Chapter 5: Wagon of Wanton Lessons
The road wound its way through a narrow pass, the sky a flat sheet of lead. The only sounds were the crunch of gravel underfoot and the distant cry of a hawk. Then, another sound wove itself into the silence—a rhythmic, wet slapping, syncopated with ragged, guttural grunts.
It came from a derelict wagon tilted off the side of the track, one wheel shattered, its canvas cover torn and flapping. The wood was gray with age and weather.
The rhythmic slapping of flesh grew louder as they approached the wagon. A man’s choked sob, then a woman’s voice, sharp and commanding. “Don’t you dare slow down, you lumbering oaf. You’re not finished.”
Frieren held up a hand, stopping Fern. With the barest tilt of her head, she indicated they should move closer, quietly. They stepped off the path, using the scraggly brush for cover, until they had a clear view through the wagon’s open rear.
Inside, a woman rode a muscular traveler with abandon. She was naked from the waist down, her trousers pooled around one ankle, a simple tunic rucked up above her breasts. Her hair was a shocking, vibrant green side ponytail and messy with sweat. Her skin was pale, almost luminous in the gloomy interior. Beneath her, the man was braced on his elbows, his tanned back a taut landscape of straining muscle, his own breeches shoved down to his knees.
She moved with a furious, piston-like precision, slamming herself down onto his thick cock with a force that rocked the wagon on its broken axle. Each downward stroke produced that loud, meaty slap of flesh on flesh. Her face was a mask of ferocious concentration, her purple eyes glazed, rolling back in her head before snapping forward to glare at the man beneath her.
“Is that all you’ve got?” she sneered, her voice husky and raw. She grabbed a handful of his hair, yanking his head back. “I’ve had harder fucks from dying old men. Come on, you worthless pig! Fuck me harder!”
The man, his face flushed a deep crimson, veins bulging in his neck, could only comply, driving his hips up to meet her brutal descent. His efforts were clumsy, desperate. He was trying to survive her, not please her.
Frieren’s fingers closed around Fern’s wrist, her grip cool and firm. She leaned close, her breath a whisper in Fern’s ear. “Watch her hips. See the twist at the apex? She’s not just taking him deep. She’s grinding against his pubic bone on every downstroke. She’s milking him, denying him a clean rhythm. It’s chaos. It’s agony. It’s exquisite.” Frieren’s lips curved. “This is how you ruin a man. Not by fucking him, but by making him fuck you until there’s nothing left of him but this… this animal panic.”
Fern watched. The green-haired woman, Ubel, was a maestro of discord. Her movements were all sharp angles and punishing force, a stark contrast to Frieren’s lethal grace or her own clinical efficiency in the barn. This was violence disguised as sex. Ubel’s breasts shook with each impact, her small, pert nipples pebbled hard. Spit gleamed on her chin.
“I’m gonna… I can’t…” the man gasped, his eyes wide with a terror that had nothing to do with physical danger.
“You’ll come when I’m done with you!” Ubel shrieked, increasing her pace to a frenzied blur. The wagon groaned in protest. She leaned forward, biting his shoulder hard enough to draw blood. The coppery scent mingled with the ripe stink of sweat and sex. “Now!” she snarled. “Spill it, you fucking bull! Give it all to me!”
With a broken cry that was half relief, half despair, the man shuddered, his body locking as he emptied himself inside her. Ubel kept moving, riding out his orgasm with short, vicious rocks of her hips, squeezing him dry until he whimpered, completely spent.
Only then did she still. She sat atop him, his softening cock still inside her, breathing heavily. A look of profound irritation crossed her face, as if the conclusion had been unsatisfying. She slapped his chest, a dismissive thwack. “Pathetic.”
She climbed off him, ignoring his limp form as he collapsed onto the rough boards of the wagon bed. She pulled her trousers up, not bothering to clean herself, and straightened her tunic. She turned, and her purple eyes, sharp and unnervingly direct, immediately found Frieren and Fern in the bushes. She showed no surprise.
“You get a good look?” Ubel called out, her voice now carrying a lazy, mocking edge. She hopped down from the wagon with a lightness that belied her previous ferocity.
Frieren released Fern’s wrist and stepped out into the open. “An educational performance,” Frieren replied, her tone neutral. “Your finishing technique lacks subtlety. You wasted energy on the theatrics of the bite. The command was enough.”
Ubel’s eyes narrowed, assessing Frieren. A slow smile spread across her face. It didn’t reach her eyes. “An elf. And one who knows her way around a cock, by the sound of it. You’re not from the Guild.”
“We are merely travelers,” Frieren said. “I am Frieren. This is my apprentice, Fern.”
Ubel’s gaze flicked to Fern, looking her up and down with a disconcerting candor. “Apprentice? In what? Botany?” She snorted. Then she shrugged. “I’m Ubel. That—” she jabbed a thumb toward the wagon, from which soft, exhausted snores now emanated, “—was breakfast.”
She walked to a small, tidy pack leaning against a wagon wheel and pulled out a water skin, taking a long swallow. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You two look like you’re heading for trouble. Or maybe you’re trouble yourselves. Which is it?”
“Trouble is often a matter of perspective,” Frieren said. “We seek knowledge. Experience.”
Ubel barked a laugh. “Experience. Yeah. I’ve got experience. The experience of knowing that most men are sacks of meat and pride, and you can have anything you want from them if you just know how to twist the right levers.” She looked at Fern again, more thoughtfully. “You trying to learn the lever-twisting, apprentice?”
Fern met her gaze. She thought of the farmer’s emptiness, the demon’s death throes. “I’m learning about efficacy.”
Ubel’s smile turned genuine, and it was somehow more frightening than her mockery. “Efficacy. I like that. Better than ‘seduction.’ Seduction implies you give a shit about their feelings.” She shouldered her pack. “Well, efficacious ladies, I’m heading towards the River Cress. Word is there’s a nest of river-demons causing a ruckus, and the local lord is paying good silver for cleared waterways.”
Frieren’s eyebrows lifted infinitesimally. “River-demons are usually female.”
“Usually,” Ubel agreed, her purple eyes glittering with a dangerous light. “I’ve never made a female demon come before. I hear it’s a real challenge. That it kills them. Sounds… efficacious.”
The three women stood in the quiet road, the only sound the snoring from the wagon. A understanding passed between them, wordless and clear. They were not the same. Frieren was a timeless principle, Fern a focused study. Ubel was a pure, unadulterated force, a wildfire looking for the right fuel to consume.
“The river road is our path as well,” Frieren said, as if commenting on the weather. “The journey is often dull with only two.”
Ubel’s grin was all teeth. “I can promise you won’t be bored.” She fell into step beside them without another word, leaving the ruined wagon and its sleeping occupant behind. As they walked, Fern caught Ubel looking at her, a speculative hunger in her gaze that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with potential.
Fern looked ahead at the winding road. The loneliness she’d felt after the barn was still there, but its shape had changed. It was no longer a hollow between two people. It was a shared space between three predators, each with their own method of dissection. The air smelled of coming rain, damp earth, and the faint, lingering trace of Ubel’s sweat.
The road descended out of the pass, and the River Cress appeared in the distance, a silver scar through the green valley. Something awaited them there in the murky water. A new lesson. Fern found her hand drifting to the dagger at her belt, not for protection, but out of a newfound anticipation.