Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 18:15:31 +0200
From: Zustara <zustara@hotmail.com>
Subject: "Galthanan's Legacy" Chapter One

GALTHANAN'S LEGACY

A story (C) 2004-5 by ZUSTARA ORUR. Contact address: zustara@hotmail.com

1.1 Not intended for redistribution, commercial use prohibited!



English is a second language to me, so please excuse any goofs present
herein regarding grammar, spelling. I try to do the best I can!

Legal mumbojumbo BS: this story features explicit descriptions of sexual
acts between consenting young teens. The story is fictional, and only took
place in my mind. If this sort of thing bothers you; you are under-age (and
anybody cares about it); reading this story happens to be illegal wherever
you may be right now; etc, please STOP READING. I won't get in trouble, but
you might, who knows. If all is hunky-dory, feel free to continue, if that
is your wish.

Also note that this is a real STORY centering around love rather than sex,
those mainly interested in long descriptions of copulation and such may want
to look elsewhere.

SPECIAL DEDICATION: This story was originally published at The Comicality
Library, and is dedicated to all the writers and readers of that wonderful
place. Please stop by there, read a story or two and leave a kind word to
the one who wrote it; it means so much for the authors. Thank you! The
address is (and don't forget the trailing slash when you copy and paste this
string): http://www.voy.com/17262/



PROLOGUE:

Queen Madriaz slowly backed away from the huge male approaching her. She
realized he must have been stalking her unseen for some time, watching her,
and she cursed herself for her lack of vigilance.

Indeed, Galthanan had watched her swim in the river, studied her sinuous,
yet muscled and powerful body as both water and moonlight rippled over it.
Felt the lust rise in his loins; for he desired this female. He desired her
a great deal, and he intended to make her his.

His almost black mane of hair moved with his powerful steps, his throat
emitting a deep, guttural rumble of a growl. The queen in turn bared her
teeth in a snarl and hissed back. Now the edge of the cliff was directly
behind her back, she had nowhere to go. The river was cut off from her by
Galthanan's sneaky approach, or else she could have escaped by swimming away
from him. His male scent was strong in her nostrils, the scent filled with
power, strength, and lust.

She had nothing to lose, and would fight literally to death for her life.
She announced that to her opponent with a defiant growl that showed off her
teeth, but it was as if he didn't care. With his thick whiskers bristling
and what might almost have been a leer, the male bared his own incisors and
continued his slow approach.

He knew he had the advantage, with his long hair protecting his neck and
throat, the tigress' choke-hold bite would be ineffective against him. With
a deep roar, Madriaz bared her sharp claws and demonstrated them
threateningly to Galthanan. She would not be an easy victim, for she was
large for her kind, being Amurian. She also fought ferociously, having
ancient Bengali blood flowing through her royal veins, those cats being
almost equal in size to her own family, and far hotter in temper. The fight
appealed to Galthanan, for he admired strength in any opponent, and
especially in a mate. His large, round, golden eyes shone with anticipation
of the coming battle as he unblinkingly stared her down...

He had all the advantages on his side; while the tiger was the superior
hunter, he was a predator born for the role of fighting and conquering; a
master of animal armed conflict. While his body was shorter, he was also
stockier, his shoulders heavier and stronger than even a male Amur tiger's,
and his overall size and weight well outmatched the queen's, not to mention
his strength. Where tigers generally avoided conflict with each other, he
had successfully defended his kingdom and large harem against countless
opposers, many of which he had mauled to death rather than let escape with
little more than their pride damaged. Some had even been his own sons...

He had all the practice a more than quarter-tonne Cape Lion monarch could
get, until the day the white men had come and captured him, stolen him away
from his pride in disgrace. Yet, he had managed to escape them, and he was
now the largest and most powerful of his kind to ever have wandered out of
the sub-saharan burning wastes, and despite his many years and scars from
many conflicts, his strength was undiminished and his natural weapons still
just as deadly. However, perhaps it was his long and arduous journey, or the
unfamiliar nature and climate of the far north-east, but somehow it seemed
the fight did not quite go as Galthanan had intended. Madriaz repeatedly
danced out of his grasp, his heavy clawed paws swinging at thin air again
and again, while she drew blood from numerous tiny wounds on his body. His
mighty roars did nothing to frighten her despite the wounds he had inflicted
upon her in return.

After a prolonged fight, Galthanan had to admit defeat. He was simply too
tired to continue, too weakened by bloodloss. He fell down and rolled over
on his side because he HAD to rest, and as he did and laid there in an
exposed position, he felt the queen ready herself to crush his windpipe with
her strong jaws. It was what he expected of her. After all, it was what he
would do to a defeated foe...

..And yet, for some reason she chose to spare his life. Perhaps she saw in
him that which he had seen in her, a more than worthy mate. The greatest
king she would ever meet, and yet still not her superior.

Allowing Galthanan to rest and gather some strength for a while, she then
let him share her evening meal with her as well, a freshly felled karibou.
The lion quickly recuperated from his wounds and fatigue, and within too
long they had not only successfully hunted together, she had also allowed
him to mount her numerous times over the course of several days, an
experience both had enjoyed greatly. Knowing he had sired an heir to his
legacy, Galthanan then resumed his wanderings without much of a farewell. He
was not prepared to live his life in the shadow of the queen, he had to seek
his own destiny elsewhere.

What became of him in the end, history does not tell. We have to assume he
reclaimed his lost honor, and we may also hope he reached a safe haven where
he founded a great new kingdom for himself...





ONE:

Queen Madriaz bore one single cub following her encounter with the king of
lions. When he was born, he was already well-grown, though as blind and
helpless as any other cub. His pelt was tiger-textured, though the base
color was a dark golden red, with black broad stripes down his back and
flanks, and no white to be seen anywhere on him. The tips of his ears bore
long straight tufts of black hair, as did the end of his tail, and his
moist, sensitive nose was also all-black. In addition, his eyes were an even
shinier golden color than those of his father's.

As the young tiger prince grew, he was schooled in the art of hunting by his
experienced mother. They encountered no others of their kind over the course
of their extensive wanderings, for there was little room in the world
anymore for such big cats. Game was also scarce, and many times they had to
prey on livestock or else starve, thus putting their lives at risk when
angered humans came hunting for them in return. They always eluded them
however, sometimes by killing their dogs to avoid being tracked, and then
sneaking away through the underbrush. A few times, bullets zinged over their
heads and smacked into treetrunks, but none ever hit their mark.

By the time Madriaz' cub had finished growing, he had become the greatest of
tigers that had ever lived. He weighed nearly 425 kilos, and was around 3.5
meters long, not counting his bushy tail. His neck and heavy-muscled
shoulders were covered by thick fur, though not as long as the mane of his
father's, it was regardless almost twice as long as the rest of his soft
pelt, and made him look even larger and more frightening, especially when he
puffed it up in anger. He had a deep ribcage, but rather slender hips,
connecting to two extremely powerful hind legs. Those allowed him to jump at
least two meters straight up, and along with his strong forelegs and large,
sharp and curved claws gave him the ability to climb trees with no
difficulty, though only the sturdiest of specimens could handle his
considerable weight! His eyesight was keen, his ears sharp, and he could
sniff out the traces of prey literally days after they had passed.

It was obvious prince Maruch was born to rule.

It was probably the sharp senses Mother Nature had gifted him with that
caused him to stop one day and listen closely, for suddenly he heard a sound
he'd never heard before.

A human child, crying; a boy-child in fact, though the tiger didn't know
that at the moment he heard the young one's cries. At that moment, it was
simply the shrill and wailing whimperings of some animal, probably one that
was wounded.

Quickly bounding off deeper into the forest, he felt drawn to the curious
noise. Intrigued by it. His approach was swift, yet stealthy despite his
large and heavy body. The pads on his broad feet dampened the sound of his
steps effectively, and he skilfully ducked out of the way of low-hanging
branches and reeds that would have given him away.

The sound he'd heard came from what he assumed was a curiously hairless
animal with a dark brown skin, quickly correcting himself upon seeing the
crying thing change position; a thick dark and tangled mop grew on top of
its head. It wasn't a very large animal either. A lamb of just a few months
of age would have been bigger, and dumb as they were, it would have had the
wits to stay quiet too when injured, unlike this strange little thing.
Strangely, it seemed to cry in order to call for attention on purpose, not
realizing it was likely to draw predators towards it. The tiger prince saw
several deep scratches across the curious creature's back, and contusions on
other parts of its body, perhaps that was the reason for its cries.

The only item of clothing the child wore was a loincloth made of wool,
though Maruch had no name for such a thing. He became so fascinated by the
strange being, he didn't see it at all as prey. Instead, he raised up his
head and slowly stepped out into the clearing where the child sat clutching
a woman's skirt - another unknown thing in the tiger's world.

Their eyes met across the distance, and locked. Both gazing at one another,
both with forward-facing eyes giving stereoscopic vision, like most
land-living predators. It seemed they had some things in common after all...

Maruch knew that whatever kind of animal the one lying down belonged to, it
was the mother of the smaller one. They both shared the same basic scent
that was common for all animals of a particular species, and the finer
differences were similar too, those that signified blood relations. He also
knew the larger one was dead, and it had happened quite recently as well.
Maybe only hours.

As he entered the clearing fully, the hairless one stopped weeping. It
looked at the enormous tiger with wide-open eyes, though it didn't seem to
exhibit much in the way of fear, just wariness and uncertainty. The tiger
prince walked closer, slowly, as not to startle what he had determined to be
the female's cub.

It followed him with its eyes, they were dark, and the boy's skin had a hue
much like treebark, a rich brown, while the hair on the top of his head was
black, though heavily matted with filth and even bits of leaves and such.
The cub seemed to have been living in or near the forest for some time
because it didn't act out-of-place in those surroundings, though it was
clear to Maruch a forest was not its natural habitat; without fur it
couldn't survive the winter.

Coming closer, the great tiger sniffed the little cub intently, tasting him
through the air with both nostrils and the scent-tasting organs tigers have
at the roof of their mouth. The little one was getting an infection from the
scratches, and he was malnourished; his mother hadn't been able to feed him
properly. He was weaned off her teats, but she was no hunter, that much was
clear. No wild animal had felled her, instead she'd slipped and fallen over
the edge of a small ridge just to the side of where she was laying; it had
probably happened in the dark, and perhaps the cub landed on top of her.
Maybe that explained why he had not suffered as much damage.

The cub sat still and let Maruch lick the wounds, the tiger saliva acting as
a desinfectant, and general cleanser. He winched of pain a few times, but
not as loudly as when he'd been crying, as the closeness of the big tiger
seemed to have a soothing effect on the cub. When this was finished, Maruch
led the boy away from his dead mother, she was already attracting insects,
and soon other creatures would arrive too. It was not a healthy place to
stay. The boy shed more tears, but still followed the tiger on short, wobbly
legs. They walked only a short distance down to the river where they rested.
There Maruch signed to the boy to wait, while he went hunting. The boy's
scent told of his diet, so the tiger brought back fruits, nuts, and catched
a small fish in the river for the boy and gutted and cleaned it with his
sharp claws. The boy ate with good appetite, and appeared to be in fairly
good shape despite everything. He'd fight off the infection easily enough
with Maruch's help. After eating, they continued onwards along the water. It
was much easier walking there than in the forest, and if the riverbank
became impassable, they simply went around the blockage by swimming in the
river, Maruch letting the cub hitch a ride on his broad back as the tiger
easily tackled the lazily flowing water.

Finally they arrived to their destination; a bend in the river almost at the
center of his territory where there was a hollow under a large tree. The
bottom of the hollow was filled with dry sand, and it was sheltered from
wind and rain. After having inspected the site, Maruch making sure there
were no snakes or other animals inhabiting the hollow, they bathed in the
river together, splashing around in the warm water to get clean and just for
fun. The cub made delighted noises while again riding on Maruch's back again
as he swam with swift, powerful strokes, the cub holding on with his little
hands in the tiger's thick fur. As they got out, the boy took off his
loincloth, wrung it out as best he could, and then hung it to dry over a
branch outside the hollow as if it was something he'd been taught to do by
his mother. He smiled proudly when Maruch gave a nod of approval.

Over the next few days, the two furnished the sides and floor of the hollow
with grass and large leaves and fern fronds to create a soft bed for the
boy-cub, and at night Maruch would curl up right outside so that the cub
could fall asleep at the tiger's side, sharing of his body heat. The
scratches were healing nicely, and he was eating well too. The cub grew
stronger and healthier from their forages together through nature and their
swims in the river, and time simply passed, days uncounted, like they do
when two animals live together in harmony. Sometimes they merely lazed in
the sun at the riverbank, on a smooth, warm rock outcropping. The cub
sometimes laid with his head resting on one of Maruch's huge front paws, or
sitting leaning up with his body against the tiger's massive chest. At the
end of the day, Maruch would get a hug from the cub, his arms stretching to
try to reach around the tiger's neck, and he would start getting licked in
return. The raspy feel of that wet, warm tongue always made the cub giggly,
and he squirmed and laughed delightfully from the treatment. After Maruch
had finished, leaving virtually no spot untouched, the cub was so exhausted
he barely managed to drag himself to bed where he snuggled in on his ferns
and leaves and went to sleep immediately.

Then one day a new threat came upon them. Scents drifted through the forest
that spoke of unknown strangers, people like the cub but different ones,
unrelated ones. Sweaty strangers carrying equipment, things not of nature.
Strangers carrying objects with harsh and dangerous scents; volatile powders
and oiled metal that reeked of death. There were five of them, four men and
one female, they were penetrating deeper into his domain than any of their
kind had ever done before. Usually he had been able to walk around them in a
huge semi-circle, but these were cutting straight through his habitat,
heading in a near-straight line for the river.

'Come little one, we must go!', Maruch signalled, indicating it was both
important and imminent they left.

'Noo, I don't wanna, I'm sleepy', the little one replied, curling up and
burrowing deeper into his warm bed; for it was still early morning and the
air outside was heavy with dew and a little nippy.

A huge paw prodded the boy's butt gently. 'There's no time for sleep'

The cub slowly looked up and yawned. 'Do we HAVE to?'

'Yes. Now.' Maruch watched the little one shake the sleep out of his head
and crawl out of his hollow.

'But now I wanna play!' The cub quickly darted off to the side and ran
around the tree and into the forest.

'No, little one, it's dangerous! Come back here at once!' Maruch cringed on
the inside because he knew the intruders would have heard his growl. He
gritted his teeth and started chasing the little cub through the underbrush.
Unfortunately, the boy was running right towards the group of humans!

'Catch me if you can, Maruch!', the boy squealed and hurried along as
quickly as he could on his short legs, not knowing the danger he was running
into.

The tiger prince bounded quickly and agilely after the boy, gaining ground
on him at a terrific rate. Yet now the humans were very close, worryingly
close in fact. Their scent indicated waryness now that they knew a tiger was
nearby. He could hear their voices as they heard his and the boy's approach
as they both crashed throgh the underbrush, for there was no time for
stealth now. Maruch felt their tension increasing the closer they all got to
each other.

The boy-cub tumbled out into a small clearing just as Maruch reached him,
having tripped over a dead branch lying on the ground. The tiger's great
maws closed around the child's midsection and he was yelling from
disappointment he'd been caught. He never even saw the strangers, he'd been
too busy trying to be naughty and run away. The scent of sweaty tired human
was almost overpowering as Maruch tried to turn and carry off the cub as
quickly as possible.

"FUCK! Shoot it!", a man's voice rang out in near-panic. They were right
there, across the little glade. Two rifles went off with tremendous bangs.
There was an almost equally loud roar that might have been of pain, and in
the blink of an eye Maruch had dropped the child, rolled aside and
disappeared into the foliage at the edge of the clearing. A third rifle went
off, and then the first two again, bullets whirring through the air and
slamming with loud thunks into tree-trunks without seeming to hit anything;
the sharp cracks of the rifles echoing through the vast, deep forest being
the only sounds that could be heard. Perhaps the only sounds heard anywhere
in the universe...

Suddenly it was all still and quiet except for the quiet, wailing cries of
the boy who laid on the ground, frightened and alone.

"Did you hit it?", the fourth man asked his guides. "I think you hit it. If
you did, you better make sure you kill it, because that was the biggest
fucking tiger I've ever seen!"

"Yeah, we don't want that bastard wounded and stalking us, that's for sure",
one of the guides added, looking around warily without trying to appear
scared - which he was.

"Is the boy hurt?", the woman asked urgently, sounding really worried. "The
tiger bit him. I saw it bite him!"

"Geez, I sure hope you hit that monster. Look at these paw prints, they're
twice the size of my hand. More!" The man and his guides continued to banter
as the group inspected the boy. He was wary of them, displaying signs of
fear and shying away from them, but seemed to relax a little once he was
picked up and cuddled by the woman. He also stopped crying.

"There's some scratches here on his body, but they're old and healed out.
Apart from that, there's nothing wrong with him", the unarmed man said. He
was a zoologist. "What do you think, Katarina?"

The woman had also looked over the boy. She was a doctor. "He seems in
remarkably good shape, if he has lived alone like this..." She seemed lost
in thought for a while. "Are you sure there aren't any villages or such
around here where he might have come from?"

The guide leader shook his head firmly. "No, it's all wilderness for many
hundreds of kilometers in any direction. The boy couldn't have come from
there on his own, he'd have been eaten by bears or wolves within days at
most, or else starved to death."

The woman nodded and looked at her male travel companion as she spoke. "As
you say, these scratches are old, and I don't think they're caused by an
animal anyway, they're not like claw or bite marks."

"How old do you think he is?", the zoologist asked in return.

"I'm not sure, Mark. I'd say around two and a half or so, it's hard to tell
when we don't know anything about him." She cooed and cuddled him to make
the boy relax, and slowly he did.

"Well, whatever the kid's age, we better not stay here", the leader travel
guide said gruffly in order to hide the worry and uneasiness he felt. "I
can't find any traces of blood, but that doesn't mean we missed. We could
still have a huge angry, wounded, and most certainly hungry tiger lurking in
the vicinity, waiting for a moment to pounce on us. Strange though, I didn't
think there was any left in the wild..."

"Yeah", added one of the other guides. "And did you see his colors? It
almost didn't look like a tiger at all! Except, somehow it did...!"

The group retreated the way they'd come and kept walking for as long as
there was light to see. They had flashlights, but they needed the rest
anyway. When darkness had almost crept over them entirely they used the last
few rays of dying sunlight to erect their tent, and then crawled inside.
While Katarina and the boy slept, the men took turns in pairs to keep watch,
but nothing happened. Once, one of the guides thought he saw the enormous
shadow of a tiger walking by against the star and moonlight-lit outside of
the tent, but that had to be his imagination he decided.

Katarina laid in the tent with the little boy nestled up to her in the
night, looking up at the canvas roof of the tent. She too saw the shadow,
but unlike the guide, she didn't feel threatened by it. She knew, if the
tiger wanted to harm them he could have, and there was little any of them
could do to stop him. Rather, it felt like it wanted to make sure the boy
was safe and being cared for... She berated herself for being silly, but she
still couldn't shake that feeling...

In the morning they broke camp after having had a quick breakfast and
heeding the calls of nature, then hurried along back towards civilization.
In the afternoon they reached their two large and very sturdy
four-wheel-drive Land Rovers parked at the end of a bumpy and almost
overgrown gravel road. They got in, and then spent the next three days
slowly making their way back to the nearest large city with an airport. From
there, it was a relatively short hop to Moscow where they went to try and
find out the identity of the strange boy they'd found in the middle of the
deep woods of the east.

"Geez, I'm glad to be back in a civilized part of the world again", Mark
said to her as they debarked from the plane. "I thought that tiger was going
to have us all for lunch!"

"I don't know", she mused, mostly to herself. "I don't think he was out to
eat us. Or the boy..."

Mark just gave her a 'are you nuts' kind of look. "Crazy woman", he
muttered, and she smiled wryly. Katarina sure was peculiar! Sometimes he
wished she would be his wife, but she was determined not to become attached
to any man. Besides, she'd never move from that far-flung Northern country
where she lived, down to southern France with him. And he himself couldn't
ever envision living in such a place like hers either. Like so many times in
the past, he sighed ruefully to himself, shook his head and followed the
woman he secretly loved on whatever quest she'd decided to set out on...

*Z*