Vashti Valant - Slave of the Goblin

“Grob?”

“My husband.” Hwega spat. “A drunken loser. He hates Akraz because Akraz is ten times the goblin Grob will ever be. And Akraz hates him, because Grob beats me and the cubs. All the nice things Akraz gets us, if we don’t hide it real good, Grob steals it and sells it for more booze. Normally, Grob would slink away like the coward he is when Akraz comes around, but now…” Hwega just shook her head.

“I would like to return Akraz to his own den, but I can’t carry him there myself,” Laya said. “Not only is he too heavy, but as a…slave…I would be seen and questioned. Can you help me?”

“Maybe,” said Hwega. She chewed her lip and studied Laya. “I recognize what you are now. You ain’t human, and sure as the Dark God lies, you ain’t a goblin. You’re an elf.”

“Yes,” said Laya.

This simple confession elicited a startling reaction from the children, who had been listening quietly to the conversation. At once the oldest children began to shout curses and the youngest to cry and wail.

“Elf! Elf! Ma, don’t let her eat me!” screeched one little one, burrowing into Hwega’s lap.

“I’ll kill it right now!” cried the boy with the bone sword. He flew at Laya like a whirlwind, hitting her with the toy.

“Shut up and sit down, all of ya!” bellowed Hwega. Cowed, the goblin children shrank into quiet balls. However, they crept so that their mother stood between them and Laya.

“She ain’t gonna eat ya,” said Hwega. “Didn’t you hear? She’s Akraz’s slave. She’s so afraid of what he’ll do to her if she disobeys him, that she risks her life to drag his unconscious body through deadly spiders and miles of caves.” Hwega gave Laya a sharp look. “You think she would dare eat her master’s favorite nieces and nephews?”

“I ain’t scared of her,” said the boy with the sword. “I ain’t scared of any elf.”

“Good goblin,” said Hwega. “Now get out of here, all of you. Scat! Go catch rats. We have only a few dried ones left and you know your pa will eat half of those tonight, if he’s sober enough to eat at all. What will that leave for the rest of you? Scat!”

The children emptied from the den, leaving a heavy silence in the smoky air behind them.

“I know some of Akraz’s boys in the army,” Hwega said. “Boys that would side with him even against the Dark God himself. But I gotta know first, before I get them down here to help him, what kind of real trouble he’s in.

“I guess maybe you are his slave, because I don’t see how else you coulda got to Mount Murk. It ain’t no vacation spot. And it ain’t hard to see what Akraz would want with a pretty elf slave girl like you, though he ain’t never brought one home before. Coulda had plenty if he’d wanted I bet.

“But you coulda left him to die from the spiders if you wanted to run away. Even if you were too scared to run, why bother coming here? I may not be a general like Akraz, but even I got brains enough to see that don’t add up.”

“Even if I told you,” said Laya. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

Hwega contemplated her with a keen, knowing look. “It’s like that, huh?”

“It’s like that.”

“Huh.” Hwega snorted. “I thought only goblin women were stupid enough to fall for blokes who were no good for them. I guess it’s all women.”

“A universal curse,” Laya agreed.

Elf and goblin shared a knowing, bittersweet smile.

“I’ll call them boys,” said Hwega.

No wonder Akraz exhibited such pride in his den and its few pitiful luxuries, Laya thought as she soaked in a wooden tub in his quarters a few days later. Compared to Hwega’s quarters, which, Hwega had informed Laya, were not only typical of most goblin homes, but also how she and Akraz had been raised, Akraz’s present circumstances were sinfully indulgent. He was a wealthy and powerful man among his people.

In the more sanitary and well-apportioned conditions of Akraz’s den, Laya had made her patient comfortable on a pile of pillows and redressed his wound several times. She kept him hydrated and bathed and tended to his personal needs. He responded gratifyingly well to treatment. His periods of consciousness were increasing each day. But other times, he thrashed in fevered nightmares, and Laya still worried for him.

When she finished with her own bath, Laya took another kettle of hot water out of the stone oven in the wall and prepared a bath for Akraz. With two buckets of hot and cold water respectively and a sponge, she rinsed the fever sweat from his naked body. He moaned under her ministrations; his eyelashes fluttered; his hands clenched, unclenched and clenched again. His face changed again, from grotesque to fair. The transformation seemed to occur at regular intervals, but Laya had not been able to ascertain what trigged it. For a moment she hoped he would awake from his delirium, but he did not.

What dreams haunted his sleep? Did he dream of the past? Laya reflected on what she had learned of his life. Hwega had inadvertently revealed much. Laya had also picked up a few more pieces of the puzzle from the ugly, battle-hardened veterans who came to help carry Akraz discreetly back to his home.

His youngest years he had spent in squalor, catching rats for dinner or going hungry. His mother, the only one to have shown Akraz and Hwega any real love, had died giving birth to a later sibling. Many of his sibs had died as children as well, some from disease. At least one, Hwega had hinted darkly, had died at the hands of their own father, a drunken lout of the same ilk as Hwega’s present husband. Said father had also come near to beating Akraz to death, but in the end had sold the boy into the army at the age of eight instead.

The goblin army had been another place rotten with abuse. Young goblin “recruits” served as slaves, and often sex toys, to the older soldiers. Akraz had escaped this fate only because of his sharp wit, which a grizzled old vet named Narg had recognized. Narg had taken Akraz as his own “boy,” but instead of raping the youngster, taught him to read and fight in preparation for becoming an officer. The apprenticeship lasted ten years. By then Narg had become General of the army.

Advancement in the goblin army typically proceeded by way of assassination of one’s superiors. A group of ambitious goblin officers under Narg finally succeeded in doing in the old man. In his outrage and grief, Akraz swore revenge. One by one, Akraz ambushed and killed Narg’s assassins, and such was the logic of Zathstragomal’s army, that this ruthlessness was rewarded by Akraz’s own meteoric rise in the ranks.

Zathstragomal valued Akraz because the wizard thought Akraz burned with hate and ambition. The secret truth was that Akraz had sworn vengeance out of his love for the old General, not a desire to usurp his place.

Akraz stirred and moaned again. His cock stiffened in his sleep.

Perhaps it was not of his childhood or of his army career that he dreamed. Perhaps memories of women he had tasted revisited him.

Akraz had once told her that he had never taken a woman by force. Now that Laya knew him, she could believe it, as incredible as it was of a goblin soldier. But how many of his previous female captives had succumbed of their own free will to his masterful charms?

Laya had washed all of his limbs except his private parts. The half-erect penis tantalized her. She reached and closed her fingers around his shaft. With her other hand, she squeezed a sprinkling of water from the sponge onto the tip. His cock nodded and stiffened in her fist. Still he did not awaken. Only his cock was wide-awake and eager.

She brushed the rough sponge up and down the thick cock. It blushed and bobbed. With the softest of strokes, she sponged his balls as well. She cupped them in her hands and played them over her fingers. She scrubbed and brushed the black hairs at the base of his cock, then rolled both her hands up and down the shaft once more. Between her thumb and the ball of her hand, she toyed with the skin around the head.