Free The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy by Chris Bunch

and I knew those to be impregnable. The door was heavy cross-braced lumber, and barred, but I’d seen a tiger kill a bullock with one smash of its paws, then effortlessly pick the beast up in its jaws and leap a nine-foot fence.
    But I knew enough to lie.
    The woman’s breath came faster as we heard the tiger pace around the walls. My cock came hard, and I rolled atop her, her legs lifting as I rammed into her, thrusting as she pumped her hips against me, back arched and hands pulling at my buttocks, the beast outside, and its scream against the night, silencing the monkeys, burying her cry as our sweating bodies became one and I poured into her.
    We waited until dawn before I took her back to her wagon, and carried a cudgel with me. We saw the tiger’s pugmarks in the mud, but he was long gone. She stopped me when we came in sight of the caravan, and giggled. “We don’t need to tell them just how you fought the tiger,” and pointed at my body. I saw the nailmarks and bites on my chest, and knew there were others hidden under my loincloth.
    She laughed once more, kissed me, and was gone.
    I spent the day away from my family in the jungle. I sometimes think of that woman, and wish her well, hoping Jaen made her happy and has given her a long life, and her husband many wineskins for blinders.
    So love has been a fine friend, but the soldierly pastime of going into rut anytime there’s a female of any age within a league, no. I’ve not only avoided embarrassments, but disease as well. My father once said, in one of his few references to sex, after making sure neither my mother or sisters were in earshot, “Some people will put their cock where I would not place the ferrule of my staff,” and he is certainly correct.
    I’ve also heard it said when a man makes love all the blood rushes to the lower half of his body, thus explaining why men cannot fuck and think at the same time, which sounds quite logical. Jaen knows I’m hardly innocent of that charge. But enough of that.
    If it sounds as if I have been bragging, I do not mean to do so, for I have many weaknesses, which should be obvious, considering my present position here on this lonely island as an exile who can expect only death to improve his lot and give him a chance to return to the Wheel and expiate his deeds in another life.
    I am but a poor reader, and have little patience with the pleasures that come from listening to the sagas, scholarly debate, or seeing dancers portray the deeds of men. Painting, stone-carving, all these things I can praise, but there is none of the heart’s truth in my words. Music alone of all the arts touches me, from a boy tootling on a wooden whistle to a single singer accompanying himself on a stringed instrument to the intricacies of a court symphony.
    Philosophies, religions, ethics, all these things are for wiser heads than mine.
    At one time I would have said my greatest talent, though, was one Laish Tenedos said was the most important of all. I was gifted with good luck, something all soldiers must carry with them.
    Now?
    That proud claim has surely been proven a joke, one that would make the monkey god Vachan, god of fools, god of wisdom, shrill laughter and do backflips in wicked glee.
    One further thing I learned from my father was always —
always
— to obey the family credo:
We Hold True.
When I swore an oath of fealty to Laish Tenedos within my heart, long before I placed the crown on his head, it was to the death. It is ironic that my vows to him were never equally honored. But that is as may be, and Tenedos is answering for that sin.
    I knew, when I approached seventeen, I would enter the army. I assumed I would travel to the nearest recruiter, and take the coin as a common soldier. If I worked hard and mightily, I might be fortunate enough to find a commission and perhaps end my days at the same rank my father reached. This was the highest I dreamed, at least that I’d admit to. Of course there was always the