PULL ME UNDER - Bonded By Blood - One

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Side A: Bonded By Blood

One

Smoke from campfires drifting, orange-pink clouds and denim sky blackening over the tents and prairie grass and waystones. Wafts of beer, horns dipped in barrels, dripped fat sizzling on embers, strings plucked, women laugh and men boast, sheep knuckles tossed, salt sweat and resin and tallow, blood over fortune stones. The gilded scales of his borrowed regalia glinted that fire shared with his new brothers-in-arms, beads through his hair like muted cat-bells rang in the gust of wind that brought the smoke to his eyes and jostled his braid at his back. Tanner dressed like them now, was armed like them, the sabre and knives at his belt and his own antlered mask sitting in his lap to talk freely. Cross-legged, straight-backed, arms out wrists on knees, he felt almost respectable in the strange formality.

Ddun, now an equal, hours ago a superior, sat across from him split half orange in the firelight in mirrored posture, still but for the awkward flicking of his fingernails with his thumb—a habit as he tried to form the right words. The big bastard had already taken off his regalia, leaving just broad chest and painted belts and bright striped pants, mask in his lap too. If Tanner was supposed to initiate a talk, this was all new to him, so he cleared his throat and tried not to smile. “What do you need?”

“You’ve earned your mask, you have a high place in the clan now,” Ddun spoke as if they both hadn’t just participated in the ceremony, he really was struggling for words and it made it more difficult for Tanner to keep from laughing in his nervousness over what Ddun was about to ask of him. Or was he supposed to say thank you? Ddun just flicked his fingernails more and the awkwardness grew thick. Beads of sweat down Tanner’s back in his attempt to repress his nerves, the others all milling about unconcerned with the two men sitting there as if they were about to negotiate something and Tanner had no clue what he might have that Ddun wanted. “I’d… like your permission to lay with your sister.” There it was, thwap, pew—Tanner’s brain just shot out.

“Permission.”

“Yes.”

“From me?”

“…Yes.”

A stifled laugh, tension released with a blast of air out Tanner’s lips. As if he truly wielded such power, but if Ddun thought he did, well… Reality was his surprise they hadn’t gone at it already. “Are you… asking to plow my sister?” His eyebrows twitched with mirth, trying very hard to keep himself together. “Did you ask her?” Ddun might be the first Dvarri warrior in history to ask anyone’s permission to do anything, especially when it came to women.

“She will have me.”

“You’re confident.”

There was the slightest clench of the man’s jaw under dark-blond beard, eyes darting to the little tent Lauren kept. “Do I have your permission?”

Tanner’s neutral formality was shattering. Ddun had lifelong practise. “Why the hell do you need my permission? Said yourself she’d have you.” A sharp giggle escaped before pressing his lips shut.

“The way you both dealt with Orman, I thought… requesting such a… permission must be highly prized in your culture. You’ve been a good friend, loyal, and… I wouldn’t want to offend you.”

Tanner just about fell backwards. “Sure, then, go ahead, I guess.”

Ddun bowed his head respectfully before he stood, giving one more small, hasty bow bordering on offence before a skip and a leap and a dive through Lauren’s tent flap. Her happy laugh carried through the flames, and Tanner caught eyes with Borga sauntering by and they both guffawed like braying fucking donkeys.

Ddun was the only one that could ever, in a million years, have Tanners permission in the whole clan, or Lauren’s for that matter, if it did make Tanner gag a little. Ah, he was happy for her. But now the crackling embers and din of distant singing had Tanner’s thoughts wandering too inward, physically he needed to quiet the solitude and stuffed his head with urges he needed to deal with—especially as Lauren’s moans were already drifting. The evening was too soft on his own, and wandering through the camp had him distracted, still dream-hazed from the ceremony, his place amongst the canvases and poles with coloured flags and unfamiliar constellations might not ever be real. The large pillbox-shaped warrior’s tent in his path brought him back, and the lithe, blonde serving girl with her little button nose and sizable assets under undyed dress opened the wood-framed door to go in. He followed.

Inside was overly warm. Too many bodies, too much sinew and steel, red-painted tent poles. Dvarri all drunk-sweat and arguing. She flashed eyes at Tanner as he hooked a hand in her elbow, his heart skipped. She held a copper jug, beer dripping over the side pitter-patter on pressed earth, of course she had a job to do but that didn’t matter, ignoring the dagger-eyes at his back from all the men on mats around the hearth waiting for service. Cheeks flushed to look up at him and lips plump and it sent a rush of spice through his veins. Arm around her, leaning down close to her ear. He had never thought to ask before, but he figured… “Is there anyone here I need to ask permission from to lay with you?” What a gentleman, knowing the answer and asking anyway, inspired by Ddun.

She did that cute scrunch of her nose in confusion that he loved. “No?”

Whisked off her feet, beer dropped with a thud and nothing was left of the two of them but the plume of dirt he kicked up, “there he goes.” Back to his own tent, only a few feet from where Ddun and Lauren were having a time.

It quickly became a sort of rivalry, a right orgasmic competition, Tanner could imagine the crowd around them cheering on their favourite team with little buntings and popcorn, a crescendo of operatic female pleasure reverberating through the camp, each man trying to outdo the other and Tanner having to try very hard to remember the schematic to that 1978 Fender Champ he rebuilt while her back arched and her beautiful hips pressed up against him. Goddamn she flowed underneath like a slip-n-slide, pert pink nipples and heat and fingers flayed out on his arms like claws. He exploded into the wonderfully voracious girl he didn’t know the name of, and rested his sweat-soaked head against her neck as her thighs trembled and dropped onto the blankets and furs. He was dead on her, fire had eaten him up. She traced clumsy lines over his shoulders and he was cross-eyed with exhaustion, but it was worth it.

“What’s your name?” He could hardly breathe.

“Minna,” she mewed.

“Minna. You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

“Thank you.”

He fell asleep next to her, the vest of his regalia still on.

***

“Stenya! The Stenya are here!”

It was dawn as the cries rang through the camp, jumping the pair awake with the smell of burning grass, every muscle in him panic-twitching, gather weapons, sleep flushed from his head. Minna was screaming and clinging to him, begging him not to go, but he had to. He could hear Lauren pleading the same before Ddun tore the tent flap open, his own sabre at the ready, mask over his face and others behind him with bows and arrows in their fists, every man running to the fray or to their mounts with howls of violence.

“They’ve come.” A simple statement before a run, leaving Tanner to give a kiss to his beautiful Minna while tying his belt, fingers flying with hurry—lips still touching, her body jolted, a wet choke. He pulled back at the spray of blood down his front, eyes widened, an arrow had pierced through the felt of the tent and through her perfect neck—frozen in place to see her hand at the arrow and her skin go white. She fell into his chest slick with her blood, slipping down to the bedding at his knees, more arrows piercing the tent, beams of morning light through the holes. An arrow grazed his hair, the only thing that broke his stare down at her body. No time to grieve. The ice in him turned to such fervent fury he roared, slapping his face with bloodied hands before donning his mask and jumping to action blind with rage and ready to kill every Stenya skirmisher at the camp’s edge.

Tanner caught up with Ddun and they both cleaved insane through the bitegrass, coating the rough green with Stenya blood. Archers at the crest of a low hill buckled at the sight of his blood-drenched visage breaking through the edge of the grass, his skin torn from the field of it but he didn’t notice nor did he care.

He caught them, and hacked free their shooting fingers before he slew them, howls in their language he hoped were prayers to their gods or begs for mercy, understanding them or not it made no difference. He’d make a necklace from those finger bones and name the necklace Minna.

He fucking loved and hated this place.