Bors

A Warmaster Jack Novella

By Onyx Tao

Section Three

This text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike License © 2011 by Onyx Tao

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The Spits, or Spit Sharpeners, or Sharpened Spits, or whatever they wanted to call themselves had a pretty good defensive camp. A log palisade with sharpened stakes - yeah, I got the joke, real funny - surrounded the tents. The tents in turn formed a half-circle around the tiny valley that opened into their caves. I didn't know how far back the caves went - nobody did, except maybe the Spits, and I'm sure they wouldn't tell me. I got a lot of hostile looks, but none of the warriors were willing to say anything while Jack was there.

The Warmaster didn't have a tent - he had a whole set of rooms in the cliff; some of them caves, some of them hollowed out of the rock. I followed him in - he didn't say not to and honestly I wasn't sure where else I was going to go. He showed me around. The sowery - I was not allowed in. Period. Ever. Although Jack didn't say I couldn't fuck his sows, he practically gave me permission, I just had to request a sow from the oldest, a sow named Baxs, his chief sow. I sure hoped I wouldn't have to fuck that wrinkled hag to get something more enjoyable. Maybe Baxs was an aunt or something? Except, I didn't think a half-orc would really care about his orcish relations. And Jack impressed me as a particularly uncaring sort.

Jack's private office was almost off-limits - I was to stay out unless Jack wanted me in there, and I gathered that he would, a lot, but I just couldn't be in there by myself. Whatever.

I'd have thought his bedroom would be off-limits, but no, apparently that's where I'd be sleeping. It looked perfectly normal, bed, desk, cushions - until I realized that the leather on the bed and floor were orc-skins. Boar orc skins. As were the ones on the wall. That was a little disturbing; what had I gotten myself into? What sort of chieftain - or Warmaster, as Jack liked to style himself - would do that? And sleep on them? Fuck on them? I was still trying not to stare at them when Heam, Jack's so-called valet, came in. Heam was one of the biggest orcs I'd ever seen; bigger than me, bigger than Paw, he made Jack look puny. Odd, that he didn't have any scars. He was wearing a loincloth, shaved head, and glistening gray-green skin. I'm not sure what he was doing when Jack walked in. He looked a little apprehensive when he saw me, and then more so when Jack just said, "Down."

Heam just dropped to his knees in front of Jack, carefully pulled the Warmaster's trousers down - all the while sneaking peaks at me, I'm not sure if I worried him or scared him, or embarrassed him while he was taking Jack's dick out. Like I cared. Well, I cared a little. Jack was bigger than I was, even soft, damn! I mean, it was pretty obvious what this valet was there for, right? Wrong. Heam wasn't servicing Jack. He was just kneeling there, his head motionless, more than a little hunched over on account of his being so damn big, and his mouth was locked around the head of a truly impressive tube - Heam wasn't doing anything, I thought, until I realized he was swallowing. Damn. That was weird, and ... a little hot, actually, watching that big burly orc drinking his master's piss down. No arguments, no backtalk, just ... just doing it. I wasn't sure about the drinking part, but I could appreciate Jack's control.

The Warmaster gave a quiet sigh as he finished draining his tool, and Heam licked the last drop off before carefully closing up the Warmaster's trousers. Jack looked around the room, nodded, and pointed to the far wall. "There. Heam, get a cot in here for Bors."

"Yes, Warmaster," and the orc stood and started to walk out.

"Hold," Jack said, and Heam stopped, just to my side. The half-orc looked at me for a moment. I wasn't sure why, but I could tell he was thinking about something. Jack's eyes narrowed just the smallest bit, and I knew he'd come to a decision. "Down."

Down? I was confused. Did he think I was going to ... but no, Heam was already on his knees in front of me. I could stop him, I should have stopped him, but he already had my dick out and ... he was just waiting. For me. I mean, I should have just pulled out, right, put myself away, and said, thanks, but no thanks. Maybe it was the way Jack wasn't looking at me, I mean, Jack was showing Heam just who was who, and me, too. The message was clear. I was in the middle of the Spit Sharpeners and I'd ... I'd need to do what they did.

What Jack did. So ... I concentrated, on relaxing myself, letting the piss flow. I mean, it wasn't much different from pissing on a tree after a late morning out with my drinking buddies, but ... it still took me a moment or two to get the flow started, slowly, and then picking up as I relaxed into the quiet pleasure of relieving myself. The wet warmth of Heam's lips touching - sucking, actually, to make sure not of the waste escaped - the tip of my cock was nice, salting the meat, and I found myself echoing Jack's sigh of relief a moment later. Heam sucked it all down, licked me clean and dried the tip on his cheek before letting the tip of my dick slip back into the skin. Had he done that for Jack?

Probably, and I'd just missed it.

Jack had just a hint of a smile, and then he told Heam, "Now go get a cot in here." Heam went back out on the Warmaster's errand. Jack looked at me with something like amusement. He went over to his bed, and pulled skins off - some were almost recognizable - and tossed them to me. "Here," he said. "For your bed."

"Thanks," I said, sorting through them and trying to get used to the idea. I had to arrange them after Heam brought the cot back up. After a little experimentation, I can say with absolute certainty that if you have to sleep on orc-skins with the head and balls still on, it's better to position them with the face toward the head of the bed. Much. Although, I can also say that Jack himself didn't seem to care. Maybe it was something I'd get used to.

Over the next week or so, Jack introduced me to his warlords - the Lodge Masters, and that's when I realized the Spits were different - really different. A Slash warrior, for example, has his own tent and his own sow (or sows, if he's lucky, or none, if he's not). A Spit warrior is part of a warband - anywhere from three to five warriors, they have a tent in common, and sows in common. The warband belongs to one of the lodges, and a warrior's loyalty is first to his tent (which they call a house, which isn't the physical tent but the warriors living there), and then to his lodgemaster and then to the Warmaster - Jack. Except that his loyalty is first to the Warmaster. Supposedly.

I'm not sure what they thought of their Warmaster's taking a Slash as an aide, but they seemed to go along with it, and that was clearly because of Jack. The Spits - all of them - treated Jack like even my Paw hadn't been treated. He listened, he talked to them, discussed things, and then he gave his orders and they ran - all of them, even the Lodgemasters - to see just how fast they could obey.

They were all frightened of the gnoll, Darz. They denied it, but I could tell by the way they moved away from her and how they just didn't talk about her at all. And if I brought it up, if I asked a question, I got a brief, unhelpful answer, and the warrior found some reason to be somewhere else. She was one of those things you just didn't talk about in the hope she wouldn't notice you, and that nobody else would notice you were scared shitless of her.

And everybody was convinced she was afraid of Jack. "Jack lets her stay," they'd say, or "Jack has that under control." That's when I noticed that they said that about a lot of things. About the other tribes the Spits had taken. "Jack planned it that way," they'd say, or "the Warmaster plays to win." Whatever it was, Jack planned it.

I even found out what exactly had happened to the other tribes. I think Paw had guessed, or maybe known, but I was surprised. I'd thought they'd just chased them out, farther into the mountains, but no, that's not what Jack did. The Warmaster didn't believe in survivors. They'd target a clan, and Jack would - in person - lead a raid that pretty much left them defenseless against a full-on attack from the rest of the Spit warriors. Jack would choose some of the senior members of a Lodge - Wolf or Puma, never Bear, and they'd go in.

And then the rest of the Spit Sharpeners would follow, taking over a nearly defenseless camp. The boars were spitted and roasted, along with any boar orclets that weren't still with its mother. The sows were taken and the camp was destroyed. All of it, everything, and the gnoll would then curse the site. That part they whispered. Darz scared them. Apparently she was a priestess and a wizard and maybe more powerful than even the Sharpened Spit shaman - the Fox King (although opinion differed on who the most powerful was). Most tribes have a shaman, and the shaman has a few apprentices. Here, the shaman had his own lodge - Fox, and the lodge master was called the Fox King. It wasn't a big lodge like the others, but the Fox King had some fifteen warriors. The Spits didn't like talking about the Fox King or his lodge, either, but I finally found out (by asking Heam, of all people) his name was Urdris, who had chained magic itself. Whatever that meant. They didn't like talking about Urdris, either.

I didn't miss that the Fox King bowed to Warmaster Jack, too.

The Spit Sharpeners were a much bigger clan than I'd thought. Orclets were everywhere, looked after by sows belonging to the lodges. Apparently, the orclets were assigned to a lodge as soon as they were weaned, and trained. Most of the lodges were big, too, having anywhere from eighty to a hundred warriors and there were five lodges, not counting Fox.

The Spits would have run right over us, even if Kett's warband hadn't been in the tunnel. Running errands for Jack, I passed by the huge cooking pit all the time. I wouldn't have ended up there, but almost certainly a pit just like that one, a long wood stake shoved through me, roasting for a Sharpened Spit victory feast. It was something I decided not to think about.

Heam might be a boar, but he did for Jack all the things a sow would do for most warriors - kept the cave clean, brought meals, drinks, kept his clothes clean and in repair. I knew Jack had a sizable number of sows, but I never saw them. They kept pretty much to themselves in the sowery, and I believed Jack when he said I'd regret entering. He just did not strike me as a boar who could be bothered to bluff. I did meet Baxs - a horrible old sow who was in charge of the sowery. Jack said if I wanted a sow Baxs would get me one but ... it hardly seemed worth it. Especially when I had Heam. Or rather, especially when Jack had Heam. He looked like a warrior, but apparently Heam didn't belong to a lodge (sort of like me, but for different reasons, I suppose), and he served me just like he did Jack, after Jack prompted him that first time. All I had to say was down and Heam was ready and willing to serve. Jack fucked him that first night, and Jack offered him to me, afterwards, obliquely, telling me that if I fucked him, I had to let Heam sleep with me. As if I cared. Heam was a damn fine cocksucker, though. I don't know if Jack trained him or he came by it on his own or some combination, but I'd never had a sow make me feel that good.

At first I figured I'd get a sow myself, but I didn't understand how the Spits worked quite yet. Sows were shared, but not the way the Slash had shared them. When our warriors got together, the senior warrior or warlord would bring one of his sows to share, but it didn't work that way here. Instead, the houses inside the lodges shared the sows - but not outside the house. If you didn't belong to a house, you didn't have access to a sow. I might just have to ask Baxs after all.

Jack did make clear, that first night, that they were his sows, and if I hurt them, he'd ... well, he took me a few steps into the sowery itself and showed me his farrows. They were ex-boars, Jack told me, and I could see little shriveled cocks on two of them. One of them had been a boar stupid enough to challenge him and not die doing it, and the others were from clans he'd wiped out. He'd cut off their balls, and in a couple of cases, feet. All three pairs of dugs on the five farrows were swollen, and there were orclets nursing on them. I told Jack I wouldn't dream of hurting one of his sows. Or Heam, he added, and I agreed, Heam was safe from me. It was weird, the things Jack cared about, and didn't.

It was about a week later when Jack took me, I thought, over to Darz's shrine - the gnoll had apparently conjured some demons or something to dig out a temple in the cliff, or the rock - there were a lot of opinions because nobody came out of the temple except Jack and Darz. I say came out rather than went in, because the warriors I talked to were certain that Darz brought people in.

They just didn't come back out. So when Jack took me over to - as I thought - the shrine, I asked Jack about it.

"She takes a few sacrifices, not that many," Jack said, in that I don't care way he had. "She's a priestess. But we're not going there. We're going to the prison."

"There's a prison?"

"A small one," Jack said. "I don't keep a lot of prisoners. More trouble than they're worth, most times. Slaves, yeah, hostages," and here he gave a smile that I couldn't really interpret, "they're one thing, but prisoners? Just a pain, for the most part."

The prison turned out to be right by Darz's shrine, which I was just as relieved not to be going into. It turned out to be guarded by Bear lodge warriors.

I was starting to understand some of the divisions Jack made. Wolf were his strike forces, light teams of warriors. Puma were his trackers, scouts, and special duty guards. Bear were his heavies - armor, heavy war-axes, and they served his infantry and policed his camp. It wasn't surprising to find Bear warriors guarding the prison. I don't know what I was expecting, although getting it meant passing through a sort of double-locked pair of gates. To let us in, a guard pulled the bar out, and shoved it into another lock - that allowed the near gate to open, but the far gate wouldn't. After we were past the first gate, the guard moved the bar again, and then we could open the far gate. Once we were through that, the guard moved the bar back to the first position - and from there, I realized, neither gate would open. It was pretty clever, but it would have left the Warmaster in a bad way if neither of those boars chose to open the gate for him.

It wasn't that much of a prison, and there were only a few prisoners. Six boars, three men. Their legs were secured with a heavy iron manacle to the wall, and they had a couple of blankets for the floor, and another blanket wrapped around them. Two buckets, one for water, one for waste. A tray for food. Each one had a hood on, though, a leather hood that went over the eyes and back of the head, laced tight. "Here we are," Jack said, more to himself than me, but none of them responded, or even took any notice. And ... "Warmaster, what's ... why haven't they taken the hoods off?" They didn't respond to my words, either, just sitting there. This was creepy.

"They don't come off," Jack said. "I had Darz make them, twelve of them. They render the wearer deaf and blind." Jack shot me a smile. "After a while they get a little disoriented."

I thought about that for a minute. Deaf and blind. No wonder all they needed was the single manacle. "I'll bet they do. You bring them in here already in the hoods," I guessed.

"Yes," Jack said. "Sometimes they can sense the other prisoners, vibrations in the floor, movements in the air, but those are usually the guard, and that teaches them that just means they should stay still unless they want to be beaten." The half-orc did a little, graceful half-circle. "All alone, each one of them, where we can keep an eye on them."

"How ..." I swallowed. "How long have they been in here?"

"Varies," Jack said. "Can't keep them too long. And, I don't like to keep prisoners. But Darz needs sacrifices, so ..." he waved to the boars. "And these are ... well. These are busybodies who shouldn't be here," he said looking at the humans.

"So why not just kill them?"

"I wish I could," Jack said.

"Why can't you?"

"Oh, I can," Jack said. "It's just that it might raise more questions back where they came from. Disappeared but not dead, their fate is a mystery. Once dead, a priest can inquire of their souls' fate, perhaps even restore them to life."

I blinked. "Really? I never believed that ..."

"Oh, yes," Jack said. "Darz can return life to the recently dead. I've had her do it." He produced a key from his pocket. "Magic can do all sorts of things," and he unlocked the manacle on one of the men. I had a brief fantasy of pulling my blade and stabbing him, but then I remembered that I'd somehow have to get out of this prison as well as just how fast Jack was. By the time I could have done it the man was unchained, and Jack had pulled him unsteadily to his feet, and was guiding him out. "This one is just a warrior. The other two ... something more."

"What more?"

"Sworn to gods," Jack said that last word with contempt. "Divine warriors. Sworn to protect their cities and towns from orcs. Meddling bastards."

"But ..."

"It's my problem," Jack said, in a tone of voice very much like Paw's when he was telling me to mind my own business. "I'll deal with it."

"Yes, Warmaster," I said, and he nodded approvingly.

"This one, at least, I can deal with tonight," Jack said. "I know you haven't asked Baxs for a sow yet."

That seemed like a weird change of subject, but I just nodded. "No, Warmaster."

"Meh," Jack said. "As long as you address me respectfully you can drop the warmaster for now. Nobody can hear us, Bors - just me and you. This," and he put a hand on the human, "can't hear a thing. You understand?"

He wanted to talk to me privately. "Yes."

"Not all boars ... like sows."

Duh. "I know."

"I don't really care for them myself. Sows are not to my liking, and human women ..." Jack paused. "Well, I can fuck 'em, but I'd rather not. They're so damn fragile. Sows aren't fragile - but they don't interest me."

Why was he telling me this? "All right," I said, a little uncomfortably.

"I know you haven't asked Baxs for a sow," Jack repeated, and then I understood. Jack was asking if ...

"I like sows just fine!" I blurted, and then paused. He had, after all, just told me pretty clearly that he didn't. "I've just ... I mean, I'm new here."

"And you've been using Heam - oh, I don't care," Jack said, sounding like he really didn't. "Either about sows or Heam. Use Heam however you like. But, when a boar uses a boar when a sow's available ... I just wonder which he really prefers."

"Does it matter?"

Jack shrugged. "A little, not much."

"I prefer sows," I said. "Heam's just ... convenient and, uh,"

"Ready," said Jack. "Yes," with a sly smile that seemed to hint at something I should know, but didn't. "He very much likes boars."

"I noticed," I said. "He's ... talented."

"Yes," Jack said. "You been fucked?"

That took my by surprise. "No," I lied, staring Jack right in the face.

"Ever wonder about it?"

"No," I said, much more sincerely.

"Fine," said Jack. He led the human out, and I followed him through the double gates. It wouldn't be good to be caught in here; you couldn't get yourself out - only the guard on the outside could let you out. Which was the point, of course, but still ... I decided it was a bad idea. Or maybe the bad idea was walking into the prison in the first place - Jack should have sent someone else, not let himself be put in a position where he could be trapped so easily.

Overconfidence, that's what Paw would call it. So the great Warmaster wasn't perfect, not at all. I filed that away, and followed Jack back to his own complex.