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Message-ID: <47206asstr$1079986204@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "Russell Hoisington" <hoisingr@hushmail.com>
Subject: {ASSM} Sacrifices {Hoisington} (MF magic)
Lines: 420
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 15:10:04 -0500
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                            SACRIFICES
                        Russell Hoisington

************************************************************

This is an erotic fantasy.  The characters and the situation are
purely imaginary, and this story is *NOT* intended to be a guide
for actual behavior.  Any similarities between this story and
actual people, or between this story and actual events that you
should be ashamed of, are purely coincidental.  If it is illegal
for you to access and read erotic fiction, or if you don't like
sex stories, then stop now.

This story is copyright 2004 by Russell Hoisington.  You may post
freely to non-commercial (free) sites, or in the "free" area of
commercial sites as long as you do not remove the author
information or make any changes to this story.  This does *not*
mean that it is in the public domain, nor does it mean that I
give permission for you to use it in spam advertising.  I reserve
the right to determine what is "spam advertising" by *my*
definition, not yours or anyone else's.

Thank you for your consideration.

************************************************************

     The left flankman, Private Ham of Greenwood, gasped for
breath as the survivors of a company of goblins fell back to the
north in disarray, with fewer retreating than lay before the
Danlier's Cerulean Foot Regiment.  Opposing battlemages continued
to neutralize either side's magic, leaving sword and muscle and
fatigue to decide the ultimate victor.  The Horde of Evil was
slowly but steadily losing the war of attrition.  After a quick
prayer of thanks that he remained uninjured, Ham dropped his
pack, gulped from his waterskin, and fished out a handful of nuts
and dried fruit.  No telling how long (or short) a time the enemy
would need to regroup.

     A shouted word dropped from the wooden observation tower
behind the lines of the Cerulean Foot.  It was picked up by the
exhausted fighters and passed toward either flank.

     Ham began chewing as the word reached him.  He glanced back
at the tower.  The lookout was down, and the draft horses were
moving the tower to the rear.  He glanced to the far northeast
where five huge shapes had lumbered over the crest of a ridge.  A
cold hand clutched his heart.  He gasped and passed the word to
the right flankman of Craig's Loden Foot Regiment.  He crammed as
much food as he could into his mouth and threw aside what
remained in his hand.  He shouldered his pack and unsheathed his
sword, preparing to run for his life.  You had to make sacrifices
in wartime, but suicide for no purpose?  He couldn't believe Sir
Willam would order a stand against suddenly overwhelming odds.

     Breathing deeply, sucking strength into his body, he turned
and eyed the wooded hilltop where the Knight-Paladin's
headquarters tents occupied a clearing at the military crest. 
Surely Old Silverwings was now out of tricks and it was time to
flee.

                              ~~~~~

     Knight-Paladin Willam of Stokes-on-Fourche strode wearily
from his command tent, the upswept silver eagle's wings on his
helmet flashing in the sun.  He flicked a speck of debris from
his gleaming white tabard, then looked northeast to where
Lieutenant Tomson was pointing.

     "There, Sir," said Tomson, his constricted throat causing
his voice to squeak.  "War mammoths."

     The shaggy beasts lumbered southward toward Sir Willam's
Serenity Brigade, the center regiments of the Forces of Good
defending the critical Shepford Valley approach into the Free
Kingdoms of the south.  The Knight-Paladin said nothing, but put
a calming hand on Tomson's shoulder.  His military aide was a man
not easily frightened.  He glanced toward the tent where his
warmages huddled.  The blue-white flashes escaping at the bottom
of the tent walls told him that they were fully involved with
countering the spells of the Horde of Evil's own sorcerers.

     The Knight-Paladin sighed.  He could think of only one
option.  He didn't want to do it, but it seemed that the Vile
Lord's Horde had left him no choice.  He turned and seemed
surprised to find his staff huddled in the tent's doorway,
staring at the approaching beasts with wide eyes and gaping,
speechless mouths.  Waving with the backs of his silver
gauntleted fingers he shooed them back into the tent like
chickens into a coop.  "Now you've seen them.  You have work to
do.  Get to it."

     "Tomson," he said in a quiet voice, "ask Ayelin to join me
and bring in Bjorn."  The Lieutenant blinked, shuddered, and ran
toward the warmage's tent.  Sir Willam turned to watch the
approaching creatures and pray that his men would hold position
long enough for him to win what was already being called the
Gateshire Forest Campaign.

     "Sir."

     The Knight-Paladin turned at Tomson's voice and looked down
between the two bearers at the large, reeking, hairy man sleeping
on the litter.  The creature was shaggy as an ape.  His curly red
hair and beard were matted and tangled.  He wore nothing but a
once-white breechcloth, now yellow and brown, a steel collar, and
steel wristbands, each plain except for loops where heavy
securing chains had been attached.  Beside him lay a huge bastard
sword, plain except for two words forged into the blade in
liturgical script.  Sir Willam closed his eyes and prayed.

     "Willam?"

     He opened his eyes.  He had not heard his beloved Ayelin
approach, but that was her way.  She was staring at Bjorn, her
beautiful face ashen but her voice controlled.  Eighty years of
countering the magicks of the Horde of Evil would instill such
strength of will.

     His head tilted to indicate northeast.  "War mammoths...."

     "I see them."  She glanced at the front litter bearer. 
"Carry him inside."

     The bearers were all too eager to be away from this
strikingly beautiful witch who commanded such deadly power.  They
would rather fight Bjorn bare-handed than remain in her sinister
presence.

     Sir Willam gazed deep into her amazing eyes, light blue
irises surrounding pupils of lapis lazuli.  The eyes of a
battlemage.  Words knotted in his throat.  When she closed those
eyes and began murmuring he swept his own over her in an
appraising glance while removing his right gauntlet.  The brown
hair which fell behind her shoulders to mid-thigh was dull.  Her
simple ankle-length robe matched the lapis lazuli of her pupils. 
It had not been changed in the six days since the battle had
begun, nor had it been slept in.  The robe's only adornments were
two small patterns of interwoven gold and silver threads where
the hood attached at either side of the neck closure.  They
indicated her specialty and her rank amongst the warmages, and
they were dull.  He knew that was an indicator of her physical
condition to her brothers and sisters in magic.  He did not need
their power to know that reviving potions worked only so long
against fatigue toxins.  Her once flawless face had tiny lines at
the corners of eyes and mouth, and her reactions were slightly,
but noticeably, slower to his accustomed eye.

     She opened her eyes.  "They will strike at the juncture of
the Loden and the Cerulean, behind a wall of goblins about to
crest the ridge and move ahead.  We have adequate, but little,
time."

     He took her slender left hand in his right.  "Send me
someone...."

     "No."  Her remaining strength and resolve gave steel to her
voice.  "I cannot."

     "But...."

     She pressed her right fingertips to his mouth.  "I must do
this myself.  None of the others have the strength.  The energy
loss would kill her."

     Fear swept the Knight-Paladin's face for the first time
since the Gateshire Forest Campaign had begun.  "Nor have you! 
This might kill you, Ayelin."

     Her fingers caressed the gray-flecked, short black beard at
his chin.  "I have no doubt that the transfer would kill any of
them.  I will not sacrifice another if I can do this myself."

     He fought to keep tears from collecting.  "But I need you,
Ayelin, and I need you to lead the battlemages.  You would
sacrifice yourself?"  His voice softened and the tears came. 
"You would sacrifice us?"

     A hint of a smile flickered as her fingers stroked a narrow
gap in his armor above the covered scar.  "Bardstown Bridge."

     Where Sir Willam had personally led the heavy cavalry charge
to rescue two surrounded companies.  Where Sir Willam had found
the point of an enemy lance.  Where Sir Willam had been so
severely injured that Lieutenant Tomson had begun funeral
preparations on the advice of Ffolkestone, the senior healermage.

     When he sighed his resignation she sealed the argument with,
"If I sacrifice *us*, I do it for them."

     *For them.*  During one of their now-infrequent nights
together, as he recovered from his ecstatic release and held her
soft, warm body to his in the pale moonlight, he had looked at
the afterglow adorning her lovely face and had casually
mentioned, "in another reality, perhaps we could wed."  She had
gone strangely silent and withdrawn at the comment.  After some
gentle coaxing she revealed that in another reality they had
indeed wed, and that she had given him three strong sons and a
daughter who together would usher in almost two centuries of
prosperity, and that their children's names would be known to
historians for millennia.

     At first she had been reluctant to tell him that particular
reality would come to be if the Forces of Good overcame the Horde
of Evil and destroyed the Pillar of Chaos in the Vile Lord's
tower far to the north.  None of this around them would be or
would have been.  Somehow, through a process she could not
explain in words he could understand, history would change eighty
years ago and would be forever different.  It was at that moment
that he understood the true stakes of the war:  a hundred
thousand now-dead men would not have died, and he would have his
beloved Ayelin as his wife.

     Sir Willam's shoulders sagged and he brought her fingertips
to his lips.  "I do wish you had a different spell to awaken,
strengthen, and control him," he said and kissed them again.

     Ayelin gave him a weak smile.  "Do you not think we've been
looking for another?  Surely, my love, you cannot think we enjoy
this."

     Sir Willam motioned her ahead of him into the tent as he
pulled on the gauntlet.  "No, I do not.  Nor do I envy you in the
least."

                              ~~~~~

     Lieutenant Tomson had rigged a privacy curtain to the left
of the entrance in the large tent.  Sir Willam nodded his
appreciation and escorted Ayelin behind it.

     The stench from the sleeping man was overpowering in the
close area.  The litter bearers had removed his breech cloth and
now stood with spear points inches from the hairy creature's
chest.  If Bjorn awoke and was not placed under immediate
control, they would have scarcely a second to kill him.  That
witch was about to awaken him.

     Without hesitation Ayelin unfastened the neck closure and
pulled the robe off over her head.  Sir Willam took the robe as
she used her hands to pull her hair through it.  It fell in
disarray about her, hiding the small, high, firm breasts, shapely
thighs and hips, and sculpted backside of a twenty year old
woman.  Magical talent was a blessing to a woman with a century
of summers behind her.

     Her hands gathered the long, brown fall behind her as she
glanced to the two litter bearers.  They were desperately trying
to look as if they were not avoiding glancing at her for any
reason except the berserker asleep before them, lest she destroy
them with a flick of her finger.  Having to endure others'
unreasonable fear of the unknown was the price paid by all with
the power.

     Ayelin knelt beside Bjorn and grasped his shriveled length
of stinking flesh with an uncontrolled shudder.  She quickly
stroked him to erection, straddled his hips, and squatted,
halting with the point of his weapon just grazing the brown
thicket surrounding her tunnel.  She looked at Sir Willam as if
awaiting an order.

     The Knight-Paladin closed his eyes and nodded.  At the same
time distant noise told him the arrows of the advancing goblins
had reached his lines.  The soldiers and then the war mammoths
would not be far behind.  His forces could eventually kill the
shaggy creatures but too late and at a terrible cost, one he
could not afford.  The Vile Lord would sacrifice those
magnificent beasts to gain the breach through which he might
ultimately defeat the Forces of Good and enslave the Free
Kingdoms of the South.  In return he must risk the sacrifice of
his two most powerful weapons.

     Ayelin lowered herself around Bjorn's short staff, paused an
instant, then began lifting and dropping her hips, alternately
releasing and engulfing it.  Her face impassive, her eyes closed,
she began murmuring the words of the spell.

     Sir Willam shook his head, unable to fathom what had
possessed the battlemages of ages past to create a weapon that
had to be activated and controlled in a manner that sacrificed
the dignity of the woman he loved and of her sisters in magic. 
Beyond his personal experience of the magic of the love act
itself and the energies it created and released, he found himself
incapable of understanding her explanation of the spell.  Yet,
this was not the love act.  This was merely a pale imitation of
it, as devoid of true emotion and the true magic of love itself
as the rutting practiced in the back rooms of taverns and in
bordellos.  This was a false magic; a powerful one to be sure but
pitiful compared to the true thing.

     A brilliant, sickly, yellow-green light from outside,
accompanied by the sucking sound of a monstrous boot being pulled
from mud, told him that the Warmages had just thwarted a deadly
attack on his headquarters.  For a moment all was as silent as
death in the camp as that realization struck home.  Before his
staff resumed its buzz of activity he clearly heard the wet
"slish" "slish" sounds of Ayelin's tight, wet sheath around the
disgusting shaft of the berserker, clearly heard the murmured
words of the spell that vanished from his mind even as he
comprehended them, clearly heard the sudden clash of sword
against sword and shield and the death screams from the battle
below.

     Clearly heard the grunting gasp he knew so well as Ayelin
achieved release.  She turned her face toward his, devoid of the
afterglow, the smile, the chimes of laughter evoked when she rode
his battle lance to release.  "It is done," she whispered, faint
to the point of inaudibility, before closing her eyes and falling
sideways.  He was not fast enough to catch her.

     "Tomson!" Sir Willam shouted as he tore back the curtain. 
He found himself staring into the green irises around lapis
lazuli pupils of his senior healermage.  The faithful military
aide, unencumbered by the emotional distractions of his
commander, had prepared for this expected result.  Tomson had
summoned Ffolkestone and a litter.

     With no wasted movements Ffolkestone squatted beside Ayelin,
pressed the fingertips of his left hand to the space between her
breasts while opening one eye with the fingertips of his right,
lifted one hand by the wrist and ran a fingernail from the base
of her thumb to the base of her little finger, and rose with a
small hand signal to his litter bearers.  They placed her on the
litter with gentle swiftness.  Ffolkestone took her robe from Sir
Willam with that glance the Knight-Paladin had seen all to often,
that glance which conveyed his deepest concern about the adequacy
of his significant talent.  He draped the robe over her as they
were moving.  And they were gone.  It had taken mere seconds, yet
it had seemed a lifetime.

     He had to put all of that behind him.  It was time to leave
her in Ffolkestone's hands, to sacrifice his concern for her and
replace it with the immediate concern for the greater good.  It
was time to awaken his response.

     "Wilfred?" Sir Willam called to his personal aide.  "Do we
have any boiling water?"

     The old man's bald head bobbed.  "Yes, Sir."

     "Then fix me a cup of tea and awaken him.  Quickly."

     The staff suddenly remembered something that needed to be
done at the other end of the tent.  Bjorn's litter bearers knew
they could be of significant assistance to the staff in whatever
the task was, raised their spear points, and joined them.  Even
stalwart Lieutenant Tomson was casting glances as if he wished to
join them.

     As Sir Willam expected, Wilfred had anticipated the request. 
With true indifference to the threat on the litter he hobbled
over with a cup in one hand and the pot of boiling water in the
other.  He handed the cup to Sir Willam and threw the water on
Bjorn.

     The shaggy man roared with more volume than was humanly
possible and sprang to his feet, bringing the sword up over his
head.  The Knight-Paladin softly spoke a word known only to
himself, Wilfred, Tomson, and Ayelin.  Bjorn froze and his eyes,
six feet and a half feet above the tent floor, glared down at Sir
Willam.  The Knight-Paladin had five seconds.  He pointed out the
door and across the battlefield.  "Those mammoths did it.  Come
back when you're done."  Two and one-half seconds to spare, at
the end of which Bjorn again roared and charged out the tent
door.

                              ~~~~~

     At the first roar from the hilltop, Private Ham of Greenwood
grinned.  At the second he risked a glance back.  A huge shaggy
figure rushed from the command tent, sunlight glinting off a
sword swinging wildly above its head.  Ham removed the head of
one goblin and continued the stroke to detach the sword arm of
one threatening Private Sutton beside him.  He compared the
approach of his Knight-Paladin's berserker to the approach of the
Vile Lord's mammoths, laughed, and parried a sword strike.  He
wished now that he'd eaten more when he'd had the chance.  It
would be at least an hour before he had another opportunity.

     Afterward there would be more of the Horde to sacrifice on
the altar of war.

                               Fin
     --
     Copyright Russell Hoisington 2004

   ************************************************************

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Russell Hoisington
State of Confusion
21 March 2004

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