2 comments/ 13984 views/ 2 favorites An Honourable Slut By: NaokoSmith Copyright 2012 Naoko Smith For James and with grateful thanks to Fran * As soon as Dar Vaie walked into the hotel bar he was aware of Hanya Lein. The bar room was full of the pleasurable warmth of men and women sharing a beer and a good story after work, perhaps a friendly flirtation, perhaps something more heartfelt. They sat in comfortable groups, golden with laughter in the light of candles on the walls and the tables, some with plates of food, others with just a bowl of beer or wine or spirits. Slightly apart from a group at his table, clearly on his own, was a big-shouldered lad, blond and soft as butter, round blue eyes lifted briefly and idly to see who had come in the door. Dar Vaie could tell from the set of his shoulders and back that he was another officer; a baby Lieutenant! new commissioned and probably on his first leave away from the troop. The lad's blue eyes dipped shyly aside in the bright candlelight although Dar Vaie had not looked directly at him. Yet. (Sweet Angels, will you look at that now. A young sweetie of a Lieutenant with muscles still not fully hardened by the summer campaigns and winter manoeuvres, a big-shouldered lovely blushing like a virgin in an hotel bar in Iarve.) Dar strolled slowly to the bar. His elaborately decorated sword and dagger set swung gently from where they were slung low about his rangy hips against his thigh length brown army boots. He ran strong thin fingers through his reddish strawberry blond hair that was cropped short at the back and sides. The corner of his thin mouth on the side away from the lad quirked in a grin, his grey eyes sparkled with pleasure. His cock stirred soft as a baby bird in expectation in his breeches. Perfect. He was tired and on the hunt for a bit of fun and relaxation after a long demanding journey from Sietter down through Trattai and Soomara into Iarve, keeping the junior officers and the men always under his keen grey eye. He had begun the work of establishing their current encampment and he had given the four Captains all leave together the previous night precisely so he could get some rest and come out alone on the prowl tonight. He disliked picking up his bits of stuffing in front of his fellow officers and juniors, preferred to go off alone in civilian clothes and see what he could find although if he tripped over anyone worth a quick fuck while taking the juniors out for a merry night of it he never said No. The lad had nearly finished his bowl of beer. Dar stood with his weight relaxed back on one lean long leg in its thigh length brown leather boot, watching out of the corner of his eye a big blond lovely tilting the last few mouthfuls of beer slowly in the bottom of his bowl, lingering over them in case someone might offer to buy him the next one. Dar ordered a whisky, a good one. The fiery kiss of it always made him catch his breath and think of his beloved brother officer Tashka el Maien and snigger a salacious laugh. He bumped the whisky back, turned and gave the lad the eye. Oh sweetie! The blush went up the lad's cheek like the Arven River in flood in the Spring. His blue eyes looked wide back into Dar Vaie's narrowed intent grey gaze. Dar sniggered the dirty salacious laugh in his nose and swung on his heel, going for the door beside the bar which must lead into the courtyard out back -- and the stables. At the door he paused and looked back. The lad had not moved from his seat. He sat there with his big hands, lightly tanned from the early summer campaign, resting on the table. His blue eyes under the head of hair cropped very short in super military style had a yearning look in them but it was evident that he was not going to come and take a tossed favour off Dar Vaie. Damnation. He was a sweetheart. He was not going to be willing to have a quick one in the stables and melt pleasantly into the night, to be occasionally brought to mind alone in your tent when you were out on campaign and could not indulge in anyone in the troop because they were all your juniors. He was waiting for someone who would talk to him and go out about a few times, someone he could get to know before he decided on a loving long term companionship and perhaps even marriage. Dar Vaie swung through the back door of the bar with a regretful pout of his thin firm mouth. Outside it was warm and quiet, bloody ideal conditions for a quick shove against the stable doors, hot and juicy. Dar wandered mournfully to the toilets, had a pee he did not need, staring at his already excited cock in his fingers, and spent an inordinately long time washing his hands. There were others in the bar of course. Other eyes had lifted at his entrance, had trailed languidly over his lean hard fit body in the cotton shirt and breeches, the highly polished thigh length army boots he was wearing. Any of them would be happy to take a casual panting fuck off an handsome sex-hungry officer like himself. Dar Vaie went back into the bar and ordered two bowls of whatever the lad was drinking. It turned out to be bloody breakfast ale, weak as rabbit piss. The fiery kiss of the whisky was still singing in his mouth like Tashka el Maien's laughter. Dar carried the bowls over to the lad and sat down opposite him. "Home on leave, is it?" he said with a wide warm hungry grin. The lad blushed again, charmingly, as he lifted those shy blue eyes to the piercing grey eyes with the laugh sparkling in them in the lightly tanned face of the man sitting brazenly opposite him. The man was young but he already had a battle-hardened air of command. His left hand was scarred as if someone had slashed a dagger over his knuckles in the field of war. When he sat down he flicked the sword in his belt back with practised ease and a pair of gloves sat in his belt ready to be snapped in the face of anyone who might need teaching a lesson in courtesy and honour. He sat lean, strong-muscled and ready for action, his grey eyes hard and laughing on the face of a lad with a big muscular chest and thighs. "Um, oh, I ... am visiting my uncle and aunt," the lad stammered. "On leave from ..." "No no, my dear," Dar said hurriedly. "Do not be giving me your full designation now," he grinned that wide warm hungry grin, that was still saying, 'C'mon, let me fuck you, let me take you quick n' easy'. The blush went up in the lad's cheek and he looked aside again. In picking up his bowl of the pathetic breakfast ale, Dar Vaie brushed his fingers briefly against the lad's lightly tanned, big, still soft fingers in a kind of apology. It was how he was. He was notorious for an honourable slut, had never looked on a man for more than a quick fuck in his life. Well, apart from the el Maiens but Clair el Maien was his senior so Vaie always pretended he only admired his military skills and Tashka was a pale Angel of a killer who would snap his glove in your face as soon as look at you if he thought you might give him any cause to do it. "Newly commissioned?" he enquired. "Just off on leave from your first summer campaign?" "Oh yes," the lad said, shyly turning those blue eyes in the blushing fair cheeks his way. "I was given my commission but three months ago. Are ... are you an officer too?" Dar laughed. "Yes my dear," he said with that grin that lurked in the corner of his mouth promising you rare pleasure if you would let him ride you. "I am an officer too, just like you." The lad laughed then and said, "you are not a baby Lieutenant. Are you not a ... a Captain?" "No my dear," Dar said. "I am a Commander." "Oh you are so young for a Commander!" the lad said in surprise. "You ... you must be tip-top if you are a Commander so young." His blue eyes lifted to Dar's grey eyes with a shy admiration in them. Dar's desperate cock stirred in his breeches but he only grinned and turned the subject with some question about the set-out in the lad's troop. He enjoyed hearing the lad's hesitant account of what he rapidly realised was the troop of a tip-top set of officers in itself. The lad went on a bit about his Captain, for whom he had got that kind of crushing adoration which baby Lieutenants will go and have on you if you allow them, although be fair, the man sounded like a supreme officer of the kind Vaie looked out for to pinch off the other troops and rely on in his own command. After a while, he said in a curiously hesitant voice: "My dear, if ... if I take a room for you, will you come?" The blush went suddenly hot up in his own cheek to his annoyance. He had always blushed easy. He muttered, "it will just be for a night, you understand." The lad looked into his patchily blushing lean face, the intense hungry longing in his hard grey eyes, the thin mouth that had become unexpectedly soft in the hopes of a kiss. Dar Vaie slid an hand under the table and gripped it above the lad's knee, in the big muscles of the leg under the table. The lad gave a gasp and his leg opened out under the firm controlled pressure of Dar's thin scarred fingers as if to invite Dar's hand to come on up. "Yes," he said. "I will come." --- Dar Vaie was on him before the door was barely closed, dragging his shirt out his breeches, gripping strong fingers on the lad's muscular broad chest. He pressed his mouth to the back of the lad's neck, kissing it, gripping with one hand on the still soft muscles that the lad had begun developing in his three months with the military. The scarred fingers of his other hand went caressing up to the lad's nipple which he pinched gently, feeling it harden to his touch. The lad was moaning with arousal, softening back in Dar's strong arms, against his hard chest, helpless with desire now in his capable hands. Dar was pulling the buckle of his sword-belt -- he was inexperienced enough that he would allow someone-else to take his weapons off him, Dar held the weapons and belt in one hand, shovelling the lad forward on stumbling feet, tugging at the buttons of his breeches. Considerately he slung the lad's weaponry over the footboard of the bed, he pulled the buckle from his own belt while he shoved the lad down on the bed and slung his weaponry over the lad's; the swords and daggers were all entangled, if anyone sprang in to attack them they would be pushed to identify whose was which sword when they went to the defence but Dar was beyond caring about that. Damnation, the lad was turning, he was going to have to lie in his arms and look in his lovely face. Dar could not bear to push this butter blond sweetheart about and make him take his favour without a kiss, the lad had compromised enough to give Dar Vaie this for sweet Hell's sake. Angels of Heaven, that big body turning to take him in the soft muscled arms. He dragged his own breeches undone and fished a condom hurriedly out of his pocket. To his embarrassment his fumbling fingers pulled five or six of them tumbling over the floor -- but the lad knew he was a slut and he had not even looked to see what it was Dar had dropped. His arms were coming up around Dar, his head lifting, his soft red mouth pouting up. Dar gave a kind of moan and fell into his kiss. So long, so sweet, so tender, that first kiss with Hanya Lein -- before he even knew his name. The lad was holding his lean hard body gently, his lips pressing softly, warmly to the thin firm mouth of the commanding officer. Dar felt himself melting into that tender embrace of mouths, his lips parted, he moved his tongue, the lad's mouth opened so willingly, he pressed his tongue deep into the warmth of the kiss, caressing and pressing, caressing and pressing. A big hand had come stroking down his long back and had gripped on his hard-muscled buttock. Dar grunted and moaned in the kiss, pulled away, driven to distraction by the squeezing of fingers on his buttock. There was a small voice in his head trying to warn him: 'Vaie, you are going in too deep! You will lose your head -- if you are lucky', but he did not give a copper coin's curse. The urgent need was driving up through him, driving the blood out of his brain to his loins. With trembling fingers he took his rigid hard cock and deftly he unrolled the condom onto it. The lad was still caressing his whipcord hard lean body with one big gentle hand and squeezing his buttock with the other. He lay with his broad body soft and relaxed back in passivity, only half undressed over the bed, his wide eyes lifted to Dar's piercing hungry stare. Dar wrapped one lean long arm around his back. Through the thin cotton of their shirts, the lad felt the hard strength of his battle-hardened arm muscles and quivered in arousal, his hands shook on Dar's body. Dar had found some bowl of lubricant by the bedside and smeared some on one finger, he pressed it gently about the sensitive rim of the lad's hole and saw his head go back with a moan, his broad shoulders relax down. His hips spread in the breeches only pulled down to the tops of his knee high boots. Dar knew he ought of courtesy to give the lad a bit more playful pleasure but he could not keep out of him longer, his lust was a craving need, an irresistible driving force, he lifted his turgid rock-hard cock and slid into the lad with a firm long thrust. Oh! the lad moaned and gripped him close, his big hips lifted up towards that thrusting cock and Dar's lean hips. Dar was staring intently at the head tipped back while he thrust with quickening force into the soft muscular body laid wide open and willing to him, he was grunting with lust then sweet Heaven, the lad's head came up, there were the wide blue eyes under the so closely cropped blond hair, Dar gave a gasp and pressed his mouth to the warm sweet mouth, thrusting his burgeoning cock, thrusting into the lad's open body, the lad was gripping him and lifting up to his thrusting cock, moaning in their kiss. Dar was grunting into that sweet kiss, quickly, quickly he was cumming in a flood of exhilarated passion, he could feel the lad shaking with his own orgasm, the lad's sperm was spurting in sticky jerks between their stomachs, into their shirts. Dar cried out, jerked his head to the side away from the lad's eyes, pressed his head hard into the lad's neck and lay still with his head pressed into the lad's muscular neck, his grey eyes shut while the lad lay staring with that wide blue limpid gaze up at the ceiling above. When Dar woke in the night they were still tangled in each other's arms, as intimately intricately enlaced about each other as their weapons hanging on the foot of the bed. Dar lay in a kind of numb stupor, close against the soft warm body, staring at the lad's sleeping young face turned to him in the cold white moonlight that was falling across the bed. They had neglected to draw the curtains over the window. They had neglected to take any of their clothes off. They had even still got their boots on, Dar was just lying with his unbuttoned breeches sufficiently pulled down to free his penis and allow it to go diving straight into the lad's welcoming back passage. His flaccid cock stirred at the memory. The lad's eyes drifted open and stared into the hard grey eyes looking into his face in the moonlight. He smiled. Softly. Dar lifted his head for a kiss, the lad lifted an hand to put about the back of Dar's head. Their mouths pressed. The tip of the lad's tongue came hesitantly poking into Dar's mouth, Dar made his own tongue gentler, to caress that hesitant tongue as it came into his mouth. They sat up and began wordlessly to undress. Dar struggled with his thigh length army boots and the lad leapt to it like a good Lieutenant to jerk them from his feet but his hands fumbled and slipped on the heel of one boot. Dar laughed and said in an husky and unusually soft voice, "Your Captain will have you for it if you are so clumsy pulling his boots off." "The Captain never makes us pull his boots off," the lad answered. Dar was surprised to hear this but it was not his business and he did not want to lead the lad on to confide what troop it was he served in, which might mean the lad expected them to correspond or something. He just gave the lad's very close-cropped head a long slow caress, feeling the velvet stubble under his hand. He grinned as he did it. The lad would have been better off with just a short back and sides like Dar had, Dar knew without asking that that adored Captain of his had cropped hair and the baby Lieutenant had copied his hair style. With his boots off, he stood up to shuck his breeches off his lean narrow hips, letting them fall in a heap with his shirt on the floor. The lad was sitting naked on the bed now, his big lovely muscular shoulders hunched shyly. He was looking at the floor, not daring to check out Dar's long thin hardening cock although only a couple of hours before it had been sunk deep in his backside, thrusting him into orgasm. Dar knelt down and put his hands on the lad's big soft-muscled thighs, pushing them open to his gaze. Since they were here for the night, not going their separate ways after a quick fuck in the stables, he determined to give the lad some slow pleasure. He did not think his was the first favour the lad had picked up -- highly unlikely, a big beauty like this one, but he suspected there had not been many lovers and those had probably been equally inexperienced fumbling young cubs. He saw between his lean long fingers on the soft muscular thighs a big thick cock with a blue vein on the underside, thickening and hardening even as he watched. The balls in their wrinkled darker skin hung soft and heavy under his gaze. Dar reached out and caressed them, curling gentle fingers around one to make the lad gasp and sigh and catch his wide lip in his teeth. With one finger, still cupping his hand around the soft-skinned bollock, he delicately caressed the erogenous area between balls and hole. The lad moaned, his cock was rising: big and turgid, Dar's eyes glistened with pleasure to see him so well hung. His finger came skimming the rim of the lad's hole, back between hole and balls; he stooped his head and took the lad's big cock in his mouth. Caressing him with one hand, gripping the muscles of his thigh with the other, he sucked at the turgid hard cock. He ran his tongue down to the base of it, lacing patterns around the thick vein with the tip of his tongue, thrusting his suckling mouth about the hard throbbing head of the stiff column. The lad sat rigid with ecstasy, helpless in his hands and mouth, moaning and grunting and spreading his big muscular thighs out to expose his cock and balls and hole even more openly for Dar Vaie to play with. Dar sucked on him harder, feeling his big thigh muscles tense and his hips thrust up then he was cumming in spurts that hit the back of Dar's throat with salacious cream, cumming with jerking hips and little screams of pleasure. Dar gagged momentarily on the spurt of cream unexpectedly hitting his throat, curling his tongue up as he continued to suck, to direct the next few spurts into his mouth, grinning as he savoured the salty sperm coming into his mouth. Dar let the softening penis go from his mouth, knelt up and rolled the lad over in the bed, quickly and efficiently rolling a fresh condom onto his own hard penis, pushing his knees between the lad's relaxed knees, lubricating his arse again with a gentle thrust of a finger that got a jerk out of the post-orgasmic soft relaxed body beneath him. He thrust in as gently and as deep as he could manage, successfully rousing the lad to renewed pleasure in spite of his spent condition. He lay on the lad's broad back, thrusting deep and gentle, deep and gentle into him, until he came with gritted teeth and a last long push to that butter blond body, hearing the lad moaning and when he passed a gentle hand over the lad's face it came away wet with tears of exhausted joy. An Honourable Slut --- In the morning Dar Vaie was woken by a beam of sunshine falling into his eyes from the uncurtained window. He lay tall, lean and hard-muscled, wrapped close in the embrace of the big soft muscular body he had pleasured so thoroughly the night before. He stared at the sun gleaming in the cropped blond velvet hair. The lad's face was soft and a little flushed in sleep. There were tear stains on his cheeks. In that moment Dar Vaie knew that he had not been so lucky as to lose only his head. His heart had gone over, gone to nestle entangled in the big gentle fingers of an hand curled softly about his back, lying close to his buttocks as if the fingers might get into the habit of giving one buttock an affectionate squeeze whenever he woke in Dar Vaie's arms. Dar Vaie knew nothing about this lad, nothing except the feel of his body, all its parts and openings and gentleness, but he knew that this was his heart's home. He woke up a little more and pretended it was just a pleasurable interlude, a bit of fun after the long journey with his troop down into Iarve. What was the harm, even if he did fall for some Iarvian lovely. The Commander -- his own former Commander, Clair el Maien, the future sworn Lord, was married to Lady Arianna el Jien who had formerly been van Iarve. They would not be going to war with Iarve as they had been obliged to go to war with those scum H'las in the neighbouring region. Iarve was a long journey but it was even possible he could get the lad transferred into the Sietter army if he used his considerable influence -- not to his own troop of course. Junior-senior officer affair: hanging offence. Idly he gave the velvet soft cropped blond head on the pillows beside him a gentle caress. The lad slept on, his muscular limbs lying around Dar's thin hard body completely relaxed, he was utterly spent by the night of passion Dar had lured him into. He was still young and new enough that they probably had to boot him out of his bedding on the mornings he was supposed to go and make the tea and coffee and take the Captain his breakfast. Dar Vaie was a seasoned officer and he always woke half an hour before the first call to duty even though nowadays he could lie there thinking about the day ahead until his man-servant came with a bowl of tea made exactly as he liked it. After a while, Vaie stirred and attempted to disentangle himself from the lad's loose soft warm embrace. The lad's eyes drifted open and he stared with that clear limpid blue gaze on Dar for a moment. Then he smiled. So soft, so tender, so open and trusting a smile, Dar could not forbear to lean in for his kiss before he climbed out of the bed. His lean rangy limbs tensed in expectation of the lad clinging and begging him to stay. But the lad only lay in a loose sprawl of big muscular limbs, his warm wide mouth pouted sadly and his eyes drifting away from Dar as if he did not want to watch Dar leaving. Dar pulled on his breeches and the shirt with an hard patch in it where the lad's sperm had dried into it. He did not bother with his socks and the thigh length army boots so awkward to get in and out of. Finally he admitted, "I am only going to get in a bit of food for us to break our fast." "If you are leaving, I had rather you just went," the lad answered, still not looking at him. "Um, well, I meant to take a day at leisure," Dar admitted. "If you have nothing planned perhaps ... you might spend it with me?" His grey eyes were as soft as the unexpectedly delicate down on an eagle's breast, turning aside as the lad's blue eyes lifted, as though in his turn he could not bear to be given the go-by. The lad only smiled, nestling his cropped blond head back into the pillows and asking for coffee with his breakfast. Dar slung his weaponry casually back around his hips and went down to where a night servant was dozing in a chair in the hotel's small reception hall. After ordering some food and their tea and coffee, he asked for paper, pen and ink. He only hesitated about which of his Captains to give the acting command to, even though they had only established the encampment two days and had not yet undertaken a full reconnoitre of the surrounding area. The trouble with having a clutch of tip-top rising young stars under your command as he did was that they were inclined to think up some rabbit-brained notion if allowed out from under your eye. Angels, Vaie sometimes felt as exhausted as a parent. He had twenty wilful children! he had to continually hold in check the impulsive whims of four young Captains and sixteen starry-eyed bloody Lieutenants, all of them vying for his praise with their silly nonsense. But it was lovely when they got it right and fell into place with your arm their signal so perfectly to give you an elegant victory. He fished his seal out of his pocket and pressed it into the wax holding his rapidly penned orders together, scrawled the current designation for the troop on the front of the packet and asked for it to be sent with despatch. "As wishes't it," the night servant said in that curious Iarvian accent, pocketing the coins Dar slipped him with a bright smile. When Dar came back in the room, the lad had made the bed up from its rumpled tossed condition, pulling the stained sheets into sharp corners and disposing the blanket and quilt with admirable neatness over the foot of the bed. He sat dressed in his stained blue cotton shirt and underpants on one of the two chairs at the small table by the window, leaning his head on one arm with the early morning summer sunshine pouring golden around his big shoulders. Dar crossed the room rapidly to take his head in thin long fingers and press kisses to it, his scarred and unscarred fingers running in increasing urgency about the lad's ears and neck and the velvet stubble on his chin, pressing his thin mouth in quick kisses to the lad's upturned giggling face but they came knocking at the door with the tea, coffee and sweet rolls. He was starving hungry and the lad began consuming the food with similar enthusiasm and slurping eagerly at his bowl of milky coffee in which he had put two sugars. The sweet rolls took the edge off their appetites so they lingered over the cooked breakfast and began chatting while enjoying the crisp salty bacon strips and long thin spicy sausages doused in fried tomato and dipped into yellow egg yolk, the golden slices of fried bread. Dar knew it was a mistake to chat but the whole thing had gone disastrously off-mission, ever since he came and brought the lad a bowl of bloody breakfast ale instead of sheering off into the night to some rougher tavern where an easy favour could be his for the taking. "I was going to take an half day ... I mean a day at leisure and go to some art exhibition that is on in the town," was Dar's opening gambit. The blush rose in red patches in his face. He had intended to pretend he was only stopping here with the lad paying bloody top price for their best room because it was slightly more entertaining than a bloody lot of paintings. Instead he had inadvertently revealed that he had only ever intended to spend an half day away from the troop, not two whole nights and a day, which he would be questioned hard about by the Generals' strategic staff if they ever found out about it. But the lad had not noticed his slip, his eyes lit up and he said: "Oh the Namoon School exhibition. You should go, some of the work being shown is classic of their style. When I heard that they were sending an exhibition to show in Iarve I begged it of my family to let me visit my uncle and aunt so I could see it." "You know about art?" Dar said with interest, pushing a tasty collection of sausage, tomato and egg onto his fork. "You are a Knight's son then?" The lad laughed at that, his velvety cropped blond head swinging round in amusement. "No my dear," he said with a faintly mocking emphasis on the lazy aristocratic endearment Vaie was accustomed to chuck about. "Not like you. You are a Knight, is it not? I am a cloth merchant's son." Dar Vaie was very surprised by this. An officer-aristocrat, not only a tip-top Commander but also a wealthy young Knight with dominion over a key trading post close to the Maier Pass which ran through Sietter from H'las on the coast and Vail and the Eastern regions on the road to court, he tended to regard merchants as mere riff-raff of trade, not as people who knew about the Namoon School, had been taken into a troop staffed by tip-top officers and had a laughing intelligence glinting in their round blue eye. The lad giggled as if he knew perfectly well what a snob Dar Vaie was but why should he care, this was but an one-day-one-night, he was not going to have to take Vaie home and impose his arrogance on his family. Well, one-day-two-nights hopefully. Dar Vaie grinned a blushing embarrassed grin. He hoped it would only be two nights. He had begun to suspect it might take a life-time to get this big-shouldered lovely out of his heart. "Do you have brothers and sisters?" the lad enquired with a smile, gently forgiving of Dar Vaie's arrogant ignorance about the cultured ways of the wealthier merchants, whose networks of trade ran widespread to knit the country together while the aristos squabbled between their regions and disrupted plans for prosperity. "Um, two sisters," Dar admitted. His grey eyes hardened on the lad at being obliged to talk about his family with someone he had only intended to fuck, and a merchant's son at that. Then he sighed and went on, slowly, not looking into that limpid loving blue gaze. "And there is my mother. My father passed a two-three years back." The lad made a sympathetic grimace but Dar ignored this, slurping casually at his tea as if it were a nothing to lose the father who had always been so proud of you and had done everything to advance your career in the army you loved, who never mentioned that he wished you would hurry up and bring home some husband to settle you down although you saw the wistful look in his eye whenever you came home on leave and he asked if you had found anyone special. "You are the oldest?" the lad enquired. "You are responsible for the lands you hold from your sworn Lord and the people on them? That must be difficult to manage, with a troop to command as well." Dar grinned and sighed and said, "Yes, my dear, a bloody packet of trouble, letters to and fro all the while from the seneschal, and here are my sisters coming to an age when my mother says I should look about for people to bestow them on. She is always on at me to have some of my fellow officers back for some hunting or to make a trip to the Vail flat races, so the girls might have the chance to meet a prospect but we are so much at war in ... in my region. I tell it her to take the girls to visit the future sworn Lord and Lady instead; they will sometimes make a party for the young ones if sufficient come by on the day in the month when they receive the Knights and Dames." The lad turned his head with a small puzzled frown at this. It did not sound much like the set-out here in Iarve where he had assumed this gorgeous lean hardened warrior was from. However he realised that Vaie was still unwilling to part with information which might lead to him being traced back and troubled by casual bits of trimming he had tripped over out on campaign so he volunteered some information about his own family instead; his older brothers and sister who worked with his father and mother in their family business, liaising across the country with their uncles and aunts and colleagues in the cloth trade and related businesses. Dar Vaie listened with half an ear and said they must be proud to see the lad taken up into the army and the lad rolled around laughing at that. "Oh no!" he said. "My family are political. They were not at all pleased and did their best to discourage me from thinking about the military as a child. I had to beg it of them forever to let me try for a commission. I am some years the youngest. My sister cried to see me go away from home! can you picture it. My mother was so busy with the business, my sister was the one who mainly cared for me as a baby you see. But they are so good to me, bought me two matched horses when I left and are forever sending cakes and treats and books they think I might like to read, and stuff for the Captain to whom they are grateful because he takes such good care of us juniors." He blushed a bit at mention of his beloved Captain. Dar Vaie glanced briefly at the sword and dagger set hanging off the foot of the bed, realising suddenly that although they were not elaborately decorated like his own to aristocratic taste, they were of high quality and must have cost a coin or ten. The lad was casually slurping at the coffee that was as creamy and sweet as he was, still laughing at Dar Vaie's ignorance about the merchant class. Dar got up and, taking hold of his big fingers, tugged him back towards the bed made so neatly that even that darling Captain of this sweetheart baby Lieutenant could not have found any fault with it -- apart from the occasional dried stain in the sheets. As they walked back to the bed, stripping off their clothes again, Dar turned, his shirt in his thin fingers. The lad was looking in a wide-eyed blue stare at his lean tall body in the early morning sunshine. Dar Vaie remembered then what his torso looked like, he took in a sharp breath but he let the lad stare. The lad had a golden pale skin with only the lightest of tans picked up from swimming or running bare-chested perhaps out on manoeuvres. His skin was creamy soft and wholly unmarked. Slanting diagonally down Dar Vaie's chest ran the long thin white scar he got in the duel over one of his juniors, whom some scum officer from First picked up and promised a marriage ring to but then kicked out of his bed when some prettier bloody kid strayed in his path. (Still, you should see what that bloody scum looked like nowadays, Dar made him cry on the Angel of Mercy.) There was a reddish sort of knot under Dar's left breast where he was hit by an arrow one time the encampment came under attack before they had time to get into their mailcoats. His legs were criss-crossed with the jagged scars of battle and there was that slashing set of wounds across his left knuckles which he got at the most terrible battle of the Sietter-H'las war: Shier Bridge, a name that was legendary from a war where they had fought so hard that most of the battles did not even have names. Angels only knew what the H'las said of that bloody day when they had suffered a dreadful shaming defeat. The memory of it would make any Sietter man or officer who had been there to follow the signal that was Clair el Maien's arm go white and tremble and start weeping. They suffered the victory of that day, using a strategy of such cold-hearted elegance that afterwards the troop had to be completely stripped out and reformed, not a man of them could stand by his brother soldiers' sides to fight ever again. The lad's blue eyes as they lifted from his lover's scarred and hard body were a conflicted mass of emotions: admiration, wonder, fear. Pity. Vaie's mouth twisted ruefully then he chucked his clothes and weaponry over the footboard of the bed and strode forward naked with his sword arm held out. "My name is Dar," he said. That tangled skein of emotions in the lad's blue eyes slipped away to leave a warm affection shining softly through. "Hanya," the lad said, grasping Dar's sword arm in his and wrapping his left hand about the elbow. He stared into Dar's face, his grip tightened in response to the hard grip of the commanding officer whose fighting arm he held. He grinned suddenly, reached out and put his left hand about the back of Dar's strawberry blond head, he pulled it into his kiss. Dar went willingly, opening his mouth for Hanya's tongue, allowing his naked tall lean body to stand in close, close up against Hanya's broad muscular body. Hanya's hands were on his waist, pulling him harder to the big soft muscled chest, Dar felt that big thick cock pressing to his lean thigh and gasped in excitement in their kiss. To his surprise, Hanya was starting to push him back, not to the bed but to the wall, his big fingers were playing insistently around Dar's hips and waist and thighs and buttocks, squeezing the hard muscles of the buttocks. As Hanya shoved him assertively back to the wall, Dar Vaie understood that merchant's son or whoever, he was in the hands of a tip-top rising young officer, one of those bright shining stars he and his former brother officers fought each other over in loving rivalry. All of them -- except poor bloody el Maien -- were Commanders out in the field, all were pinned for strategic, the Generals only vied over which one of them to favour most. They had been the rising stars in their day, nick-named the Angels for their beauty and military skills, and they competed hard and fast for this kind of intelligent aggressive young cub with the demanding hands. Dar Vaie felt breathless. He never normally submitted to having a favour pushed on him, he was always the one who took a dominant fucking position. He could not remember experiencing this kind of knee-trembling pleasure in submission since the days he had been a baby Lieutenant himself. That bloody pale Angel Tashka el Maien dared him to give the eye to one of the bloody Generals -- in uniform on formal parade! And stupid fool, he had done it. He could still remember the incredulous look in the General's eye, the look of disbelieving horror in the eye of Captain-Lord el Jien -- and the husky evil snigger of Lieutenant-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter by his side. The General was generous. He turned away with some comment about Caja Nain's buttons not being polished, giving Tashka el Maien a piercing stare and the Commander's shoulder (it was in the old Commander, Stariel's, day) a sympathetic squeeze. Stariel was a brilliant manager of the juniors but everyone knew that young Lieutenant-Lord Tashka el Maien had the entire troop wrapped around his fingers and exploited his charm to the hilt. Later that night the General caught Vaie out by the armoury wall and grabbed him by the gold-embroidered collar of his red felt winter tunic, turned him into the shadows of the wall, pulled his breeches down to expose his buttocks in the wintry air and gave him the fucking of a lifetime with an hand over Vaie's mouth to stifle his mingled screams of pain and pleasure. Hanya's grip was no less assertive than that General's had been yet strangely gentle at the same time. Dar knew that if he displayed the least resistance, Hanya would courteously give way, allow Dar the pleasure of penetrating him again. Dar gritted his teeth with his grey eyes sparkling in his grin and forced himself to relax in Hanya's big hands, to be pushed about as easily as had been that petrified baby Lieutenant, slack-muscled with lust and craving, in the General's fierce hard hands. Hanya was no brutal Sietter General, seeking to take his own selfish pleasure and teach a lesson to a cheeky cub who had foolishly twisted the lion's tail. He turned Dar into the wall but his hands were caressing as well as assertive and his mouth began bestowing soft warm wet kisses on the back of Dar Vaie's neck, making the tiny hairs there lift and Dar moan with arousal and spread his legs. Dar was still trembling with the effort to crush down his instinctive impulse to react, his normally active drive in temporary abeyance to the absolute overwhelming desire to give way, submit, be still and passive for the thick big cock that he knew hung between Hanya's legs. A finger came gently lubricating Dar's hole, Dar gasped and groaned and quivered with pleasure, grunting with the longing for that big cock to push in but Hanya -- unlike the General -- was not willing to take pleasure without preparing Dar for so large a member in the tender entrance to his body. He was running his finger about to spread Dar's hole wider, gently pressing a second finger at the sensitive rim, listening intently to the quality of Dar's moans to ensure they were those of pleasure not the sharp gasp of pain. His two fingers had slipped in now, Dar spread his legs quivering as he leaned face into the wall, his whole body felt like a burning begging yearning mass longing for Hanya's cock in his arse but he managed to remember himself and gasp: "Condom, condom! Angels' sake, Han!" An Honourable Slut The despair of Hanya's fingers coming out of his backside and having to wait that short time for Hanya to get the condom on then one of Hanya's strong arms went about his lean hard scarred chest, Hanya was setting that hard thick rod to Dar's arse and with a wrenching groan at last he was pressing his big cock in through the tender sensitive rim of the hole. Sweet Heaven! he had hit Dar's sweet spot with that very first thrust and Dar was gone, gone in Hanya's arms, pressed to the wall over and over with the long soft slow fucking thrusts of Hanya's big muscular thighs pushing and pushing the big cock up into his hole. Dar was moaning like a virgin, helpless in the waves of pleasure that rippled out from Hanya's every gentle thrust, Hanya was moaning softly, pushing harder and faster, Dar was completely out of control, he came in a spurting helpless gasping molten ecstasy in Hanya Lein's arms, chucking his head backwards over Hanya's big shoulder to press in an exquisite outflung elation hard back, his grey eyes open wide and staring. Hanya gave a great groan that vibrated against his narrow scarred back, thrusting that big thick cock deep up into Dar and pushing him into the wall as he shot off in his own orgasm. --- By the afternoon they were just lying in wordless joy, entangled in each other's limbs and bodies and the rough male kiss of the blanket keeping them warm and close. On the table by the window and around the bed were scattered the remains of lunch. They had enjoyed a creamy sweet pudding in ways the hotel cooks had probably not intended and lay sticky and sweet and smiling softly close together. There was a knock on the door and a voice said: "Thy time for my allegiance." Hanya's eyes snapped instantly into focus at the appeal of the junior for the senior officer's attention. Dar Vaie lay a moment longer in Hanya's arms, his brow creased by a tiny frown. None of his juniors would dare come in the room without his expressed permission to enter, ever since Lieutenant Farin had mistaken a muffled moan and had burst in on him in his bedroom at their winter quarters with his cock still filling the mouth of a visiting Lieutenant from Strategic. Finally Dar got out of Hanya's arms, slung the sheet and his weaponry around his rangy hips and strode to the door of the room. Hanya saw the softness of love and passion fall away from him like a cast off cloak, his shoulders and back stiffened and as he opened the door with his scarred left hand, his right hand flexed ready to go for his weapons -- even though he must have recognised the voice asking for him. There was a lengthy softly murmured conversation during which Dar Vaie stood with increasing displeasure evident in the set of his thin strong shoulders and the forward thrust of his strawberry blond head on his lean neck. Finally Dar said in a louder voice, "Go and have a bowl in the bar then, and I will give you my expressed orders in writing to take back. Ask them to send up some paper and a pen." He shut the door and crossed to the table by the window, frowning angrily in the warm sunny light of the afternoon. Hanya got out of the bed and went to run a gentle hand through his reddish hair, to try and make him smile again, although his heart was sinking. "Do you have to go back to the encampment?" he asked, trying to make it plain in his voice that he understood Commander-Sir Dar Vaie had the responsibility of over two thousand men under his eye so Hanya would not start sulking and carrying on about it if Dar had to leave him, one silly little baby Lieutenant. Dar turned his lean head under Hanya's caress, the frown slipping from his face. "No no, my dear," he said softly. "I just need an half hour in which to think through what to tell the bloody fools to do in the first instance. They have made such a mess of it that I may 's well leave it till the morrow." The morrow he would be gone then, back to his army command leaving Hanya just one of many pleasant memories a slut like he was could so casually enjoy. Hanya pushed down the tears rising in his eyes. He wished he could be as casual with his favours as Dar appeared to be. What fun Dar must have, he never had to feel this intense longing of the heart. Once his body's light longing had been satisfied, he moved on and out, carefree and well content. "What's to do?" Hanya murmured, pressing his soft lips to Dar's ear while he got the glistening give-away tears out of his eyes. Angels' sake! he was going to get another night of pleasure was he not. He could tell that this was no common event with this hard-hunting handsome Commander-Knight. Then he remembered himself and said, "No, no, I know you cannot talk of your troop's business with me." Dar laughed, catching Hanya's big hand and putting the fingers in his mouth. He sucked them suggestively and said past them, "Well my dear, if you are a spy you have been willing to offer up so much for so little information that they will probably hang you themselves for inefficiency! "We are always in skirmishes and at war," he explained casually, "so the men are sick with nerves. They sent us down here to Iarve to get the troop a bit less wrought up. And now the bloody fools have tripped over some Iarvian troop encamped nearby and got into a skirmish with them!" He leant his head into his hand on his elbow on the table and his thin mouth puckered up ruefully. "There was nothing I could have done to prevent it," he said, "but it would have to happen while I was off playing with you, my dear, instead of keeping the troop under my eye. Ah well, no fatalities fortunately, just a few injuries and a righteously incensed Iarvian Commander to try to get around my fingers." Hanya felt both dreadfully guilty to have lured Dar into such a misdemeanour and guiltily thrilled to have been able to do it. He said anxiously, "What will you do?" "Well what would you do," Dar said idly. Hanya felt that this was an opportunity to impress the battle-seasoned commanding officer sitting wrapped in a sheet in an hotel room he had been willing to pay for in order to fuck Hanya. What would the Commander, what would his beloved Captain, those two brilliant military strategists he was so proud to serve with, have done? Hanya sat down naked in the other chair at the table and fell into an unconscious imitation of his adored Captain. He set one ankle on his knee and clasped it in his right hand, turned his head and looked sidelong at Dar, a flashing blue glance with a smile perched on his mouth. "Well, my dear," he drawled, "once the Iarvian Commander has simmered down he will bethink himself that the Generals' strategic staff will not be pleased to hear he has been caught up in skirmishes with a friendly visiting troop, whosoever's fault it may be." But Dar had sprung suddenly up and was standing over him, his face was thunderous with emotion, his grey eyes flashed sparks. "Where in Hell did you learn to sit like that?" he hissed, his scarred left hand gripped on Hanya's big fingers on his ankle, his fingers bit hard into Hanya's hand. "I ... I ...what do you mean?" Hanya stammered, his head coming back round to face forward again. Dar dropped his hand and straightened up with a sudden heavy sigh. "I prithou pardon me," he said in a much gentler voice. "You reminded me ... of someone dear to my heart." His grey eyes lifted from Hanya were extraordinarily soft and misty with tears. Hanya felt a dreadful bitter pang of jealousy. "Your lover?" he was unable to forbear asking. But Dar only laughed, saying: "I wish!" which was possibly worse than if he had said, Yes. "No, my heart, not my lover. My friend." The grey eyes turned down to Hanya's soft young face were warm and full of both laughter and tears. He had called Hanya his heart. Not that lazy aristocratic endearment/non-endearment 'my dear'. He had said, 'my heart'. Dar Vaie hesitated but he was in too emotional a state now and he had flung his body so open to this sweetheart lovely and where was the harm, he was going to ride away from him with the troop the morrow. They would have to move on after this bloody incident with the Iarvian troop. Although perhaps he could ride back for a night or two if they made camp not too far further into Iarve. "You reminded me of my brother officer," he said. "I love him with all my heart. But he is the younger son of the sworn Lord and, because of some scandalous affair his mother got into, the sworn Lord do not favour him. We all thought he would be put into the strategic staff offices and go on to be the Lord General to his brother as the sworn Lord. He is too good a strategic mind to bestow off on some other region's oldest daughter and run their bloody army with his consummate skills. But a year or two back something happened. He disappeared and I have never seen nor had word of him since," there was a longing love in his voice that Hanya was no longer jealous of, Hanya understood that what Dar was talking about was the companionship of a friend closer to your heart and mind than a brother or sister, someone you would never go and lie with in passion although you might pretend to consider it sometimes in case that might be a way to lock your friend even closer to you in love. "There were four of us," Dar said dreamily. "Two of us were Knights, one the son of our Commander, one the son of a General, one was the younger son of the sworn Lord. They put us under the Captaincy of the young future sworn Lord of a friendly neighbouring region to strengthen the tie with him. Our own future sworn Lord was a Captain in the troop, and later our Commander," he was almost whispering now, his grey eyes dim with the memories. "Oh my Commander," he said softly. "My life, my days, my fight. There were four of us, tip-top rising stars and as handsome as the sun. They called us the Angels. I am for them through Hell and through life," he murmured. It was the kind of vow silly baby Lieutenants make to each other when they do not yet know what warfare is like then years later in the middle of the horrific trauma of battle, they realise it is true. "My friend was the most brilliant and most beautiful of us four Angels. Where is he now?" he whispered sadly. He sat leaning his head on his arm, thinking wistfully of the exquisite slanted blue eyes, the dark-haired head whose feminine grace was undone by the cropped short hair and the salacious wicked laughter that would spurt from the corner of the rose-petal mouth of his brother officer and best friend. They were coming knocking with the paper and pens, Dar Vaie sat up and his eyes cleared and hardened. He sat at the table thinking and writing with a determined set to his lean jaw bristly with the stubble he had not shaved off that morning. Hanya lay in the bed dreamily watching his lover engaged on the business of his troop with a light frown of concentration between his grey eyes. Finally he saw Dar Vaie seal sets of papers, pressing into warm red wax the seal he had fetched from a pocket full of condoms. Dar sent for a bath before dressing and going down to his junior officer to give him the orders expressed in writing and a letter to be sent with despatch to the Iarvian Commander. When he came back, Hanya had taken his turn in the bath but he had not troubled to shave either. Dar came in the door and saw Hanya's big muscled clean lightly tanned limbs lying out over the rumpled bedclothes, naked, his cock just starting to stir hopefully again. He lay as soft and blond as butter in the bed, his blue eyes lifted warm and smiling. Dar smiled automatically in reply. He crossed quickly to the table and scrawled on a sheet of paper, pressed his seal into some wax he dripped on the bottom of the sheet which he brought over and held out to Hanya. "There," he said in a rough careless voice. "That's my full designation. You ... you can write to me, if you must." Those blue eyes lifted tremulous with happiness. Hanya knew exactly what this meant. Dar added hurriedly, "I am a slut, you know. Just because ... we have an understanding between us, I will not be able to stop myself throwing a favour to whoever if I trip over someone." But Hanya only said, "you will not wave it in my face, though?" "You ... you may do as you please too, of course," Dar said in that rough pretend careless voice. Hanya only smiled as he took the piece of paper from Dar's trembling fingers. Hanya was a sweetheart, he did not chuck his favours around like kerchiefs far and wide. Dar knew that even though he would occasionally go and have a casual quick fuck in his slut's way, if Hanya ever did it and he found out who the man was, he would kill him. Hanya's head had gone down to read the slanting scrawled writing on the paper: Commander-Sir Dar Vaie of Tenth Sietter, contactable through the troop's winter quarters in Rejiel. Under the writing was the seal with Dar's insignia in it: the two curved lines meaning the Sietter Hills, a little tower off to one side designating his castle and lands, a deer leaping over between the hills and a banner because Dar was a Commander. --- After a while, Dar said hesitantly, "Is there a problem?" Hanya's face lifted to him was pale and set and the warm loving happy blue eyes were full of tears now. It was evident that there was a serious problem. "Um," Hanya muttered, "I am Lieutenant Hanya Lein of Sixth H'las." Dar stood quite still. His right hand lifted from his hip and hovered for a moment as if it would go to his sword hilt. Hanya lay naked over the bed below him, his weaponry hanging over the footboard with his clothes out of his reach, his blue eyes clouded with tears. Dar turned about and walked over to the table where they had chatted over breakfast and eaten some of their lunch, courteously avoiding asking about what troop the other served in, continuing to assume each other was from Iarve even though it had gradually become clear that this could not be the case. Dar Vaie's head was like a frozen block, on the top of which only a few stupid irrelevant thoughts could slip and slide. "Oh Sixth H'las," he said in a light bright voice. "Your Commander is young el Gaiel van H'las. They say he is a tip-top strategic mind." "Um, yes," Hanya replied, staring at him with tear-filled blue eyes. "The chain of command in H'las is centred on duty of care to the men and juniors," Dar Vaie burbled on. "How fortunate you are to be serving in such conditions," that lovely gentle assertive baby Lieutenant, how far he was going to rise in such a chain of command. "My ... my friend," Dar said huskily, "my brother officer el Maien van Sietter was always a great admirer of the structure of the chain of command in H'las. And of the skills of el Gaiel van H'las, even though ... their families have of course long been sworn enemies." There was nothing that could be said to this and Hanya only lay naked on the bed staring at him from tear-filled cloudy blue eyes. "Hear me, my dear," Dar said softly. "I am no baby Lieutenant who can play with the enemy and get off with a caution. I am a commanding officer and ... I am pinned to go up to strategic. Do you understand? They have begun to say that if el Maien cannot come back and be the Lord General they will take me up to consider me for Major General, especially because I was Commander-Lord Clair el Maien's junior and they know I am bound to his heart, as are we all who were his juniors. I cannot be getting letters off some ... piece of trimming I tripped over from H'las." The tears spilled suddenly from Hanya's blue eyes down his soft cheeks, over his quivering warm red lips, into the soft blond stubble on his jaw. "We ... we are not at war now!" he sobbed. "Angels' sake!" Dar sprang out of the chair with his face twisted with anger and bitter frustration. "van Sietter and van H'las have met four times now without striking an accord! It is only a matter of time. van H'las would have to make up a political strategy worthy of my friend el Maien's twisting brain to stop that old snake van Sietter shuffling him into war!" Hanya only sobbed and held a pleading big hand out. Dar crossed rapidly to him but the hand he laid on the velvet blond head of his lover and his enemy was caressingly gentle. "My sweetheart," he said huskily. "I am a veteran of Shier Bridge. What do your brother officers say of us Sietter who fought for Clair el Maien's banner on that day? We tore the lives out of two whole H'las troops using the bloody Vashin Bird -- Angels of Hell! V-Vashin!" he had gone white and had started trembling, he bit his lip hard to force the anguished sobs back in his tight throat. "Th-they say what skill el Maien showed, to defeat two troops with only one at his back," Hanya sobbed, "and what honour -- to go to court and beg for peace for us all, Sietter and H'las alike, instead of pushing on down to conquer H'las off the back of his victory." "Push on down to H'las!" Dar Vaie repeated incredulously. "Three quarters of the troop in one grave, the rest carrying serious injury and the Commander so wounded in his mind, so stricken with what we made him do to give him the victory that he never lifted his arm the signal to a troop again! A-Angels of Hell! Pale bloody Angels of Hell!" He got up away from the sobbing H'las officer lying on the bed where they had fondled every part of each other's bodies and strode away to the door. He left Lieutenant Hanya Lein sobbing over the bed, almost ran down the stairs in a cotton shirt stained with Hanya's cum, calling angrily for his bill of fare. He threw money at the counter while they were trying to write it out for him, too much, what did he care. He stormed out into the sunny afternoon and started striding up the dusty road towards his troop's encampment. Those bloody merchants, they went everywhere, sneaking all over the country like rats undertaking their grubby trading activities. If he had only had the sense to fall in love with some aristo there would have been none of this, 'oh I am from another region visiting my uncle and aunt in Iarve'. Should have stayed hung about Tashka el Maien's heart, no chance of a wretched affair with Tashka, he would have been safe, safe from this dreadful heartbreak. Oh the butter blond velvet head, the big soft muscular chest, the gentle fingers squeezing his buttock, the blue eyes lifting with that limpid open loving gaze. Oh Hanya, Hanya! He spun on his heel and ran back to the hotel, ran up the stairs ignoring the astonished stares of the hotel staff -- damnation, they had already been overpaid had they not. Hanya sat up on the bed as he burst back into the room, Dar's face was white and his grey eyes fierce with the horror of what he had been through in the war with Hanya's brother officers and men. Dar Vaie came over and seized Hanya as roughly as he had once been seized himself by a brutal Sietter General, he spun Hanya's big soft muscled body about and jerked his knees between Hanya's to force them apart, holding Hanya down on the bed with an hard hand on the back of his neck. Hanya was still crying, partly with fear now. He knew what was coming to him but he lay unresisting under Dar's strong hard hands for the brief moment while Dar dragged his buttons open and shoved a condom on. Hanya's arse was still moist from the pleasures of their lunchtime fucking but he gave a little scream of pain when Dar fucked him hard with a rock-hard cock straight down, deep down into him, holding him down with an hand on the back of his neck, holding his knees apart with firm knees. Every time Dar shoved into him, grunting with rage and despair, Hanya gave a moan, Dar could not tell if it was with pleasure or pain and he did not care. The buckle of his sword belt was sticking into Hanya's big buttocks as he thrust down into him and then he came in teeth-gritting rage and despair. He fell across Hanya's broad back and burst into tears, white and trembling and sobbing like he had been after Shier Bridge -- the last time he saw Tashka el Maien, who had been too young to take to war but who had to come back and pull them together, the shattered remnants of Fourth Sietter, and lead them away from the field of dreadful victory because the Commander had lost his mind to his grief. Dar lay sobbing over the back of an H'las soldier like the soldiers he had slaughtered that day, not even noticing that one of them had slashed the knuckles of his left hand until the battle was done with. He lay grieving desperately for the loss of one thousand four hundred and fifty-nine men; the loss of ten merry-eyed bright young Lieutenants -- he lost all four of his own Lieutenants that day; the loss of Captain-Sir Hanya Vashin, the ice-eyed laughing pattern of military perfection who designed a strategy to give the Commander victory and lost his own life in it, throwing himself in the way of an H'las spear aimed at the Commander's heart. Hanya had turned over under him and clasped him close in strong arms, he lay sobbing with huge heaving gasps in the tender embrace of a soldier who was exactly like one thousand eight hundred and seventy-six strong brave kind-hearted H'las soldiers who fell before the cold-hearted brilliance of the Fourth Sietter officers and their horrifically elegant strategy the Vashin bird. An Honourable Slut --- Oh my heart, my darling, my lover. Gently then, softly. Put your finger there, oh yes, press me, press me! Hold my head, hold my shoulder, hold my buttock, hold my hand. Put your finger in my mouth, put your mouth to my mouth, put your sex to my mouth, my sweetheart. Lay your body by my body, lay your legs between my legs, lay your mouth to my mouth and fuck me tender in the night. Hold me, hold me, fuck me tender, give it, give it, your favour, your pleasure to my pleasured body, fuck me, hold me, love me, my lover, my heart. --- "Thy time for my allegiance." "Enter," said the familiar warm husky voice. As Hanya Lein lifted the entrance flap of his Captain's tent, he could not forbear to smile into the exquisite slanted blue eyes that were lifted to him in query, one eyebrow raised, a smile perched on the rose-petal lips. The close-cropped dark-haired head gave a toss and Hanya's adored Captain, Tashka Maien, got up from his box-desk and stretched out his long lean muscular body in the double-breasted black cotton uniform with blue details of an H'las soldier. He looked devastatingly attractive in the black uniform with the blue of the details picking up the blue of his eyes but Hanya Lein had never thought about this, since Captain Maien was his senior. "What is it, Lein?" the Captain enquired lazily. "You cannot have got in a tangle with the provisions only one day back off leave." "Oh no, sir," Hanya assured him hurriedly. "I have something that I must ... I need your advice." He stood staring anxiously into the warm smiling face of his Captain, his big fingers came twisting together. "About ... a matter of the heart." His head shone golden in the sunshine above his big muscular body in the black and blue uniform with the silver Lieutenant's buttons, his thigh length black boots shone like his buttons to the standard the Captain insisted on. "Oh dear," Tashka said in a surprised voice. "Fallen in love with an enemy officer while on leave, is it?" He laughed heartily then he stopped laughing and said ruefully, "Lein, what in Hell .... C'mon in then and have a bowl of wine with me and tell me all about it." Hanya stepped into the warm interior of the Captain's tent and sat down on the bedding made up into a couch while Tashka poured out two bowls of wine and brought his folding chair over. Tashka sat with one ankle on his knee and the scarred fingers of his right hand clasped about his ankle, listening intently to Hanya's hesitant, blushing, shy confession of how the affair had come about and how the Sietter Commander had suggested they correspond through Hanya's aunt in Iarve if she would be willing to forward their letters to each other and had sworn Hanya to secrecy but Hanya bethought him that although he did not want to get his lover into any trouble, this was not strictly according to the code of honour. They were not at war with Sietter now, he pointed out anxiously. Perhaps an accord might be reached and ties made across the military of the two regions with cross-regional placements of officers and troops being sent out to campaign together. People were saying the el Gaiels van H'las ought to get the younger el Maien to serve under their own Commander, Lord Vadya el Gaiel van H'las, to make a tie. The younger el Maien was Dar Vaie's own brother officer. The Captain started as he said this and spilt some of his wine. He said in an annoyed tone, "Angels! look at this mark on my boot now. Give me that cloth, Lein. Um," he added in a careless voice while rubbing at his own highly polished thigh length black army boot, "I was not paying due attention just then, Lein. What did you say is the name of this Sietter scum who has um, behaved to you with such dishonour?" Captain Maien was a pale Angel for presentation so Hanya was not surprised that he had been distracted by the appalling awfulness of having spilt something on his boot. "Dar Vaie, sir," he said. "Commander-Sir Dar Vaie of Tenth Sietter." He was worried when he heard the Captain talking so fiercely about Dar's behaviour as dishonourable. Tashka Maien was honour itself and a terrifying killer in the duel. There was no saying what he would do to someone whom he considered had stained the honour of one of his junior officers. He had not long back fought and killed some stupid fool who had suggested that he was too close to the Commander for decency and those scars on his right hand were said to have been picked up in a disreputable tavern brawl which he himself had provoked by punching out Commander-Lord Tarra el V'lair van Athagine. Nobody could imagine what Tashka Maien could possibly have against that louche member of the high nobility and if anything were said about it to Tashka he looked so dangerous that everyone shut it straight. However there was a lurking twinkle in Tashka's slanted blue eyes in the close-cropped dark-haired head that turned to look sidelong at Hanya. "My dear," the Captain said in an unusually gentle voice. "This man is .... Do you know much about him? Do you expect him to be true to your heart and body?" "Oh no," Hanya replied with a sudden giggle. "He is a slut of the first order, sir! but he has promised it me not to wave it in my face and I am content. Not much chance of that," he said mournfully, "the way things are between Sietter and ourselves. I shall be amazed if he even bothers to write very often," he said with a sigh, "although I know he does like me. He told me he would not have much time to spare for letters although he said I might write to him as often as I pleased," he sighed wistfully. "An honourable slut, eh," the Captain said softly. "What an Angel. And you, my dear," he said, swinging a suddenly intent and highly amused blue gaze onto his Lieutenant, "have succeeded in pinning the heart of ... this Sietter slut." He gave a wicked snigger, salacious and dirty, back in his nose. "Well now, Lein," he went on more briskly. "We are not at war with Sietter just now and as you say, perhaps an accord may be reached and the sworn Lord of Sietter's younger son may even come to serve under our own Commander," his blue eyes gleamed softly as he spoke about their senior officer, in a manner which rather justified accusations of an overly close affection between them. "Your heart is only my business in so far as no one makes any stain on your honour, Lein. You have done what is proper in telling me of this matter and what I suggest is that I write a sealed privy report to be put in your file back in Halla outlining the details and saying I have let the matter pass. It is not for us to say whether your aunt in Iarve may have an affectionate correspondence with you." His slanted blue eye, vivid with laughter, lifted to the round blue eyes of a baby Lieutenant hardly daring to hope. "There are a two-three letters here for you already," he added, getting up and going back to his box-desk where he had been sorting the post when Hanya called for his attention. "What a loving aunt you have, to be writing so soon after seeing you!" he made that dirty snigger back in his nose as he handed a starry-eyed Hanya two sealed packets of paper. --- My heart, my heart's heart, my heart's home, Write it me and tell me how your journey passed. Was it a long ride you had out to your troop's encampment? -- although you must not be telling me where you might be practising the summer manoeuvres now, my dear. You do not want to be getting us hung for spying on each other inefficiently. Press this paper to your lips, to your heart, to some other part of your body as I am doing and allow me to dream that through this means I come close to touching you. Write it me soon, I beg it of you, to tell it me you will not give the go-by to that man who is so happy in his heart to call himself, your slut, your lover, your sweet heart Dar Vaie.