WHY THE ADVENTURER
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
I could almost feel his approach as he entered our village. It was like an electrical charge in the air, like something exciting was about to happen. So I set down my knife where I had been working at the kitchen table (not cooking, I was working a section of leather into a pair of rough shoes for myself) and went to the door to see if I could get a glimpse at whatever was sending everyone into such a frenzy. I opened the top half of the door and looked out...and my heart was lost at once.
His armor was of the golden, elaborate silver-washed iron of the ancient warriors of Oparia, some stolen booty from that long-conquered land. It had seen hard use since that time as well, being dented in three places and banged out afterwards, slopped with mud on both shin greaves, stained with other less identifiable substances on two other places, one of which may well have been Orcish blood. The wearer, though, was who caught my eyes truly, sitting astride his saur mount as though born to the saur-saddle, and his gleaming body shining in the sun where it was exposed to it, his arms, his neck, his face and head. I looked for the Oparian wolves'-head helmet that would go with this armor, did not see it. His face was large, square and solid, a scar made a fine, perfectly straight line of paler flesh on his left cheek, and that only added to his masculinity. Wavy brown hair, steely-stern gray eyes, straight, regal nose, cleft chin, an easy smile that he turned on each in turn as he waved to left, then to right, then left again. Master of his own fate, captain of his own destiny, in control of his own future in a way that I, weighed down by obligations and limited by lack of funds to this village, this land, this life. So I gazed upon him in undisguised admiration, envy and desire, in part because he lived a life far freer than any I had ever known or dared to dream of, in part because he earned in that life a fortune far greater than any I had ever seen or dared to aspire to, and in part because he was a large, handsome, magnificent man far...
I guillotined that thought as he looked at me, with that smile upon his face and as he looked, his smile seemed to grow larger, warmer, deeper, then he turned on and the smile faded and I looked after him, and he actually turned his head back to look my way again after he had ridden past and I waved madly at him once again.
"He's seen you then!" My mother noted beside me. I hadn't known she was there, though of course she'd been in the kitchen near me when I'd first noticed his coming. "Was that who I think it was?"
I'd heard the voice a half-dozen times, screamed either at him or about him. "That is Mecaster of Desmendome. They say he killed a dozen Orcs at the Battle of Three Rivers two years ago." That was from my own knowledge after I'd heard the name. "They say he's gathered a hundred fortunes from a hundred ancient treasuries, and taken it all back to Desmendome with him at the conclusion of each year's campaigns. He must be on his way back to the Blasted Lands to seek yet more treasure."
"If he has a hundred fortunes already, he's probably not seeking more." was my mother's casual and eminently practical evaluation of that."
"Well, he's headed to the east, Mother." I pointed out.
"He's got a ways yet to go in that case." Mother said. "But you'd better nip on down to the pub and see if he wants to take supper with us tonight. Tell him I'm making a rich, hearty, clevek-meat stew, just like his mother would make for him." What she meant was that he could entertain us with stories of his exploits during and after the meal.
I was tugging on my old shoes and heading out the door. Mecaster would be besieged by such offers long before I could get there, but it would let me look at him again, linger around him for his stories. And maybe, if I was lucky, I could convince the tavern-keeper to sell me a pint of beer for the two coppers I had in my pouch, and let me pay the other three to him at a later date....
Mecaster was indeed at the tavern and holding court from a seat next to the fireplace. There was no fire in this warm weather, but the fireplace made a natural location to hold court for such as he. He was swinging his beer mug like a sword, or was it a shield, and regaling the listeners with a harrowing tale of a battle within the depths of an Orcish Clan's caverns, in which he and his troupe had been badly outnumbered and were trapped on a ledge, with only a near-bottomless pit if they took a misstep during the battle.
"The only thing that saved us was that as the Orcs fell, they blocked their own path to get to us. After I had stacked up five of them atop each other, we had ourselves a barricade they could not get across until they tossed the bodies down the chasm, and we took that pause that it gave us to get to better ground where...." He sloshed his tankard a bit too heartily and it sloshed a young man to one side. "Oh, sorry, there! Get yourself another drink on me, this time in a mug!"
Everyone laughed and he saw me there wanting to speak to him. "And what are you wanting?" he asked, not unkindly.
"My parents' courtesy, sir, and would you care to take supper with us tonight? My mother is making a clevek-meat stew, and promises you will enjoy it."
"Clevek-meat stew?" One of the sons of a more prominent family scoffed. "He can and will eat much better than that at our family's table!" He turned to his friends and repeated the words in a tone inviting them to join in. "Clevek-meat stew! Haw!"
I had lost and knew it and looked at Mecaster so that I could be dismissed (and to look at him again), and saw the face looking at the young scion with disgust. And I dared to hope.
When the sounds of laughter had died down, Mecaster said, "Tell your mother that I shall dine with her and your family with pleasure. If you can come back for me at sundown, I shall go with you to your home at that time."
I bowed and made my way out. I found my way home, but don't remember much of the trip home. I only remember my getting there and walking in, able to say to my mother, "He's coming! I'm to bring him here at sundown!"
The afternoon was busy, I was sent here and there to coax our neighbors into contributing to our larder so that we could fete the hero properly, that and cleaning our main room so that it would be worthy of his presence. I managed to squeeze out a half-hour to bathe my own body and put on clean clothes before I went at sundown to fetch him.
Walking by Mecaster's side those four blocks home, I felt very much the hero myself. He had cleaned himself up, wearing a tunic and tights that were so new and so ornate with red, blue and golden threads, it made me feel plain and poor next to him. But his demeanor with me was that of two old friends on their way to a party, and by the end of that walk, my smile was the equal of his.
Several friends had made their way to our table, and the stew was fortunately as rich and thick and hearty as my mother had promised, and was complemented with fresh-cooked bread, a richly sweet pudding and a large bowl of young apples, green but pleasant to the taste just the same providing you were expecting its sour bite on your tongue. And wine, a small cask of it, sat in one corner, to fill the glasses, both ours and those borrowed from neighbors for this occasion. A party for true it was.
Mecaster was full of stories and he repeated the story of the ledge for us, and told stories both of his own exploits and others he had heard, long after the meal was done and the shadows got long and there came at last the curfew bell.
Mecaster seemed startled by it and he stirred by my side (I had captured the seat earlier that evening and not moved from it since) and said, "I should return to the tavern. I have not even thought in all the revelry to rent myself a room there."
My mother rose quickly to the bait. "No need of that. Stay with us, and you can have the bed my husband and I use."
We had only the two beds, the one they slept in, in the small upstairs room, and the smaller mattress we stored under the stairs and laid out in the common room that I slept upon. Where would I sleep in that case?
"I would be glad of your hospitality and thank you for your offer, which I accept." Mecaster answered.
"Jo, you can stay with Dame and Goodman Esben tonight, can't you?"
I started to agree but Mecaster chipped in. "No need of that. If your bed is large enough for you and your goodman, it will be big enough for me and your son together."
Something in my loins stirred mightily when he said that. A roaring in my ears, I heard the rest of the conversation.
"Good sir, you are kind but that is not needful, the Esbens have room enough since their own son joined the army...."
"Nonsense, I share my bedrolls often enough on my travels, truth to tell, I cannot sleep well without another body next to mine, whoever it is. One time, I even got desperate enough for a bedmate that...." And he launched into a fairly long, rather ridiculous tale about some bed-hopping late at night that had us all laughing. By then, the second curfew bell was about to ring, and everyone scrambled for the door in haste, and we were left alone. In the sudden, nearly painful silence, I followed Mecaster up the stairs to my parents bedroom.
Alone in the bedroom, my mother having followed us both up and hastily scooped up her and my father's bedclothes and taken them downstairs, along with the extra blanket they kept for winter nights, I felt bashful being alone with this strong man, and wondered how I should undress, and how much, for bed. I normally slept completely unclothed, and here? Tonight? I should leave my tights on, at least, I decided, even though they were uncomfortable enough as they were, and would twist perhaps painfully upon the bed....
But Mecaster was moving in sure movements. His tunic came off, and then his shoes, real shoes, cobbled in the city by a master craftsman and then he reached for his waistband of his tights and looked at me, still clothed. "Well, you can't wear all that to bed. Strip it off, Jo, and we'll warm these cold sheets together and sleep well and comfortable."
I paused and he stripped down his tights, showing me his taut, dimpled buttocks and the sight of those double-globes stirred me to my own, frantic action. I had my own clothes off quick as I could. Mecaster did not turn my way again as he got into the bed, I caught only a glimpse of darker area between his legs as he moved, what could, or could not, be his organ. Too brief to be sure.
Mecaster scooted to the far side of the bed, leaving me a space to get in. "Put out the candle, or not, as you wish." he said to me, not looking my way.
I finished undressing and got into bed with him. "Why should I want to leave on the candle?"
"I thought perhaps you might want to ask those questions that have been in your eyes all night long." Mecaster offered as he turned to face me in the bed.
"You are not tired of talking?" I demurred.
"I'll spend many weary days speaking very little." Mecaster assured me. "It does no harm to lay in a reserve, to make a surfeit of conversation, before embarking on such a life."
"There is one thing I wondered." I admitted.
"I am here, ask what you will."
"Why did you become an adventurer?" I asked him.
"Not the question I expected." Mecaster mused. "But an honest one. Men become adventurers for many reasons. Foremost of course is the lure of treasure, which is not so abundant as the tales have you believe, but worth having. Then there is the desire to see other lands, to have interesting tales to tell others and tell yourself. And there is another reason, and that reason is the one which caused me to choose the life of an adventurer." And he stopped, as if he had finished.
"Then why did you become an adventurer?"
"I'll answer that when you ask me the real question."
"I don't know what you mean." I stammered out. Did he know that I...?
His arms came up and around me. "Ask me the question your eyes are already asking." he said in soft, dulcet tones. "If I have heard that question aright, the answer I will give you is yes."
He pulled me to him. Warm, so warm, so strong, those arms that enveloped me, that chest that touched my own in large oval areas of male skin dusted with hairs that tickled my flesh. And below that, the moist kiss of his glans as it rested against my inner thigh of my lower leg, and my own erection pressed against his pubic brush and burrowed inside.
"Ask." Mecaster breathed, his face nearly touching mine, his eyes a fraction of an inch apart from my own. "Ask."
I wet my lips and tried to form the words he needed. "I...I just...I want to...May I...."
"Yes." Mecaster told me.
And my lips pressed against his own. I'm sure I'm the one who reached for that kiss, not that he didn't match me and outdo me in ardent desire. His prong was a steel lance that pressed between my legs and the head smeared my skin stickily with incipient desire. My own poured precome into his pubic area, and the bottom of my shaft touched the top of his, the two matching each other in curvature and shape very well.
Mecaster kept kissing me as his brawny arm stirred from over top of me and dove between us, caught hold of both our cocks and held them together. As I moaned my lust into his mouth, he began to pump us together, one hand stirring us both, arousing passion's throb with strong, sure strokes.
His tongue slid into my own mouth from his open lips and the heavy male taste of that fleshy invader only made me groan the more, I caught and sucked on it as it if were the nipple of my mother's breast and I again the mewling infant in her arms. When he withdrew his tongue after a space, my own followed his into his mouth and he jousted with my tongue with his own playfully, delightfully...lovingly.
Then that same tongue thrust mine out of his mouth. "Yes, yes, and again, yes." he breathed to me.
"But why did you become an adventurer?" I asked him again, nearly plaintively. While I desired him very much and didn't want to do anything to stop those arms upon me, those lips, that rod beneath mine in his hand throbbing, I felt that if I could but get the answer to this question, I could get the answer to...well, everything!
"If I must talk, then let me feel your lips upon my body as I speak." Mecaster sighed.
I was glad and more than glad to have an excuse to slip from his arms and taste that magnificent body of his. He lay upon his back and I kissed my way over the mountain of his chest and down his ribs as he explained.
"I was born and raised in a village not all that different from this one. What can a man do in a village like this when his body urges him to do as you and I are doing? Ahh, yes, your lips on my nipple is so sweet, but suck on it harder, I beg you, please."
I had planted my lips upon this mountain's peak as he said this and I clamped upon him and worried that nub as if it were prey and I the hungry tiger.
"Ah, ah, ah-ah-hah!" Mecaster groaned, and I resumed my journy down the other side of that peak. "What could you do in this village, where everyone knows your name and your business and your life? Hope to find a fellow soul, and there are none to find, are there? The few that would have sang the song of life with you have long ago taken to their own heels in search of greener pastures than this parched earth. But the city itself isn't so much better a hunting ground and the danger from unsympathetic ruffians is greater. A man can learn the sword and defend himself, but doing so in dark alleys is not appealing no matter how many you give the quietus to.... Ah-ah-ah!" I had just reached his manhood. As I took it into my mouth, his own arm reached down my body, which was now angled around on the bed, and I had taken only a couple of strokes upon his pud before his hand captured my own dong and gripped it firmly. Ah, it felt even better, being the sole captive of that wonderful jailer which began to pump up and down upon my manhood much faster than I could manage to suck him in turn.
"Ah, ah, ah, ah!" Mecaster gasped. "Up this way, work your body up this way, Jo, so I may repay your generosity."
In rising glory I complied, my feet were buried underneath the pillow at the head of the bed when I felt the heat of his mouth engulf my prong and those lips, soft as velvet, smooth as fresh milk, moved my cock's skin up and down with a talent I could not hope to match. But then, my own practice had been but twice before, both times with strangers under furtive, sordid circumstances. They could not prepare me for this, to make love to another man as slow and easy as I chose. While this was an undoubted improvement over my prior episodes, it left me ill-prepared to lavish the attentions upon Mecaster that I would have liked.
I tried my best, but Mecaster was better. I was still manfully plying away when my own climax rose up and assailed my brain in undeniable intensity. I had to turn loose of his cock to groan, I could not do anything but fall upon my own back and let my orgasm take me.
With a loud groan, I let my jism fly and I ejaculated up into Mecaster's suctioning mouth, and he held on and sucked down every drop of my male fluid as fast as I could jet it out of my body. Done, he continued sucking as the explosions in my brain continued in diminishing measure, until I had experienced the entire unadulterated portion of my orgasm from his attentions.
"And this is why I travel." Mecaster told me. "In the lands where evil holds sway, a man must take his love where and as he can find it, and many is the man who finds that love in the arms of his comrade-at-arms. It makes all the blood, all the travail, all the rigors and trials worthwhile, to have those moments, both in the lands and after when we are safe once more and enjoying the fruits of our victories. I am only sad that I travel this time without Rorcut, he had been my steady companion for three such sallies, and now I am alone again. But a suitable companion will come along soon, I hope."
"Let me rest a bit more and I'll return to my duties for you." I said.
"No need of that." Mecaster shifted in the bed. "If you will but permit me some liberties with your body, you will not need to move the more."
It wasn't as easy as that, especially since I started moving to accommodate him while mystified, but finally we ended up in the position he wanted, my head back on the pillows while another one under my sacrum lifted my buttocks off the sheets and he was above me, holding my legs by the ankles one in each hand, and his cock, slicked up by my saliva and some of his own added, was probing at my anus.
I hadn't dared try this method of male-male love thus far, and worried about the pain I was sure it would involve, but Mecaster assured me he would be gentle, and he was. I felt pressure and some discomfort, but no worse than that, and after quite some time, he had enough of his length into me to begin to move back and forth with some assurance of not falling out again.
After a period of this, he pushed in further and I felt something more than pressure and discomfort. The motion of his dong inside of me made me feel...pleasured. Something inside of me, his cock was rubbing it and it was sending waves of delight through me very much akin, but not identical, to the pleasures my own manhood could give me. Now that I had experienced it, though, I knew that denying it to myself in future would be a hardship.
So I began to make myself indispensile to Mecaster as best one can in lovemaking, I began to work in harmony with him, helping him to send his tumescent prong deeper and harder into myself, while my grunts and motions urged him to greater speed, harder, faster, deeper, more, more, more!
"Ah, ah, ah, here it comes, Jo, here it comes, hold on tight, here it comes! Ah, AH-AH-AH-EE, EEE, EEEE, EEEEEEHHHHHUHHHH!" He called at the end very like a donkey might, and in the heat of that mighty dong exploding into myself, my own body fought upwards to a second orgasm, lesser than the first but still wonderful, especially since we did it together, and in that shared joy, I felt his seed fill me and knew that this, more than those two stolen interludes before, was the end of my virginal innocence. I was no longer a lad, I was a man!
His hearty groans synched with my own moans and when he was done, he felt gasping onto my body, a heavy but welcome weight that pinned me but did not distress me. I patted his sweaty back as he panted heavily in my left ear, and when he was able to breathe once more, he was kind enough to roll off of me onto the bed once more.
"And that is why I became an adventurer, Jo." he said to me. "The best reason of all, to find kindred spirits to share my life and my love, and it is why I shall not cease adventuring until the day comes when it deserts me rather than otherwise, whether under an Orcish blade or in infirmity of body."
"You have many more years before that can happen." I assured him.
"So I do, I think. And now tomorrow I ride on, I must be at the border in time to get papers of authority from the royal representative and then join a suitable raiding party. After that, we must ride nearly two or three more weeks to find pickings in the Blasted Lands. A summer's raids and then I return. I shall try to pass this way again, I hope. If so, I shall visit you again."
"I would like that." I said to him.
I slept and my dreams were of adventure and excitement in a manner it had not been for some years. In the morning, I had hoped to have another time with Mecaster, but he was dressed before I arose myself. We breakfasted with all heartiness on his part, but my own heart was heavy.
I escorted him to the stable where his saur was kept. As he mounted, I said to him in sudden determination. "I wish I were going with you."
"So do I, Jo." Mecaster told me. "I'd love to have you with me on the trail. But until you can wield a sword well, you would do well to stay full this side of the border."
"I know." I agreed mournfully. "But I'm going to become an adventurer one day, just like you."
"Well, in that case, you'll need a sword." Mecaster reached into his pack and pulled out a solid, serviceable sword. "Here, take this one."
I took the heavy metal object with surprise. "Thank you!" I gasped out.
"I'll check on your progress in the fall." He told me and spurred his saur into action.
I stood and waved at him until he was out of sight. Then I hefted the sword in my hand. It was heavy, it was awkward, it was already making my arm muscles ache. No matter. It held my destiny, now that I knew why the adventurer chose the path he did.
THE END
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