← Samuel the Rogue: Where the Feathers Fall

Chapter 14 - Battle on the Jungle Floor

The sun came up and turned the tops of the trees gold. I’d barely slept after our scouting day, and now it was time to try our plan. I tightened my grip on the dagger and adjusted the net draped over my shoulder. I stood on the thick branch of a tree, the bark rough against my bare feet, right where we’d decided I’d get the best look down at our ambush spot. Above me the jungle was thick and green, rustling now and then in the wind. I could hear the griffons’ wings beating somewhere as they hunted, and every beat made my stomach drop.

The larger griffon weaved through the lower canopy. That one was our target for today. Its mate circled higher overhead, occasionally screeching into the morning air. We’d agreed to focus on one at a time; taking on both at once would be suicide. All I had to do was drop the net on its wings when Aeolin led it under me, and then we’d finish it, his spear and my dagger. It had sounded simple in the dirt last night, and now my knees were shaking.

Aeolin landed lightly on the branch beside me, his green feathers bright in the patchy light. He was breathing slow and easy, the bastard, while I was trying not to throw up, and his green eyes stayed on mine. “Ready, ground-dweller?” he asked, a teasing smirk on his face.

“No,” I muttered. “But let’s do it anyway.” My eyes dropped to his lips for a second before going back to his eyes.

He leaned in without hesitation, his hand brushing my cheek as our lips met. The kiss was tender and nervous, and it made my stomach flip. I closed my eyes and let it go on, his warm hand on my cheek holding me steady in the middle of all this crazy shit. When Aeolin pulled back, his grin was wide and mischievous.

“For luck,” he said, winking before he launched into the air with a powerful beat of his wings, disappearing into the trees.

I watched him go, my heart pounding in my chest, partly from the kiss and mostly from what was about to come at us. The wingbeats of the griffons grew louder, and a guttural cry rolled through the forest. I shifted my feet on the branch and locked my knees so they’d quit shaking.

The first griffon came out of the shadows of the trees below me. It was huge, and every inch of it looked built to kill things like me. Its feathers were gold and shone wherever the sun got through the leaves. Every talon was as long as my forearm, and its beak snapped loud enough for me to hear it from up there while its golden eyes hunted around for breakfast. I had a pretty good guess who breakfast was. This thing was a goddamn killing machine.

Aeolin darted into view with his spear in his fist, a flash of green against the brown and grey of the forest. He zipped through the trees, teasing it along just out of reach. The griffon screeched, a sound that ripped through the air, and dove after him. Its huge wings were great for scaring the piss out of me and terrible in the thick trees, and branches snapped and leaves went flying with every beat. Gods, he was good at this, leading the creature straight toward our trap.

The net was heavier than it looked, the damn thing sagging under its own weight as I clutched it to my chest. My breath came in short, sharp bursts. Below me, the griffon’s golden eyes flicked upward, locking right onto me, and I nearly pissed myself. I swallowed hard, and my throat was dry even though the air was wet enough to wring out. “Well, fuck it,” I whispered. My hands trembled as I adjusted my grip on the net, the rough hemp digging into my palms.

I crouched on the branch, the net bunched in one arm and the dagger in my other fist, feeling like a fucking idiot about to wrestle a giant eagle. The griffon crashed through the trees below, its claws scraping against the trunks, bark flying as it tried to keep pace with my harpy. I held my breath, counting the beats of its wings, every muscle tight, waiting for the perfect moment. When Aeolin darted sharply to the left, the griffon followed, right under my branch, and instead of just dropping the net like we’d planned, I jumped with it, which was the dumbest thing I’d ever done.

The net unfurled in midair, a spiderweb of weighted rope, and spread over its wings a second before I hit. I slammed down on the griffon’s back so hard it knocked the air out of me. The net tangled around its wings, and it lurched sideways in the air. It shrieked so loud my ears rang and bucked like crazy, trying to throw me off. I clung to the net one-handed, my fingers hooked through the ropes and the dagger still clenched in my other fist, and every buck rattled my teeth. Bertha had never bucked half this hard on her worst day.

We plummeted towards the forest floor, the griffon crashing through branches and leaves the whole way down. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, bracing for impact. We hit the ground with a sickening thud, the griffon’s body slamming into the earth, kicking up a cloud of dirt and broken twigs. I was thrown clear of the griffon, landing hard on my shoulder, pain shooting up my arm. “Fuck!” I yelped, my heart in my throat as the griffon, dazed but still fighting, struggled to its feet, thrashing against the net and tearing up the dirt with its talons. Every time it heaved I could see the muscles bunch up under its feathers, and all of them wanted me dead.

I scrambled to my feet, swinging the dagger with all my strength. The blade struck the creature’s side, skidding along its thick hide. It felt like hitting a brick wall with a fucking butter knife, but it opened a cut, and blood spurted from it and splattered warm across my face and chest. The griffon shrieked again and twisted to glare at me.

“Stupid, Sam, very stupid,” I muttered to myself. The griffon thrashed harder, its claws slashing through the air. I threw myself sideways and mostly fell, my bare feet skidding in the damp soil. The net was a mixed blessing: it held the weird lion-eagle down, but it also made it harder to land a clean hit.

This was insane. The griffon was a big mess of feathers and fur, jerking every which way. I swung again and again, wild and sloppy. Half my hits bounced off, and the dagger felt laughably small against the size of the thing, but I kept swinging. I was running on pure panic and the sheer fucking thrill of the fight. The griffon lunged, its beak snapping inches from my face. I ducked, mostly because my knees gave out, felt the wind of it go past and stabbed down blind at its leg. I got a spray of blood for it.

The griffon stumbled, and the net pulled tighter around its wings. All my wild stabbing was finally slowing it down. My arms burned and I couldn’t get enough air, but I kept going, covered in blood and sweat, with a scream building in my throat. It was going to be me or the bird, and I really wanted it to be the bird.

Aeolin dropped out of the trees and drove his spear down into the griffon’s shoulder, pinning one netted wing to the dirt. The thing screamed and twisted toward him, and for one second its neck was right there in front of me.

I lunged and buried the dagger deep in the griffon’s neck. It shuddered, let out a long, rattling wheeze I’m going to hear in my nightmares, and dropped into the dirt and stayed there.

I staggered backward, my chest heaving, my body shaking now that the fight had drained out of me. I wiped my face with the back of my arm, my eyes stuck on the dead griffon. It was over, and we had won, at least until its mate came looking for it.

A rush of excitement hit me, and right behind it came something weirder: I was horny. The fight had scared the shit out of me, and it was still the biggest thrill of my life. My heart was still hammering, and I was wide awake and buzzing.

The blood was everywhere, thick and coppery, and the smell of it went straight to my head, and then, embarrassingly, straight to my dick. Back in Willowbrook the most blood I’d ever seen came out of a rabbit in one of my snares, and that had never made me want to jump anybody. Sure, Aeolin’s spear had done half the work and dumb luck had done the rest, but it was my dagger that had opened that thing’s neck, and I wanted my harpy so bad my teeth hurt.

I swayed on my feet, exhaustion threatening to buckle my knees. Aeolin had let go of his spear, still stuck in the griffon’s shoulder, and he was right there, close enough to touch. Without thinking, giddy with relief, I threw an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. He was solid and warm, and up close he smelled of sweat and feathers. “Fuck,” I wheezed, more air than word, “we actually did it.”

He leaned into me, his weight against my side. “You stabbed a griffon in the neck,” he murmured, his voice a low hum in my ear, and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. His feathers, matted and bloodied, brushed my cheek, and somehow they were still smooth under all that grime. For a second we just stood there breathing hard, my arm around him, both of us shaking.

“Aeolin,” I croaked.

He turned in my arm to face me without a word, his chest rising and falling, and reached for me.

I dropped my dagger in the dirt. I was already moving, grabbing his wrist and pulling him in. His lips met mine in a hard, desperate kiss. His teeth scraped mine, and I tasted blood, probably mine, maybe his. I didn’t fucking care.

He bit my lip, just hard enough to sting, and I growled into the kiss. My hands grabbed at his waist and dug into his feathers. I yanked him closer, and he stumbled, but he didn’t pull away. He kissed me back like he was trying to crawl inside me.

I pushed him down onto the dirt, and he went willingly, his hands already working their way down my body. His fingers brushed my dick, and I about jumped out of my skin. I was already hard, or maybe I’d stayed hard since the fight, and I needed him.

I kissed him again, rolling us so he was on top, then back again, until we were both covered in mud and blood and feathers. His hands were everywhere, my hair, my face, my dick, and I was doing the same, tugging at his feathers with no idea what I was doing. He was laughing, a rough, breathless sound, and I was too, though I wasn’t sure why.

The jungle sounds were creeping back in, birds chirping and something calling far off that I didn’t recognize, and I barely heard any of it over Aeolin, his hands, his mouth, his body pressed against mine.

I pinned Aeolin in the mud, my hands sliding through his sticky feathers. He laughed up at me, and my cock jumped.

We twisted around in the mud until he was on top of me, his hips over my face, and I took him into my mouth. I sucked and licked, greedy as hell, running my tongue all over him. At the same time, Aeolin went down on me and took all of me in one go, and the moan he let out made me think he’d been wanting this all morning. There we were, man and harpy, sucking each other off in the mud. My throat worked his cock as his mouth worked mine, each of us moaning and panting around a mouthful.

The blood, mixed with our own spit, made everything obscenely slick. My hands gripped his hips tighter as I thrust upward, meeting his movements as we both chased the finish. The wet sounds we were making and the smell of sweat and blood only made me hungrier. It was filthy, and it was everything I wanted.

His wings beat faster and faster as he got close, his mouth working my cock faster and faster. My moans grew louder and louder as he swallowed around me, and I was about two seconds from losing it myself.

Right before either of us could finish, he pulled away, his mouth leaving my cock with a wet pop. My hands slipped from his hips as he shot straight up into the trees, his wings beating hard. I looked up at him, confused and pretty fucking disappointed, with my wet dick bobbing in the air.

I scrambled to my feet as Aeolin came swooping back down, wings half tucked, in a dive fast enough to scare me. He pulled his wings in as he got close and went loose, dropping right into my arms. I caught him, held on tight and flipped him over with a wicked grin. He gasped as he found himself hanging upside down, his cock a few inches from my mouth and his face right at my hips.

I wasted no time in wrapping my lips around his dick, my tongue sliding over every hard inch of him. His head dropped back as he gulped air, and his hips bucked while my mouth, which turned out to be pretty good at this, brought him closer and closer to the edge.

He wrapped his arms around my thighs and pulled his face in to meet my cock: he took me in his mouth, hollowed out his cheeks and sucked as hard as he could. I felt like a god among men, and I bet he’d have told me so if his mouth weren’t full.

He was light enough that I could hold him up without my arms giving out, which was lucky, because I had no plan at all for putting him down. We went at each other like that, him hanging in my arms, both of us desperate to finish.

We held off anyway, dragging it out, easing up every time one of us got close. We were both gasping through our noses, and I couldn’t hear anything else. The whole jungle could have fallen down around us for all I cared, as long as his cock stayed in my throat and mine stayed in his.

I felt him getting close, his cock swelling and throbbing in my mouth. He let out a choked cry and came in hot, sticky bursts down my throat, and I swallowed every drop.

I was so busy with him that I only noticed I’d gone over too once he was done, my own cock pulsing and emptying into his mouth.

I barely had time to catch my breath, my body still shaking. My knees started to go, so I tightened my hold on him, staggered back against a tree trunk and slid down the rough bark until my ass hit the dirt. Aeolin slid down my front and ended up sprawled across my legs, and he rolled onto his back with his head down by my knees, all loose and lazy, with his wings flopped out over the bloodstained ground.

“Oh my fucking gods,” I panted. “That was… fucking amazing.”

Aeolin, still lying the wrong way round across my legs, let out a lazy laugh. “You’re welcome.”

I let my head fall back against the bark, wiped the sweat from my brow and smacked my lips, still tasting him.

“How do you always taste so sweet?” I asked, glancing down at him with a raised brow. “Holy shit, is that normal?”

Aeolin tilted his head, his green feathers ruffled, and grinned up at me. “Maybe I’m just special.”