Roderick and Gorlana Pt. 04

She hissed a stifled groan of approval as he sucked and licked and lapped up her juices, working his tongue over her labia and reaching for her clit. He wanted to taste and explore every possible surface of her folds, inside and out. He shoved his tongue as deep into her as he could, his eyes rolling back at her overwhelming taste. He slid his hands down her thighs, all the way down her long smooth legs and felt her feet, then started massaging them with a strong and caring grasp. He heard a heavy scratching sound and realized she was digging her claws into the stones of the dungeon floor.

"Your cock! Roderick! I need it! Oh Gods! Please!" she begged him in a strained torturous whisper.

"Oh Gorlana," he gasped against her pussy.

He stood up and grasped her hips like he had no other purpose in life. He wetted the tip of his cock on her soaking quivering pussy and she hissed at his teasing touch. She reached back and pulled herself so tightly against the bars he thought she might bend them. Showing him her intense need with her entire straining body.

He gave his orc girl everything she wanted, and in one glorious motion thrust himself strongly inside her. His hips pressed tightly against the bars as he bottomed out and her pussy clasped around his cock in a tight sweltering possession.

They stayed motionless like this, both frozen in ecstasy until he let up and pulled back just enough to thrust heavily inter her again, each of them finally letting out a quiet groan that they each wanted to be a roar. He fucked her with an intense, needful passion. He tried not to shake the bars too hard, hearing an occasional clang, instead holding each thrust as deep inside her as he could while her moving inner folds massaged his length until his arms and hips strained, and then fucked her hard and slow again.

Each time his raging cock was possessed by her ravenous pussy they shared sounds of helpless panicking breaths, rising in maniacal urgency together. He was doused in her boiling juices, then thrust again, slapping wetly again her ass, the muscles of her buttocks indented into the bars trying to breath through to him. He impaled her again and again, slowly and powerfully pulling on her thick sweating thighs with all the strength he could muster, hearing her claw and scratch at the stone floor again, until her hips started bucking and her pussy started fluttering in waves of flesh tightly along his twitching cock as she started to cum.

She stifled her moans through gritted teeth as she her orgasm rocked her body. He pressed his face against the bars and bore his grinding teeth against the metal in agony as the movements of her pussy, the sound of her breath, and the smell of her made him go mad as his own climax rushed forth.

He gave a wild shuddering grunt, as his cock exploded inside her. He pulled on her wide heavy hips with incomparable purpose and thrust again as he released himself into her. His cum filled her, as he threw back his head in tight-eyed helpless lust and tried not to bellow loud enough for the whole castle to hear. Somehow he held his voice back and only released another sputtering grunting breath. His world became pure perfect fulfillment as he gave his orcish mate every drop she craved and she rolled her ass against the bars as the flesh of her pussy lapped it up in gratification.

They held themselves together for as long as they could, after he was spent, basking in the soaking pulsing oneness of their loins.

He did not know how much time past, but eventually each of their legs gave out and they lay on the floor. Forcing themselves up eventually, and using the bars to help themselves stand, they shared a heavy wet kiss, losing track of time again. They still spoke no words, and needed none.

He leaned up against the bars as he watched her dark figure finally leave. He slid down them in exhausted bliss, and fell to the floor, to sleep once again.

...

Roderick awoke the next morning, at least he was fairly sure it was morning now, on the cold damp floor of the Orthanhall dungeon. He immediately felt relief and satisfaction. His arms stretched... and nothing held them back. It was his third day in the cell instead of tied up, but it still felt new and welcome.

He still felt more satisfied and full of life than usual though, even though his stomach rumbled. His hips hurt. Were there scratches on his ass? His cock felt...

The events of the previous night returned to his memory. Had that really happened? He could almost believe it was the best dream he'd ever had. He didn't have deep doubt but as he looked out of the cell into the shadows of the dungeon he saw the scratch marks from Gorlana's claws on the dirty stone floor. He took a deep breath, lifting his chest and rubbing his sore groin again. Staring at those scratch marks... he had won battles with his army that had made him feel less pride.

He sat back against the cell wall and stared distantly with a smirk, then stood up, feeling energized. He rolled his shoulders and did a long slow arm circle, his cracked lips and dirty face smiling widely at the 'freedom' he felt without his binds.

His fingers brushed the rough iron of the cell door and he came back to earth. Not freedom really, but despite the stale air and occasional rat to kick away it was an improvement, even before last night. He knew he would eventually feel different if he was made to remain down here for long enough, but he would continue to take each day at a time.

He rubbed his hands over his face, free of the blindfold. He rubbed the callouses on his wrists from the bonds that had held him for too long, scabbed and scarred in some places, but they would heal. He sighed as he leaned against the wall and waited for whatever bland small meal they would bring him. He tried to make himself think realistically. Just because last night wasn't a dream didn't mean Gorlana could or would have him treated differently now. Perhaps she would avoid him again, like after their mating in the rainstorm. Somehow it didn't bother him. He was feeling too comfortable. Too optimistic. Exactly what they would want him to feel were they aiming to turn him. He slowly frowned. How close were they?

He thought back to Gorlana's question yesterday and felt that bizarre fear of not knowing who he was, or what he stood for. A feeling he had known to some degree most of his life, but now distilled into a sudden intense reality instead of a quiet nagging in the back of his mind. A mind that was now torn.

He shivered as he remembered Gorlana's gorgeous shadowed face in the torchlight, her scent, and her body against the bars. If he let his instincts take the reins he would kneel before her as his queen in a heartbeat. How could that seem like the naturally right thing to do? To commit treason to the country he had fought for all his life? He had bitter resentment to many of the upper political players, true, but deep down he loved Andralia. His province of Fringeland. His home. To turn on everyone there. His parents, his Granny, all that he knew and loved in Highquarry and Fortspring... Was this maddening schism of thought what he caused in every orcish prisoner he had kept and turned over the years? If so, it suddenly felt like much less of a mercy.

He loved Gorlana, he knew. He always had and likely always would, but did thousands deserve to die for that love? He still could imagination no path that led to their being together without political upheaval, stability in their countries ruined. More war, death, likely starvation. How arrogant and selfish would that be?

Would it have been better to let her release him and hobble off with her into the cold countryside? Gamble their lives on a slim chance of escaping recapture, as if dying together would be better than living apart? He shook his head at himself. It was like he was 18 again.

Toying with these traitorous possibilities and it's only been a few weeks. He would likely be here all winter, as slow communication between the capitals progressed in the negotiation for his life and freedom. Did Valessa even know he was still alive yet? After there had been no attack or pursuit of them, he wondered if they assumed him dead, eaten by some mountain animal. He knew she must have gone south to their allies, and then east over the mountains back to Andralia. What then though? How would she negotiate? WOULD she even be willing to?

He sat back against the bars and tried not to stew on problems he couldn't solve, but there was not much else to do. He worked on the emotion-scent thought exercises Carthala had trained him with, but without someone to sniff him and give him feedback it was difficult to tell whether he was improving.

A few hours had likely passed when the door opened. He opened his eyes and raised an eyebrow. It was too early for his meal, he thought, though the passage of time was hard to track. The door slammed shut and quick stomping steps sounded, making him sit up in sudden attention and concern.

He sniffed the air and smelled Gorlana, smiling for an instant at recognizing her beautiful scent, but then the flavour hit him and he frowned.

Anger. A heavy anger. A deep frustrated, emotionally-injured rage.

"Gorlana?" he said, standing up quickly. "What's wrong-"

"WHY?!" She shouted and he suddenly jumped back from the bars as she grasped them in her claws and shook the door with a loud clanging metal, looking like she would rip it from it's hinges. "Why would you LIE like this?! To lead me on for so long!?"

"What are you talking about-"

"YOU KNEW! You HAD to have known! Yet, you toyed with me! WHY?! HOW!?" she pushed herself away from the bars and squinted her eyes hatefully. "Does your more human mix actually let you stifle and twist your scent to us? Acting like a nose-blind, stinking fool while you PLAY with us, knowing your forces amass in secret. I've never known someone to distort their scent in such a devious way but you must have!"

"What? Gorlana no. Is that even possible?"

"I don't know! I don't know how ANY of this is possible!"

"How what is possible? What has happened Gorlana? Tell me."

"Your plan has come to fruition."

"My-... what plan? My plan was to bring Valessa to negotiate with Malgora, then when everything went sideways it was to get the fuck out of Orthalia. That's it. Gorlana, tell me what's going on."

She twitched her nose and grunted in irritation. She backed away and looked off into the darkness, still seething through her teeth. "Your woman demands your return."

Roderick furrowed his brow, and cautiously replied, "Darganya?"

Gorlana turned towards him and raised an eyebrow, then squinted threateningly and sniffed, "Now you truly mislead me," she whispered in a snarl.

Roderick's nervousness turned to a sickening guilt as he realized what she sensed in him.

She stared him down now, "Say her name. Say it to me, for the first time. The truth you deliberately withheld from me, just as I can smell you doing now. Say the name of your mate."

Roderick lowered his head and spoke hoarsely, "Valessa."

Gorlana closed her eyes and nodded. Then she turned and punched the adjacent cell door with a loud clang as she screamed, and then fell to her knees. "I thought you beyond this! I might have expected it from Traulch, but not from you! I didn't think you could... do this to me." she sobbed and gritted her teeth, then spoke more softly to herself, "Though I let you. I let him. I misstepped the day I thought to use my womanhood instead of my skill, whether for Orthalia or myself."

Roderick could only stand in silent remorse, unable to find words that didn't sound like a pathetic excuse, until he finally replied, "Our relationship... was only brief and new. Nothing official had b-"

"Enough!!" she shouted at him, spinning towards him furiously. "Read the words of your betrothed!"

Roderick flinched at the words as much as her tossing of a crumpled paper at the bars of his cell. He knelt down to pick it up.

"Marvel at the skill of her diplomacy," Gorlana scoffed bitterly, and turned her tear-stained face away from him.

He flattened out the expensive-feeling parchment, reading the words, written with elegant penmanship.

- Gorlana of Orthanhall,

Give me my fiance back. Or you die.

Roderick of Highquarry will be returned to me immediately, or you, and any who defend you, will be destroyed.

- Valessa, Princess-Heir of Andralia.

Roderick closed his eyes with a sigh, then cleared his throat and tried to think clearly. "I let you believe she was dead, and never told you of our relationship, which IS only new... but, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry Gorlana. I know she's angry now, but she's intelligent enough to treat with you reasonably. I know she will. She doesn't want all-out war again, and we have all winter to work it out. Even if she musters an army it won't be-..." his words broke off at the pitying incredulous look she gave him. "What?" he asked, with a confused frown at her face and her scent.

She walked up more calmly to the bars and sniffed in derisively. "You truly don't know. You're their First-General in name, yet left an ignorant fool. Are you simply to be a prize on her arm while she pulls all of the strings?"

Roderick looked at her with an embarrassed confusion and threw up his hands, hopeless and baffled. He had never hated a look as much as the pitying down-cast way she regarded him now.

She finally spoke, "Her army is already here. They march behind Faringoll. A massive legion, fresh from Andralia."

Roderick stepped back, bug-eyed. "How?"

She spoke with a numb flatness now, "I had come down here to demand the answer to that from you, but I'm starting to believe your insistence of your ignorance."

Roderick took his eyes away from her cold stare and looked off in thought, "Their army couldn't possibly have mustered in time after I was caught." Then he remembered. "Her pigeon..."

"This was planned before you were even captured, as I suspected. How can I believe you did not know?"

Roderick continued his thought, "But she didn't even know who Faringoll was at that point. They must have communicated again and changed plans."

Gorlana stood motionless but betrayed her stony face with a trembling sigh, then closed her eyes, perhaps fighting off tears, "I think it's becoming clear you know less than me. Faringoll's front forces arrived today, and the first thing their outriders did was deliver this letter. The trail of their army stretches for miles behind, many of the Andralian forces catching up by the river. Darganya's entire horde is with them as well."

Roderick shook his head, "How..."

"We will both have to find out from them it seems. I am starting to suspect the Roancliff pass was not as completely destroyed as we thought."

Roderick's mind spun. "It was a massive rock slide, but... with both human ingenuity, and Orcish strength, working from both sides..."

Gorlana nodded, "Darganya would have slipped out of Orthalia that way, then travelled north, and using the same ingenuity and strength, managed to transport the Andralians and their boats over the northern screes to make such haste downriver to Orthanhall." She scoffed and shut her eyes tightly. "One thing that has stayed with me over the years since I met you was the idea that humans and orcs could be greater if they combined their best traits, and made use of each other's ideas and strengths..."

Roderick's stiff resilience suddenly broke. He smiled and let out a single sobbing laugh, falling forward to lean his head on the bars as he nodded with a painful admiration of her.

Gorlana's voice crackled as her own tears fell, "But you were always ahead of me in that regard. I only used your tactics. Your army did it better. And now, here we are. You've won."

Roderick gritted his teeth and shook his head as his bitter tears fell, "No. No Gorlana I didn't want this."

"What DID you want then?" Gorlana sobbed in frustration.

Roderick simply gulped and shook his head again, knowing he had no answer.

"This is goodbye Roderick. You'll be handed over tomorrow in exchange for Orthanhall not being sacked by a human army for the first time in its history. If there's any last words you have for me, say them now."

Roderick opened his eyes in determination, and said the only thing he knew with certainty, "Gorlana... I love you. I know I've been deceitful, and confused and stubborn, but one thing that hasn't changed and never will, is that I love you, truly."

She nodded and replied softly, "I know. I never doubted that even today. With what we've shared... and you know I love you too, but just because two people love each other does not mean they belong together."

She stared at him with a sorrowful resignation, and then turned to leave.

Roderick blurted out, "You were brilliant."

She stopped her steps and turned to face him again.

Roderick continued, "As a general. You were brilliant. The best I ever faced. You weren't just copying my style you were doing it better. It was luck and desperation that won me my survival against you, nothing else. I had never admired another general so much, without even dreaming it was you. I never told you that."

She looked him over and the sadness wracking her face slowly faded to a pensive frown, then she looked up at him, with those mesmerizing purple eyes shining in the firelight, and blessedly, bore her fangs to gift him a beautiful genuine smile and a small laugh. He smelled a pride and a mutual admiration from her, and he smiled back. They said no more words, but that brief moment, with the look and the scent that they shared, would be a moment cherished by him for months to come. He sighed and closed his eyes against the cold iron bars, hearing her footsteps fade away.

...

Just before noon the next day Roderick was tied up and blindfolded again to be led out of his cell. There had been no more visitors after Gorlana. Carthala would have normally seen him in the evening, and Torvrul had been checking on him almost daily as well, but no one but the silent guards had seen him, throwing him a small meagre scrap as a meal and nothing more.

He was led into the crisp late-autumn air over stone walkways and eventually on to hard-packed ground. He was then stopped next to a group of orcs, fairly sure Carthala was nearby, and eventually, absolutely sure Gorlana had arrived.

No one addressed him though. He was simply a package to be delivered, as they discussed and argued over what was to be said and requested, or demanded. As he listened to their conversations over the next hour or two, he eventually pieced together the explanation of how it had come to this.

The Roancliff pass indeed had been used. It had not been far from where Roderick was kidnapped, only slightly north and east from where they had been parting with Darganya's forces. Once Roderick was kidnapped, Darganya had abandoned her plan to join Iringoll and instead gone with Valessa to Roancliff. A small group was sent away first, to the north to secretly reach Faringoll and petition her to their plan, sneaking past Gorlana's scouts in the foothills. Another small and agile group crossed the wrecked pass to send urgent message to the Andralian army, to help them clear the rocks enough for Valessa and Darganya's clan to make it across. They succeeded, and went north, to meet Faringoll's forces who helped them and their boats to cross the northern screes. This route across the Ramparts was not as tall, but colder and wider than other parts of the Ramparts, and too far north to ever be practical to use, but the make up of their forces, and their priorities had changed. After crossing, they floated downriver quickly, and now had caught up to Faringoll's main force, just before arriving here. They were spread out considerably, and difficult to count accurately, but it was clear that their addition to Faringoll's forces made them far outweigh all of the others.