A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 05

Late the next day when the sun had just begun to sink into the western trees, an hour when Ralen and the crew gathered atop near the wheel and played at wands, Cam saw the slaver lift the unresisting Kheld girl in his arms and carry her across the deck, then down into the aft cabin, the very one he shared with Ralen. He liked it even less when the slaver closed the door behind him and did not come back out right away. Leaving the game, he crossed the deck, not knowing what he meant to do. Not, that is, until he heard Tegwyna's muffled cry of pain. He ran in without thinking twice only to stop cold at what he saw.

Tegwyna was on the bed, both her legs around Eubuleus' fat hips, her thin smock open in the front and bunched up about her waist. Tegwyna's bandaged foot, the wrappings spotted with seeping fluids and blood, moved up and down in time to Eubuleus' buttocks as the slaver's cock, pale and thick, as big around as slender Tegwyna's arm, plunged greedily into her unresisting body.

"You fucking Staubaun pig!" he yelled. Picking up the nearest thing he could, a wooden chair, he hoisted it high. "Get off of her!"

"Go away, cumbuck," Eubuleus growled, though he stopped thrusting.

"No!" Cam lifted the chair higher, to show he would hit him with it. The only reason he did not was that he would in all likelihood hit Tegwyna's injured leg as well. "Now get off her. Worth so gods damned much as a virgin, is she? You gods' damned fucking lying pervert pig—" He never expected the Staubaun to move so fast, until the man swung at him. Though Cam swung the chair, all it hit was the man's outstretched arm, eliciting an outraged roar.

The barque was not so large a boat the confrontation had gone unheard. Ralen was first in the room and others came after. Between them, they pulled the fighters apart. Eubuleus cradled an injured arm and Cam sported a bloodied lip from the punch the man had landed after the chair broke, and they continued to hurl insults and spit at each other, but they were separated. Through all of it, Tegwyna never even moved, just lay silently on the bed with her legs spread like a whore's, covered in her virgin's blood and Eubuleus' slime.

"The bitch is mine!" the slaver railed. "Your little cumhole's got no business—"

"She's fucking burned, you Staubaun asshole—or don't it matter to you that she's in fucking pain—" Cam stopped only when he felt Ralen's heavy hand on his neck.

"Out," the big man said.

"But Ralen—" Cam protested.

"Out. Both of you." Ralen gave Cam a shove to the door. "She stays in here." They left the girl within, with One-Handed Brasco to keep an eye on her. He had both of those and they were sharp enough.

Once everyone was outside, the other men released Eubuleus, who took the opportunity to restore somewhat his dignity by hiking up his trousers. Ralen walked up to Eubuleus and stood over him like a great golden bear, forcing the man to look up to meet his gaze. Not all Staubauns were the same height, and Ralen was both taller and of bigger build.

"I told you, slaver," he said, emphasizing the politeness in a way that rendered it menacing, "no fucking on my boat. No fucking the cumbuck, no fucking the girl. Not you, not the men. No one fucks on the water. You knew it and you had to go do it. Now you know why."

The slaver's eyes darted, seeking disagreement among the men and finding none. It had been one of Ralen's rules for the dozen years some had known him. All of them had abided by it, including Ralen himself. Eubuleus had lived on the river long enough to know their type, rough men having to live in close quarters, each ready to kill the other over something one had that the other wanted. And Ralen himself was a scoundrel and a killer, about as dangerous a rogue as could be found along the Dazun.

"She needed it. She was starting to mewl like a cat. Couldn't have that, now, could I?" he complained.

"I'll cum in a cup, you too, and you give her that. But no fucking the girl."

He saw that Ralen was unrelenting. "It won't happen again. I'll get her off the bed."

"She stays. That way I can be damn sure it doesn't. Tomorrow we reach Lygge. You—and your girl—get off there."

"I paid you good gold for passage to Merath!"

"You'll get it all back. I want you off."

Disgruntled, the slaver had no choice. He walked away, unhappy, the costly yellow robe he had bought in Konops sweeping the deck and teased by the wind. The men, shaking their heads yet again, dispersed again to the aft deck to resume their game. Grabbing Cam's arm, Ralen led him to the bow, where he sat him down upon the grappling coils. The setting sun was at their backs, throwing out long shadows. "The girl belongs to him, Cam."

"You know it's wrong, Ralen."

"Do I?"

"We got to take her away from him. It'd be easy for us."

"Yes, it would. We outnumber him, don't we? It's what—seven of us and one of him? But I can't do it." He frowned and looked heavily down the length of the barque, with its wide wooden deck empty for now of cargo. "Think what it would mean if I did, if I took Eubuleus' slave—any man's slave—and word got around. It would mean any man could come along, and take you, and say I get what I hand out."

"But she doesn't want to be his slave!"

"Do you want to be mine?"

Cam looked at him, hard. When he opened his mouth to speak, he was thinking again. "No. That was decided for me."

Ralen nodded, and sighed, and would not meet his eyes. After a time, he said. "I'm not a slave owner. Never have been. You were the first." To the surprised stare Cam shot him, he nodded again. He hunkered down beside the youth. "Do you think I kept every boy I ever gave to Penargos? No. Not one. A few I sold, because they had sold themselves to me first. The others, I let go, told them they were free to do what they wanted about it. It's bad being a cumbuck, but it's not a death sentence."

"But you kept me? Instead of letting me go? Why?" Cam felt that knowledge work like a needle in his heart. The others had been set free after . . . had returned home. He remembered his family, his former life, a time so far away after only ten months that it seemed like a dream.

Ralen's eyes hardened again, his lips slid into a look Cam knew well. "Because I wanted to."

When had Ralen known? During the rape? After? Stunned by that revelation, Cam did not even know what his own feelings toward this man might be. They had become tangled again, haunted by that night.

"You're perfect for me, Cam. Perfect for my life and perfect for my bed. When Penargos had finished with what he wanted, I knew what I wanted. I wanted you."

"You bastard—"

"I thought I could protect you, Cam. I . . . I didn't want you to suffer more than you already had."

"Protect me? How? By shoving your cock up my ass?"

Cam couldn't look at him. In Ralen's silence he heard an answer he could not bear. The force of Ralen's desire stunned and also strangely thrilled him. Like an earthquake or a Dazun flood, it had come upon him without warning and altered his life beyond measure. That one man's lust should have changed his life seemed at once impossible and inevitable, because he could no longer imagine it otherwise.

"That girl Tegwyna," he said, finding it difficult to say anything but easiest to say that, "Eubuleus doesn't want to protect her. He wants to sell her, maybe. Or fuck her the same way he would fuck me, or any Kheld, because we're handy and don't matter. He doesn't see her as a person at all."

With a short, bitter smile, Ralen touched Cam's face, stroked his fingers over the soft growth of beard lining his jaw. "I won't take her away from him, rabbit. Because I would never let anyone take you away from me. You've stolen my heart, boy. But I won't help the damn slaver any further. Tomorrow morning, I put them both off at Lygge." He rose and walked away, his shadow preceding him across the sunset-painted deck.

* * * *

Cam thought hard about what to do before he did it. He knew the Upper Dazun well enough by now, and recalled all that he knew about what it held before reaching Lygge. He took the last watch and in his walking the deck he made sure to give his watch-mate, old One-Handed Brasco, a bottle of Ralen's best brandy. A perk, he said, for keeping Tegwyna safe. The kind-hearted man smiled and, having a weakness for spirits, did the bottle proud. While he was doing so, Cam every quarter hour drew in another foot of line attached to the four person ketch the barque dragged behind like an afterthought. Soon it was barely trailing the boat at all. At the very end of his watch, he stepped around the drunken Brasco and entered the cabin.

Ralen was sleeping soundly on the floor and Cam stepped surely around him to kneel beside the bed. With Brasco's dagger, he sliced through the rope leashing Tegwyna, leaving only the length the slaver had knotted in a makeshift collar about her neck. He had no time to worry about that. The girl's eyes fluttered open once or twice, but Ralen liked his sleep and had given her a strong dose of the elfshod. Tegwyna neither fought nor welcomed him as Cam scooped her up in his arms. "She needs to pee," he said to Ralen when the big man stirred. The Staubaun grunted in his sleep and rolled over, neither caring nor seeing which door he heard open or close.

The sides of the unladen barque stood a few feet above the water, but Cam pulled the boat easily alongside and lowered Tegwyna into it without making more than a usual amount of noise, then climbed down himself. Pushing off with an oar, he soon was rowing toward the Amallar bank. By the time they noticed him—and Tegwyna—gone, he would be well away.

* * * *

Rowing was hard work and Tegwyna lolled weak as a kitten against the prow seat, so there wasn't much talk. Not that Cam's heart would have been in it. His heart was in turmoil. Leaving Ralen felt completely wrong. Had he really stolen the bandit's heart? His own felt torn in half at what he was doing. As angry as he truly was at having his life stolen from him because of one man's lust, he also knew he felt more truly alive now than he had ever felt in Omadawn.

He didn't know what the hell he wanted to do.

But that was his problem, not Tegwyna's--and he knew exactly what he wanted to do about her. He couldn't let Eubuleus get off the barque in Lygge with this girl as his slave. The Staubaun bastard would rape her again, almost for certain, and then he'd sell her to other men who would rape her. Maybe take her to a man who would cut off her burned foot or hands so he could sell her to a beggar gang. A pretty, maimed young woman might do well enough for such a lot, but her life would be unimaginable. He doubted Tegwyna would survive it.

There was a Kheld town on the Amallar side, as was often the case cross river from any Staubaun port. This one was inhabited primarily by several families of Darms, a Kheld clan and a hard-working lot. Oily yellow lanterns topped a couple of shacks, serving as makeshift port lights should any vessel have reason to approach the sorry wharf by night. A fisherman up early on the piers directed Cam to the town's healer, Anrheddu Mab, who had studied under a woman who had trained at Argoellin glade. The old woman, her black hair striped with wide white streaks that framed her face with light, looked over Tegwyna's wounds.

"Can she stay here with you, Mother?" Cam asked as politely as he remembered. He had not been near a proper Kheld matron since leaving home, and his own language sounded strange off his tongue. "I took her off a slaver, see, and I got to leave her somewhere. She's in an awful bad way, but he'll do her worse. Can you hide her?"

"We will hide the poor child, should any come to seek her. You did well to bring her here. Slavers know better than to come into our towns," old Mab said. Her lined face smiled tenderly upon him. "The burns were treated skillfully, and I believe they will heal though she be left lame. As for the other, she will find it hard to bear at times, but we have had our young women thus afflicted before. Our women bear their burdens and we have half-Staubaun lads enough from whom she might find ease. The young men the Staubauns take have it harder." Her round bird-like eyes lingered on his.

Cam nodded. He reckoned it true. A woman craving a man was a matter Khelds understood. They could help Tegwyna here in this sleepy river town, but they couldn't help him. Among his own people, he would be despised, looked down on as a Staubaun-sucking wog, lower than the bottom of a beggar's shoe. Khelds didn't approve of men being with men that way, whatever the reason for it.

* * * *

When the crew noted that the ketch was gone and raised the alarm, Ralen's first thought upon waking and seeing the girl gone was that Eubuleus had taken off in the night. But when he reached the deck, there was the yellow-garbed slaver beside the rail, demanding the girl and screaming about his property being stolen. And there, too, was drunken Brasco being held ass-bare at the side while his mates tossed a pail of cold river water over his head. He knew then that he would not find Cam anywhere on the boat, and neither would he find the slaver's useless girl.

"He took the cunt. They hang together, that kind—always do—once a Kheld, always a Kheld. Thieving little cum-drinker! He stole her!" The veins on the side of the slaver's neck bulged.

The sun was not yet up, allowing them to see the port lights of Lygge in the distance. The city, second largest in Merrydn after Merath, attracted heavy river traffic. There being nothing else to do, not knowing where the boy would have made land, they continued to the town. They could launch a search from there. Eubuleus, presenting himself as grievously wronged and pointing out that he no longer had the slave girl with him, demanded passage when they continued to Merath, and Ralen, knowing his slave boy to have committed the wrong, agreed.

He had never considered that Cam would leave him.

He needs to suck cum, the little Kheld bastard. We're four days out and he's feeling it hard. Did he have it so bad, here with me? Ralen stared out at the brightening water, torn between anger and loss.

"Without the ketch, we can't go ashore," Partas grumbled at the inconvenience. "I'll flag the port masters and see if they have a berth for the boat." There probably would be something available, but he resented having to pay the fee.

They dropped anchor outside the port and waited. Signals were slow work and it might take some time before Partas got his answer. Brasco huddled on the deck, his shirt wet in the morning cool, cradling his head in his one hand and occasionally groaning. He had downed a whole leg of Kheld brandy and had to be suffering for it.

Ralen was still silently cursing his changed personal situation when Meuk wandered over to his brooding leader. "That looks like our ketch," he said, pointing out on the water. Ralen leaped to his feet and ran to the opposite side of the barque, squinting through the haze into the first rays of the sun.

"He's coming back. He knew where he'd find us." Pulling out his spyglass, he angled for a better look. "Cam's alone. He ditched the girl." He continued to watch the boy, still a miniature but now identifiable.

"Prob'ly on the Amallar side. Jarla." Meuk named the town.

Ralen nodded. Through the eyeglass, he continued to watch the strong young back clad in the blue and brown jacket Ralen had given him but a few weeks before, the steady confident rhythm of the youth's oar strokes lifting and cutting decisively into the water. Other men, alerted by their leader's preoccupation, came over to look.

Partas abandoned his flags and laughed. "Pay up! That's what you get, wagering against an honest lad." He hadn't cared about the damn slave girl, but had not believed for a moment that Cam would steal the ketch.

The slaver, too, came over, though he merely glared with disapproval. When Cam was within a few yards of the barque and angling so that the men could throw him a line, Eubuleus turned to Ralen. "Make him give back the girl," he demanded.

Meuk spat into the river in scorn. "Fat swallow. The little bitch is with folk now won't give her up. He's seen to that. Khelds don't hold with slavers."

"Then give me the boy," Eubuleus proposed. One of the men, shouting, tossed Cam a line and seconds later the ketch bumped against the solid planking of the stern. The slaver met Ralen's affronted glare. "He stole my property, which makes him a slave and a thief. Slave-stealing is a crime in Lygge. He's nothing but trouble to you. Just give me the boy and we're even." He all but licked his lips at the prospect. The lad was worth twelve of the girl he had just lost.

Ralen turned on him, foregoing the pleasure of watching Cam climb back onto the barque. Climb back into his life, whole and willing. "Damn you, no. You lost a slave, you get her price. That's it."

"That slave's a thief!"

The smuggler snorted. "We're all thieves on this boat. You included. You stole that cunt in the first place, didn't you? She wasn't born a slave, you made her one. But you won't make one of Cam. Or haven't you got it in your head yet he's a freeman?"

"Him? A fucking cumbuck?"

"Cumbucks get fucked, slave or free. But a slave can be bought and sold, right? Well, he can't be bought because no one is going to sell him. I'm not about to do it and no other man is going to get the chance, so he's no more a slave than any man here." Ralen dismissed the gaping slaver and walked over to the side where Partas had just lent his hand to help Cam climb back into the boat. Ralen grabbed the youth by the arm and coldly met his questioning look.

"I did what I had to, Ralen," the Kheld youth said through cold-stiffened lips. He had been out on the water for hours, likely, rowing to get back.

"Smart move, coming back," Ralen said. He allowed a thin smile. "I would have had a hell of a time finding you if you hadn't." Cam's blue eyes widened as he realized Ralen's meaning. The smuggler would have spared nothing to track him down. He knew he was in for it. "Go to the cabin," he said, shoving the boy in that direction, past the slaver. "We need the damn ketch."

* * * *

They sent messages on two boats due to leave up river from Lygge, then set out again into the river. Eubuleus remained on board, without a word of disapproval from Ralen. He wanted the slaver on board.

"He's trouble," Ralen said to Partas, who nodded. Both foresaw Eubuleus reporting his grievances to local authorities as soon as they berthed at Merath. Even if Merathi officials were not disposed to pursue the matter of the man's stolen slave, Eubuleus could make other claims equally as bothersome. "Get rid of him at Fogall." The river at the Cut was deep. A bound man in a sack filled with stones might wash up a year later, by which time it would not matter.

But though he saw Eubuleus killed and dropped over the side to silently disappear beneath the surface of the Dazun, Ralen bore no hard feelings toward the slave whose rash acts had prompted the deed. Cam's actions had sprung from truer foundations than Ralen himself possessed and far from scorning the boy for his conviction, the smuggler felt his love grow deeper. He could not own Cam because it was his deepest belief that the lesser man cannot own the better. But he could hold that man and he could degrade him, and he could find himself within that mirror. So it was that he did not punish Cam overtly, but simply withheld the one thing Cam most needed from him.

As they neared Merath, he felt the boy's hot eyes upon him, detected the taut look of desire, the hint of softness about that proud young mouth. He smelled it in the cabin after the boy had retreated there to relieve his own need in private. He knew it by the way Cam, otherwise so given to solitude, stayed always near him.