Tales of the Huntsman Read online

  Tales of the Huntsman

  By M. Palmeri

  Copyright 2013 by M. Palmeri

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Prelude: “A Handsome Prince to Carry Me Away…”

  Chapter One: The Merchant’s Faithful Daughter

  Chapter Two: The Inn Between

  Chapter Three: The Skillful Huntsman

  Chapter Four: The Enchanted Castle

  Chapter Five: Magic Lessons

  Chapter Six: The Witch Queen

  Chapter Seven: Rough Magic

  Chapter Eight: White as Snow

  Chapter Nine: Red as a Rose

  Chapter Ten: The Dark Fortress

  Chapter Eleven: The Purple Duchess

  Chapter Twelve: The Cat in Boots

  Chapter Thirteen: From Red to Black

  Chapter Fourteen: The Cinder Girl

  Chapter Fifteen: Games

  Chapter Sixteen: The Apprentice

  Chapter Seventeen: The Red Hood

  Chapter Eighteen: The Wolf

  Chapter Nineteen: Circuses

  Chapter Twenty: The Stepsister’s Tale

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Runaway Princess

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Trial by Ordeal

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Narrative Omissions

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Merchant’s Faithful Daughter Part II: The Blue Lady

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Golden Key

  Prelude: “A Handsome Prince to Carry Me Away…”

  He didn’t say a word to her until they had passed into the hills out of sight of the town, where he suddenly stopped his horse on the deserted road.

  “Get off.”

  He eased her to the ground, then he dismounted after her. He drew the large hunting knife from his belt and approached her with it. There was definite intent in his eyes, but she could not read him—he only looked like he had some bothersome task to attend to, but his target was definitely her, and she froze. Then she barely had time to catch her breath in, fully picturing the worst, before he started cutting.

  The blade slit her dress like a razor, splitting it down the front from between her thighs down to the hem. A strong hand spun her around, pulled aside her mother’s cloak, and he cut the back of the dress open likewise. He let her go and put the knife away, stepping back as if to assess his work.

  Her hands tried to hold the rent dress together, tried to conceal her threadbare white undergarments beneath. Her body began to tremble as she anticipated what he certainly must have in mind for her next, what she suspected from the beginning he might have in mind for her, though she had not anticipated that he would take her right here on the road. (Would he just bed her on the packed earth, or give her the comfort of grass or even blanket?)

  But instead he returned to his horse, took something from his saddlebag and flung it to her. She caught it to keep it from hitting her: a bundle of soft blue suede and hard leather that unfolded into a pair of thigh-high boots.

  “Those will help keep you warm,” he told her. “My cobbler can adjust the fit later. It is time you learned to ride a horse properly. I won’t have you riding side-saddle on my lap all the way.”

  And Marie flushed, realizing that what she was feeling wasn’t relief. (Was it disappointment?)

  He got back on the horse as Marie changed her worn cloth slippers for the soft boots. As she pulled them on, the fact that they were certainly made to fit someone her size suddenly chilled her more than anything else that had yet passed: Why would he carry a woman’s boots with him unless he was anticipating a wearer? And he had no rational reason to be—how would he have expected her need to barter herself for her father’s sake? There was no way he could have anticipated the circumstance. Unless he had come expecting the possibility of taking her—perhaps seducing her rather than by forced bargain. Marie could not help but spin the wicked rumors that surrounded the Count through her imagination again.

  The questions were clearly in her eyes when she returned to the horse, even though she was afraid to ask them out loud. The Count, however, ignored the issue as if it were perfectly understood. He pulled her back up into the saddle in front of him, and guided her leg over so she was straddling it.

  He thrust his body up firmly behind hers, and she slid forward until her pubic mound was pressed into the saddle horn. The new sensation that came from having her legs spread and her privates shoved against hard leather made her flush, but she was far too proud and ladylike to let him know that he’d made her so uncomfortable, nor did she try to back herself away from the horn. One of his arms wrapped her waist while the other took the reins. She could feel him breathing into her hair.

  She tried not to make any sound, tried not to let him know what sensations were disturbing her as every movement of the horse transferred through the saddle to her most intimate places. She wanted to giggle and scream and moan, wanted even to shove herself harder against the horn, but she carefully kept still and silent, biting the insides of her lips.

  It only got worse as they continued riding—there was something about the rhythm of it that made it so much more unbearable (but not in a way that she wanted to fight it). And she could now feel something swelling and pressing into her tailbone from behind—she flushed again as she remembered the bawdy tales her stepsisters would giggle like fools about when they thought no one was listening (and Marie did not matter), or the fuss they would make when they saw the animals mating.

  She pulled her hood up to hide her growing discomfort as the rocking pressure between her legs reminded her far too much of how she had begun, years ago, to explore herself, quiet in her bed at night, learning to bring her passion up with her fingertips, and maintain it with guilty stealth for sometimes hours.

  And she remembered all the times she had let her own imagination take flight, lonely and dreaming of the handsome lord (or even the strapping blonde delivery boy who brought flour to the village bakery) who would sweep her away on his horse and make her his wife, and what she imagined they would do together in the passion of their marriage bed (though just now the road or grass or blanket or even right here in this saddle would do). And the temptation to rock her pelvis against the horn, or to discreetly add her fingers to the game, became almost too difficult to resist. But she knew she could not be stealthy enough not to be found out, not with him holding her so close.

  Then, as if he could read her mind, he set the horse to gallop, exaggerating the pounding of her groin into the saddle by using his arm and body to rock her hips into the rhythm of it. The wind blew back her hood as the wooded hills passed by and the road vanished beneath them, and she held the saddle horn with both hands. Then the arm that held her shifted, and she felt his hand reach down the middle of her. A soft but powerful claw, his fingers dug into her fleshy mound through her undergarments and began to tug gently in small ovals in time with the horse, the heel of his hand pressing into her and pulling upward to expose her more intimately to the violence of the saddle.

  He kept this up for what seemed like hours, and indeed, as she lost herself to the waves of sensation and shame that alternately commanded her, she watched the sun set over the hills. And she realized that they had come farther than she had ever been from her home.

  He slowed the hor
se and steadily eased back on the pressures he had inflicted on her. She found that she was sweating and panting, and her entire body trembled so terribly that she had little control over her limbs, but she had kept silent throughout her ordeal, unwilling to let him know how completely he had both shocked and pleasured her. When he withdrew his hand, she was doubly shamed to realize her undergarment was wet against the saddle, and the musky scent she knew he’d drawn from within her was perfuming them both.

  “I had told you that you must do whatever I command,” he reminded her softly. “And what I command of you first and foremost is that you hold no shame for your body or what it will teach you. There is nothing purer or more beautiful in nature…” He brought his hand to his face, and Marie could hear him breathing her scent deeply, savoring it. “…and nothing sweeter or more intoxicating under heaven.”

  Her world was reeling all around her, as thrill and shock fought over her heart and soul.

  Night fell, making the world all the less real in darkness. She felt herself collapsing back into his arms, melting into him, and he eased her back a bit from the abuse of the saddle horn. And she realized she could happily sleep like this in his embrace…

  She did not even see the lights of the Inn until the horse had stopped.

  Chapter One: The Merchant’s Faithful Daughter

  There was once a merchant named Stephan, who worked very hard to support his selfish but beautiful second wife Elsbeth, a widowed noblewoman whom he had wed shortly after the untimely death of his own first beloved spouse. Whether Stephan had married the woman for her beauty or her inheritance he would never say. But that she had married him not out of love but out of avarice she made clear almost every day, as did her three daughters by her first unfortunate husband: Daniella, Viviana and Angelina.

  Though certainly a tempting sum for a merchant seeking capital, Elsbeth’s inherited wealth was not enough for Elsbeth herself, and she had hoped an enterprising merchant could take just a bit of what she had and turn it into a far greater fortune for her own use.

  But things did not work out so. Stephan struggled for years only to find that he could barely keep ahead of the ever-increasing financial demands of his bride and stepdaughters. And every day, he endured Elsbeth’s nagging and the girls’ ingratitude, as they insisted he provide them with ever-increasing levels of material comforts. What capital he had left to do business with began to diminish to the point that he could either no longer afford to support them as they were accustomed, or would face losing what dreams he had for his own success.

  But Stephan had one blessing: the single daughter he had with his late first wife. Her name was Marie.

  Plain but pretty and brown of hair, Marie honored her mother’s memory by looking after her father as best she could, and without help, because her stepmother and stepsisters had no interest in doing so. So when funds became short and servants could no longer be afforded, Marie selflessly (if not completely cheerfully) began taking care of the house, doing the cooking, even tending the garden and the animals.

  The days of hard work made Marie look even plainer, more like a servant girl than a once-wealthy merchant’s daughter. And as her stepfamily not only haughtily refused to share any of the work, but also continued to insist on having the finest clothing and jewelry, the contrast between them made Marie look all the more like a housemaid in her own home. Worse, Elsbeth and her daughters were beyond ungrateful, only criticizing and ridiculing the quality of Marie’s labors as well as her resulting rough appearance.

  How much Stephan appreciated his daughter’s sacrifices he never shared with her, perhaps because he was so preoccupied with trying to keep money coming in to feed Elsbeth and her three daughters’ insatiable greed. In fact, he was at home less and less as the situation got more desperate, traveling farther and farther abroad in search of any profitable venture. And when he was at home, Marie made her best efforts to conceal her growing rage at her stepfamily, so as to not burden her father more than he already was.

  Meanwhile Elsbeth, when not preening herself, spent her days grooming her daughters in hopes they would marry rich noblemen, for that was all that was important to her, and her children absorbed her values completely. Marie, however, blossomed into womanhood quietly, under the plain veil of her servitude, and found herself beginning to despair, and worse: to dream.

  Then Stephan was approached by a sea captain with an opportunity to make a windfall that would more than offset the debts his family was accruing: importing exotic spices and silk from the orient. All he needed was enough capital to pay for the ship and crew, and to buy the stock to import. The captain promised Stephan’s profits would be enormous, and the local markets seemed to confirm this. But the investment was far more than Stephan had left to his name.

  And it was on the verge of giving up hope that Stephan was approached in the local alehouse by a strikingly pale young dandy who called himself Roland, a noble youth generous with his coin, who plied Stephan’s story from him over many pints. And when the merchant’s misery was all told, Roland leaned forward across the table as if in conspiracy with an old friend, and told Stephan about the Count.

  A reclusive nobleman with an estate at the edge of the mountains, Count Richard was most often spoken of in tales spun by travelers in taverns that ranged from the bawdy to the sinister. His wife—the Countess Rose—figured prominently in many of these gossips, and was in the most courteous of them referred to as a kind of sorceress (though more regularly in terms much more disturbing) who had granted the Count great wealth at the cost of his soul or worse. But in certain merchant circles, Richard was known as a shrewd investor in the shipping trade, preferring to expand his wealth through business rather than agriculture (his family wealth was less-fantastically said to have come from mining on his lands somewhere deep in the mountains, but his mines had run dry).

  So, putting superstitious nonsense aside in the desperate hope of securing a wealthy patron, Stephan decided to risk the strange youth’s advice, and made the journey to the Count’s estate.

  After an almost two day ride, Stephan found the Count’s estate to be an ancient and forbidding castle on a rocky hilltop, overlooking a few tenant farms, its own fields untended and walls overgrown. The outer wall was pentagonal, forty feet high, with towers on each corner. Faint light could be seen from the archer’s slits high in a few of the towers, but there was no sign of movement on the battlements or from the guardhouse over the main gate. The drawbridge was down across a stagnant marsh of a moat. And despite the apparent abandonment of the place, the heavy iron portcullis raised as soon as Stephan’s horse set hoof on the bridge.

  Through the gatehouse, Stephan found himself in the open inner Bailey, surrounded by the halls and galleries that lined the inside of the battlement wall. Straight ahead of him was the fortified gate of the Keep of the fortress, growing up around the base of the greatest and farthest of the towers. Still, there was no sign of life other than the firelight that could be seen behind some of the shuttered gallery windows.

  But what unsettled Stephan most was not the initial apparent absence of inhabitants, but what finally greeted him when he dismounted and cautiously approached the Keep gate: A single woman in a brilliant red gown and matching hooded cloak appeared from seemingly nowhere, as if she had been standing there all along and he had somehow not seen her. Worse, she did not bother speaking to him even when he tried nervously to hail her, as if he was of no consequence to her. (Needless to say, the tales of sorcery came back unbidden to the unnerved merchant’s mind.) The red-hooded woman simply turned from him as if mildly annoyed, and opened the great doors (effortlessly, despite their massiveness), ushering him in without a uttering a single word, then closed those doors solidly behind them.

  She threw back her hood then, and her hair was an almost equally brilliant red to her cloak and dress, like metal in a forge. Her eyes were the palest blue, and her skin—what he could see of it as her neckline showed off the tops of her
breasts—was totally covered in ruddy freckles. She was young and lean, though showed the weathering and strength of the fittest of peasant-girls, and he found her to be quite pretty despite her striking and intimidating appearance: she bore herself with a quiet simmer of distain (for him specifically or all men alike Stephan could not tell) and a strength of confidence Stephan had rarely seen even in men.

  The red woman turned and led him through the outer hall. Stephan still could see no other servants, despite the impressiveness of the space (though at times he thought he could hear the hushed muttering of female voices in the walls and beams). Stone columns supported the roof, and staircases led up to the galleries above. Dark gothic tapestries (which he was rather unsettled to note depicted subjects ranging from classical nudes to shameless images of wanton eroticism) covered the massive cut-stone blocks of the walls.

  His every step on the stone floor echoed as the red-hood guided him—still wordlessly (and he felt another chill when he realized the only footfalls he could hear were his own, as his guide moved as silently as a ghost)—to another set of great wooden doors, which she also opened for him with little effort. And as if she could read his mind as he wondered how security was kept in a castle without visible guardsmen, she turned to face him for a moment, her cloak opening enough to reveal that she wore a golden-hilted sword and matching dagger with the casualty of any male duelist he had ever seen. Glancing up from the weapons, what Stephan saw in her eyes when she met his unsettled gaze almost put him to flight.

  But then she was out of his path, gesturing him through to the interior of the Great Hall. It had twenty-foot arched ceilings and was big enough to be a ballroom, lit by iron chandeliers and warmed by a gently crackling fire in a hearth so big that a half-dozen men could stand up inside the fireplace. And waiting for him at the center of a table long enough for two-score guests was the Count, flanked by two other striking women: