The Year of the Gods 4/?

[lucky-jack.livejournal.com]

DM/EW
Warning: Some non-consensual sex and high sexual content in some chapters.
An AU story set in British prehistory. Dominic is the son of a tribal chief with the weight of his village’s problems on his shoulders. When Lijah, the rival chief’s son is taken captive, the gods demand that Dominic uses his new slave to appease them.

Marys laughed as she mixed Dominic’s seed with the powdered woad. Semen was often used, when times were lean and meat-fats rare, to mix with the dye and make it adhere to the skin that bit better, but it seemed like poetic justice that Dominic’s should be used to paint the face of this little whore. She looked at Lijah sitting hunched against the wall of the hut, his face hidden in the shadows and only occasionally illuminated by the dance of the flames from the central hearth. He was beautiful, she conceded, but she hoped the gods would tire of him soon and then she could have Dominic to herself again. Well, almost to herself, after all she was Dominic’s mistress and by village law he belonged to his wife Wynn (but she was a dried up old hag that could not produce a strong son and was not worthy of him anyway). Marys glanced over to Wynn as she fussed over her sickly son and sneered.

“That changeling does not want to suck your sour old tits Wynn. Stop tormenting him and help me dress this little bitch”. She nodded towards Lijah and pounded the woaden mixture with doubled force.

Wynn warded off the evil of Marys’ words by spitting on the floor and turned her back. She was not going to lower herself by talking to Dominic’s unworthy mistress, or indeed to her brat of a daughter Ellohal, who with the forwardness of her mother and brute force of her father, was attempting to goad her baby boy into a fit of tears by tweaking his toes hard as he suckled. Instead she watched out of the corner of her eye as Marys approached the captured slave and ordered him to stand with an impatient gesture of her hand and a jerk of her head. Lijah stood, his body now revealed in the swirling light of the smoky, fire-lit room, and Wynn licked her lips in pleasure. He had a lean body but soft and strangely unscarred for a warrior, and his skin had a quality that she had never seen before. Such a creature must have been marked by the gods for this fate at his birth. Wynn tilted her head slightly so that she could examine his face, but his eyes were downcast and he was expressionless as he awaited his next order.

“Look at me”, Marys barked suddenly, breaking Wynn’s concentration and causing the baby at her breast to jerk and open his eyes in fright. “Keep still”.

In the silence of the hut, Marys began to paint a simple design on Lijah’s face before moving to his chest and surrounding his nipples with blue paint in a gross mockery of the female form. Obviously enjoying herself, she crouched down and applied the paint to his inner thighs, swirling patterns that appeared to continue to some inner depth that only the gods knew existed. She chuckled as she painted, a gurgling sound of mockery and mirth that made Wynn’s baby turn its head and mewl.

“Ellohal, fetch me the dress child”. Marys sat back on her heels and rocked as she admired her art work. “Oh that’s good”, she murmured, “Yes, that’s fine”.

Ellohal returned to her mother, the garment held reverentially in her hands. It was a dress she hoped to wear some day, the garment worn by newly married women on the night of their bonding. In fact, so reluctant was she to hand it over to her mother that it had to be wrested from her hands. It was, to Ellohal, a disgrace that such a beautiful robe was to be worn by this …this creature and that he was to be her father’s newest bride because of something the gods had commanded in a ceremony that she had not understood. He was not even a woman and certainly not as pretty as her mother. It was just not fair! She stared up at the slave and found that he was watching her, his blue gaze unwavering and very sad, so sad that it made Ellohal avert her eyes and pretend to be absorbed in watching the flames dance in the hearth.

Marys handed the dress to Lijah. “Put it on”, she commanded.

Lijah hesitated for a second before slowly pulling the garment over his head and letting it settle around his frame. The material was very thin and the blue woaden patterns on his body could be seen as dark shadows behind the folds. Marys allowed her gaze to wander down towards the other dark shadow below his waist. “Shame”, she muttered to herself before turning her attention to the flowers that were gathered in a basket by the entrance to the hut. The next hour was spent in weaving these into the slave’s hair and into the dress itself. The effect at the end of all the hard work and preparation was so startling and pleasing that even Wynn left off from fussing over her baby to laugh in pleasure at the sight before her.

“Well”, declared Marys, “if that doesn’t make the task a little easier for Dominic I don’t know what will”.

“But mother, when father has spent a night with this man, he will come back to you won’t he?” Ellohal asked with real worry in her voice. She was jealous of this stranger and of his usurpation of the rights of her mother. Even Wynn was preferable to this.

Marys’ face clouded. “Your father will lie with the slave until the gods command it girl”, she said sullenly, only adding ‘Or until Danell chooses” under her breath. Realising what she had said might be unlucky and disrespectful, she reached out and grasped the oaken handle of her knife and prayed silently to the gods for forgiveness.

But Ellohal was not to be swayed by the whims of gods she had never met or even seen. She marched over to Lijah, sitting once more against the wall of the hut, and grabbed a fistful of his hair. “I hate you”, she spat. “I don’t think my father will like you. I think he will think you are ugly and it will be like lying with…with a pig”. She twisted the hair in her hand and gave it a spiteful tug but the slave did not call out or utter a sound. This enraged her further. “You are just a slave”, she screamed, kicking him. “You are just a slave and I hate you, I hate you”.

“Stop!”

During his humiliation, Lijah had cut himself off from the world around him. He had stared at the swirls of smoke in the currents of air and had imagined himself disappearing through the roof with them. The despair welling up inside him was all-encompassing and weighed heavily beside his inability to do anything about the situation he was in. So far had he retreated into his own world that he had barely felt the blows landed on his body by the girl that was obviously Dominic’s daughter. Sometimes his mind would drift to Garren and his wellbeing, sometimes to his brother Dafydd lying dead on the grass (at least he had escaped this ordeal), and sometimes to his village and to wondering whether they would assume he was dead (after all, captives were never generally kept alive for long after the initial spoils of battle had been claimed and enacted). But overwhelmingly he was resigned to his fate, to what he must endure for the safety of his son. He expected no mercy and anticipated no kindness in his future. And this is why the calm but imperious voice from the entrance of the hut was so startling to him.

Lijah looked towards the source of the voice and saw a young woman framed in the entrance, her face stern and the full effects of this turned against Ellohal who stood, frozen, watching her. She was not beautiful nor yet was she ugly, but her eyes were bright and stormy blue and filled her whole face with a character and animation that gave her an attractiveness she should not have possessed. She obviously had some power over the occupants of the hut too, because at her command of ‘stop’ they had all gone very still and quiet and cast their eyes away from her as if ashamed. Ellohal let go of Lijah’s hair and ran to her mother, hiding behind her back and burying her face into the nape of her neck.

“This slave has been gifted to us by the gods. It is not for us to use him so”, the stranger gazed at Lijah with curiosity and perhaps a little pity (or was that Lijah’s imagination straining against the stark reality of his position here?). She walked further into the hut and stood over the fire, warming herself against the flames. “Dominic does not want you in here tonight. I am come to tell you”.

Wynn and Marys looked up quickly, their feigned indifference and barely concealed hatred momentarily rising to the surface. “What do you mean? Where are we to go tonight with the children and all?” Marys stared at the woman angrily.

“My father has extended his hospitality to you. And the chief’s invitation must not be refused Marys”. The stranger raised her eyes and glanced at the two women, a barely concealed smile on her face, before returning her gaze to the fire. “Gather your things and go”.

After a moment of silence Marys and Wynn began packing up the items they would need for the night. Gathering their children to them, they swept out of the hut, trailing their ill feeling behind them with their shadows.

Lijah watched this woman as she moved about the hut. He felt drawn to her, to her self-possession, her refusal to goad him and delight in his humiliation. If her father was the chief then she must be Dominic’s sister and so he studied her as one who, in the normal course of his life as it had been, he would have considered an equal. But, he reflected, that life was past now and he should not dwell on it. The woman, and she could only have been about eighteen, was busy readying the sleeping area, laying out the furs and making ready for her brother to….Lijah immediately felt a shock of fear and nausea as he realised what the bed was being readied for. For Dominic. For him. For them to be together. He squeezed his eyes closed and thought of his son.

“Are you cold?” The soft voice shook him out of his reverie and he looked up to meet the stranger’s gaze.

Lijah shook his head. “No, I’m warm”. He had not imagined it. There was kindness and empathy in the woman’s gaze and he felt a great sense of relief wash over him. “My son Garren”, he blurted out in the midst of these feelings, regretting it immediately. “Is he safe? Is he being well looked after?”

“He is in my father’s hut”, she replied, cocking her head to look at him. After watching him intently for a few seconds, she relented. “He is being very well cared for. Danell has told us that, as the kin of a chieftain he is good luck for the village. If you…if you comply then no harm will come to him. Quite the contrary”.

Lijah exhaled a breath of pure pent up anxiety. “Thank you”.

The woman nodded and made her way to the entrance of the hut. “I am Berren”, she confided. “Dominic is my brother. He…” She paused as if trying to find the right words. “Dominic is a good man and is slave to the gods and to our father, much as you are slave to them. Please, remember that. Don’t judge him too harshly.”

Lijah could only watch as she turned her back and left the hut, his only shield between himself and the fate that awaited him. Once she had gone he stared down at himself in the dress and reached up to feel the flowers in his hair. How had he got here? How had he offended the gods? He felt shame at his nakedness and shame at what he had had to do that night in the confines of their stone circle. Lijah remembered the feel of the men thrusting themselves into his mouth, their hands wandering over his body and the sound of their laughter as they mocked him. And he would have to endure this night after night, day after day? He would have to crouch down to piss like a woman? And serve the men at the feast? And spend his time feeding and bathing the children when really he should be hunting and fighting and drinking? Yes he would have to do it all. For Garren, he would have to do it.

Concentrated as he was on his thoughts, Lijah had not noticed the figure standing in the entrance of the hut. The shock brought him to his feet. Dominic was here.

Lijah watched the figure that held such terror and fascination for him enter the hut. Dominic walked around the wall away from him and was lost on the far side of the fire, hidden amongst the shadows that lurked there, his form only a haze against the pall of smoke. But still Lijah watched him as a creature caught in a net might watch a fox. He waited for him to speak, to acknowledge him, to demand something of him, but nothing happened. Instead, Dominic poured himself some mead and began to drink.

Motioning through the haze of the fire, Dominic gestured to a container on the floor a little way from Lijah. “Drink”, he said, his voice uneven and rough sounding.

“What?” Elijah hesitated, trying to see the man’s features in the shadows, but to no avail.

“I said drink”.

Slowly, Lijah pulled himself across to the container and pulled out the stopper. He took a mouthful of the warm, sweet liquid and swallowed it. He felt it burn down inside him, fortifying him in some way and comforting him with its familiarity. He took another gulp and then another, watching as Dominic matched him mouthful for mouthful. The tension in the air grew until Lijah thought he would burst from the anticipation, it was so unbearable. Dominic must have felt it to, because he left his seat and walked round the fire.

Lijah watched him as he approached, his features emerging from the shadows, the same eyes as his sister only stormier, more dangerous, trained on him and him alone. He noticed that Dominic’s tunic was open, his chest tattooed and scarred. Slowly Dominic walked towards Lijah as if being drawn there reluctantly by some spell, some whispering of the gods, until Lijah could bear it no more. “Don’t toy with me”, he demanded, his voice hoarse and uncertain. “Just do what you have come to do”.

With a flash of thunder in his eyes and a quickness that stunned and awed Lijah, Dominic flew at him, crushing him against the wall of the hut and squeezing the breath from his lungs.

“Do you not understand?” hissed Dominic through gritted teeth, his face only a fraction from Lijah’s. “I have to do this. I have to”. As if shocked by his own outburst, Dominic stepped away, releasing Lijah from his grip. He stumbled backwards and Lijah noticed for the first time that he was drunk. “You stand there so…so fucking beautiful…and you don’t understand”.

Dominic and Lijah gazed at each other in confusion and fear. “I must do this”, whispered Dominic. And again, “You don’t understand”.