Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 15

"We've seen our share of bandits -- the odd goblin and such -- but most of the fae-folk of the wood keep the savages thin 'round here." Stearn laughed bitterly. "Not a good road for a pilgrimage, lad -- better to hi-thee to the Coast Road."

"Are the forests so dangerous, if fae-kind live there?" Ginga asked, warming her hands near the hearth. "I would think Ser Majesty's road wardens keep the peace along the north road."

"They do, when they can." Stearn sniffed, rubbing his knuckles thoughtfully. "It'll be a little thin, the soup, but I've some day-old bread, if..."

"Husband." The voice was soft, yet it cut through their chatter with a sharpness Damon could hardly believe.

Stearn lurched about, straightening as best he could to face his young wife. She had to be half his age, or even nearer an age with Damon and Ginga, with dull raven locks and pale cream skin that made her look not-quite sickly yet too fair to be healthy. Her clothes were fine make, fabric purchased in Renks Cairn or Tsuro; and she spoke with an accent they'd heard in Tsuro, marking her as an immigrant from across the Narrow Sea. Her features were otherwise drab, but she seemed to capture Stearn's attention whenever she spoke. She looked nervous and she said little.

"My dove." Stearn rubbed his knuckles as he approached her. "I'll see to supper, tonight..."

"Did you ask...?" This she said in a hushed tone, her face turned partly away from the guests her husband had led into the house just at sunset.

"Hush, hush -- no, I've not." Stearn looked over his shoulder, a mix of shame or embarrassment clouding what Damon might have mistaken as anticipation. "Best wait to after supper. Hospitality..."

"Yes." As quickly as she'd interrupted, she sat back into a corner of the kitchen and presumed herself forgotten.

Stearn caught Ginga and Damon glancing curiously at her.

"Fumiko, bless her, is very much her mère's child... from east across the Narrow." Stearn nodded almost to himself, visibly weighing how much to admit and when.

"Our host gives us too much, Ser." Damon offered what he hoped passed for a reassuring smile, then thought better of it for the wiry black scars webbed across his face.

"Your host..." Stearn caught himself up, and straightened. "Pay it no heed, lad... we'll sup and then I'll beg are word with you in private, host or not."

Damon saw fear or shame in Stearn's face, he thought, and knew it was no small matter for a man of his years to ask a stranger for anything in his own home. The young exile of South-wold gave a silent, solemn nod and let the matter be. Ginga made a thoughtful sound but said nothing more of it, either.

...

"Hospitality or not, I think there's plenty wrong with both of them." Ginga shook her head, arms crossed on her bosom and right foot tapping the trampled straw of the little barn. "And she's agreeable to this?"

"What's candle strangler?" Abhilash nudged Damon's shoulder with a probing knuckle, her first inquiry too-long ignored.

"Candlelight stranger, not strangler." Ginga gave a well-used and long-suffering sigh, though the effect seemed to give her little respite. "A person in the night, someone you don't know, that answers a difficult need."

"Why candle? Why not night stranger?" The she-ork mused.

"I don't know, Abhi." Damon shook his head. "It's not the point. They've asked -- well, Stearn asked. Fumiko just stood there like a post, staring at the floor."

"If she'll not have it, don't do it." Ginga swiped her hand, knife-like, between them. "And that's it."

"What need? You not say." The she-ork interrupted with a jabbing knuckle to Damon's shoulder again.

"Stearn asked me to give Fumiko a child." Damon hissed, glancing over his shoulder and hoping their host couldn't hear the conversation despite the dozen paces and two walls between them.

"He want you rut female?" Abhilash looked genuinely surprised at the idea before resolving her thoughts with an indifferent shrug. "So, rut female."

"What if she doesn't want a bairn?" Ginga set a fist on each hip, lowering her chin and glaring at the ork from beneath her brow. "If Stearn is forcing her..."

"So no rut female." Abhilash shrugged again. "White-hair no want rut female?"

"He can't sire... he's impotent." Damon shook his head, then followed-up before the ork could ask her next question. "His seed does not make welps."

"Weak." She grunted. "Good you here."

"I don't think it is." Damon frowned.

"But he said a seer told him you'd be here, today?" Ginga worked her lip between her teeth, looking more worried than angry.

"Not me, just... 'someone who can help'. Those are his words, not mine." Damon splayed his hands. "It's why he didn't shoot me, when we stopped. He said he was relieved Abhilash wasn't male, when he saw us all up close."

"That'd be a damn poor seer to put his line in the hands of an ork." Ginga gave a sad smile, not sure she felt better about things with a seer being involved. "Did he say anything else?"

"Not about his instructions -- just the day and place." Damon shook his head. "The seer told him it was too far away to name a person... but his issue could be sired under the light of the half-moon, and a candlelight stranger would be his witness."

"White-hair want you watch him rut female?" Abhilash scratched her head, then muttered in ork-speak a familiar word.

"The witness is the surrogate... like a second... no, you wouldn't know that, either." Ginga groaned, rubbing her temples. "Damon would sire the child, but swear that the bairn is Stearn's own flesh and blood."

"So Damon lie?" Abhilash's eyebrow raised quizzically at the human male. "You rut female and say you not rut female?"

"It's a stupid practice, I admit." Damon took a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips. "Even Matta said it was archaic, a device of nobility and politics."

"And Stearn's at least a petty noble... or attached to a noble's house." Ginga stopped tapping her foot. "Maybe he's looking to secure his own dotage."

"His old age." Damon said aside to the ork. "Not just white-haired, but old and weak."

"Weak now." Her frown was thoughtful, interrupted by a sneer of contempt. "Weak and not die. Strong and not live."

"I suppose." He shrugged in answer.

"If she wants the bairn, you should do it." Ginga said quickly, her mouth drawing into a tight line as soon as the words left her lips, her entire body stiff and still as she stared past Damon's hip out the front of the barn.

"That's cruel." Damon looked at her. "Are you sure about this?"

"What cruelty? She doesn't know you... won't love you... maybe won't even remember what you look like -- other than horribly scarred... in a few years, anyway." Ginga shook her head, refusing to look Damon in the eyes. "Stearn's asked... that's that. He needs an heir, and she needs a child to care for her as well when he's gone."

"If she wants it." Damon finally got Ginga to look him in the eyes.

"Aye. If'n she'll risk it." Ginga's hands cradled her own belly, not yet beginning to swell. "Go, before I lose my nerve... I'm already praying Stearn's lost his."

...

Whether Stearn's nerve had shaken, Damon wouldn't know... Fumiko met him at the door as he returned.

"Stearn?" He asked, trying to look past the exotic-looking woman with pale skin.

"Sleeping." Her eyes had a different cast to them -- defiant, maybe.

"I..." Damon leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Are you sure about this?"

"Sleeping." Fumiko held out a hand and turned, beckoning him into the house.

"That's not a 'yes', Ser." Damon stopped, his wrist clasped in Fumiko's hand forming a bridge between their silhouettes in the lamp light spilling through the doorway. "Is this what you want? To carry Stearn's child?"

A momentary frustration flashed across her face, replaced by a smile that was neither wistful nor dutifully pleased of the notion. Was she amused? The play of light behind her made it difficult to read her expression; she turned away as he drew closer, leading him into the house.

She took him back to the kitchen, where a simple pallet had been fashioned on the floor -- a woven rug of hempen fibers beneath a soft fur Damon didn't recognize and a blanket that likely belonged to the noble that owned the estate. He hoped it belonged to a noble and wasn't from Stearn's own bed. Something about sullying a noble's blanket seemed more honorable than using the bedding of his host -- especially if he was about to impregnate the man's wife.

His cock hardened against the front of his pants, even as he wrestled with the needs of the moment against his own sense of possessiveness. How would he feel in Stearn's position? Would he be willing to let Ginga take the seed of another? The circular distraction of his thoughts ran into a rocky outcropping -- Fumiko guiding him to the floor and loosening his belt. Her expression was placid -- distant, maybe. Damon tried to mimick it for his own ease, thinking of Ginga... and Abhi with her... trying to distance himself from the idea that Fumiko was wed to another man and only using him for his seed. She didn't even know it was magical, and he wasn't being paid as her whore.

"Wait." Damon stopped her, his pants around his thighs and Fumiko's hand a palm-breadth from touching his hardening dick. "It might... be easier if you didn't have to look at me."

Her lips quirked with amusement, wiped quickly into a flat expression again before he had time to wonder at it. She drew away from him and turned about, presenting her skirt-covered haunches to him.

"I am Stearn, right now." Damon whispered. "The man in the barn is our witness, Fumiko."

The lie felt clumsy on his tongue. He squeezed his eyes shut and stroked his cock with one hand and lifted the hem of her skirt over her hips. Opening his eyes so he wouldn't fumble about, he laid eyes on the most pale, pristine skin he'd ever seen glistening in the light of the one lamp set on the nearby table. It took a moment to realize she was wearing some silken hose that covered her legs all the way to the joint of her buttocks -- but even those smooth cheeks were only just darker than the leggings covering Fumiko's lower extremities. The thatch of dark hair that was her mound swallowed what little light Damon had to navigate her with his eyes, and the cleft of her sex was just beginning to glisten with excitement.

"Remember how I touch you." Damon whispered, hoping to give Fumiko a measure of arousal before the shock of his seed stole all illusion from the woman. "Think of how I make your body hunger for me."

Fumiko lowered her head onto the blanket, resting against her arms and sighing as she seemed to sink into the fantasy. The scent of arousal snaked into Damon's nose, and Fumiko gently rocked her hips closer to him. The slippery sensation of her leggings against his skin was a novel feeling, slipping and slithering against him in a way that only fine hosiery could. His skin prickled along his arms, thighs, and shoulders, savoring the kissing, stirring slide of skin on silk between them as his prick nudged beneath her mound and rubbed through the coarse hair. Damon bounced his hips gently against Fumiko's arse, drawing the length of his cock over her mound several times before slowly lining the dark purple head with the entrance of this bride's sex. His bride, he told himself. He was Stearn. Fumiko was his bride.

"Are you ready for me, Fumiko, my young bride?" Damon whispered, voice hoarse at the back of his throat as he began to lose himself to the lust of the moment.

"Yes." Her answer hinted at hesitation before she added with audible desire, "give me an heir."

His cock pressed into her, splitting her waiting quim angrily as she was still not quite aroused enough for easy entry. He pulled back, dragging the crown up and down her slit and groaning in appreciation of her -- her wetness chasing after with her breath a muffled sigh into the blanket. Trying again, he sank fully into Fumiko's eager cunt...

He never tired of her... ever since they'd wed, he'd ploughed her every night and learnt every quivering curve of her body... if not for his faulty seed, he'd have sired a child with her already and the seer's vision would've been pointless, and he wouldn't have needed the witness or his damned companions...

Ginga...

Damon's eyes snapped open and he took a sharp breath, his self-deception shattered as he felt his balls slap against Fumiko's mound.

His legs felt hot, and his sack itched as though he'd been at this some time... had he truly lost himself to that illusion? Was it his own doing? Pieces of the dreamlike mantle of Stearn in his mind crumbled at a touch, and Damon realized the lamp had been removed -- someone had lit a candle in its place.

Fumiko sighed and rocked with him, muttering quietly in her home tongue... Damon hoped he hadn't insulted her or ruined her own dreamlike enjoyment of their shared illusion. Shaking his head and taking another steadying breath, Damon activated the magical trigger of his climax twice in rapid succession. The euphoria nearly made him gag on his own tongue as his muscles seized momentarily.

Fumiko gasped loudly and stopped, shuddering violently as Damon's seed poured into her with molten pleasure radiating from his throbbing prick... each pulse and spasm of muscle sending waves through her body in a way Damon knew would be unlike anything she'd likely felt before as a simple steward's wife.

He waited for Fumiko to take several shaking breaths before withdrawing from her in one smooth pull, a guilty twinge following when she whined and rocked back toward him again. Damon held her hips away from him firmly, his task completed and not wanting to spoil whatever Stearn and Fumiko shared. Better this disappointment now than something worse later.

Standing up and dragging his pants over his softening dick, Damon stifled the urge to clear his throat. Fumiko moaned, still savoring the glow of intense orgasm, now laying flat on the blanket and rolling her hips to grind her mound lazily against her hand hidden beneath her. Her "husband" shook himself, breaking a momentary trance staring at her undulating rump beneath him, leaving as quickly and quietly as his feet would carry him.

...