Nira’theba felt reminded of earlier times. Even though this was just a meager resting place, which offered no comfort at all and once provided enough shelter for her whelps, many puppies, their mothers, but also a few males had romped around the fire. She was almost embarrassed, because in troll culture, at least in many tribes, it was customary to entertain guests and their means were limited. Fortunately, Haki had caught some meerkats again yesterday, and Nira’theb herself had found a rich mango tree not far from the wanderers’ camp. It was not Nira’theb’s fault that there was such a crowd at their resting place, but just as her deceased mate had been very popular in the past, she found herself in the presence of such a troll again.

  “And then,” BloodTusk tried his hand at bad trollish, imitating a swing. ’I jumped from the stands and rammed the sword into his eye. Over and over again.”

  It really was bad trollish, which is why everyone looked back at Kriz’kriz. ’And then I jumped from the stands and rammed the sword into his eye. Over and over again,” she croaked and flapped her wings. ‘Give me meat!’ As a reward for her constant translation of the arena story, the parrot was repeatedly thrown tiny pieces of meat.

  Blood Tusk had told a story in which he, Abaroth and some other gladiators, who hadn’t survived this fight, had fought against a giant Okuro. These beasts were between 10 and 15 meters tall and had been the ancestors of the already massive ogres and, like their descendants, they had only one eye.

  Not a single troll at the fire doubted this story. Not after what they had seen from the gladiator two days earlier. Especially the pups looked at the giant with wide eyes, which revealed that they just couldn’t get enough of his stories.

  Blood Tusk had told quite a few of them since yesterday, which surprised even himself, since he rarely exchanged many words. He didn’t realize it, but it eased his longing for the arena and when he wanted to, he could be quite a good conversationalist or storyteller.

  “Enough of this fairytale hour,” Sa’Thuk grumbled. He knew about the giant’s merit, but that didn’t make him likeable, and there were more important things to do. ”Get back to work before the rain starts!”

  The sky was really very overcast and it was only a matter of time before it rained. Most of the adults rose, while it took a while for the puppies to do so.

  Sa’Thuk helped them. “Come on, the bigger ones help and the smaller ones, go play!” he said emphatically, and so the puppies left too, as did Sa’Thuk.

  Nira’theba sighed with relief when it became quieter. However, she did not miss the determined look of some of the females who had set their eyes on the giant. They were mostly the unattached ones from that group who had only recently joined these wanderers, but she, of all people, understood their attitude and she glanced fleetingly at the gladiator. The longer he stayed in the camp, the more his so-called impurity faded into the background and for her, like other females, the advantages increasingly outweighed the disadvantages. Maybe it was also because she hadn’t had sex since the death of her mate and her extremely healthy urges remained unsatisfied, but she thought, who was she? A female with three whelps who had no noteworthy qualities: being a mother, a collector, sewing, things that were a matter of course under non-warrior. Only in her thoughts, oh yes, there she was allowed to imagine everything and she did that best alone. “Nitha, you take care of Jakhan and Ba’tha,” she said to her nine-year-old daughter, and she grabbed the now empty fruit basket. “I’m going to pick mangoes.”

  “Okay, Ma’Ma,” Nitha nodded obediently. Ba’tha was asleep anyway and she usually had her three-year-younger brother well under control. ’Come on, let’s play.”

  “Yes!’ Jakhan nodded. He took two straw troll dolls out of a small sack that looked like warriors and gave one to his sister. ”There.”

  The break in the history lesson at the resting place had been observed by another female with annoyed and tense features from a distance. “Like hyenas,” Haki snorted, annoyed. “Now that they’ve all seen it, they all want a piece of him.”

  “Did you expect something else?” Djar’Ku asked. The old warrior was in the process of sharpening his broad-bladed, rough katana with the whetstone. ’And you wanted everyone to believe you.”

  “Maybe,’ Haki sighed. She did see a certain prerogative for herself, though. ”I was the first to witness his power, though. I don’t want the other females to get any ideas, but he’s mine.”

  “You do realize that a troll like that can have as many females as he wants?” Djar’Ku asked. He had already realized the day before that the female was jealous since the giant was constantly besieged and courted. ”Reminds me of a troll from my younger years. The best hunter, even other tribes thought highly of him and he had an enormous drive. In the end, there were five, no, six females that he called his and at least two dozen whelps. It’s been too long ago to remember exactly.”

  Fortunately, Haki’s little lie had ensured that the gladiator would not mate with any other female, and he seemed to strictly adhere to it. “You’ll see that won’t be the case with him,” she confirmed. The tiki had shown him to her first, and she considered that a gift, her claim. “So don’t put any ideas into his head!”

  “Me? Stand between a female and her fangs and claws?” Djar’Ku laughed harshly. ”Not my concern, but you also know that he won’t stay forever. His desire to return is unbroken.”

  “We’ll see. The more time he spends with us and the more I show him, the more the true troll in him will awaken.”

  Djar’Ku couldn’t resist. “And a true troll has both arms full of females,” he smirked, before he was met with Haki’s stinging look. “I’m just saying, and I just don’t want you to cling to illusions. Let’s just be thankful that he’s with us right now and has helped us, just as the bargain says, and I think we should keep our promise, too.”

  “The bargain, eh?” Haki suspected. Somehow she had the feeling that the old warrior didn’t want her to be happy. ”What are you saying? That I should stop trying to dissuade him from his wish?”

  “I’m saying that we still don’t know what exactly we’re dealing with here,” Djar’Ku replied uncertainly. It wasn’t that he wanted to get rid of the giant, but breaking a bargain, especially with a troll sent by the tiki, could in turn arouse the tiki’s wrath and bring disaster for the wanderers or their future tribe. “And you should perhaps not try too hard to influence him. Perhaps he will lose the desire to return to the arena on his own.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. I’ll just show him our way and he’ll decide.”

  Djar’Ku refrained from telling her that her choice of words before had been -discouraging him. “As long as it is his own will, I think it would be okay, but as I said, don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Sure, sure,” Haki waved off when she saw the gladiator arrive. “What are you up to?”

  “Hunting,” Blood Tusk replied in trollish. He was carrying his Bisento and had a bag of small wooden javelins on his back. ’Alone.”

  Haki didn’t want to let the giant out of his sight, especially after she hadn’t been able to spend a moment alone with him in the last two days. ’I’ll go with you.”

  “No,” Blood Tusk shook his head. ’Must be alone. Won’t get better if I always have help.”

  “But you’re not good yet-”

  “Haki,’ Sa’Thuk interrupted. ”You still haven’t started packing up the training ground of the whelps. We want to leave by tomorrow morning at the latest, so stop dragging your heels.”

  Haki growled weakly at the group leader, but she couldn’t disagree with him. “I’ll start right away, so calm down,” she said, stomping past all the males, admonishing the giant. “And don’t come back without prey if you think you’re ready and want to go out alone.”

  Blood Tusk didn’t understand sentences that long yet without Kriz’kriz, and the batparrot had stayed at the resting place of Nira’theba. “Two days without mating,” he said after the female was gone. “Haki blood boils. My blood, too.”

  “I don’t care,” said Sa’Thuk and left, too.

  “Two days without mating,” Djar’Ku marveled. He didn’t need the details but he was wondering. ’Why do you do that? You have plenty of choices.”

  Blood Tusk nodded because he had only understood the first four words. ’Yes.”

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  “Yes, what?”

  “What?”

  “Yes, why do you do that?”

  Unable to understand the sentence, Blood Tusk merely shrugged.

  Djar’Ku took that as an answer. “I see. Well then, good luck with the hunt.”

  “Yes, hunt,” Blood Tusk nodded and headed into the jungle.

  Light thunder began to announce the approaching rain a little later, while the gladiator crept through the eastern undergrowth. He had never been hunting here before, although he didn’t know that Haki had never gone with him here because there were the fewest animals in the area. Unsure of this, he tried to find traces of possible prey, without much success, and the scent of the imminent rain, clouded his senses of smell, which were not yet fully attuned to the jungle. However, he soon found the fresh footprints of a troll, which he followed with caution.

  The first raindrops began to fall, but this was the Diamond Jungle and sometimes, the sky could be like the sea, as it was now. Within seconds, it began to rain so hard that you could barely see further than a few meters through the curtain of silver. Even the mighty trees and all the thick greenery could not stop the masses for long.

  This only made Blood Tusk all the more alert as he got soaking wet. His fur plum stuck to his body, but that didn’t bother him, because it was the same rain that he had felt on his body time and again in the middle of an arena fight. It even made him careless when he closed his eyes for a moment and felt the cool wetness more intensely. At the same time, Bluthauer became more sensitive to hearing and he heard the splashing of footsteps marching hastily through puddles. He opened his eyes and tried to follow them slowly and quietly. He was not doing too badly at it.

  Any other troll would have noticed him at the latest when he got as close as he did to the figure that had sought shelter under a tree.

  It was a mango tree, with an unusually thick trunk and a natural hollow between its broad roots, which plunged into the earth.

  Blood Tusk approached the figure from the side with Bisento in line, although the rain continued to make it difficult for him to see exactly what kind of troll he was dealing with.

  It was only when he was right at the root threshold that the trollish figure noticed him. It retreated in fright deeper into the confined hollow of the tree, and several mangoes rolled out in front of the tree.

  Growling, Blood Tusk planted one foot firmly on the squelching ground and extended his weapon, but not too far. “Show!” he said in troll.

  The foreign troll ventured forward only slowly, but a sigh of relief escaped her lips. “You scared me half to death,” Nira’theba sighed. She was soaking wet, and her homemade, soaked two-piece top and robe skirt, studded with tiny bones as a holder, revealed every little detail of her extremely curvy body. “Should you be looking for me?”

  When Blood Tusk saw who was standing in front of him, he adopted a more relaxed posture. ‘What?’ He replied. “Not understood.”

  Before she answered, the female looked up and down at the gladiator. “Come in here,” she said, beckoning him. He didn’t understand that either, but her gesture was enough for him to go under the tree and drip all over it, as did Nira’theba. She spoke in the common tongue, reasonably intelligibly, all at once. “Were you looking for me?”

  Apart from the serpent priestess, Kriz’kriz and Ja’Jen, Blood Tusk had not heard that familiar sound for weeks and, needless to say, he was very surprised by the female, albeit in a typically restrained manner. “You know the language?”

  “Learning,” Nira’theba replied curtly. She could only be a hut female, but she was clever and had always listened to Kriz’kriz and even spoken to her alone. ”I can’t quite yet, just like you can’t speak ours.”

  “But you can already do more than I can,” admitted Blood Tusk, while he took a closer look at the female and traced the contours of her inviting body. ”Are you learning that for your tribe?”

  “Learning is always important,” Nira’theba emphasized with conviction. Her own father had been a shaman and a follower of tiki Uza’rara, the wise swamp turtle. ’Tiki likes that.”

  “Tiki, tiki, tiki,’ Blood Tusk repeated with effort. ”Do those tiki ever do something to jungle trolls that is not for tiki?”

  Nira’theba pressed her hands to her knees tensely and swallowed after the gladiator dared to utter such words. She objected moderately. “Without the tiki, we would be empty and lifeless. Without the favor of the tiki, trolls are lost.”

  “Not me.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “And how?”

  “You’d get lost in the jungle,” Nira’theba said. In fact, it was the very first time she had been completely alone with the giant and even after the rain pelted down and blurred so many smells, the female could still perceive the scent of the male and that sent a shiver through her loins. ”Without help, you won’t make it home.”

  “Just because I don’t know my way around,” Blood Tusk looked at it simply. ’Never been here.”

  “If you were from here and honored the tiki, they would surely show you the way to Arena.”

  Blood Tusk spoke freely from the heart, which others, especially non-trolls, could mistake for dry humor. ’So the tiki are as useful as road signs? I can’t read anyway, in any language.”

  Nira’theba didn’t know how to answer that. She knew she wasn’t a scholar or a priestess, and she was afraid to anger the tiki with further words from her or from the giant. “You’ll have to ask the wise trolls about that,” she said, trying to change the subject. “But I can ask you something?”

  “Ask.”

  “You are very strong, healthy, many females want you,” Nira’theba spoke openly. For her, as for almost all trolls, it was a matter of course. ”And you want to mate. Your body is hot and ready, it smells of desire and your eyes always say it too. Why do you reject all of them? You only want Haki?”

  “Your rules.”

  “Rules? I don’t understand.”

  “Haki has forbidden me from mating with other females,” Blood Tusk said in good faith. ’She said she’s in charge of me and that’s why she can do that. Those are the rules of your group.”

  “There is no such rule,’ Nira’theba answered reflexively. ”You must have misunderstood.”

  “No, those were her words,” Blood Tusk said confidently. ”She said it a few more times after that.”

  Thoughtfully and uncertainly, Nira’theba touched her chin with her lowered gaze. For a short time, all that could be heard was the endless patter of water falling on wood, stone, leaves and earth. She wondered why Haki would tell the giant that? She knew that this alone was against the law of the jungle and the tiki also commanded that every troll was allowed to live and fight for himself. Being conquered or enslaved was part of this commandment, but she couldn’t believe that Haki would give in so easily. “I’m no wise troll,” Nira’theba admitted. It was none of her business, but the giant had saved her and her whelps, so she owed him a debt of gratitude. Besides, she lived by the rules of the jungle and the trolls, so she thought he should know. But deep down, her instincts as a female also told her that Haki was taking the easy way out. “But I know that there is no such rule.”

  “I don’t get it. Why would Haki say something like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Blood Tusk really didn’t know why Haki had lied to him, but that quickly faded into the background. With the ban out of the way, nothing held him back. “You say many females want me – you too?”

  Had Nira’theba just misheard that? Was the giant interested in her? In any case, her heart was now beating fast and she tensed her body noticeably more while staring straight ahead. “Many good females among new trolls,” she said. “I have whelps, I’m alone, I’m just a female, I’m at the bottom.”

  “Bottom?” Blood Tusk asked, scratching his wet head. He saw a purebred female, with flesh on her hips and yet not too fat, like her golden-yellow hair falling on both sides, though glued straight. ”I don’t think so. You’re one of the best females of them all.”

  Nira’theba’s eyes grew wider: Ballast, used, weak and a few harsh words more, she had to endure in the last few months. Now to hear that she was one of the best females here, had to be a dream. “So you... if you ask if I want to, you want to mate too? With me?”

  “Yes,” Blood Tusk replied, leaning forward a little. He didn’t go too close to the female, but he clearly sensed interest, although the rain masked the natural scent of her. The pheromone bomb that she was now exuding, however, could not be contained by any amount of water, and that made Blood Tusk growl throatily.

  Only slowly did Nira’theba turn her face in the direction of the eager gladiator, and she too sniffed cautiously. The scent of the male beguiled her senses and her eyes fluttered slightly. Nevertheless, she was aware that he was only interested in sex, but that was fine with her. She wondered if he was her reward for all the hardships of the past. “Cold,” she murmured and at the same time she pulled down the shoulder strips of her top. “Warm me.”

  It wasn’t a typically male move, but simply a glance, when the heavy, very large double-D breasts of the female were freed from their cloth cradle and hung a little lower. Due to their magnificent size, however, the drooping was hardly noticeable and instead rounded off the full maturity of a mother.

  As she had requested, it was Nira’theba who leaned against the giant, pressing her extremely soft, voluptuous body against his firm, muscular surface, looking up at him almost imploringly.

  In one swift move, Blood Tusk grasped her neck and sank forward. He buried her slowly under him and tilted her head to the side to bite her shoulder.

  How long had Nira’theba not felt this: the robustness of a male, the attraction of a bite, the feeling of togetherness and the warmth of a lustful step pressing against her hungry, still-covered lap. It even frightened her a little that it could all be over in an instant. That’s why she wrapped her arms around the giant, at least as far as she could, and dug her fingernails into his upper back.

  This made Bluood Tusk groan and he released his fangs to lick instead over the narrow wound of the female. He also had to rein himself in when he sent his free hand down to pull the cumbersome, wet, clinging robe from the hip of the lying female without tearing it.

  In response, Nira’theba slowly scratched her buried fingers through the gladiator’s flesh, as if to urge him not to take any care with her clothing, and that was exactly his reaction.

  Ruthlessly, Blood Tusk first tore the robe open and then completely off the female’s hips, who immediately spread her legs wide in her newfound freedom and laid her right leg on his flank. Her childbearing pelvis and the already moist lips were like honey for a bee, so that Blood Tusk pushed his semi-hard manhood firmly into the female and both let out a sound of sinful relief.

  “Take me!” Nira’theba demanded in vulgar trollish. All her carnal desires erupted and she became active, snapping at the giant’s left upper arm. ”Fuck me!”

  Those were trollish words that Blood Tusk had learned first and he followed them only too gladly. The ground in the tree hollow wasn’t soaked, but it was still earthy and loose, and when the giant began to push the female wildly, he dug a bed hollow for her with every thrust.

  Nira’theba’s water-speckled skin gathered the earth with ease and in no time, her body was painted with streaks of mud, which she passed on to the gladiator with many a movement.

  Both became louder without restraint, but then they could be quite unrestrained as well. The rain in front of the tree not only obscured their small shelter, but together with the thunder also suppressed every sound of pleasure, and it would remain that way for the next few hours. Hours in which Nira’theba could be more than just a mother and let herself go completely. With Blood Tusks stamina and drive, she had found the right troll for that.