by S. U. Pacat
It was a battle won and a fort taken, a solid base secured, and Damen was alive, and facing his freedom for the first time in many months.
Around him there was celebration, an outpouring of revelry, which he allowed because the men needed it. A boy was playing a pipe, and there was the sound of drums, and dancing. The men were pink-flushed and happy. Barrels were upended into a courtyard fountain, so that men could scoop wine out as they pleased. Lazar handed him a full tankard. It had a fly in it.
Damen put down the tankard, after disposing of its contents onto the ground with a sharp movement of his hand. There was work to be done.
He dispatched men to open the gates for the returning army: the injured first, the Patrans following, the Vaskians with their loot—nine horses on a string. He dispatched men to the storehouses and to the armoury to make inventories, and to the private quarters to offer reassurance to the residents.
He dispatched men to take Touars’s nine-year-old son Thevenin and hold him under house arrest. Laurent was developing quite a collection of sons.
Ravenel was the jewel of the Veretian border, and if he couldn’t take pleasure in the celebrations, he could ensure that it was well manned, with a good strategy for defence. He could ensure that Laurent would have a strong foundational base. He set up shifts to man the walls and the towers, assigning each man to his strength. He picked up the threads of Enguerran’s systems, and reimplemented them, or changed them to his own exacting standards, giving command duties to two men: Lazar from their own troop, and the best of Enguerran’s men, Guymar. He would have an infrastructure in place. One Laurent could count on.
The work was falling into place around him when he was called from giving orders on the battlements to report to Laurent.
Inside the fort, the style was older, reminiscent of Chastillon, the ornate Veretian designs worked in curved iron and dark carved wood, without the overlays of gilt, ivory, mother of pearl. He was admitted to the inner rooms that Laurent had made his own, flame-lit and as richly furnished as his tent. The sounds of celebration were muffled into softness by the ancient stone walls. Laurent stood in the centre, his back partly to the door, a servant lifting the last piece of armour from his shoulders. Damen came through the doors.
And stopped. Attending to Laurent’s armour had lately been his own duty. He felt a pressure in his chest; everything was familiar, from the pull of the straps, to the weight of the armour, the warmth of the shirt where it had been pressed beneath padding.
Then Laurent turned and saw him, and the pressure in his chest grew like pain as Laurent greeted him, half-stripped and bright-eyed.
‘How do you like my fort?’
‘I like it. I wouldn’t mind seeing you with a few more,’ said Damen. ‘To the north.’
He forced himself forward. Laurent swept him with a long, gleaming look.
‘If you didn’t fit Enguerran’s shoulderpiece, I was going to suggest you try the panoply off his horse.’
‘“I will take Guion”?’ said Damen.
‘Be fair. You won the battle before I could get to him. I thought I’d have half a chance, at least. Are all your conquests that decisive?’
‘Do things always work out as you plan?’
‘This time they did. This time everything did. You know, we just took an impregnable fort.’
They were gazing at one another. Ravenel, the jewel of the Veretian border: a punishing ground fight at Hellay, and a piece of mad trickery in mismatched clothing.
‘I know,’ he said, helplessly.
‘It’s double the men I was anticipating. And ten times the supplies. Shall I be honest with you? I thought I’d be taking a defensive position—’
‘At Aquitart,’ said Damen. ‘You had it supplied for a siege.’ He heard, as if from a distance, that he spoke in his usual voice. ‘Ravenel’s a little more defensible. Just have your men check under the helms before they open the gates.’
‘All right,’ said Laurent. ‘You see? I’m learning to take your advice.’ He spoke with an unselfconscious little smile that was wholly new.
Damen forced his gaze away. He thought of the work proceeding outside. The armoury was stocked, and more than stocked, meticulous rows of smooth metal and sharpened tips. Most of Touars’s men stationed in the fort had transferred their loyalty.
The walls were manned, and the ordinances for defence had been laid out. The equipment was readied for use. The men knew their duty, and from storehouses to courtyard to great hall, the fort was prepared. He had made sure of that.
He said, ‘What will you do next?’
‘Bathe,’ answered Laurent, in a tone that said he knew perfectly well what Damen had meant, ‘and change into something that’s not made of metal. You should do the same. I had the servants lay out some clothing for you that befits your new station. Very Veretian, you’ll hate it. I have something else for you as well.’
He turned back in time to see Laurent move briefly to pick up a half-circle of metal from a small table by the wall. It felt like the slow push of a spear into his body, the awful unfolding inevitability of it, in front of servants, in this small, intimate room.
‘I didn’t have time to give this to you before the battle,’ said Laurent.
He closed his eyes, opened them. He said, ‘Jord was your Captain through most of our march to the border.’
‘And you are my Captain now. That looks like it was close.’ Laurent’s gaze had shifted to his neck, where the collar was scarred from Touars’s blade; iron had bitten deep into the soft gold.
‘It was,’ said Damen, ‘close.’
He swallowed down hard on what crawled in his throat, turning his head to one side. Laurent held the Captain’s badge of office. Damen had seen Laurent transfer it once before, from Govart to Jord. Laurent would have taken it from Jord.
He still wore full armour, unlike Laurent, who stood before him, his yellow hair sweat-tendrilled from the fight. He could see the slight red imprints where Laurent’s armour had pressed through padding on his vulnerable skin. Breathing was a tight, painful thing.
Laurent’s hands rose to his chest, finding the place where cape met metal. The pin under Laurent’s fingers pricked fabric, slid, then fit to the clasp.
The doors to the room opened. Damen turned, unready.
A swell of people were spilling into the room, bringing with them the jovial atmosphere from outside. The change was sudden. Damen’s heartbeat was at odds with it. Yet the mood of the newcomers was congruent with Laurent’s, if not his own. Damen had another tankard thrust into his hand.
Unable to fight the tide of celebration, Damen was swept away by servants, by well-wishers. The last thing he heard was Laurent saying, ‘See to my Captain. Tonight he is to have anything that he asks for.’
Dancing and music wholly transformed the great hall. People in clusters laughed and clapped enthusiastically out of time with the music, rosily drunk because the wine had preceded the food, which was only now being brought.
The kitchens had rallied. The cooks cooked, the attendants attended. Nervous at first over the change in occupancy, the household staff had settled, and duty was transforming into willingness. The Prince was a young hero, coined in gold; look at those eyelashes, look at that profile. The commons had always loved Laurent. If Lord Touars had hoped for the men and women of his fort to resist Laurent, he had wished in vain. It was more like the commons rolled over and waited to be rubbed on the belly.
Damen entered, resisting the urge to tug on his sleeve. He had never been so overlaced. His new status meant an aristocrat’s clothing, which was harder to put on and take off. Dressing had taken almost an hour, and that was after bathing and all manner of attentions that had included trimming his hair. He had been forced to take reports and give orders over the heads of servants, while they meticulously attended to his laces. The last report from Guymar was what now had him scanning the crowd.
He’d been told that the small retinue that had ridden i
n with the last of the Patrans was that of Torveld, Prince of Patras. Torveld was here accompanying his men, though he had not taken part in the fight.
Damen moved through the hall, with Laurent’s men congratulating him on all sides, a slap on the back, a clasp of his shoulder. His eyes stayed fixed on the yellow head at the long table, so that it was almost a surprise when he found the knot of Patrans elsewhere in the room. The last time Damen had seen Torveld, he had been murmuring sweet nothings to Laurent on a darkened balcony, with the night flowers jasmine and frangipani blooming in the garden below. Damen had been half expecting to find him in intimate conversation with Laurent once again, but Torveld was with his own retinue, and when he saw Damen, he approached him.
‘Captain,’ said Torveld. ‘That is a title well earned.’
They spoke about the Patran men, and about Ravenel’s defences. In the end, what Torveld said about his own presence here was brief:
‘My brother is not happy. I’m here against his wishes, because I have a personal stake in your campaign against the Regent. I wanted to face your Prince man to man, and tell him that much. But I will ride for Bazal tomorrow, and you will have no more help from Patras. I cannot act further against my brother’s orders. This is all I can give you.’
‘We are lucky the Prince’s messenger got through with his signet ring,’ Damen acknowledged.
‘What messenger?’ said Torveld.
Damen thought the answer political circumspection, but then Torveld added, ‘The Prince approached me for men in Arles. I didn’t agree until I was six weeks out of the palace. As for my reasons, I think you must know them.’ He motioned for one of his retinue to come forward.
Slender and graceful, one of the Patrans detached himself from the group by the wall, dropping to his knees in front of Damen, and kissing the floor by his feet, so that Damen’s view was of a tumble of curls, burnished honey-gold.
‘Rise,’ said Damen, in Akielon.
Erasmus lifted his bowed head, but did not come up from his knees.
‘So humble? We’re the same rank.’
‘This slave kneels for a Captain.’
‘I’m a Captain through your help. I owe you a great deal.’
Shyly, after a pause: ‘I told you that I would repay you. You did so much to help me in the palace. And . . .’ Erasmus hesitated, looking over at Torveld. When Torveld nodded that he should speak, he lifted his chin, uncharacteristically. ‘And I didn’t like the Regent. He burnt my leg.’
Torveld gave him a proud look, and Erasmus flushed and made obeisance again with perfect form.
Damen repressed another instinct to tell him to stand up. It was odd that the usual manners of his homeland should feel so strange to him. Perhaps it was just that he had spent several months in the company of pushy, forward pets and unpredictable Veretian free men. He looked at Erasmus, the demure limbs and the lowered lashes. He had bedded slaves like this, as pliant in bed as they were out of it. He remembered enjoying it, but the memory was distant, as though it belonged to someone else. Erasmus was pretty, he could see that. Erasmus, he recalled, had been trained for him. He would be obedient to every order, intuit every whim, willingly.
Damen turned his eyes to Laurent.
A picture of cool, difficult distance confronted him. Laurent sat in brief conversation, wrist balanced on the edge of the great table, fingertips resting on the base of a goblet. From the severe, straight-backed posture to the impersonal grace of his cupped yellow head; from his detached blue eyes to the arrogance of his cheekbones, Laurent was complicated and contradictory, and Damen could look nowhere else.
As though responding to some instinct, Laurent looked up and met Damen’s eyes, and in the next moment Laurent was rising and making his way over.
‘You aren’t going to come and eat?’
‘I should return to oversee the work outside. Ravenel should have impeccable defences. I want . . . I want to do that for you,’ he said.
‘It can wait. You just won me a fort,’ said Laurent. ‘Let me spoil you a little.’
They stood by the wall, and as Laurent spoke, he leaned a shoulder against the contoured stone. His voice was pitched for the space between them, private and unhurried.
‘I remember. You take a great deal of pleasure in small victories.’ Damen quoted Laurent’s words back to him.
‘It’s not small,’ said Laurent. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever won a play against my uncle.’
He said it simply. Light from the torches reflected on his face. Conversation around them was a faded wax and wane of sound, mingling with the restrained colours, the reds, browns and dimmed blues of flame light.
‘You know that isn’t true. You won against him in Arles when you had Torveld take the slaves to Patras.’
‘That wasn’t a play against my uncle. That was a play against Nicaise. Boys are easy. At thirteen,’ said Laurent, ‘you could have led me around by the nose.’
‘I can’t believe you were ever easy.’
‘Think of the greenest innocent you’ve ever tumbled,’ said Laurent. And then, when Damen didn’t answer: ‘I forgot, you don’t fuck boys.’
Across the hall there was a muted burst of laughter at some distant minor antic. The hall was a hazy background of sounds and shapes. The light was a warm torch glow.
Damen said, ‘Men, sometimes.’
‘In the absence of women?’
‘When I want them.’
‘If I’d known that, I might have felt a frisson of danger, lying next to you.’
‘You did know that,’ said Damen.
There was a pause. Laurent pushed himself away from the wall eventually.
‘Come and eat,’ Laurent said.
Damen found himself at the table. In Veretian parlance, it was a relaxed affair, people already eating bread with fingers and meat from knife points. But the table was arrayed with the best the kitchens could provide at short notice: spiced meats, pheasant with apples, birds stuffed with raisins and cooked in milk. Damen reached unthinkingly for a sliver of meat, but Laurent’s grip on his wrist stopped him, drawing his arm back from the table.
‘Torveld tells me that in Akielos, it’s the slave who feeds the master.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then you can’t have any objection,’ said Laurent, picking up the morsel, and lifting it.
Laurent’s gaze was steady, with no demure lowering of his eyes. He was nothing like a slave, even when Damen allowed himself to imagine it. Damen remembered Laurent shifting inwards on a long wooden bench in the inn at Nesson to fastidiously eat bread from his fingers.
‘I don’t have any objection,’ said Damen.
He stayed where he was. It was not the role of a master to strain after food held at arm’s length.
Golden brows arched slightly. Laurent shifted in, and brought the meat to Damen’s lips.
The act of biting felt deliberate. The meat was rich and warm, a delicacy with southern influences, very like the food of his homeland. Chewing was slow; he was over-aware of Laurent watching him. When Laurent picked up the next sliver of meat, it was Damen who leaned in.
He took a second bite. He didn’t look at the food, he looked at Laurent, at the way he held himself, always so controlled, so that all of his reactions were subtle, his blue eyes difficult to read, but not cold. He could see that Laurent was pleased, that he was enjoying the acquiescence for its rarity, its exclusivity. It felt like he was on the edge of understanding, as though Laurent was coming into view for the first time.
Damen drew back, and that was the right thing to do too, allowing the moment to be easy: a small, shared intimacy at table, one that passed largely unnoticed by the other diners.
Around them, the conversation shifted to other things, news from the border, moments of the battle, discussion of tactics on the field. Damen kept his eyes on Laurent.
Someone had brought a kithara, and Erasmus was playing, soft, unobtrusive notes. In Akielon performances�
�as in all things Akielon—restraint was prized. The overall effect was one of simplicity. In the quiet between songs, Damen heard himself say, ‘Play the Conquest of Arsaces,’ speaking the request to the boy without thinking. In the next moment, he heard the first familiar stirring notes.
The song was old. The boy had a lovely voice. Notes pulsed, winding through the hall, and though the words from his homeland would be lost on the Veretians, Damen recalled that Laurent could speak his language.
They are surely gods who speak to him
With steady voices
A glance from him drives men to their knees
His sigh brings cities to ruin
I wonder if he dreams of surrender
On a bed of white flowers
Or is that the mistaken hope
Of every would-be conqueror?
The world was not made for beauty like his
The song ended softly, and despite the unfamiliar language, the unassuming performance of the slave had changed the mood in the hall a little. There was a smattering of applause. Damen’s attention was on Laurent’s ivory and gold colouring, the overfine skin, the last traces of bruising from where he’d been tied up and hit. Damen’s gaze travelled, inch by inch, taking in the proud lift of his chin, the uncooperative eyes, the arch of his cheekbone, and dropping back down to his mouth. His sweet, vicious mouth.
The pulse of desire, when it came, was a throb that re-formed blood and flesh, and transformed awareness. He stood, unthinking. He left the hall, walking out into the great courtyard.
The fort was a dark, torchlit mass around him. The walls were now manned by their own men, and the occasional shout came from the sentries on its walls; though tonight every gate-lamp was lit, and sounds mingled, laughter and raised voices flowed from the direction of the great hall.
Distance should have made it easier, but the ache only increased, and he found himself on the thick walls of the battlements, dismissing the soldiers who were manning that section, bracing his arms against the stone and waiting for the feeling to subside.
