Chapter 12 Song and Dance.
I dreamed of the song. Mom danced in the storm, and the lightning danced around her as if her partner. The rain caressed her skin as she danced skyclad in the rain, and the earth was firm beneath her feet. Around her in a circle the ground broke with flowers rising in a ring around her. She danced the song of life in the storm, and both storm and earth answered. She danced love and life, and the world would permit no thing in it to harm her. Her song was life, and from the first time she learned it, she brought me to life.
My body burned. The song sang in me, not my song, not the killing song, not the war song. Her song. Mom's song. The dance of creation, the dance of life. My dance was the opposite. Mine was the storm, not the land. Mine was the dance of war, the dance of destruction and creation. Mine was the song of predator and prey, of killing and consumption, of rotting and return. It took me long to realize that my dance was not just unmaking, but remaking. My dance was not just tearing down, but the rebuilding. I was the fire and the fireweed, I was the killing cold and the germinating seed. I was the death that made new life possible. My song was not hers, but the light in me burned too bright. It burned with all the divine energy of the demons my tentacle friends had eaten, the lives of a circle of sorcerers and their demons brought in to power the transformation of my flesh.
I was so full of life it was killing me.
I grasped my spear and began to dance. The song rose in me, the song, the song and the burning. My flesh burned with the fires of creation, and inside my tentacle friends screamed as they were caged in the light that cut forth the universe from the darkness, they burned in the light that breathed soul and will into the gods. I burned so bright my bones were visible through my skin as they shone so bright only my blood kept them from ignition. It fucking hurt. So I danced.
I danced the dance of the hunt, the dance of war. I lost myself in the frenzy of leaping and thrusting, my spear lancing out like a thunderbolt as I danced the death of the soldiers I had killed, of the animals I had hunted. I danced death so the darkness would keep me alive as my body burned with a life it could not contain, and as I danced, the song drew me onward, ever onward towards an echo. A song of death. A song of death that could save me. I needed that song, for the life in me burned too bright. I was not Mom. This was not my song. I may have fucked up. My body moved with the grace of a panther, my spear flashed like lightning, and my heart was doing its best to pound an escape route through my chest. The song was in me, and the song called to me. Whatever this death song was, I needed it. I burned so bright.
...Deathwatch Hut
Oskana the Crone held Tamara's hand as she screamed again.
"I told your mother when she was born, she could bear no child. I told Tamara at her first bleeding, she could bear no child and live. I told you both, and you did not listen. Now I must see her out of this world as I saw her into it. I would spit on you if I had the breath." The old witch hissed and glared at the Orc warrior holding the pregnant orc's other hand, her face a mask of rage and fear.
"Oskana, she knew, she always knew. She took up the spear, as I did because nothing but death awaited her, so she would meet it on her terms. Then she met Solvig, and she fell in love. She knew it was death to love him, and she did not care. To be an orc is to know the world hates you, the gods forsake you, and death is all that awaits you. She spat in the face of death and chose to love. She knew she would die, she only prayed the baby would live." Kala Anyasdottir glared at Oskana, the crone who delivered her and her sister in the same birthing nearly twenty summers ago.
Oskana muttered and chanted, pulling out bits of bone and rock casting them on the ground to read the pattern the spirits left.
"Death comes. Death comes for her. Death comes for us all. Death will have us. And the boy will live?" Oskana looked at the bones she cast as if doubtful.
"That makes no sense. Death is coming for mother and baby, for we are not like human or dwarf that you can belly cut and save the child. This says death comes for us all, yet the baby will live. All. You, me, your warrior sisters. Death comes for us all, today." Oskana muttered. The god of the orcs had been slain by the Titans in the war of the gods. Those gods who remained looked down upon the orc and cared not. They would have no magic from the gods, no healers, no sages, yet they were born of the mortal earth and blood of the titans as all the mortal races were, and the spirits loved them. The spirits loved them and whispered their secrets. The wise women, the crones, they learned to listen to the spirits and guide the clans, here in the Savage lands the other races feared to tread, the outcasts of the world scrabbled for life, and here alone the orc could thrive.
There was the crackle of thunder in the distance, and the ground shook. Thunder. In the savage lands summer, where no rain fell for months? No rain was coming, the spirits had not spoken of it, the wind did not whisper of it, yet thunder sounded, and something shook the ground itself.
Olga stuck her head into the Deathwatch Hut, her orcish face drawn in worry.
"Something is coming. The horses are panicking, and the livestock are tearing down the fences. The wolves are half way between charging to attack and running away. Whatever it is, we either fight it now or we are going to lose the village in the panic when it gets here." Olga said, her voice filled with the fatalism that comes from having chosen to forsake a mate for the life of a spear maiden. No orc woman who wed the spear expected to die of old age.
"Death is coming for us all" Kala whispered, echoing the prophesy of Oskana. "Yeah, well, I have a prophesy of my own. She reached down and picked up her spear. She strode from the Deathwatch Hut where she had been helpless watching her sister die in labour, and raised her spear to the approaching threat. "Oskana says death is coming for us, well, I say FUCK DEATH!" Kala screamed, and her spear maiden's screamed back.
"Fuck Death!" They screamed.
"Fuck Death!"
"Fuck Death!"
...Clover's POV
The song was rising, faster and stronger, the burning was eating at his mind. He burned so bright. Then he felt it. The song. The song of death. The song of death was near. It was in that hut. It called to him. He screamed in joy, and began to dance towards the song of death as if it was his only salvation.
....Kala's POV
He was human, he was buck naked, so clearly human, and very male, but he was glowing like a second sun. His bronze spearhead blazed so bright you could not look directly at it. He did not charge towards them, but danced, and where he stepped the bare desert scrub burst into life, flowers tearing from the ground in seconds as they would in hours after the rain, and his foot prints in the bare sand seemed to weep with water.
They formed their shield wall, and the wolves charged in. A flurry of thrown javelins arced in just before the wolves, so the shieldless man should be no more than a bleeding pincushion when their fangs got to him. He spun the spear like it was a dancer's fan, and the javelins didn't just scatter, they shattered as if struck by a blacksmiths' heaviest hammer. The wolves closed and he danced into them. Kicks shattered jaws and spear hammered through chests, he danced and his naked body was splashed in wolf blood as he moved among the dire wolves like they were so many helpless sheep.
He was wrong for a human. He was too tall. He must stand an easy seven feet, he moved too fast, hit too hard, and never even once broke the steps of his dance. Kala closed on him and thrust with her spear, she aimed for his belly, but he brushed it aside with his own tip and lunged towards her. She interposed her shield, heavy layers of hide and wood, strengthened with bone and metal bands, it could take the lance of a charging human, or the club of a troll and survive, yet a burning bright head blasted through her shield and into her gut.
The flame of it lit her. Writhing on the ground, she waited for death to come but the fire seeped deeper into her, burning and burning, refusing to let her die. She watched in horror as he cut through all her spear maidens, each of them left lying with a wound that wept golden flame like their very blood caught fire from his spear. Each of them writhing and screaming but not dying. He walked into the Deathwatch Hut where her sister, Tamara Anyadottir strove to give birth to the child that would kill her. Kala had failed. She protected no one. Everyone died today. Even the baby.
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...Clover's POV
The song of war called, but he could not hold it. The song of life was too loud. The fire of creation burned him too much. He burned. He was being unmade. His tentacle friends burned in the same golden light that tore the universe from their darkness, and even they could not help him, yet the song called, the song called from that hut.
I saw her there. An orc woman, heavy with child. Stripped naked and clearly consumed by a birth gone too long. Death was all around her like a shroud, and she danced with it. She was consumed by death, but would not die. The song of death shouted from her loud enough to shake the world. The darkness was around an in her, a darkness that could take the light from me, that could quench what burned the reason and soul from me.
I put my hands on her and suddenly I was back to my childhood. To the first time I dared to dance with my mother.
Hers was the dance of life, and mine was only its shadow, the dance of death, and yet when we danced together, her steps so fast and light, so joyful and loving, and my own wild and savage, filled with the promise of blood and death, wove together into something greater. The dance of creation and destruction. The dance of the world. Together, we made the song whole.
I felt her. She was shaped wrong. The great vessels required to keep her and the baby alive were in the wrong place. To give birth was to tear them. To tear them was to die. Yet she drove on anyway. She embraced death, she danced death and demanded life. She did not shy from it, she did not barter or bargain with it, she drove into death with every fiber of her being, determined to tear life bleeding from death in the doing. Her flesh could not do it. So she must burn.
I placed my hands upon her belly, and let my fire fill her. The golden light of my will flowed into her as a human wizard would pour magic into a spell, but the spell that formed was Tamara Anyadottir's. The spell she cast was her own destruction and the baby's creation. Her muscles reshaped themselves with the power of my light and my will, bleeding and blending into her own. I was drunk with power, and mad with it. Hers was the only focused will, and I let her guide the raging torrent which was the life in me.
She tore, screaming and she bled. My power would not let her die, she hung screaming as her own muscles tore her flesh asunder, as her great heart filled the empty spaces inside her and sprayed outside with the hot red iron stink of blood, yet her will was a thing of iron, and drove us both onward. She tore and tore, and with my power reshaped herself. Using the power of the primordials she tore the weakness from her mortal flesh, paid in blood and pain to grow stronger in the broken places. She pushed, and pushed again, something tore inside her, but this time it was a thing that needed to tear, and a dark black head of hair crowned between green trembling thighs.
I reached down and pulled gently as the baby came out in a second massive push as Tamara screamed a cry so defiant and powerful the walls shook and the heavens answered back with thunder. I held the baby in my hands and felt death clawing at his every cell. Too long struggling, too long fighting, his flesh was beyond even the limits of orcish strength but his mother screamed at me simply "HE LIVES".
I threw back my head and screamed. All around me the fire burned, draining from me. Lightning flashed from the heavens and I felt the power bleed out of me in a hundred directions. To the wolves in the field, to the orcs spear riven, to the mother on the bed whose blood pumped out faster than the spear pierced, and to the baby.
The fires of creation screamed out of me, and the fire that burned in those I had shattered, the fire that burned in the mother and baby whose delivery I had helped force to be drank the life that threatened to unmake me, and gave me back the song of death. They merged at last into balance. The song of creation and destruction. Power flowed from me like wine from a shattered jug, poured from me until I was empty. With the last of my strength, I placed the baby boy on his mother's breast. My sight was failing as I heard his lusty cry of rage, once, twice, thrice, before his mother gave him a nipple and to the happy sounds of life I passed into darkness.
That is how they found me.
A dozen angry, and somewhat bewildered Orc spear maidens crowded into a hut meant for the dying, where a naked human (me) was lying on the floor next to a grumpy baby and a happy mother.
There was a discussion going on I should really weigh in on. It is important. There were a lot of important things going on, but awesome cosmic powers had used my body like a lightning rod, only I am not a lightning rod, so it really fucked me up pretty deeply.
The one orc, I think she was called Olga was most insistent.
“He has seen an Orc maiden naked without being a captured concubine or family. He has to die.” She said, pointing to me. Well, I did see the pregnant orc naked. Very hard to deliver a baby without seeing the cave exit. Of course, I am also naked, and not complaining. Or speaking. They are deciding whether or not to kill me. I should probably weigh in. Soon. Probably.
The second orc, the one who lead the spear women against me was speaking now, she seemed to look a lot like the pregnant one. Minus the baby, and with a few more clothes. That and I didn’t stick a spear in the pregnant one. I did stick a spear in these ones. Odd that. They look a bit healthy for being as speared as they were. I knew I was missing something important. Once I got done lying down here feeling like lightning fried my brain I’m sure I will have lots of pertinent questions, and possibly even an answer.
“He saved my sister’s life. He healed her. You know even an actual healer, who won’t work on orcs even if we could kidnap one, couldn’t heal her. Her body was wrong for birth. It would kill her for sure, now it won’t. He did more than heal her, he made her safe to have children. Hell, since the wound he gave all of us and the wolves burned gold like his spear, I’m pretty sure he healed us too. Though I don’t know why. I won’t kill him.”
She definitely was one of the ones I speared. She is taking it well. Seems to think I healed her. Don’t think so, but I’m not thinking all that well. There was a lot going on and not a lot of it made sense. They were all woven in the song, and I was burning with too much life. Maybe I did heal them. I hope they don’t kill me. I wanted to thank them for stopping my burning. Or something.
The old crone, Oskana, cackled.
“Well the only way out is to take him as a concubine. You will have to take one for the honour of the clan. Relax girlie. He is a human, it won’t be much of a sacrifice.”
The old hag laughed, but the warrior orcs were looking down at me.
“I don’t know, I mean, on a normal sized orc that might not look as big. Maybe its just because it’s on something small?” One of the female orcs said poking my privates.
Oh no. I had too much damned creative energy in me, and I could feel it waking up, the song that had slowed to a murmur in my heart started growing louder with my pulse.
Olga poked my genitals again, and the damned thing got the wrong idea and started to rise.
“No, that thing would look disturbing on a farm animal. How did a human grow it? You know, Kala, if you wanted me to take care of this for you, I could totally handle it.” Olga suggested, her voice going a lot lower and throatier.
Kala grabbed me and threw me onto the other sick bed in the Deathwatch hut and began to strip.
“No. He saved my sister, and probably the rest of us. If I am going to make this legal I have to take him as a proper warslave concubine.” The big orc spear maiden was stripping off. She had to be a good eight feet tall and heavy with it, curved richly, but with enough muscles to remind me more of Gracie the troll than the human woman in my squad. She was definitely serious about that concubine thing.
I should stop her.
I brought myself into a sitting position and strove to bring my muscles under control, summoning my power to resist when my tentacle friends betrayed me.
“Need this. Foolish boy. Help we will. Best kind of healing. Other side of the dance. We help! Tentacle friends help!” A dozen voices from my tentacle friends sounded, and they poured out of me to help. But not to help me.
Instead they tied me down to the bed, and I looked up in confusion to see a somewhat startled naked orc maiden watching tentacles of darkness pin me to the bed, then rise like so many shadow cobra’s to sway in time with the sound of the song that rose again.
I felt the song rising, and I could see it rising in her to. With a cry she knelt beside me on the bed and I felt her hands on my chest, her mouth on mine. I heard the old woman cry out in surprise.
“It’s glowing. It is shining like a bloody sun!” The old woman shouted.
I didn’t know what she was talking about, the orcs lips on mine set my blood afire, and my hands stopped fighting to push her off, and my tentacle friends let them go. I was caressing her, holding her. The strength of her body was not a match to mine, but it was far closer than any normal human woman could be.
The song was in her, and the need. We kissed and caressed. My tentacle friends were everywhere. Caressing, kissing, probing places they probably should not be, they had zero boundaries, fewer inhibitions and a wonderful sense of how to shatter a person's control. It wasn’t long before I felt her rise above me, and felt the hot tightness of her core stretch around my crown.
Her eyes went wide, and I felt the golden power of my body focus in the head of my penis, as with a single cry, she impaled herself on the first few inches. My mind broke. This was a part of my mother’s song and not mine. This was the dance of life, yet it would now also be a part of my dance. I reached up and grabbed Kala’s hair, pulling her lips down to mine and I kissed her. My tongue pressed into her parting lips, and like completing a circuit, the power that flowered in my cock flowed into her, and through her, and her own power flowed into me.
We moved together, and I could see the light shine in her eyes, and from her skin, as if she was lit from within by fire. I felt our bodies moving together. We moved together, her riding me, each rocking of her hips pulling me deeper inside her. Her arms dug into my neck and shoulders as she kissed down my neck to bite my shoulders as she strove to contain a scream as I felt her writhe and shudder on me, a hot wetness so unlike the blood from when I thrust in my spear earlier to try to kill her, this was more like the rush from her sister that preceded the crowning of the baby. A cry of life, not a cry of death.
Now she moved faster, I could see each thrust of me into her drove my power into her, and felt her mortal flesh sundering. Inside her, the will that drove her to become a shield maiden, that drove her to train to the point of exhaustion, to push past fear and pain to stand even when all seems lost and place her shield and spear, her flesh and soul between her people and danger. That will began to burn gold as it awakened. Inside her, the hunger to kill, to tear down anything that reisists her, that defies her, that denies her rose. The hunger, the need for change wove threads of darkness through her flesh, even as the primorial will to press your will upon the world burned golden in her.
I felt the song rising in pitch, I saw her eyes burn golden, saw them blaze with power even as tentacles of darkness burst from her back to weave with my own. With a shout, we came together in a shattering climax under a cloud of fluttering flower petals.
As we came down from our high, there were a few things that we noticed.
First, the Deathwatch hut had been overgrown with vines, every wall and the ceiling crawled with vines heavy with white and pink flowers that fell upon us like soft raindrops. Second, that not only the whole of the orc spear maidens but my whole cohort had been outside the walls, beating their spears and shields in time with our.......efforts.
Staring at us were not only the old crone, the sister and baby on the next bed, and Olga, but Janice, Brencis, Gracie and Fuckhead.
Fuckhead gave me a thumbs up. Thank you Fuckhead.
Janice glared at me for some reason. “We rushed all the way here to rescue you, only to find you.......”
The crone, Oskana pushed herself between us and the eyes of my squad with a questionable but not technically inaccurate description.
“Delivering baby. He was delivering a baby. The rest the stabbing with one thing and another was mostly just misunderstandings and some pesky legal issues now totally taken care of.” Janice glared at her like that was not an answer. Gracie slapped Fuckhead who was grinning and still flashing his thumbs up at me.
I looked at Janice, and asked “Why are you here, how are you here?”
Janice snarled, “To warn you that the Knight’s armour is a ritual link to the Legate and he can totally attack you through it, and if you don’t want to be followed, don’t make your foot prints grow flowers and weep water in the bloody desert. Now are you done having sex and can we talk actual survival strategy?” Janice asked.
“No.” Kala said.
“No?” I asked.
“No.” Kala said softly, kissing me. “I am Kala Anyadottir. Spear maiden of the Broken Blade. We are married.”
I felt her stirring on me, felt myself still hard inside her and felt the song begin to pick up again, joining us together in a single song.
I looked at her and kissed her.
“I am Clover, son of a very fit gentleman who brought flowers. Okay.”
As we began to move together, I heard a baby cooing from the next bed, and a bunch of humans, orcs and trolls leaving the hut. I heard the crone Oskana ask Janice.
“Is it always like this with him?”
Janice swore, and Gracie answered in broken common “Yes. Or worse.”
Fuckhead laughed, and high fived Brencis who was also laughing. My squad was back. I had delivered a baby, and just like Mom, I had found someone to dance among the flowers with.