—
Harith didn’t like the sound of the starbreakers, so he’d wandered away from the village a little. Someone had figured out how to make the exploding powder brightly coloured by adding some other powder to it or something, so Harith’s father had commissioned ten of them in different colours to sling into the air as part of the celebration of the village’s founding.
Qilq’s Burrow had been founded five years ago, but they were only celebrating it now because this was the first year that they’d paid Imperial taxes and not had to use the name of the next nearest village, so Harith’s father had declared that this was the official founding of the village.
Harith wasn’t allowed to have any of the wine and the starbreakers were going to explode soon, so he was just going to go sit in the long grass outside the village for a few minutes and watch the Westeri Mountains to see if he could spot any griffons. There were probably snakes in the grass, but they probably weren’t venomous, and Harith had been bitten by worse—
He thought the prick in his neck was a fly bite until he brought his hand up and found a small dart there. “Wh…”
Harith fell face-first into the grass, unable to move. He tried, and tried and tried, but he couldn’t even talk. He could make noise from his mouth, but he couldn’t move his lips. He could lay there and he could breathe, and that was it.
Someone climbed on top of him. Harith couldn’t move. “Good to see you, land-stealer,” said a rough voice in rough Payyot.
Harith wanted to ask who it was on top of him, since he didn’t think it was someone from the village—he’d never heard that accent before—and the voice sounded adult even though the person was his size. But he couldn’t ask anything. The person started ripping the back of his clothes, and Harith made a sound, but they were outside the village. Everyone was partying. Nobody would hear him.
“Your father stole our land to build his village,” the voice went on, touching, touching Harith all over. Touching his butt. Some part of Harith knew what was going to happen, but he couldn’t move. “So it’s time for us to take something from him.”
And something pressed against Harith’s butt, something hard and thick and…
And the first starbreaker went off just as it rammed into him, drowning out Harith’s scream of pain. All around him the grass was bathed in blue, and Harith realized how tall it really was. It would hide him completely. It would hide this completely. And the starbreakers would hide his screams.
“Don’t worry, little guy,” said the person, hard cock moving in and out of Harith’s ass as he whispered in Harith’s ear. “If you’re really good, we’ll let you walk home in the morning as a message to your daddy. If you’re not…” he gave a hard thrust. “We’ll just keep you as a consolation prize. It’s entirely up to you.”
Another starbreaker went off, and all Harith could do was cry as everything was stolen from him.
—
How Best to Use a Sword 