An Evening at the Greybridge Tavern

An Evening at the Greybridge Tavern

 

Gulfim drained the tankard with ease. “Another!” the orc called, pounding the table.

“I think you’ve already had enough,” Ekkhart said, eying the three empty mugs.

“Bah! Stupid paladin, never know how to have a good time.” The barbarian tossed back her hair, a full torso movement that she knew drew all the male eyes her way as her minimal leather armor left her ample cleavage exposed. “Tonight I celebrate!”

“Celebrate what? We’re barely halfway done with this quest, we only just now found where the Moon Pearl even is, we have a long way to go tomorrow, and you’re drinking all of our funds away at every tavern from here to Thorgal’s Gap!” The leader of the Azure Circlet guild was by nature a very patient man, far beyond his 19 years, but Gulfim was wearing on his last nerve this trip. In the weeks since they had taken this their second job as a guild, he had come to greatly value her axe, and greatly detest her thirst.

“Who cares about travel funds? Shenabel can always ‘find’ more.”

Ekkhart frowned. “Yes, I need to speak to her about that, too,” he said, glancing up at the room on the second floor occupied by the elven rogue and her twin sister the ranger Karabel. Trinkets and coin often disappeared in her wake, much to the discomfort of any faithful paladin of Ambrosius the Just.

“You see? You worry far too much! A stray kobold arrow might find you tomorrow, and then what good are all your lectures and grimaces and ‘thou shalt nots?’ Now, where’s that next ale?”

The human knight threw up his hands in frustration and stomped out of the common room. He paused at the stairs, torn between trying to get the barbarian to act reasonably or just giving up and retiring for the night.

“She is such a child sometimes! What would Sister Mei-lyn do?” He thought back to the kindly cleric who had raised him at the Great Temple of Ambrosius in Wintobul. Unbidden, a memory arose from when he was seven years old, of the first and last time he’d tried sneaking into the chancel with a filched basket of honeyed plums, the sweetest and stickiest of treats. And then the memory of himself, bawling over Sister Mei-lyn’s lap as she gave his bare bottom a long hard spanking.

Ekkhart winced. “Yeow! For someone with healing hands she sure has a wicked palm.”

Such a child sometimes…

“Oh, that would never work…would it?” he mused. He turned back into the common room. No, he was sure that a calm appeal to reason and a forbearing attitude would assuredly succeed this time.

In the scant minutes Ekkhart had dithered in the stairwell, Gulfim had downed two and a half more mugs and now sat across from a gap-toothed grinning dwarf. “Oi! Preachy! Just in time. I bet Kormac here a dozen silver crowns he can’t beat you at arm wrestling!”

“Enough!” he shouted, flinging an uncertain amount of coins at both Kormac and the barkeeper. “To your room this instant!”

The warrior maiden’s face twisted, amber eyes widening in fury, tusks gleaming in the firelight and hand twitching dangerously close to the broad hunting knife of her clan at her belt. “Since when do I take orders from some stuffy, prissy, puffed-up little-”

“I said now, young lady!” Ekkhart roared, reaching out to pinch one long green ear and hustling her out of the room and up the stairs.

“Ow ow ow okay okay ow!” Gulfim’s pained protests trailed off amidst the laughter of the patrons for whom this little bit of impromptu theater was just another part of the night’s entertainment.

Tevar and Petra simply chuckled knowingly at their table off in a dark corner. “’Bout time the young pup stepped up to his responsibilities,” the wizard grumbled as he took a pull on his pipe. Petra nodded, the druid making a mental note to increase her stock of both cooling balm and stinging nettles.

 

***

 

Ekkhart kept his thumb and forefinger clamped tightly on Gulfim’s ear until he had marched her into her room and sat down on her bed. Being handled in such a way, and in public no less, seemed to have taken the fight out of the orc, and now all she could do was cross her arms and pout.

“What’s gotten into youAAAAGH WHAT IN THE HELLS DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!” she shrieked as the young man pulled her over his knee and drew the back hem of her skirt up above her waist.

“Giving you something you’ve needed for a long time,” Ekkhart growled. In a move that would in other circumstances seem impossible to one with his vows, he effortlessly yanked down her linen loincloth. “If you’re going to behave like a rambunctious out of control brat, then that’s just how I’m going to treat you!” He punctuated this ominous decree with a loud smack! to her plump green rump.

“You…you can’t do this to me! I’m a sworn warrior of the Stormcrow Clan,” the barbarian yelled, twisting and squirming just as he had those many years ago.

“Oh I can’t? Seems to me I very much can!” he replied, spanking her again on the opposite cheek. “Perhaps those were mere flukes. Shall we test again?” Before she could let out a strangled “don’t you dare!” he slapped her backside a third time, right on the curve above her thighs. “Well, by Ambrosius, I am quite sure I can! And I will!”

Ekkhart began to pepper her bouncy bottom with quick sharp slaps. His hands, strong and precise and calloused from a lifetime of sword practice, never hit the same spot twice in a row as Gulfim yelled out every threat, curse, and vengeance oath known to the Stormcrow Orcs.

When the young barbarian’s rear end was a nice solid pink, Ekkhart changed tactics. Now he delivered firm, heavier, targeted swats in succession: ten to the fullest part of the right cheek, ten to the fullness of the left cheek, ten to the top of her right thigh, ten to the top of her left thigh, then started over. Those strikes to the thighs provoked the loudest squeals and (as he well knew) would have the longest-lasting effects.

After a few cycles of this, the threats stopped and the crying started. Then the begging. And finally the apologies, amidst hiccups and sniveling.

“Ekkhart, I’m sorry! Please, I’m sorry, I won’t waste our money again, I’ll be better, I swear!”

Ekkhart’s hand slowed. “I know you will.” Gulfim’s heart momentarily rose. “…Because this is one spanking you’re never going to forget!” He then delivered a dozen of the hardest swats to her now hot and scarlet hindquarters as she kicked and yelped.

For at least a full minute the orc sobbed as she lay draped over his knee without even registering that there were no more blows coming. The paladin gently shushed her and rubbed her bottom softly until he was the one shifting uncomfortably with this beautiful half-naked woman on top of him. He helped her up, eyes fixed firmly on her tear-streaked face.

The knight’s jaw was set sternly but his eyes were as gentle as he could make them. “This is one lecture you’d best listen to, young lady. We have a long way to go on this dangerous and important quest. And as long as you’re a member of this party, important decisions fall to me. And if you contradict those decisions, you’ll find yourself back over my knee. Is that clear?”

Gulfim nodded quickly. Ekkhart just quirked an eyebrow and tapped his foot. “Um, yes?...sir?”

“Very good,” he replied. “Normally I’d send you to the corner to think about what you’ve done, but we’ve got a long ride tomorrow - ” Gulfim groaned inwardly thinking about sitting on a horse all day – “so it’s straight to bed for you. If that candle isn’t blown out in five minutes I’ll be lighting a different fire again.” He rose and then, in one last memory of his own experience at the hand of Mei-Lyn, kissed her forehead.

They both stared at each other for a moment, upper cheeks reddening to match her lower ones, before he muttered, “good night, Gulfim,” and left the room, hoping there was a very cold bucket of water in the cellar he could acquire.

“Good night, Ekkhart,” she said to the door in a daze, fingers tracing the spot his lips had brushed. Then she shook herself and quickly readied for sleep.

 

***

 

When Ekkhart made his way downstairs the next morning, followed by a gingerly-stepping Gulfim, the common room was empty except for the two older party members. After a quick glance at the new pair, a grumbling Tevar handed over five gold eagles to the grinning Petra. “Not yet, but she will.”

“What’s that about?” Ekkhart asked, grabbing some cheese and bread from the counter.

“Oh, just a little bet between old folks,” Petra replied airily. On when the lusty barbarian will finally bed you, my dear innocent lambkin. “The twins are outside packing.”

“Very good. Got everything, Gulfim?”

“Um! Yes sir. All ready to go,” the barbarian said as she grabbed her own bowl of porridge.

Once outside all the members of the Azure Circlet swung onto their horses, but one of them nearly hopped back onto the ground the instant she took her seat. The elf girls giggled. Ekkhart just shrugged. “Come on, Gulfim, we’ve no time to waste. I want us in Tourney Bridge before nightfall,” as he set off at a trotting pace that, just for once, made a certain orc barbarian wish she’d spent less on drinks and instead bought that fancy saddle with extra padding.

 

***

Weeks later…

Karabel – greatest hunter in six kingdoms and obviously the cute twin! – returned to her room to see her sister Shenabel standing in the corner, nude from the waist down, red-arsed and snuffling. “Ha! Ekky found out where Baron Morvin’s missing silver set went, didn’t he? I know Ma will be pleased her wayward daughter is in such good hands!” she taunted with a vicious grin.

Then she herself felt that same hand on her shoulder, as a voice from behind her said, “glad you think so, as the Baron also wanted to know about a missing brace of partridges.”

“Eep!”

Both twins ended up sleeping on their stomachs that night….

 

 

 

Felt like trying out some fiction! It's been awhile since I did that. Like, I think the last time I posted anything at all was 2016, and the last I posted to animeotk was 2011.