Langauge Barrier
The truth is, I’m getting older and I should be wiser. But half a lifetime in the ring doesn’t do much to ground a man’s passions or temper. The fire in my belly is what got me through my time in servitude, and it’s why I’m alive now. I’ve managed to find my calm when it mattered most—my frustrations with my family. In particular, my sister. Ultimately, she’s the reason I’m here. I came halfway across the desert to find a tonic for her ailment, only to find instead a real physician who shattered all my hopes with cold truth. The disease she has will ultimately kill her. And soon.
So maybe I hadn’t gone there, amongst the dregs and port refuse, to take in the culture. Maybe I was there to find a fight. It’s not that I went looking for one. I’m just excessively good at finding fights, wherever I go. It is, after all, what I was trained to do.
I was angry, too. That didn’t help. Angry, frustrated, at a loss as to what I should do with my life now that the only person left in the world who really meant anything to me had gotten a death sentence. And she didn’t even know it yet. I had to go back to her at that miserable brothel and tell her. She probably wouldn’t even care, that’s the truly frustrating thing. Her mind went to the drug a long time ago. She might have seen death as a release.
Gods, I wanted to hit something. Someone. And I found my opportunity quickly.
The grotto was little more than a natural cave off the coast, carved by the tides. It was probably a beautiful natural wonder at some point, but it had become the refuge for the worst the port town had to offer over the years, and now it was a place for the locals to dump their garbage—people and actual trash alike. There were fragments of glass and entire bottles littered across and pushed into the sand by the lapping waves, broken and rotting crates and barrels, and towards the dryer end of the cave, the remnants of some ancient stone walls that were probably part of a building back before this place went to hell. The hyenas and the lions had marked all the stone with rough graffiti both carved and painted into the rocks, with symbols that were too local to make any sense to me. Probably gangs.
Judging by the shouting and jeering as I approached, and the loose circle of men near one of the enormous bonfires, there were fights for money going on. I could smell blood and other even less appealing bodily fluids, and I briefly considered getting in on the action and showing all these dumb young fools what real combat looks like, but I wasn’t in need of coin and I really didn’t want to get pissed on. Or even—rubbed up against—by some of these men.
It’s hard to believe that even with the ocean a few paces away, bathing could be such a foreign concept to so many.
So I made my way towards the cave, where the people thinned out into less of a mob and more of an eclectic collection of unfortunate, lost souls. Many of them clearly lived here, judging by the ramshackle shelters and how many of them were already sleeping.
Or dead. Some of them certainly smelled like it.
Again, I wasn’t really certain what I was looking for. But I knew it the moment I saw him. The dog.
For one, his coat put him woefully out of place here. It’s not that canines were rare here, I’d seen at least three jackals and two thin wolves on my way towards the grotto. But the Dog Lords—the Amurescans—are different. Their coats are like patterned paper, or the sorts of fancy sarees a woman might wear. Too shiny, or long, or speckled and spotted. They look like childish imitations of a canine, to the point that it’s almost laughable.
Until they shoot you, and then you get to remembering they own most of the known world, and why.
This one wasn’t too bad. His coat was mottled and looked almost natural in places, sort of grey from a distance, with black over his eyes and, I’d imagine, other darker spots elsewhere. He had a sharper face than some I’ve seen, with attentive, pointed ears that reminded me somewhat of a jackal’s, and gold eyes like a wolf that would’ve probably been considerably fiercer were it not for one thing.
He was shitfaced.
He was sitting on a crate, mostly slumped over, bobbing now and again in that way drunks do when they’re trying not to fall asleep. The cause of his woes was held loosely in his right hand, half-empty and smelling from here like good rum. Expensive rum. Which emphatically did not suit the man—he was dressed in a thin, old, ragged shirt and what may have been grey britches at some point, but they looked like he’d been wearing them for months. He had the remnant of a red sash around his waist, which I knew from experience marked him as a navy man from one of their warships, but it looked more like he’d been using it for a belt than wearing it as any badge of patriotism or honor.
Did I say man? A better term might be ‘boy.’ Or ‘young man,’ at best. I’m not sure how old he was—old enough, clearly, to somehow end up halfway across the world from his native lands in a shitty little port town, apparently separated from the rest of his kin.
But he was sitting on a crate of good rum. In a nearly dry port. I’d been trying to get a drink since I came here, but apparently something went awry with the chain of supply in this area recently, and there was a shortage of alcohol. Some of the vendors carried it, but I refused to pay five times market rate for what was likely the worst swill they had left.
He must have stolen it, or something. He was probably trying to sell it here to stay beneath the hyenas’ notice, but he was about to lose his entire supply once the inevitable happened and he passed out. I could’ve just waited for that to happen. But that could’ve taken hours.
So I figured it was time to get him in a sharing mood.
“You,” I said as I approached him. He didn’t even look up, save to flick an ear dismissively, so I raised my voice just a bit. “Amurescan.”
He did look up at that, and I nodded at him. “Yes, you.” I was about to say more, when something in his eyes caught me off-guard. He wasn’t just drunk. He was… destitute. The sheer sadness there made me second-guess myself. I don’t know why it surprised me, honestly. This isn’t the sort of place happy, fulfilled people come to. It’s a resting place for the desperate. Even desperate foreigners, I suppose.
My silent pause apparently convinced him I had no more to say, because he turned away at that. So I spoke up again, a few moments later.
“Look, can I just pay you for some of that?” I asked, my desire to pick a fight boiling away into something a bit more charitable. I still wanted his alcohol, but maybe, I figured, I shouldn’t be such a damn bully about it. Like I said, it’s not like I was hurting for coin. Not since I’d gotten got my manor job. I could pay for booze.
“How much?” I pressed.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look up again. I think he sighed, but I didn’t get so much as an ear flick that he might be listening to me. And that started to irritate me. I don’t like being ignored.
“I said I’d pay,” I growled out. “What’s your problem?”
Still no answer. He gave me a look for a few moments, but then he went right back to ignoring me.
“Look, I’m not in the mood for this,” I snuffed, moving forward towards him and reaching into the belt pouch that was behind my hip. “I’m gonna give you what one of those bottles is worth, and you’re going to take it and be glad for it.”
For some reason, my reaching for my coin purse got his attention in a way nothing else I’d said had. His ears went from nearly flat to rapt in a second, and his whole body went stiff. With a far more certain motion than I’d thought him capable of in his current state, he sprang to his paws and smashed the bottle in his palm against the edge of the crate, spilling its precious contents and bringing the jagged edge up, pointed at me.
The way he went from nearly unconscious to alert and dangerous in a few short seconds might have surprised me, but I’m used to being surprised by men with weapons, and it didn’t take me long to recover. I abandoned the idea of going for the scimitar on my hip right from the start, because I honestly didn’t think this situation warranted it and, despite what some men seem to think, there aren’t actually a lot of ways to use a sword that don’t end fatally or with serious maiming.
He was just a kid, fast reflexes or no. So all it took was one well-timed motion, and I’d gotten his forearm locked with one hand, while the other twisted his wrist until he cried out and released the broken bottle. I’m pretty certain I didn’t break anything, but he’d be feeling that tomorrow.
He surprised me again when he didn’t immediately give in. What he did instead was flash fangs, and level a kick at my gut, actually connecting hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I released his forearm and he got this look like he thought he was home-free… until he tried to twist away from me and realized I still had his wrist.
It was actually no easy task to wrestle him to the ground, and I’m very good at wrestling. What the kid lacked in skill he made up for in raw energy and defiance. Even when I’d gotten him beneath me, thoroughly pinned, he was cursing me out in Amurescan and thrashing against me.
“Stop insulting my parents or my… ‘lineage,’” I muttered, switching to his own tongue simply to use the same words he was using. “I know bloodline’s a big thing to you dogs, but I promise you, I’ve got no love for the people who sold me as a pup.”
He abruptly stopped fighting at that, so suddenly I almost fell into him. And then he stared me straight in the eyes, his jaw hanging slack open for a few moments. When he at last spoke again, he sounded shocked.
“You speak our language?”
I patted his cheek with a chuckle. “‘Our’ language in these parts is Huudari, pup.”
“Amurescan,” he clarified. “You speak Amurescan.”
“I’ve fought a lot of swordsman from your parts who thought they were big and bad enough to survive a few rounds in a Huudari gladiator pen,” I snorted. “After the third or fourth, I decided I wanted to know what they were saying when they were bleeding out in the sand.”
He seemed no less hopeful or jubilant after that, and his lack of fear was honestly starting to impress me. Then again, could’ve just been the liquid courage.
“I can barely curse in Huudari,” he said, a tinge of desperation in his tone. “I’m marooned here, and I’ve never been in Mataa before. Please… I’m begging you. Help me. You’re the first canine I’ve met who can understand me.”
“Plenty of the hyenas around here speak your tongue,” I pointed out.
“Well… yes, but they’re hyenas.”
I had to laugh at that. “Point.”
And then I let him up, and offered him a paw to pull him to his feet. Those lightning quick reflexes from before didn’t avail him much once he was standing, and very soon he was tipping back over to collapse on his rear into the sand.
“What is it exactly you need help with?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. “Besides remaining vertical.”
“You’ve sort of got me over a barrel here,” he sighed, running a paw over the dark fur around his eyes. I was good enough not to say something suggestive at his comment, and I think I should be commended for that.
“Look, I’m talking to you… canine to canine,” he stressed, looking up at me. “If you kill me for this, I’ll haunt you.”
“Spit it out,” I pushed. “Whatever it is, it can’t be worth all this time.”
“I know where the recent rum shipment went,” he said, patting the crate next to him. “Twenty-two more like this. The Captain cached them down the coast a-ways, to get around paying the outrageous taxes to the local clans. I relocated the cache, after…” He paused at that, clearing his throat. “Well, we had a falling out.”
“You and your Captain?” I ask, amused.
“More me and my whole ship,” he said with a frown. “Look, the point is, I know where all the missing alcohol is. And selling it might be my only way home. If the hyenas don’t kill me for it, first.”
“That is definitely worth my time,” I murmured thoughtfully, glancing around. There was a sleeping cheetah a few paces away, but judging by his even breaths, he was really asleep. And it didn’t seem like anyone else was close enough within earshot to have heard the Amurescan. Despite the fact that he was talking at a higher volume than I would have been, were I discussing a stolen cache of booze.
Then again, he was also sitting on an entire crate of booze, in a den of scum and poor thieves, so he clearly had some stones on him, or had made something of an impression on these people when he first arrived, because everyone was giving him a wide berth.
“Is that why you’re here?” I asked. “To find someone to buy the cache off of you?”
“That was the plan,” he said with an exhausted sigh. “But it sort of fell short when I realized I couldn’t stray too far from the crate, or… really talk to anyone here.”
I chuckled again. “Not much of a planner, are you?”
He glared at me. “I have a sharper head when I’m somewhere I know the lay of the land, and can bloody communicate with people.”
“The rum isn’t helping either, I’d imagine.”
“There wasn’t much else to do,” he said dejectedly. “And it’s been a rough few days.”
“Yeah, I’ve walked that road,” I snuffed. “Well, I suppose I could lend a hand. For half the take, that is.”
His ears twisted back and he bristled for a moment, but then he just dropped his muzzle and looked resigned. “It’s not like I have much of a choice,” he agreed. Then his eyes came up to mine again, demanding. “But you’re not just going to translate for me. You’re going to teach me enough of your tongue that I can broker this deal myself.”
“Oh-ho, the lad is sharp,” I commended him with a smirk. “You know, I wasn’t actually planning on selling you out or fleecing you, but… good thinking. Trust no one in this world, boy. Always make sure the one you can rely on in the end is yourself.”
He flashed his canines when he smiled. “I’ve never had anyone else.”
The next day, after he’d slept off the worst of the rum—with my sorry ass guarding his goods the whole time—we sold off the contents of the one crate he managed to bring from the cache and made our way down the beach. He assured me the cache wasn’t far, a mile at most, but I hardly cared if this errand took half the day or more. It was something to do aside from wallow in my own grief and anger.
It was a typical coastal day, the sun unobstructed and burning hot and bright in the sky, not a cloud for miles. We were on the other end of the monsoon season, so there wouldn’t be rain in these lands for months.
I found myself watching him as we walked, his shoulders and back bare, as he’d stripped off his shirt earlier in the walk and bunched it into the hem of his pants. For such an apparently young lad, he was hard-bodied and solidly built. Not surprising considering the work they must have had him doing on the warship he came from. I’ve seen a lot of boys enlist in crews soft and come back chiseled like some craftsman went to work on them. He’d been insistent on walking ahead of me, so I unashamedly admired the view.
“So what manner of ship did you hail from?” I asked as we walked, feeling the need for conversation. The scenery was fine, but I’d seen a lot of sand, sun and waves recently, and even casually ogling the canine in front of me would’ve grown boring eventually. Or just frustrating.
He glanced back over his shoulder at me with a look of surprise, like he hadn’t expected we’d be speaking throughout the walk. “Oh… uh,” he paused, “she was called the Solace. Fourth rate ship of the line. Fifty some-odd guns. Really hardly qualifies as a warship in these times, any more. She’d never survive a prolonged assault with Carvecian Privateers or even the sorry ass pirates in these parts. Maybe with the right Captain… but that, she definitely did not have.”
“Some of that went over my head,” I admitted with a chuckle, “but I caught the part about you not liking the man in charge. I’d imagine that explains your current situation.”
“Empty-headed, inbred Pedigree trash,” he growled. “He took us into a storm last month to shave a day off a 30-day trip, nearly sunk us. His first’s a decent man, but Captain Tallhook took offense to the idea of listening to men with more experience than him. Or any man, for that matter. Even the deck scrubbers like me would’ve made better calls.”
“Sounds like,” I agreed. “Was she your first ship?”
“No,” he sighed. “The Penitent was my first. Fifth rate… even smaller. That’s why she got decommissioned. The waters are getting more dangerous, the Royal Navy can’t afford to send out anything but monsters any more. I was aboard her for a season, just long enough to really find my place in the ranks and… make a friend or two. Our Captain, a fox named Harkavy, I saw him weep when they took her away from him. He was a good man. Worked his way up through the Navy the right way, with grit and cleverness. I’m glad at least the first time I went to sea, it was with him.”
“But this Tallhook lost your respect in a big way, hmnh?” I asked.
He got a sour expression. “He never had it,” he said. “I hated his style of command from the second I got on-board. But it’s not as though you can quit a commission just like that, when there’s nothing but sea in all directions for miles. I tried to stick it out, tried to toe the line. I thought maybe it might get better with time.”
“What made you desert?” I queried, curiously.
“I didn’t,” he said between grit teeth. “I was quite literally tossed out. They tried to keelhaul me, and the boy doing my ropes was bad with his knots. I got free before they got me under the boat, and swam to shore. Good thing, too… that bloody ship was old and poorly-maintained. The barnacles would have flayed me alive.”
“I can’t say I know much about your justice system,” I said, arching an eyebrow, “let alone whatever functions for one amongst your navy, but that sounds like a stiff punishment. What did you do? It had to be more than just disagreeing with the man. Unless he was a tyrant.”
At that he gave me a nervous glance, then averted his gaze to the horizon. But just as I was about to wave off the question—his sins with his own people weren’t my business, really—he answered.
“I killed a man.”
I’m not sure if he’d expected that would phase me. Instead, I gave him an even stare, then asked simply, “Why?”
“My own reasons,” was his response, and his tone said he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. So I didn’t push. I’d lost track of how many men I’d killed over the years, I’m not exactly one to sit in judgment.
“So your Captain must have buried this cache recently, for you to have gotten to it before him,” I changed the subject.
He got a wry grin at that, which chased away the darker expression he was wearing prior. I found myself grateful. Not because he intimidated me particularly, that grin was just far more suitable on his muzzle. “Yes, well,” he said, “I don’t think he planned for me to live, let alone escape. Still, the whole thing was poorly thought-out. He chose the location for the cache because it was so easily accessible, and there’s this stone jutting up near it that’s a very recognizable landmark. Made it real easy to find once I got to shore.”
“Is that the first thing you did?” I chuckled.
“The first thing I did was shake the sand out of my fur,” he clarified. “The second thing I did was fuck him over. I got to the cache, and spent a day moving it. I saw the ship circle a few times while I hid out in this fisherman’s shack a few days after that. Dhole, smelled like shit, but he put me up for a while for a few bottles. Helped me get that crate to the grotto, too. We couldn’t talk to one another, but the language of rum is pretty universal. I couldn’t really figure out how to show him with… gestures and bottles… that I wanted to sell the rest of the cache, though. Or even that I had more. All he ever saw was the one crate I left out.”
“I was about to ask,” I muttered.
“I might be a poor cattle dog,” he said, glaring at me, “but I’m not stupid.”
“You don’t have to keep saying it,” I assured him. “At this point, I believe you.”
His ears flattened somewhat at that and he looked away. “Sorry,” he said, defensively. “I’m just used to keeping my claws out, I guess.”
“I can see the chip on your shoulder from here,” I agreed. “Word of advice from an older man who’s had the displeasure of spending… I’m going to say twice as long walking this earth as you have. Don’t overcompensate. A man who has nothing to prove gets a lot more done. If you’re smart or clever, people will figure it out fast enough. If you’re dangerous, it’s best if they figure it out too late.”
He was silent for a bit as we walked after that, and it looked like he was earnestly digesting what I’d said. I don’t exactly consider myself a deep thinker, but it felt like I might’ve said something right.
I probably would have been more nervous about being out here alone on the beach with a confessed murderer, were it not for the fact that I’m an ex-Gladiator, and he wasn’t even armed. But I was beginning to wonder if I was being taken for a ride, after nearly an hour of walking until he stopped in his tracks, his tail going rigid, and he pointed.
“There,” he said, gesturing to a nondescript scraggly bluff covered in scrub grass.
“Are you certain?” I asked, tilting my head. “It looks like every other bluff we’ve passed.”
He dragged a breath through his nose. “I dumped out a bottle in the grass. I can still vaguely smell it.”
“Clever,” I admitted. “Can’t smell much from the sea, and this place looks like every other bit of coastline around here.”
We climbed the sandy slope up towards an area of clearly overturned grasses and earth, and he spent a few minutes digging down until he was able to wipe aside enough sand to reveal the first hint of wood from a crate.
“So,” he said, stepping back and spreading his arms. “Here they are. I’ve got to admit, I’m at a loss as to how we’re going to move them all a full mile down the coastline. The original cache wasn’t far from here, and it was still a trial and a half to get them all moved. Took me nearly two days. And that was,” he glanced down the coastline, “a few hundred yards, at most.”
“I came here with a merchant caravan owned by the Sura clan,” I said, scratching the underside of my jaw. “Powerful clan further inland. No love lost with the coastal clans, since they compete at market here. They’ll be glad to take all of this off your hands, I’m sure. They won’t give you what it’s worth, but it’ll be enough to buy yourself passage home.”
He made a face. “That’s just more hyenas.”
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. “You realize I’m an Aardwolf, don’t you?”
“I… I wasn’t sure what you were, actually,” he admitted. “I don’t know all the peoples in these parts yet. You’re some type of wolf?”
“Closer to a hyena,” I said with some bitterness. I honestly preferred to be mistaken for a canine most of the time. But I’d come here with hyenas, I worked for them now—for the first time in my life as a free agent, earning real coin—and if this boy had something against them, he deserved to know that.
He was silent a moment or two, then just shrugged. “You’re canine enough. So long as you trust these people.”
“Never trust a hyena,” I said. “But when it comes to resale, there’s no avoiding working with them. I’ll see to it you get as fair a deal as possible.”
“How long until they return and you can make contact with them?”
“Two days,” I said with a sigh. “Or more, depending on wind storms. They went further down south than I was heading, I just hitched a ride. Their return trip takes them back to my place of employment, so reconnecting with them was always the plan. Now I’ll just have an extra opportunity to throw their way, and make a bit of coin off of, myself.”
I clapped a hand on his shoulder and he started a bit, seeming defensive about being touched. “Apologies,” I said, withdrawing my paw from his bare shoulder. “I just wanted to say thanks for not leading me on a damn tail chase, this seems like it could work out well for both of us.”
“… yes,” he said in an odd tone, dropping his gaze away from mine. “You’re welcome. Thanks for not… you know… murdering me for my booze.”
“Did you have some sort of plan if I’d tried to?” I asked with a smirk. “This was a risk.”
“Well, now that you mention it,” he murmured, and reached to the waist of his britches, pulling it taut to reveal two things. For one, an unapologetic view of his sheath, which I hadn’t been prepared for. I found myself having to shut my muzzle forcibly. But also, and most definitely the main thing he intended to show me… a knife, tucked into a loop he must have sewn in himself in the interior fabric of his waistband. It was a small blade, probably generally meant to be worn along the ankle in a similarly small holster.
“Uh-ah,” I tried to find words, and act like any normal man who doesn’t give a damn about seeing another man’s sheath. “Alright. Not exactly an impressive weapon, but you would have definitely caught me off-guard when you’d pulled it from there.”
“Worked on the last man I had to kill, too,” he said with a visible canine when he smiled. “And be careful what you say about another man’s weapon. It’s impressed some.”
I quirked half a smile, and began to grow curious. But how best to approach this…
“Not for some time, I’d imagine,” I said with forced ease, putting an elbow in his side. “Not many women at sea. There’s a place back in town, if you haven’t found it already. I think they might even have a canine or two.”
He looked distinctly uncomfortable at that, and averted his gaze. “That sort of thing’s not… really for me.”
His comment was vague, and didn’t give me much less to wonder on. The Dog Lords aren’t just known for guns and spotty coats, they’re also pretty infamous for having large sticks crammed up their asses when it comes to the matter of sex and breeding. The boy could just honestly dislike the idea of prostitution.
Which, considering my sister’s position, didn’t hurt my opinion of him at all.
Still, it also didn’t sate my curiosity.
“So a few days…” I sighed, glancing down at the half-buried crate. “We’ve got some time to kill. Any thoughts on how you’d prefer to do that?”
“Well, other than teaching me as much Huudari as I can commit to memory in that time,” he looked pointedly down at the crate, as well. “I can think of one obvious thing.”
I’ve lived a full, eventful life. There’ve been some really abysmal lows, and some thrilling high points, most of which were violent. The one continuing theme has been the dirt in my fur, and the low-life wretches like myself I’ve had the pleasure of spending it with.
The point is, I’ve had every excuse, whether it be my desperate lot in life, or the people I shared it with, to drink.
I don’t think I’ve ever been as drunk as I got with that Amur man. It was four days, actually, that we ended up spending on that coastline. We spent it moving between the cache, the grotto, and an old stone ruin we found at a midway point along the beach. We had to go to town every day to check and see if my caravan had returned, and those walks were about the only thing that sobered us up in between bottles. It’s honestly surprising to me in retrospect that neither of us just died.
For such a young man, the dog knew a lot about drinking. And he had the benefit of caring more about what happened to him and his body than I did at that point in my life, so he made sure to insist we bring water from town, and boil crabs and shellfish we collected along the shore for meals each night. The rum was some of the best I’ve ever had, smooth and strong, and it probably didn’t help that it went down so easy.
Somewhere in between I think I may have taught him some Huudari. I must have, because even by the second day we were exchanging phrases. The kid was a real quick study, and he had a mind like a steel trap. He didn’t just pick up on the language fast, he held onto it. Drunk.
I shuddered to think what he might be capable of sober.
It was the third night when the drink finally got the better of me, and I did something foolish. I’d like to think I’d been fairly in control of myself most of the time I’d spent shitfaced with the Amur, but that night we’d gotten particularly rowdy. We weren’t even the drunkest we’d been, just… full of energy. He was young, and thus always full of energy, but in my case I think it’s because the days I’d spent drinking, sleeping on the beach and teaching my tongue to a foreigner were accidentally the best distraction I could have asked for to help me forget my troubles for a time. I’d eventually have to join the caravan, return to the Sura Estate and talk to my sister, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do while I was still stranded here, and it did me some good not to dwell on it all until I had to.
So, I was feeling good that night. Perhaps too good.
“It’s a ‘cha’” I sounded out the throaty noise for him again. It was a fairly common sound in our language, but apparently not in his, and he’d been struggling with it.
He made a noise that sounded more like he was clearing his throat, and I couldn’t tell if he was honestly trying any more, or mocking me.
“…a little less like you’re coughing something up,” I snorted out a chuckle.
“Ugh,” he grumbled.
“More like that,” I smirked.
He rolled his eyes at me. “How often does this sound really come up? Can’t I just be a dumb foreigner about this one, and keep doing it wrong?”
“Well, it’s in my name, for one,” I stated. “It’s a major part of the language. If you can’t do it right, you might be a little hard for natural speakers to understand.”
His ears perked. “Are you finally going to tell me your name, then?”
“I really don’t see why we need to exchange names,” I repeated the explanation I’d given him many times already.
“I don’t see why we wouldn’t,” he insisted, irritated. “I’ve already admitted to you that I’m a murderer. And I’m pretty sure that sword—”
“Scimitar.”
“—scimitar… is not for show. Even if you’re wanted or something, I’m leaving your country soon. Hopefully. I fail to see how I’d use your name against you.”
“First off, I am not wanted,” I said. “I’ve only ever killed men legally.”
“Lord it over me, why don’t you?” he said wryly. “So what does it matter?”
I leaned back, scrunching my muzzle up for a moment. “Let me use one of your expressions,” I explained. “We are like… two ships passing in the night. Is it important that you know the name of the vessel you saw once in the distance, and hailed at?”
“It is if they’re an enemy vessel,” he retorted.
“Is it, though?” I pressed. “For one, you keep insisting you’re not my enemy. And I’ve assured you I’m not yours. But the more we know about one another, the more we dig into our histories and identities, the more likely we are to find discrepancies, contrary facts, and reasons why this meeting should never have happened. Why dig into the details? Let’s just keep enjoying this time, until we’ve passed one another by and all we have is a pleasant memory. I’m not afraid of living with a few mysteries in my life.”
“You’re an odd man,” he muttered, shaking his head. “But… alright.”
“You strike me as a fellow with more than a few secrets of his own, anyway,” I said with a smirk and another long swig from my bottle.
I thought I’d eased into the conversation with one toe, but again, I watched him shut down completely, his good humor falling away all at once. “What makes you think that?” He countered in a tone suddenly as serious as death. “I already told you why I’m marooned.”
“Murder isn’t much of a secret in this country,” I said. “More a part of life. Hell, people here wear their crimes as a badge, or use them in negotiations. The Clans rule this whole country because they got so skilled at murder. And no one here’s going to give a damn that you killed one of your own—”
“You don’t even want to exchange names!” He growled out, narrowing his eyes. “Why are you asking me about secrets, all of a sudden? What’s your agenda?”
“No agenda,” I tried to insist, putting my bottle down. “I just—”
“Maybe we’ve had too much to drink,” he interrupted me again, like he wanted to hurry the conversation along. “Should turn in, it’s gotten late.”
“You’re still making enough sense that I know I’m not too drunk,” I countered, with a snort. “Too drunk is when I stop being bilingual.”
He seemed ready to say something else, but I decided—because I was feeling too good and too optimistic—that now was clearly the time to press my advantage, and stop half-stepping around the matter. I got to my feet and crossed the campsite to him, stepping close enough to the campfire that I could feel it on my tail.
“You think I’m not on to you?” I asked in what was meant to be a playful tone. In retrospect, he might have seen it as threatening. I’m told I’m often intimidating even when I’m not intending to be. “You think I haven’t caught your eyes wandering?”
“I… don’t know what you mean,” he said warily, leaning back on his palms in his seated position.
“You weren’t even subtle, on the beach the other day,” I chuckled, dropping to a crouch in front of him, then lowering myself to my knees to be at eye level. “When we went swimming?”
He got this look that, in my inebriated state, I mistook for excitement. Terrified, like a cornered animal, may have been more accurate.
“So what d’you say?” I drawled, leaning in closer. “Let’s stop playing games, hnh? I could feel it from the second we met. We haven’t got much going for us, you and I, but some things in life are free. This beach, the time we’ve spent together… it’s ours to spend as we wish. Isn’t there more you want out of it?”
“More… rum?” He guessed, unconvincingly.
Rolling my eyes, I finally gave up and grabbed him by the underside of his jaw, claiming his muzzle with my own. If he was going to be intentionally dense, I was done leading him by the hand. I knew I wasn’t wrong. It’d been a suspicion at first, but three days with him had more than confirmed it. He wasn’t as discreet with his eyes as he thought he was.
Of course, I’d never have pushed for more than a kiss. There were a thousand reasons he could’ve rejected me, from my age to my species to my general appearance, so I knew I was taking a risk. I was prepared for rejection.
The way he’d reacted though, you’d think someone had lit him on fire.
He fell back on his tail in one second, presumably in shock, but in the next he had his forearms shoved up between us, and flung me back with a strength I hadn’t thought the smaller man capable of. I’m not exactly a petite man, and he pushed me off and had me falling back on my rear and crushing my own tail under me like he’d shoved over a child. A lot of it was due to my surprise, I’m sure. The boy was lean and muscular, but I hadn’t expected that kind of strength.
That felt like a rejection if ever I’d had one, and I was in between cringing from the fall and trying to think up some half-decent way to apologize, when the second act began. And it was just as quick, unexpected and powerful as the first.
He fell over top of me and pinned me to the sandy earth, his canines flashing and his voice a growl. “Don’t toy with me!” He snapped, inches from my muzzle.
“I’m not,” I said after a moment, managing to sound un-intimidated. It wasn’t so much that I was certain I could take him if it came to an out and out fight at this point. I was fairly drunk, probably more so than he, and my scimitar was halfway across the camp. It was more that I didn’t care. Die to some Amurescan madman on a lonely beach in the middle of nowhere, because I’d mis-interpreted his interest in me? It was better than dying on a hyena’s blade, at least.
His muzzle twisted up into something that looked like disgust, but not directed at me. More self-loathing?
“How… how did you know?” He asked, his tone shaky.
My answer was a hapless shrug. “Sometimes you just know. I stopped being interested in women when I was twenty. I realized I’d never been interested in them about five years after that. I’ve had a longer life than you to come to terms with it, and see it in other men.”
“I…” he flattened his ears. “I try so hard to hide it.”
“You don’t have to here,” I said. He immediately turned his ears, and then his muzzle, back towards me. “I know your people have some strict laws about breeding and where you can put what in whom,” I said with a wry smirk. He didn’t seem amused. “But in Mataa, unless you’re a hyena or a lion, no one cares who you bed down with at night. So long as you’re making pups with someone, or working a trade where you don’t need children to help your family. Or you know, if you don’t have a family, and there’s no one to give a damn about you.”
“Like you,” he stated.
“Yes, like me,” I replied without taking offense. “That’s the trade-off. Men like me tend to die alone. Which I’d prefer not be tonight, if you don’t mind.”
He seemed to take stock of our position for the first time, and slowly leaned up. He didn’t get off of me, but he eased his hands away from my shoulders and went silent for a time, looking down at me.
“You would never tell anyone,” he said quietly.
“Why would I?” I reasoned.
“They tried to kill me once already,” he murmured. “Not because I killed a man. I killed him because… I thought he was like me, and when I tried to be… myself… with him, he used it against me. This sort of thing, it isn’t just against the law where I come from. People think it’s evil. The Church says it’s heresy, that it’s like a disease that can poison the mind and the body, and sailors are already superstitious. My Captain thought it was like a real disease. Like I could somehow… infect… his entire crew with it.”
“People are all mad in different ways,” I sighed. “Here or in your lands, probably across the sea. They believe whatever suits their positions well and demonizes others. Every culture needs to hate someone. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. You have an unenviable lot.”
He slumped at my words, and I felt a pang of regret at how the night had gone. It hadn’t been what I’d hoped for. But for him, this seemed like a subject of hurt, not something he would indulge in with as little care as I did. And I had to respect that.
“You could always stay here, you know,” I offered, because it seemed obvious to me. “Your lands might not be the right place for you.”
“But they’re mine,” he replied, not in a tone that suggested any patriotism. “I was born in Amuresca, it’s my land and my people. For better or for worse, I will never fit in any other place in the world. Here I would just face hatred for my nationality, instead of…”
“You’re right, of course,” I said. “I just thought I’d offer. I work for a clan that has no issue trading with and even hiring foreigners.”
“What do they do?” He asked without much hope.
I set my jaw. “They cultivate and grow a flower that is used to make powerful drug, and they buy and sell servants.”
“You mean slaves.”
I sighed. “It is what it is, boy.”
“Sorry,” he said quietly. “That sort of life isn’t for me. I need to be on the water, in any case. At least if I go back home now, I can find another ship where I’m not known to anyone. Maybe this time I can hide who I am better. Or find someone else who’s like me.”
“I wish you luck,” I said simply.
There was a long silence at that, and once again his expression was hard to read. But given two major facts, one, that he wasn’t getting up off of me, and two, that he was still looking down at me, eyes drunkenly half-lidded, I figured he had more to say. Sometimes a man needs to be pressed to open up, though.
So I pressed. Up against him.
He gave this noise somewhere between a growl of warning and a whine of discomfort, then slumped over me again, our muzzles inches apart.
“You’ve been this way since you were young?” he asked me, his breath warm and smelling of rum.
“I remember a few years of confusion, but yes, for the most part,” I said.
“I’ve never been confused,” he stated with the certainty most people would state the color of the sky. “I’ve always known what I wanted, I’ve just never known how to get it. Or have it.”
“Getting it’s as easy as asking, tonight,” I murmured, working a hand between us and kneading it up through his chest ruff. I got that growl again, and found that I liked how it thrummed against my palm. I gave him a quizzical look. “What do you mean by ‘having it?’ You mean keeping it? Because even I haven’t figured that one out. It seems between men, it’s always fated to be a fleeting thing.”
“I’m not even thinking that far ahead,” he snuffed. “I meant… there’s a way to do this right, isn’t there? You’ve had longer to figure it out than I have.”
I paused, uncertain if he meant what I thought he did for a moment or two. But his expression was dead serious. “Ah,” I let out a breath. “I see.”
“I want it so badly,” he growled. “And the Church says it’s wrong, and every man I’ve ever met who’s wanted—it’s just never gone right. And I don’t want to believe it’s just not meant to feel right with another man, because I know in my heart—”
I silenced him by wrapping the hand I’d worked between us around the outline of his sheath in his britches. His pupils went to pinpricks and he fixed his gaze on me, and I knew I had his complete attention.
“It’s a skill regardless who you bed, no matter the gender,” I assured him. “And yes, there’s a way to do it right, even with another man. Being unskilled is nothing to be ashamed of. You’re young. You can learn.”
He stared down at me, intently. “Show me,” he commanded.
I would have regardless, of course. But there was something about his tone that made me want to obey, no matter what he’d asked.
“You should lead men, with that voice,” I smirked.
“Someday I will,” he said with an alarming lack of doubt.
“Mnnhhh,” I hummed, rubbing him through his clothing. “Well, I do hate to make requests this early on, but this would be easier if you let me up.”
He rolled off of me and sat to my side, rather quickly. He still seemed incredibly attentive, considering how much we’d had to drink. But then, I’d seen that before, when I’d first met him. Some men could find focus even amidst the haze of alcohol. Whether or not he could keep it remained to be seen.
“We probably shouldn’t be this drunk,” I grumbled as I moved to my own side, tracing a palm down his stomach to the tie that held his thin, worn britches up.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I find rum helps me unwind and let go of… a few of my fears.”
“Yes, but there’s a point where it loops around to being unhelpful,” I chuckled, as I undid the last tie and tugged enough to free his sheath. “Mnh,” I smiled at what I saw. “Seems we haven’t hit that point yet, though.”
“You were grinding up against me,” he said as way of excuse.
“I take it you’ve figured this part out by now,” I huffed with a hot breath on his exposed cock, leaning over to straddle his hips with my elbows.
“Yes,” he said in an anticipatory tone, the exposed pink of his growing length twitching once as if it also anticipated me.
I leaned down and took him into my muzzle in one practiced motion, gliding him along the groove of my tongue and as deep as I could currently take him. I could tell by the fact that he wasn’t stone hard yet that he’d probably get bigger, but for now I could swallow him all. He tasted canine through and through, I’d been with wolves and jackals before, and I found I liked the musk more than hyenas, even more than my own. Granted, that was probably because I—unfortunately—smelled and tasted most like a hyena.
He didn’t withhold his groans as I began to suck him, and I intentionally started slow just in case he was the sort who fell to pieces all too soon. He’d admitted to being inexperienced, after all. Things didn’t necessarily have to lead to more than just this tonight, and I’d be happy for just about anything in the end, but he’d asked me to show him what I knew. So I was at least going to try.
I went through a few different motions with his cock in my muzzle, swirling my tongue at his tip, teasing the throbbing underside of his hardening length, and working a palm beneath the growing bulge of his knot, still beneath his sheath, to squeeze gently at it. Eventually I went lower, and rubbed my calloused pawpads gingerly over his velvet-furred sac. When that got more breathless moans out of him, I cupped and rubbed at them, and increased the pace of my muzzle.
I could tell when he gave a hitch of breath that I was either about to get a mouthful, or he was going to stop me. A hand on my head, easing me back from his cock was my answer.
When I looked up, he was panting and I think pleased, but was clearly trying to fight his own body. “N—no more of that,” he said, his voice heavy. “I know how to do that. I want to try something more.”
I got up, using the broken stone wall of the ruins we were encamped in to steady myself as I did, and undoing my belt to loosen my own leather britches. They came off easily enough, but the harness I wore to attach my blade and my travel pack to my back would be more of a task, especially inebriated, so I left it on.
He watched me stand and his eyes soon traveled down my striped torso to their inevitable interest point, where he seemed caught by surprise.
“Oh,” I glanced down at my now quite prominent, heavy-hanging manhood. “I please easy. Doesn’t take much for my body to get rearing.”
“It’s not that,” he shook his head. “The… uh… color…”
I chuckled. “You’ve only ever been with canines.”
“I’ve seen most of a fox, once.”
“Does it bother you?” I asked, amused.
“I like cocks,” he responded as bluntly and elegantly as I’d ever heard that statement phrased. “I don’t care if it’s pink or black. It’s just different.”
I laughed, and half stumbled over towards my bag to dig through it. I could feel his eyes on me, watching me as I bent over it. I bobbed my tail about, perhaps a bit intentionally, giving him a bit of a show.
“What are you doing?” He asked at length, and I heard him get up and unsteadily make his way towards me.
“Getting something we might need,” I muttered, tossing a few things I didn’t care about at the moment onto the ground. I felt him kneel down beside me and settle his hand on my lower back, running it slowly over my shoulders and through my mane.
“You have a lot of scars,” he noted, tracing one.
“Most of the ones on my back are lashes,” I said. “Barely break my hide, but they always scar. The more serious ones are usually the smaller ones, ironically. Stab wounds. Lot more serious, but if you survive them they don’t leave much behind. Ah,” I finally found what I was looking for, and pulled out the small clay finger pot. It was stoppered with an old piece of cork, which I pulled out immediately and handed back to him.
He took it and sniffed it, and looked confused. “Smells like those big tree nuts.”
“Hishma,” I said in our tongue. “Coconut oil. It’s like a grease or a butter when it’s cold.”
He stared at the container for about three seconds before a look of understanding passed over his features. “I… believe I understand,” he said. “That’s honestly brilliant. Did you think of that?”
I outright laughed. “No, no. Men and women have been using it since ages past. I’m sure some in your country do, too.”
“It would have to be imported, so I’m sure it’s expensive,” he grumbled. “But there’s probably something like it in my lands I could find more easily.”
I turned and saw him smearing some over the paw pads along his fingers, and I cleared my throat. “It’d probably be easier for me to use it on you,” I pointed out.
“Who said we’re using it on me?” he replied.
“Well…” I paused. I thought about it for a few moments, but the look in his eyes was rather unyielding, so I decided it was probably best to relent. I was starved enough for lovers of late that I’d probably get where I was going regardless how I got there. “Alright,” I agreed. “But I thought the point was for you to learn. Harder for me to show you this way.”
“Then talk me through it,” he said, his tone still not inviting an argument.
“Well, for starters,” I leaned down on my elbows and got comfortable in the dirt, flipping my tail up and resting it sideways over my rear. “Put it on yourself, too.”
“Right, that makes sense,” he murmured, and I heard him slicking it over his own cock. The sound of him stroking himself didn’t stop when he began poking up beneath my tail. I’d noticed earlier that his claws were fairly blunt, likely from working with ropes on his ship, so I wasn’t worried when he began to ease a finger inside me.
I groaned a bit at the intrusion, small though it was for now. I wasn’t exactly accustomed to it—it wouldn’t have been my first choice in any encounter. But that had its perks and flaws. On the few occasions I did partake, it was always a strain. In the best of ways.
He withdrew his finger before long and I felt him closing the distance between us, and stopped him. “Don’t jump right to it,” I said, glancing back at him.
“But I readied y—”
“Try two this time,” I urged him. “Give your man some time to adjust. I know sometimes you’re in the heat of it and you want to move right in, but you’ll be grateful you took the time. And so’ll your lover. Especially with big boys like yourself.”
“I’m not that—” He paused. “Oh.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Patience is a virtue. Take some time to—nhhh… enjoy the… view.”
“I am,” he murmured lowly as he widened me out a bit. He was being very ginger with his touch at least, and I could have given him a world of instruction on exactly where I wanted him inside me, but really, that was different with every man. So I simply got comfortable and enjoyed his exploration for a time.
I knew when he took a hold of my harness that his patience had finally run dry. He gripped one of the leather straps rather firmly and tugged me to him, and I smirked.
“Grip it by the ring,” I suggested. There was a metal ring at the base of my back that attached to both of the two straps in four directions.
“You’ve done this before.”
“I would think that goes without saying,” I laughed.
“I meant with the harness on,” he said as he grabbed the ring. I could feel the change immediately, instead of one strap pulling hard against my side, he had my whole body lifting a few inches off the ground. The canine had on several occasions by now shown me that younger or not, he liked to consider himself in charge. And I didn’t exactly mind that. It was good to let go sometimes.
“I’ve had this harness since my days as a gladiator,” I said. “You’d be surprised how many times I’ve had occasion to wear it… out of the ring.”
“God,” he groaned, as his broad tip pressed up beneath my tail. “Add that to the list of things I never knew I wanted before tonight.”
I would have laughed again, except at that point he pushed up inside me, so I lost my breath all at once. The canine apparently was willing to listen to me about taking things slow when it was just his fingers in me, but once he got his cock inside me, he threw that caution to the wind. And I wasn’t going to be a whiny bitch and complain about it… but damn.
He filled me, I’m fairly certain all the way to the knot on the first push, and then paused only a few seconds to feel me around him. Then he began to move, and any attempts I might have made to give him instruction past that would not have made it out of my muzzle around the groans. I’d been with smaller men, usually men that paid for me back when I fought in the ring, who would have had to try to hit that spot up inside me that made fire course up my spine. The Amurescan had little to no technique, but he had size and fervor, and that just about made up for it.
I could hear him moaning occasionally too, a gruff, quiet noise in between thrusts that was either naturally quiet or he was actively trying to control himself. I didn’t bother. I didn’t care what the canine thought of me, baying plaintively for him in the sandy dirt, the straps of my harness digging into my chest and abdomen, so long as he kept it coming. A minute or so in—I hardly know, it’s not as though I was keeping track—I knew he could fuck me senseless if he had the stamina to keep it up long enough. And I hoped very badly that he did.
At some point he began to slow, easing into a steady, gentler rhythm. The rough paw pads of his free hand kneaded at my ass and spread me wide for him, and at one point circled around me to rub and squeeze at my balls. I think it was more for his sake than mine, he just wanted to touch me. But I tried to encourage him with a heavy groan, let him know how much I wanted—needed him to keep doing that. It wasn’t words, but sometimes you don’t need them. He understood, and kept at it.
He stayed slow for a little while longer, before finally picking up the pace again. I could tell he was dragging it out, for his sake or mine, it hardly mattered. I was glad at least that he’d figured that part out on his own.
Once he got to fucking me hard again, he didn’t hold back. It was rougher and faster than it had been at the start, and it was exactly what I needed. I fell to one elbow, my knees still propping my rear up but my muzzle firmly crushed down in the earth by now. I didn’t care. I needed my hand free so I could wrap it around my cock and pump myself in time with his thrusts. I hadn’t cum like this in years and I wasn’t letting the chance slip away from me.
When my end did come, I was reminded how much more powerful it felt with a man inside you. My whole body seized and my mind went blank, and his thrusts brought on wave after wave of it. I could vaguely hear myself crying out, my piteous noises echoing into the empty desert air, joined only by the distant sound of the waves on the beach. I think he came some short time later, but I honestly lost myself for a while there.
When I came back to my senses I was lying in what felt like a small lake of my own, sand-caked seed, and the Amurescan was half atop me, ignobly splayed. He’d knotted me, like a son of a bitch, and I knew canines well enough to know we’d be stuck for a time.
“You’re a bastard,” I muttered, using the Huudari word that would best fit the insult.
“I knew my father, thank you,” he grumbled from behind me.
“It means you’re an ass,” I sighed. “Speaking of. How long until you can get off of me?”
“I… honestly don’t know. It’s different every time.”
“That’s a problem I’m glad I don’t have,” I muttered. “Except now, obviously.”
“Did you not enjoy yourself?” He asked, working his muzzle over my shoulder. There was a quietness there, an uncertainty. I’d heard it before from time to time from him. For all his bluster, for all he seemed to enjoy it, the canine had confidence issues.
“I’m covered in my ‘enjoyment’ of it,” I assured him. “You did fine. Hold off more in the beginning, and you might last longer. Wasn’t necessary this time, but still.”
He nodded, resting his lower jaw against my shoulder. “I’ll remember that. Thank you.”
I let my own head rest in the sand and stared off through the shattered wall of the ruins we’d camped in, out towards the deep blue-black horizon and the dunes beyond. The stars were clearer out here than they ever were near the cities. I took some time to drink it in, and strangely, to think on my sister. I suppose that’s because this was the peak of what I’d wanted to find with the Amurescan man, and once you’re past the best moments, all you have to look forward to is the decline that comes after.
This was over, likely by tomorrow. I’d sell his rum, give him his cut, and we’d go our separate ways. And then, miles and miles past those dunes, I’d return to my sister and tell her she was dying. And then I’d go back to working for the clan that had bought her, sold her into prostitution, and was ultimately responsible for killing her. Because working for them was the only way I could stay close to her and take care of her while she died.
Many times throughout my life, I’d considered pretending none of it had ever happened. After I’d won and paid for my own freedom, it would be a lie to say I hadn’t considered leaving my sister behind, and pursuing a life my own. Our contracts had started the same amount. She’d ended up trapped longer in hers because she fought them tooth and nail, and made trouble for her owners. She’d tried to escape so many times… attacked clients, even been caught with a weapon. She’d made her own bed. And I admired her for it. Because despite having fought in the ring for the people who owned me, I’d never fought like she did. And that’s why I was free now. I’d towed the line. I’d let them own me.
Never before had the prospect of cutting her out of my life been so appealing. The Amurescan man would never stay here, but I had no love for my country. And I spoke his language. I could travel. Leave here with him tomorrow. Never return.
Except I couldn’t, and I knew it. It wasn’t just for my sister’s sake, either. There were other indentured servants kept by my Clan that, if even in some small way, I could help from the inside. I’d long ago given up the idea of fighting the Clans, fighting the system that kept us enslaved to them in everything but name. But I knew how to get out, I knew how to play the game and not be destroyed by it. And I could get others out.
“Once we part ways, we will likely never meet again,” I said quietly to the man still resting against my back. “I hope what little I’ve taught you, you’ll find useful.”
“I learned more through you than just your language,” he said. “You more than upheld your end of the bargain. Thank you.”
“Dhan ya, ass.” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“It means ‘thank you’,” I smirked. “Ass.”
