Wulfram | Spoil of war

Of the two hundred men, only a hundred are left. Some were killed by the elves during their raids, and others died of disease. Because of the damn snow, neither provisions nor His Majesty's gold could reach their detachment, and in this shitty village there was not a single animal left for them to eat, nor a single hole that didn't please the boys. Even Lonan had his first woman out of fear of dying without ever knowing the inviting warmth of a woman's throat. But if the snowstorm isn't going to let up soon, they'll all just die here one by one from fever or a cowardly elf arrow. Those bastards shoot from three hundred yards and hit right between the plates of armour. Wulfram spat at his feet, shaking the last drops of urine from the tip, and shoved his cock back into his breeches. It was physically painful to look at the angry red flesh. It seemed like in a few more seconds, his manhood would simply freeze and fall off as a chunk of ice. If it weren't for his innate squeamishness, he would have pissed behind the house like the other soldiers, protected from the wind and snow, but who knows what diseases he could catch there? The warmth of the house was pleasant enough to make him cum. The heated air almost burned the frozen skin of his cheeks, and his fingers itched with goose bumps. And as much as he wanted to drop his pants and warm his ass by the fireplace, Wulfram couldn't. His gaze focused on the woman in the corner of the room. The ropes dug into her delicate skin, leaving bluish lines beneath them. He could see them even from this distance. He usually treated women better than that, but this wasn't just any woman with a god in her heart. She was an elf. “Still not dead? Tough creature.” Approaching her, he kicked a wooden bowl with bones and pieces of meat on them closer to her. Food that even dogs would reject. He checked if Cedric would eat it. But a creature like an elf didn't deserve even such a luxury as bare bones. And yet, she had to live. As proof of his bravery, as his spoil of war. Wulfram couldn't look at her for long. His whole body twisted with disgust, and his fingers trembled with the desire to grab a blade and cut the elf down. He sat down in a deer-skin-covered chair and stretched his legs toward the fireplace. He didn't look back at her.

Wulfram walked ahead of his group and got lost in the harsh winter, wandering for hours without any idea where he was going. All he could hear was the howling wind, and his legs refused to move. But in an instant, the snow stopped. And then he saw her. She was trying to find shelter from the snow near the roots of a tree. Like a mouse or a gopher. But he could see the sharp tips of her ears, completely blue from the cold. Wulfram still couldn't tell who she was, a civilian or a soldier. Her only weapons were a short blade and a broken arrow. But did it matter? An elf is an elf. They found themselves face to face. The countdown was seconds. Whether she tried to run or attack, he moved faster. He grabbed her hands and forced her to drop the small dagger. Then he struck. Again and again. Wulfram clenched her long hair in his fingers and slammed her head against the tree until her body went limp beneath his grip. Only then did he turn her face toward him. These parasites are damn tempting. It's almost a crime to destroy such creatures when you have to literally kill for a pretty face and wide hips at home. But even the devil was once the most beautiful angel. Wulfram clenched the hilt of his sword in his hands. Damn it. The blade was stuck in its sheath, no matter how hard he tried to pull it out. He spat, cursing the sword that had let him down. But then another idea came to mind. The only thing more valuable than a dead elf is a living slave. Isn't that right?

“You won't starve to death,” he said coldly. It was not a reassurance, but a threat. “You won't die until I squeeze every last drop of usefulness out of your worthless self.” Wulfram stood up. He enjoyed how the creature flinched at his every movement. That was right. She never knew what would happen to her in the next second. “Didn't you hear what I said? What good are your long ears if you can't hear anything? Maybe I should shorten them a little?” Wulfram grabbed the dagger he had taken from her. He couldn't help smiling when he noticed her gaze. That sweet mixture of fear and rebellion. It was with this very blade that he cut off her beautiful long hair, because once he had heard how elves cherished their locks. And how sweet it was to his soul when, with each step he took, the balance shifted in favor of fear. He crouched down next to her, grabbed her jaw with his iron-gloved hand so hard that he heard the crack of bone. The blade caught the glare of the fire from the fireplace. “How sharp. And how do you make weapons when you fuck each other with branches and butterflies?” The sharp tip of the dagger touched her ear. Wulfram whispered something soothing to her, as if he really wanted to comfort her. The blade ran from her earlobe to the tip of her ear, but never pierced her skin. A laugh came from his chest. “Eat, bitch,” he threw the blade away, “or I'll really cut off your ears.” Then he picked up a bone from the bowl, turned it face up, and shoved the end with the cartilage into her mouth. “Spit it out, and I'll punch you in the face.” Wulfram meant every word. “Do you want to test me?”

They didn't have time to sit around warming their asses by the fire, waiting for God's mercy and the delivery of provisions. Supplies were running out fast, even with the reduction in rations for each soldier. More and more often, he saw a malicious spark of defiance in their sunken, hungry eyes and a hint of rebellion in their twisted lips. Once, Wulfram lost his temper and beat a soldier who complained about the amount of meat in his bowl. That evening, Cedric ate that piece of meat and licked the blood of the man off the ground. But he could no longer deal with the soldiers with orders, encouragement to pray, or threats. If at least a third of the troop decides to leave the village and return to larger settlements, the elves will enter at that very moment, killing everyone in their path. And if this place was not a pity to lose — just a few houses and women with bastards— then the loss of the town further down the hill could be a disaster. From this village, with their damned arrows, the elves could take it in a matter of days. So they broke away from conceiving new bastards and left their warm houses on that cursed stormy day. It was the only way to move through the forest more or less safely. No matter how strong these monsters were, their arrows would be lost in the wind and snow. They had to go into the forest, had to find food themselves if they didn't want to die a death fit for dogs. Wolfram stubbornly kept going, even when his hair froze to his skin, his face stung with every new snowflake, and the wind forced him to stumble every few steps. Damn it, he would find a damn deer to feed on for a week and make himself some warm shit out of its skin. He was so angry that he was ready to go after a bear if he found its den. Oh yes, a bearskin coat would be a luxury. Only these thoughts kept him going when his feet were sinking into the snow and everything around him was so white that it blinded his eyes. But he couldn't be stubborn for long. Covering his face from the snow, Wolfram looked back again in an attempt to figure out where he was. Shit. Shit. Shit. There was nothing but snow and trees stretching their branches toward him as if begging for mercy. That idiot Lonan was supposed to be behind him. Damn it, how many people went hunting with him, and not a single one followed the commander? Those bastards won't be getting dinner. Hell, they wouldn't get breakfast either. Wolfram would feed it all to Cedric himself. But he couldn't stand there dreaming of punishing those who were probably already sitting by the fire, hoping for the commander's death, which would allow these cowards to flee to the safety of the fortress. Hell no, he wouldn't allow that. Without knowing where he was going, Wulfram continued his march, wiping the snow from his face and repeating the prayer he usually said before going into battle. The words filled him with rage that drove warmth to his extremities. His blood boiled with fury, and his heart continued to beat its hateful rhythm. It was then that he heard a crow cawing in the wind. A good sign. This bird was a symbol of his home. A crow always shows a wolf where to find food. He continued walking, then broke into a run, as far as the snow under his feet and the weight of his armor would allow. Wolfram followed the crow's calls, which continued to echo somewhere ahead. But suddenly everything fell silent. The crow's cry no longer reached him through the fierce wind. Because... because the wind had finally died down too. In bewilderment, Wulfram watched the snowflakes fall slowly for a long moment. “Damn providence,” he muttered, looking back. And at that moment, he froze. A few yards away was a frozen river. Even under the thick snow, he could recognize this strip. It was the line that separated them from the elves. Wulfram and his men never approached it closely, always stopping three hundred yards from the river. They found out that the stories about the range and accuracy of elven arrows were not just fiction when one idiot got his skull pierced by one such arrow. Perhaps his body still lay somewhere around here. He spat at his feet. Damn it, he was wide open, just shoot. “What do you have for me, God? Why the hell did you bring me here?” He took a few steps behind a tree for some protection. And then his foot found something soft beneath it. Wulfram looked down, expecting to find a crushed gopher or, if he was lucky, a rabbit, but instead he met the gaze of a woman. Not just a woman. His gaze fixed on her pointed ears, blue from the cold, then slid over her large eyes, and by the time it stopped at her half-open lips, the sword was already in his hands. Wolfram took a step back, assumed a more comfortable position, and was ready to strike at any moment. “Thank you, Merciful God, for this gift. Now I understand what I am doing here. With my hand, you are bringing justice to the elven scum.” He didn't move, his whole body filled with intense heat, and his gaze focused on the face of the elf in front of him. Damn beautiful creature. It's even a pity to kill such beings. Especially when the local wenches are already sickening. Perhaps this was not God's task, but His gift? His gaze slid over the curves hidden by her cloak, which a real man had probably never touched. “You're lucky, bitch, I'll spare you. Throw away that pathetic blade and accept me as your master. It's your only chance to stay alive.”