Chapter 36: Metalton

As Smithy had predicted the snowfall wasn’t that bad.

It was a very chipper crowd that greeted Trixi and me at the fire the next morning. We did get a few head shakes after the night before, and I did blush. You see I tried something new. Trixi was exhausted after four days of helping me recharge and the magic she had used that day.

My girls had indicated to me in the past that it wasn’t so much the sex but me channelling the magic through them when I came. I was going to try to be the conduit tonight. Once we had entered the tent and stripped off, I got Trixi to lie down, and I proceeded to give her a massage.

I started at her feet and worked my way up her lovely legs. I’m not much into feet, but legs are a different story. She had well-defined calf muscles, and the walking and riding had only strengthened them. I added a little heat to my hands and worked the kinks out of her muscles.

By the time, I did her hamstrings she was more than ready for me. I loved her smell when she got excited. I was careful not to touch her sex as I worked my fingers into her tight arse muscles. She was moaning softly by the time I moved onto her back.

I spent some time here, and I could see she was really enjoying me lavishing attention on her. The odd little kiss made her shiver. I got her to flip over, and I massaged her shoulders and arms. Her nipples were rock hard and very tempting. I couldn’t help licking one, and she shivered in delight.

The massage got forgotten once I had tasted her. Her grabbing my head to encourage me to keep licking assisted. I was soon licking, sucking and kneading her lovely udders. Her smell was getting stronger, and she was wiggled and gasping under my onslaught. When she said ‘more’, I knew what she wanted and moved down her body.

The first lick was soon followed by many more as I drunk in her essence. Her happy squirms and little moans only encouraged me to pleasure her. Having my head jammed between her thighs and my tongue pushed deep inside her cunnie was no hardship on my part.

It didn’t take me long to have her jamming her cunnie into my face and coming for me. I slid back up her body and had little trouble working my cock head into her as I shared her spent, while I kissed her. I was doing short strokes with just the head of my cock dipping in and out of her to start with, and then rubbing it along her lips to her clit.

I’d then stab my cock back it back into her, but not as far as she wanted. She kept trying to get me to push in harder. I increased the length of shaft she was getting, but for her, I was going too slow. It was working her up nicely.

I finally pushed in as far as I could and wiggled and rocked my hips, so I was stimulating her clit. She was humping her hips into me and pulling on my arse as her fingers gripped my flesh. I pulled back and started doing longer strokes and enjoying her cunnie gripping my shaft.

I hunched up a bit so I could suck on her udders as I proceeded. I knew she was going to come again soon. Her excitement had me speeding up to her rocking hips and soft moans of delight. When she started tensing up, I was surprised that I felt the need to come with her.

I only tended to come quickly if I was low on magic. I balanced back above her and started slamming in and out of her. As my need got to breaking point, I concentrated on pulling the magic through me and pushing it into her.

She shuddered under me, and I grunted with relief as I released my first shot of seed into her. I had imagined that the magic was pooled in my balls with my seed and it would feed into Trixi when I came. I damn well saw stars when I blasted that first load.

Trixi howled. It was so intense and primitive it even made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Then her muscles spasmed around my cock, and she milked every drop I had out of me. The intensity of the magic and my orgasm flooding my body was bloody powerful, and I tingled all over as I pumped my hips and feed her again.

I was sucking in so much magic she was sated quickly, and I tried to bleed it off into our crystals. I even reached out to Sable and his crystals. I was shocked when his little voice sounded in my head, ‘It tickles Daddy’. Then I heard Rose gasp and she grumbled, “Bloody Hell, Bron.”

I thought, ‘Oops!’ I was grinning like a naughty boy who had pulled off a prank. By the time, I had finished coming, several other voices had chorused with me.

I heard a female sounding voice I recognised as Smithy scream out, “Fuck me!” It was closely followed by two males grunting and flesh slapping flesh. It wasn’t hard to work out who was getting fucked in that tent.

I then heard Harry squeal, a solid slap of flesh and Jay’s happy grunts as he too came. Several other moans, screams and grunts came from the other tents. What made me laugh was Jany. I heard her grumble, “Shit! Why do I always get guard duty at this time of night?”

Totally sated I looked down at Trixi. She had this lovely silly smile in spite of being totally out of it. I gently pulled out, hauled up the blankets and cuddled up to her limp body. I was soon fast asleep beside her.

We were sitting around the fire nursing our first cuppa when Jay looked at me and said, “So what the hell happened last night?”

I looked at Trixi, and she grinned at me. She was radiant this morning, and I knew it had worked. The tired lines had been removed from her face, and her eyes sparkled. I noticed everyone was looking refreshed.

“I tried something new with regards to how we channelled magic when we recharged,” I told them.

“So you decided to share it with all of us,” Smithy said with a grin.

“Sorry, I’ll get better at my control, it got a little intense,” I replied.

Foxi giggled and said, “Please don’t do it on my account. That was awesome. You should have seen the looks on Smithy and Albi’s faces when they came. Poor Smithy was shaking so hard between Albi and me, it was delicious.”

“Foxi!” admonished Trixi. “We do have a little one with us.”

Sable sniggered, “Yeah, like I’ve not heard it all before, Trixi.”

I looked at my son and wondered if his sex education may be a little more advanced than was good for him. He smiled at me and said, “Don’t worry dad, Herder kids learn pretty young what sex is all about. I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t do it.”

We all had to chuckle at his common sense attitude.

We soon had the camp packed up.

We popped a wide but not very long humped bridged over the stream and continued on our way. We crossed the small meadow quickly, and Trixi and I went for a look over the ridge. A small cleft was on the other side, and then it ran down a moderate slope for a bit.

We pulled the rock from the ridge making our gap and filled in the cleft to make way for out road. We decided on a small switchback to make the inclines easier to negotiate and moved on. We hit another low ridge and a cleft and did the same as we had the last time.

On the other side, we could see where the main road cut through the trees and the low smoke from one of the tavern’s chimneys. We decided on a double switchback and then a small straight stretch to come out on the left side of the Tavern. It would make it a much easier climb for people coming our way and heavy carts coming down.

From our vantage point, we easily placed the road. We even made it 6m wide along this section to provide more room for carts negotiating the curves. Trixi and I both chuckled at how easy it was. After nearly six days of practice, we barely thought about it. With both of us being charged to the hilt, it was even easier.

We even add a couple of low walls with regular gaps on the corners to make sure carts couldn’t slip off the road if it was wet but the rain did. Smithy looked at the road and grinned, “That is just beautiful.”

We got down to the last 500m and noting the flood marks, we build a nice wide bridge over the stream behind the Tavern. We then layed down the last of our road, so it came up to the existing road 50m from the Tavern to line up with the other road. We waited for the others and crossed the bridge together.

We noted the condition of the main road and repaved it for klick either side of the tavern and up to the road to Metalton. It would cause a few surprises for the locals when they came up to it. Sable insisted we needed a sign post. So I dutiful constructed a sign post pointing to each of the four towns.

We moved the coach and the wagon over to the barn beside the Tavern, and while the soldiers took care of our lankys, Jay and the rest of my party headed inside. The place was deserted. We had noticed the barn didn’t have any lankys in it and it concerned us. It should have had at least the owner’s animals in it.

We could see where it looked like several people had been moving about in the snow and even wagon tracks. I knew I had smelt smoke coming from here the night before, but it now seemed everyone had left. We cautiously looked around.

The main part of the tavern was a big roundish room with back to back fireplaces in the centre for warming the patrons. They both had smouldering coals. Dishes sat on several of the tables. Three long tables with long bench seats sat with one end at the sidewalls and either side of the fireplaces. Three smaller tables with four chairs took up the area nearer the back wall.

At the other end, a bar sat between two doorways. The bar was littered with used cups, and it looked like the patrons had checked out ever vessel behind the bar. Several were smashed on the floor. Things were looking grim.

One door led to a set of stairs and the other to the kitchen, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a large store room. Upstairs was a short hall. The room facing the hall was a communal bathing room. It even had two flushers inside the door in alcoves and the bathing chamber behind the third inner door.

A second hall ran down the centre and had four doors on each side. The room closest to the stairs had three double bunks, the cheap room. The next two had just the double bed, and the last was the biggest room with a bigger bed and better decorated than the others were. The other three rooms had a single wider bed with a set of bunks, family rooms.

The last room, the two doubles and a family room were not made up. They looked like the occupants had rolled out the beds and grabbed their stuff and left. Rose touched one of the beds. “I believe they all had occupants the night before, yet I get the sense they didn’t stay here any longer than last night.”

Jay and I both agreed with her assessment. We heard Harry call out to us and we went back downstairs. Harry, Albi and Foxi had headed out the back to the kitchen. I’d told Trixi to keep Sable in the tap room. The kitchen was a mess. It looked like every available morsel of food had been scrounged and removed.

Harry pointed to a door, and I went to see why he looked so green. Two women were tied up by their hands and naked on the bed. I didn’t even wish to think of what they had been through before their throats had been cut. I guessed it was a mother and daughter. It was a little hard to tell as some sicko had carved them up pretty bad.

Albi had found the tavern owner. He was in the store room, and he wasn’t in much better condition than his women folk. He had been abused just as roughly if not more so. I looked at how they had left him. “Jay, I believe they may have tortured him,” I said.

Jay looked at the man more closely and then went and looked at the women again. “They all were,” he told me. “I have no idea what the people who did this wanted. I can only assume they thought he had some coins hidden.”

“Possibly, but there is also an element of sadism. As if the person or persons had enjoyed what they were doing,” I said. I looked more closely at the man laid over the barrel and the area around him to analyse what I was seeing.

“Two. Two men did this. One a little taller than the other roughly 130cm and 140cm. The shorter was more heavily set and moved slower. He was the older of the two and the rapist. The other who liked the knife was the stronger. The older man had tied up the barkeeper, while the other cut his clothes off,” I said as if thinking aloud.

“The wound under the chin suggests the knife was held here while the taller man got the barkeeper to suck on his cock. The older man sodomised him. I think he was done last and early this morning before they left.”

I walked back to the women and as gruesome as it was, I examined them too. “They were repeatedly raped and not just by the two men. I believe there were six men in all. The knife wielder cut their throats this morning, but the younger one was already dead. Rose?” I asked looking at her.

“Yes, I can smell the scent of six men. I too believe the same knife was used on all three to finish them. The younger woman must have fought as she had internal injuries from being thumped and her wrists are raw was twisting and pulling,” Rose replied.

“Most of the stab wounds and cuts were delivered in anger. Those wounds are from the same knife. She threw up on the man. The fourth to use her. The older woman may have gone into shock at the start. Her wrists are not as raw.”

“She had been used longer suggesting they continued to use her after her daughter died. The man who cut her throat did the torturing. His cuts were not aimed to kill but to cause pain and elicit a response from her. I believe he was also the last to use her as his scent is strongest on both women.”

We all spun around when Smithy exclaimed violently, “The bastard! What the fuck is wrong with that man?”

He was looking at the older woman in horror. His face was pale, and he was shaking in shock and distress. Tears started coursing down his cheeks. “I shouldn’t have left. Oh, shit! What did he do to my sisters? His own daughters.”

“If he can do this to her, he wouldn’t have left them alone. I have to go, I have to go,” he blubbered and stepped back out of the door. We heard him race down the hall sobbing.

Jay and I looked at each other. We headed to the taproom, and I said to Trixi, “Trixi, get them buried and follow when you can, but make sure you stay with the soldiers. Protect Foxi and Sable,” I said. Jay and I then hurried after Smithy.

It was probably mean of me, but I gave her the last order, so she didn’t ride after me. I knew they would end up between many hours up to a day behind us. They would most likely have to camp. It took a good day for a wagon to get to Metalton from here. It was already after lunch time, and they had graves to dig.

Jay yelled to his soldiers to stay and protect the women and bury the dead. I headed to the coach first and removed several items that I was able to get into my satchel. I wished I had brought my old backpack with me. I put a few more items into my magic saddle bags and re-saddled Opal.

Sable ran up to us, “Jay, take Red, she is fresher.”

“Thank you, son,” I said to him, and Jay shifted his saddle to Red while Sable talked to her. She nodded her head at him. She and Opal both seemed to realise that some urgency was required.

Jany and two other soldiers slipped halters on three other lankys. Once we were mounted, they handed us the reins so we could change lankys. “Smithy didn’t take much with him,” Jany warned us worried about her friend.

We nodded and took off after Smithy.

It took us an hour to catch up with Smithy.

He must have finally calmed down enough to realise he was flogging the lanky. We got him to change lankys and set a more realistic pace of alternating a canter with a fast walk. As we walked the lankys up a steep section of the road, I asked him, “Why do you think it was your father?”

He sighed, “It was why I left. He had brought a young woman home. I’d been in the barracks for about five years by then as he insisted I learnt how to be a leader and he had sent me there when I was fifteen. We often get people enter our land to steal gems, and our soldiers are kept busy seeing them off.”

“I’d gone up to the mansion to see Grandfather, Mica and Casey. I tried to visit at least once a month. Grandfather and I ended up staying up late playing cards, and I crashed out in my old room. My bedroom was closer to my fathers.”

The girls were still in the nursery wing. They were only fifteen and twelve at the time. Grandfather’s room was further down the hall. I woke to a muffled woman’s scream. I shot out of my bed thinking it was Mica and then realised once I got to the hall it was coming from my father’s room.”

“He’d not shut his door properly, and when I pushed it open, I heard him chuckle. At first, I couldn’t work out what he was doing. He had the woman’s groin in his lap, and he was fucking her, but she was struggling under him and whimpering.”

“I thought he was just raping her. That made me mad, and I went to tell him to stop when I saw the flash of the knife. I also realised her hands were tied to the bed. He stopped thrusting into her and had leant forward.”

“I moved to see what he was doing and stood in shocked horror as he sliced the knife across one of her breasts. As she screamed, he went back to fucking her as he watched her blood drip from her breast. I realised her pain, screams and the blood seemed to turn him on as he was really pounding into her and he even licked at the blood.”

“I wanted to vomit. Then I lost it when he stopped again went to slice the other breast. She had several slices on each breast already. He was cutting just deep enough to cause pain, and so her blood welled.”

“I reefed him back from her. He’s not a tall man, and while he was thirty years older than I was, I was fitter and heavier. I’d also grown taller in that five years and wasn’t a boy anymore. He flailed about as I tossed him to the floor.”

“I stomped on his hand and then kicked the knife from it. He screamed in pain, and I kicked him in the groin and several other places. He curled into a ball, whimpered and cried, and begged me to stop. I told him I’d kill him if I found out he was cutting up another woman.”

“He agreed that he would stop. I freed the woman, took her downstairs and doctored her up. I then took her home. When I got back, he had locked his door and refused to let me enter. I went back to my barracks and didn’t see my father for another month until Andy turned up.”

“My father told me that Andy was recruiting and he had offered him ten men for a year and he felt I could learn a lot from Andy, so he wanted me to go with him. I was still that disgusted with my father that I happily agreed.”

“He told me at the next Lords meeting when he asked me to come see him that the King was delighted with my progress and he was happy for me to stay as long as the King needed me. So I stayed. I’ve not been home in the last six years, and he has not asked me to come home either.”

“The first time Mica turned up to the Lords meeting I asked her about our father. I told her to be careful around him and told her why I hadn’t been home to visit her and Casey. She said he had stopped bring women home and was courting one of Sir Timor’s daughters.”

“He never married her and Mica said he was drinking more. My grandfather was also not getting better. I asked her if she wanted me to come home. She said yes, but she didn’t think our father wanted me there as he had called me lots of nasty names if she mentioned me.”

“She said that she and Casey were fine and he didn’t touch them or the female staff. If he was still doing what I had said she’d not found any evidence it. The last time I saw her, she was pensive and didn’t wish to talk to me. I was becoming worried. Then she didn’t come to the meeting.”

“I did get a letter to say she was well but they had an odd sickness, and she was busy helping the sick. Now I find that my father is still slicing women up and even killing them for sport. Once I make sure Casey and Mica are not hurt or ill I’m going after him. I think he has fled Metalton for some reason. I need to know why.”

Jay said, “Yes, I agree with your plan, but you should have waited for the rest of us. There is safety in numbers. With it just being three of us, we possibly should look for a way to sneak into town rather than ride in openly. If we go to the manor house, I’m sure we can find out what is going on.”

I grinned at the men, “Did you know that my shield works just as well over a moving object?” They frowned at me. I pulled one of the cornerstones I had made from my satchel and activated it.

“Now that is seriously amazing,” Jay said. “Can you still see us?”

I reached out and grabbed his thigh. I had to chuckle at the girly yelp, he gave. Smithy had to chuckle too when he realised what I had done as Jay was rubbing his leg and scowling at being caught unaware.

“Bron, I can’t hear your lanky moving,” Jay said after a few moments.

“But you can hear me,” I said.

I watched as his eyes went wide and he asked, “Why can I hear you but not Opal?”

“I can project my voice through the shield. It is my spell after all,” I said.

Smithy shook his head, “You could really scare someone to death doing that Bron. Your voice seems to be coming from several directions and even has an odd echo. If you have moved from between Jay and me, then I have no idea where you are.”

“Shit!” exclaimed Smithy as he started. I had slid my hand up his thigh after I had moved and I was on the other side of him. “Okay, that is officially one scary shield you have Bron.”

I turned my shield off, and they both breathed a sigh of relief. I got Smithy to touch one of the cornerstones and spelled it to turn on and off at his or my touch. I then did the same with another one for Jay. “Presents,” I said. “You will be the two sneakiest City Guards in Weston’s history.”

They both looked at the objects I had handed them. They looked like a squarish quartz crystal about 2cm square, 6cm long and the two ends had pyramid shaped ends. A small 6mm cubed magical crystal was embedded near one of the ends.

“If you pushed the end without the crystal into the ground and activated it by saying, ‘On’, it will form a 10m domed shield that will cover your lanky and you easily. If you put two 10m apart, you will create a 20m dome shield. That will easily cover four or five people and their lankys.”

“If you put it in your pocket and tell it to turn on then, it will form a shield out to about 20cm from you, or you and the lanky if you are sitting on it. Just touch it again and tell it to turn off. You can do this mentally, so you don’t have to speak,” I told them.

I grinned as they played. The boys were surprised when they touched each other and found the shield covered them both if they had the cornerstones turned on.

They turned them off satisfied, and we picked up the pace.

It was getting dark when we came close to the pass.

Smithy said that he wanted to sneak up on the guards. He said they had a small hut and he knew where they hid to watch for people entering the pass. Jay and I agreed, and we hung back and waited.

We were starting to get worried when Smithy reappeared in front of us. We could tell by the way he walked that he was not a happy man. He looked at me with a blank expression. “They are dead, all ten guards are dead.”

I knew Smithy wasn’t a stranger to death. He had been a guard for six years and fighting with bandits and ornery prospectors for five years before that. “How?” I demanded.

The command in my voice snapped him into reporting mode. “The two on duty were stabbed. The rest seemed to have drunk something that must have had a poison in it. They all had red bloated faces, Sir.”

“We will have to send a detail out to investigate in the morning. Let’s get your sisters Corporal Smithy. Mount up,” I told him. I moved Opal forward, and he hurriedly got on his lanky to follow us. He took the lead 5km down the road and suggested we use the cornerstones.

I modified the spell to have them joined if were within a 50cm of each other. It also covered the spare lankys as they were linked to us. That way we could ride comfortably, but we were still under the same shield. I felt both men relax a little when they realised this. I think the day’s events were starting to spook them.

Smithy led us to the manor. It was on this side of the valley and about a 2km’s out of town on its own estate. With a worried voice, Smithy said, “The town sure seems dark. Normally at this time of night, you can see the glow through the trees. We do have gas street lights, and most homes have them too.”

We did see lights on at the manor. Smithy indicated a copse of trees about 20m from the manner, and we left the lankys there. I told them they could graze but not to move out of the trees. I told Red and Opal I would set up a shield, and they were to keep the others in it.

They knew how to detect the edge of the shield and never went out of it at night. I set a shield with five cornerstones around the trees and the little stream. We loosened the girths but didn’t remove their saddles. Hopefully, I’ll be back soon to get them, if not they would be comfortable enough here for the night or even a day.

We walked up to the manor house. Smithy headed straight for the front door. He opened it carefully, and we slipped in and closed it behind us. We did a quick inspection of the ground floor. Before we split up, I told them to come back and stand near the door, so we could locate each other after we searched the place.

Jay walked into my shield fifteen minutes later. We waited another ten minutes and were starting to get worried about Smithy. He seemed to have a knack for finding trouble. We were both relieved when he walked into us.

“Dinner hasn’t been cooked, and there are no staff down here,” he said with worry.

“Let’s find the girls,” I said.

Smithy led the way, and we stayed close. He took us to Mica’s room. The door was locked. I suggested we turn off our shields. Smithy and Jay both drew their swords, and we shut them down. Smithy knocked on the door in a series of taps. He waited a moment and did it again.

The door flew open, and a vision of loveliness was poised to fight us. She held the curved ended sword in two hands, and the look of determination on her face was hard to argue with. Like her brother, Mica had Genteli features but shifter colouring. I suspected they turned into grey wolves.

Mica was on the taller side for a woman and only or two or three centimetres shorter than her brother’s height of 170cm. She was perfect. She was wearing light plate and leather armour. It had been crafted for her. I noted the breastplate wasn’t flat across her udders.

Metal and leather formed cups over her shoulders, and the leather provided flexibility to the plates over the top of her arms and strapped over the top of her greaves on her lower arms to protect her elbows. Her gloves were made of a fine, chain link mesh over a soft kid leather.

Thick leather flaps attached to the plates and lapped over each other. They shaped around her hips and covered her arse down to about mid-thigh. Tight black leather pants encased that arse and sexy legs. Long black boot hugged her calf muscles and dainty feet.

His ash blonde hair was cut in short feathery pattern around her beautiful face. The dark purple eyes had flashed ready for a fight. They now softened, and her plump surprisingly dark pink lips split into a smile that stole my heart, even though it wasn’t for me.

She dropped the sword and threw herself at her brother. She wrapped her legs around his waist as she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him hard. Smithy chuckled as he stepped back upon her onslaught and wrapped his arms around her.

Mica hugged him for a good minute before releasing him enough to sit back a little so she could see his face. “What took you so long? I expected my knight to come weeks ago.”

“Sorry, sis. Andy couldn’t get the King to agree to send us here. I was going to take a couple of weeks leave, but then this poncy little mage turned up and set Weston on its ear. He frighted the King so bad he had a heart attack, and we had to hang around while Andy became the new King.”

“What the fuck has father been doing?” he asked, as he lowered her to the floor.

She scowled, “Gone off his rocker. He and that deranged mage Tare started a feud. The moron’s kidnapped Tim Timor’s daughters, Prinny and Ginny, about two months ago. He told the guards to not let anyone in or out of the pass.”

“When they brought them here, dad and I had a huge blue, and I even challenged him. He laughed and had the guards lock Casey and me in this wing. He told us if we were good, he’d pick us a husband each from the guards. If we were bad the guard of his choice could teach us some manners.”

“He mentioned letting a different one be the teacher each time. The first one that tried found out that my sword isn’t for show. The second one also learnt the hard way. He left us alone after that. He said that as long as we didn’t try to escape, we would get fed.”

“When we tried to escape again, three weeks ago, one of the arsehole guards put an arrow through Casey’s leg. While she was down one of the other guards tried raping her while I was busy slicing two of them up. I got back to her and brained the fool.”