The Black Cloud Ch. 01

Story Info
Mission: To tame a reluctant slave, and escape alive.
4.5k words
4.74
17.4k
7
1

Part 1 of the 2 part series

Updated 09/22/2022
Created 06/10/2010
Share this Story

Font Size

Default Font Size

Font Spacing

Default Font Spacing

Font Face

Default Font Face

Reading Theme

Default Theme (White)
You need to Log In or Sign Up to have your customization saved in your Literotica profile.
PUBLIC BETA

Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.

You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.

Click here

--- Introduction ---

It ought to be every man's dream to share a small boat with a woman blessed the beauty and grace of a goddess, to be alone with her, to have both of us naked in the light of an early summer morning. It ought to send fire down my nerves and set my blood boiling to look at the slender, golden body of a young woman with large, firm breasts and smooth, sleek skin. It ought to make me lose all sense of time and place when those large, black, slanted eyes made connection with my own.

But since this woman had tried to attack me thrice during the preceding night, when what her eyes showed was nothing but contempt and hate, then one can understand that I was not feeling neither amorous nor comfortable. Take into account that I had not eaten nor drunk anything since last afternoon, and that I was sweaty and tired from rowing the boat, and you have my current situation.

===

The woman was my prisoner. That is, she was not really a true woman at all. She was a siren, of a race of she-demons that used their sugary sweet curse-song to lure sailors to their death.

Yesterday she and her flock of sirens had caused the death of the crew and passengers of the good ship Lady of Eastborne. They had been smashed to death against a reef along with the ship, or they had drowned, or the sirens had mated with them until they died from fatigue while under the spell of the curse-song.

Only one man had survived, only one had been unaffected by the singing. Me. Ward of Deepwoods, passenger on my way from Eastborne to Gnarlstraits. I had recently been dubbed and made a Gray Knight. On my way to my first assignment, a post at the House of the Knights, I had been eager to see the world, to experience life outside the Academy.

Right now I felt I had seen enough and experience enough, as I looked at the siren I had captured. I used my new, shining sword had cut off her long, black hair and so quell her powers of Wind. The now savaged head of the woman was only thing that marred her otherwise perfect appearance. Then I had forced her to travel with me in this, the only surviving lifeboat of the Lady of Eastborne.

I tried not to focus on her beauty. I planned to bring her to justice for what she and the others had done. But right now it did not seem very likely.

We had no food, no fresh water, and no direction to go. We would probably die out here on the calm ocean, and in her frustration she had tried to kill me during the night. But now, with the sun rising she merely looked at me with hate in her eyes.

--- Rowing on the Sea of Seven Perils. ---

I broke the prolonged eye contact with the siren and let my gaze wander all over the scene around me instead. It was ocean, ocean everywhere, no land, no ships, no anything in sight. The green sea with its yellow tints was strangely calm. Only a few lazy waves made the little boat rock gently from side to side.

This part of the World Ocean was known as the dreaded Sea of Seven Perils, the one place in the East-West trading routes where the ships had to sail out of sight of the shore and so be at the complete mercy of the Sea.

So far it had been disappointingly stingy with its infamous perils. There was neither much harsh Weather nor treacherous Reefs, just calm, green sea. There was the peril of the Siren, of course, but the one I had with me was not very strong and posed not immediate danger to me. I had proved immune, or almost immune, to their curse-song. Why, I did not know.

So, in lack of other perils, we were in danger from dying of thirst. I would almost relish the appearance of a Wyrm, a peril that would at least entail dying with my boots on and a weapon in my hand. I looked down at my sword lying at the bottom of the boat. I had no boots do die with, the sword was the only possession I had left in the world, that and its scabbard and belt.

I had lost everything. I was not sure why the Antlered One had put me in this plight after he had saved me from the sirens, but I knew now that I would not be able to take my post at the House in Gnarlstraits for a long, long time, yet. If ever.

With a grunt I pulled at the oars. I was not sure why I kept rowing. There was nowhere to go, and I had no idea whether I held to a straight course or not, as I had never been to sea before. The only result was that I exhausted myself, and that I was very conscious of the drops of sweat I was producing by my labor.

Sweating was my stubborn, stupid attempt to pretend that I did not care that the siren looked so divinely beautiful as she did, that I did not care to appear handsome to her. She was one of those responsible for the death of the crew and passengers of the Lady of Eastborne, she was my prisoner, and so she would damn well stand having me stink from my effort. The fact that my manhood would become as hard as a steel pole from time to time when I looked at her did not change that, no matter how embarrassing it felt.

===

I looked back at her where she sat in the aft seat of the small vessel. She was still staring angrily at me, using her hands to cover part of her nakedness. One hand was held over her breasts, the other hung between her legs.

As my shaft began thickening and rising yet again, unbidden, I decided to try to speak to her. I could not hide my desire, so I thought to distract her from it instead. Thinking about it, I realized that we had been in this boat now for an entire night, and we had not exchanged a single word. I did not even know if she could speak at all!

"My name is Ward, Ward of Deepwoods. What is your name?" I said in the tongue of Eastborne, my native language.

She looked at me with the kind of disgust the prettiest girls will give the ugliest boys when they are stupid enough to ask them to dance. But it was clear from her scornful eyes that she had not understood me, it was just my attempt at communication that she spurned.

"My name is Ward, Ward of Deepwoods. What is your name?" I said in Falconlandish. The city that took the name of the hunting bird was a powerful influence on lands on the shores of many seas.

Once more the big, black eyes glinted with derision, and her full lips curled up in a dismissive snarl. But there was no sign of her catching the meaning my words, and I was beginning to run out of languages. As a Gray Knight I had been taught more than the art of warfare, but I was no scholar.

"My name is Wa-" I began in yet another tongue.

"You speak like the gull: loud, annoying, and pure gibberish," she said in Marine. Of course, that strange language of the sea. Sailors would speak it among themselves, in one of many various dialects spread across the entire World Ocean. But those dialects were only shadows of the true Marine language. Only the creatures of the sea, it was said, spoke it in its pure form.

It was language of power, containing the raw forces of mighty storms and tidal waves and whirlpools, and I realized that the curse-song of the sirens must contain some secret words from this language, words that had driven the men of the Lady of Eastborne mad.

"You look like a gull as well. Vacant eyes and open mouth," she added scornfully as I was thinking about this.

My mouth was indeed open, I realized. Not just because I was surprised that she could speak, or even that she was intelligent enough to make scathing jokes at my expense. No, I was struck by the beauty of her voice.

When the sirens had sung earlier, I had compared their song to that of honey poured on silk. That quality remained in her speaking voice as well. So when she spoke it was as if the loveliest Princess, the youngest, most beautiful daughter of some legendary King of the world, had opened her mouth. Even her derision had a touch of elegance and smoothness in it, and the sound of it made me want to pull her to me and make love to her.

"You speak tongue call Marine?" I replied finally, haltingly. I had only learned a smattering of the language from sailors that would came ashore in Eastborne when I was a Squire there.

"And you don't, evidently," she replied, and I think I caught a hint of a smirk on her face.

I grunted, and pulled irritably at the oars. I was being outsmarted by my prisoner. She was half a head lower than me, at my mercy, and she was smirking at me!

"Call me Ward," I tried again. "Call you what?"

"What?"

"Call me Ward. Call you-"

She snorted, and yawned prettily. Even her dismissal was done with an otherworldly elegance.

"Me Ward," I said, pointing at me. "You?" I pointed at her..

"Ah, I see," she gloated. "When you try to communicate at a level that befits your limited faculties, then I manage to understand you. Good, good. Your name is, I take it, Ward. I am a Sister of the Wind, and we do not need what you call names. We know who we are."

She spoke rapidly, and I did not understand much of what she said. But that she was insulting me I gathered.

"What you call!?" I replied threateningly.

She sighed theatrically and spoke slowly, her mouth making exaggerated movements. "You Ward. Me no name. Me no call nothing."

All right, so she had no name. "Me you call Siren," I said.

"No, Sirens are what others call us. I am a Sister of the Wind."

"Me Ward, you Siren".

"Look," she sighed, passing her hand through her ravaged hair, looking up at the cloudless blue sky. "I. do. not. have. a. name."

"Siren."

"Now listen, Guano-for-brains, I told you I-" she began.

I pulled the oars into the boat and slammed my fist down on the railing. "Me Ward, you Siren," I repeated loudly. "You nice or I this," I added, pointing at my sword-belt. I was fed up with being treated like some unthinking savage.

"Yes...." she purred, "Look at the pretty thing. Very nice thing it is, indeed."

===

Luckily the siren, or should I say 'Siren', was very light, weighing just over half of what a normal woman her size ought to. If not, then the boat would certainly have capsized when she struggled against my hands as I pulled her towards me.

It was a brief fight and soon she lay across my knees on her belly, her hands and legs flailing wildly, trying to kick and scratch me. I hefted a good grip on the sword-belt with my right fist and let the sword and scabbard drop back onto the bottom of the boat. It was a broad, heavy, black leather belt, and I lifted it high above my head.

My father had used his belt on me when I was a boy, and my Instructors at the Academy at Eastborne had caned me for my misdemeanors when I was Squire, and I had never been on the giving end of punishments before. But now my hunger and thirst had made me irritable, and the siren's attitude was certainly not helping.

"Eww!" she yelled when the belt hit her bottom, and she thrashed about, trying to break free, her big breasts bounding against the outside of my thigh. But my left hand was holding her firmly in place.

"Eww! That hurt, you bastard," she yelled when the second blow came. I was putting some of my strength into this, but far from everything I had. Still, the leather made red marks where it hit her smooth skin.

"Eww! Stop that, you creep!"

"No! No! No!"

"Eww! Stop, you sick idiot!"

"Ouch! No more! No!"

"Eww! Please, no more! Please..."

I stopped the blows for a second, as emotion threatened to make me dizzy. For some strange reason giving her this punishment had made me, well, much, much harder than before. I actually enjoyed thrashing her! She could not have avoided noticing the head of my manhood pressed against the belly of her squirming body.

"No speak, no move," I breathed.

"Yes, yes!" she gasped. "Yes, I will- Eww!"

"-" was all she said after the next blow, her body as limp as possible despite the pain.

"Good," I said, putting down the belt and touching her red, sore bottom. The skin was still smooth, but felt very warm to the touch. I caressed it slowly, thoughtfully. Giving her this pain had given me pleasure, but mostly I had relished that she had obeyed me. Strange. When my lingering fingers were inadvertently drawn towards the sacred space between her thighs, I wrenched both them and my thoughts away from sex.

Lifting the belt once again, I said in a commanding voice: "Me what?"

"W-Ward," she replied, her body still, her head turned and her eyes on the hand holding the belt.

"You what?"

"Siren," she said, defeated.

"Me gull?" This felt good!

"No."

"Me bastard?"

"No."

"Good. I teach, you learn now?"

"Yes."

I let her go.

===

We did not speak to each other again for the rest of the morning. I was back to rowing once more and Siren was kneeling before me, finding it too painful to sit on the seat with her thrashed buttocks.

The look she gave me was not friendly, but now there was something else mingled with her anger. Not fear, but what could quite possibly be respect.

The sun approached its zenith. Its heat beat on my brow and burned my naked flesh and drove my thirst to yet new heights, when she suddenly spoke once again.

"Gull!"

"Call me what!?" I said in anger, looking for where I had put the sword-belt.

"No," she said quickly, though not fearfully. "No, Ward. There is a gull flying over there. Behind you."

I turned my head. Yes, there was a black speck on the sky straight ahead.

"And?"

"Birds do not stray too far from land," she said patiently, as if to a child. Evidently I would need to use my belt again some time in the not too distant future.

"Land?" I said, realization dawning. Smiling, I began rowing harder again. Land! We might even survive this misadventure!

"That's right!" She smiled as well, the first smile I had ever seen on her face. "We are saved! And then you can go back to your people and me to mine. Of course, I need to wait until my hair grows out before I can glide on the Winds once more, thank you very much!, but if I must I must."

"What?"

"When we reach land," she said slowly, "you go one way, I go the other."

"No."

"No? Didn't you understand what I just sa-"

"No. You are mine. I go way and you go same way." I really wished I spoke the language better, this baby talk was frustrating.

"Why?" she said incredulously. "Why in the world would you want that?"

"You kill men. You evil." Yes, that was it. She was an evil siren, not a goddess, and I had bring her to justice. Strange that I kept forgetting that. It was unforgivable for a Gray Knight to forget such a thing.

"Kill men?" She furrowed her brows. "Oh, you mean the men from the ship? We did what we always do, we invite them to make love to us, and then we mate with them. And then, yes, their purpose is done. We lay them to rest in the sea."

"You kill!" I shouted, getting angry thinking about the men who had died of exhaustion after the curse-song had made them make love beyond their strength.

"Well yes, but..." she began, then fell silent as she thought about this for a moment. "Well, you see Ward..."

Silence. Her face, her entire naked, kneeling body, seemed absorbed in considering the new line of thought that now had opened to her.

"Isn't mating what men do?" she said at last.

"Yes," I lied, virgin as I was, "and more. But no mate to die."

"All the men I have ever seen, humans I mean, have come to mate and... to die?" He words came haltingly. "Can men mate and live? Like we do, we Sisters of the Wind? We sirens, I mean."

"Yes." I answered, not knowing what to believe. Had Siren, who clearly was intelligent, not understood this simple fact?

"Mate and live," she mumbled. Then she gingerly put out her hand to touch my flaccid member. "It is soft."

I gasped ever so slightly as her slender fingers touched my manhood in several places, prodding it like a delicate bird. Oh, by all the Gods there are and will eve be! No woman had ever touched me like this before! Ever! Swallowing I kept on rowing the boat.

"All the other Rods of Pleasure have always been hard. Oh!" she drew breath, "it's growing! Oh look! Now it is hard! Hard and very, very big."

I blushed at the compliment, but her tone was not seductive in any way. She was still thinking hard.

"What made it so hard, Ward?"

"You."

"But I am not singing? What do you mean?" As she spoke she let her fingers slide up and down the shaft, like a female minstrel would delicately strum her harp. Her obliviousness to that fact that she was making me burn with lust was just like pouring oil on the fire.

"You," I groaned, closing my eyes, pulling at the oars. "You hand, you face, you speak, you all."

"Me? But I am not singing as I said," she mumbled, tickling my balls. "What is it with me that makes it hard?"

"Song is in you," I tried. "You are like song."

"My body is like the song?" she wondered as she stroked the head of my manhood, drawing yet another growl from my lips. This was just like one of the unreal dreams of lust I had dreamed for years come true! A goddess was touching me, doing thing to me!

"Yes! Body and mind! Eyes and speak and smile!"

"And I can mate with you forever and you will not die?" She made a circle with her fingers and moved them up and down the shaft.

"No..." I moaned. "Mate, rest. Mate, rest. Mate, rest. And eat, drink, sleep."

"I see," she said, her hand closed around me, biting her lips. "That does make sense. I guess I just never thought about it like that. I never knew they did not have to die."

She released my manhood and sat up straight, making her large, firm breasts protrude towards me, her big, black eyes looking at nothing. Then, slowly, the tears came. But when they came, they fell for what seemed like hours as she covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

I could do nothing but row the boat, my manhood had thankfully gone limp again as she started crying. I rowed the boat towards the dark mass that I now could see as I turned my head. My tongue was getting swollen, and the dreadful thirst fought with sympathy for Siren for priority in my mind as we slowly approached land.

My name was Ward of Deepwoods, and I was a Gray Knight. I was sworn to fight for good, show prudence, and amongst other things be gentle in all my dealings with the fair sex. Letting an innocent, I now understood, young woman like this fondle me and then destroy her with the realization of what she had been party to, was not in accordance with what I had been taught. Not to mention thrashing her with my belt...

===

"Siren," I said finally, as evening approached. She was still weeping, and I felt I had to snap her out of it.

She looked up, blinking her eyes, seeing the shore only a mile or so away. There was anguish on her divine features.

"No cry no more," I said.

She nodded mutely.

"You row," I said, pulling the oars into the boat.

"I, I cannot row, Ward," she said.

"You row or this," I pointed at the belt.

"Move then," she said between clenched teeth, getting angry at my not-so-courteous behavior. When she sat down after we have laboriously switched places, trying not to show me that her buttocks were still smarting, she threw me dark looks and put the oars into the water.

I felt like a true bastard, but my clever ruse had worked it seemed. Her mind was now set on being angry with me, instead being terrorized by the horrors of her past. After a few failed attempts, losing one oar at one time, she managed to find a decent rhythm, despite her not being very strong.

"Why do I need to row when the current takes us towards land?" she asked, exasperated.

"What?" I replied stupidly.

"Current is water moving, Ward. The current brings us towards land. I have never known a current could be this strong," she said, taking gulps of air as she fought with the heavy oars.

I couldn't recognize a current if I had been drowned in it, but I believe she was right. I seemed we were moving faster than what her largely ineffective strokes should account for. Looking up at the coast we were approaching I noticed a cloud hanging above it, the only cloud visible on the clear, blue sky. Something about this did not seem right at all, but I was too thirsty and too fascinated by Siren to think about that.

12