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[This is a companion story to "Savannah Law". It is set in the same world but several centuries earlier.]

The cell was completely dark, but still the hyena woke just as the last glow of the sun faded outside, knowing in his bones that it was night. The aches and pains throughout his body were not only from last night's duel or from a day's sleep on the damp floor. He knew that pressure in his chest, that grudging ache in his knee, that dull throbbing in his shoulder. Damned, but he was getting old. An old warrior, perhaps, but still old.

They came to get him an hour after sunset. He'd gone through his evening ritual by then; stretched out the old pains, beaten old age back under his skin for another night. He could feel the edges of it gnawing against his joints, waiting; but pushed back deep enough that he managed to hide it from the lion guards.

There were five of them; young and strong males all of them. They wore their manes braided but undyed; as was the fashion amongst the royal guard. So, it was to be the queen. Heh. So the scar-faced devil wanted the final revenge to be personal. He felt strangely honoured.

He snarled at the guards when they tied his arms behind his back, but didn't resist. He had lost his honour in last night's duel, and with it his freedom of Lordship, so he went where he was told. He had kept his pride, though, and so he snarled and held back straight as a warrior should.

The guards didn't take him to the throne room but ushered him towards one of the half-dozen huts that nestled up against the river. They were large huts, each of them could have passed as the main hall of any lesser Lord's estate. Here they were mere reception halls; places where merchants, courtiers, hunters, mercenaries and cattle-owners could gather to conduct lesser business -- such trade or war as was beneath the queen's attention: petty riches and petty justice.

The large hut was empty except for the old throne; an oversized chair of ancient leather and faded cloth strung onto supports of whalebone and ivory. It was a rickety, moth-eaten affair compared to the new throne -- a heavy, intimidating thing built from solid, dark-stained wood that spoke of gold and the power of gold -- but to the hyena's eyes it was a far better match to the thin, hard-eyed and battle-scarred lioness who were sitting in it.

The queen looked at him for a long moment; her blind left eye white and unrevealing, her right eye with amused delight. Her ears lay slowly back against her skull as she watched the guards usher him into the middle of the room and push him down to his knees. Her upper lip curled up to reveal a glimpse of her teeth.

"Uzoma. Uzoma the lion-slayer; the bane of Sithembile." she said with a faint purr of delight under her words.

The hyena held his back straight and looked the queen full in the face, ignoring the guards that crowded around him.

"Queen Lindiwe, Sithembile-daughter." he greeted in return.

The lioness' smirk turned sarcastic.

"Not 'Queen Lindiwe the cruel'? That is what they call me in the market-place."

"Life itself is cruel, Queen. The townspeople name you cruel only because they have forgotten."

"A silver tongue, Uzoma? You, the great slayer?"

"The _old_ slayer, queen. Age gilds every man's tongue."

"Hah. So tell me, old slayer: do you find me cruel?"

The hyena shrugged.

"As cruel as a lord must be." he said unequivocally.

"Must be? Was not the usurper mellow and forgiving; did they not call him 'the kind' or 'the merciful'?"

Again the hyena shrugged.

"Your uncle fell, Queen."

"So did my father."

Uzoma didn't flinch. So, now they came to it. He nodded, once.

"Yes."

For a moment the queen said nothing, then she looked away from Uzoma to the guards that surrounded him, looking faintly surprised as if she's just now noticed them.

"Leave." she said curtly.

The guards hesitated for a moment, but the steel in the queen's eye did not invite objections and they left without another word spoken. When the door closed again the lioness looked back at the hyena and nodded slowly.

"My father fell. I didn't see the final blow. I caught glimpses of the two of you through the battle; then I saw you standing above him, shaking your spear towards the sun, shouting your name in the way of hyenas. I was distracted..." The lioness paused and touched her hand absentmindedly to the scars around her left eye. A faraway look came over her features and she smiled a peculiar, thin smile. Only for a second, then she lowered her hand again and her seeing eye focused once more on the hyena.

"You forced the Savannah Law on us then, Uzoma. You, alone. We were winning, until you killed my father."

Uzoma shook his head.

"Boipelo was the mother of the law." he disagreed mildly.

"But you were its champion." the queen snapped back, brooking no discussion.

"By her mind, but by your hand, warrior. Is that not the truth?"

The hyena was silent for a moment, then shrugged awkwardly.

"It is _a_ truth." he admitted reluctantly.

"Hah." the queen rose from her throne and reached behind her to smooth out the fur on her tail, not the least bit self conscious.

"So tell me, law-giver, do you stand by the law still?" she asked him and walked to stand above him, looking down.

"I killed for it." Uzoma said stiffly.

"Men have killed for lies before." the lioness said with a shrug.

"Not I." Uzoma said angrily, fighting back a growl.

The queen smiled and crossed her arms, looking down at the hyena for a long moment. Uzoma stared back up at her, as if daring her to contradict him.

"Tell me, lion-slayer, did I not defeat you in combat of honour?" she asked softly, her tone suddenly formal.

"I admit it." Uzoma replied with the same formality, surprised both at the question and the change in tone. It was not like he would have forgotten or could claim otherwise. What was she leading up to?

"And am I not queen and a lord on the Savannah? Are you not in my house, on my land?"

"I do not dispute it."

The queen nodded faintly, as if his answer was the only possible one -- which it was.

"What says the Savannah Law on a lord's right to choose tradition?"

Uzoma hesitated. He had never had a good head for remembering exactly, and although he knew what the law said he couldn't remember how it said it.

"I don't remember what words it uses, but in the meaning, it says that it is a lords' right, and duty, to choose which traditions are followed on his land."

The lioness nodded curtly with a satisfied look on her face. She grabbed one of the hyena's ears and with a sudden tightening of her grip pierced the ear with her claws. Taken by utter surprised, Uzoma let out a quickly killed yelp.

"Then, under the law and by my right as lord, I mark you as mine and take you as threm, in accordance with the traditions of the Azubuik tribe of the Hyena nation."

"No!" Uzoma exclaimed and pulled back, horrified. This was wrong.

"It is my right." the queen hissed, the gaze in her eye as hard and sharp as a flint-tipped spear.

The hyena shook his head strongly and looked pleadingly up at the queen. That an old warrior was defeated by a younger and made threm -- servant, mentor, lover -- that was right, proper; _among hyenas_. This, this was wrong; depraved.

"Please, Queen. This is, this is too..."

"Too cruel?" Lindiwe demanded.

"Yes." he admitted hoarsely.

The lioness looked down at him in silence for a long moment, then touched his bleeding ear and stroked it almost tenderly.

"Do you dispute the rights given to me under the law?" she asked.

The old hyena shook his head mutely for a moment, then looked down.

"I do not dispute it." he said in a thick whisper.

The queen nodded silently to herself and untied the length of blue cloth that was tied at her waist. She let the end run through her hand and the cloth rustled faintly as it fell to the floor. Naked, save for the rings in her ears and the silver necklace that bore the seal of the kingdom, she retreated to stand in front of her throne. All the time the hyena held his head downcast, looking emptily at the floor.

The lioness stretched and lifted her arms, placing her hands behind her neck and turning her torso slightly, posing shamelessly like a young, landless huntress might pose before a secret lover.

"Tell me, lion-slayer, do you find me beautiful?"

He had to look then, and slowly Uzoma lifted his head to watch her. Silently, he forced himself to study her as a lover might, trailing his gaze up along her stocky legs, over her powerful hips and lingering for a moment on patch of thinner fur over an old scar. Then further up her too-sleek body, studying the flat, pale fur on her stomach and chest. Up to her face then, looking studiously at the living amber eye and the dull, blind white one; one by one counting the three long scars going down over her eye and cheek. For a moment her seeing eye flickered, but then she looked back at him, giving him the same detailed study.

He shook his head slowly.

"No," he said reluctantly and licked his lips, his voice still hoarse, "Magnificent, but not beautiful."

The lioness hissed but her lips curled up in a sardonic smile, and she ran a hand along her jaw in ironic parody of coquetry.

"Am I too cruel to be beautiful?"

Again the hyena shook his head.

"Too honest."

"Hah! Too honest. Is it honest to have such flaws, such scars?"

"Scars is not a flaw in a warrior. Neither is honesty." the old hyena said gruffly and looked away.

For a moment the lioness stood still, looking at the kneeling hyena with her upper lips drawn back and her ears lowered.

"Then let me be _honest_, Uzoma of the Azubuik." she said with a snarl, and walked forward angrily, moving to stand astride him, pushing her hips forward so that the pale fur on her crotch almost touched his snout.

"Is this honest, warrior?" she demanded.

The hyena pulled his head back and glared up at the lioness, an involuntarily growl escaping his throat. Lindiwe stared back down at him, hard and ungiving.

"Yes." Uzoma admitted finally and with and angry tug on his ropes he leant forward and began to lick at the lioness' earth-brown outer lips. Scandalised, upset and confused, Uzoma worked his tongue hard and fast against the lioness' warm skin; licking her with angry servitude.

It was certainly very _different_ from doing the same to a female hyena. Not only did the lioness taste differently, but he also caught himself several times searching with his tongue for bits that just weren't there. It was not directly unpleasant, just... off-setting. Like sipping from a flask, expecting water but finding wine.

Then again, some aspects were strikingly familiar. The way she grabbed hold of the fur on his head, the way she pushed in against his face, the increasing heat and slickness as he kept working his tongue up and down along her sex.

Much unlike other lovers he had had, the lioness remained almost completely silent as he licked her. Only once did she make a sound; a hissing intake of breath the first time he hesitantly snaked his tongue inside the unfamiliar slit of her sex. Uzoma did not know if such silence was the custom among lions or if it was another aspect of the queen's flint-edged character.

Not everything stated is spoken, and Uzoma was experienced enough to read the meanings in the lioness' silence although she was of a different nation than his own. The rapid, shallow breathing; the way the muscles of her stomached clenched and tensed; the way her grip she on his fur slowly tightened -- in some ways her silence spoke just as clearly as any ecstatic whooping or giggling would have done.

After a surprisingly short time the lioness shuddered in the culmination of pleasure. She held his head held tightly in place against her as she road the crest, and Uzoma could feel how the play of her muscles with his snout, how they clenched, shivered and then relaxed. As she rode down, Lindiwe pricked her claws into his scalp and Uzoma, too unsettled to suppress the reaction, snarled and pulled away. Out of reflex he licked the wetness from his lips and the scent of her filled his mouth and nose; a deep, musky aroma of lion, spices and sun-burnt earth.

For a while the queen stood panting slowly, her arms cradled loosely around the hyena's neck and her crotch held less than an inch from his snout snout; not touching but so close he could still feel the warmth of it even through the fur on his cheeks. Then she grabbed him by the arms just below his shoulders, and pulled him decisively to his feet. The ease with which she hauled him impressed Uzoma. Warrior strength. Young strength. How he missed it.

Pain stabbed through his knees when they were straightened; reminding him of how long ago his own young strength had been. While his body was old and weak, his mind was still flint and he straightened his legs and stood steadily with none of the pain showing in his movements or in his expression.

The sensation of the lioness' raspy tongue against his snout broke Uzoma from his momentary musing on age. Lindiwe still held him by the arms and had started to lick eagerly at his face, rubbing the corners of her mouth against his snout and nipping playfully at his ears. Her body language was alien and confusing and the intensity of it unsettled the hyena. Intimidated, he took a step back, needing breathing space between himself and the foreign, white-hot fire in the lioness' manner.

The queen growled when he pulled back; an angry, impatient rumble from the back of her throat. She grabbed his arms tighter, her claws digging through the fur into his skin. She stepped after him and then pushed him further back, forcing him backwards step by step until the wall stopped him and there was no further retreat.

She pushed him up hard against the wall with a grim, satisfied smile. Then she leant forward him and started grooming the fur on his neck with long, warm licks, moving from the left side of his neck to the right and then back again.

The lioness let go the grip on his arms and began instead to pull at his clothes, tugging and loosening. Even through her alien body language there was no way to misread the lioness pure, impatient lust. Despite the wrongness of it all, Uzoma felt strangely proud of being the object of such intense desire. Fire calls to fire, and once the lioness' passion had found its way in, through his pride, Uzoma's own lust stirred uneasily in response.

Not familiar with the hyena's foreign style of dress, Lindiwe struggled angrily with his cross-fixed hauberk before she found the buttoning at the side and could get it open. She pushed the cross-piece of it back over his shoulder then unbuckled his belt so she could get her hands in under his gipon. She stroked his stomach and chest possessively, brushing her fingers greedily over the shaggy fur.

Pressed against the wall and with his wrists tied behind his back, there was no way for Uzoma to retreat from the rough, demanding caresses, and no way to retreat from the effect they were having on him. When the lioness put her claws out and and raked them down through his fur, scratching his skin in places, Uzoma could feel his cock starting to respond. When she slid her palms down to his woolen cod-piece, pressing and kneading her way, the bulge of his cock made a clear lie of his carefully blank expression.

Lindiwe rubbed the bulge of his cock firmly, giving Uzoma no pause to gather his will and attempt to control his lust. She struggled with the leather thongs that kept the cod-piece fastened to the belt and the insides of his leggings, but made no headway with the unfamiliar knots. She hissed angrily with frustration and resorted to simply shredding the cod-piece open with her claws, tearing through the cloth where it tied to the belt.

The front of the torn cod-piece flapped down, baring the hyena's half-flagged erection. Lindiwe hesitated for a moment then grabbed his cock awkwardly with both hands in a hard grip, almost painful. Uzoma could feel his cock swelling further against her fingers. He swallowed and turned his head to the side, staring helplessly at nothing for a long moment before he found the strength to look back at the lioness. Their eyes met.

The queen stared intently at him, even her blind eye seemed aware and alert. Her ears were hesitantly raised, her thin upper lip pulled back in a nervous snarl that showed the tip of her teeth. Her fingers reflexively kneaded the hardening cock, tightening and relaxing around it, almost bringing out a whimper in the hyena.

"Uzoma the lion-slayer." she named him in a whisper, full of meaning, almost reverently.

Uzoma found no reply. Spellbound by the look in the queen's eye, he felt his allegedly gilded tongue dead and thick in his mouth. A heart-beat ticked slowly by.

With a impatient, frustrated snarl the queen let go of his cock and grabbed him by the shoulders. She stepped up against his side and showed him forcefully down over her hip, pushing him to the floor.

He twisted in the air, but still landed heavily and the jolt of landing on his hands forced a short growl out of him. He grimaced and tried to roll onto his side, but the lioness pushed him back down onto his back. She sat down astride his waist, pressing her cunny down hard against his half-sheathed cock. Uzoma growled despite himself, not from pain this time.

Lindiwe steadied herself with a hand against Uzoma's chest, grabbing a handful of his coarse fur. She looked down at him with narrow-eyed, predatory anticipation and started to slide herself purposefully back and forth along his sheath and cock. Uzoma squirmed under her, unable to prevent himself from responding to the lioness' merciless stimulation; pressing his cock back up against her. It took only a few moments of Lindiwe's greedy riding before Uzoma's cock had emerged fully from the sheath, hard and ready. Still the lioness kept riding him roughly, sliding her cunny her cunny along his cock; hard, warm and slick.

She stopped at last, on the verge of climax. She paused for a few moments to get her breathing under control and let herself sink down from the peak. Once more in control, she raised her hips a few inches and reached nervously for his cock, measuring out the length of it with her hand before taking hold of it near the base and raising it up towards her crotch. She closed her eyes lowered herself down onto it with a quiet, anxious purr. The purr turned shortly to a soft gasp and her ears raised and turned forwards.

"Finally." she mumbled dreamily, her thighs resting gently against Uzoma, all the length of his cock inside her. She opened her eyes and looked down at the hyena; her expression a curious combination of lust, satisfaction and triumph. Uzoma looked back up at her, pleading wordlessly. With a quiet, possessive growl Lindiwe started moving, giving him what he had asked for and what they both needed.

She fucked him in silence, riding him with a measured but speedy rocking of her hips; her downward thrusts possessive and controlled, her upward movements impatient and greedy. Every time she pushed herself back down onto his cock her upper lip arched into a quiet snarl. Uzoma couldn't keep himself that silent. He let out a steady trickle of small grunts and whoops as she rode him; punctuating the rhythmic, obscene sounds of the fucking.

It no longer mattered that it was wrong and depraved; that it should have been another hyena possessing him like this. It only mattered that someone lusted for him, desired him, wanted his cock inside her.

He started moving his hips, awkwardly because he lacked leverage the way he was lying his hands. There was no conscious thought behind it, only passion and lust that had built to a point beyond control, beyond inaction.

They fucked each other hard. Uzoma thrusting with short, awkward thrusts against her greedy, possessive shoves. She was silent, he was whooping, snarling and grunting in word-less, pre-verbal language. The lioness' claws dug harshly into his chest, no more under her conscious control than the sounds he was making was under Uzoma's. Neither noticed. Their world had narrowed to the primal, physical movement of their bodies and the heady awareness of the other's lust.

Too much. Too tight, too warm, too fast, too tense. Something had to give, and Uzoma did. He came hard, harder than he had come since adolescence, since being taught by his first lover.

Lindiwe stopped when she felt him come, freezing in mid-thrust with half the length of his cock still outside her. She closed her eyes, losing herself in the awareness of his orgasm; the feeling of his cock throbbing inside her, the spurts of his semen shooting into her, the reflexive, hungry clenching of her cunny, the sweet victory of knowing she'd made him come, given him that, won that. A deep shudder went through her and she let out a broken, ragged gasp.

She remained still until Uzoma had spent himself completely. When she felt his erection starting to wane inside her she opened her eyes again and smiled down at him, imperious and radiant with victory.

She let go of his chest-fur and sat up straight above him, grasping both hands to her her crotch. She masturbated swiftly and decisively, driving her lust up towards that oh-so-close peak and then, with a sudden, sharp hiss, over it and past it; crashing down on the other side in a landslide of pleasure, a crowning of her triumph.

They lay next to each other on the cold floor catching their breaths. As his heart slowed down, Uzoma felt the post-coital sadness creep up on him along with a heavy shame. Unable to bear the queen's mysteriously satisfied smile, potent with something deeper than just sexual contentment, the hyena turned his head away and stared at the smoke-blackened roof.

Lindiwe watched his withdrawal for a moment with the same subtle smile, then reached out and lay her hand on his chest, gently brushing her fingers through his coarse fur.

"Talk to me, Uzoma." she told him, her voice still a little breathless from her orgasm. It wasn't a command, but neither was it a request. It was a lord's statement, a decision.

Uzoma licked his lips and made the tiniest shake of his head, keeping his eyes turned towards the roof.

"This is wrong, Queen. It isn't how things should be between nations, between you and me." he spoke quietly. The heavy sense wrongness that had wrapped around him kept his voice low.

The queen watched the hyena quietly for a while, letting her fingers move in soft circles through his fur.

"Maybe." she admitted eventually, for the first time that night there was a vindictive glimmer in her good eye. She stroked her hand deliberately down along his chest and stomach and cupped it over the hyena's wet crotch, possessively and lewdly.

"But the law allows it, law-giver." she said with just a hint of cruelty in her voice, adding the hyena's title in a hissing whisper. She brushed her finger pads tenderly along Uzoma's sheath.

Uzoma flinched. The queen's barb had struck well, right in the center of his hidden doubts about the consequences of the law. The law. It had been _necessary_. The law had built a new reality on the savannah; a new structure, new possibilities, new strength. But in the process it had destroyed much. Men had fallen before it, villages had fallen, traditions had fallen. Morals had fallen.

The law had been necessary, hadn't it?

"We never intended this." Uzoma said hoarsely, shaking his head in hesitant denial.

"Didn't you?" the queen asked and pulled her hand away from the hyena. She raised her head and stared angrily at Uzoma.

"You tied the nations together. Drove awl-holes into ancient traditions and lashed them together with law. Did you think you weren't weakening the fabric of each nation as you strengthened the whole? That only law would cross the seams? That only words and trade would flow along the threads? No friendships? No hatred or love? No lust? No perversion? No. Boipelo's vision was true, and you shared it. She was too clear-sighted not to see, and you too strong to deny it. You knew. You intended."

Uzoma flinched again and met her demanding gaze for an instant, looking away in shame. He said nothing, but it was a potent silence filled with admission.

After a while the queen's gaze softened and she lay back down. She reached out and stroked his hurt ear lightly, tracing the small notches she had made earlier. Uzoma startled at the touch, but relaxed again. The ear was sore but it was just pain. He welcomed the distraction.

"I never thought I would have see it for myself." he said quietly; a confession to the silence, to the alien caress.

"You didn't expect the changes to happen so fast." Lindiwe agreed and lightly stroked the base of his ear. It had surprised everybody how quickly people adjusted; how quickly they'd forgotten how things were before the law.

Uzoma shook his head slowly. No, that wasn't it. He had known it would be fast. Boipelo had told him, and he had believed. He had seen what she had seen. The law hadn't created change; it had been the other way around. Change had created the law. Made it necessary.

"We knew it would be fast. I just never realised I would ever be this _old_."

The lioness moved in closer against him and nuzzled her face warmly in the nape of Uzoma's neck. She spoke softly into his shaggy fur as if telling a secret, but her voice was again a Lord's voice, stating what was and could not be doubted:

"You had to so I could win you."

They lay like that in silence. The lioness triumphant and content, the hyena shameful and dominated. It was wrong that the lioness' understanding should comfort him so, that her warm body against his should be so good, but Uzoma was too wrung out, too tired and too lonely to shy away from either. Not that his pride would have allowed him to, even if he had the strength.

After a while the queen pulled away from him and lay watching him with a peculiar small smile playing on her lips. Something about her smile reminded Uzoma of Boipelo, and he felt he should be able to read it, even in a lion. When he finally figured it out his eyes widened.

"Again? Already?" he exclaimed with dismay, "Queen, please. I am old. I can't again this soon."

The lioness' smiled turned into a grin, and with a studied movement she stretched her right leg into the air. She held it straight for a second, then bent it at the knee and lay it slowly down to the side, deliberately exposing her cunny. She raised her hips, just half an inch; an invitation that was as plain as it was lewd.

"Maybe you're old, lion-slayer, but you _do_ have a gilded tongue." she said, still with that amused, playful grin.

Uzoma looked at the lioness' proffered cunny for a moment, wondering at its strangeness. It looked so ... incomplete. The feeling of wrongness hang heavy over him, but strangely grew no stronger while he studied her intimate details. Somewhere there was a decision, somewhere beyond pride. He lifted his gaze to her face and nodded once before moving forward to start licking at her proffered sex.

He didn't know himself if he moved in submission to the law or in submission to her honesty.