[more previously]

        "You are like my former king, what you want, those things you desire most, only I can get them for you. You want me, Princess. You want my bloodline so that you can foreswear to Queen Leh that the child is her grandchild and heir to the heir. You cannot divorce and return to your people of the cold northwest, they will kill you. And, without a child, especially a son, you have no hold on your position in Kashmir. Rahdat can put you away, anyway he wishes—by exile, by death even."

        He pulled her onto him, to straddle his leg, so that she could feel his hardness through their winter trousers, and he moved against her, as his hot hands warmed her cold, pale, hungry skin beneath her clothes. Tor knew exactly what he wanted from all this ... from her and he knew exactly his own value in the matter, and because of Dara—his true worth. He made Ahlhild want him more than she already so plainly did. She knew what he was doing, but it did not matter.

                [Edit]

        "You want me, woman, I understand that, I understand what you desire of me—a double bloodbinding. You would put your husband's head in my strong and deadly hands, knowing I have no love for him, knowing the bond between the man and myself is nonexistent, with Dara gone. You would also bind my blood to yours in flesh ... and desire. Since Dara, I know I am strong enough standing on my own and I do not have to bind myself to anyone … who will not return an equal or superior advantage or respect to me. I will no longer give of myself to anyone who cannot meet my price."

        "I offer myself and a rich kingdom, what else do I have that you desire of me?" He coldly reappraised her treacherous blond beauty.

        "What no woman, except Dara ... and nearly one other … another queen, whom I gave an heir, offered me. I want more children. I miss having a place among people ... family and friends, more so than a place of land or ownership. I have never had land and do not want it, it is too easily taken by one such as myself, anyway. I want what is harder to obtain, what you royal women hold so jealousy dear and away from me, because you do not wish me to have it or because you are incapable of it."

        "What?"

        He gently pushed her hair back, to examine the angles and curves of her face, the contrast of the light hair on her skin, then on his. His grip on her long tresses tightened considerably, as he made his point.

"I will not be bought for a mere wish, whim, or promise of land, servants, and wealth, nor for the mere shallow promise of a woman's lying body. If you want me, Ahlhild, I will take you and give you what you desire; conversely, you will give me all of you. I will take all of your body and all of your heart, and you will not hold back a part of either from me, because if you do, you will sorely regret it.

        "I destroyed many lives and the core of a nation, despite being given all that I wished. I learned that lesson; but, I would not assume, if I were you, that I am so placid or flaccid, now, that I would blithely share one, who I consider as mine alone, or accept in good nature betrayal from same. Dara had leeway in such matters, because she is ... was Dara; but, you do not. I have no plans to ever hold or rein back who and what I am again ... except that most sacred part of me that will always belong to her. If you are afraid or incapable of meeting my demands, cross back to the other side of this fire and nurse your half-murdered husband back to health and your loving cold bosom and empty womb."

        He released her, and resumed puffing on his pipe, while observing her, as she internally reevaluated her situation.

        "Tell me, Ahlhild. I have always had an ear for a lie, since boyhood, so be careful what you decide to tell me."

        She spoke in his ear of what was in the vial.

                [Edit]

        He slipped the tiny container into his boot before resliding his hand behind her, into her pants, to continue maddening her voluptuous canyon, while purposefully undoing his own trousers. The visual sight of viewing his substantial manhood this close was a satisfaction in itself; however, she had learned much observing him with Dara.

        She grasped with authority and licked famishly at the head of it and sucked the early milk of his desire she had coaxed from him, then she took more of him in her hungry mouth. Little by little, she licked and kissed his dark shaft with her pink tongue and lips as she sucked more and more of him in between her flushed lips. It was clear she loved the taste of him, the feel of him within her facile orifice. She loved the feel of his shaft filling her hand, and the softness of his scrotum hair on her palm.

        It was always a pleasant find for his lovers, to discover how finely silken the hairs of his crotch were.

        She was doing a most admirable job, for her first time with him, her jaw soon tiring at the strenuousness of her activity, which pleased him, but which gave him an unnamable feeling, to see and feel her use Dara, His Bänd's techniques on him.

        He decided he liked the feel of her, the little sounds she tried to keep muted from her husband's sleeping ears, the taste of her when he removed his fingers from her hot, wet cunt to taste the flavour of her salty lust and delighted in the sweetly musty smell of her, now. He understood that the pale princess wonderfully devouring his cock with her somewhat amateurish skill was as treacherous as he had believed; however, he ... wanted her, and Ahlhild was his for the taking.

        Her plan was accomplishable ... if he were contented with her, which it seemed he would be. She was more than eager to delight and satisfy him, instead of him doing all the sexual work. Her royal pride had previously expected to bend and use him at her will, yet now she gave herself shamelessly and uninhibitedly to him—knowing quite well these were traits he had found in Dara and that to win him, Ahlhild could do much worse than to emulate His Queen.

        Tor enjoyed her and quietly coaxed her, telling her what he wanted and she complied readily. He stubbornly held back the fullness of his pleasure-giving from her, until he surged up, and came first in her willing mouth, which he completely felt was his right—she wanted him more than he wanted her.

        Then, he rewarded her because eventhough he was at times heartless, he was never particularly selfish, as he renewed his devastating assault on her sensitive and starving nether parts. His fingers were inside her and she was moving against them, as his other hand delighted her clit, as he suckled and devoured her breast. He liked the feel of her when she clamped down on his fingers in her lust's throes, as she drenched his fingers, as she muffled her cries from her husband by biting the neck of his jacket. When she recovered, he could see in her eyes that she wanted more but was afraid to command him … ask … beg him for what she wanted. He knew what she wanted, and stroked her pale hair from her beautiful face.

                [Edit]

        "Ahlhild! Prince Tor, what do you do there?"

        The princess, on all animal fours, in having exactly what she wanted, fully indulged in Tor, with no regard to her husband, and remained indifferent to the Crown Prince, who feebly stood over them. She let the men handle it.

        "We do what you see. I am enjoying the pleasures of your wife, to great effect, I might add."

        Rahdat tried to knock Tor from her but was himself unceremoniously knocked on his own bottom, which, of course, put him in a better line of sight to see Tor's dark, rigid cock slip and bang in and out of his wife's swollen, yielding desire. Ahlhild did not care at all about any of this, as the General battered his way into his complete dominion over her. She did not care, until she heard what she could not understand, as Tor and Rahdat heatedly lapsed into Dara's tongue, the Pers-Scythian dialect.

        Her lover unexpectedly stopped his overt motion, as he held her fast to him. She pushed back against him and continued feeling the incredible hard throb of his sex enveloped in her own, while he removed the vial and gave it to her husband, who eventually looked at her more shocked than minutes before, when he had awoke and found them thus joined. He backed away from them and dragged his saddle to his mount, to arduously dress it.

        "Where is Rahdat going?" Tor pulled out of her and turned her around to face him.

        "What is more important to you, woman, where he is going, or where I am taking you?"

        "But, he leaves." She was worried that her husband, her master, her future king would arrive at Srinagar before them.

        "He is weak, it is dark, and he is sick enough to lose his way in the many weeks it will take, on the long, difficult path home ... and ... I will hunt him, when I am done with you."

                [Edit]

        Ahlhild jumped when her ears were assaulted by a wild cat's yowl. The animal was large by the sound of it, as it growled, too near, in the night. They both heard the dangerous thing; its voice chilled her, its voice, by Tor's reaction, was like a siren giving him promises of delight through his ears. He often did that; he loved the sound of wild things. The more dangerous the better it seemed. It must have been the hunter in him, since it had been so long since he had lived in sophisticated cities like those of Africa and the Mediterranean. Wild sounds always unnerved Ahlhild.

        "Do you want him back, woman?"

        Tor turned his cold gaze upon her, all the recent warmth he had shown her this night erased from his handsome, dark face, although his warm, proprietary hand stroked her nightchilled skin with seeming affection.

        "What?" Her answer was strained, higher pitched than she wanted.

        "Do ... you ... want ... him ... back?" Her only answer, because she was afraid to say her…other…true thoughts and feeling aloud was a deep kiss, which he was greatly receptive to; but, his eyes were the same when she looked in them again. "Do you want him back?"

        "I only want you ... King Tor."

        Her face froze in its adoring expression. He watched her try to keep its façade from revealing the fear she held within. The new appellation would have bolstered the pride of any other man, especially after she had made such love to him; but, Tor was nearly egoless and he was used to the all-encompassing, otherworldly yet tangible love of His Beloved Queen, Dara. Honoring him, wooing him with the new title may have been a mistake, she was not sure ... not by the gaze from his oddly coloured eyes, which triggered an echoing lusting ache within her overlying the wonderful soreness his masculine attentions had left deep between her slim thighs.

        He slowly rose, placed more fuel on the fire, redressed, mounted Belloche without a saddle and rode out, towards the eerie howl of that same beast. That is when she realized she had never been left alone in camp at night entirely by herself. The subsequent fear, which arose in her, made her feel more cold and naked than she was, without his hot, masculine, and protective presence beside her … inside her. She quickly dressed then held tightly to the weapons given her.

                [Edit]

        The sun was high in the morning before he came back and she resisted the nearly overwhelming desire to welcome him with enveloping, open arms. The princess did not want to show her disappointment of Tor arriving, stern of face and alone on Belloche, without Rahdat. He did not even have Rahdat's horse. She had put his food on to warm when she saw him coming, and sadly laughed to herself because she had never done such a thing for any man. She was not a servant, she half amended that thought, since she was not completely certain what she now was or what future she had in choosing this dangerous man. Even he had not come back with her half-murdered husband, who had many powerful and loyal allies. Thus, her sadness and disappointment, as his shadow past over her.

        "This is yours."

        He removed a pack slung on his back, something lopsidedly round and bound in the leather that had formerly been his shirt. Its shape was familiar…and not. He tossed it into her lap. It had considerable weight and hardness, there was ... drying blood on it, that had seeped from inside. She pushed it off her to the ground.

        "What is it?!"

        "It is the fulfillment of what you have so heartily desired."

        She remembered seeing similar things, when Rahdat had taken her to visit a barbaric, ally king. His warrior men had played with theirs, striking them with long sticks from horseback or on foot, depending on which game they decided to play with the bound, severed head of an enemy. This bundle had a thick, long tendril of Rahdat's hair, that had been left dangling from its container. She stared at the horrid thing before her, as Tor ate his meal without a word, until he was done.

        "No tears for him? No cheers, either? He should have been dead with what you had been giving him, except you tempered the amount you were poisoning him. Am I not right? You did not wish to completely murder him yourself, by your own hand, that is the other reason you have wanted me, because what is one more life taken by one such as I?"

        He watched her in her impenetrable silence for some time.

        "You chose me over him, you chose death over life, wildness over domesticity. I have bedded you, widowed you, and I will sire on you … in his name. All as you planned and greatly desired. The proof of your sincere grief and self-interest lies before you to hand to his aggrieved mother."

        He let that image settle in her mind, and it made her look sadder, as her stomach turned sour, and her head became heavy.

        "My Dara said his domain is a lushly beautiful land of many lakes and handsome people. I have never had much of my own to possess ... now I have you ... and perhaps being a king will have its other benefits, as well. Break camp, I am sick of this place of betrayal and assassination."

        She said nothing as she did as he bid her, even to securing the ... thing, Rahdat's head, upon one of the yaks.

                [Edit]

        Ahlhild knew that he had ignored and usurped Dara's authority, at the added coaxing and manipulations of his king; but, he had never fully conquered the woman. They had, more rightfully, conquered each other. Ahlhild knew the relationship between Tor and herself, however, would, most likely, never be so equal. She did not care ... she wanted him, and now that she was his ... she wanted and needed him more; nearly like an addiction.

        Unfortunately, he was still addicted and afflicted with his love for his fallen queen and it was now to the point where he would alternate from hardly sleeping to oversleeping; two things he had never done before the ledge. He said ... Dara ... was "behind his eyes," open or closed-sometimes to merely be with him, causing him to stay asleep to be with her longer. He imbibed in smoking bhanj rather heavily, he had purchased some in Purushpura, and when that was gone had, unfortunately she thought, he had found more growing wild on the trail.

        When the Dara afflictions struck him, even more unfortunately Ahlhild felt, was that they struck more and more often, and he found no comfort in her, and patently avoided lying with or merely sleeping beside the Princess.

        The past fortnight had been a combination of both these "afflictions", and no matter how many times she tried to convince him a dead woman could not influence him or control him, he only looked at his Princess, as obviously ignorant of the power of The Little Mare to whom he was forever Bänded.

        The red feather added to his distraction. Belloche halted of his own accord as an eagle flew over Tor, casting its shadow over him, and a red feather from its wing fell directly on him, through the warm air. It had been still early; but, he remained where the horse and the eagle directed.

        "Why do we stop here, Tor, we have hours to go before evenfall?"

        "Dara commands it."

        His startling statement did not sit well on Ahlhild's heart or mind. It angered her, and frightened her, and the latter took precedence when it became clear she could not change his mind in the matter—the eagle had, according to him, brought Dara's impending pregnancy with Ta'Ruh, and the horse's sensitivity to the matter confirmed for him. Dara commanded the beast and was its master … the master of all horses, including his own.

        "And, the master of you, it seems." Ahlhild had meant her statement as a caustic retort.

        "Yes, she is." Ahlhild kept her correction of "is" to "was" to herself.

        They were encamped and the mixed weather manufactured a thick fog that rolled in on a cold wind. The white mist came nearly to their camp; yet, eerily stayed at bay just beyond it, where it roiled and moved and stretched and stalked, like a wild animal afraid to come too close to their night fire.

        The unnatural cold forced the princess back into her light jacket; when she touched her prince, thinking he too would feel the chill, she found his dark skin searing with heat. The wild cat was back as its call shrieked and carried to them across the fog. Tor had bound the feather with his hair to a leather thong around his neck and now stood, forgetting what he was doing with the packs he had just removed from the yak, to stare into the fog in the direction from which his ear told him the sound generated. Ahlhild could not tell, the wild voice sounded like it was in many places in the earthbound cloud, and it sounded more fierce, more urgent, more … hungry than she recalled it sounding before.

        "It is not as close as it sounds, is it, Tor?"

        "Closer." That was not comforting to hear.

        "Will it stay away? I suppose they all sound alike; but, it sounds so much like the one leagues back ... when Rahdat ... went away." She tried hard not to glance at the pack bundle, which held ... the thing; but, she did.

        "It is the same ... creature."

        She frowned, because it sounded odd that he did not say animal, and he sounded and looked distant. The wild thing called out again, as if impatient, again sounding to her ear, as if it were on all sides of them; Tor, however, had grabbed his short sword in its scabbard and was striding towards the dreamlike distortion of the fog.

        "Tor? Tor!!"

        He stopped and half turned to her, slightly annoyed at being disturbed and requiring him to recall he was not alone. He tossed the weapon to her, with hardly a look to her. It fell at her feet, as she jumped back in fear of its weight and sharpness.

        "Do not follow me. Belloche stay with Ahlhild, until—. She may send me back." He sounded disappointed.

        "Who?" She already knew "who".

        "The creature. Dara. You heard her, too. She did not wish it before; but, she greatly desires I come to her, now."

        "It was only an animal, a wild animal, a thing of the night not your queen!"

        He half laughed at what she said; again, as if he could not believe her sheer ignorance. The thing shrieked again in its demanding impatience, startling the princess, riveting his attention upon it. Before its voice had died in its reverberations across the fog, he ran into its blank whiteness, and was gone from her sight.

                * * * *

        Tor only had a dagger with him when he ran towards the wild cry, and he ran recklessly until coming to a lone brave tree beside a narrow edifice of stone, for this area was devoid of sizable plants because of the often heartless environment of harsh weather and harsher winds. The wild cat's growl was now less of a scream and more a tease, as it moved around him and the tree, with its displaced voice sometimes purring, sometimes growling ... but always distant, always out of his reach and sight.

        "Demon?! I will not be toyed with this night, you will come to me. Now!"

        Dara stepped out of the fog into view, wearing a riding dress and leggings, but still she did not come directly to him, as she continued circling him, staying out of reach of him. She would not allow him to approach her, and it was plain her Mare's Power was hard on her, as her eyes eerily shone overbright in the dark.

        "Are you angry with me? Is that why you have been torturing me? I have done what you wanted. The woman is mine and she will bear what I have planted within her. You wanted me to sire on her, did you not?"

        "Yes." She did not stop moving, staying visible to him; yet staying from his yearning reach.

        "I sent your Rahdat to you. It is what you knew I would do, when you were not with us. Or, have I angered you?" She said nothing and he chanced losing sight of her to bang his troubled head against the tree, making it shake. "You walk your own path and leave me here—alone."

        "You are not 'alone'. She is with you. She watches and waits for you now."

        "I would rather be with you. I cannot bear your absence!"

        "You tried to follow me." He nodded. "Why?! You knew—!" Her anger became curiousity. "No ... why did you not follow me?"

        "She said it would make you angry with me ... that it would anger Camia, that I could not leave our little one alone for others to raise outside of her lineage." He started to add that Ahlhild had been correct on all accounts but held his tongue.

        "She spoke well and true. Did you harm her, anahk Tor?"

        He glanced into the uncanny polish of her eyes again, that saw into and through him; knowing that she knew him all too well. He jerked his head to mean "no," knowing that she would understand that he had almost hurt the princess. Dara came to him, through the deceptive fog. It was disconcerting to the point of alarming him, to see the mist envelope and hide her then reunveil her to him, almost as if it passed through her more so than around her. He did not wish to wait, but let her do as she wished in her own time; first, taking him in with her eyes, as if renewing and recommitting every inch of him to her mind, before putting her cold, starving mouth to his.

        The shaft of his desire had thickened and risen at the first sound of her and now strained against his trousers between them to be with her. He turned her to face the tree, slipped the back flap of her dress aside and relished both the sight of her and the feel of her, as he deftly loosed himself and slid deep to the hilt within her sopping wet heat.

        I have sore missed you and your powerful sword, My Bänd, there is no other like it."

        "Nor another scabbard but yours suited to properly sheath it, to protect and keep its edge."

        He fucked her heartily and she used the tree for leverage and fucked back in the same manner, both knowing this particular sexual matter between them would peak for both in short order. She made a wild sound that carried on the reflective fog to his camp, startling Ahlhild to her feet.

        The Princess was holding the sword he gave her but cherished more that she had been holding to Belloche's warm and comforting neck when the frightening, strained, unearthly exclamation rang out in its anguish—assaulting her ears. The animal cry was closely followed by the familiar deep-throated shout of Tor; the same rare shout he only gave when his desire had been very great, much postponed, then finally satisfied. By Dara.

        Ahlhild had almost decided to run towards his sound but the fog was too dense to make out anything beyond the fire and camp, which was still as if separated in its own world from where he had gone. She could not be sure if the beast might stalk her and their animals, if she caught its attention by calling out here alone, nor if the horrid sound it made was its last, for she did not hear it again. She hoped Tor's skilled dagger had found its way home deep within the wild thing's flesh. She would wait patiently and trust in The Destroyer's good fortunes with Death, that it would bring him back to her, and not lose him forever to this damned, illusory mist of deception and his bhanj, sleep deprived, grief induced mania.

                [Edit]

        When he awoke, on the ground alone, at the base of the tree, after his full night with her, the sun had burned away the fog and dried the splatters of his lust that had fallen against the tree leg and onto the blades of grass, at its foot. The excruciating loss of her presence seared his brain, his heart ... every part of him. She had instructed him again; however, before coaxing him asleep in her arms, to not follow too closely on her silently departing heels, upon which she stole away, evaporating like her fog, abandoning him while he was unaware in his trusting slumber.

        Otherwise, he would have taken only what he had with him, himself and the dagger, and pursued her.

        He was sullen and obtuse when he returned to his princess, and they did not leave that place for nearly a week. He was reluctant to go on, incapable it seemed to Ahlhild. She only hoped he had not completely lost himself in the mysteriously strange fog.

                [End of Excerpt]

Watchtower, Book 1, Excerpt 1

Watchtower, Book 1, Excerpt 2

Watchtower, Book 2, Excerpt 1

Watchtower, Book 2, Excerpt 2