Chapter One

 

The first stiff cock I ever saw was that of a goblin. I woke to find the heavy strain of it right there at my face, looking to plunge into my shocked mouth, its ready yearning already stringing a silver thread toward my chin. Demonic eyes glowed hungrily down at me through night's gloom. Gnarly hands gripped my hair, whilst the heat and scent of bestial desire was like a fiendish enchantment that held me in thrall. I'll not forget the dark thrill that swept me as my royal cheeks took the full hit of his hot spatter.

It was blood, thankfully. Shooting straight from the ruptured vessels that fed the creature's twisted heart, my trusty bonds-maid Runa having speared him right through the chest. She then hurled him across the room, sliding him off her spear and into the great hearth that roars all night to keep the bitter chill of this ever-wintered realm from my bed chamber. He hissed and crackled a bit before bursting into a shower of green sparks, as goblins are wont to do. I was glad. The last fiend Runa had chucked into the flames had roasted for hours and stunk to fuck.

The second erect prick I witnessed was even more unwelcome. It belonged to Torben Oveson-he whom many call The Prince of No God. I, to my shame, call him brother. He and that deviant prick of his are the cause of everything: why my life is no longer my own; why I may not marry the person I choose when or if I choose; why I had to slog through three days of blizzard to be in this strange realm this evening, all for the dubious chance to be picked above the other desperate suitors here to be the wife of Jaromir-the gore-guzzling warrior prince known to his black-hearted northern kinsmen as Vulkalak, the Werewolf.

Yet win him I must. The fate of my family depends upon it. Sassa Bloodchild is my name, after a mother who fought every day until she died, squeezing me out. Eldest daughter to King Ove, son of the famed Sørgen Knotbeard. Sibling to three sorry half-sisters and one half-brother-that perverted cunt Torben. Princess they call me, but don't ever let that fool you.

My people came from the north. We brought with us our raging fires, our sagas, our monsters. We sailed first down the coast, raiding and trading-in furs and silver, but mostly in slaves. Next, we surged inland on rivers. We defeated, we threatened, we forged alliances. We did anything to gain us greater riches and land than we had left behind.

Better warriors than us seized the more fertile spoils, so we pulled our furs tighter around us and pushed on, heading eventually back north again, into the colder, meaner, howling Sheet-lands where the darker souls lived. Here the most vicious creatures and demons and revenants had also been driven. Our assistance in a great battle brought victory and fame. It earned my father a large tribute in gold and a swathe of the Sheet-lands to rule over, for what it was worth. He immediately styled himself konungr-high king-although in truth he remains a jarl, an earl. That wasn't going to stop my father.

He let the power possess him. His drόttning-his queen, his second wife since my mother died-is even worse. As mad as she is alluring, she can be found screaming naked into fires, or drunkenly scrabbling atop feasting tables trying to bite people, or down on all fours in the woods at dawn, snuffling and snorting in her hunt for her favorite kind of mushroom.

It was she who forced the brooding horde whose lands we'd seized to burst their hearts hauling stone and wood to strengthen the fortress we had taken from their slain chieftain, all for protection against them. It ensured that bloody revenge would forever bubble in their veins.

Between them, she and my father also gave us Torben. The demon was in him from the start. Before he'd even been taken on his first raid, he'd be doing things like forcing sticks up rat's arses and running around the village brandishing them, trying to put them up the girl's skirts. He tried it on me once. I punched him in the stomach and used my boot to hold his face down in the resulting vomit. I think that's when his crush on me began.

His succession to the throne, once the thankful crows are pecking out my father's eyes, is not assured. Actual kings might decide this, if the sword and axe haven't already done so. A good marriage would certainly help, aligning our family with the house of a powerful other realm. In these parts as in many others, such a match is more likely if the proof of strength and fighting prowess and masculinity can be displayed. That is how I came to see Torben's erect cock.

In these harsh Lands of the Dark Gods there is a custom. Once they come of age, eldest sons must prove their virility in front of witnesses-who may then attest to his prowess and the strength of his coursing blood. It is certainly not the custom of our people, yet twisted Torben still insisted upon it. An easier spectacle to stomach it might have been had my brother not purposefully fixed me with his lustful leer, never once taking his eyes off me as he slapped against the rear end of the chosen concubine; had he refrained from loudly snarling throughout,

"This will be us, sister, I swear it!"

Even in these parts they draw lines. If his foul reputation hadn't already done so, this open insight into his perverted mind decided that any maid of noble standing would rather cut a hole in the ice sheet and plunge headlong into the breath-stop waters before they ever consented to wear his ring.

What is all this to me? It means little prospect of my father gaining a decent dowry through his only son's marriage. It means far less chance of our family being able to buy allegiances or the mercenary fighters we will need if we are to hold onto this realm and to our lives. Because my brother is a ravening pervert, my father must look to me instead to bring him advantages. And because dowries are demanded, it means my father must first pay out heavily for me before the hope of getting anything back. Unless, of course, he can find a suitor too rich and vainglorious to demand such wedding payments...

 

"Treasure will not secure me for a husband," the wolf-prince Jaromir declares, glaring lustily around this feasting hall at the two dozen or more of us flush-cheeked females hoping to catch his eye. "My wife must be way more than a giver of land or silver plate. She must be exceptional. She must have no match anywhere!"

He looks like he is fixing to gobble one or all of us up-a roomful of girls shifting in their seats, trying to sate the itch, trying to force out caught breaths. His effect is like petrified yearning. I can smell it in the air mixing with the woodsmoke, seeping from us all. He is disarmingly handsome, I cannot deny it, especially in this flicker light. He stands as tall and wide as any man. The shoulders and arms are as thickly powerful as a bear's. The hands are said to have crushed skulls. The vertical scar on the right cheek tells of violence and victory, of safety at his side.

The orange dance of the fire is caught in his intense brown eyes to add to the look of feral hunger. If indeed he is a werewolf his fur must be on the inside, for apart from the thick black mane falling to the shoulders, the rest of his face and stripped torso is smoothly free of hair. There is a sign of curls below the taut belly, down where his leggings have had the laces untied and loosened, ready to be hauled around the thighs. Soon, we know, we will see him in all his glory.

He is here to show himself off. We are gathered from far and wide to learn what we must do to win his hand. In turn he will demonstrate what a prize he is. In moments we will bear witness as he invokes old customs and plunders the cunny of the slave bent expectant over the feasting table before him. The intent is to have us gasping at his virility, the sheer rigidity of him, his stamina and skill. The proof of it will be seen glistening on his fat shaft and dripping off his balls.

The jangle of nerves and impatience has me uneasy. Saliva gathers thickly and I'm having to swallow, over and over. For all of us, the fear of being his wife will be matched only by the fear of missing out on him. And then his leggings come down and it is out: proud and thick and ready. More ready than my heart proves, even though it knew this moment was coming.

He thrusts his hips forward and grasps his cock like the hilt of a sword. I can almost feel the heat and pulse of it at my palm. Whimpers and gasps escape all around me. He sneers his satisfaction.

"Is that all you've got, pig-fucker?"

This mumbled slur from the shadows behind, back where the servants and our guardians are stationed, has me jumping even though it was said so low that surely only I could hear. Prince Jaromir Wolfskin did not, that is for certain. His leering continues as he runs his hand boastfully up and down his shaft, encouraging still more blood there, encouraging our need for him. Despite the shock voice from behind, I cannot wrench my eyes off the scene before me.

Then Jaromir is behind the slave girl. He throws the skirts up over her back and grasps her bare hips. Two dozen maidens suck in their breaths and grip their seats, frozen in awed anticipation as he feeds himself into the slave's defenseless body. Her head snaps back, her eyes roll, and her mouth falls opens in a long wail as he fills her. Every one of us girls is trying to recall the fingers-and in my case the stone pestle usually used to grind herbs-that we have in our time thrust up inside ourselves. We are hoping to imagine even a hint of the bliss this girl is clearly feeling now, stretched and stuffed though she might be.

That pestle broke my maidenhead a while back. It has seen countless visits to my bedside since. As much as Jaromir is here to show his sexual prowess, any bride he chooses will be obliged to prove her previous innocence. Don't tell my father, but on the slightest chance that the Wolfskin picks me, the lack of blood on the marital sheets from that part of my body is going to lead to a deluge from the rest of it, as I am sliced down the middle where I lay to swiftly annul the marriage in no uncertain terms.

Jaromir slowly withdraws, making sure we all know what is coming before ramming home his first thrust. The force of it ripples through the slave's rump. The lewd sound has all us girls pushing down into our seats, searching for contact. Whimpers escape from all sides. Hearts rush and mine with them. Blood throbs achingly in those parts one can only touch when alone.

It is difficult to know why it is so enthralling. Perhaps because as high-born, supposedly pure daughters, we are sorely deprived of immersing in the kind of filth all others seem to wallow in-and this just looks so bestial, so thrillingly rude. Or because all of us have known a surprise raid that had us close to taking just such a ravishment; the last thing we would have known before our throats were slit.

Maybe it is just the heat of competition. However vulgar he is, for this horror of a man to pick you above all others would still be a triumph to bask in. To be proven as the best girl here, the fairest, the one he most wants to fuck. It is stirring some instinct in all of us, no matter how noble we claim to be.

He has the slave's hair wound around both hands as he thrusts in and out of her, like he is riding a horse at a gallop. He snarls and sneers through gritted teeth. The otherwise-silence of night heightens the crackle of the fire and the hiss of the flaming torches all around; the breathy panting of the onlookers; the loud slaps of her arse. Our imagination racing, we watch in wonder and trepidation, in excitement and in hope as he pumps the slave to an almost agony of ecstasy, judging by her wails and her screwed-up face. Then he roars his own finish and pulls out of her still iron stiff, still leeching his seed.

He lets us soak up his display, his fiery eyes raking us and silently daring anyone to doubt even for a moment that he isn't the most potent man in all the lands north of the Half-Ice Sea. He knows the effect he has had.

"I will choose my bride at the Feast of the Blood Moon," he informs us, "out of those who join me at Volch'ye Logovo, my fortress. And any who come must come alone!"

That causes a stir of consternation. Most of the prospective brides around me already believe their hopes now dashed, since no promises or threats would see them begin to contemplate roaming the Sheet-lands with nothing but their own courage and skills as protection.

"Such a journey is beyond impossible!" gasps one guardian from the shadows behind. "None could last half a day out there by themselves, let alone a whole moon-phase!"

"No daughter of mine," calls out another, with anger, "will be made a sacrifice to a gorging strigoi just to nourish your wicked vanity!"

"Fuck off then," a stony Jaromir retorts, his prick still oozing a thin string of seed and showing no sign of flagging, "and take your sobbing bitch offspring with you. I said my bride must be exceptional and I meant it. I aim to breed sons with the heart to conquer worlds, not just kingdoms. Any woman who lets herself get eaten by some half-rotted blood demon deserves to die, not become my wife."

Strange, I find myself wearing a thin smile, like I'm seeing things his way. It betrays a twisted amusement at all these greedy, posturing prospective fathers-of-the-bride who came here to claim a prize, yet instead have come to see their precious daughters condemned to certain death. No one could cross the Sheet-lands alone. Whole armies get decimated out there.

"My lord," I say, unabashed as always, "could we not take along our handmaiden? You want a royal bride yet surely you do not expect a princess to carry all her own supplies for such a long trip, to cook her own food, to wipe and clean herself?"

I am perfectly capable, of course, of doing any wiping I need, if the mood takes me. It is a ruse. If I'm going into a fight, I want Runa at my back. Jaromir glares at my audacity at speaking up, the muscles at his jaw twitching. I look straight back, unblinking, eyebrows arched in nonchalance. Of all the girls here, I'm the only one he's been made to notice.

"One handmaiden then," he agrees, his eyes lingering on mine. "But that is all. And now you know my whim, let us feast!" He grabs his horn beaker and messily drains it in one go, the blood-red wine dribbling down either side of his mouth, bringing to mind a be-fanged draugr, gorging at a victim's neck. "More!" he cries, slamming his beaker on the table.

"Insufferable prick!" comes the surly slur from behind. I'd forgotten about this mystery voice, what with all the excitement. The owner of it comes out of the gloom behind, stinking of drink, barging me aside on his way towards the head table where Jaromir now sits. This new fellow is as big as the Wolf Prince, dressed as black as the lank hair that almost covers his face. I glimpse only stubble and a patch covering one eye. He passes, one hand behind his back. And that's when I see the dagger slip blade-first down from its hiding place in the sleeve, now gripped ready to throw.

Jaromir, the ice-hearted yet intriguing possible werewolf who sure fucks like a beast, the potential one and only savior of my family, is about to be assassinated. I signal the danger in haste to Runa, never far from my side. She knows exactly what to do. Our two-pronged attack is instant. Runa reaches up to grab the lank hair and halt forward progress before pressing the blade of her own dagger to the side of Eyepatch's neck. One deft slice will see red fountains spurt-a thought to send a tingle right through me.

For my part, I am swiftly around the front, grasping at the assassin's crotch-something I've always wanted to do-and squeezing hard. I show him my blade and let him watch as I steer it purposefully down towards the handful of his meat I'm clutching. He knows one unwise move will see him lose it for good. Oddly, rather than the terror I expect to see on his face, there is instead a hint of a smile through the twin drapes of his hair. I can feel the heat of him through the material of his leggings. I have to open my grip some to contain his swell.

It's me who's blinking with surprise, but I pull myself together and increase my grip again to cut off his blood supply there.

"I'm not about to let you kill my future husband," I hiss at the assassin, looking and sounding as steely as I feel.

He peers down at me with that one unpatched, disarmingly blue eye. Despite the imminent threat to both neck and manhood, his face still shows mirth, the swell only increasing at my palm, warmer still.

"I wasn't going to," he says, all measured calm, "as much as I despise him. I was, however, going to kill that servant just about to pour your precious prince a beaker of wine laced with poison."

If it's a ruse to distract, it works. I turn swiftly, eyes widening as I behold the servant bent to pour, see Jaromir's hand already grasping the beaker in readiness to down the contents in one. One gulp will be all it takes. Then it will be a few short moments before the poison takes hold and burns his insides. With the servant having slipped back into the shadows, the Wolf Prince, my father's one chance of securing the funds he so needs to protect us from the ever more vengeful enemy surrounding our home, will be feasting in the next world.