Stonebound

Beneath the bold stripe of warpaint, Ceni's eyes had the intensity of a mountain dog about to break after a wild sheep.

"You let me win," she said.

Yarro flexed beneath her, made a futile kick with his feet and then let his shoulders slump. Both charcoal-streaked forearms were trapped between Ceni's long shinbones and the lichen-encrusted rock. He could feel its warmth beneath his back, the burn of a grazed elbow and a bruise rising on his hip bone.

"No," he lied.

Ceni was the faster of the two spearcarriers, lean and light, but Yarro was stronger in the arm. He knew that there had been a moment during their wrestle when he could have dug the balls of his feet into the rough grass, gripped her by the shoulder and swept out the opposite leg. Had he been more determined, their positions might have been reversed.

In a real fight though, he would not have bet goat shit against her. Yarro knew Ceni to be a vicious and unpredictable brawler with more than a little of the wyrd about her. His strength and size would have held scant defence against her lithe, quick movements that could deliver a cold flint between the ribs of whoever blocked her path. But in a straightforward grapple she was at a disadvantage and if he won every time, where would be the fun?

"Liar," she hissed. He thought he could see the smile hiding just behind the accusation, although something in her look cautioned him.

A cloud slid behind the bundled mass of her hair. Their heaving breath calmed and synchronised. Her gaze softened. Ceni's hazel eyes held mischief and fire, and an affection that seemed as radiant as the sky that framed her face. She had once told him that it was his own love being reflected back at him as if from a pool. He still didn't know what she had meant by that.

Ceni thumbed open one of the pouches on her goatskin pocket belt and withdrew a bundle of wide leather straps, stitched with long waxed thongs that brushed stiffly against Yarro's muscular chest. She set them on the beaten-down grass above the half-buried slab and produced a pair of rough-hewn wooden stakes. She bent low across his face, flexing at the waist, and purred as he kissed her belly. He heard the sharp taps deepen to a flat thumping as she hammered in the stakes with a fist-sized stone. Then she picked up the straps in turn and wrapped them around each of his wrists, tying off the thongs so that he couldn't reach the knots. Yarro surrendered to her.

In a deft movement Ceni shifted her weight, took hold of one cuff and bound the thong to one of her stakes. Then she came off him and stretched his other arm up, fastening that one so that both were held wide apart above his head. She sprung lightly across his body and off the rock, grasped his calves and pulled him down, stretching him across the slab. Above him, Yarro could see the crags reaching to tear at the sky.

They were in the lee of Shattergrin Carn, a loosely crenellated rock formation that looked like a chaotic mass of broken teeth. They had risen in the blue dawn at the hilltop village of High Hearth, then painted each other in woad, and charcoal taken from the last night's embers. It was the way of lookouts to leave prepared for battle, although in truth they expected days of unbroken seclusion at the carn. Their journey across the peaks had taken a full morning, broken only to forage bitter sloes and great, flat mushrooms, and shoot a brace of rabbits for their supper. The previous lookouts, Salix and Benja, had shared a knowing smile and left eagerly for home while the sun was still full. Then Ceni and Yarro had started pushing each other around and dashing across the uneven rocks, sometimes chasing and sometimes chased. They were laughing, taunting and competing, breathing gulps of the rarefied air and relieved to be away from the milky eyes and sharp tongues of the High Hearth olders.

Shattergrin was their tribe's lookout post, with a great beacon and clear sightlines across the purple-brown expanse of wind-scoured moors that swept southeast in the direction of the City. The drab smudge of that place stretched across the far horizon; a dead maze given a wide berth by their people. If Shattergrin looked like gappy teeth from a distance, the City scrapers were a wide smile of rusty nails.

Ceni squatted with her back to the view, admiring her handiwork. The slab was rough and solid against Yarro's back. He took joy in the straining of his powerful limbs against their bonds.

"If I were a slaver," Ceni started, and Yarro rolled his eyes.

"You're no slaver, Cen," he told her. "And you're no slave neither. You're a crafty hare them soft City dogs'll never get."

"Shh. If I were a slaver woman, like one of them house queens in coloured cloth, living in a big stone tower, I'd make you my plaything."

"Would you now."

It had taken her days to make the cuffs. He had watched with growing anticipation as she had tanned the deerhide using the brains of the animal, carefully scraped and softened it, cut the strips with a sharp flint and stitched them together into thicker straps with a bone needle. She had begged Old Sefan for a thumb of beeswax to finish the cuffs, and somehow got it without telling him the whatfor. When Ceni got something into her head, she would always make it happen.

She came closer, nestling up beside him and resting a hand on his firm belly.

"Aye, I would," she told him. "I'd have men and women both, for my workings and weavings and whatnot, and out doing aggro-cultur. But you, I'd keep for special."

"I wouldn't go along." He flexed, balling his fists and working his muscles until the veins fattened. The cuffs were firm and tight around his wrists and ankles. Unyielding. "I'm made for the mountains and the rushing air. You couldn't keep me like some dog begging under your table."

"Oh, you'd beg for me." Her fingertips were tracing the contours of his chest now, circling the broad nipples and pausing at the divot of his solar plexus.

"Wouldn't." He tried to sound defiant, but he could also feel the hard pressure under the supple leather of his chaps and loincloth.

She noticed the bulge, explored it with her palm. Started to unlace the cords along his leg.

"You would. You're of the wild, Yarro, but I have the whisperings of you. I'd train you, boy. Make you mine." She yanked at the chaps, slid them off him. His erection stood straining at the sky.

A raven quonked; a weird, hollow sound. Yarrow imagined Ceni leaving him there, abandoned to the wind and the rocks. Those ravens would take an interest then; pick out his eyes like Fotovoltaïos when the sun chained him to the cliff for stealing its energy to light his home. Yarro knew he was helpless now and a fleeting panic took him. He loved Ceni, but there was something impulsive and inscrutable about the young witch. Could she whip off his cock with her flint, or have her way and then leave him for the birds?

He felt that in some way, he had made himself a sacrifice to her.

"Make you mine," she repeated, showing her teeth. His dick throbbed. "You'd live in a metal cage high in my stone tower, so high you could see your distant hills and long for them. I'd keep you collared, my sweet, sad, wild one. Collared like this."

She produced another strap and now sat on his hips, looking into his eyes. He saw the fire there again.

The strap was broader than the others, and she wound it about his neck. His breath caught a little as she made it fast.

He looked at her - in truth she was all he saw. He would be hers, he realised. If the Old Weavers had cast them into different tribes; if she had been born noble strata in a high scraper; had ridden out this way with a warband, caught him unaware and taken him as a prize... He would have been content at her feet, gaze lowered and kneeling. Beneath the warpaint, the ritual scars and the stark landscape of his physique, some part of him craved confinement and servitude.

Ceni seemed to read this in his face. She took in the deepening rise and fall of his chest. Cocked her head. Yarro wound his neck against the collar and then relaxed like a whelp in the jaws of its parent. He felt those cunning eyes look right into him, but couldn't read them in return.

After a moment she laughed and untied something at the back of her head to let her hair fall. The matted red ropes of her dreads hung vivid against the dags of blue and black warpaint streaking the smooth orbits of her breasts. Her fingers went to the ragged hides and waxed cloth at her waist and undid a knot. Naked against the sky, she flung her skirts away.

It was a game they played, well out of sight of the others. Many in High Hearth had lost family to the slavers; a cousin in another camp or a brother snatched while hunting alone. The slavers were a whispered terror - unnatural people who clung to the old City like ticks still latched to the desiccated skin of an animal carcass, inexplicably refusing to move on. They were said to long for some old world past recalling, their re-creations of its luxuries made possible only by the labour of their captives.

The pair had spoken of this many times. The shadow of fear the slavers cast into the long wooded valleys also made them fascinating. They were anathema to the hill, heath and forest peoples, for whom coercion was the only real crime. Somehow the threat of capture that Ceni and Yarro had known all of their lives had transformed itself into a dark, secretive excitement. The day would come when they would have to face the slavers in battle and prove them to be fallible humans who could be made to flee bloodied into the bogs or disappear forever beneath a cairn. The slavers must not be feared if they were to be beaten, so the two young spearcarriers had broken the taboo, exploring their fascination through coercive fantasies and play.

Moving slowly, she draped herself across him. First, he could feel only the light brush of her nipples against his chest, then her inner thighs against the outsides of his. She lowered herself and his dick met her belly; pulsed against it. Her breath was hot in his ear as she relaxed down top of him.

"I would have you for my bed slave, Yarro," she whispered. "And for my bed, at that. No straw pallet for me. You're more comfortable."

"Sleep, then."

"Later, maybe. Now's the time to bank up your fire."

Ceni moved her face down his broad chest, kissing here and there, taking soft little bites. She sniffed at his painted skin and sighed. When she looked up, he saw that her eyelids were heavy. She bit her lip and moved on down his stomach.

Yarro strained as she kissed at his thighs, then he pulled at his bonds in earnest and groaned deeply as she slipped his cock between her lips.

As her mouth moved up and down he could feel the rough tangle of her hair on his belly and her breath on the base of his shaft. The warm, silky pleasure of her tongue against his head transported him as he writhed and flexed. The timeless clouds moved before his eyes.

Suddenly she withdrew. His dick throbbed with built-up energy. He squeezed his eyes shut and heard himself moan.

Her fingertips returned, tracing lines across his taut flesh, traversing the plateaus of each muscle and the steep valleys and escarpments that lay between them. A tender spot at his side made him flinch, and another beside the crest of his hip drew a gasp. She took her time, lazily probing and caressing. Unbound, he might have thrown her down in his place by now and begun to pound her against the rock. As it was, his every nerve-ending was hers to play like an instrument, and the languid movements of her long fingers made each of them sing.

He felt Ceni position herself over him and opened his eyes again. Her slender waist and the undersides of her breasts filled his field of vision. He saw the zigzag lines and dotwork of medicinal tattoos covering her left flank where the paint had been smeared off in their grappling. She shifted up, straddling his head. He tried to move his face away but she gripped him with strong thighs and lowered her cuni onto his mouth.

She was wet for him and he opened for her, exploring with his tongue. First he licked in slow circuits around the outsides of her, and then began to make tighter, faster circles in her most sensitive place, occasionally flickering down further into her vulva. She tasted strong, whole and irresistible. He heard her moaning; his own sounds were muffled deep inside her.

Again she withdrew.

This time Yarro could hardly bear it. A low growl escaped him, rumbling deep in his throat. Her response was immediate, dropping her hands to either side of his head and biting down on the base of his neck. Ceni made a growl of her own, lighter and smoother than his. Yarro winced, and yielded to her.

"Please," he said. "Please. I'm begging."

She moved away, and once again her fingertips meandered across his belly and the insides of his legs. For an instant she looked troubled. The coarse bulk of the rock seemed somehow distant to Yarro, compared to the worlds of sensation contained in Ceni's touch. The round, white clouds became shining streaks and the sky danced with darting pinpricks of light. The shadows moved.

She took him in her mouth again, and brought him almost to release before pulling away. Again he pleaded, incoherent with desperation. She met his eyes, a reproachful look burning out from that black band across her face. Yarro was panting now, his breath coming in sharp nips of diaphragmatic action. He writhed against the rock as Ceni lowered herself onto him. Pulled with all his strength as she slipped him just inside her. The sound of her moan almost finished him.

She moved off him again, and he heard himself whimper.

There was no Yarro anymore. He had no words left; no name or self, only wanting. Their game had metamorphosed, and he coursed with the urgency of a beast whose immediate function was to fuck and then die. He had no other purpose but to take this woman or be taken; both were beyond his power so he needed her in any way that he could get her. He wanted her to ride his face and smother him to death. His spirit burned through him, willing her to drink it all and leave nothing behind. He would be her plaything, her bed slave, would kneel for her and give his blood to her workings if only she would allow him this. He was ready to give away his selfhood and let her use his body as she saw fit. He would belong to Ceni, now and always.

Between the bursts of wild panting he growled freely, locked eyes with her, and bared his teeth.

"There you are," she breathed. "My wild one."

Her eyes lost their focus. Yarro's body struggled unbidden, slamming itself against the tight leather of the bonds.

"When they lock you in your high cage, my lover, will you growl for them?"

A raven spun slowly, high above.

"When they drag you away to their fields and forges, will you struggle then?"

Her voice had taken on a droning quality. One hand still stroking his ribcage, she reached for her pouch belt.

"When they come in the night for your olders and youngers, what will you do?"

She had drawn her flint. With gentle fingers she traced the swirling ridges of his coming-of-age scars.

"When they leave at first light with your witches and lovers, what will you do," she intoned.

He felt her shudder. His cock still strained for her and a hot ache spread from his balls to his lower belly, but something was wrong.

"When our stories go untold round the cold of our hearths," she said.

Every one of Ceni's idle touches shot lightning through his skin.

"When our streams forget their names and our trees stand aghast," She pinned him with that predator stare.

"What will you do," she shouted suddenly.

She drew the flint lightly across his chest in the quick, deliberate scrawl of a well-practised sigil. The caked paint parted. A hot pain seared through him, and he tore at the restraints in panic. She shoved him down. Her palm, when he saw it again, was smeared bright red.

Yarro steadied his breathing, locked eyes with her again, and snarled.

"When your kindred are made to hollow out their own hills, Yarro, what will you do," she shrieked. "What will you do? Will you submit then? Do you really yearn to kneel and beg at their tables? When they lead us all into mines and metal cages, will you let them win?"

Their noses were almost touching now. The workings in her screams rang his skull like a singing stone.

"No!" He bellowed back. His eyes welled with tears. Rage tears. Shame tears. Pain tears.

"Does your spirit yearn for surrender, Yarro?"

"No!"

"What will you do, then?"

"I will cast them from the high carns and drown them in the bogs," he cried. "I will lead them up lost trails at impassable heights, and leave their dead to feed the forest! I will piss on their forges and wrench the smoking guts from their machines! I will trap them in their scrapers, strike open their cages, fire their City and return it to the wilds! I will never let us be taken!"

Ceni moved the blade to his throat. Yarro's heart thundered in his chest.

"Will you ever let me win again?"

"Never," he barked.

She slashed out with the flint, cutting the thongs binding the cuffs to the stakes. He grabbed for her, but she hopped away to free his ankles.

Yarro was roaring. He exploded off the rock and seized Ceni by the shoulders, throwing her bodily onto the rough grass beside the slab. She landed heavily, then cackled and tried to scramble to her feet. He was already on top of her but she kicked him away.

Half-blinded by tears, Yarro chased Ceni across the scree. She darted behind huge slabs just as he lunged for her, skipped past low, gnarled trees that tore at him, and jinked down goat trails through the coarse heather.

"Come on," she taunted. "Come on, warrior! Move, spearcarrier!"

He pelted after her. For an ecstatic moment she was the hare of the high heath, canny and quick. But he had shifted too, no longer the young pup vying with his littermates, he was the mountain dog, pummelling after his quarry with spirit aflame.

Ceni had always been the faster of the two, but he was gaining. She had stripped something from him, reached deep inside and cut away bonds of his own. His feet were airborne, flying freely across sharp rocks and treacherous hummocks that seemed to whip past beneath them untouched. He launched himself at Ceni, bringing them both down at the foot of a great standing slab.

Yarro gripped both of her arms and yanked them above her head, wrapped one fist around both wrists and used his other hand to force her hips down. She tried to drag herself away, screaming with chaotic laughter, but he held her fast and kicked her legs apart. The tip of his cock found her wet and willing.

Ceni took each of his thrusts with a yelp, eyes clenched tight as he bit at her neck. They slammed against each other with a savagery, her bruised knees pointed at the sky as he pressed her arms against the hard earth.

Yarro's growl opened into a roar as he came. For a heartbeat he was both full and empty at once, giving everything he had to her and to their mountains. Almost immediately, Ceni shrieked and bucked beneath him, then shook for a long moment in his grip with a howl that sung back at them from the rocks before being snatched away by the wind.

The ground dissolved under them and they lay wrapped in each other for a long time. The creature that was Yarro could feel the one who was Ceni, and felt her feeling him. Something seemed to cycle between them, moving from one body to the other and back again until they were one life with no division that either could sense.

The shadows were stark and long when they began to move. He had softened inside her but Ceni gave a little gasp as he eased himself out. For a while they lay together in their nook amongst the rocks and the dry whispering of the sedge. Yarro's chest stung but he welcomed it, for what transformation came painlessly? Later, he would dirty the wound to ensure a deep scar that would remind him of this day.