A Satyr for Midwinter
An erotic novella by
Teresa Noelle Roberts
Also by Teresa Noelle Roberts:
Pirate’s Booty
Restraint
Lady Sun Has Risen
Rain at Midsummer
Threshing the Grain
This is an explicit and erotic novel
intended for the enjoyment
of adult readers. Please keep
out of the hands of children.
www.Phaze.com
A Satyr for Midwinter
Copyright © 2011 by Teresa Noelle Roberts
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Edited by Tina Gallagher
Cover Art © 2011 by Trish Schmitt
First Edition
ISBN-13: 978-1-60659-615-9
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Published by:
Phaze Books
An imprint of Mundania Press LLC
6457 Glenway Ave., #109
Cincinnati, OH 45211
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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Chapter One
When the stranger stumbled into the courtyard, Laeca was elbow-deep in blood and entrails. Blood spattered the dirty snow around her and marred even the fresh, new-fallen area in the far corner.
“What…what are you doing? I thought you were the Lady of Thermanae, but this courtyard looks like a battlefield and you a blood-spattered warrior.” The voice was weak, queasy. “Is that some poor creature’s head in the cauldron?”
Laeca didn’t look up from stirring the gory mixture that would become sausage. “What, haven’t you seen anyone making blood sausage before?”
“No, fair one. You plan to eat that mess of blood and bones? How predatory.”
Who in seven hells had invited idiotic city people who clearly thought sausage grew on sausage trees to Thermanae for Midwinter? And why in the world had they come? Even her own villagers were staying close to home, not venturing to spend the Longest Night at the villa like they usually did. The air smelled of blizzard—and thus, of danger.
The approaching storm (well, that and the cook’s ill-timed attack of sciatica, which was probably triggered by the storm as well) was why Laeca was making sausage alone. She’d sent most of the household staff out to make sure the old folks and other vulnerable families—widows and widowers with young children, the family with the crippled daughter—either had enough food and firewood to keep them for a long stretch or made their way to the villa.
The uninvited guest gagged.
Laeca didn’t look up, but she could imagine the pale, effete, overdressed chap all too easily. Definitely a city type from Poldar, a noble or a scholar. Had her parents decided to come home from Arlind for the holiday after all and drag some political contact with them in hopes that she’d wed him? Lord and Lady, they knew her taste better than that—they should, since their down-to-earth approach to life had shaped it. Still, she’d been acting as Lady of Thermanae without a Lord for long enough that the magic of the land was starting to become unbalanced and they might be desperate enough to try to arrange a marriage with an unsuitable stranger.
Such as a city-bred moron who couldn’t handle a little sausage-related carnage. “And I suppose you eat nothing but fruit and grain.”
“Mostly, Lady. Honey and wine as well, and greens in season.” The voice faded out. “I am sorry to interrupt your cooking but… please…help.”
The soft plea cut through Laeca’s irritation. She looked up just on time to see the stranger collapse into the trampled, bloodstained snow.
Easy to mock the poor fellow, but he sounded dreadful, not just shaken by unexpected sausage-making, but truly ill.
And even if he had fainted from the sight of pig’s blood, she couldn’t very well leave him face-down in the courtyard. A woman of honor simply wouldn’t do that, however funny it might seem.
She dropped the huge olivewood spoon she was using to stir the pot and wiped her hands on her apron. It took her only three steps to reach him, and by then, it was clear that the stranger wasn’t an effete noble or sheltered scholar.
He wasn’t even human.
A naked satyr lay at her feet.
A naked, handsome satyr, the kind of male creature who might have been her dreamed-of Midwinter gift from the Lord and Lady, the perfect way to spend the Longest Night celebrating the power of life.
At least if he hadn’t been battered and far paler than a satyr should be.
Laeca’s stomach twisted with anxiety. Still, she knelt and examined him as best she could. She could tell very little at a cursory glance, but he was clammy despite the cold and burning with fever that even her weak medical skills could detect.
No rashes, breathing smoothly and easily, but definitely he was not well. That gash in his leg might be the source of his fever. She doubted it, though. It looked painful, but it wasn’t oozing or puffy.
Did satyrs and humans suffer from the same ailments? She knew how to bring down fever in a human, but would the same remedies work on a satyr?
And what if humans could catch his ailment? Should she use the same herbs and rinsings with distilled spirits of wine as she would to keep a bout of snow fever from galloping through the estate?
She shook her head. She didn’t have the slightest idea how to answer those questions. Didn’t have the slightest idea how to help him.
The poor creature needed a healer from his own people, one who knew satyr physiology and magic, not a human with no magic and only a scant knowledge of medicine.
Seven hells, why wasn’t her mother here? Jaenna Thermanae practiced healer’s magic from two traditions. The spirits of the land loved her. She was scientifically trained as a physician, with all the best modern know-how in the humors and laws of similarity at her disposal. She’d be able to help the poor satyr if anyone could. Or maybe Laeca’s sister-in-law Miryea could have figured something out. She was only partially trained as a physician, but she knew a tiny bit about satyr magic, and she seemed to have good luck doing impossible things.
But her mother was in the provincial capital of Arlind, trapped by her father’s official duties as provincial satrap. And Miryea had just found she was with child, so she and Adimir were staying in Arlind rather than risking the long journey in winter.
Which left her, the one the old grannies called Laeca Lack-magic. She might be the Lady of Thermanae, but unlike her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and so on back as far as anyone could remember, she was neither a physician nor a magical healer. Hells, even Adimir’s wife would make a better Lady than Laeca did, and Miryea was born in a city in the flatlands and barely knew a goat from a sheep.
But Laeca had to try, or at least keep the satyr alive until his kin could be found. She owed the goat-legged hill-brothers. Satyrs had saved her brother and possibly all of Thermanae this fall, using their magic and ancient knowledge to help Adimir and Miryea slay a demon. “Well then,” she said, wiping her hands one more time, although she knew she’d never get the blood off until she was able to wash them properly. “Let’s see about getting you someplace warmer.” Satyrs were rumored to live outdoors year-round—at least no one had even seen a satyr house—but in this cold and as sick as he appeared to be, he needed shelter.
She didn’t dare to leave him long enough to get help, not lying fevered in the snow while more snow fell. Besides, she’d already touched him and would be caring for him. If his illness was something humans could catch, she’d already been exposed. No need to risk others if she could help it.
Maybe being taller and stronger than average would finally come in handy for something other than helping with the olive harvest and beating the rugs and bedding during spring cleaning. The satyr, well-built and muscular though he was, wasn’t tall. If he was at all responsive, she should be able to help him to his feet and guide him…
Where?
Her own quarters. As the Lady of Thermanae, she had her own apartments, separate from the common spaces shared by the many retainers and servants who lived at the villa. It would keep both the satyr and the other inhabitants of the house safer.
She squatted in the snow. Lord, Lady, she prayed, help me help this hill-brother. At least help me get him to a room with a fire.
She slipped her arms around the satyr. Poor creature, he was burning up, yet shivering. He needed more than willow-bark tea and cool cloths. He needed magic. But he’d have to take what she could offer.
Fevered or not, his skin felt glorious, like heavy silk drawn tight over muscles. It reminded her of a beautifully groomed stallion, only he was close enough to humanity that simple animal vigor was transformed into something much more compelling.
Laeca shivered sensually. An image popped into her mind of the satyr restored to health, holding her in his strong arms, lying over her, driving into her with a gloriously hard cock. She’d carefully avoided looking at his cock so far, trying to stay focused, but…well, he was a satyr and everyone knew about satyrs. Even when she and her brother were children and would escape from the villa to run wild with the satyr children in the hills, the satyr lads looked like well-endowed grown men between the legs. Back then, the young satyrs’ endowments had been comical to her, entirely out of proportion to their spindly, boyish bodies.
Now the mere thought filled her with a heated curiosity that wouldn’t help her patient in the least. But what would it hurt to satisfy her curiosity? After all, it wasn’t every day a woman met a satyr in the safety of her own courtyard. She glanced down and treated herself to a look. His cock was all she could have possibly imagined and more, almost large enough to be intimidating, but Lord and Lady help her, not quite.
She forced herself to look away. It had been altogether too long since she’d lain with a man—a not altogether satisfying episode of sex magic with the priest of the Lord of Grains at Spring Festival, and not since. Midsummer she’d meant to join in the festivities, find some attractive laborer who wasn’t too intimidated by her status to play hard, but Dela, the captain of the estate’s guard, had been short of able-bodied people willing to forego a wild night of drinking and lovemaking to patrol against Kulchu raiders. Though Laeca was no warrior, the first duty of a Lady of Thermanae was to protect her people, so she’d found herself holding a spear and praying she wouldn’t need to use it. And the festival of Threshing the Grain this autumn had been no time to play, what with a demon about and her brother in danger.
The Longest Night wasn’t shaping up to be promising either, not with the weather keeping visitors away and a sick satyr to deal with. Looked like another festival she’d be missing.
“Come on, my friend,” Laeca said to the dazed satyr. “I’m going to get you to your feet but I’ll need you to stay conscious for a little while longer. Once I’ve got you safely in bed, you can sleep all you like.”
At the sound of her voice, the satyr opened startlingly green eyes. Foggy for a second, they focused on her face. “Ah, fair one,” he said, his voice soft and shaky, yet somehow honeyed and erotically charged. “If only things were different for me. No satyr should sleep in such a lovely woman’s bed. At least not until we’ve worn each other out.” He smiled as he spoke, and pale and sorry-looking though he was, the smile set heat shimmering in her belly, made her nipples press almost painfully against the linen and wool blend fabric of her q’misa.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to put on a face of calm good humor, to hide the way her heart raced and her sex throbbed and dampened at the thought. “In that case, I’ll make a point not to be in the bed with you. Hill-brother, you need rest more than you need a woman.”
His handsome face seemed to close in on itself. “I doubt you can provide what I need, fair one. But a warm place to lay my head…” He took a deep, sighing breath and seemed to collect his thoughts from a place far distant and not very pleasant. “…would not be amiss.”
“Up you get, then.” She leaned closer for leverage.
Seven hells, even through the sweat and stink of illness, the satyr smelled of sweet red wine and herbs and underneath it all, of a musk that was pure male, pure erotic power. Laeca’s mind clouded, filling with images of wild, raucous mating, of the satyr sleek and strong over her or driving into her from behind or licking honey off her nipples and from her dripping sex.
She shook herself. This wasn’t the time for such fantasies, enticing as they were. She had to get her unexpected guest out of the snow, get him safe under warm blankets and with willow-bark tea and hot broth warming his system.
Then and only then she could find some privacy and use her own right hand to relieve the ache of desire. As she’d been doing for far too long, but when you were acting as the Lady of Thermanae without a Lord, you took what satisfaction you could get.
“Come along, hill-brother.” Using the sturdy muscles of her thighs, toned by walking the hills of Thermanae and working in the fields and orchards alongside her laborers, Laeca stood, pulling the satyr with her.
He overbalanced, tumbling into her.
By instinct, Laeca’s arms closed around him to keep him from falling. A heartbeat later, his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer, close enough to make her all too aware of the strength of his muscles, the power of his cock that, even soft and barely stirring, felt huge. “Fair one,” he whispered.
Those weren’t words Laeca was used to hearing, not even from men about to bed her, but she could get used to them, especially spoken in that voice that insinuated itself into all her long-neglected soft, secret places. It had been too long for a young, healthy woman, even one who tried to be sensible above all things, to keep her head against such temptation.
Head swimming, sex throbbing, moving through warm honey, ignoring the voices of common sense that told her she should at least get him inside first, Laeca leaned in to kiss the satyr. His red, sensual lips parted under hers. Even sick, even stumbling out of hills blanketed in snow, the satyr’s breath tasted like thyme and rosemary, with a hint of honeyed wine. Desire slammed into Laeca with painful force, an erotic punch. Her sex opened, slicked, yearning for penetration. Her fingers curled into the satyr’s tangled black hair.
Gently, the satyr disengaged himself and pulled away. “I’m sorry, fair lady. I cannot.”
Anger bred of long frustration bubbled up. “Seven hells, am I too lanky to inspire even a satyr’s lust?” She’d heard the whispers all her life, that she was attractive of face, but built more like a boy than a woman, enough like her brother to be his twin.
Hells, if she couldn’t inherit her mother’s magic, couldn’t she at least have her mother’s beauty along with her Kulchu height? No one had ever mistaken her mother for a weedy lad from behind.
She was quivering from a toxic stew of emotion: anger, self-doubt, anger at the creature whose legendary lust couldn’t stretch to giving her a kiss, and underneath it all, a seething desire that teased her senses even while the others roiled her stomach.
This time, the satyr’s smile was sad—tragic, even, the expression of someone forcing himself to go on in the face of despair. “I love your height and the strength of your body, fair one. You have the muscles of a satyr woman and the soft smoothness of a human. Not long ago, if you had been willing, I’d have tumbled you in a heartbeat. But there is no joy for me anymore in a woman’s beauty, or anywhere else.” He sighed.
More pain than Laeca could imagine was encompassed in that sigh, putting her petty concerns into perspective.
“I am dying, fair one. At least I will have a beautiful woman to close my eyes and prepare my body for burning.”
Somehow, incredibly, even while talking of his own death, he managed a smile that hinted at some of the flirtatious mischief a satyr’s smile should hold.
And then, without ceremony, he fainted again.
Chapter Two
Why was the villa crawling with servants, sycophants and guests whenever Laeca wanted a bit of quiet and emptier than a tomb when she could actually use some help? The feverish satyr was slightly shorter than she was, but solidly muscled. Dragging him back to her chambers took more out of her than she wanted to admit even to herself.
In her chamber, she laid him out on the low, old-fashioned bed. He roused himself long enough to help with that, but then passed out again. The fire was banked but still gave off a bit of heat, and she easily poked it back to life and fed it with dry twigs and then larger pieces of wood. She washed her hands one more time, using the pitcher of herb-infused water she’d left for the purpose, and splashed her no doubt blood-smeared face for good measure.
After eying her nameless patient and seeing he was still unconscious, Laeca shed her blood-stained garments and slipped into a clean q’misa without blood on the cuffs and a soft woolen robe that had been a gift from Miryea when she married into the family. The blood had disturbed him earlier. No point in having her bloody garments greet him when he woke again.
Laeca didn’t allow herself much feminine vanity. She simply didn’t have time for it, even if she figured it would do much good. Still, it made her smile knowing that the robe was a flattering shade of deep red, not her usual undyed homespun wool.
Almost as an afterthought, she put on clean salvar, neither spattered with blood nor damp with snow and mud.
Clean and armed with fresh, pretty clothing, she drew closer and studied her patient.
He was barely more than a boy, although that “boy” might be close to a century old, given satyrs’ long lives. He was definitely fevered, and his naturally ruddy complexion looked paler than it ought to be. Lines of strain and sorrow marked an overly thin face so youthful he had only the merest traces of a beard. But his body showed no signs of wasting or long illness. Beautiful, lean muscles, gleaming, thick black hair, healthy-looking pelt on his legs, elegant horns, tidy hooves that looked like he’d polished them. Thinner than he probably ought to be, but by no means wasting away, especially not the impressive muscles of his chest and thighs.
Shouldn’t someone who was dying look sicker? Laeca was no physician, but in her eight and twenty years, she’d often gone with her mother to a deathbed, to make sure the house was cleaned and the linens aired and food cooked for anxious relatives while her mother eased someone’s passage into the arms of Bone-white Lady Death. Truly dying people, as opposed to sick people who would mend with proper care, had an odd luminosity to their eyes and skin. As their bodies diminished, you could see their souls more clearly.
The satyr—what was his name? she couldn’t just call him the satyr—didn’t have that transparent look, that frailty, didn’t give the impression his soul was bigger than his body. But would he? She’d spent little time with healthy adult satyrs, let alone gravely ill ones.
“What ails you, hill-brother?” she whispered, putting her hand on his bare chest, near his heart.
She was bombarded with images of blood and death, of a young satyr literally torn to pieces by a raging mob.
Rough despair filled her, a sense that she was cut off from all light and love, that all good had deserted her and life was meaningless. So alone, alone forever, true love gone, soul ripped in half…
Laeca jerked her hand away and sank to the floor sobbing, filled past bearing with someone else’s pain.
A gentle hand grazed her shoulder. “I am sorry, fair lady. I should have known a daughter of Thermanae would be sensitive beyond what is ordinary for humans. Now you know why I suffer.”
Laeca nodded. She couldn’t yet speak through her tears, but all the pieces were coming together.
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and pulled herself together through sheer force of will. She shut the dreadful images she had seen into a tiny chest in her brain, locked the chest, and hid the key until she might need it. “I know who you are,” she said. “You’re the satyr whose mate was killed by that demon. Kallios?”
“Yes. So you know why I am dying, daughter of Thermanae. This illness should not be mortal, but I have nothing left to live for and so I cannot shake it.”
She pulled herself to her feet, put her hands on her hips and did her best to channel her mother. “Oh no you don’t. You’re not giving up so easily. You helped save my brother’s life. Honor demands I save yours. I am Laeca Thermanae and I vow on my family’s name and on the good land we tend that if the gods are willing, you shall live.” She was astonished by the confidence that infused her voice, considering she wasn’t sure how she would accomplish this vow.
Kallios ventured a faded smile that transformed his gaunt face. “My elders have told me the ladies of Thermanae have always been fierce and beautiful,” he said, “and you live up to the legend. I am not certain I wish to live, fair one, but I do not believe you are offering me a choice.”
Laeca shook her head. “I’m saving your life, Kallios, and that’s final. What you do with it after that is up to you. Some part of you must wish to live, though, or why else would have come here?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “My hooves set their own course.”
Daring greatly, for she feared she might be fed more images of his lover’s death, she brushed a stray black curl out of his goat-pupiled green eyes. “Rest,” she said firmly. “I’ll be back in a bit with some food and medicine.” She pulled a warm wool blanket over him, then added another. You were supposed to sweat out fevers; that much she knew.
Kallios snuggled under the blankets. “Thank you, Lady,” he said softly. “For the first time since Agapios died, I feel some hope.” He reached out and took her hand, closed his eyes and sighed. This time the sigh conveyed more comfort than despair.
Laeca stifled a sigh of her own. She needed to get back to the blood sausage, and delve into the store of simples and herbs to make him up a tea to break the fever—thank Lady Sun that her mother had left her parchments detailing how to make the most basic medicines!—and see what they had on hand that a sick satyr could eat.
But she couldn’t pull away. Kallios’s firm, callused hand held her tightly. Satyrs were physical creatures, everyone knew that, not simply sexual, but affectionate and lively, always hugging and kissing and cuddling their friends and family and even near-strangers. Kallios, bereft of his mate and far from his kin, must need the comfort of touch. She would give him that comfort until he fell back to sleep, which from the look of him would not be long.
Why were the sensations his handclasp evoked so uncomfortable and yet so enticing? His touch teased places that a simple touch should not reach, as if he caressed her nipple or cupped her sex instead of merely holding her hand as innocently as a child drifting off to sleep.
And what in seven hells had she gotten herself into anyway? Laeca was no healer, and she was certainly no wise old granny-priestess qualified to act as an advisor to the broken-hearted.
But she’d just made a vow on her family’s honor to save Kallios. And by Lady Sun and the Lord of Grain, she would do it. Now all she had to do was figure out how.
Nothing like a nice next-to-impossible challenge as a diversion for the Longest Night.
Chapter Three
Thank the Lady that some of the kitchen help had returned from their errands of mercy. The blood sausage was now in their capable hands and Laeca was free to work in the stillroom.
Which, in her case, meant pouring through her mother’s notes, wishing Jaenna’s hard-won literacy had extended to neater handwriting, and being grateful that Miryea, whose handwriting was tidy, had helped her label the various jars and crocks and attach bits of parchment to the bunches of herbs still hanging from the last autumn cutting. At least with everything labeled, Laeca felt fairly confident she wouldn’t kill her hapless patient while trying to cure him—at least if nothing that was harmless for humans was toxic for satyrs.
Best to choose something mild, even though she’d normally choose the stronger herbs for a strapping young man struck down by a bad fever. She took another pass through the notes, seeking comments such as “safe for children”. She trusted a tea of feverfew and willow bark would work against the fever. An infusion of hypericum was tonic against depression and grief.
But hypericum was also toxic to livestock and Kallios did have goatlike qualities. Best to skip that one. What else could she use? Ah-ha! Both valerian and basil were supposed to be good for melancholy and valerian would also soothe him into healing sleep. A tea based on rose, lemon balm and lavender might raise his spirits and would certainly warm him, especially with some honeyed wine mixed in. She had a feeling she wasn’t supposed to give a fevered person too much alcohol, but Kallios would have been weaned on wine and mead, and abstaining would probably shock his already disordered system.
Praying under her breath all the while that her efforts would be fruitful, or at least do no harm, Laeca set to work.
* * * *
The problem was that it was virtually impossible to keep a secret at Thermanae. She managed to sneak her pots of herbal brew back to Kallios without provoking any question. With the sudden onset of cold, snowy weather, many people had been looking for teas to clear a stuffy head or something to ease stiff joints, so no one she ran into looked twice.
Getting him suitable food was another story. Aglia the cook was back in her domain, lying on a pallet in the corner and ordering her underlings to do the actual work of preparing for the Festival feast, with its traditional roast pig and honey-glazed apples and sweet breads. As soon as Laeca starting requesting a dish of lentils, rice and onions from the pot made up for the feast, while trying to abscond with a dish of the honeyed apples and some of the last of the cold-stored grapes, Aglia started asking questions.
Laeca thought she’d done a decent job of not answering them, but somehow by the time she got the food on a tray to take back to her chamber, everyone she ran into—and where were they all when she’d been trying to get an unconscious satyr safely indoors?—knew about her uninvited guest.
And of course the first people she ran into were her two surrogate aunties, who were never shy about expressing their opinions. Anat the steward sniffed, “Satyrs have the strangest senses of humor. Probably he’s not sick at all, just trying to cadge a free meal and a warm place to spend a cold night, and he thought it would be more amusing to do it this way than simply to ask.”
Explaining that it wasn’t like that, that Kallios had accidentally shared his tragic memories with her, was beyond what she could handle. That she’d shared a satyr’s memories seemed unlikely even to her, and would seem even more so to her pragmatic old aunties, who knew all too well she had no magic. So she shrugged and conceded, “It’s possible. But why go to all that trouble of faking an illness—and he certainly seems feverish and weak—when we’d feed and shelter anyone who came to our door in this weather?”
“Perhaps he’s hoping for a free tumble as well as a free meal? Sick creatures look harmless, so you’ll get close, and then the next thing you know you’re under him.”
Dela, Anat’s partner, laughed. “I didn’t think you’d turned so stuffy, wife. Just because we wouldn’t like to be tumbled by a satyr lad doesn’t mean Laeca wouldn’t enjoy it.” An old comrade-in-arms of Laeca’s father, Dela hadn’t let age slow her down, and certainly hadn’t let it interfere with her interest in carnal matters. She clapped Laeca on the shoulder as if Laeca, too, was an old soldier. As Laeca swayed under the hearty blow and fumbled to make sure she didn’t drop the tray, Dela proclaimed, loudly “I’ve heard satyrs are great fun, as long as you’re not expecting more than a roll in the hay. If that’s what he’s offering, lass, take him up on it!”
“I’d never…” Which wasn’t exactly the truth, but there were things a woman didn’t admit to her auntie, even if said auntie was the first in line at the temple of the Huntress at festival times, with her wife a close second, for a chance to play with the pretty priestesses and any ladies eager to enjoy the delights of their own sex.
“No, you’d never, because you might have work to do or some fool thing like that. Which is the whole point of playing around with a satyr, girl. They show you a good time and then they leave you be! You work far too hard and take life far too seriously, and if you’re not careful, you won’t store up enough juice to keep you going when you’re as old as we are. Just saying.” She smacked Laeca on the bottom, taking advantage of the privilege of being very nearly family. “And gain some weight, girl. Your rump’s as bony as my mule’s.”