Message-ID: <7282eli$9803262030@qz.little-neck.ny.us> From: Spoonbender <Theodore@spoonbender.demon.co.uk> Subject: **NEW** The Black Crows of Morden by Spoonbender Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Reply-To: Theodore@spoonbender.demon.co.uk Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: <usenet-approval@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded <story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Story-Submission: <story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Original-Message-ID: <351acf3e.6702498@news.demon.co.uk> The Black Crows of Morden ********************************************************************* (c) 1998 Spoonbender. A short story of an adult nature. Not to be read by minors. If you don't like this sort of stuff or you are underage then don't read. Contains illusions to sex and other stuff. Can be freely distributed as long as it is not changed, including this heading. If it is to archived on a fee paying archive then please email me first for permission. Note that the characterisations are mine. I do not like people stealing them for inclusion in their own efforts. So be warned Linda Jean! Please email me with comments, constructive criticism, fantasies you want put into words etc. Don't flame me if you don't like the content or you don't like my style. ********************************************************************* The winds were bitter that winter. Tumbling down the mountainsides they screamed between the black trees, that stood like naked sentinels over the lands of Morden. Inside the mean shacks the peasants huddled together for warmth and reassurance. For it was coming up to the time. The dark Lord's time. When he despatched his hooded crows amongst the people to choose his new bride. Terror gripped the land in its icy hand. Young maiden hearts fluttered in panic in byres and sleeping berms around the countryside, as they waited for his emissaries to descend and carry off the choice. No-one knew how they chose, nor indeed how they travelled. All that was known was that they would arrive in a dual column of dark hooded figures. No-one had seen their faces, nor heard them speak. Nothing was said, no spark of human warmth or understanding was ever offered to her bereaving family, as they led the chosen one away to her fate. Never to be seen, nor heard from, again. No writing, no voices, no lasting testament to her ever having had existed, or indeed the continuance of her existence. Nothing. She would vanish as if she had never been. It was always thus, since the dark Lord came to dwell in his massive black castle. Perched high on a mountain with the crows circling and cackling around its turrets. No-one had seen him, or if they had they had not lived to tell the tale. Alone among the Lords, he demanded no other tribute save the sacrificing of a single virgin every year. He sought no contact, nor leeched no produce from the peasants who scratched a precarious living from the thin, barren soil. The minstrels sang that in previous times the Lords demanded much penance for the right to exist on the land and, as such, this Lord was just and mighty. But the Peasants trembled. Poor, uneducated and caught in a cycle of backbreaking toil and misery. They were overwhelmingly superstitious of the brooding power that seeped from the Black Castle that threatened menacingly from upon its hilltop. The rumours about him eddied around the settlements like the wind driven snow as, in the absence of surer knowledge, the conjecture grew into mighty proportions of fear and dread. Mistrale, the eldest daughter of Ulna, had developed into a beautiful young maiden of comely proportions. Clean of limb, proud of back, with a bright, flashing smile and a ready wit, she was a favourite amongst her village. For eighteen summers her presence had enlivened the bleak huddle of huts that was a village with no name, one of many such villages hereabouts. Although but a mere wisp of a girl she too had to suffer the burdens of their fruitless existence, with its spiral of backbreaking toil leading, without respite, to an untimely death. This morn found her yoked to a plough, alike to the oxen that her father was too poor to buy. Pulling with all her puny strength as the plough cut through the boulder strewn field that begrudgingly yielded up its fruits in summer with the surety that the winter rains would again seed the soil with a liberal scattering of rocks. Which would lay mocking their labours, when the snows receded and the late spring sun cast its feeble glow across the benighted land. It was ever thus, in the darklands of Morden. Mistrale never thought to question her father as to why she must turn the soil on such a pitiless day, with its flurrying snow and its biting winds. Such was her demeanour that she accepted his decision and his decree. Her thin clothes clung to her nubile body as if seeking her protection from the inclement climes. Such was her youthful perfection that her beauty shone through her humble rags to project an image of vigour and vitality, that had quickened the breathing of many a lustful swain. And still she toiled. The whirling snow covering her tracks is a soft, fleecy blanket as surely as if she had never been. The wind screamed. The trees shook their branches angrily at the intrusion upon their winter slumbers. The maiden toiled. And the Black crows came. Silently, menacingly, inexorably. A dual row of evil portents, pursuivants of the Lord. Cowled, cloaked, their faces hidden deep within the recesses of their hoods. Heads bowed, as if in prayer. Their intonation, if such there was, was secretive and silent and buried by the passage of the wind. They took her away. No-one saw her passing. The plough upended and abandoned, the only witness to the fact that she had once trodden these blighted fields. The snow buried her prints and the crows buried her past. ************************************************************************ "Hi. My name is Andy. " The decoratively clad stranger held out his hand in a friendly manner unknown to her. "And you are?" "My name is Mistrale." She said, eyes cast down modestly. "Nice name." His accent, and indeed his manner, were unknown and unusual in these parts. It spoke of a carefree land where all peoples were free. Even the crows shed their capes to reveal the faces and bodies of happy, carefree people. Such as she had never seen. "Welcome to Andy's." He laughed to try to put her at her ease. "Please, my Lord, may I speak?" "Sure honey, it's a free country." A free country, that concept seemed so alien to her that it stilled her tongue. "Go on honey. I won't bite." Mustering her courage she took a deep breath and spoke. "Are you going to sunder my maidenhead, my Lord." She asked, fearfully. He looked at her owlishly. "Hell no Honey. I'm not that sort of guy. Not unless you want me too, of course." He winked. "Then, what is to become of me my Lord?" "Hey! Less of this My Lord stuff huh. I told you I'm Andy." "But surely you are the dark Lord?" He laughed. "They all say that." He said. "I'm no Lord baby. Just a talent scout for a modelling agency which happens to own a castle, which it uses for its more exotic shoots." "You are not a Lord?" "Nope. Just a working Joe, who happens to think that you have the face and the body that could be big in next year's season. Listen I'd like to offer you a contract. You ever heard of Vogue............" ***************************************************************************** Sorry no sex I'm afraid. Email me with comments, fantasies, offers of large sums of money, etc. etc. -- +--------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `------------+ | story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us | story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us |