Chapter 1

Larke awoke at the first sound of the heavy footsteps coming up the narrow wooden staircase to his upstairs garret bedroom, but recognizing the heaviness of their gait, the lad just grumbled at the interruption and made no motion to arise at all from bed. The hands shaking him awake a few moments later were not in the least bit gentle but since they belonged to Larke’s step-father Havril, the lad would have been truly astonished if any signs of actual affection had been offered. Indeed, such a consideration on any day would have been a first and never-before encountered occurrence!

“Up you lazy boy! No time to sleep the day away, there’s honest work to be done!” Havril the Miller bellowed, shaking the lad harshly yet once more, nearly knocking the lad off his cot entirely. “Mildrad has hurt his arm downstairs in the mill and you’ll need to finish the rice flour he’s started.”

An all-to common occurrence, alas. Mildrad was not the most graceful of lads and a water mill full of rotating gears and belts, not to mention rotating stones was not the safest sort of place for a fellow that tended to trip over his own moccasins on a near-daily basis. Odds were the lad’s cut or scratch would be trivial and require only minor wound tending from Mistress Erminga, the village healer and medicus, who’d throw him out by his ear from her hut if at least a half-dozen stitches or more weren’t required. Life in the Mórdene Swamp wasn’t for the weak or faint of constitution, whether man or woman. On the other hand, his step-father was so lazy these days that he wouldn’t recognize what a day of honest labor was, even if it rode into the village perched on the back of a giant swamp lizard!

When he was younger and a bit more foolish, Larke might have remarked on this trait of extreme slothfulness ... and very likely earned a sound beating in return. Some days, for the sake of own pride, it might be still occasionally worth the risk, but not today. Larke held his tongue and continued to feign sleep for another moment or two until his annoyed step-father roughly grabbed and shook his shoulders harshly.

Larke peaked open just a single eye and replied with weary but distinct condescension, repaying a thousand prior slights, snubs and outright insults with just a tiny small measure of repayment in kind, but layered in excessive courtesy. “As I am certain that Mistress Frigyth has reminded you on multiple occasions over the last nine years and bit more, I am craft-bonded to her service as an apprentice, commanded by her authority only ... save for common tasks given by our village council in fair rotation, posted weekly in advance. I have such a later duty later today, to bear watchful guard over the bathing grounds of the mill pond that the ladies might bathe this late afternoon. After this council assigned shift is completed at dusk, I must then immediately heed the request of my craft-mistress and spend many long hours tonight obtaining the all-too elusive and nocturnal fire-bellied frog, for they are urgently needed at once by my mistress for certain medicines needed by Ermingra, our Mistress of Healing. Alas, my prior resting for these forthcoming labors was also quite directly instructed by mistress, that I might better perform each of these necessary and lengthy tasks later to everyone’s better satisfaction.”

Larke risked a quick peak outside of his small bedroom window but saw that the sun was still full in the sky that afternoon in late summer, only perhaps an hour after the sounding horn for the communal midday meal, which he had partaken of hastily before his short nap. He ignored the last violent thump of his step-father’s strong angrily clinched right fist as he stomped away in enraged silence out of the room. The master miller would have to attend to the duties of his own mill this afternoon, instead of lounging away the long hot humid afternoon at his brother Brom’s brewery next door, as he was usually wont to, downing endless pints of first small (and later much more potent) beer!

The blow to his back was ill-aimed, due to the miller’s growing enraged temper, and Larke didn’t even attempt to mask any minor discomfort from this blow. He’d endured far worse beatings earlier in his childhood until his craft-mistress had not-too subtly put an end to such future treatment once he fell under her lawful guidance and direction at age thirteen, for the most part. By village law, the lad was entitled to retain his prior childhood bed if his craft master or mistress had no facilities for boarding apprentices, but the other associated courtesies here under the miller’s roof were quite non-existent.

The village kitchen-mistress Saxleue saw that the growing boy got his regular meals, at the long communal tables with the rest of the villagers, but the lad never sat anywhere near his step-father or Brom. Larke didn’t mind this in the least.

He fell back asleep without a tinge of regret. He’d already spent far too many years of his younger life toiling for no pay or recompense for his step-father, who was in truth not even legally troth-bonded to his mother. They’d been engaged in promise-oath only, when Larke’s mother had died in childbirth delivering him. Quite the embarrassment to everyone in the village and an affront to his very honor that Havril had never forgotten! His guardianship to Larke was of a non-blood adoption, terminated by both law and custom when the lad assumed his apprenticeship over nine years earlier. Larke owed his adopted father no further debts of obligation ... nor did his treatment lend itself to performing any ‘favors’ out of kindness-debt, let alone any true ties of friendship-bond.

Clearly and beyond doubt, the miller hoped someday (soon) to never again lay eyes upon the lad, the all-too visible reminder of his past disgrace! Long ago, to be certain – but never once forgotten!

Awaking at the first note of the mid-afternoon horn, Larke arose refreshed for his guard duty labors and grabbed just his bow and spear before leaving his small garret room above the mill house. He owned a good set of scale armor stored away in his clothes chest but for guarding the normally well-protected mill pond today, such protection was quite unnecessary. The swamp lizards that made their way up the small mill stream into the retaining pond were invariably small ones, generally hand-sized hatchlings avoiding bigger predators in the great river. This late summer day was well-past their usual season as well for causing anything but very minor trouble to the village bathers. In late spring, it was habitual to assign two guards over the mill pond, but this afternoon Larke would be alone, and unlikely to encounter any problems whatsoever.

Already the lady bathers were assembling and beginning to strip down upon a small grassy slope above the furthest part of the pond away from the mill run, where the currents created by the great water mill forced a small but fast moving flow of waters back to the river. Today the mill wheels were grinding slowly and any currents in the pond would be negligible.

Larke could tell at a glance that the entire pond was currently quite safe, but he kept to his assigned duty and first walked around the pond entirely to make sure. Swamp lizards both large and small had razor sharp teeth, and the willingness to use them against any creature even far larger than themselves, but they were also very stupid and predictable. There were usually very easy to spot as they invariably basked on top of the warm waters with large portions of their head and nostrils quite visible, if one took the time to look for them.

With a nod of approval, the lad completed his circuit and pronounced the waters safe for bathing and the throng of happy overheated naked women splashed into the relatively cooler waters and took their well-deserved late afternoon respite. The men enjoyed their own assigned period of bathing and cooling down at this time on alternate days, but without an assigned guardian to watch over them. All young men and older were expected to be at least nominally adept with a spear, if not also bow and this reduced the need by half for the village to task one of the trained warriors of the village to perform daytime guard duties, in an assigned written rotation posted monthly on the walls of the village inn. If anyone swam in the mill pond at other hours during the day or at night, they were then quite on their own.

Larke enjoyed the fine views of the female flesh on display, particularly of several of the untrothed and unbonded maidens of his acquaintance. There was no nudity taboo here in the vast largely uncharted region of Mórdene, let alone at this lone village outpost in the Yelfen Swamp, as most outsiders tended to call this fen-ridden and nearly impassible district several weeks travel, at best, up the great Mórdain river. In their close-knit community of barely two hundred souls, there was very little personal privacy and the extreme sweltering heat and humidity of high summer made the wearing of even minimal body coverings something of a sweaty annoyance for nearly everyone.

From late spring to early fall, most women, especially those laboring in either the nearby wild rice field or performing tasks with the village walls, barely donned more than a few strips of tied cloth. One strip that nominally covered their waists while baring most of their legs, and the other to wrap around their breasts, more for structural support while working than for modesty. The younger and less busty women often did without the top, while laboring during the worst and hottest days of summer. Men working about or near the village generally wore just a loincloth themselves. Hunters or gatherers entering the great swamp itself needed to take much more precautionary measures and wore at least a stout pair of leather trousers and hard boots, to at least protect their legs and feet in the swamp.

Mórdene was a month’s travel or more to the south and east of the infamous Forests of Leodewude, considered by most to be the very fringes of human civilization. Even taking a boat mostly due east up the Mórdain River for a hundred leagues or more from the young growing coastal city of Mórdheath could take weeks, if the currents or winds were against the boatman. Towns and even villages along the great river were scarce here in this nearly uninhabited tropical wilderness there were but a half dozen small towns of little significance in-between their swamp village and Mórdheath.

To say that the Yelfen Swamp was vast would be something of an understatement. No human explorer or hunter had traversed even a small portion of this entire region but it was considered that the uninhabitable swamps here by the village stretched for at least a hundred leagues in nearly all directions. The shores of a very great lake could be found in a valley about three days travel away from the village to the northeast but even Larke himself had only explored a very small section of that shoreline as the young man could only ill-afford to ever be gone from the village for a moment longer than a full week. Clearly, he could already much surmise, that this vast lake might feed a number of great rivers to both the east and west, and perhaps the south as well, in addition to their home river.

Once on an unusually clear spring day before the rains, Larke had climbed up a tree near the great lake and thought that he could perhaps see hills and perhaps mountains to both the north and the east on the very far side of the vast lake. To the south was nothing but featureless swamp and rainforest as far as the eye could see. The call of the unknown had enticed to him on that day, but he had dutifully returned home to the village. Assuming that someday his seemingly endless apprenticeship would become complete and his life become his own, he meant to travel to each of those far distant hills ... to then discover what hitherto unseen and unknown lands yet lay beyond!

Today, it was instead the tanned wet bodies of two young ladies that quite caught his attentions, as indeed those playful young ladies were quite trying to catch his eye. Wyverna, was a lovely well-formed brunette and she had been of late quite willing to canoodle with him secretly under cover of darkness, and entirely without the knowledge of the village elders, especially the Women’s Council of Three. Those elder village matrons decided when and if promise-oaths of troth-bonding could be made ... and approved – or else quite forbidden. Larke was pretty sure that no such undertaking between them would or could be ever permitted. Like her monstrous namesake, Wyverna was already one of the very best village hunters, skilled with both the spear and the bow, but still accounted to be an apprentice. She was anticipating her bond-release by year’s end to become both a Master Hunter and be declared of full maturity, decreed a ‘woman’ in both mind and body by the Woman’s Council. She was of the average age and of above average intellect and martial skill, being just nineteen, to receive this freedom, and thus be able to legally undertake any oath, such as marriage vows.

Her companion and frequent partner in dalliances, both Sapphic in private and while sharing the occasional male sex partner such as Larke, was Breges, a softer spoken doe-eyed honey blond of the same age that worked as a weaver’s apprentice in the village. She had no skill at arms, rarely leaving the safety of the wooden village fence except to pick willow and softer marsh-reeds. As a lover, Breges’ skills were more much refined and exotic than her girlfriend’s. She’d taken her first lovers when young, far earlier than the Women’s Council would ever knowingly permit even the first stages of early sexual experimentation. The matrons kept a sharp eye for such things and freely dispensed herbal birth-control remedies for overly adventurous ladies far too young to be declared women or allowed to troth-bond with their beaus.

Both young ladies were bored beyond measure by the mundaneness of village life and the many hardships that were faced in the swamp. Neither would likely wed and raise their own children here, let alone live out the remainder of their lives at this village. Wyverna yearned to become a great warrior and travel the world as a sell-sword until she’d made her reputation and fortune. Breges just coveted a future life of idle luxury ... even if she had to earn it working on her knees or on her back as a whore, or so she often joked. I’m sure she was quite entirely serious. She had both the looks and the determination to either find herself a rich husband or in a decade of prosperous whoring own the largest and most notorious knocking shop in all of Mórdheath ... or even fabled wicked Corælyn!

Larke grinned but kept to his duties, trivial as they now were. The only moment that even offered the slightest cause for concern was when another older young woman grabbed a large eel out from the mud of the mill pond and grasped it to her groin as if it were a wiggling male penis (of quite exceptional size). With her squirming eel as a faux-penis she made forth to boldly menace with amusement any other woman within reach. Too slippery to hold, the flapping eel had slipped away to the safety of the pond after a few minutes and with much laughter the ladies found other amusements. For the most part, eels were harmless and quite commonplace in both the river and the mill pond, not to mention fairly good eating as well ... but something of an acquired taste. They did have small blunt teeth, but were designed for chewing plants underwater. Ladies (and men) had been bit before on occasion, but harmlessly so. At most just a sharp pinch to the fingers, much like the bite of a pestered turtle, many of which could also be caught here, but save for times of extreme need, not feasted upon like the eels.

As the sun set, the hitherto languid still summer breezes of the swamp began to blow, slightly at first and never with any meaningful force, but just enough to be a pleasure upon the ladies bare wet skin. Most of them took this time to lay out upon the soft grass in small conversational groups, to brush out each other’s hair. Other young ladies, still quite naked, took this opportunity to gather up their scraps of clothing and run to greet their various lovers and troth-mates, often for a quick quiet lovemaking or cuddling before the call of the dinner hour.

Soon, nearly everyone else had left for the village, except for Wyverna and Breges. With a conspiratorial wink, the young ladies got up to their feet and clasped their hands together while giggling, then wandered off behind the gentle green hillside to a nearby copse of small trees, barely much larger than bushes. Here, now quite out of sight from the mill pond, or even the water mill and the rest of the village, the two giggling lovers disappeared out of site. The copse was well known and often used as a local trysting spot and Larke smiled with anticipation, but waited yet another few minutes for the last of the bathers to leave and return to the village. His assigned task here was now entirely completed.

Approaching the covered copse, he could hear giggles of amusement and already some sighs of pleasure even before he pushed aside some branches to better view the young ladies. Both were already quite busy, with their mouths upon each’s lips and breasts, while they both stroked their fingers upon the other’s moistened sex, each fingering the other’s clit with increasingly desperate need. Larke let the lovers enjoy their fun alone until Breges moved her mouth down to lick her girlfriend’s breasts and then slid her tongue downwards further until it could reach her cunt, leaving Wyverna’s mouth quite free and available for the eager young lad to stick his already rampant cock right into her waiting mouth. She sucked the fully stiffened member with great enthusiasm, and even Breges stopped her own tongue-lapping to remark that Larke was indeed the largest and most endowed male in the entire village ... and to save some of that cum for her!