Blood Bound
A young nobleman travels to the middle of nowhere to find the legendary Darryth Monsterslayer so he can convice the man to take him on as an apprentice. He gets much more than he bargained for when he finally tracks down the disgruntled government employee - danger, excitement, and (strangest of all) love in the arms of a rare creature that he never would have believed existed.
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Chapters 12345 6 7 8 9
Hunter's Pride
Chapter 1
“Come on, boy; keep up!” growled Garadon, tugging at the leather leash sharply.
The young slave trotting near his horse’s tail stumbled, but then somehow managed to hurry his steps so that he was back at his master’s stirrup where he was supposed to be. His thin face was set in weary lines, and his eyes were haunted and empty. Garadon was a brutal master, and was known to work his slaves to death regularly. When he wasn’t beating them to death with the horsewhip coiled at his belt, that was. This boy was a newer acquisition, but he probably wouldn’t last long. He was too frail and slightly built to withstand the kind of punishment that Garadon regularly meted out to him.
Garadon looked around him at the rest of the caravan. The lines of slaves in their heavy leather collars and chains marched along under the whips of the slavedrivers, making good time. They were more than halfway across the grasslands, on their way to the trading city of Narhana. There these human goods would be sold on the block to the highest bidder, and he would turn a handsome profit. Garadon’s lips lifted in a cold smile. These slave runs were becoming more and more profitable, because the civil war in Derajhan meant that the land was in chaos and it was easy to scoop up displaced civilians and enslave them if you were quick and capable.
The boy on the lead next to him was one such. He’d been traveling with his family when Garadon’s slavers had fallen on the group and slaughtered all of those who wouldn’t make good slaves, such as the elderly and the very young. Garadon himself had taken a fancy to the boy, and had made him his personal attendant. Which meant that he used the boy for pleasure whenever he felt the inclination, and also expected the boy to fetch his food, clean his clothes, and take care of his personal affects. So far, he hadn’t proved to be very good at anything - but you couldn’t expect perfection. And at least the boy was pretty and had a tight ass. And Garadon enjoyed the way he cried every time that he was being taken, and was often more brutal than normal because that sobbing excited him. If the youth managed to survive, Garadon thought he might just keep him for awhile. Until he was used up and no longer pretty, then he’d sell him to a brothel for whatever he could get for him.
He heard a commotion near the tail end of the caravan, and turned in his saddle to see that that utter chaos was breaking loose back there. He snarled, dropping the leather line leading to the boy’s collar. “Don’t go anywhere, sweet meat,” he growled to the boy, “Because if I have to chase you down I’m going to make sure that you regret it. Stay here,” and he rode away down the line to see what was happening there, his free hand loosening his sword in its sheath.
The young slave just stood where he’d stopped, dully staring at the ground. Garadon’s words had made a terrible fear spring up in his breast, and he would not move until his master returned from wherever he’d gone. Garadon’s ‘punishments’ were so awful that making a bid for freedom was out of the question. Because the slavemaster was on horseback, and he had only his own two feet. Besides, he was utterly weary and worn down. There was no way that he’d be able to make it very far before Garadon hunted him down and took his disobedience out on his hide. He trembled as he remembered the feel of that horsewhip falling on his back, and a small sound of terror escaped his lips involuntarily.
The shouting and yelling were getting louder, and had been joined by the sound of metal on metal. Finally even the young slave was roused out of his stupor enough to turn and see what was going on, and what he saw made his eyes go wide in shock, and his mouth open in dismay. The slavers were fighting a pitched battle against a large group of leather-clad men who had fallen on the caravan out of nowhere, and they appeared to be losing! The ferocious men were cutting them down one-by-one, and as the slave watched his own master took a spear to the chest and fell off of his horse with a cry.
Dead. The brute was dead. It didn’t register at first, but then the boy gathered his strength and took to his heels without looking back. He was afraid that those leather-clad men either meant to kill the slaves as well, or enslave them again themselves. This was his one chance to get away, while the slavers were losing the battle but before the last of them fell and there were only the slaves left for the leather-clad warriors to deal with. He ran and ran, away across the grasslands toward who-knew-what destination. Anything was better than here.
Hours later, he staggered to a halt and fell face down in the grass. He lay unmoving, one arm stretched out in front of him. He could go no further. If a predator or one of those leather-clad warriors found him, then they could do whatever they wanted with him. He simply couldn’t move. His eyes closed, and he fell into a troubled unconscious state full of bad dreams that were sadly no worse than his reality had been for the last few moons.
A strange scent reached his nose. He stopped in his tracks, sniffing the air. What was that odor? Intrigued, he turned and moved toward the source of the scent. His golden eyes scanned the tall grasses, and finally found an indentation nearby. He padded over and found a figure stretched out in the grass unmoving. Completely curious, he crouched down and studied the creature lying in the grass. What was it? He’d never seen anything like it before. And it had the strangest scent, also like nothing that he’d ever smelled before. He reached out tentatively and poked at it with an unsheathed claw, but the creature didn’t move.
He considered what to do, but before he could do anything he heard a voice call out to him. “TwitchEar, where have you gotten to, kitten?”
He grimaced at being called a kitten, but what could you expect from an older sibling? “I’m here, BroadPaw,” he replied, springing to his feet. “And look at what I’ve found!” he pointed at the figure lying in the grass.
His brother strode over and looked down at the creature. “Herk,” he said, spitting a little, “You’ve found one of those filthy no-hairs.”
“No-hairs?” he was nearly dying of curiosity by now, having never heard of such a thing before this.
“No-hairs. They live beyond the grasslands, and they breed like rats. We see them once in awhile when they’re following that track they carved out of the grass for their weird wooden boxes with the round things that turn on them. I don’t know what they are; the no-hairs use them to carry stuff around on and they tie animals like the Curvehorns to the front to pull them.”
“But why do you call them no-hairs?” he asked his brother, pointing to the top of the figure’s head. “It has hair.”
“Yeah, but only atop its head,” his brother replied. “They’re weird and hairless everywhere else as far as we can tell. Which is why they wear hides and woven stuff on their bodies, to hide the fact that their skin looks like a rat’s tail. Disgusting.”
This was amazing. He stared down at the creature his brother called a ’no-hair’, seeing that it was, indeed, wearing some kind of filthy and tattered hide on its body. No tail, either, that he could see. And the paw on the end of the figure’s arm was not only hairless but didn’t have any claws. Merely some thin, nearly transparent surfaces covering the skin. What were they? He wanted to poke and prod the figure, to roll it over and look at it from the front.
“What should we do about it?” he asked, blinking up at his taller sibling.
BroadPaw frowned. “We should just leave it here,” he said disdainfully. “The rest of the filthy no-hairs will probably come looking for it eventually.”
“No!” he cried. “We can’t just leave it here, BroadPaw. If we do, a mnaask or a rijer might come along and find it!”
“Best thing for it,” his brother sneered, but seeing the distress on his sibling’s face he sighed heavily. “The Lords of All watch over us,” he muttered. “I suppose that you want to take it home with us and nurse it back to health like a pet yarlan?”
He nodded eagerly. His brother rolled his golden eyes in absolute disgust. “Fine. I’ll carry it for you…but you owe me, TwitchEar. I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he muttered, even as he bent over and picked up the no-hair as though it weighed nothing at all. He threw the unmoving creature over his shoulder negligently, then turned to look at his brother. “Let’s go. We won’t be able to do any more hunting while I’m toting this thing around anyway.”
He brightened up. “My thanks, BroadPaw!” he cried, darting away through the grass ahead of his brother.
His sibling snorted heavily. Shaking his mane, he strode away after the lithe form of his younger brother. The things he did for that silly kitten…he just hoped that their Chief, RedMane, wouldn’t be angry at him for bringing this ridiculous hairless creature back to their village. If he got in trouble because of TwitchEar, he was going to make his brother pay in turn for any punishment that he received.
“What do you have there, BroadPaw?” a voice called to them as they entered their village.
He stopped and turned, his heart sinking in his chest as he saw Elder LashTail ambling toward them. The still keen golden stare under the now-white brows were fixed on the still figure lying over his shoulder. He sighed. “Elder,” he said, dipping his head respectfully. “It’s a no-hair. My brother found it lying in the grass, and talked me into bringing it back with us. He means to nurse it back to health or something,” he went on in disgust.
“Ah, I see,” the Elder replied, looking the no-hair over thoughtfully. “Haven’t seen one of these in a while,” he added.
“Please, Elder, can’t I keep it?” Twitch Ear begged. “I promise that I’ll look after it myself!”
The Elder blew out a long breath. “I suppose you might. The no-hairs aren’t dangerous unless they’re carrying weapons, and this one doesn’t seem to be. They have no claws or sharp teeth,” he explained. “But you have to hunt to feed this thing yourself, TwitchEar,” he went on sternly as the youngster beamed at him happily. “As I won’t allow it to take away resources from the tribe. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Elder!” he cried, bowing respectfully.
“But what about RedMane?” BroadPaw asked.
The Elder waved a negligent claw at him. “I’ll clear it with RedMane,” he told them. “He will listen to my judgment.”
BroadPaw nodded. He knew that this was so. Everyone in the tribe respected Elder LashTail, even their formidable chief. If LashTail said that TwitchEar was allowed to keep his no-hair pet, then it would be no problem. Pleased that he wasn’t going to get into trouble for indulging his brother’s whim, he bowed slightly to the Elder again and bore the no-hair off to the tent that TwitchEar had recently moved into on his own, now that he was finally a young adult. What happened to the creature now was up to his brother, because he simply didn’t care about the fate of filthy thing.
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