The Fifth Beast Extras

Sencha - chapter 1

Until the age of ten, Sencha was an ordinary peasant boy, who herded geese and picked berries and mushrooms in the forest. Then the lord's steward took notice of Sencha's pretty, albeit dirty, face and took him to Sliabh Mis Castle.

A week later, Sencha escaped and reached his village on foot without much difficulty. Like any peasant boy, he knew those lands very well. But instead of rejoicing at the return of his son, his father fell silent, frowning, and his mother began to cry. In the morning, his father harnessed a beautiful bay horse, which Sencha never had seen on the farm before, to the cart and drove Sencha back to Sliabh Mis. On the way, he explained to his son simple truths that anyone who reached the age of ten should have already known: that their lord had every right to command his subjects as he saw fit, and they would have considered it a great honor to simply give Sencha into the lord's service. In other castles, parents themselves pay for such an honor, but their lord, via his faithful steward Matha, paid for Sencha with pure white bronze, and Sencha's family was able to buy a horse, which they had been saving for a long time. And a horse on a farm was much more useful than the third of five children, even if he was pretty and smart.

Sencha sobbed all the way back to the castle. When the steward ordered to lash him for running away, he had no more tears left, so he endured the lashing in silence. At that time, he hated Matha the steward; after all, if not for him, Sencha would have been living in his village, and wouldn't have had to learn all sorts of stupid and boring things, like walking gracefully, speaking beautifully, pouring wine skillfully and so on.

A year later, Sencha also learned what was obvious to everyone around him from the start: that he was being prepared for the lord's bed. It immediately became clear why the rude guards, who couldn't keep their hands for themselves and loved to paw servant girls and boys and pinch their buttocks, never touched Sencha and generally pretended that he did not even exist.

After learning that, Sencha spent the whole night crying. It was a great honor, yeah, even greater than simply serving the lord at the table or brushing his horses. And of course, Lord Niall Mac Nechtan, owner of Sliabh Mis Castle, was majestic and beautiful, like a god. But Sencha saw him only from a distance, never exchanged a single word with him, and never even met his eyes once. It seemed to him that the Lord of Lightning would turn him into a thrall with a single glance of his gleaming eyes, would drink his soul and throw his lifeless body away.

Sex itself didn't scare him. He grew up on a farm, in a village, and sexual intercourse was not a mystery to him. And even if he were completely innocent in matters of sexuality, then a year in Sliabh Mis would have taught him a lot. There were always heterosexual and same-sex affairs, payment in flesh for services rendered, and even coercion using someone's power and position.

But sharing a bed with a god, a powerful sorcerer who could kill a human with his mere touch — or turn him into a drooling idiot! Sencha had never seen thralls, and no one he knew personally had either, but there were plenty of rumors and gossip.

He ran away again and returned to his village. Their house was renovated; a new barn was built near it, in which two cows mooed. He looked through the window and saw the family gathered for dinner, all his brothers and sisters, and a new baby in his mother's arms. There was more food on the table than before, and the bowls were clay instead of wood.

But all that seemed to Sencha so unbearably poor that he almost burst into tears. He almost forgot meals of porridge and steamed turnips, because in Sliabh Mis there was meat stew and white bread almost every day! He forgot those dirty streets with cow dung, those rickety houses, smoke-blackened walls, homespun clothes, rough peasant dialect... Sencha didn't even knock on the door; he just turned around and walked back.

He reached Sliabh Mis in the morning, went straight to the steward, fell on his knees and asked him for punishment. Surprisingly, the lashing was very light, and Matha seemed to look at Sencha more favorably from that moment on. He even stopped calling Sencha names like 'ignoramus' and 'serf'. Probably because Sencha completely resigned to his fate and began to show much more zeal in his studies.