Kickass Anthology (18 page)

It was time to see if he could awaken the Guardians. Vorgell leaped off his horse, unwrapped the top of the staff, and walked up to the nearest stone. He touched the golden disk to the shadow-dark surface. Nothing happened. He walked to another stone and did the same. Nothing. Only the tap of metal on rock.

They had ridden all this way for nothing.

Looking past the stones, Vorgell saw towers and walls outlined by starlight in the distance, pinpricks of light spilling from its heart. Gurgh. They could reach it if they rode fast.

Madd’s voice penetrated his frustration. “It’s night. I think the Sun Staff uses Sun magic. If these stones are the Guardians, and they can be awakened at all, it has to be in daylight.”

“Dawn, then.” Could they afford to wait so long? And if they did ride to Gurgh and return the Staff to the Sun Priestesses, might the Salid’s army not arrive in the meantime to prevent anyone from awakening the stone army?

“We have to stay, don’t we?” Madd slipped down from his mount and stood a few feet away, a small slim figure who had never left Vorgell behind for any reason. Not even when doing so would have saved him from being taken by slavers or put him in the path of magical beasts who intended to tear him limb from limb. Small of stature Madd might be, but Vorgell had never known a braver or more stubborn man. Save possibly for himself, and he would never put the man he loved to such a test.

“Only I need stay. I”—he hefted the staff—“and this.”

“As if I’d leave you here to bumble around on your own. You’re likely to fall asleep and not wake up ‘til the Salid himself is scaling Gurgh’s walls. Put that thing down and put Petal on sentry duty. We only have an hour or so until dawn and—” Madd’s beckoning smile went straight to Vorgell’s bones and turned them to butter, “—I could really use a bolt of magic before then. The thing with the road took a lot out of me and, well, we may well die tomorrow but not without a fight.”

Witchkin males had to acquire magic from living things, which they ate. Few living things thrived in the Bone Barrens, and those that did were so wary it would take more energy to catch them than they were worth. But Madd was not really asking for magic. He looked far too playful for that. Petal, knowing what was to come, had already secured a lofty perch.

The Sun Staff and its wrappings had barely met the ground before Vorgell’s lips found Madd’s and he was crushing that hard, much loved body to his. It had been so long. So many days on the road, stealing sleep instead of gold, performing sucks as means of release or magic but not strictly for pleasure—and yet pleasure, the sheer joy of being together, was what they needed most. Brooches, buttons, ties… every fastener met the same fate and yielded, Madd’s tunic falling off his shoulders, Vorgell’s belts and skins dropping to the earth. Naked, his flesh pale and needful, he knelt and with worshipful hands eased Madd’s trousers over slim hips.

His lover’s beauty never failed to render him weak. Wanting. Vorgell wanted Madd more than he wanted to run with the wolves in the afterlife promised by his forefathers. He wanted Madd more than he wanted all the coin in Gurgh, all the gold in the Sun God’s Temple. More than his freedom. More than his life. He had come to Gurgh with nothing, not knowing what his life was worth or where it would take him. Finding Madd and weaving this fiery witchkin thief into his life had unlocked every door he had ever wanted to open.

“This won’t be extinguished,” he murmured between heated kisses. “What we have burns too hot for any man to conquer or the gods to want to end it now.”

“We have no time for poetry. Stop talking. Over here.”

Madd thoughtfully spread Vorgell’s cloak, hood and all, over a large flat boulder smoothed by the ages and the asses of countless travelers. The fabric cushioned the hard surface just enough that Vorgell found it bearable. The moment Madd’s hands cupped his ass there was no place in the world he wanted to be than here beneath the stars, his erection standing as tall as the stones ringed around them.

“You look like a heathen sacrifice spread out this way.” The warm dark tone of Madd’s voice blended with the night.

“I feel like one, awaiting the finish.” He could not be harder. Beads of starlit fluid already flowed from his cock tip to his belly, on lines as fine as spider thread.

He did not have to wait long. Madd knelt between his spread legs and Vorgell lifted his head to watch his lover’s full lips approach his cock. The shiver of anticipation that raced through him raised more droplets to the surface even as Madd’s hair fell in a dark curtain across his belly and the kiss of those lips on his cock made Vorgell praise the gods.

Every touch brought him close, yet never close enough. Madd was skilled that way, too. The fingertip at the gate, the tender press awaiting invitation. Patient. Loving. Vorgell knew that now, how much love so simple an act could convey. For a moment he wondered where Madd had hidden a trove of oil, to have made his finger so slick, the entry so… oh gods, oh many Lords of Many Lands! There were no word for how desperately he wanted to be fucked.

“You’re so damn magnificent, you really are. See what you do to me?”

As Vorgell watched through hooded, lust-filled eyes, Madd curled the fingers of his other hand around his own stiff cock and began to stroke himself. Oil glistened on those sure fingers as Madd smoothed it over his plump glans and thickness. It was a blatant display from which Vorgell could not tear his eyes.

“You know what I want.” He nudged his knees further apart, but Madd was having none of it. The little witch instead pulled his finger out from Vorgell’s ass and angled up over his body and chest. There Madd bent and took possession of a nipple, sucking the bit of flesh into his mouth to tease it with his tongue. Each flick shot a bolt of pleasure through Vorgell’s body.

“Stop, Madd… stop! I’m too close!”

He really was. He was about to explode.

Madd laughed and returned to kneeling between Vorgell’s thighs. “You know why I had to do that, don’t you?”

“Because you have the cruel instincts of a Sardakkian torturer?”

“No. Because I love to hear you beg.”

“Aw, Madd… I’m begging now.”

“I know.” Madd trailed a finger up the line of Vorgell’s shaft, then lowered his head.

Oh yes… Vorgell bit back a loud moan at the heavenly pressure of Madd’s tongue on his cock, licking with a demon’s sure knowledge of how to torment captured mortals. “Please, Madd… please, please, please… you haven’t sucked me in more than a day. I’m dammed to the brim.”

“I’ll suck you now if you want. Is that what you want?”

Vorgell groaned. It wasn’t what he wanted, but he was hanging by a string. Madd had laid hold of his balls and gripped them expertly, gently and pulled just enough away from his body to interrupt his rush to ejaculation. If that were not enough, the damn witch had inserted two oil-slicked fingers deep into Vorgell’s greedy ass and was fucking him slowly.

“What do you want, Vorgell? You want me to get your cock off? Or do you want me to screw your magnificent warrior ass?” The hand smoothly working his ass completely owned him. Madd’s voice lowered to a dominant growl. “You have to say it.”

“My ass, Madd. Please. I want you to fuck me.”

“Fuck you how?”

“I don’t know. I—” Madd expected him to decide something at a time like this?

“I’ll make it easy for you. Do you want me to fuck you like a lover… or a slave?”

A choice. He could handle a choice.

“Slave,” he gasped. “Fuck me like a slave!” Though Vorgell had killed every man who had ever placed his neck into a slaver’s collar, he rather fancied his sex on the rough side.

“Then that’s what you are.” Madd closed one hand around Vorgell’s cock and squeezed hard until Vorgell yelped with triumph.

Slave or lover, he knew himself to be both and it was heaven every time. The slick feel of Madd’s well-oiled cock—so thick and so hard—invading his body sent Vorgell plunging into bliss. Nothing else felt so good, like being put exactly in the very place he needed and wanted to be. No more thinking, no more wanting. When Madd was inside him, he simply was what he wanted to be. Fucked.

Madd’s cock plunged in sure strokes and bumped against that place inside Vorgell that made him nearly pass out from sheer pleasure. It was just a small bump, he knew from Madd having taught him how to find it. A small bump and yet it unmade him. His cock jerked in the hand fisting it, then jerked again, fat spurts of come flying to splash onto his belly and chest.

He knew Madd came when he heard his partner say his name, “Fuck, Vorgell… fuck!” and plunge even harder within him, then cease. It amazed Vorgell how at times he could feel the pulses of each spurt of Madd’s ejaculation.

Vorgell lay gasping, drowned in sweet release, when Madd pushed over his body and began to lick up every trace of come as if doing so was his true reward. Perhaps it was, given it was filled with magic as well as life. The sight of his lover brought on a smile. After sex, Madd always looked deliciously tousled and pleased with himself. The way a lover should look. When Madd had finished, Vorgell pulled him all the way atop the boulder into his arms, so Madd lay atop him, cheek on his shoulder.

“I don’t think there’s any man alive who loves to be fucked more than you.”

“Because I have you doing it.” Vorgell could not imagine being so intimate with any other man.

Madd nestled in. “Do you know why I like it? Because there’s no way I will ever get closer to you. Being inside you is like… like being one person. My life and yours sharing the same space just for that moment.”

“Is it over already? That moment?”

“Not yet.”

They lay that way for several more minutes, sharing the same space as the stars faded above them. Only when Vorgell kissed Madd on the forehead did they stir.

“You and your snuggles,” Madd groused, rolling out of Vorgell’s arms and off the boulder. He stood and looked around. “We might have fallen asleep and woken up on a battlefield!”

Vorgell sat up and took inventory of their situation. Though it was still dark, the sky had just begun to pale. Three horses still stood where Madd had tethered them an hour ago. A flurry of movement atop the nearest of several standing stones told him where Petal had taken up her post. Though the basilisk posed with her back to him, displaying abundant disdain for the activities she had witnessed, she looked otherwise unruffled and so there were probably no soldiers in the vicinity. Because that last fact could turn quickly, he rose and sought one of the rocks to stand behind while he emptied his bladder. It only occurred to him after he’d shaken off the last drop that he’d likely urinated on a Guardian.

When he returned, he saw Madd fully dressed again, a vision in tattered trousers and a formerly fine cotton tunic, not unlike the first time he had ever seen him. Much had changed, and yet nothing had. They were still rogues living day to day, hoping that one day their fortunes would improve.

After donning his clothes and belting on his weapons, Vorgell picked up the Sun Staff again. He kept the wrapping firmly in place on the grip end of the rod but uncovered the broad disk. It seemed to drink in what little light filled the sky from the east, where Gurgh’s monumental walls and tall wizard towers stood etched against a pale pink sky.

“I think you’re right. It needs the sun.”

“Makes sense if you think about it. Sun magic.” Madd walked to the edge of the circle of stones. For the first time Vorgell noted how the stones leaned ever so slightly inward, like old men angling to overhear the songs of children who played in their shadows. “Vorgell!”

He ran to where Madd stood. The light was bright enough for him to see the stone circle stood atop a small rise. From it the land sloped away toward the broad flood plain leading to the river upon which Gurgh sat in bloated splendor. Much of that flood plain was now occupied by ranks of men, tents, and shadow structures Vorgell knew from experience would be revealed in daylight to be war machines. A dull gong sounded through the murky morning, followed by  another, and a third as Gurgh awakened to the danger.

“We were idiots!” Madd kicked at the ground, sending stones scattering. They were too far away and the light too weak for them to be noticed, but not for long. “Even if your crazy idea works—”

They would never find out if Vorgell didn’t try and that meant right now. The first rays of sunlight spilled past the city onto the plain and tipped the statues standing at their back. The Sun Staff glowed with golden purpose. Brandishing the staff, Vorgell charged to the nearest stone and laid the disk upon its eroded surface. Nothing. He staggered back. He’d been so sure. After seeing what had happened back at the ruins and hearing the legends… he could not be wrong! Were words needed also?

“What does the priestess say?” he shouted.

Madd raced for the horses and untethered the beasts. “Get the hell out of here!” Seeing Vorgell not joining him, he exhaled heavily and said, “She calls on the Protectors, that’s all I know. Maybe that one was just a rock. Try another. You’re going to try them all anyway, if I know you.”

“I summon thee, Protector!” Vorgell cried. He tapped the next stone, which was taller and straighter. A slender edge of the sun’s orb lifted above the horizon at his back and the disk atop the staff blazed as if it was that celestial being come to earth. The stone looked shot through by light and it stirred.