His breath caught in his throat. Something small and itchy, maybe a stray drop of snot, quivered at the tip of his nose. The situation he found himself in completely overwhelmed him.
There were two of them. Almost identical in build and color. They moved around him with the quick, soft steps of professional murderers. Their restless hands roamed over his bare torso and back, feeling and assessing him like meat at a butcher's. One of them, whom he mentally started calling Black Strawberry, took an interest in his wild fox bone pendant. The other unceremoniously jabbed the handle of a whip between his shoulder blades and brushed his nipples with a gloved hand. "Will he do?" she casually asked Strawberry. "Who knows? I guess we'll have to check the front," the queried one laughed, then quickly drew a small knife from its sheath, which was instantly pressed against his pants.
"Are you taking them off yourself, or should we cut the belt and you can run around with your ass bare later, little fox?" she rasped into his ear.
He felt dizzy. For a moment, he didn't believe his own body and fumbled with his belt, then he heard a quiet whistle and cackle as his member, for some inexplicable reason almost fully erect, emerged from his sliding pants. "He'll do," repeated the one with the whip, this time to him, and slipped her tongue into his ear.
***
At that moment of dawn, which is the coldest and therefore best for sleeping, the goat Zenobee scraped her right front hoof on the ground, carefully watching the sleeping boy. His disheveled dark-blonde mane had blades of straw and brittle clumps of dry earth in it. He was comically smacking his lips. The goat made a short turn, took a small running start for emphasis, and jumped straight onto his chest.
Sleep fled him in an instant, caught and lifted into oblivion along with the air coughed out from his crushed torso. The boy cried out in surprise, sat bolt upright, and instinctively shoved Zenobee off with all his might. She, letting out a satisfied "baa," quickly ran towards the village, knocking over and spilling the milk bucket. She cast a piercing glance from her bulging yellow eye over her shoulder, then, bouncing off the roof of a low lean-to, leaped over the palisade surrounding the settlement and disappeared into the thickets. The awakened boy groaned and rolled his eyes. He would have to bring her back before Penky and Hoyk noticed their absence. Those two never missed an opportunity to kick him – physically and verbally.
He rolled onto his side, pushed himself up on his hands, and stood up from his knees. He slapped his hands against his pants. He took a deep breath and turned over his shoulder, heading towards the settlement gate. At this hour, he had a chance to sneak through without attracting attention. One of the sentries would be asleep, or barely conscious, relieving himself from the palisade outside. And Dorky had long practiced moving silently and being unnoticed. Being an orphan, and a scrawny, somewhat too gullible and prone to dreamy wandering of thought one at that, didn't earn him popularity among his peers.
He moved close to the walls of the huts, diligently built from baked clay, sealed with straw, with fitted shutters and wooden doors. The settlement was doing well since the Orcs had turned on each other and left the other inhabitants of these dangerous lands alone. Dorky had a vague idea of their customs, but something vaguely reminded him that when one of the clans grew strong and an unstoppable warrior emerged who had no one left to compete with, they challenged the Orc King himself. Then the proud Clans went for each other's throats and waged internal war. Such a situation had occurred several moons earlier. Humans and other peoples, hitherto tormented by constant raids and abductions, could finally breathe a sigh of relief… to a certain extent.
In the absence of the males, their habitats and offspring were guarded by Orc-women, who enjoyed almost as bad a reputation as their massive and violence-prone menfolk. While they were not allowed to declare and wage wars on their own, no one blamed them for organizing small hunts for potential slaves. Several young people, boys and girls from Dorky's settlement, had disappeared in recent months. So far, none of them had returned home. The mere thought sent a shiver down his spine. He involuntarily clenched his buttocks and looked around to ensure no one was watching him.
A suddenly opened shutter almost hit him in the head. He instinctively and swiftly ducked, eyes wide open, with an involuntary snort that he stifled with the back of his hand. Slowly, he began to move in a crouch below the line of sight of the person standing at the window. Just when he almost felt he had succeeded, someone's hand suddenly grabbed his ear, and another his hair, and he was pulled upright. He didn't immediately see the face of the person who had caught him, however. Turned away, he observed a pair of magnificent breasts, covered only by a thin white blouse, resting on the dewy, wide, smooth windowsill. He thought he would like to be pulled between these materials, hard and soft, heavy, forcibly subjected to anything, helpless and ready.
A grunt brought him back to reality. Celine – the hunter's widow – let go of his hair and ears, patted his cheeks, and now held his hands on his shoulders. "My eyes are up here, you blockhead. How many times do I have to tell you that you owe me respect. Re-spect. For an old lady!" she said not very loudly. In his opinion, she wasn't an old lady at all, but a beautiful specimen of natural health and wonderful entry into maturity, worthy of many tender words and caresses, especially in the décolletage area. "Dorky, you idiot, stop staring!" she said drawlingly, resignedly. "You look a mess, you're dirty, and you smell of goats. You should be looking for girls your age instead of giving me those puppy dog eyes. Listen, my young man. In a moment I'll give you an apple and milk to drink. Then you'll go and wash yourself at the well. I'm on duty at the hearths today, so drop by later and I'll leave you something decent to eat. Understood?" she continued quite amicably and understandingly. "Yes. I mean, thank you, Celine. I wasn't staring, it's just that you have such, well, a mosquito just landed there," he stammered, shifting his gaze several times between the oval of her face and laughing eyes, and her breasts, now lifted from the windowsill. He blushed and swore to himself that one day he would muster the courage to talk to her like a real man. Meanwhile, he accepted the apple, drank the milk from the clay jug in one gulp, and returned it to the kind woman, who waved lightly goodbye and disappeared into the shadows of the room. And then, no longer disturbed, he finally slipped out of the settlement.
He had already managed to calm his breathing and heart rate. He looked around carefully and walked quickly, because the path clearly marked with Zenobee's droppings, through a mixture of low olive trees and stunning yellow forsythia, was well known to him and quite comfortable. The goat had run away more than once, and he expected that this time too she would stop to graze on one of the steeper fields of thyme and thorny bushes above the bed of the stream, dry at this time of year, not too far from the settlement. However, that did not happen. The animal, seeing Dorky approaching, snorted, trotted two circles, and leaving a large pile of fresh droppings, jumped across the stream with a grace worthy of a better cause, then ran up the scree path between the rocks on the other side and disappeared from his sight.
The boy swore and sped up. Before the stream, he turned left, as he didn't dare to jump there. The problem wasn't even the distance, but the slope of the terrain and the loose ground on the other side, which could make him lose his balance and slide into a deep chasm many meters down, where tangled, hard roots waited for him between smooth, eroded boulders. He quickly ran the distance separating him from the nearest safe narrow point, flanked on both sides by terraces of flat, gray-orange rock, and lightly jumped to the other side. Something chilled him upon landing. He would have sworn that something moved in the bushes at the top of the rock wall, which now stretched above him. He felt a mixture of milk and apples rise to his throat, and the most terrifying stories of Orcish abductions returned with full force, amplified by youthful imagination. In truth, no one knew the details, because no one had ever returned. However, this did not prevent speculation, as it is often the unknown that seems so dangerously attractive.
He stood there for a moment, undecided, once again that day calming himself and concluding that he had actually been lucky so far, so why should it abandon him this time? And anything could have moved in the bushes. A magpie, a jackdaw, a wild pig, or a large lizard. Why an Orc-woman, of all things? Slowly, he moved along the edge of the stream to the place where he had lost sight of Zenobee, occasionally glancing furtively at the rock wall towering above him, but he saw nothing. Why. An Orc-woman. Of all things.
The sun began to operate with all its relentless power, heating the orange earth, rocks, and vegetation. Heated, fragrant herbs slowly released their aromatic oils, carried by the pulsating air directly into the boy's nostrils. Notes of thyme and oregano brought to mind good, nutritious food. He licked his salty lips and began cautiously to climb the scree, avoiding steep clusters of loose stones. After a few minutes, he reached a natural crack in the rock. He ran his fingers through his hair and entered the cool of the narrow, damp passage, which the sun barely reached at all. He had only seen this passage maybe twice in his life, because no one in their right mind ventured so far unless they were a seasoned warrior or a merchant with a strong escort. There were no warriors in the settlement, and even fewer merchants, because it wasn't profitable to venture into such distant frontiers. The poor inhabitants, being farmers or gatherers, rarely had anything to pay for the goods they needed. In addition, these regions were widely considered dangerous. Dorky had seen the last traveling merchant over two years ago. It was a shame, because he liked to admire their goods, weapons, and listen to stories of distant journeys. He himself would gladly take up such a trade, instead of constantly herding goats and being at the beck and call of all the stronger boys in the settlement.
He was nearing the end of the passage, where it became much wider. Several large boulders lay scattered haphazardly on the ground of clay and smaller stones. Walking on this ground released crunchy, rustling sounds that echoed off the walls. The pleasant coolness and draft brought him relief. Suddenly, a large drop of water, detached from a rock ledge, fell onto his eyelid. He blinked. He looked up. He shifted his gaze forward and froze.
When they put the rope around his neck, and tied his belt and hands, folded as if in prayer but behind his back, he felt everything clearly, only his legs felt strange, like soft dough. Suddenly, he felt hot, sleepless, and the exhaustion of the whole day. He wanted to faint, to fall asleep, to die quickly. The thought that he would probably end up roasted over a fire, or tortured, or even worse, terrified and froze him. Bound and prepared for the journey, he was lightly pushed forward, almost falling onto the stones, but he found strength somewhere to maintain his balance and meekly moved forward. The handle of the whip, so precisely jabbed exactly between his shoulder blades, periodically set his pace, and the whistle and crack of carelessly struck elements of the landscape revealed what awaited him if he tried to use his unbound legs to escape. He was ashamed of his reaction to his pants being pulled down. What was he imagining? That they would immediately, the two of them, perhaps caress him? That would be quite… undignified, abnormal! After all, he's a perfectly normal boy who likes normal girls and women. He shook his head. These were females. Women? He looked at the fitted shorts of thin leather, pulled over a considerable backside of ideal proportions, moving in rhythm with quick steps, just in front of him. He had time to examine all the lines and curves well. He looked greedily at the green, muscular legs in laced sandals. He saw slightly pearling sweat on her thighs, especially on their inner side. But actually, he probably had a right to feel strange. Females… His member stiffened in his pants once again. When he tried awkwardly to hide it, wriggling and pressing against it with his leg as he walked, he stumbled and fell to the ground. The whip cracked at the same moment, cutting his shirt on his back and burning his skin like boiling oil.
"On your feet, fox," growled the one who hit him. So he quickly scrambled to his feet, trying not to sob.
They moved on, into the unknown. A nearby goat, with her front hooves resting on a boulder resembling the face of a laughing old man, watched slyly and chewed laurel leaves.
***
That day, working in the kitchen, Celine long and in vain looked out for the boy, wondering where he might be. It was only late at night that an overwhelming feeling woke her, that something terrible had happened. She blew on the embers in the hearth, took a torch, and went to look for him in the stables where he usually slept, but there was no trace of him. The next day, after a short search, the goat Zenobee was found by the stream, but no trace of Dorky. Aside from the widow, no one was particularly bothered by the young shepherd's disappearance. They were used to it. In the evening, she prayed long and fervently that the gods of luck and jokes would look favorably upon him, and then, with a sigh, she went to sleep. A few moons later, no one remembered him. Meanwhile, Dorky was doing not so badly…