Bors: A Warmaster Jack Novella Part Four
#4 of Bors - A Warmaster Jack Novella
Bors
A Warmaster Jack Novella
By Onyx Tao
Section Four
This text is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike License © 2011 by Onyx Tao
Despite the stumbling and difficulty the human had walking, Jack didn't take the hood off, and I wondered at that. The man wasn't big, certainly nowhere near the strength of myself or the half-orc, and I didn't see any way he could escape from the heart of the Sharpeners' encampment. Maybe it was just to keep him disoriented? He didn't look like he needed it -- he was already stumbling and looked confused. He didn't say anything, not a complaint, not a word even as he nearly fell. I asked Jack about it.
"The hood mutes them. Didn't I ... no, I didn't say that." Jack said. "Should have mentioned it."
There didn't seem to be much to say to that beyond "I guess that makes sense."
Once we were back in the Warmaster's rooms, Jack tossed the man -- not too hard, I noticed -- onto his bed. The Warmaster must have noticed my surprise, because he said, "Humans are fragile, Bors, a lot more fragile than orcs. I don't want to break this one accidentally."
The man, I noted, just pulled his blanket around himself and huddled on the bed. I snorted. "And we're afraid of these?"
"Yes," Jack said. "Humans have better armor than we do, and better weapons, both in the steel and the design, and they've mastered the art of war like orcs never have."
"What?" I said, offended. "This -- these -- are warriors?" I said, offended.
"No," Jack said. "Gods no. Hardly. Not warriors. If only! Far more dangerous than warriors, Bors."
"What?" That was ridiculous.
"Soldiers," said Jack, calmly. "They fight together, in coordination, under the immediate tactical command of their sergeants, who are under the general tactical command of their captains, who are under the tactical and strategic command of their colonels and generals. They have an army, where orcs have a horde. And the army will win, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand."
"That's ... impossible," I said.
"No," Jack said, sounding irritated. "If it were impossible, as you put it, then orcs would rule the world and we would have exterminated humans. Which, obviously, we have not done. Heam! Get me something to clean this human with!" There was a deep sound that might have been Yes, Warmaster, but it might have been something else, too.
Oh? Yeah? "Then why haven't they wiped us out?" I said challengingly.
Jack fixed me with a surprisingly intense look. "A number of reasons, starting with the difficulty of moving and supporting armies through mountains -- logistics problems, and fortunately for us orcs breed faster than humans, and age faster than humans, so that orc losses can be made up more quickly and with less overall expense. A serious campaign against orcs, in the mountains, would cost more than they can afford." Jack shook his head. "Sometimes, even victory can be a defeat."
I wasn't sure what that meant, so I changed the subject. "So ... this is a soldier human, then."
"A warrior and a soldier," Jack said, seeming to cheer up a bit. "The two are not entirely exclusive ..." Jack leaned over the bed, grabbed the man's hooded head, and pulled him up to Jack's head. Jack's tongue forced itself deep into the man's mouth, a deep kiss that seemed more like a test of the human's resistance than anything resembling affection. Jack broke it off a moment later. "Heam!" he shouted, and the huge orc brought in a ... a bucket? And a rag?
Jack looked at me with a cold appraisal that sent a well-disguised shiver down my back. "You say you don't care for boars, or men. Really?"
"Yes," I said. "Not that I wouldn't fuck him if I had the chance, but I'd rather have a sow. Or a woman."
"Hmmm," grunted Jack with displeasure, as he wet the rag in the bucket. "Heam! It's cold! Get me warm water."
Heam took the offending bucket away leaving Jack with the wet cloth.
"Cold will do," muttered Jack, "although hot would be better ..."
"Better for what?"
Jack looked at him, and gave a short laugh. "This soldier is already half-broken. I'm going to finish the job tonight, and dispose of him."
"Spit him, you mean?"
"Only in a manner of speaking," Jack said, something that made no sense to me at all. Jack must have seen my confusion. "It's a human idiom. It means ... that what you said is right, but not the way you meant it."
Again, I focused on what I did understand. "You're not going to spit him?"
Jack shook his head. "Fuck him, but he'll survive the evening." And then a cold grin crept over the half-orc. "In a manner of speaking." I wasn't sure why, but that grin ran a shudder down my back. I might not know what Jack meant, but it wasn't good.
I tried to figure out what Jack meant as he methodically used the cloth to wipe the human off. The man was filthy, covered in matted hair and dirt, probably from the dungeon. A few minutes later Heam came back in, the bucket now full of steaming water. Jack dipped the cloth in, and returned to the man. Humans are built a little like orcs, only smaller, with red blood and their skin is covered with fine, fine hair. At first, they almost look hairless, like orcs, but they are anything but. The rag was revealing a fairly sturdy human, although he was slight for an orc. At least, he had been muscled -- after his time in prison, he was visibly shrunken. That was a shame, he would have been better looking filled out a little. Although, he was looking better and better as Jack cleaned him. The man was actually moving towards Jack, letting Jack ...
That was why Jack was doing that! It let the human give in to him. Jack's captive was now actively cooperating with him. "He's letting you ..." I said.
"Yes," Jack said, as he finished wiping down the man's legs. "Heam?"
"Here, Warmaster," and Heam handed Jack a razor. The half-orc slid it down the man's arm -- the reaction was muted -- and I didn't see any blood. He tried to pull away, but a yank straightened out the arm for the next slice ... no, not slice. He was stripping the hair off, and more dirt came with it. The man struggled, a little, but softly, whether out of resignation or fear of the blade I wasn't sure. Or maybe he was just weak from prison. Or maybe he was just weak; he was human, after all.
Jack didn't hurry, although he paused half-way through to squeeze wine from a skin into the man's mouth, and then he put the skin down on the bed. I watched, and I kept expecting him to hurry, or start stripping the man's skin off, or something ... anything other than just continuing to shave him down.
"Why?"
"Why what?" Jack said, without putting any serious attention into the response.
"Why are you shaving him like that?"
Without so much as a pause Jack answered, "I prefer him smooth," and ran his free hand ran down the already-clean side. "Much nicer to fuck."
"But ..." I paused, not sure how to phrase this without offending Jack. "Heam could do that."
That actually caught his attention, and he snorted. "True." He didn't say anything more, and I just watched him finish, and then start wiping him down again with the cloth.
I finally had to ask. "So why are you washing him instead of having a slave do it?"
"Heam? Heam is ... not a slave," Jack said. "Although I understand why you'd make the mistake. As to why I'm washing him ..." Jack looked up at me. "Do you want to do it?"
"No!"
"Is it causing you pain to watch me?"
"No," I said.
"Liar," Jack said, but without any emphasis. "You don't like watching do it, do you?"
"You're the Warmaster," I said. "You shouldn't have to ... to ... wash slaves."
"Oh," Jack said, with a short and remarkably unfunny laugh. "You're right. I don't have to. I want to. It pleases me to do this." Something that could easily be mistaken for a smile flickered briefly across Jack's face. "His life is in my hands; I know it, he knows it." Jack looked at me for a moment. "Perhaps it's even that you know it," Jack said. "After all, if I wanted to hurt him, would you stop me?"
That was easy. "No."
"Could you stop me?"
Honestly? I hated to answer, but the truth was, "No."
"And if you wanted to hurt him, but I didn't want you to, would you hurt him?"
"No."
"And somewhere in the silent darkness, then, this man is so desperate for touch," and Jack paused before continuing, "that knowing I will hurt him, he's still not fighting me."
"How does he know ..."
"He knows," Jack said. "I told him, before I put this mask on him." Another disturbing not-a-smile came and went. "I was the last thing he saw, and that promise -- that I would hurt him, is the last thing he heard. He knows," the big half-orc said quietly. "Oh, he knows."
"I ..." What was there to say to that? Except wish I wasn't here, not with Jack like this. "I'm sorry I said anything."
"No reason to be," Jack said. "Besides, I'm not going to hurt him."
"You're not?"
"No," Jack said. "I'm going to make him feel ... good ." Jack stroked him again. "Very good." He looked back up at me. "You're going to stick with your story that you don't do boars?"
"Or men," I said.
The half-orc shrugged. "Even when Heam is on his knees in front of you?"
"That's just ... convenience ," I said. It was. Mostly.
"Or with his legs in the air?"
Damn it! How ... how did he know? I just couldn't see him bothering to ask Heam. Maybe he'd seen us?
"Or were you going to deny it?" he asked.
"I was bored," I said, which was at least partially true.
"If that's what you want to call it," Jack said, and then, a moment later, "which is deflecting, if you wondered."
"Deflecting?" Huh? What was that?
Jack just shook his head. "Never mind," he said. "It hardly matters." He looked over the figure, and nodded. "A little thin, but ... that's my fault, really, leaving him in the prison that long ..." Jack paused, but whatever he was thinking, he didn't say it.
I deliberately didn't watch as Jack started fucking him, although I could hear it. It was weird, since the prisoner's hood kept the human silent, all I could hear was the sound of flesh on flesh, and Jack's breathing. I couldn't help glancing over, to see the human was trying to resist the Warmaster, but not effectively. I'm not sure Jack noticed.
I looked away when I started to harden. It was just like it was when Paw went at Kett; I knew I shouldn't , but somehow ... I did. Damn it. I couldn't help it; I turned back to watch Jack fuck him. The Warmaster was careful, I realized, probably didn't want to hurt the human too much, but really, why did he care? Why would he bother being careful? I mean, Paw was careful, but if he hurt Kett or me, then ...
I just shook my head, and turned away again, trying to ignore the sound. It was really just the sound of Jack; the half-orc pounding away at the human. That mask kept the human silent, and I was hearing the soft slap slap slap and as much as I tried not to think about it I couldn't not think about it, not wonder what it felt like, how good the man would feel under me or even how it would feel if I was on the table, under Jack, squirming like the man was squirming and I realized I was watching them again. Somehow I couldn't keep my eyes off the two of them.
Jack reached down and pulled the mask off, without missing a thrust. The man gave a shuddering howl, and forced his head down, into the soft skins on the bed. I wondered briefly if he knew what he was laying on. From the way he jerked his hands up, from where they'd been supporting him against Jack's fucking to cover his eyes -- it was the same reaction I might have to sunlight. But the light in here was just a candle, and I'm not even sure why Jack wanted it. He could see in the dark, just like an orc. But why would that hurt a human?
The howls had changed into words -- human words, and Jack was answering him, in a low, soothing voice, but it didn't work. The human was yelling over Jack -- never a good idea, even in the short time I'd known him -- but that didn't seem to bother Jack, and it certainly didn't slow him down. The Warmaster just put a hand on the man's shoulder to prevent his being pushed off the bed as Jack went at him.
I wasn't even pretending to ignore it anymore; I was rubbing myself through my trousers, thinking about fucking that human, thinking about Jack's hand on my shoulder, holding me down while he fucked me.
"You'll get your turn," Jack said, speaking orc, although he didn't turn to face me. "Just hold on. I told you I last for a long time, relatively speaking?"
I guessed he was talking to me, but ... "Yeah, well, uh, no, not really," I said. "I'm not even ..."
"Half-human," Jack said, punctuating each word with a not-so-gentle thrust. "I'm half-human, remember?"
"Yes," I said. "I'm not likely to forget that."
"Well, you know -- or maybe you don't -- that a human takes five, ten minutes of fucking to come, right?"
"No," I said. "Really? That long?"
"Yes," Jack said.
Oh. I got it. "So you take that long," I said, with sudden understanding. That was too bad, I thought.
"A little longer, for whatever reason," Jack said, and sighed.
"That's a shame," I said.
Jack just chuckled. "Well, Bors, if you like fucking --"
"Who doesn't?"
"-- then is it better to last for ten minutes, or one minute?"
I thought about that while he fucked. I mean, he did look like he was enjoying himself, and somewhere in the back of my mind I thought that maybe lasting that long might be a good thing if one were being fucked, rather than just trying ... "Wait," I said. "Like fucking? As opposed to coming?"
That actually caused Jack to stop, and turn to look at me. "Yessss," he said, looking at me carefully.
"Well, coming is better. Way better," I said confidently. "Much better. So maybe you can fuck for ten minutes, but I can come three times in the time it takes you to come once." Jack was staring at me oddly, not fucking, and I had the sinking feeling I'd somehow insulted him.
So hearing him laugh was a relief. "Good to hear it," he said, resuming his motion. I noticed the man was moving with him now, not against him, pushing back even as Jack moved forward. "And ..." he said, shoving himself forward, slamming the man down into the skins, he held himself still for a good long minute. Wow. Did it really last that long for him? Maybe he had a point.
"Where ... ah," Jack said, pulling out of the human. "You might have a point," he said, wiping himself clean with the rag he'd used. "Three times, huh?"
I nodded.
"Go for it," Jack said, and then he turned to the human, and said something to the human. I'd have to learn human, I decided, if I was going to have to stick around here. Not knowing what Jack was saying was just a little worrisome.
"But ..."
Jack just stared at me. "Oh, right, you only do sows," he said, mockingly.
"That's right," I said, although I wasn't sure if I believed me. I was sure that he didn't.
"Well then," the big half-orc said, and then he snapped something at the man, who shook his head, and whimpered something along the lines of no and please, don't. I don't speak human, but there are a few words that I couldn't help but know. Jack growled and in one swift movement, flipped the human over, so he was on his back, looking up. He was hard, six or seven inches of pink flesh jutting up from crotch. Jack said something else in human, and the human shook his head, no. I suppose that was just one more thing than Jack was willing to tolerate. The half-orc smashed his fist into the human's chest, with a distinct thump-crack sound, and that meant broken ribs. The human was just moving meat at this point, the only question was whether Jack would bother to put him down or not. It was weird; I'd expect him to lose his hard-on, but he didn't. Jack cursed, in orc and human, nothing really coherent for a moment -- I guess he was unhappy to lose his temper like that.
Or maybe he'd had other plans for the man. Jack didn't seem like someone who appreciated it when his plans went wrong. After a moment of thought or hesitation, I couldn't say which, because a chieftain never hesitates and I doubt a Warmaster does either, even if it looks like hesitation, Jack walked over to a shelf, moved a big jug aside, and reached into a hole in the wall. I hadn't known it was there. Probably I wasn't supposed to, so I looked away briefly and when I looked back the jug was blocking it again. Jack had a silvery metal vial in his hand -- I couldn't imagine it was anything other than a curative potion.
Jack had a short interchange with the man in human, but after a few seconds, the man nodded, and Jack reached down to offer the vial to him. "You're wasting a curative on a human?" I said, in disbelief. One of those would heal wounds, knit broken brones, turn a broken warrior into a whole one -- they were priceless, hard to get, and he was using one on a human? I couldn't believe it.
"No," Jack said, and since he used the orcish rather than the human I assumed he was talking to me. He tipped the tiny vial over, and thick, almost lumpy, pale green ooze dripped out of it. It didn't pour evenly, coming out in blobs, but the man swallowed it, grimacing either at the taste or texture, and maybe both. I've heard magic liquors are uniformly horrible, but then I've never had one. The human sighed, and settled back.
"Well, if it wasn't a curative," I said, "it's still wasted, because he's gonna die."
"Maybe," Jack said absently, watching the man's breathing ease. "It's something in the nature of an experiment Darz and I came up with. It's probably impractical -- too much magic is required to make it useful on any grand scale -- but we decided to go ahead and test it, anyway."
"What?"
"The tricky part was getting him to drink it willingly," Jack said, and smiled. "I told him it would heal him."
"So it is a curative?"
"Yeah, that too ..." Jack said. "Darz wasn't sure how long it would take to work." The half-orc put his hand on the man's side, where he'd hit him, and asked something. "Well, it's healing him, so that part's working."
"Wait, you only pretended to get mad? That was a setup?"
Jack turned a cold look on me. "Of course."
"Oh," I said. "Uh, Warmaster, did I say something ..."
"Yes," Jack said shortly.
Oh. What ... "Warmaster, what did I say?"
The half-orc looked at me for a moment, thoughtfully. "It would be stupid to get mad at a prisoner, Bors, and even more stupid to hit him that hard unintentionally." Jack gave a very brief smile. "I dislike being called stupid. I heard that a lot when I was traveling in human lands ... and it grates."
I nodded. "I didn't mean you were stupid," I said.
"Good," Jack said. "Keep it that way." He looked back at the man, who looked liked he'd now fallen asleep. The red splotch on his chest where Jack had hit him had faded. He still had his hard-on, though, and it was jerking gently back and forth, if anything harder than it had been.
"Warmaster?"
"Just Jack, we're alone, and Tidmon doesn't speak orc." Jack paused. "Which really is stupid. Why would anyone think they could walk into orc-held territories and find out anything of value without speaking orcish?"
"That does sound stupid," I said, slowly. "Did his companions speak orcish?"
"One does," Jack said, approvingly. "Go on."
"Maybe ... maybe he was going to meet someone? A spy?"
"Excellent!" said Jack, with a real smile this time. "Very good!"
"There's a spy?"
"Well, no," said Jack. "Not as far as Urdris or I can tell. We questioned them pretty thoroughly, too, on what they were doing, who they were going to meet, what they knew, what they were sent to learn ... and they didn't have any contacts here. As far as we can tell, they were really just stupid. But that's not the point; the point is, you had an excellent idea to explain something that seemed ... wrong to you."
"But it was wrong," I said.
"Most ideas are," Jack said, cheerfully. "You have to go through bushels and bushels of wrong and mistaken ideas to get to the right ones. That's called thinking, and it's hard to learn to do. It took Baron ..." Jack paused, losing his sudden good mood. "Never mind."
Baron. I filed that away for later. Just because I didn't know who or what Baron was, didn't mean Paw wouldn't. I'm surprised at how much Paw knows sometimes.
"Still," Jack said. "It was a good idea."
"Thanks," I said, not sure if he was mocking me or not. Paw would have been, but I wasn't so sure about Jack. On the other hand, if he was mocking me, there wasn't anything I could do about it.
The man -- Tidmon -- was stirring on the bed, and Jack's attention focused back on him.
"What's your experiment?" I asked.
"Wait and see," Jack said, "wait and see." The big half-orc moved over to Tidmon, and ran a hand down his chest to the throbbing cock."
"He hasn't lost that at all," I said.
"Just wait," Jack said quietly. He reached out, and touched the sensitive underside of the cock, pushing it up towards the human's navel just a little, and ran his finger up and down. Droplets of clear juice appeared slowly at the tip, and Jack coaxed them down, over the dry flesh, coating it with the slick stuff. The man was watching him, and Jack was speaking fluently in that sharp human language -- I'm not even sure how he could say some of those words, I'd trip on my tusks if I tried, or bite my tongue, or something, and then Jack said something very strange in orcish, "Please, Master Bors, fuck me!"
That caught my attention! It only took me a minute to realize he wasn't talking to me, he was coaching the man. Tidmon, since Tidmon repeated the phrase very quietly. Jack said something which had to be the human equivalent of louder, or maybe louder, slave, because Tidmon said it again, louder. Jack shook his head, and Tidmon said "Please, Master Bors, fuck me!"
Jack nodded, and gave me the human translation for "fine, man-whore," because he said saying yes, slut would make me sound like an idiot, and when he pronounced it -- and I have no idea how he did, Jack has the same tusks I have -- there's just no way I could make that short sharp hissing sound. Assuming I wanted to, of course ... I was sure I wanted to fuck him, I just really didn't want to do it in front of Jack. Maybe I could get Heam later?
No. Fuck it. I did want to fuck him. I pulled my trousers down; I was already hard, and leaking pre-fuck slime already. I started to turn him over, but Jack stopped me. "Don't. Take him like that."
"But ..."
"If you want him," Jack said, "take him on his back."
Fine. I swung his legs up and apart, and thrust myself into him; I entered him easily, hard as I was and wet as he was from Jack's release earlier. I'd never been that fond of following someone, but his ass was still tight, and it gripped me in a wonderful way. I started moving into him, just enjoying the warmth and tightness, and I could feel him resisting me, or at least trying to. Not that he could, the warmth was raising me up and it didn't take me long to reach my own release with a howl.
I opened my eyes, panting with the sheer pleasure of it, and looked down. Something ...
His cock was still hard, still leaking the clear pre-fuck that orc and human have in common, but ... it was smaller. His sac had pulled up against his body, I could see the twin orbs within standing out against the taut skin. I looked across at Jack, who was watching ... us, me and Tidmon.
"That was one," Jack said.
"He's ... what's happening to him?"
"Keep going." There was a grin on the half-orc's face. "Maybe you'll figure it out before he does."
Maybe I would. There was certainly nothing stopping me from fucking him again, and this time, I kept my eyes open while I did. Yes. His dick was shrinking, and ... the harder I pounded him, the more he writhed, the more it shrunk; his balls were tight against his crotch and it was thickening. What ...
I lost track of what was happening as I shot into him again, and this time, the man -- Timdon -- came too, I could feel the soft wet impact of seed on my chest as I paused. When I was focusing again, though, I found I was wrong. I wasn't spattered with human-seed (and that was good), but more of that clear prefuck; he'd shot clear. I saw his eyes widen as he realized that had happened; and his head jerked down to look at the shrunken stub of cockmeat -- if it could still be called that. He was actively fighting now, and Jack put his hand on Timdon's shoulders. Between that, and my grip on him, he was pretty well pinned however he tried to move.
Jack said something in human, which provoked a spurt of what could only be cursing from the man. Jack didn't say anything, though, just letting him yell.
"What did you tell him?" I asked.
"Just what you told me," Jack said. "That you prefer sows to boars."
I laughed. "I do," I said. "But I'm not sure this one is a sow yet."
"Keep going," Jack said. "Fuck him again." The half-orc looked down over the pale pinkish flesh, and snorted. "You said three times, no?"
"I did."
"So, what are you waiting for?" Jack said.
"I'm almost ready to go again, it takes me a minute or so."
"You don't what him to go and change without you, do you?"
I just shook my head, and started plowing into him again. I knew from watching that Jack himself needed nearly twenty minutes after shooting before he liked to go again, and I suddenly wondered if that's what I was doing for him now, keeping Timdon ready for him while Jack recovered. Maybe. It didn't matter; I was the one fucking him now and he was changing for me; whatever Jack had drugged him with seemed to need fucking, or maybe it was just faster when I was thrusting into him. After a minute or so, I didn't really care that much; I was just watching the nub of flesh that had been his cock get swallowed up by the opening formed from his balls, which had worked themselves into cuntlips, inner and outer, and I decided that I would be the first to use them. Jack probably wanted to be first, but, well, fuck Jack. I watched the flesh change, crawl down, watched this human go from stud to bitch. I slid my hand down the human's leg, to his -- her? -- new sex, wet and slick and hot with that same clear prefuck and twisted my finger in.
Timdon moaned, bucked his hips around me, trying to get me deeper in.
"Yessss," said Jack quietly, but I wasn't really paying attention to the Warmaster at this point, I was trying to gauge if I could ...
I could.
I pulled completely out of Timdon, and then pushed myself into the new opening; that sweet red cunt waiting for cock, ready for my cock, and I just slid into the hot warmth. There was a slight resistance, but nothing more. The man was screaming something, and Jack was speaking, too, but I didn't care, my attention was not on them, it was on me, on the warm tight feeling in my balls, on the intense hot pressure on my cock, and then I came, filling this new sow with my seed.
"Nicely done," Jack said. "Although you're all bloody."
Timdon had stopped moving when I pulled out of him. "Blood?" I looked down. "What ..." The clear was stained with red human blood, not the normal green. I glanced back up at Jack; was his blood green? Or human-red?
"It's a human thing," Jack said, without any emphasis. "There's a sheet of tissue that has to be torn when a bitch is fucked for the first time. Fortunately, it's just the first time."
"Fortunately?"
"It's fairly painful for the bitch," Jack said. "If it grew back, there would be a lot fewer humans, I think."
"Fortunate?"
"Eh. Point," said Jack. "Point. Fortunate for humans, then."
I looked over the motionless Timdon. He -- she -- might have a bitch's anatomy, but the rest still looked male. It was a turn-on, I had to admit, and now that I was done, I just might have been, as Paw put it, thinking with my cock, especially if I might have been stepping on Jack's ...
But the Warmaster didn't look particularly angry, or even stern. He just looked ... content, like something had gone right. "Clean yourself up," Jack advised. He took a few steps over to the door. "Heam, go get Baxs. Tell her to bring me a sow collar, and the keys." He looked back at the changed human. "Small one, I think."
For ... Timdon? Obviously. But why wouldn't Jack just put her in the sowery?
I finished wiping myself off, and even though that didn't take long, Baxs had arrived with a sow collar -- we Slash don't use them, and I hadn't seen any among the Spits, but some tribes do use them -- they're pretty much like iron slave collars, but they're wider, and curved, so they don't chafe. Jack took the collar, and the lock, and put it on around Timdon's neck, and then used the lock to shut the collar and attach a short iron chain.
I was shocked when he put the end of the chain in my hand.
"You wanted a sow," Jack said. "Here you go."