The Steel Remains полностью

He’d watched the sky for weeks after his encounter with Kelgris, gnawing on his hate and his lurid dreams of vengeance. The Dwellers make their will known for those with eyes to look above, his father had schooled him, long before Poltar had properly understood that he, too, would one day wear the wolf-eye robe. Where other men see only to the rim of the world, you must learn to look beyond. You must look to the sky.

Deeds followed words not long after—Olgan was a shaman in the old tradition, and he intended his son to one day wear his robes with the same conviction. From his father, Poltar learned the seasons and moods of the Sky Road, its colors and the sparks that Urann’s iron-shod steed sometimes struck from its surface when the Gray Master rode in haste from the Sky Home to earth or back. He learned why the band might wrap itself in cloud and hide, why it would at other times stand clear and bright from horizon to horizon like a promise in shimmering gold. Learned the humor of storms and the visiting aurora, what they intended and whose business they were habitually about, learned the meaning of each wind across the steppe and what it could tell those with ears to listen. He learned where to find the sky iron, to know when it was most likely to fall to earth, and in what season it could be safely touched. He learned the names and the tales and the invocations and once, when he was still very young, he saw his father raise Takavach the Many Faced from the surface of a crystal mirror tilted to face the darkening eastern sky at dusk.

Look to the sky.

But for weeks, the sky had given him nothing.

And then Ergund came to call.

“MY BROTHER ERGUND?” EGAR FROWNED, NOT REALLY FOLLOWING THE sudden digression, not really wanting to. “Well, why should he? Pay you respect, I mean? You’re barely sixteen, and you’re a milkmaid, for Urann’s sake. You’re nothing to him.”

“To him, maybe not, or to that clamp-mouthed bitch wife of his. That’s not the point.” Sula laced fingers that had until a moment ago been otherwise—and better—employed, and sat back where she straddled him just above the knees. The view was superb—she was naked but for bangles and the bone-carved necklace he’d given her a couple of weeks ago. But above it all, her face had turned suddenly sulky. “Ergund knows damn fucking well what I am to you. Fuck it, I was on my sky-fisted way to your fucking yurt when I passed him. And, like I said, he just fucking shoves right past me, without a sky-shat word. Piece of shit wouldn’t even fucking look at me. Face all fucking screwed up like he’s pissed off about something I’ve fucking done to him.”

Egar sighed. His abruptly untended erection slackened, flopped sideways across his thigh. He reached out for the rice wine flask by his head, swigged at it, grimaced and swallowed.

“Look, he’s probably just jealous,” he said. “I doubt he ever had his hands on a pair of tits as gorgeous as yours his whole fucking life.”

That seemed to work. Sula sat forward again with a grin, tilted her shoulders at him, side-to-side, and back again. Like most of his conquests, she was a well-endowed girl. Her breasts swung heavily in the warm, speckled light from the yurt’s iron-mesh brazier. A coiling snake tattoo she had from collarbone to cleavage seemed to wriggle on her flesh with the motion. She licked her lips.

“Yeah, and a wife with a mouth closed that fucking tight won’t be much for blow jobs, either, right?” She chortled delightedly. “Bet he’s lucky if he gets three of those in a fucking year.”

“Strictly feast nights only,” agreed Egar, reaching up and cupping a callused hand to each of the breasts under discussion. He thumbed the thick, rope-end nipples back and forth, squeezed gently at the jellied weight with his palms. Dropped another broad hint. “And of course, she’s a woman of leisure, so, you know, probably got no strength at all in her fingers like you have.”

Sula’s eyes smeared wide with renewed lechery. She put her hands back on him, gathered up his prick, and began to work it slowly up and down. Ahhh, milkmaid’s fingers. He felt himself slam back to fully erect in seconds. Sula felt it, too, grinned again, leaned down and brushed one breast softly back and forth across the head of his prick, then across his face. He gaped after the nipple, twisting his head to catch it and suck it in, heaved up and grabbed after her hips. She swayed sharply back up and shook her head.