The Song of Roland Ch. 15

Her one free hand reached down, palming his testicles, as if testing the heft and succulence of a pair of fruits at the market. Her fingers squeezed against the porous material, coaxing his masculinity to produce still more of the life-creating substance that his already unnaturally overfilled balls already contained. Roland let out a heavy grunt, taking Kelsea's attractive features and shoving them down to his base. The sultry woman did not so much as hesitate, her gag reflex a nonexistent entity as she allowed herself to be a vocal proponent of his physical pleasure. Her eyes continued to stare, making Roland cup her cheek as she leaned against it, her unholy warmth and slight hint of a smile breaking through the muffled moan that slid from her occupied mouth.

She pulled back, but Roland kept her tethered to his base, thrusting forward with his hips as her mouth suctioned hard against him. Her nose wrinkled, inhaling despite the supposed sealing of her windpipe due to the dick lodged in her throat. She let out a muffled moan as she breathed in the heady scent of Roland's nethers, her free hand reaching around his side to pull him still closer to her. He could feel her corrupting influence, sense the impossible way that his sex seemed to thicken still further due to the being debasing herself at the altar of his masculinity. Kelsea pulled up, revealing the long, glistening shine of his cock to the mountain air as it pulled free from the Succubus' warm mouth. Just as her lips were shifted by the edge of his head she leapt forwards, taking so much of him in at once that any mortal would have choked from the mere suddenness of the act.

She built him to a budding climax, his hips shifting forward as his back bent downward like the drawing of a bow, his eyes clenching shut as his prostate tightened and he began to burst within her. She never broke eye contact, her expression one of unashamed submissiveness as she sent him over the edge. He came with her lips gently kissing his base, looking for all the world like she was merely planting a peck upon the skin just above his invisible cock. It was only when her lips expanded and her pupils enlarged that any visible sign of his release implanted it upon her face. Roland felt his balls jiggle just slightly, bouncing against her chin as she clenched her fingers around the things, lovingly helping to speed the ejaculation process as he exploded down her gullet. She held there for the first few bursts, her mouth pulling back, stopping at each new blast as she audibly swallowed, her tongue sliding excitedly about his shaft as he continued to feed her. She finally was left at the end, suckling upon the tip like it was some candied sweet that she'd been given, her tongue lapping at his slit as he deposited still more of his copious load into her mouth. Kelsea only pulled away at the last few spurts, letting loose a tender smile as she angled the cock to lay its pearlescent threads across her face, coating her in a visible declaration of her sexual proclivity.

"I love watching you when you cum, Roland." She said, her voice low toned and timorous. "It feels so...rightwhen you do this. To me." She licked her lips, her face streaked with spiderweb strands of cum striping across her face in three, sharp lines. Roland stroked her hair, enjoying the post-orgasmic bliss of her voice. Her eyes lidded, her body heat even more unbearably burning than usual. She let out a lustful giggle, her hand moving freely to circle his cock and jerk the last, bubbling globs of his sperm onto her lips before kissing the tip. "I can't even describe to you what you taste like... what yousmelllike. I'm so..." She moaned. "Hn! I've... I've never felt like this, even with others. Even withdemons. I just want to-"

There was a loud shout, far ahead of them upon the higher slope of the trail. Roland's eyes snapped up as he saw the distant figure of Carl Hale, perched atop a rise on the incline, pointing. His hand looked accusatory as it indicated something behind them, back towards the spot on the trail where Kelsea and Roland had had their explosive confrontation the day before. Roland turned, his gaze sharpening with immediate focus upon what the glamoured man was yelling about. As his eyes adjusted he felt an immediate, sinking feeling in his gut. "Oh, Gods."

There, at the lip of the High Road before it descended circuitously to the base of the incline where they'd broken camp that morning, clustered a host of armored men, sitting sternly atop tall horses. From a distance Roland could see the glimmer of metal and the clinking of chainmail flickering in the sunlight. He could only see three of them clearly, though it was obvious that the party was far larger than that, hidden behind the others like writhing lumps of flesh on the narrow path. They stood, like statues staring across the gulf of air between themselves and the three vagabonds picking their way painfully up the slopes on the opposite side like ants up a tall dirt heap. Behind the horses, sitting atop a pole sat a dark, crimson banner, fluttering in the wind. Roland could not make out the sigil that dwelt upon the tattered thing, but he knew. In his bones he knew it was the image of a black, snarling dogshead, encircled within a triskele of thorny brown brambles that weaved around it like the coils of a murderous vine.

He pulled up his pants in a rush, stepping away from Kelsea's startled expression as he snatched up her pack and threw it to her with no preemption or hesitancy. "Run." He said, trying to keep his voice free from panic before grabbing his own and slinging it haphazardly across his back. He lifted his long knife free before dropping it down smoothly into the leather sheath. It felt pitifully inadequate in his fingers. A hundred questions rushed through his brain as he wondered how in the eight helspires they'd caught up to them.

"What's-" Kelsea started, before she saw the same shadows lingering on the horizon that Roland did. She hurriedly wiped at her face, standing to her feet. "Wait, who are they?"

"Run." Roland said, more frantically now, his face clenching as he forced himself to wrench his gaze away from the war party stoically observing the three fools as they picked their way up the opposing roadside. Still the Succubus did not move, not quite grasping the severity of the situation. "Kelsea!" He shouted, his voice booming. "Go! It's the fuckin' Briar Dogs!"

"The..." She trailed off, her eyes widening as her cheeks grew pale. "Oh no." Out of options, Roland forcefully took her by the arm, all but shoving her forward up the hill away from the man's former sellsword company. They continued to stare, their figures and features indistinct in the distance. The arm of one of them reached out to point in Roland's direction, and the bearded barbarian let out a loud curse. As one, the party of horsemen began to descend the hillside, the slow, cautious trot of the beasts of burden carrying them down the uneven slope. Their tepid progress belied the fact that they were moving at a far faster clip than Roland and company were capable of matching; they'd be upon them in minutes. The mercenary began to follow after his companion.

Roland's mind raced as he thought about the situation, his eyes flicking this way and that as he climbed uphill at a run, his boots digging into the dirt as he all but sprinted up the treacherous trail. Kelsea struggled up in front of him, her body moving in quick, lithe bursts as she battled to make forward progress. The red-maned mercenary glanced to his left, staring with increasing despair at the height of the cliffs to his left, and the steepness of the drop to his right. No matter how he squared it in his brain, there was just no swift method of getting off of the High Road where they were. They were stuck, with a tall hill at their front and a party of hardened killers approaching rapidly at their back.

"How-" Kelsea said, panting with effort as she leapt across another deep dent in the road. "How did they find us?"

"They tracked us." Roland replied, his adrenaline pumping as he ignored the dull ache in his loins from the latest sexual affront. "Followed the trail of footprints leading out away from Dornich. Probably..." He took in a heavy breath as the climb began to take its toll, "probably took this long for them to figure out which way we went, which road we took."

"What are we going to do?" She said, her body moving just a little bit faster in response to his reply. Roland shook his head ruefully to himself.

Nothing.The increasingly hysterical realist in his head said.Die. Be run down like animals.Instead of answering her question he merely said "Have Carl ready his bow."

The glamoured man stood, still and rigid atop the hillside some distance ahead of them. His two companions ascended the slope with a painfully slow progress, each step being matched three or four at a time by the horses behind them. As they neared the flat point on the road that Carl had stopped at, Roland could hear the sound of shouting behind him. He could not make out the words, but he garnered the intent: sanguinary, bloodthirsty jeering. The riders were nearly down the whole of the opposing slope before Roland dared to turn back momentarily to take in the scope of their war party. They were nearly a dozen men, all armed, bearing a multitudinous array of barbed spears, short swords, and thick round shields slung across their backs. A few even had longbows. All of them were clad in dark, rust colored lamellar armor or chainmail tunics, their large, brutish forms shifting and swaying in their seats as they came towards the three like a wave of unrelenting martial force.

Kelsea reached Carl first, whispering in his ear as he nodded and took his bow in hand, calmly pulling a slender, red feathered arrow from the quiver at his back. Roland came up the road seconds later, empty of breath and red faced from the run. "Wait till they're climbing the incline on this side. You won't be able to hit an Ogre at this range." He said, "They'll have to go uphill against arrow fire. It will buy us some time."

"To do what?" Kelsea asked, the look on her face telling him she also understood the hopeless predicament that they were in. Roland was about to respond, but the sudden piercing cry of something far above them caused all three to look up, heralding the arrival of yet another crisis. The Harpy, conspicuously absent all morning, came hurtling down from the snowy plateau perched atop the cliffs at full speed, diving with her long, azurean wings tucked back, moving at a near-blur. She plummeted towards the ground where they stood, making a beeline for them as she jetted forth like a smack of thunder through the thin, mountain air. She landed hard, her clawed feet hitting the ground as she fell into a crouch to try to minimize the impact she made. The shockwave of the air beneath her wings being released blew Roland's red mane back from his head as she planted herself firmly amidst her companions.

"Kaaaah!" She cried, her voice warbling far louder than normal. The Harpy all but leapt at the three of them, her human hands out, spread imploringly as she continued to screech without abatement. There was a tenseness to her muscles, a clenched half-panic that gave Roland pause. Her yellow eyes were wide, like an animal's in the midst of a desperate moment. Her blue feathers were ruffled and fringed, her thighs shaking from the effort of her flight. Her face was red and her chest heaved air; she looked as though she'd seen a ghost.

"The fuck she saying?" Roland said, casting a worried glance to his right at the swiftly descending horde of horsemen coming up the High Road.

"It's..." Kelsea said, turning her head in confusion as the Harpy made a supreme effort to make herself understood, all but hopping in place as she cawed unabated. "She's saying 'It's back?'"

"What does-" Roland began, but he was interrupted by the abrupt arrival of total darkness. It was as if the sun itself had sank down beneath the mountainside yet again, turning time backwards to an earlier part of the day where the whole of the trail was covered in shade. Blankly, the red maned man tilted his head skyward, staring in horrified incomprehension as he saw something coming down from the heights of the mountain. It was...massive. A body on a scale of magnitude several times that of a grown man. Though he could not make out its form completely, he could see the thing, its bulbous head blotting out the sky as it dropped like a collapsing tower down at them.Rightat them.

Instinctively Roland grabbed Kelsea, tossing her like a ragdoll back down the road, out of the way of the descending creature before roughly shoving the Harpy as well. Carl had the sense of mind, even enthralled as he was, to clear the area in the opposite direction. Roland had to jump to avoid being crushed by the thing that landed with all the grace and subtlety of an earthquake onto the roadside. The force of the landing rocked Roland, sending him sprawling away as a small cloud of dirt was kicked up by the sheer weight of what had fallen down. His pack opened, scattering its contents and strewing about all of his goods and supplies like the battle casualties of a front line charge. The ground trembled at the thing's arrival, taking several seconds for the dust cloud to clear. Roland lifted his head, his eyes taking in the sight of the creature that had come down like a monstrosity from the mountains.

It was enormous, even with a back crooked like a bent bow it stood at almost eighteen feet. It hunched forward, leaning upon its overlong arms, tipped with four spindly, clawed fingers on each grasping hand, each half as long as Roland himself. Its skin was brackish grey, leathery and wrinkled, but thick like a mastodon's flesh, crinkling and stretching as it moved purposefully about. It had a rough proportion to that of a baby's body, with a bloated, oblong head and jutting chin that stuck forward like the blunt butt cap of a warspear. Its legs were stunted and thick, like sickly dark tree trunks. A trio of thick, black claws stuck out from its three-toed feet, with the largest in the middle dwarfing the other two by nearly twice the size, curving like a scimitar down onto the ground, ending in a needle's point. A pair of tightly curled, corkscrew like horns swept from the back of its head to the front, pointing like a ram's antlers in front of it, ready to impale foes upon their sharp edges. As it moved forward across the ground, it used its thick knuckles to waddle forth like an ape, moving with quick, jerky motions that contradicted the shambling size of the thing. It was hairless, with pinioned, bony, batlike wings set between its large shoulder blades. The wide, fleshy wingspan spread out so far it had to fold them together to avoid smacking against the cliffside next to it.

The bottom dropped out of Roland's stomach as he gazed upon the thing, its large, protuberant orbs bulging out of its skull like spheres of concentrated hatred. They had a cow's eye quality to them: with dilated pupils half the size of the entire ocular limb, and most of the rest of the surface space taken up by doltish, brown irises with only a sliver of white on the very edges of its drooping, fleshy lids. Roland made contact with its gaze, watching as the creature's wide, flat mouth pulled back, its lips lacking flesh as it exposed its yellow, rat like teeth the size of shortswords from within its gaping maw.

There was a long, dead silence, then in the distance Roland could hear a shout from one of the Briar Dogs that echoed distantly up the mountain road: "Gods, it's aHautviech!"

A skin eater; a gorger of flesh. A monster so abominable that even the savage Beastfolk were known to hunt them down and slay them mercilessly if one of their gore-strewn lairs were discovered nearby. Roland had only heard stories and hearsay of the grisly beasts: endangered alpha predators of the sky who hunted Harpies in their mountainous caves far to the north in the Wildlands. Known for stripping the skin from their still-living victims, the Hautviech would use their long, butcher's claws like flaying knives, devouring the tender pelt of their prey first before moving on to the meat and muscle and bone. How had it come here, to the lands of the civilized nations? What had gone so wrong at the Border Forts, that a monster of such terrible measure and dimension had slipped past the wards and nested so far south, so near to Arjal?

It gaped its inhuman features and let out a roar, folding its paperlike mouth back and shaking the air with its thunderous snarl. It spun around suddenly, searching with a predator's eye for the object of its quarry. The speed at which it moved left Roland momentarily paralyzed, lying prone upon his stomach on the ground, terrified that the thing might take notice of him and decide to make a feast of his succulent flesh. The hesitation disappeared, however, when he saw the creature's head bend downwards, searching intently down the roadside towards where Kelsea and the Harpy had so recently been forced to flee.

The questions flew from Roland's head as he saw the gargantuan creature amble away from him, its back turning as the beast caught sight of the Harpy cowering farther down the road, huddled next to Kelsea. Roland leapt to his feet, drawing his sword in a swift smooth motion and taking off after it at a run. Just what he thought he would do against the beast, he had no idea, but he ran like a man possessed, his feet carrying him down the uneven ground as the thing loped forward on its finger joints, moving with deadly purpose towards its natural prey.

The Hautviech arrived at the pair before Roland's smaller steps could catch up, reaching down with its long arm to roughly grip the fear-paralyzed Harpy about the waist, pulling her forcefully into the air. Kelsea gawked at the thing, rendered speechless as her companion was plucked bodily away from her. The Harpy's wings flapped futilely as she squirmed and struggled within its grasp, her human hands pulling desperately at the fingers about her person. Her legs dangled uselessly beneath her, clawing at the thing's thick wrists with her feet as she frenziedly tried to defend herself. The thing's other arm reached about behind her, digging a long claw deep into the curve of her back as it pierced the skin. She let out an agonized scream, her body twisting as it started to drag its claw up the line of her spine.

It only stopped its fatal excoriation when an arrow slammed into the side of its neck. The red feather blew back and forth as the barbed metal head pierced the thick flesh of the Hautviech's body, sitting quivering in the air as only the tip perforated through its tough hide. What should have been a killshot merely made the beast turn sharply, its attention now focused on the impudent cur who had mildly inconvenienced the thing. Carl Hale pulled a second arrow smoothly from his quiver and nocked it again, releasing the whistling projectile before the monster even had the chance to let out a roar. It sailed through the air, connecting with the back of the creature's hand as it clutched the Harpy to its chest like a selfish child protecting a favored doll, its other hand extending to ward off the annoying flea bites. Roland didn't look behind him to see the result of Carl's third attempt, running full tilt towards the thing's large foot as he swung his blade horizontally, chopping like he was attempting to decapitate a tree. His sword sank into the crook of its left foot as the weapon connected with the Hautviech's squat ankle, sticking stubbornly like a battle axe into an opponent's thick shield. A small trickle of red blood poured out from the wound.