Borin and Merek ch. 2 - "The Village at Scourthsway" (M/M)

My life has been kind of messed up lately, but I've been able to chip away at a long term project I'm trying to finish up. Taking a bit of a turn from my usual dark fetish erotica into some tsundere erotica and fantasy stuff. Here's the second part of the Borin and Merek story!

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Chapter 2 - The Village at Scourthsway

Merek awoke in absolute terror. Something was holding him and he was many feet off the ground. He panicked and flailed about, emitting a scream that sent morning flocks of birds scattering from the trees. Then, he fell.

Borin had attempted to awaken the fox, even going so far as to upend the rucksack so the slumbering vulpine would slide out the other end. The end result was that the white creature just continued snoozing, adorably squeezing onto the edge of Borin’s bedroll. Borin picked up Merek and carried him outside of the tent, then stood up to sniff at the morning breezes. Then Merek awoke and panicked, prompting Borin to drop him like a pet animal.

The fox yelped and chattered and flailed around, then slowly came to his senses and pinned his ears back. “Oh, oh, oh, good mornings, wolf sir,” he said, and felt as if his ears would turn as red as a gemstone.

“Luckily I do not wish to hunt on our way back into the kingdom. That scream was loud enough to hear all the way to the Latriesh.” Borin started to strike the camp, collapsing the tent into a roll that he tested by slinging it upon his back. Merek watched with wide eyes, imagining what would happen if he did the same thing. He imagined being squashed flat. “You should stay out of the way if you do not know how to help,” Borin said, and continued packing. Everything related to the tent was packed into the rucksack Merek had slept in, held together by some wooden dowels lashed with rawhide and rope. The final finial to the top of the pack was the head of a purple stag deer, a striking animal which Merek had never seen before, and whose eyes stared wide and unseeing out ahead.

Borin noticed Merek’s green horror at the trophy head. “If it were alive, it would have kicked you,” the wolf grunted, then adjusted the pack as he hunkered down and stood up with it atop his shoulders. “Follow. Do not drop behind. Do not run ahead. Do not do anything except follow me.” With that, the wolf started hiking.

Merek’s revulsion at the trophy faded into complete boredom. He had already come so far, and all he had to do was continue hiking. After pushing through a small glade, the pair emerged right onto a road leading past a guard post. The guards were impressively attired canines, a breed that Merek had never seen, and who were mostly uninterested in Borin and his new follower. The dogs asked no questions of Borin, nor of Merek, but they did stare at the blush-pelted fox. Merek stared back, then tripped on a rock and fell face-first into some mud.

“Watch where you’re going,” Borin snapped, not even bothering to look at what happened.

Merek felt tears well up into his eyes from the humiliating mess now on his clothing, the minor sting of pain from breaking his fall with his hands, and Borin’s cold response. Then he looked through those tears at just where they were walking, along a mild verdant ridge that curved from the wall and watchpost through a small farming village, to a much more intensive security wall. Far above that stone boundary were the ramparts of Scourthsway Castle.  The diminutive fox had never seen something so large, so intense, so authoritative, so up close.

As they walked through the village, Borin got a few nods from men here and there, while everyone looked at Merek.

“Why they’s all lookin’ at me?” Merek whimpered.

“Are you blind? You are the color of a fresh salmon.”

Merek disagreed with the color - his shade of pink was much more like some of the dyes made of coral that were used back home than a mere fish - but didn’t have the fortitude to open his mouth after Borin’s invective. He just followed along, trying to stay behind Borin as they wound through the village and approached the main wall. He felt a little better that the village was not at all well-off,  clearly full of peasants and farmers and other workers whose lives were busy enough with simple things that they wouldn’t pay more than idle mind to something like a pink fox following a massive wolf.

The guards at the great wall actively stopped Borin, both crossing their axes. These guards were gray wolves, impressive but not quite as much as Borin. “Returning from the hunt, Stormbringer?” One of them said, with a profound cock to his voice.

“No, the deer climbed atop my pack and fell asleep.”

“Not much t’do with yer head cut off than sleep,” the guard responded with a shrug. “Wots’at?” He pointed the ornate battleaxe he was posed with at Merek, who promptly cowered.

“That, is a fox. You might remember them from history books.” Borin adjusted his pack with a huff.

“There ain’t no fox around ‘ere.”

Borin turned around and looked at Merek, who cowered further, tail fluff actually coming up forward from between his legs. “That’s why you would only re…” And then the dark wolf sighed greatly. “She, is not from around here. She blundered into my campsite last night, desperate for food. As someone who hunts rare game, I thought it best to bring her back to town. Perhaps the unusual pelt will fetch a good price.”

Merek’s eyes went so wide that the fox felt like they would take over his entire head.

“Right ‘nuf, go on,” the guard wolf said, as he and his partner lifted their axes straight and unblocked passage.  Borin gave Merek a head-jerk gesture and then carried on. Borin had the steady pace of someone who knew exactly where they were going, but was also large enough that Merek had to scurry to keep up.

The fox tucked up close behind Borin. “Uh, uh, wolf sirs-“

“There is only one of me,” Borin grunted.

“Yous ain’t gonna sell me as a fur are you? And, and, and, I’m a b-“

Borin turned and took two fingers, then shoved them against Merek’s muzzle. “You are too scrawny to eat, you are an outrageous color, and foxes were taboo up until around the time I was whelped. You would fetch far less gold than this stag’s head. Also, you are a girl, and thus, you are some nameless victim of the forest and far-away land, to be brought to town to be saved from  violence.”

Merek’s worry turned to hot indignance. “But I’s not!” To the fox’s fault, his negation was not specified.

“Good, you sound more like it now,” Borin said. “Now be quiet and follow me. It is a short way to my home.”

Once moving again, Merek quickly forgot that Borin was surely wrong about his being a her. The farming village outside the wall had been impressive but just a simple farming village. Inside the wall was a world that Merek had never even imagined. Instead of thatch and live-roof huts, instead of livestock, instead of bales of hay and piles of corn, there were houses. All run together in rows along the road, and winding up the slight hill. Houses made of stone and wood plank, and people, lots of people, more people just on one street than had been in Merek’s entire village.

They passed through a market and Merek could barely recognize what was being sold, and that was only the food. He kept so close to Borin that when the wolf walked up to a particular merchant - a sharp-faced weasel of some sort - and stopped to chat, the fox bashed into the back of his leg.

“Whatsat bumpin’ inta you?” the merchant said, leaning around. “Some pretty lil’ whelp girl? Odd fluff of a tail…”

“That, is not important,” Borin said, and hoisted the stag trophy down from the top of his pack and set it on one of the crates. “This is what you should be paying attention to.”

“Ay, that purple stag I sent you afta. How’d ya get im? They can smell fer miles.” The weasel handled the dead head, flicking his clawnails through the pelt down to the skin. “An’ not some fake, no dyin’ or wot.”

“An arrow straight through the heart, to save the head. I covered myself in scent and moved in my bare fur. Sometimes I ponder that hunting has become a lost art. Wild animals are experts in it to survive. We eat fat cattle and stomp around in loud clothing.”

“Ehy right, you an’ your flashy armor stuff like you’re still army,” the weasel laughed, then opened up a lockbox and started to fill a coin bag. He happened to look past Borin’s left leg to where Merek was cowering with ears back. “Really, wot’s that lil’ thing?”

“I saved that thing from dying of exposure, and now I am going to see what reward I can collect,” Borin said, with a very sardonic growl to his voice. He put his hand out, and the weasel dropped the coin pouch in.

“Good luck eh, I’ll run it ‘round that ya got the stag, get a few mugs of ale from everyone next time you show up at the tavern!” The weasel said, then hefted the stag’s head off the crate and handed it to a young assistant who whisked it away into a caravan. Borin turned and started off again, forcing Merek to scramble to catch up.

The fox grumbled to himself about being called a ‘thing’ when he was obviously a ‘fox’, although with the way everyone kept looking at him, perhaps no one around really knew what a ‘fox’ was. This, despite Borin having told him clearly that there were no foxes in Scourthsway. After several moments, Merek forgot all about his indignity and returned to gawking at the spectacle of the Scourthsway city.