Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 15

Majutsu-shi no Chikara loosely translates to "Sorcerer's Power"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Candlelight Stranger

Damon plunged backward, snapped out of his fugue to smack hard against the deck -- a knife pressed to his neck.

"Stop, right now!" The first mate's dark eyes drank the light between them, and Damon blinked without comprehension.

His mouth hurt, like he'd bit the insides of both cheeks and his tongue with one fierce chomp. The back of his head ached, and he wasn't sure why. A loop of rope had clinched his arms just above the elbows, and the knot of the lasso dug at the hollow of his right shoulder.

"Leave off him, Cordell." Mateja's voice reached out from somewhere behind him in the dark. "He's stopped, already -- or hadn't you noticed?"

Cordell, and his knife, withdrew from filling Damon's vision -- allowing the much younger human male to crane his neck and see the she-dwarf, Captain Mateja Radinka Meier of the Forge Spitter, holding the end of the line binding his arms to his chest.

"What happened?" Damon still felt disoriented, not only from smacking his head on the wooden deck of the ship. "Did it work? Is...?"

He searched about, looking for Ginga and Abhilash -- both curled on the deck a pace or two from his feet. Ginga looked drunk and giggling, eyes shining with mirth at him. Abhilash stared at him unblinking... hunger, hatred, fear... he couldn't be sure and didn't want to think on it more. His head hurt.

"You didn't tell me you were a wild mage." Mateja's frown belied the smile in her eyes. "I don't think I'd have let you aboard."

"I'll go." Damon offered stupidly, having no notion of where he'd go other than overboard -- and no idea how far downriver they'd drifted with the current or whether anyone from Renks Cairn would be waiting for him at the shore.

"A bargain's a bargain." Mateja spat to one side. "What's it matter there's contraband in the barrel?"

"Captain?" Cordell, her first mate, gave an incredulous glance over his shoulder, hand still a fist around the handle of his knife.

"Put them in my quarters, as agreed." Mateja shook her head. "So help me, I'll take it out of the lot of them if I must."

"I can walk." Abhilash argued, snaking up to her feet with alarming speed.

"Good." Mateja nodding, approving and appraising. "Then you can move the other two and spare my crew the sweat."

...

Damon awoke just as he dropped into the water -- the cold shock blasting into his senses and shivering him into his bones. He flailed, sputtered, stammered, cursed and cried-out. The tugging pain about his chest and knees as he dragged behind the catamaran pulled his attention to the rope harness about his shoulders and legs, cutting dark slashes gleaming in moonlight between himself and the railing above.

The rope hauled upward, his teeth chattering from the mix of night air and cold river.

"What happened, now?" Damon snarled amid coughing, but there was no answer.

Above, Abhilash leaned toward him over the rail and yanked him back onto the ship. Mateja looked to be standing watch over the ork, and Damon couldn't place events in order from what he remembered last to now.

"How long?" He managed, catching Mateja looking at him with a different expression less like pity and more like disgust tangled with the underpinning lust still shining in the purse of her lips and the blush of her cheeks.

"Not long." Mateja's hurried whisper quieted him as Abhilash set him on his feet. "Just dropped you in, now let's go."

Damon was pushed and dragged between them, his new boots sloshing and squishing as he walked.

...

"See, here." Ginga pointed to the black veins in Damon's skin.

In the bolstered moonlight of Mateja's cabin, a single candle was paired to a second before the first burned away. Through the portholes of the captain's quarters, moonlight now spilled by aid of clever lenses placed where the shutters had previously been locked.

"It looks like it's... spreading." Mateja scowled. "This better not interfere with our business."

"I don't think it will." Damon mumbled, naked and feeling vulnerable under the intense scrutiny of three females as they examined nearly every scrap of his exposed skin.

"Show me." Abhilash reached between his legs and cupped his cock in her hand.

"Fuck off, Abhi." Damon swatted at the she-ork's arm, but she didn't budge -- and the heat of her hand wasn't unpleasant.

"She's right, love." Ginga's face twisted with apology, even as her own eagerness started to get the better of her. "Better to prove it sooner than later, right? And we've already all..."

"I know -- I know!" Damon held his hands over his face and groaned. "I realize, I just... it's been a long day, and this is..."

"Give." Abhilash leaned forward and touched her lips to Damon's chest, nudging his arms out of the way.

"Me." The she-ork sank down, her hot breath racing across the skin of his stomach and through the thicket of hair at his crotch. His traitorous cock lurched awake, forgetting the frigid water in favor of the trio of quim giving the air a properly lusty aroma.

"Seed." And her mouth slid over him, his prick hardening against her tongue.

He groaned at the feeling. Abhilash had developed some skill of the tongue (so far as his cock was concerned) in their days together, but he knew she wanted proof his magical prowess was intact.

"Can't we just...?" He looked to Ginga, and saw in her face a similar hunger that made him realize his own complaints were going to be met with little sympathy.

"Better to just..." Ginga gave a lopsided, sad smile and made a blossoming gesture with her hand. "...and then we can get some sleep?"

"Sleep? Oh no." Mateja frowned, planting her fists on her hips and giving each of them a stern glare. "No, you're going to make damn good and sure this one's not going to be a problem for me or my crew."

She pointed over at Abhilash who growled in warning at such a suggestion -- sending a shivering thrill to Damon's toes. Mateja than jabbed a thumb back at herself.

"And then you're going to make better sure that I'm so cum drunk on you I don't throw your arse overboard."

He met her gaze. The pale blue-green of her eyes was a dull silver in the moonlight, and it reminded him vaguely of brighter silver lamps glowing down at him from a gray-brown face. He pushed thoughts of Naenia and home aside, seeing the dwarf's jaw flex impatiently.

"Of course, Ser Meier." He inclined his head, activating the magical trigger that caused his sudden orgasm.

"Captain." She lowered a heavy, broad hand down to the back of Abhilash's head before the she-ork could draw back from his cock. "On my ship, you will call me 'Captain'."

"Aye, Captain." Damon sighed, enjoying the wave of euphoria from his loins and listening to the drunken gurgle Abhilash gave.

"Again, pet." Her other hand cradled his jaw and pulled his face to hers, eyes blurring out of focus as their lips met.

Abhilash slurped hungrily at his cock as another magical spurt of seed lit a cannon whose shot exploded ecstasy in the ork's belly and she near stopped breathing.

"Once more." Mateja ignored Abhilash's faint whine and the feeble movements of the ork's hands trying to navigate around to move the dwarf's hand holding her face impaled on Damon's cock.

Damon gave the she-ork a third dose of his seed, ignoring the building tension between his eyes and the aching in his lower back telling him he needed to slow down for food and drink.

"...drink..." Ginga thrust a flagon between them, when Mateja at last let the human and the ork free of her domineering hold.

"Good." Mateja licked her lips, loosening her belt and yanking her shirt over her head. "Now her arse."

...

"That should just about do it, pet." Mateja was licking his ribs, thrusting his hips against Abhilash as his cock slopped in and out of the ork's abused sphincter. "She'll be weak as a kitten, I think."

"I... I need a moment." Damon panted, sweating and gritting his teeth from the pain building in his muscles as the enchantment powering his non-stop orgasms took what it needed from the rest of him.

"You're not 'spent', are you?" Mateja's voice carried a malicious edge, one Ginga caught easily but missed Damon's addled ears.

"He needs to replenish himself." Ginga had quickly run out of wine to give him. "Food, water... keep this up and he'll faint."

"But he's got at least one more, haven't you, pet?" Mateja pulled gently on Damon's hips, her lips and tongue tracing an arch across the small of his back.

The stench of semen drowned out the pungent, earthy stink of ork ass when Damon's cock popped out of the glistening hole. White, syrupy clots ran out, dribbling in sticky streams from the gaping cavern of Abhilash's anus. The splattering rain of his seed was an unusual noise that pricked its way into Damon's ears and dragged his mind away from the burning thirst in his throat.

"Clean him up." Mateja ordered, stopping Ginga as she looked about. "What are you looking for?"

"A cloth -- bucket of water..." Ginga set a hand on her hip, but the dwarf grinned evilly.

"Use your mouth, girl." Mateja turned Damon, who only just kept his feet. "Get him ready for me, and maybe you'll get your turn after."

"No." Damon and Ginga both managed at the same time -- though Damon's voice was hoarse. He'd spoken up as soon as he could, and Ginga had only just gotten past her shock. The pair of them had put the dwarf on her heels only a moment when she squeezed Damon's buttocks just before yanking him down to the floor.

"Suit yerself." Mateja sneered, letting Damon fall with a thump so she could straddle his hips.

The candle burned out, but Ginga kept her eyes trained on the she-dwarf as water splashed Damon's crotch. Not water.

Mateja Radinka Meier, Captain of the Forge Spitter, was pissing on Damon. Ginga's eyes narrowed in disgust, nose wrinkling as the urine-stink mixed with the other odors in the cramped quarters of the ship's captain.

"Not my usual." Mateja squatted lower and grabbed Damon's still-erect, piss- and semen-slicked dick to aim the member at her eager quim. "But disobedience has a price, lass."

She settled herself on Damon's gleeful penis, the appendage likewise ignoring anything that wasn't the delicious squeezing slipperiness of pussy over its crown and down its length. Damon groaned, his knees bent painfully where he'd fallen, and Mateja humping down against him felt like a barrel was being dropped on his pelvis. A mercy her cunt plied his cock more gently than Mateja's hips.

"Cord!" Mateja shouted, her door swinging open immediately to reveal the silhouette of her First Mate in the gloom. "She's yours for the night, I don't fancy her anymore."

"...no..." Damon fought the word out of his mouth, gasping. Ginga swore, drawing a knife from her belt.

The sailor, evidently a skilled hand in such matters, snatched Ginga's wrist too quickly for her to counter and he wrenched the knife from her grasp. Once disarmed, he cuffed Ginga sharply even as she thrashed and kicked at him.

"...stop..." Damon used the only leverage he had, triggering another -- now genuinely painful -- orgasm to put Mateja off-guard. "...Abhi."

The she-ork responded, slurring something in ork-speak as her eyes fought open from a sleep unlike any she'd ever known. She thought maybe a hot coal was wedged in her ass and her muscles still felt limp, useless. Her eyes focused quickly in the shadows of moonlight, taking in the movements and shapes around her.

Damon wrestled Mateja beneath him, dumping more of his seed into her and struggling to keep her off-balance as her orgasm interrupted her ire. She was much stronger than him, and his leverage didn't last. The resulting melee of naked and clothed bodies in the dark rattled and banged in the cramped space.

A scream, the flash of steel and moonlight shone along the deadly length of metal hovering in the air. The smell of blood. Cordell wailing and clutching the stump of his left arm where his wrist and hand used to be. Mateja eyeing Abhilash coldly up the length of magical blade, and the she-ork's eyes glinting like deadly yellow stars.

"Well." Mateja sniffed, letting go of Damon's neck and stepping back. "Throwing her to the crew might have been... impolite."

"Fuck you, Raddi!" Cordell shrieked, kicking weakly at her as blood streamed from the stump of his arm. "Fuck you and all of you... she cut off my fuckin' hand!"

Commotion from outside, as more crew roused to the shouting.

"Listen, she-beast..." Mateja's voice had changed -- a tone Damon found more familiar, more like the voice she used when pillowing at the brothel. "...you've done right by them both. You can lower the sword. Pet, tell her."

Damon was cradling Ginga, his back to the dwarf and his eyes and hands searching over the human female.

"I'm alright." Ginga whispered, their foreheads touching as they struggled to calm their breathing. "I'm alright, Damon."

"Okay..." Damon slurred, feeling heavier and slower by the moment. "hokay..."

He looked back over his shoulder, marveling that Abhilash hadn't already butchered the dwarf -- not giving himself time to wonder at her restraint.

"Abhi... don't." He shook his head. "We're alright."

"Like fuckin' hell!" Cordell hollered. "Fuckin' hell we are! Raddi, you gotta help me..."

His teeth were chattering and his eyes were wide. Mateja squared on the door, where the bosun and other of her crew were crammed with weapons drawn.

"Right, we're going to need some boiled linens and plenty of light." The dwarf's demeanor shifted again, assuming the captain's air of command. "Get him on deck!"

A flurry of movement, Cordell half-lifted and half-dragged from the room.

"Fuck, this fuckin' mess." Mateja put both fists on her hips and looked at the pooling fluids on the floor. "Well, I suppose fair's fair."

...

"Fuck off, boy." Cordell panted, eyes glassy and heavy-lidded as Damon approached. "Ye done enough."

"Thought you might want this back." Damon tossed the severed hand onto Cordell's lap, tugging a pained cough from the sailor growing ashen from blood-loss.

"Can you heal him?" Mateja didn't look up, but her chin turned slightly toward the side as she watched her crew try to stop the bleeding without pitch or magic. "I don't keep a hedge-wizard aboard."

"No more dragging me across the deck, or throwing me overboard." Damon stated flatly, trying to remember the whisper-song that had mended Abhilash's arm. "And if I'm able, I expect to be paid for my efforts."

"Bar that, Raddi..." Cordell lolled his head, rather than shaking it. "Put a sword in his guts, n' good riddance."

"Shut up, Cord." Mateja tapped her foot, considering her options. "Alright, wild-mage."

The she-dwarf turned to look up into his eyes, the stern set of her jaw a fair warning of the voice she was about to turn on him so he knew exactly the type of captain he was dealing with.

"You mend him, I'll pay you." She sniffed, looking him up and down without much approval of what she saw. "Fail, and I dump your corpse in the River."

Damon nodded, feeling his throat tighten and wondering if Abhilash would be enough to stop a ship full of sailors if the worst should happen.

"Then get to fuckin' work." Mateja stomped away toward her cabin. "Didn't aim to sleep t'night, anyway."

The human sorcerer moved close and sank to his knees next to Cordell, the wounded sailor leaning away as best he could where he was propped against a low railing aft of the wheel. The other crew gathered about moved to just out of arm's reach, well within blade's reach just the same, and Damon was as near to alone with Cordell as he could have any hope.

"I'll have to look at the two sides of it." Damon reached down, gingerly lifting the shortened length of the sailor's left arm. Someone had tied a severe cinch about the elbow using a knotted whip or scourge, stemming the gush of blood to a slow drooling. Tilting down, he looked closely at the cloven flesh -- glad he hadn't eaten as the roiling of his stomach produced nothing but the itching burn of bile at the back of his mouth. The thick smell of blood filled his nose, and he was vaguely aware of some strong spirits that had been used to ease Cordell's pain.

"This will have to come off." Damon pointed at the binding on the sailor's elbow.

So, I guess I'm a healer, then. Damon breathed deeply through his nose and thought back to what he could remember from the troll's severed limbs. The blood would have to flow, at some point, and his magic would bring the two pieces back together. The alignment needed to be right, or perhaps the bones and muscles wouldn't mend properly -- if at all.

"This is going to hurt." Damon warned, getting a faint scoff of exasperation.

"Oi, I'm glad it don't yet." Cordell sagged toward him, his breathing shallow. "I hope... she kills you slow."

The rhythm tickled the back of Damon's mind, the rippling image rising before his eyes as his perception sank inward and his focus through Matta's Lens cleared.

"Take this off." Damon whispered, not waiting to see who -- if anyone -- would follow his instructions.

He and Cordell didn't have the luxury to wait. The young sorcerer hummed the first words, his fingers searching along the lines of magic for the right patterns. It wasn't the same as before; the sailor's injury was to his arm, yes, but the manner and severity were different. Damon realized that, in some ways, this wound was far easier to understand. The two ends separated by the sword were visible, cleanly sliced in one blow with no deflection of the blade when the edge met bone. Abhilash's arm had been twisted, the bones coarsely snapped and the muscles bunching and tearing around the bone -- or so he guessed. With Cordell, he could see the whole of the wound.

He remembered Kuruk's thick scars, when the severed limbs had been fastened back to him, and perhaps it was that image that steered him.

The song was as soft a lullaby as ever, weaving back and forth between Damon's hands until he quickly reached for Cordell's left hand and set the severed wrist against the stump with a careful twist. He could hear Cordell wailing, but the sound was far-off and had no meaning. The only meaning was the lullaby. The only movement the slow rolling of the two halves of the wound finding its most natural alignment. Damon's hands now held both sides of the wound, pressing them together as the magic slid between them in a fine mist.

"Bugger me blind, he did it." Damon heard from his right, where a crewman he didn't know was holding the cut length of knotted leather that was once keeping Cordell's lifeblood from flooding the deck.

He looked at Cordell's left arm, eyes widening to see the thin black scar where a magical blade had made clear Abhilash's disapproval of the First Mate's handling of Ginga. Relief poured over his head and down his back. He didn't feel nearly as weak or weary as before, when he'd healed Abhi's arm. A bit like he'd been hauling water from the creek, or climbing one of the larger trees deeper in the Willow Wood... and perhaps like he'd been holding his breath.

The sailor, still weak from lost blood, was just able to see the results of the wild mage's efforts. Wiggling the fingers of his left hand as feeling and pain surged out and back from those reunited digits, Cordell promptly fainted.

Damon exhaled a breath he noticed he'd been holding, then clutched at his head's painful throbbing from thirst and hunger.

"I need food... and water." Damon grumbled as loud as his clamoring skull would allow.

...

When Mateja reached her quarters, the stench of blood, semen, and ork-stink was gagged and muffled beneath a pine oil washing that removed the offending sluice but only masked the pungent odors with an astringent more invasive and abusive of the nose. She didn't care for it, but there'd be no helping it with how much Cord had bled all over the cabin. Lucky to be alive and no mistake. She swallowed the bile rising at the back of her throat and coughed coarsely before opening her door to creak noisily where a mop had scoured the lower hinge. She winced, but it didn't look as though her guests had been giving her due attention as the door opened. Better that, too.