Chapter 11

Dharsha came awake at a sharp stab of pain. First instinct was to curl inward - - second was to remain motionless so as not to offend the hand that tormented him and make the punishment worse. So he stiffened, stifling a whimper and lay still, expecting the infliction of more hurt.

"Calm," a low voice told him, and a hand patted his hip, warm skin, soft touch. "It'll take a blade to loosen that knot."

Dharsha drew a startled breath and opened his eyes. The trapper knelt over him, the both of them crowded in a small, dim space. A warm space, relatively, compared to the winter cold of outside. Warmer still from the presence of the dog curled against his feet, head on her paws in deceptively languid repose. But her eyes took in everything, a sharp, young dog, suspicious of the stranger her master had brought in out of the cold.

They were in a sort of lean to, made of limbs and sticks, insulted by a piece of canvas stretched over top, with leaves and snow coating that. Hides and furs lined the ground and the body heat of two people and a dog crowded inside had edged out the frigid temperatures.

Dharsha stared down where his pale, shrunken cock lay above the throbbing red of swollen testicles. At the trapper's long fingers gingerly lifting and prodding the tautness of the twine that Karl had wrapped around the base.

Dharsha squeezed his eyes shut again in shame, fighting that urge to curl in upon himself again and hide the evidence of his abuse.

"Dharsha," Caled's low, even voice edged through the pounding of blood in his ears. Don't move, or I'll finish their work for them. Understand?"

There was silence; a distinct lack of motion and Dharsha realized that Caled was waiting for his acknowledgement.

"Yes," he said, voice a thready whisper. His throat felt raw, as if he had been screaming long and loud. Perhaps it was blood running back down that had abrased the tissue, he could taste the flavor of it in his mouth and there were sore spots on his tongue and the inside of his cheeks as if he had bitten through. He didn't remember.

Caled did not wait longer than it took for the neko to draw another breath, before placing the tip of his skinning blade to the base of Dharsha's balls, where the twine bit deeply into soft flesh. There was a prick, quick and barely perceptible past the throbbing pain that had centered at the core of the Neko's being. Then a moment of relief as the constriction eased, a long shuddery breath of freedom before the blood started rushing back and the real agony began.

Dharsha howled, pain as terrible as anything the woodsmen had ever done to him flooding outwards from between his legs. The trapper cursed softly, lunging forward and clamping a hand down across Dharsha's mouth, body pressing him down into the furs.

"Quiet, damn you." Caled hissed, close to his ear.

Dharsha stilled under him, too well trained in the art of enduring pain not to accept that command. He trembled though, the hurt welling under his skin like boils eager to burst. He felt faint with it, but perhaps he'd already slept too long for darkness to come back and mercifully dull the torment.

He laid there, under Caled's weight, hearing the harshness of the man's breath, the rapid beat of his heart. A frightened man, Dharsha thought of a sudden. A man that had taken a great risk rescuing a stranger not even of his own species and had five angry men out for both their blood because of it. Five angry men who knew this wood and had no qualms about getting blood on their hands.

Dharsha nodded under the clamp of Caled's hand and clenched his jaw against the pulsing waves of pain as blood flowed freely back into formerly constricted flesh. Caled's hand eased and he rolled over, lying in the muted darkness next to the neko, making no noise save the sound of his breath.

Dharsha shut his eyes and endured, distracting himself from the pain by listening to the sounds of the snow covered forest. He heard the quiet rustling of the trapper's animals. The occasional thump of snow falling from trees onto the ground. The flap of distant wings as some night hunting bird sought prey. More distant still, the chatter of some small animal rustling in its burrow. He could track it to its home, if he wanted - - a game neko children played that honed the skills of the hunters they were all born to be. It had been a long time since he'd stretched his senses. A long time since he'd thought about home and the joys of adolescence. He'd still be in his mother's den now - - still able to engage in such games - - still a young male whose path in life was undecided. Whether he was to go the path of the intellect or the path of the warrior dependent on that spurt of growth that came with full maturity. If he were still home.

If. Useless to dwell on what should have been.

The pain gradually receded, no greater, or no worse than the other aches that dwelt bone deep in his body from the beating he'd gotten that evening. He drew a breath of relief, the air in the lean to strong with the smell of dog and leather and the subtle musky scent of the trapper.

Caled lay warm and still beside him, breath deep and even in sleep, content it seemed to let the dog's sharper senses warn of anyone venturing too close to the little shelter. A neko hunter, well versed in his craft, would be equally well equipped to detect the subtle sounds of danger even during sleep. Dharsha had only just begun to go out into the vast green forests of home with his older cousins and learn the craft.

He bit his lip, as the longing for home reared up again and tried to lay still, with the trapper on one side and the dog against his legs on the other.

Eventually he slept again, and his vaunted neko senses, so long subdued into dormancy, did him no justice, for when he woke, the darkness had faded into wan filtered light, and both trapper and dog were absent from the lean to.

Dharsha made to sit up, but his body resisted, a flurry of aches driving him back down into the warm furs. He groaned and lay there, staring up at the translucent places where the light shone through the canvas and snow covered lean to ceiling. He gingerly reached down and touched his testicles. There was some soreness around the loose skin of the base where the twine had bruised flesh, but his testicles seemed no worse for wear from near castration. His cock even twitched a little from the handling, as if it sensed there would be no repercussions from the act now that he was free of the woodsmen. He ran a tentative finger up the underside of his cock and shut his eyes at the shudder of sensation.

At the rustle of movement in the snow outside he hastily yanked his hand away, an instinctive flash of fear making his heart thud. He struggled to his elbows as the trapper crawled in past the flap of the lean to.

Caled nodded, a barely perceptible motion, seeing Dharsha awake. With his fur cap on and his big coat, the man seemed to take up so much more space than he did when he was just in trousers and shirt and stretched out still and quiet with exhaustion.

"There's no sign of them venturing near, but with morning light they'll likely be more energetic in their search." He rummaged in one of the packs crowded in the small space and pulled out a pair of trousers. His own obviously. A valuable second set of clothing for a man alone most of the time in the wilderness.

He offered them, grim faced, and Dharsha made haste shedding the makeshift boots and shrugging into the pants. They fit, surprisingly well. A little loose but then Dharsha had been living on scraps for a very long time. His tail was a problem.

Caled frowned, pale eyes narrow with annoyance and took a knife to the seam at the back, splitting it down to make room for Dharsha's tail, then hastily making eyeholes and lacing the edges back together above with a strip of thin rawhide.

"I'm sorry," Dharsha said, fearing this man's displeasure almost as much as he feared the violence of the woodsmen.

Caled flattened his lips and tied off the rawhide. He thrust a shirt, from the same pack at Dharsha and crawled out of the lean to. Not a pleased man at all then, at the inconvenience Dharsha had caused him.

Dharsha pulled on the shirt hastily, wincing at the pain of a cracked rib. He refastened the fur boots and crawled outside. Caled was already sweeping the snow and leaves from the canvas topping the lean to and Dharsha helped, untying the canvas, shaking it out and folding it up while the trapper unhobbled his animals. The dog paced in the snow, as eager it seemed as her master to be on her way.

"Up," Caled instructed when he'd fastened the last of his packs upon the smaller horse, a mountain of bundled furs and packs atop a sturdy legged little mare.

"I can walk," Dharsha said softly, hating to ride when the trapper walked. Hating to be an inconvenience.

"Get on the damned horse." Caled snapped, impatience making his voice sharp. Obedience was too ingrained a habit to ignore, when an order was given in such a tone. Dharsha ducked his head and scrambled up onto the waiting horse. She shifted under him, casting a look back with large, patient eyes.

Caled started moving, leading the horses along before Dharsha had fully settled in the saddle. The neko clutched at the coarse black mane and clenched his thighs, searching out stirrups and awkwardly shoving thick fur covered feet into them for purchase.

They headed north, following no path Dharsha could discern. It was the snow that confused him, concealing all the tiny details. It never snowed at home, the forests forever warm. But Caled knew the way, it seemed, for he seldom faltered in his stride. Nor did he seem inclined to talk, all his breath horded for the walk through sometimes knee-high snow.

With the passage of hours, Dharsha began to hope that there would be no pursuit from the woodsmen. A warm feeling of freedom began to uncurl, loosening the despair that had knotted his insides for so very long. Or perhaps it was only the absence of pain. The throbbing in his genitals had dissipated and the bodily aches were the sort of distant numb that could easily be ignored.

He nodded off, body picking up the rhythm of the horse, instinctively finding balance.

Perhaps it was some lingering nightmare that roused him, or perhaps he was so used to interrupted sleep at the hands of the woodsmen, or it might be simply hypersensitive neko awareness that broke through his doze and made the hairs inside his ears twitch. He blinked, startled at the uneasy sensation and sat up straight trying to discern what it was that had roused him.

The trapper walked ahead, shoulders slouched, head covered in a long flapped, fur cap. The horses seemed unconcerned. The dog was nowhere in sight.

And yet there was something . . .

Dharsha canted his head, ears pricked and heard the faintest muffled rustling of movement in snow. The faintest musky smell of damp fur and earth tones. The scent, once he picked it up was so clear that almost he saw images in that area between nostril and eyes. Porcine he thought.

"There's something," he hesitated to voice his discovery, thinking the presence of some forest grub eater might be of little interest to a man making all haste to cover ground.

Caled hesitated, looking back at him, then scanning the direction Dharsha indicated, eyes like pale morning sky in the shadow of his hood. "Where?"

"There," Dharsha started, then hastily grasped the mane of his mount as the horse tossed her head, as did the other pack animal, eyes suddenly white around the edges, ears twitching as they picked up finally the scent that Dharsha had already discovered.

Caled's hand moved to the knife at his side, even as something small and dark trundled out from the brush far up the invisible trail they followed. Another small thing followed it, both their noses brushing the snow and Dharsha breathed a sigh of relief. There was no threat, for these were young animals. Similar looking to the forest pigs that lived at the edges of the woods at home, surviving on grubs and fungi and the tender grasses at the edge of woodland and field. Skittish, sky animals that presented no challenge for hunters.

"Damn," Caled whispered under his breath, hand still on the hilt of his skinning knife.

Dharsha looked to him, uncertain. The trapper's face was tense, his mouth tight. He whistled once, a short bird-like trill as he his eyes scanned the surrounding underbrush.

The young pigs shuffled forward a few more paces, blunt snouts digging through snow, before one of them noticed their presence and squealed in fear.

Caled swore softly and tugged on the horse lead, even as something much larger than the two piglets crashed through the brush.

A mountain of bristly black fur broke through the bramble, small, red-rimmed eyes and sharp twisting tusks dominating a scarred face. There was some resemblance to the forest pigs of Dharsha's homeland, but the thing outsized them thrice over, standing as tall a man's ribs at its sloping shoulders. A mama boar perhaps, by its protective nature, and bristling mad at the threat to her young.

The packhorse reared, whinnying in fear and its back legs slipped out from under it in its desperation to scramble away in the snow. It overbalanced the horse Dharsha rode, and the mare jostled for footing. Dharsha felt her going down and in fear of being trapped beneath her when she fell, launched himself from the saddle.

He landed easily enough, crouching in the snow, hearing the shriek of the horses, the cries of the man, the mad bellowing of the boar as she charged, her gaze fixed on him, suddenly the closest target.

He froze, suddenly helpless in the face of danger. For so very long the instinct to fight back, to defend himself against harm had been systematically beaten out of him - - so that now, with his very life threatened, he found he could not make his limbs move. Natural neko reflexes numbed by the ingrained conditioning of cruel men.

Something slim and dark darted past him, yapping insistently. The hound, which bounded this way and that snarling and snapping at the startled boar. A loud, quick distraction that drew the mama boar's attention from Dharsha.

He stared, wide-eyed as the dog narrowly missed life-threatening gouges by those deadly tusks, the cacophony of noise swirling about him like a storm, with him, motionless at its center. His clan brother, by his father's first wife was a renowned hunter/warrior. Dharsha had seen him once, when he'd been a cub defeat a wyvern three times his size with nothing but claws and teeth.

He curled his fingers, claws blunt against his palms. Filed claws, almost neutered - - he was nothing like those fierce neko hunters. He couldn't even make himself move while the dog danced around a bloodthirsty beast scant feet away.

The dog yipped, flipped onto her back as the boar got in a lucky hit, and blood trailed in an arch between dog and tusk as the boar whirled, ready to tear into the closest remaining flesh. There was a clap of sound. A flare of light and the boar staggered, wheezing, one stout leg crumbling in the snow, the others following. It lay, dark and dead against the white, no blood leaking from its hide, just a singed hole in its shoulder. The smell of burnt flesh assaulted Dharsha, along with the faint acrid scent of sulfur.

He turned, blinking, towards the source of the sound. Saw Caled standing spay-legged, breathing hard, with a dark metal tube in his hands, the likes of which Dharsha had never seen.

Caled drew a breath, another, then hissed, and scrambled through the snow towards the dog. She struggled gamely to her feet, whining, tail thumping desperately, as if she were embarrassed about letting an oversized pig get the better of her. She had gash along her side, but it seemed shallow.

"Go after the damned horses," Caled growled and Dharsha blinked again, the ability to move slowly returning to him, realizing that indeed neither of the two horses were in the immediate vicinity. Dharsha warily stared down at the metal tube wedged in the trapper's belt. It had a grip of sorts, molded to fit a man's hand and strange patterns engraved along the metal.

"Move, damnit!" Caled had pulled a cloth from his pockets and was staunching the worst of the bleeding while the dog sat there, shivering and whining, impatient, Dharsha thought, to be prowling and sniffing around the boar's carcass. The two piglets had long disappeared.

Dharsha flinched and pushed himself up. Forced to himself to focus on the horse scent and the sounds of horse bodies moving through snow muted forest. There were tracks of course, but the scent was easier to follow and they hadn't wandered far. They recognized him and his own smell when he approached, murmuring soft promises of meaning them no harm. They seemed no worse for wear, even the one who'd been lame only days past.

He led them back, afraid to meet the trapper's eyes, ashamed and embarrassed at his cowardice. This man's goodwill meant everything and he had tarnished it.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, while the trapper rummaged in a pack and came out with a jar chalky paste.

Caled snorted, angry still, and crouched to smear the thick residue across the gouge on the dog's side, then he patted her on her flank and released her from immobility. She sprang up and began sniffing about the brush, ignoring her pain, as animals tended to.

The trapper moved to the boar, drawing his knife. He hacked off a haunch with practiced ease, and stuffed fresh meat into a weathered leather pouch.

"Come," he said sharply, to either Dharsha or the dog, or both, and led the horses at a fast pace up the slope they'd been traveling. Both neko and canine followed obediently in his wake, Dharsha's ears flattening and pricking and flattening again in his shame.

But it was a different sort of shame than what he was used to. Not the sort that made him want to slit his wrists, but the sort that made him desperately want to do better. That made him desperately want to impress this man and prove his worth.

They walked for a good ways, while the shadows began to lengthen and turn purple with evening. Finally, Caled spoke without turning his head to look back at Dharsha trailing behind in the trench made by the horse's passage.

"It wasn't your fault."

Dharsha said nothing, not entirely sure if a response was expected of him. Not entirely sure that he wasn't somehow at fault.

"You heard them before the horses. No small feat," Caled continued. "Those ears of yours are for more than show, then."

Dharsha supposed that compared to Caled's small pink ears, his own tall tufted ones were indeed more sensitive. He swallowed though, afraid that Caled, like the woodcutters would condemn him as no better than an animal because of them. Ears and tale and claws that made him different than the men of this land.

"If your former masters were to close in upon us - - you would hear them from some distance as well, then?"

Dharsha looked up in surprise and nodded. He had been able to hear those men through the walls of the log cabin, crashing through the forest on the way back home half an hour before they reached it. He would most certainly be able to pick them up in the wilds with nothing but snow and trees between them and him. Perhaps he had a use after all.

"Then you listen out," Caled suggested. "If they were within a mile distance of us, they would have heard the sound of the gun."

"Was - - was that what that was? The thing you used?" Dharsha hesitated to ask.

Caled glanced back at him, blue eyes considering. "It was. I would suggest you never bring up its usage in casual conversation with strangers you meet. Some magics are - - less than favorably accepted among the masses."

"Magic?" Dharsha's eyes grew round. Tales of western magics were told in whispered tones around the clan fires. The neko practiced none of their own.

"The bastard child of it and techcraft." Caled shrugged, apparently not willing to go into detail. Then thought better of it and added. "Runerounds are few and far between. If you find yourself in the path of a predator again - - do us both the favor of running."

Dharsha blushed in humiliation and nodded.

Another hour and they reached a small structure that Dharsha never would have noted, had Caled not approached it. Sturdy limbs lashed together, the cracks stuffed with bramble and camouflaged with vines formed a more permanent lean-to shelter. The weathered quality of the wood suggested it had been here for many seasons. A welcome shelter perhaps, for travelers in the know, making the trek down from the mountains to the cities along the coast.

The neko picked up the faint, lingering smell of dog and horse and man. Familiar scents belonging to Caled and his animals. They had stopped here then, on their way down.

"Unpack the horses," Caled told Dharsha. "There is cloth to rub them down and grain in the burlap sack there."

Dharsha nodded wordlessly, relieved to have a task. The trapper gave the dog a command and she sat in the lee of the lean-to where the snow was a bare sprinkling on the ground and waited, then the man retreated into the wood, back the way they had come.

Dharsha was not entirely sure if the dog had been directed to stay here to protect the campsite or to guard against him attempting to make off with the trappers horses and gear. For a moment, Dharsha listened to the muffled sounds of the trapper's careful movements in the forest, then he took a breath and began his assigned task.

He stowed the packs inside the lean-to, portioned out grain for each of the horses before taking a cloth to their sweaty coats. They munched and twitched while he worked, great gusting horse sighs released into feeding sacks when he reached sensitive spots.

They were appreciative of his efforts. The dog pushed her nose close when he was finished, perhaps looking for some bit of attention herself, and Dharsha stiffened, caught off guard by a sudden flash fear/revulsion. He had too many terrible memories of dogs - - of a dog - - nosing its way into his personal space with the expectation of things he had no desire to give. It was enough for a neko to form a permanent distaste for the species. But it hadn't been this dog - - who had put herself between him and a maddened mama boar and taken injury because of it.

The dog bristled, showing the hint of teeth as she sensed his turmoil. He took a breath, blew it out and held out a hand for her to sniff. Her ears flicked, black nose twitching.

"I understand," he said softly, somberly, carefully laying a hand on her head between her floppy ears. "That you are not responsible for the actions of your brethren."

She canted her head, staring up at him with quizzical brown eyes. Her tongue lolled and her tail thumped twice against the ground. Forgiven then, for his sleight.

She jerked her head out from under his hand, hearing the man's approach, even as Dharsha did.

Caled trekked through the snow, obscuring his tracks as he came with an evergreen frond.

"I've created a false track and hidden the true one," he said, discarding the branch as he moved to check the condition of his horses.

"I think a small fire would be safe and I've a mind to take advantage of fresh pork."

There was dry firewood inside the shelter and the fire was easily made. The warmth and the flickering orange flame in the shadows of evening were a welcome thing. Caled cut strips of meat with practiced ease, threaded several onto a sharpened stick to grill. The rest he portioned up and folded back up in his pouch.

They sat on opposite sides of the little fire in silence, while water brewed in a small tin pot for tea, with meat sizzling over the flames. Even as a free neko youth Dharsha had never been much for idle chatter, but the quiet now was deafening. Caled seemed comfortable enough with it, though. Caled seemed very much at home with his own thoughts, as any man might, who lived his life bereft of company that shared the capacity for speech.

Dharsha was adept at hiding his discomfort though, and quietly sat, observing the trapper in the growing darkness, neko vision well suited to picking out details in the dark.

There was a certain quality to man's face, under the growth of beard and the speckles of dirt that hinted at elegant growth of bone underneath. A young man, with smooth skin around the eyes and teeth that were white and healthy, even if they were blunt. The way he spoke - - when he spoke - - was softly accented, more like the way the Lady formed her words, rather than the rough dialect of the woodsmen.

"Why," he could no longer stand the silence and dared to venture a burning question. "Would you risk your life for me?"

Caled's eyes shifted from the browning meat over the fire to Dharsha. Calm, blue speculation that made the hair on the neko's arms prickle.

"I am occasionally known for rash decisions." A half smile, not quite self-deprecating curved the trapper's lips. "But there is slavery and then there is senseless cruelty and I've no taste for the latter. What they did to you - - there are laws that protect those sold into servitude against it."

"Oh," Dharsha pulled his strip of meat out of the fire and picked at half cooked meat. The neko were not so many generations gone from preferring their meat bloody and still warm from the kill. The taste of it was wonderful, a moment of true bliss after so many months of surviving - - barely - - on the worst of the woodcutter's scraps.

He shut his eyes to savor it, quelling the urge to gobble it down all at once. He was not an animal and did not wish to present that face to the man.

"I don't make a habit of it," Caled qualified, breaking into Dharsha's silent savoring of the meat. "Of setting wrong's right when I stumble upon them."

Dharsha swallowed heavily, nodding, wondering if Caled regretted his action. Hoping not. Desperately hoping not; this man's good will being as vital to him of a sudden as the air he breathed. He had failed in the most basic path to the respect of another male with his embarrassing and immobilizing fear in the face of the charging boar, but he knew another way. Had been taught another way to please a man that hard taught lessons had made him good at.

One way or another, Dharsha would prove his worth to the trapper.