The Steel Remains полностью

“Oh, no. First things fucking first. We’re going to get the edge off. I’m not looking for a two-minute drunken herder’s fuck out of you, just so you can head off to the ceremonies in fine fucking form. You just fucking lie there and do as you’re told, Clanmaster. I—” In time now with her slow, rippling strokes. “Am going to milk you fucking dry. Just like one of my fucking buffalo, yeah? You like that? Then we’ll see what you can do for me.”

Egar chuckled. “You make me suffer, bitch, you know I’m going to hand it straight back. I’ll have you yowling like a steppe fox.”

Sula lifted one hand from her work, made a flapping mouth with fingers and thumb. “Yeah, yeah—talk, talk. You’re all the fucking same, men. Clanmaster or herdboy, you tell me where’s the fucking difference.”

The clanmaster tipped a meaningful glance around the trappings of the yurt, the rich tapestries and rugs, the brazier in the corner.

“Bit cold to be sneaking out and tumbling herdboys in the grass this time of year, I’d say. That’s one big difference.”

A shadow crossed Sula’s face, a light, watchful tension, and her hands slackened a little in what they were doing. She didn’t know him well enough to read his moods yet, to know rough humor from genuine displeasure, a growl from a drawl. He had to force a smile, stick his tongue out at her and clown the moment away before she eased.

In the end, he had to remind himself. Tits and milkmaid’s fingers notwithstanding, this is just one more foulmouthed Skaranak herdgirl you’ve got here milking your cock for you, Clanmaster.

It made him unaccountably sad. Sula was gorgeous, supple, succulent in his mouth and hands, utterly joyous and abandoned in her fucking. But afterward, afterward . . .

Afterward, as they lay sweat-stuck together, the inescapable truth would seep back in. That Sula was less than half his age, had been nowhere, seen nothing, knew nothing beyond the big sky limits of the steppe—and was eminently content to stay that way. That she had nothing much to say about anything but herding or fucking or the current clan gossip or the endless fucking squabbles of her extended family.

That she could not even read. And—he’d broached the subject once—that she did not much want to learn.

Oh, you were hoping for book-learned pussy, perhaps? Some Yhelteth-bred courtesan with an astrolabe out on the balcony and an illustrated binding of Tales of the Man and the Woman on the table beside the bed?

You were hoping for Imrana, maybe?

Fuck it.

Yeah, fuck it. You can take Sula to Ishlin-ichan when the ceremonies are done. She’ll love that, marching into all those fabric places down Rib Whittle Row with a clanmaster’s purse at her disposal. You can bask in her reflected squealing joy as she buys everything in sight, and call it happiness.

And now she had him up in the near reaches of his own brief joy—the heat of orgasm pulsing and pooling in his groin, the strong-fingered strokes coming shorter and harder, his own grunts and gasps in his ears, his thoughts fading out in the clamor for ecstasy and release.

C’mon, how bad can it be, Clanmaster? As the feeling rushed him, stormed up the column of his prick and he exploded, splashed hot salt white into her hands, and she cackled and smeared it over her throat and breasts and belly with one hand, the other still pumping at him hard. How fucking bad can life be?

“YOU SEEM UNHAPPY, ERGUND.”

“Yeah, well . . .”

Poltar stifled a sigh. He didn’t much like Ergund, any more than he did any of the clanmaster’s other brothers. But they were influential and must be catered for, the more so given Egar’s demonstrated blasphemy and lack of regard for the traditions. And Ergund did at least show a modicum of respect. The shaman put aside his flensing knife, nodded at his acolyte to go on with the work, and wiped his hands clean on a rag. He indicated a curtained alcove at one side of the yurt.

“In here, then. I can spare a few minutes. But the ceremonies are almost upon us, I have to get ready. What is it you need?”

“I, uh.” Ergund cleared his throat. “I had a dream. Last night.”