A Taste …

Chapter One

Bonded by Blood

“By the bells that hurts!” hissed Huni, trying his best to keep the tears that welled in his eyes from spilling out. The boy watched in growing horror as Tober, his longest and best friend of all, pulled a splinter the size of a large roofing nail from his forearm.

“Sorry,” Tober said as he manoeuvred the last of the wood out of his friend’s flesh. The wound did not bleed, not even a little. It did, however, hurt like a bastard! Huni had to bite his lip to stop himself from wailing in pain.

“That was a cracker!” said Tober as he discarded the splinter.

“Humph,” Huni agreed, sucking at the nasty puncture. “I’ve had it with this place!”

“Aye, right,” scoffed Tober. “I hear those words tumble from your mouth at least once a week. You piss, moan, and sulk, but at the end of the day you’re still here. Honestly, I’m sick of hearing it.”

“I mean it,” a blaze of anger flashed within Huni’s green eyes. The crimson flush that blossomed upon his cheeks only highlighted the swathe of freckles that spread across his pale face. With an exasperated breath he blew at the shock of wild red hair that fell about his shoulders in thick, untamed curls. “I have my things packed and ready to go!”

“Aye.” Tober nodded. “That rucksack has been packed and ready to go for months! You’re all mouth, man!”

“And you’re all arse!” Huni said, throwing a good-natured punch at his friend’s arm.

The pair were standing in the middle of the old smithy floor, sweating in their small clothes due to the perpetual heat of the forge. They had been feeding the great fire that powered the furnace when Huni had impaled himself on a piece of firewood.

They had been working for hours already, and the sun had yet to even fully rise for the new day. It was work that demanded constant, mind-numbingly monotonous labour. It was hot, boring, pathetically paid, and often dangerous, but at least they had each other’s company to help share the misery and pass the time.

Tober pushed the smaller boy back and dropped into a wide-legged crouch. He had spent the entirety of the last winter playing Rover’s ball with some older lads and had developed quite a lethal tackling technique. Huni aped his friend’s posture as best he could, a knowing grin quickly spreading across his face.

Tober had a good twenty pounds on him, if not more. His extra bulk and accompanying strength were because of his extra six months of age, or at least, that was what Huni told himself. He would never admit, not even to himself, that he was a scrawny whelp by nature, and would likely never rival his mate’s imposing body weight.

“Come ahead, ya nonce!” Huni laughed.

Tober feinted to his left, dropping his shoulder, and making as if to catapult at the other lad. Huni was not about to fall for that kind of foolery, and besides, he had noticed the tell-tale glint in Tober’s dark eyes that always signalled he was up to trickery.

Huni made a crude feint of his own and stuck his tongue out for good measure. He kicked up a thick cloud of dust from the ground, pushed his fingers to his temples to make horns, and snorted in his best bull impression.

“You are a dead man!” Tober yelled in mock rage. The older lads of the village had taken to calling him the bull due to his excessive enthusiasm for tackling, and the moniker had been a thorn in his arse since.

Huni laughed as Tober charged.

The pair of boys collided with a wet slap of ruddy, sweat-sodden skin. Tober’s shoulder rammed into Huni’s gut with practised authority. The smaller boy was carried from

his feet, despite his bull-like stance, and propelled backwards at a great speed. A smack resounded throughout the smithy as Huni crashed into the rear wall. The impact punched the wind from his lungs and he fell, as if lifeless, when Tober released his hold.

“Oh, shit! You alright? I didn’t mean to hit you so hard.”

Huni rolled onto his side, stuck his tongue even further out of his mouth, and crossed his eyes in an impish mockery of a corpse.

“Bastard!” Tober laughed. The older lad bent down and pulled his friend back to his feet with non-too gentle hands.

“By the bells! Just what are you two up to now?” a deep voice ricocheted around the walls of the smithy. It was Nahuel, the blacksmith, and he sounded to be in a fouler mood than usual, if that was even possible.

“Nothing, sir,” Tober replied instantly. He had suffered at the hands of Nahuel’s black disposition many times and did not want a beating so early in the morning.

“What’s all this ruckus?” Nahuel’s fat, bald head was beaded with sweat. The man was monstrous. A bear of a man with arms the size of ale barrels, legs like tree trunks, and a chest that was truly formidable. His form had been forged by countless hours at the anvil, like all else within the smithy, and caused him to be feared and shunned by the folk of the surrounding hamlet.

It appeared his temper had been forged within the fires of the furnace as well. Quick to ignite, and difficult to tamper down.

“Sorry, sir,” piped up Huni. He, too, had felt the back of the huge blacksmith’s hand more than once.

“Look at this mess,” Nahuel raged.

As far as the Huni could tell, the smithy looked to be in its normal state of disarray, no more or less untidy than before their roughhousing. “Sir?” he squeaked.

Nahuel lashed out a meaty hand and slapped the lad across his cheek. The blow sent Huni crashing to the ground once more, this time, in genuine distress.

Tober stepped in and grabbed Nahuel’s arm as he readied himself to deliver another slap. The youth pulled at the blacksmith’s arms with all his strength, but it was useless. Nahuel turned and cast Tober off as if he were shooing away an irksome fly.

Both boys scrambled to regain their feet, expecting to be struck again at any moment. After a long moment of silence, they first looked at each other, then slowly over to where Nahuel stood.

The blacksmith did not look well at all. He had moved back a pace or two and was bracing himself against the rear wall with a steadying hand. His face, normally red and filled with barely contained fury, was death-white. His free hand clutched at his chest, pumping his left breast with forceful squeezes.

“What is wrong?” Tober asked.

Nahuel did not answer. By his look, Huni doubted that he would have been able to even if he wanted. The man’s eyes were wild, bulging within their sockets, frantically roaming about the smithy as if searching for something precious.

Both lads watched, mouths agape, as their master gradually sunk to the filthy ground. He did not make a sound, but looked like a man slowly drowning in the river. His mouth sucked in huge mouthfuls of air, and bubbles of spit collected at the corner of his lips. His tongue lolled within his mouth, somehow suddenly swollen and grotesque looking.

“What the fuck is happening?” Tober shouted into the air.

“He’s dying,” Huni said simply.

Piss seeped from under Nahuel’s rump and across the floor.

“By the bells!” Tober cursed.

Huni bent low to get a better look at Nahuel, making certain to keep his bare feet clear of the puddle that was slowly but surely soaking everything on the ground.

“He’s done for,” he said after completing his inspection.

“How would you know? You’re no menderman!”

“Aye, that’s true enough,” agreed Huni, “but I’ve seen death before, and it’s here, now. No mistake!”

“Shit.”

The boys watched in silence as the blacksmith struggled to breathe. Each breath was a hard labour that never seemed to satisfy his needs. After a few haggard moments, the man’s lips started to turn blue. A few moments more, and the blue tinge had migrated down his neck and up onto his cheeks. Finally, spit-foaming, piss-reeking, blue-faced and panicked, Nahuel the blacksmith, the ostracised and foul tempered bastard, took his last breath.

“Fuck you,” Huni whispered into the dead man’s slack face. “You deserve to die!”

“This is not good!” Tober whispered.

“He was a dog—”

“No, it’s not what you said,” interrupted Tober. “But it’s that he is dead. That he died here, now. We’ll get the blame for this. There’ll be a storm, and we’ll have to ride the winds!”

“Shit,” Huni said bitterly. “Why couldn’t he have died in bed, or in the alehouse, or on the street? Anywhere but here!”

While it was true that Nahuel was largely despised by the folk of the village, he was the only smith for miles around, and his expertise and skills would be sorely missed. The villagers would look to blame someone for his death, undoubtedly, that blame would land on Huni and Tober.

“We need to leave.”

“What?” Huni replied.

“Come on.” Tober pulled his friend back to his feet. “We need to move, get some distance between us and here before anyone comes looking.”

“Wait—”

“No,” insisted Tober. The older boy steered the smaller lad across the smithy floor to where the pegs that held their clothes were. “Get dressed,” he instructed. “Quickly.”

“We can’t just tuck tail and run,” Huni’s eyes were wide with fear.

“What? You want to stay? Face the crowd that will come looking for answers and folk to blame?”

Huni shook his head but slowly started to dress himself.

“We can’t just leave. Not without saying goodbye first.”

“Are you cracked, man?” Tober asked. “If we delay long enough to say farewell, we may as well stay for dinner and let them all come for us!”

“Well …” Huni had a sheepish grin on his face.

Tober raised a brow. “What?”

“It’s just Marjorie. She’d be awfully upset if I left without saying goodbye.”

“Marjorie, eh?” Tober pretended to squeeze a giant set of breasts.

Huni’s cheeks crimsoned. “Aye, well … we have become … close these past few weeks.”

“Close?” Tober sniggered. “No,” he continued, suddenly serious. “I am sorry, but we need to leave now!”

Huni looked back at the slumped corpse propped up against the smithy’s rear wall. “I know. Just let me get my rucksack.”

***

The rain seemed as if it would never stop. On and on it went, hour after hour, one day into the next. It had started the very hour they left the village, and had not let up since. That had been three days ago.

At first Huni had been glad for the downpour. It had been many weeks since the last rainfall, and the feeling of the fat droplets upon his face as he marched along the road was a welcome distraction. It did not take long, however, for the pleasant little drops to form into a persistent downpour, which swiftly turned the rutted road into a boot-sucking nightmare.

“By the bells!” Huni cursed, shaking his head and sending a torrent of water down his back. “This is miserable.”

“Aye,” grunted Tober from beneath a dark and sodden hood. The older boy was a pace or two behind his friend, struggling with his extra weight to keep up, and about as miserable and sorry for himself as he could ever remember being.

“Think we should stop for the evening?” asked Huni, trying to look into the gloom that blanketed everything that was more than thirty or so feet away from them. “I think there’s trees that way.” He pointed somewhere off the road to the right.

“Where are you looking, man?” Tober said as he came to Huni’s shoulder. His voice was almost completely lost amid the drumming of the raindrops falling into the mud. “I can’t see a thing.”

“There. Just off the road, where it turns away to the left. I can make out trees. That’s the best shelter we’ve seen all day.”

Tober had to admit, locations for shelter had been pretty slim on the ground, and if there were trees out there in the gloom, he would welcome their protection for the coming night. He was wet and cold, hungry and bone tired. While he doubted they would be able to get a fire going, or cook anything hot to eat, at least a good canopy of trees would hold back the worst of the rain.

“Alright,” the older lad agreed. “I’m all in anyway. I feel like my legs are going to fall off as it is.”

Huni smiled at that. For once, his slighter frame was proving to be a boon. He could negotiate the sucking slop of the road slightly better than his larger friend, and as a result, had managed to husband his energy. While he was also tired, he felt strong enough to continue for some time.

“Or we could push on a little more?” he said with a wicked smirk.

“No, I’m done.”

“Well, come on then.” Huni smiled. Without waiting for his friend to reply, he strode off toward the promised coppice, the squelching of his boots making enough noise to be heard even above the drumming of the rain.

Tober followed as swiftly as he could manage. He really was spent, and the final, will-sapping few steps of the day were proving to be utter bastards! His thighs burned with effort, and he was sweating despite the cold. Even if there weren’t any trees to be found off the road, he would be glad to be stopping the slog through the mud for a spell.

“You smell that?” Huni whispered. They had moved off the road where it snaked away to the left and were moving through the scrubland that pushed up right to the road’s edge. Now, as well as the sucking mud and relentless rain, they had to deal with snagging roots under foot, and sharp nettles catching at their cloth and flesh as they passed. If anything, it was more miserable than the road, and they had reduced their progress to a pitifully slow march.

Tober looked up from under his hood and filled his nostrils. He was glad that his friend had paused for a moment and relished the chance to catch his wind. There was

something on the air. A faint smell of … cooking! “Aye,” Tober breathed quietly. “Someone is cooking somewhere close.”

Huni nodded and held a finger to his lips. “I think they are in the trees, about one hundred yards over there,” he hissed as Tober leaned in close. “What should we do?”

They had not encountered a single person since setting out on their forced pilgrimage. There had been signs of folk, discarded bits of rubbish at the side of the road, heavy cart ruts, signs of horses passing and the like. But actual living, breathing people, they had not seen since … well, since Nahuel.

“I’m not sure,” whispered Tober, stroking at the wispy black hairs on his chin, which were the pitiful sum of weeks’ worth of attempted beard growth. “They can’t be looking for us, surely. They’d never have passed us without us noticing, right?”

Huni shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe, at night? Who knows?”

“Come on,” hissed Tober. “Let’s get closer, try to get a better look.”

“Aye, alright.”

Together, the boys crept forward through the scrub, keeping themselves as low to the ground as they could. The gloom that shrouded everything more than a stone’s throw away in a murky blanket was, if anything, getting worse. Eerie, smoke-like tendrils stole up out of the ground off in the middle distance, groping at the surrounding shrubs and outcroppings of rock.

“I don’t like this,” Huni whispered, pulling his friend to a stop just before what looked like a little thicket of skinny birch trees. The smell of meat was stronger now, unmistakable and delicious. The younger lad squinted his eyes in an attempt to look further into the trees.

There were dark shapes under what could be trees, but at such a distance, he could not be sure who, or what they might be.

“Alright,” whispered Tober, moving forward and freeing the small knife he had pilfered from the smithy before they left. “Let’s get a proper look, eh?”

“Be careful,” hissed Huni as he followed behind.

As they moved, the smell grew stronger, and something else, above the noise of the falling rain. Could it be … singing?

“You hear that?” Tober asked.

Huni strained his ears to hear. “Aye. Someone is singing, ‘The Sinful Daughter.’”

Tober pressed a finger to his lips. With silent gestures, he indicated he would break left and try to get behind the coppice, while Huni should keep approaching from their current position.

Huni nodded and watched as his friend slipped away, noiselessly disappearing into the gloom. His heart pounded as he moved through the brush toward whatever was making the music and the delicious aromas.

He was unarmed, cold, wet to the bone, and starting to seriously question the wisdom of coming upon a strange camp as the night crept in.

With a silent curse, he swallowed the lump of fear in his throat and moved himself forward. There was no point driving himself crazy, thinking over the ifs and buts of life. Much better to face them square on, regardless of what they turned out to be. Even if his knees trembled, his hands shook, and his guts felt as if they may drop at any moment.

Without Tober being close enough to add support and generate at least a little noise, the silence closed in around Huni, bringing with it a sense of unnatural heaviness.

The lad moved as quickly as he could, trying to keep any din he made to a bare minimum. He always had been a great creeper. He could always beat the other kinders as they had played their various games of fox and hen, or hunter’s folly. He had been the village champion, much to Tober’s chagrin.

Now, as he moved, every skill or trick he had learned as a kinder came rushing back to his mind, making sure that he made next to no sound.

There was a four-wheeled wagon ahead, below the canopy of trees. Next to it, a pair of grey-brown horses were hobbled and lazily chewing on the grass underfoot. A great tarpaulin stretched out from the tray of the wagon, and a small yellow fire merrily danced and swayed beneath it. Hunched around the fire, poking a stick into a pot that was undoubtedly the source of the wonderful smell, a solitary figure sang into the oncoming night.

It did not look to be a large person, or from what Huni could tell, particularly menacing. Yet, there was something very odd about the whole thing that tickled at the lad’s mind like a persistent gnat.

“Why don’t you come in?” a cheerful voice broke Huni’s musing. It belonged to the stranger by the fire. “Stop lurking about in the bushes and join me by the warmth of my fire.”

Just how the stranger had noticed him moving as quietly as he had been, hunkering low to the ground, with the amount of rain and gloom in the air, was beyond Huni’s understanding. But he had, and there was little point in trying to pretend that he wasn’t there.

“Alright,” Huni called out, making his voice clear above the rain. As he moved from the scrub, the lad raised a hand to show that he meant no harm. “I’ve been travelling this blasted road,” he continued when he got a little closer. “I smelled your cooking and couldn’t help but come closer.”

“That’s alright, my friend.” The stranger beamed from across the small fire. His teeth were a blaze of gold and sparkled in the firelight like nothing Huni had ever seen before. His eyes too, sparkled with a dark dazzle. Other than that, the stranger was unremarkable. He was a man of middle age, maybe just entering his declining seasons. He possessed a little grey at the temples of his lank, muddy-brown hair, a few lines upon his face and crow’s feet at his eyes.

“I thought perhaps my singing had enraptured you.” The stranger laughed. The sound of the man’s mirth set Huni’s teeth on edge and sent a shiver tracing down his spine.

“No,” he said flatly. “It was the smell of the food.”

“Well then.” The man continued to smile. “Why don’t you ask your companion to join us, and we’ll eat.”

***

Huni had to admit, the last few days riding with “Toran the Golden” as he insisted on being called, upon his rickety old wagon had been a great deal better than when they had been slogging on foot through the muck and mire.

Huni and Tober had filled their bellies that first night, and each night since. It had been excellent fare too, well cooked and delicious. The rain had even eased off and finally settled. Overall, the youth judged that their lot had improved quite a bit since meeting the queer little man under the trees. The initial feelings of unease had slowly evaporated, and now, whenever Toran made an odd comment or cast him a queer look, Huni just brushed it off as harmless eccentricities.

Besides, Tober still had his knife and could settle any trouble if the stranger decided to try it on.

Apart from his incessant singing, mindless chatter, and unnerving cheeriness, the man was not bad company. At the very least, his store of food and dry makings for fire were excellent, and a great improvement on what the lads had on hand themselves.

Huni had even become accustomed to the rocking motion of the wagon and would often catch himself napping in the back tray, warm and comfortable, amid the sacks of foodstuffs and other supplies, happy to let the world pass by as Toran steered them onwards.

“How much further do we have to go?” he asked from the rear of the wagon. They had been moving non-stop since morning. While the horses did not look to be flagging or otherwise distressed, Huni was certain that they could not carry on much longer without some sort of respite.

There was maybe an hour or two of daylight left and, seeing as it took them nearly an hour to sort their little camp out each night, the lad judged that their journey for the day would soon be over.

“We just need to crest this little rise,” Toran sang back from his seat at the front of the wagon. “There should be a clearing just off the road. We will camp there tonight and should be at the gates by midmorning tomorrow.”

Huni could not help Toran’s cheery tone infect his own mood, and soon he found himself smiling away, rocking along with the jolts and jostling of the wagon, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“That sounds grand,” he called back to the peculiar little man.

“That sounds grand,” Tober mocked from next to his friend. The older lad had been just as keen to eat the stranger’s good food and ride comfortably in his wagon, but had not warmed to him like Huni had.

Tober kicked Huni in his shin and poked out his tongue. Both lads erupted with laughter.

“That is good, my young friends,” Toran called again. “Soon our journey will be at an end, and we will come to miss this time we have shared upon this road.”

“Aye, alright,” Huni yelled back. “I’ll just be glad to get there!”

***

There was a tickle … a wet tickle in his ear. A hot, harried breath, and sucking at his lobe. Huni’s hand tapped across his head to dislodge whatever beastie might be trying to burrow its way into his ear. He had been sleeping soundly for hours and did not wish to be disturbed by having to dig out a night-creeper from his earwax.

The tickling ceased, and Huni rolled onto his side. Just as sleep was about to claim him once more, a strange sensation took his abdomen. Not so much a tickle this time, but more of a … grope! At first Huni thought that it was Tober reaching out to him as part of some joke or other, but as sleep slowly shed from his mind, he realized his friend was still snoring off to his left.

A pair of hands were snaking their way down, over his belly and under the belt that held his trousers up. Before he could stir himself, the hands were down his pants and firmly gripping his cock.

“What the fuck?” he murmured, still groggy.

“Quiet now,” a hot breath hissed into his ear. It was Toran’s voice. His tone was not its normal sing-song self, but a thick, deep whisper that instantly turned Huni’s blood to ice.

“Get off me,” the lad protested, trying his best to break Toran’s hold and get to his feet.

“I said, be quiet!” Toran growled. The strange older man freed a hand from Huni’s crotch and pressed it firmly over the boy’s mouth. He was powerful for a man of such slight build, and no matter how Huni tried to break himself free, he could not.

Toran pressed his tongue against the nape of Huni’s neck and traced a long, salivary trail down his spine. The man’s tongue was hot and caused an instant wave of revulsion to spasm in the lad’s gut as he squirmed to free himself.

Toran held him firm and soon had his trousers down around his knees. Suddenly, Huni felt a hard poke slide up between his arse cheeks. It was Toran’s prick!

Panic gripped the lad like a vice. Sometimes, back at the smithy, when Nahuel’s temper had been stirred to a tempest, and the beatings were rough, Huni had felt a sense of panic. Back then, amid the heat of the forge, as Nahuel’s fists pounded into his face and body, an odd sense of dread and alarm took his mind, slowing his movements and rendering speech next to impossible. Although he did not recognise it at the time, the anxiety he had suffered back then had been only the slightest taste of what real panic could bring.

Now, with this strange little man doing his utmost to fuck him, Huni understood what real panic meant. He could not get his limbs to move even in the slightest. He could not get his mouth to produce more sound than a whimper, which was stifled by Toran’s hand tight against his lips.

Huni knew what was coming next. He was no stranger to the workings between man and woman. He had bedded his first girl late last season and had accomplished the feat twice since. While he was no expert, he had no illusions as to the nature of fucking. He definitely had no desire to be made into a woman by this strange man, his sing-song voice, and his cock.

He knew he should be fighting with all his strength. Railing and thrashing, biting and cursing, spitting and scratching. Yet … yet, he was as still and compliant as a lamb.

“Good,” Toran breathed into his ear from behind.

Huni wept.

Toran tensed and shuddered violently. A soft keening replaced his hot breathing and a wet gurgling sound rose from his throat.

It took Huni a good few moments to realize that the hand that forced his mouth shut was no longer holding him, nor was the hand that pulled his pants down.

The lad blinked, struggling to comprehend just what was occurring.

Suddenly, Huni felt a tide of warm and sticky fluid cascade over his back. As if slapped from a nightmare, he found he could move. He pulled himself up and bent over on hands and knees. Sobbing like a babe, he scuttled away and spun around to face the rapist.

The scene that greeted his eyes when he was finally able to make sense of what had happened to him caused Huni to back away even further than he already had.

Tober was standing over Toran, the older man’s hair clutched between a white-knuckled fist, pulled back, while the pilfered knife sawed away at his throat. Blood rushed out of the growing hole, like a ruptured water jug, the air wet with fat droplets.

The older man twitched once, kicking out his legs before he finally went limp. Tober did not stop his attack. The sound of the knife blade tearing through flesh and crunching against bone was loud in the air.

“Tober!” Huni squeaked. His trousers were still around his knees, but he was too shocked by the sight of his best friend killing a man to dress.

Tober seemed possessed. His eyes bored into the rear of Toran’s skull with an intensity that Huni had never witnessed before. The lad grunted with the effort of hacking his knife through flesh, cartilage and bone, until he pulled the head free.

As if displaying a treasured trophy, Tober held the severed head up for Huni to see. Toran’s limp body slumped over and fell sideways to lay, oozing dark blood onto the sacks of grain and other goods that littered the tray of the old wagon. As for the head … Huni could not look at it.

“Tober,” he whispered, turning his face away from his friend and retching over the wooden side of the wagon. The sun was just peaking over the horizon, casting a pleasant pink hue and banishing the last of the night’s darkness.

Tober stood and threw the severed head out into a thicket of nearby trees. “You’d better cover yourself,” he said in a hoarse voice, pointing at his younger friend’s trousers.

Huni hastily pulled his pants over his hips and secured the belt tight. “We’ve really done it now,” he said, wide-eyed and trembling.

“Aye,” agreed Tober.

Huni rose and moved to stand next to his friend. With a gentle hand on Tober’s shoulder, he asked, “What do we do now?”

Tober let the knife fall from his blood-soaked fingers. The metal blade clattered as it struck Toran’s body, bounced off, and hit one of the iron studs that held the timber boards of the wagon’s tray together.

“We,” Tober began with a thick voice. He paused for a moment to clear his throat before continuing. “We dump this piece of shit and keep moving.”

“Aye, alright, but—”

“Look,” Tober interrupted his friend.

Huni looked to where Tober pointed his bloodied finger. On the horizon, growing more distinct with the rising sun, was a dark, soot-like smudge.

“Kraven,” Tober said.