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A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 01

By: NaokoSmith



Copyright © 2015 Naoko Smith

This is a re-edited version of Chapter 1. (I added to the chapter, and also cut it in half and put half after Chapter 2.) Thank you so much for the feedback, which I'm working hard to take on board. 

Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.) 

Lady Arianna el Jien van Sietter opened her round blue eyes and stared dreamily at the cool early morning light dancing on her ceiling. Her windows were open, the shutters back and a light breeze lifted the muslin curtains against the exquisitely painted heavier curtains which she had neglected to draw over her windows the previous night. 

Arianna lay with her large creamy breasts rolling free in the white lacy linen of her nightdress. Her blue eyes were clear beneath soft lids, her face warm and sleepy, her big body loose-limbed in the big bed. 

She was still feeling sleepy so instead of reaching for the scroll she was currently working through, she snuggled back into her pillows, allowing a hand to creep over one big hip. She pulled at the linen covering her legs and fingered the soft warm flesh of her thigh. Slowly her own fingers came caressing her sex, poking through the short curled hair, parting the labia to find the soft wetness of the vulva and the excitable bump of flesh that was her clitoris. She fingered herself dreamily, going through images of a faceless man who might make love to her in ways she thought were so outrageous that she began blushing alone in her own bed. 

But then she felt the yearning rising in her soft belly for the actual pressure of another body to her body, someone-else's hand to explore her sex (shyly she wriggled and blushed). She thought how no man seemed interested and became sad. She lost the wish to pleasure herself in the longing for someone-else to share pleasure. 

Now she was not even in the mood for her favourite fantasy: the one in which she pictured two lean and hard-muscled young men enjoying each other's bodies -- one of them in military uniform! This totally inappropriate scenario could make her so excited it had surprisingly satisfying results. 

Her brain started fretting about the housekeeping. 'Flour is so expensive, the accounts are out of balance. Clair must ask van Sietter for more money. Again! Such folly. van H'las is seeking an agreement that will free up trade and make wheat cheaper. If wheat is cheaper, surely the housekeeping budget will balance. If I am fretting over the price of wheat, what must the poor be feeling for it? van Sietter must heed the calls of the merchants this time and answer van H'las' appeals for accord.... Angels! I may as well get up.' 

Arianna flung back the embroidered bedsheets and soft silk quilted covers and slid out of the comfortable hollow of warmth her body had made in the night. She reached up over her head and stretched her plump curving body in her lace and linen nightdress. Her arms stretched, her fingers spreading out, her eyes closed and her jaw stretched in a long yawn. Through the thin white cloth of her summer nightdress showed her milk-white waist and her back, her large breasts and her wide hips. Her warm body was as taut as a bow then she let herself go into her day. 

She flung the white lace dressing-gown matching her nightdress around her shoulders and walked quickly out onto the open veranda around the inner courtyard of the family quarters. Strong white sunlight was falling into the leafy shade of the flowerbeds and the sparkling drops of a fountain dancing under the old pear tree. 

Down the veranda all the bedroom doors were latched. Her father by marriage Lord van Sietter lived with his second wife, a Vilandian Princess, in a new palace he had built himself over the hills in the town of Arventa. Arianna had no idea where her husband currently was and she tried not to care. Her brother by marriage Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter was out on summer manoeuvres. 

Gently Arianna opened the door opposite her own. Light fell dimly in the nursery through the curtains patterned with dancing animals. She went to the little bed and stooped over, her face suddenly golden warm with tenderness. 

Arkyll was still asleep. He had black curling hair like Clair's, his sturdy bone structure was from Arianna and his whole face was so mixed between her features and Clair's that you could not say whom he resembled. Only when he cried, the tears welling up in his exquisite slanted blue eyes, he looked like his Uncle Tashka. 

Arianna left him sleeping and went back to her room where her maid-servant was laying out a pretty blue and white frock on a chair. Arianna caught sight of a faded cotton dress tossed on the bed and picked it up with a fond smile. "Oh um, that dress," Lisette said, "I was about to give it away ...." Lady Arianna said: "I am only going about the kitchens and whatever, this will do." She pressed the soft old cotton affectionately to her cheek. Lisette turned her head down with a rueful grimace. 

Arianna sat down at the beautiful inlaid dressing table that had been her husband's wedding present to her. It was very elegant, someone had made an excellent choice of it for him. Her eyes slid to a pile of scrolls which lay to one side, pushing some delicate glass perfume flasks out of their place. She edged one of the scrolls further down round its wooden baton. Lisette made a grumble because she had moved her head and she frowned into the looking glass. An unattractive motionless pale visage frowned back at her. No wonder the men let her alone, what man would be interested in such a face? As Lisette finished, Arianna turned her head and smiled; her face broke suddenly into a mobile loveliness sweet as the summer dawn. The maid-servant could not forbear to lean closer to her, before leaning hurriedly away again. 

Passing from the corridors into the big entrance hall, Arianna saw that the castle doors were open. She went through the dim echoing space out into the daylight and stood on the broad top step, with the new ramp on her left running down the side of the steps. 

She always felt bad at heart when she saw the ramp. Her husband had wanted it built for soldiers he brought back from the war who were now in wheelchairs but the work was delayed for several months because Lord van Sietter quibbled over the cost. Arianna felt guilty that it had taken her so long to understand what was to do. Her brother by marriage Tashka had finally brought the problem to her attention, then she had made the money surreptitiously available for the ramp from her own finances. She felt it that her quarrel with Clair had caused her to ignore what it was he was about with this and other projects for those of his people who were in need. 

Early morning light fell brightly over the cobbled courtyard. They were opening up the castle gates. Arianna saw through the gates the road from the castle running into the rolling low hills to the left, splitting to the right to go down to Sietter town. 

Through hills now green with summer, the River Arven carved out the passage that was the Maier Pass. Flowing down to the river port Paviat on the border with H'las and Vail, the snow-fed river which started as tumbling streams in the Northern Mountains, ran on to the sea at Port H'las. Arianna looked to the West, where the Maier Pass led to Arventa and to court. 

Far to the South lay her childhood home Iarve, through many other regions; so far that it was easier to bring goods from Iarve across the sea and up the Maier Pass to Sietter and thence to court. Arianna thought of all the regions scattered between the fields of Iarve and the hills of Sietter, through which the merchants wove their webs of industry and trade. She thought of the bickering aristocrats bound together by marriages, of her own marriage which had brought the sunny lands of Iarve rich in wheat and flax and silk into accord with Sietter, with its weaving factories on the plains in the town of Arventa. 

Arianna thought of the disastrous collapse of van Sietter's marriage to Lady Anastelle el F'lara. Lady el F'lara came down the river from the harsh rocky territory of the Northern mountains to live in these quiet hills. People did not of course speak of her in Castle Sietter but Arianna had heard whispers at court of how this seemingly perfect Lady had finished by flouting the code of honour in spectacular fashion. The scandalous breaking of her marriage threatened the bond between the V'ta region and Sietter. There was some extraordinary demand the el F'lara family were still making about which even her brother by marriage would say casually: "it is the Northern code, my dear." Arianna knew better than to interfere: a mere younger child, a woman to be moved about like a chess piece, not choose what part she might play in the game. Her lip curled. At least by remaining a chaste maiden in her husband's castle, she was not threatening political relations between her home and her marital regions. Yet. 

She looked to the East where the scattered regions were not in secure alliance: the grassy plains of Vail, the woodland and fields of Thiel and the vineyards of Athagine. Her own first cousin, the young Lord who would inherit Vail, had served alongside Clair and Tashka el Maien: brother officers, but this close bond of honour was undermined by her marriage. Her cousin had once hoped for her hand himself even though their families were already inter-married. He had cut his friendship with Clair although he remained intimately close to Tashka. 

The son of the infamous el V'lairs van Athagine was her husband's friend, they were reputed to hunt ladies together, but this was not enough to guarantee an accord in trade. High taxes on wines brought through Sietter from Athagine and Vail had led to bands of desperate smugglers roaming the hills. Arianna frowned as she thought of the dwindling numbers of flotillas of barges and caravans of horses travelling the Arven River and Maier Pass, of trade driven to the long overland route through other regions instead of coming the easier route to court from the port cities in H'las because the high taxes and costs of security made the Maier Pass too expensive. 

Arianna's frown hardened. She turned from the view of the rolling low Sietter hills, bitterness clouding her blue eyes. She had heard it said that Tarra el V'lair van Athagine refused to offer Clair el Maien a glove for spending the night with his then wife, he said would offer it to his wife for taking up time he could have spent with his friend. That was not the worst of the stories told about el V'lair and el Maien and their play in the pink-fingered set at court. But those other stories did not involve a Lady of great beauty and high intelligence, who had escaped a tyrannical marriage arrangement and gone back to her home region to re-marry happily and resume her interests in poetry and literature. 

Poetry! what was that. Did it feed the poor? Could it address the violence which Arianna was obliged to witness between the menfolk of the high nobility. If it was not warfare, it was duelling. They lived in a web of violence as the merchants lived in a web of trade. There was barely a Lord she knew of who was not scarred by it: her own younger brother had had his face and one leg completely ruined by wardogs in a peacetime exercise. Here in Sietter she was in the worst of it, there were so many men who had come back from the war with H'las devastated in body and mind. Guiltily she looked over at the ramp down the side of the steps again. 

Even a brief friendship she had once enjoyed had been brutally ended when her husband challenged el Parva van Selaine over a poem foolishly dedicated to herself. That was what poetry did, it led to some silly young man being slashed in the face for the sake of a code of honour that brought neither profit nor prosperity. Honour! What was honour? Arianna flattered herself she was at the least of it no stupid languishing poet to believe her husband might do such a terrible thing out of love. Her upper lip curled in scorn as she turned back into the big echoing entrance hall. 

Then she smiled indulgently, seeing the two footmen who used wheelchairs racing each other through to the kitchens. They braked sharply on seeing her, nearly shooting the trays of crockery on their laps onto the stone floor. 

She loved to see the two young men enjoying themselves and only shook her head, going to walk with them to the stone-flagged kitchens. She rested a hand on the shoulder of one of them as she went. 

The young footmen were so attentive, she often became fond of them and she hoped these two would stay since Clair had made careful provision for them in their wheeled chairs. Although of course if there were better opportunities for them elsewhere Clair ought to encourage them. The stable-maids too. It was surprising how many of them he would suddenly call to the offices to interview when he came home. They would sidle surreptitiously in the library and say, My Lady, my Lord has found me a better position, looking wistfully into her face as if they would miss saddling up Sweetheart for her and accompanying her out in the hills. 

The footman's muscular shoulder was firm under her hand. She gave it a friendly squeeze. 

The footman turned his head to his colleague with a sly grin. His colleague made a hideous grimace back, Angels' sake! the Commander's Lady wife! what are you thinking?  The footman enjoying the pressure of Lady Arianna's hand on his shoulder only grinned again, Well? she would not be the first to look down the social classes for her pleasures. In this very castle ... eh?  Although he knew if he said it aloud the older servants would become angry and find ways to punish him without Lord Clair or Lord Tashka having to hear that he had thrown that scandal about. 

He would not even hint at the gossip about Lord Clair himself which my Lord's personal men-servants sometimes let slip. His colleague had been a soldier in Lord Clair's troop and would never tolerate a word against his former Commander. 

The footman slid his eyes surreptitiously at Lady Arianna in her faded frock. It did not make the most of her considerable charms, it was like something the kitchen maids would wear but although it was not becoming it made her seem accessible to flirtation, especially when she smiled that warm curve of the full sweet red mouth at you. He was even contemplating putting his hand over hers when she took her hand away. She went ahead into the kitchens with the faded cotton swinging around those wide hips that must surely be so soft for a man to sink himself between. 

The other footman jostled his wheels as he pushed into the kitchens. He sniggered slily and wistfully. The head cook glared at the two of them. They both blushed. 

The head cook turned back to Lady el Jien. She was asking if there might be some recipe for cakes for the Knights' and Dames' reception which did not use too much flour, he made an indulgent smile. 

'The waste of it,' Arianna thought with a sigh. A waste of precious wheat and sugar, just to make some formal polite occasion at which the lesser aristocracy could ask her to use the van Sietter powers to secure them advantageous positions at court or in the regional army. A waste of her time too, which could have been spent on much more deserving projects than promoting the flirtation and inter-marriage of their daughters and sons. When she thought of the sensible hard-working mercantile and farming classes, even of the impoverished weavers, shopkeepers, lesser trades people who could not get near to ask for the help she longed to give them, it made her feel quite frozen cold with the injustice of it. If she had been an oldest child to rule her own region, with a counter to throw in the votes at the King's Councils, instead of a younger child bestowed away elsewhere, what would she not have done ....

A footman was approaching with a single letter on a tray; it must be urgent, then Arianna saw it had van Sietter's seal on it. She frowned anxiously. Her father by marriage would not be writing to some mere younger child about urgent political business, but his rare letters to her were invariably a fore-runner to an even more bitter discord than normal between the members of the el Maien family. 

There was a commotion at the door and little Lord Arkyll bounded into the room, still wearing his nightshirt. Lady el Jien's face flushed up with pleasure. The cooks all smiled, although unlike the footmen, they turned their eyes politely aside from the pink and white maternal beauty of the future sworn Lady. She held out her arms to Arkyll who leapt into her lap and snuggled into her soft big breast. His nursery-maid was coming after him scolding. Arianna laughed and only said: "Wills't change after breaking your fast, my cherub? Wills't go with Ria then to school?" 

"Oh yes," Arkyll said. His nursery-maid looked sceptical. 

Since he was with his mother, Arkyll took the opportunity to help himself to chocolate pastries instead of something more nourishing. Arianna turned to break the seal on her letter. 

It began with some pompous preliminary lies about van Sietter's concern for her health before going on to instruct her that he would be visiting Castle Sietter with some guests. 'Why does he write to me, not to Clair?' Arianna thought in nervous irritation. 'Whom has he invited, why has he not given their names? Puh!' 

"Is it from papa?" Arkyll demanded hopefully, seeing the frown on her face. 

"No, my Angel," Arianna said absently, showing him the back of the letter. "Mays't read here, it is not papa's name, is it?" 

Arkyll looked at the crabbed black writing and shrugged with a grin. He had started school but he was forever sneaking away to play close to his mother so he had not learnt his letters. 

Arianna's angry blue eyes flicked on to read that her husband was being dragged back to her. van Sietter was of course only telling her this so he could protest how firmly he had told Clair he should spend more time with her, insinuating that Clair was reluctant to come. Arianna paid this no heed, she knew Clair was never reluctant to come home to Arkyll. 

... I have also written to tell the Lady Anastelle I expect to see her when I arrive in one week, and I hope she has shown the courtesy to write you and let you know she will be coming which she has not shown me. I prithou write it to me with despatch what her answer has been ... 

At this, Arianna's warm red mouth fell wide open. She stared at the cramped small letters penned on the paper. Her round blue eyes crumpled in an anxious frown and her lips moved to repeat the words to herself in disbelief. 'Whatever is he playing at?' she wondered. 

She rose from the table. Taking Arkyll's little hand in her own, she said: "We must light a candle for Uncle Tashka, sweet heart." Arkyll came trotting willingly with her, much preferring to go down the corridors to the chapel to having to dress and go to school. She would let him light the candle himself, which was exciting. If he made sufficient fuss she would let him light candles for Uncle Tashka to each of the thirteen Angels, so that Uncle Tashka might have all the dark Angels to watch over him, and then one more for the hero Baya who threw down the pale Angel. 

Uncle Tashka could wrestle like Baya and duel even better than Baya! better than anyone. Uncle Tashka was so great a military intelligence, and so handsome, that they had called he and his fellow Lieutenants the Angels when they served together under Arkyll's father in his troop. His father too was a famous blade and commanding officer, although when people told Arkyll about his heroic action in battle and his much admired adherence to the code of honour, it made his mother cross.

A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 02



Copyright © 2015 Naoko Smith

This is a re-edited version of Chapter 2. I cut half of Chapter 1 and turned it into a new Chapter 3, so I've been obliged to put it in at the end of this chapter. (Chapter 3 is now Chapter 4, etc etc.) 

Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.) 

"Thy time for my allegiance!" shouted a husky warm voice outside the tent. 

Commander-Lord Vadya el Gaiel van H'las stirred one arm in the soapy water of the tin bathtub and sat up, his broad shoulders and muscular chest with the keloid scars across his brown ribs, his narrow hips surging out of the wash lapping down over his genitals. His big cock and balls floated softly in the water, flaccid against the clearly delineated muscles of his strong thigh. He reached out towards his manservant Batren, who was standing by with the towels. 

He had recognised the voice as that of one of his Captains, Tashka Maien, and he shouted casually: "Enter!" 

The entrance flap was gripped in thin scarred fingers which flung it back and a head of dark hair close-cropped in severe military style leaned into the tent. A tall muscular body was coming after with one long leg poised to step inside. 

Slanted blue eyes in the clear tanned face of a ridiculously pretty young officer looked straight into Vadya's brown eyes. Tashka's gaze moved down Vadya's muscular brown legs sprawling out of the tin bathtub in the middle of the red and black carpets, then up to his chest with the scars and black hairs on it, then down to his balls and cock floating in the bath water. The blush went suddenly hot and red up his tanned cheeks, his rose-petal mouth bunched in a stutter. Tashka turned shyly downwards the exquisite blue eyes that cast a heartbreaking Northern beauty into his face. 

'What a schoolgirl!' Vadya thought with a grin. He threw a wet flannel, catching Tashka round the head. Tashka jumped and looked up through his lashes at his naked soapy Commander with an embarrassed smirk. He muttered something about Lieutenant-Lord el Darien and an extra guard on the woods side of the camp and disappeared in such a rush that he barely stamped out the ritual steps of the junior leaving the senior H'las officer. 

Vadya laughed and made imitation trumpet noises of retreat, lounging back in his bath. 

He was not particularly handsome but he was a fit young man with broad shoulders and narrow hips. His sweetness of character showed in the kind smile that often came over his generous big mouth. He was a good prospect for any younger daughter of the high nobility, sprawled in the bathtub in his tent, the strength of his muscular shoulders and thighs offset by a gentle heart and courteous disposition. 

In describing his virtues his father had not mentioned the magnitude of his masculinity. Vadya himself had never much considered it. He had not had many lovers. The main relationship of his life thus far had been with a woman who was not interested in the size of what she occasionally enjoyed so much as the gentle affection of his heart. A spirited young Lady of the high nobility with a bright reputation had once said to him: "da-arling, what an horse you are!" but the modest young Lord el Gaiel had only supposed she was trying to flatter him into more of her interesting activities. 

He lay sniggering in the warm water, splashing with big weapons-hardened hands -- which were frequently admired for their delicate skill on the horses' reins -- so that the water flowed about his hips and his thighs and his flaccid cock and balls. 

He felt vaguely surprised; Tashka Maien was infamous for the disgusting stories he would come out with on night-sentry duty by the fire. 

The tent-flaps through which Tashka had departed so abruptly fluttered in a light breeze, Vadya stared lazily out. Beyond the troop on almost every side he saw the pale grassy plains stretched in shimmering waves to the milky blue of the horizon. The campsite Vadya had chosen was on a long shallow hillside, near some leafy green woods but not near enough that the woods could become a hazard. A small river flowed below, convenient for washing and for watering the horses. It made a pleasant constant babble behind the fluctuating level of the troop's noise. You heard it clearly in the still watches of the night, in the middle of practising some manoeuvre it might disappear in the jingle of harness and weaponry, the stamp of hoof and foot. Then it would be there again behind the shrill yells of the officers repeating orders to their men. 

The guard-posts, baggage wagons, tents and picket-lines of horses were laid out in an orderly way. The troop was well-set to defend itself against an enemy attack, or, more likely in the Vail plains where they were practising light summer manoeuvres, a practice raid by a friendly troop seeking to win a few cases of wine and some glory. 

There was another troop encamped nearby but unfortunately it was Ninth Vail, the play troop of the frivolous young Lordling of Vail, Pava el Jien. There would be no glory in springing a practice attack on Ninth Vail. Young Commander-Lord el Jien van Vail had been trained as an excellent field officer but these days he spent his time partying with visiting officer-aristocrats. He was Vadya's age and easy-going fun so Vadya was friends with him even though he had been an officer of Fourth Sietter, by the side of the el Maien van Sietter brothers. 

It was Pava who had recommended Tashka Maien to Vadya's notice and Tashka had asked if he might spend a couple of days with Pava. They were only trotting round the Vail plains as a kind of holiday, Vadya readily granted his request even though Tashka was about to go on extended leave. He said he would ride over to Ninth Vail's encampment with Tashka. 

By the time Tashka came back Vadya was outside his tent dressed in an elegant red silk doublet and breeches. He had tried to insist that jodhpurs and a plain shirt would be better for the ride over to Ninth Vail's encampment but his manservant Batren said, with that glazed obstinate expression that meant he would be willing to argue about it with you for a long time: "Captain Maien suggested you wear a suit." Vadya was sniffing at a bottle of wine, by his campaign table laid for dinner. He noticed that Tashka was looking particularly attractive in a dark blue silk that matched his eyes, with a lot of lace at the collar and cuffs of his cream silk shirt and a large pearl and diamond drop earring in his ear. Vadya felt an uncomfortable swelling in his underpants which he ignored (luckily his breeches were loose around the groin). He hoped with a qualm that nobody in Ninth Vail would mistake Tashka's elegance and offer him insulting attentions. 

Tashka was apparently still embarrassed about having walked in on his commanding officer in the bath. He grumbled, "you have no shame," as he flung himself into a folding canvas chair. He set one black booted ankle on the other blue silk-clad knee, his lovely features crumpled in a frown. 

Vadya burst out laughing. "Holy Angels!" he said. "What need has a soldier of shame?" 

"Give me some of that Athagine," Tashka replied crossly. 

Vadya thought of one particular story of Tashka's about a farmer's daughter and shook his head with a snigger. 

He poured Tashka a bowl of deep red wine, almost purple, heavy waves lapping at the white inside of the beautifully painted clay bowl, one of a set Tashka had given him. Tashka took the bowl, stared intently at the colour of the wine, smelt it and sighed. 

"My life for your banner," he said the casual toast slowly, looking warmly up into Vadya's brown eyes. Vadya knew he meant it. Tashka had risked his life to save Vadya's from a rearing horse. When they were caught in a disgusting little defile in the mountains in V'ta (which Vadya had insisted to lead them through although Tashka had said the steep cliff faces were a hazard), it was Tashka who broke out to fetch support from a nearby P'shan troop. 

Vadya smiled and raised his own bowl, saying: "My life for yours, my friend." He added: "That ... is a very fine suit." 

Tashka lifted his slanted blue eyes with a sparkling grin. "We cannot go and see el Jien wearing a dishcloth and the scrubbing brush," he sniggered. It was true that Pava el Jien van Vail was reputed to be particular about his wardrobe -- if not about his ladyfriends, but Vadya was surprised that a plain Captain Maien should be so familiar as to joke about it. Tashka was tilting his wine to and fro, laughing into it as if remembering ... what? el Jien van Vail had never been known to take a male lover that Vadya had heard of but Tashka was so pretty anyone could be excused casting a speculative eye on him. Except his senior officer, of course. 

"Thy time for my allegiance," it was one of Tashka's Lieutenants, one of the two aristocrats entrusted to his tender care. He was very new and stuttered over the appeal to the senior officer, looking at Tashka with adoring brown eyes in his plump brown face. He was still wearing his black cotton uniform with the blue details, tightly buttoned up to his collar, although all the other officers would have changed into casual clothes for the evening. 

Tashka straightened up in his chair and nodded. His eyes tightened up at the corners. 

"I will hear you, Lieutenant." 

Mada el Vaie van Soomara cast an anxious glance quickly at the Commander then looked at Tashka, soft and pleading like a puppy that only wants its ears tickled but it thinks it might get a kick instead. Tashka started to rise in his chair. Vadya had had his fill of the officers of the Second Quarter saying there was nothing wrong and yet always coming running to interrupt his dinners with Tashka, he cut in curtly: "Lieutenant, are you quite sure this is a matter requiring the Captain's attention." Tashka, poised halfway out of the chair, looked at him with that bland attentiveness which came over him when he had to submit to orders against his wishes. 

el Vaie blushed and stuttered, shuffling his feet in the shining thigh-length black army boots which Tashka made his juniors keep polished to a standard the ceremonial First troop would have been proud of. "Well ... Hanya ... I mean Lieutenant Lein ... and Volka said,"

"Perhaps Lein and el Darien can help you resolve the matter," Vadya responded before Tashka could say anything. Out of the corner of his eye he could see his man-servant and a trooper standing with the trays of food in their hands. He felt that Tashka had eaten enough cold dinners and that the Lieutenants ought to have learned to manage by now. 

"Yes sir," Mada said. He saluted with a crisp flick of the hand, his thigh-length black army boots stamped out the ritual dancing steps of the H'las junior officer leaving his seniors. He turned to walk slowly back towards Second Quarter, scuffing with his boot at tufts of grass as he went. He looked like a puppy that wishes it had had a kick at least. 

"el Vaie is a butterfly-wits," Vadya grumbled. "I never should have asked for him." 

"He is just new," Tashka said in a careless tone of voice. "You had to ask for him, it was good politics. You wanted to renew the tie with Soomara." 

"Politics!" Vadya groaned, "and we are stuck with that butterfly-wits, never mind the letters off his sister demanding to know if we are keeping a sufficiently close eye over his honour. Maive el Vaie is in an affair with Pava el Jien, is she not?" He poured more wine into their bowls, keeping a close eye on Tashka. 

Tashka sniggered. "Maive is an honourable slut, of course she broke the affair but Pava is still dangling after her," he said. "She will come after you too if she gets the sniff of a chance. She has had most of the oldest sons, she has a magnificent collection of their favours on her stocking top!" 

Vadya blushed. 

"Well, things could be worse," he said. "We may yet get the younger el Maien van Sietter placed with us! What a disgusting thought, eh." 

Tashka stopped sniggering and gave Vadya a quick look from those slanted blue eyes in the face that had delicate bones and a heartbreaking Northern beauty. 

"I'll not put him in your Quarter if we get young el Maien," Vadya said considerately, "although I have heard he is an excellent strategic mind. He was Pava el Jien's baby Lieutenant, is it not? Do you know him?" 

"No," Tashka said. 

"You have enough trouble with that arrogant horse el Darien and that butterfly-wits! You do not need an el Maien van Sietter to add to your woes," Vadya said. 

"Mada is just new," Tashka insisted, "he needs time is all." 

"Rather your time than mine," Vadya grunted. 

"My time for his allegiance," Tashka said wittily and gave Vadya a suddenly brilliant grin. His blue eyes rolled and sparkled, his whole face lit up with his humour then it suddenly fell into strained lines. There was a haunted look to his eyes and he swung his gaze shyly at Vadya with a pout to his rose-petal mouth as if he feared some tragedy coming his way. 

"Time for my allegiance!" A soldier shouted, running up to Tashka. "Sir! Lieutenant-Lord el Vaie and Lieutenant Lein are fighting, sir!" 

"Holy Hell!" Tashka chucked his exquisite bowl of fine Athagine wine aside onto the turf, sprang out of his chair and ran off across the camp, leaping over weapons, cooking utensils and seated troopers in his way. 

Vadya raced after Tashka across the mud and grass of the encampment, past troopers rising from the meals they were cooking to stare at them in astonishment. His muscular legs stretched out over the ground, he was desperately trying to catch up with the sprinting tall figure flying ahead of him. 'Angels of Hell!' he thought. 'Those stupid young cubs! I should have given him at the least of it one older Lieutenant. Papa said I ought to.' 

Tashka had rushed up to a straggling crowd of troopers in casually unbuttoned black and blue cotton tunics and was elbowing and kicking a way between them. Vadya tunnelled in his wake, the troopers reluctantly shuffling away on either side of him. Tashka was already jumping on the two men sprawled over the ground at their centre. 

The plump soft figure of Mada el Vaie, still in buttoned up summer uniform, was seated on top of a struggling big muscular figure in casual civilian gear. Hanya Lein was a battle-hardened young soldier who would ordinarily have had no difficulty in flooring the inexperienced el Vaie but as he came pushing past the bodies of the troopers, Vadya saw Mada el Vaie bring up a clenched right fist and send it smacking with rage into Hanya's butter blond head. Hanya's head jerked to the side, his big hands flying up to block Mada, reaching to try and grab at Mada at the same time. Mada's usually gentle brown face was staring with fury, his eyes wide and glaring. For the first time Vadya could see the military potential in him which had been promised by his letters of recommendation. 

Tashka grabbed Mada by the collar of his black tunic, dragged him off Hanya and flung him kicking and yelling to one side. Hanya sprang up, fists ready to the defence, and saw Tashka. He sank back on his heels, his fair head, cropped short at the back and sides, turning suddenly away. 

Vadya saw Flava Trait, the most experienced of Tashka's four Lieutenants, struggling to get through troopers who were half-heartedly impeding him. Volka el Darien was standing by with his arms ostentatiously folded on his thin chest, his face carefully expressionless. Flava gave a savage shove at one of the men blocking his way. 

Mada el Vaie was already trying to come at Hanya again as if he had not realised who the tall figure in dark blue silk was, crouched to defend Hanya. Flava Trait and one of the soldiers had to seize him by the arms and pull him aside, kicking and struggling. 

Tashka straightened up. Vadya saw the colour drain completely out of his face. His own heart had gone cold, he was remembering Tashka crouched to defend a fatally wounded young Lieutenant in that rocky defile in V'ta. Tashka's face went paler than the lace at his throat, it became a white-grey mask, his blue eyes blazed in it like lapis lazuli. Then the colour crept slowly back into his face, he turned round and faced Hanya Lein. 

Hanya was kneeling in the grass, his breath heaving raggedly in his chest and blood trickling from a cut by his eye. The blue cotton shirt he was wearing was torn, the hard clearly delineated muscles of his chest showing through. He suddenly dropped his head and began to pick at the rip in his shirt, his fingers shaking with adrenaline, fear, fury. 

Mada crumpled suddenly to the ground and started sobbing. Flava tried to put an arm around him but Mada beat his fellow Lieutenant's hand away, crying: "leave me be!" 

Tashka stooped down and rested one hand on Hanya's broad shoulder and Hanya's blond head flicked up to face Tashka's, barely six inches away. Tashka said: "How dare you bring your filthy politics to a fight in my Quarter!" 

Vadya gave an angry grunt. He looked past the troopers around him at Lieutenant-Lord Volka el Darien, who was staring away at the horizon, a satisfied set to his thin shoulders. 

Hanya's head twisted from side to side as if to escape Tashka's cold blue glare then he said in a strained high-pitched voice: "He struck me with 's glove!" 

Tashka straightened up and moved round to stand behind him, one hand still on his broad shoulder. "el Vaie!" his voice cracked out like ice breaking. Mada's dark close-curled head lifted and he struggled to stand up, his baby soft young face streaming with tears. "el Vaie," Tashka spoke slowly as if to someone who could barely understand. "Hanya is a merchant's son. His family are not in the habit of fighting duels." 

"I ... I ... I never thought!" Mada sobbed. "He is ... the same to me as Volka! If Volka s-said, if Volka said ...!" 

Tashka gripped his hand on Hanya's shoulder. Hanya looked up with pleading blue eyes into his Captain's cold blue eyes and said: "One of my men had some ... some pictures off one of his. I told him he ought to undertake an inspection of the troopers' bedding rolls, then el Darien said it was beneath his notice. I only said you would send him home to his sister if he were too lazy to do it." 

"That is not all!" Mada cried out. "He said, my 'honourable' sister!" 

Vadya screwed his face up. Tashka lifted his head to look into Vadya's eye in a brief blue flash of amusement. He turned back to Hanya and said, "Mada's sister's honour ... is shining bright." This was a somewhat loose account of the flamboyant Lady el Vaie van Soomara's reputation and the way he said it made this plain. "I will give the glove myself for the honour of young Lady van Soomara," he added sternly. Vadya could only imagine Lady el Vaie's delight and hilarity at this prospect, she would be bound to say she would rather have the favours of someone so gorgeous than his glove on behalf of her honour. 

Hanya turned red with embarrassment. "I ... never meant," he stammered. "Of course not," Tashka interrupted, he swung his gaze back to Mada el Vaie, saying: "Angels' sake, do you honestly suppose Lein, your brother officer, would tease you about your family in such a way?" Hanya Lein had retained a sweetness of heart in spite of his active battle experience. Tashka had frequently commended him for his good natured support of the younger Lieutenants. Mada's tearfilled brown eyes fell before the appeal in Hanya's embarrassed soft blue eyes. 

"You are a soldier now," Tashka said to Hanya. The stern note in his voice dissipated into the weary tone of someone bored with repeating the same thing over and over. "You cannot live by the politics of your family. el Vaie ought not to have offered you the glove, because he is your brother officer, but it was a matter of family honour so you ought to take it or submit." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 02



"They call me a shopkeeper!" Hanya burst out. He was still picking at his torn shirt to try to pull it over his big muscular chest. 

"That man who called Lieutenant Lein a shopkeeper, let him step forth," Tashka said, looking round at the soldiers with piercing cold blue eyes. 

There was a long pause, a rustling expectant dread passing though the troopers around Vadya. 

Lieutenant-Lord Volka el Darien van Trattai stepped into the space in what was now a tight circle of men and stood stiffly to attention with his legs apart and his hands loosely clasped behind his back. 

Tashka strode over to him and seized the cloth of his shirt, kicked him hard in the back of the legs. el Darien collapsed in his grip, hanging by his shirt from his Captain's fists. Vadya made an involuntary move towards them, thinking: 'Angels! what will van Trattai say of it if he hears an H'las Captain treated his son like this before the common troopers!' then he thought: 'I will give it him if he try to protest that we gave his son strict discipline, he can take Volka back.' He slunk partly behind a trooper so Volka could not see him and appeal to him above Tashka's fingers. Volka was clutching at Tashka's hard fists, scrabbling to get back to his feet, Tashka kicked him in the leg again and he hung still. 

"You bloody arrogant fool!" Tashka's low husky voice hissed. Vadya had to strain forward to hear him but all the troopers were hushed, their bowls of food and drink held quite still in their hands. "Do you think your father sent you here from your family's castles and lands and Knights and monies to insult my Lieutenant, my junior officer who is my honour, by flinging his family in his face?" Volka was shaking his head, still trying to keep himself up by clinging to Tashka's fists. "Do you think it is proper for a van Trattai?" Tashka demanded, "to come here and ruin the career of my officer? You got it in your blood perhaps, to be the kind of fine-laced officer who can do as he pleases, who can throw away the career of his brother officer like a toy he does not care for." He suddenly chucked Volka aside, Volka fell in the grass and mud and lay there with his head turned into the ground, his thin shoulders hunched up. 

Tashka walked back to stand behind Hanya, who had sunk down to kneel on one leg in the grass with his butter blond head bowed. One of Tashka's long lean legs in its knee-high black boot pressed into Hanya's big back, his hands were clasped behind his back. "This man is as my brother," he said in a voice like the first snow falling. "He is my Lieutenant and my soldier. He will die for my sword, an' I ask it. I am his life, his days, his fight. He is my care, my honour, my victory. If any man finds reason to hate him, he may hate me too." 

He looked at Mada sobbing at Flava's feet and Volka lying on the ground. "Trait," he said. "Break these men up, send them back to eat." He stood quite still while Flava dispersed the crowd of troopers, staring at the sky with his hands clasped behind his back and his leg pressed into Hanya Lein's shaking back. 

Vadya demanded: "How long has this been going on?" 

Tashka turned his face down and raised an eyebrow over one would be innocent slanted eye. His blue eye was as clear in his tanned pretty face as if he were being asked about the weather. "Has what been going on?" he enquired. "Shut it, el Vaie," he added savagely to the still sobbing Mada. 

"Maien," Vadya growled. "I cannot let pass a fight between two officers before the men." 

Hanya Lein scrambled to his feet. He set his big strong shoulders and said: "Sir, I should have borne it in mind; they are younger, they come under my eye as much as under the Captain's." 

Vadya said: "Lein, this will be a bar in the way of putting you up for your Captain's sword." Hanya looked stricken at Vadya, suddenly understanding that under the extraordinary control Tashka Maien exercised he might get equal treatment but that Commander-Lord el Gaiel van H'las would have to put the interests of two young aristocrats before his. Then Hanya gave a small shrug, his large soft mouth pouted out in an acquiescent smile that did not reach his tear-filled blue eyes. 

Beyond them in the curve of Flava Trait's arm Mada el Vaie gave a sudden horrified gasp. Vadya turned and deliberately looked hard into Mada's puppy-soft guilt-stricken face. Volka was still lying on the ground with his face hidden. Tashka stared at Vadya expressionless. 

"Maien, you may discuss this with me privily," Vadya said. 

He turned on his heel and walked away between the slowly dispersing soldiers. Tashka watched him go from an immobile face before walking over to Volka and kicking him in the back but not very hard. He snarled: "Stop sulking and get up. Are you going home to Trattai, el Darien, back to be a fancy Lieutenant in First Trattai where you will learn to prance your pony on parade in front of the fine ladies or do you intend to stay here with me?" Volka got slowly to his feet, his head still bowed down. "I swear it!" Tashka put a hand under his chin and jerked it up so Volka had to look him in the eyes, "if you ever show me up before the Commander again, you may as well pack your parade silks up to make cushion covers for your sweet virgin sister to embroider!" Volka looked quickly at him at the mention of his sister. Tashka smiled a horrible wolfish smile in his face. Volka looked to one side, biting his lip. "Will you give me your glove, then, el Darien?" Tashka asked softly, his blue eyes staring intently into Volka's brown eyes, that wolf's smile still on his mouth. "Will you give me your glove over lovely little Lady Ria, sitting and keeping her honour as bright as her embroidery needles?" Volka shook his head violently. 

"I'll see the Commander," Tashka said, standing back from Volka and dropping the wolfish smile abruptly. His slanted blue eyes looked coldly round at them all. "I will let you know what he has thought." He turned to go. Flava Trait tried to take his arm. Tashka paused at the grip of his hand then he turned back and put a lean scarred hand round the back of his Lieutenant's close-cropped head. He said softly: "Go to, my dear. I must go plead for the juniors with the Commander." He gripped his scarred right hand on the back of Flava's head before striding off. 

Vadya was sitting waiting at the campaign table, a rapidly cooling dinner laid out at his elbow. His face was set straight in front of him to look at the troopers of the First Quarter who were getting on in an orderly fashion with their camp-fires and cooking, the cleaning of weaponry or tack. His brown hair curled softly around his ear, his eye was quiet and decisive, the expression on his face was calm and attentive, his smooth brown brow was clear. He turned his head as Tashka came striding up to him. 

"Did I break that bowl?" Tashka asked, in a tone of voice as casual as if he had dropped it while going to check if the food was ready yet. 

Vadya looked into his slanted blue eyes, he had raised one eyebrow in a habitual expression of courteous, slightly mocking, inquiry. He sat back down in his chair with his ankle on his knee as if the whole incident had never happened. 

"How long has this been going on?" Vadya asked. His tone of voice was inflexible. 

Tashka heaved a sigh and gave Vadya a rueful grimace. He stretched his hand out to where his bowl was. Batren had picked it up and refilled it, he looked at it closely as if inspecting it for chips and took a sip of his wine. "Oh, ever since el Darien came," he admitted. 

"Did you honestly think it would escape my notice?" Vadya asked. 

Tashka shrugged. An impish sparkle flashed in his eye, like a child caught stealing jam out of the larder. It knows it will get a scolding but considers it has got away with it so many times that a mere scolding will be worth it. 

"Maien, I have thought," Vadya said (the senior officer's habitual way of introducing an order). "I will transfer Hanya Lein to another troop." 

At this Tashka sat motionless and silent. Vadya looked at his face, it was as if it had frozen in the impish smile with Tashka's slanted blue eyes turned to look down at the ground where he had so recently flung his Athagine wine. 

"It is not fair on Lein," Vadya went on although he knew that to justify his decision was a sign of weakness, "to ask him to put up with this nonsense. I cannot send el Darien back to Trattai. Hanya can go with a clean record and then he will have the chance to get his Captain's sword." 

"He was almost an Angel," Tashka murmured in a strange dreamy voice as if he were just talking to himself. "I did so love to hear of Vaie from him." He lifted his head and said: "It is done, sir. I prithou tell it to Lein yourself." The quiet rueful smile stayed frozen on his rose-petal mouth. 

Vadya signalled to his servant and told him to fetch Hanya. When Hanya came Tashka was sitting in his chair with his ankle on his knee and his face turned aside. Hanya stopped a few feet away, adopting the formal H'las stance with his legs apart and his hands loosely clasped behind his back. He had cleaned the blood from his face and from his butter blond hair cropped at the back and sides. He was still wearing a torn shirt, the muscles of his big smooth chest visible through the tear in the cloth. 

"I have thought," Vadya said to him. "You will go to another troop with a clean record and have the chance to get your Captain's sword." 

Hanya stared at him then looked at Tashka. Tashka made no move. The evening breeze riffled through Vadya's hair, it made Hanya's torn shirt flutter open to reveal his muscular chest again. 

"I am for Captain Maien," Hanya said in a voice suddenly husky with tears. "He is my life, my days, my fight. I beg you ... not send me to any other Captain." 

"Others vow and then change their Captain," Vadya said. 

"Not I," Hanya answered, "not after V'ta." 

"You will risk your Captain's sword to serve under this man?" Vadya persisted. 

"I am for him through Hell and through life," Hanya said. 

Tashka's blue eyes opened wide and he turned to stare into Hanya's blue eyes. It was an odd thing to say: the kind of silly vow baby Lieutenants make to each other, not something for a junior to say to a senior officer's face. Tashka and Hanya stared at each other. There was no expression on either of their faces. Nothing of the terror they had been through side by side in battle nor the pleasure of comrades who sit and talk for hours together. Then Tashka made a sudden intense smile, turned his head to Vadya and gave him a slantwise look that was more difficult to refuse because it managed not to be pleading. 

Vadya refused to look into Tashka's eyes. "What of the trouble you are getting from el Darien and el Vaie?" he asked Hanya. 

"What trouble?" Hanya said blandly. 

Vadya glared at him. "Lein," he said in a soft voice. "I have been pushed hard the day! Be warned. Will you forswear your family's politics to serve with these two as brother officers?" 

"I cannot help what I believe!" Hanya said tearfully. "The injustice ..." 

"Keep it out of the troop can you not?" Tashka interrupted in a rough-edged voice. "Believe what the Commander and I believe. We only believe in each other." 

Hanya looked at his Captain and said, "I believe in you and the Commander." 

"And el Darien?" Vadya asked. "Can you believe in him enough to defend him if it comes to it?" 

"Sir!" Tashka's voice rose in protest, he sat up straight in his chair putting both feet on the ground. "Lein has spent hours working with el Darien in our inspections and manoeuvres. You must not accuse him that he cannot set aside his private quarrels when it comes to the business of the troop." 

"I have heard," Vadya said. "Lein, you may stay with us although I will be keeping you under my eye. To Quarter." 

Hanya looked at Tashka again, Tashka flicked his head towards the Quarter. Hanya saluted crisply, did the little stamping steps of a H'las junior leaving his seniors and walked slowly away. 

"So," Vadya said, looking closely at Tashka. "He loves you, does he?" 

"Not in that way!" Tashka said fiercely, turning on Vadya with a look of insulted fury in his blue stare. "He is my junior officer!" 

"Oh. Yes," Vadya said. "Your pardon, Maien." He had felt sick at the thought of Tashka taking the big broad blond body of the handsome merchant's son in his lean strong arms. He had of course only felt like this because of the disgusting idea of a senior crossing his vow in sexual relations with a junior, it was a great relief to remember that Maien was so renowned for his adherence to the code of honour that the soldiers said he had it engraved on his heart. He was the least likely person in the entire army to go and snatch a favour off some junior officer. Or senior officer. 

"Lein already has a lover," Tashka said, with an odd smile. 

"I did not know," Vadya said in surprise. 

"Lein cannot see him very often," Tashka replied. Vadya looked a question but Tashka volunteered no more information. Not long after Lein had been commissioned, Tashka had submitted a privy report on him to his file back at the winter quarters but Vadya knew this could not be a matter that compromised Lein's honour in any way, Tashka would never have condoned it. "I had better withdraw my request for leave to see Pava," Tashka said with a rueful twist of his rose-petal mouth. 

"Maien," Vadya said. "You are not the only senior officer to Second Quarter. I think I am capable of managing the juniors in your absence," his tone was dry but not unsympathetic. "It is el Darien is it, who stirs up trouble?" 

Tashka turned those slanted blue eyes to him and they sat in silence for a moment then Tashka's face relaxed into an exasperated grimace. "You know already," he said with a sigh. "Hanya's family are among the most political of the Trossian merchants, they work to get influence in the King's Councils equal with the nobility. It was even a problem for Hanya that he wanted to be a soldier, at first they would not countenance it. This year trade has gone badly. They were used to give Hanya enough to keep matched horses but now he has to try to send money home. That makes it worse when el Darien teases him. el Darien is an arrogant fool and van Trattai has not just sent him here to make the tie with you. He knows that Volka was too much indulged by his mother and then in First Trattai. He hopes that being in an active campaigning troop will discipline the puppy. And sir, I swear it, I will discipline the puppy." His beautiful lip curled in a suddenly scornful snarl. "To be the future sworn Lord," he muttered, "and to behave in such a way to one who is a comrade in arms! How does he treat his servants and the poor of his region, do you suppose." 

Vadya listened with lifted eyebrows to what was true but would be regarded as an extraordinary piece of insolence coming from a simple H'las Captain about the future Lord of the strategically important region of Trattai. "Um, is Volka willing to stay with you after what you have treated him to?" he enquired. Tashka lifted his head and offered Vadya that wolfish smile. He did not need to say any more. All his juniors were hung on his sword. Yet Tashka was exceptionally hard on them. It was no good placing solid reliable Lieutenants of the kind the other Captains sought with him, he had eased out the two who had been in his Quarter when he arrived in the troop; courteously and cleverly but pretty quickly. He kept an eye out for bright rising stars and trained them on brilliantly but in spite of their efforts to avoid it, they got promoted away from him before they gained the experience to be able to adequately support him in the management of each others' flighty ways. 

"Sir, hear me," Tashka said in crisp decisive tones which belied the deference of his appeal. "I will make Lein and el Darien practice something together for at least an half hour each day. Not duelling! at first. el Darien will gain a better respect for Lein if he spend that time with him. You can give them the night-sentry duty for a week; together. You can give them a five mile run every day straight after if you wish but I do not recommend it." He spoke with an authority well beyond his position. "el Vaie had better be given some sort of punishment, make it a couple of runs out with the messengers -- he could do with the extra training. Maive will go sending him chocolate although Pava and I told her not to. Mind, Pava only has to tell Maive not to do whatever for her to go straight to it!" His blue eyes glinted in a sudden flash of humour. 

As usual Vadya nodded his agreement to what was virtually an ultimatum from his young Captain. He suddenly said: "Maien, I think you are nearly the perfect Captain." Tashka lifted a puzzled head to him, Vadya knew he was asking about the 'nearly'. "There is one fault that you have," Vadya went on. Tashka's eyes were suddenly liquid with fear. Vadya said: "You will not ask for my help." 

Tashka gave a curt laugh and looked down at the ground in silence. Around them, troopers called to the others of their Units as their dinners were prepared. The evening breeze wafted over Vadya's and Tashka's dinner, back towards Vadya's tent, where his servant was standing watching their food get cold with a scowl on his leathery face. 

"Why do you stay in Sixth H'las?" Vadya asked. "My father offered you your Commander's banner and double pay to go and work with him in the Generals' strategic staff. Why do you stay out here in the field managing the silly quarrels of an arrogant horse like el Darien van Trattai?" 

Tashka looked up and the corners of his mouth flicked up in a sudden intensely sweet smile. "My Commander," he said in a voice so soft and husky and tender that Vadya did not want anyone else to hear it, "I just like to be with you." He put both hands, the scarred and the unscarred, on Vadya's left hand, lifted it and, instead of brushing it on his forehead as a junior officer does when he swears allegiance, he pressed it to his cheek. 

Vadya looked into Tashka's exquisite slanted blue eyes with the ridiculously lovely long lashes, his rose-petal mouth that was pouted in that intense smile, his head tilted towards Vadya as if for a kiss. Around them First Quarter clattered on with their horses, their food and their weapons. Vadya's fingers shook as he took them from his junior officer's hands. 

Chapter 3

Unexpected meetings for Arianna el Jien van Sietter. 

The big formal reception room at the front of the castle was furnished with an enormous patterned red carpet over which were collected armchairs and sofas upholstered in grey velvet --arranged to allow for groups to converse. The windows were small and irregularly spaced, bars of sunlight fell through casting their light through the room. Beautiful works of art hung on the grey painted walls. At one time Arianna thought she and Clair might make a friendly marriage by collecting art together but Clair only quarrelled with her about where to hang pieces they separately commissioned. 

A couple of younger Knights and a Captain of First Sietter in red parade silks were coming in a cluster towards her with a softly predatory admiring look in their eyes. She was frowning because she was thinking about the scroll she had tried to look at while Lisette did her hair. The young men hesitated, seeing her stiff-backed, tall and elegant in a grey silk suit with diamonds flashing in the lace at her throat and a frown in her veiled blue eyes. She noticed them looking on her and her face relaxed into a surprised and flattered smile. They started to drift in her direction but she saw someone she actually was glad to see and brushed past them with a casual nod. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 02



Dame Sevianne Inien was sitting to one side of the fireplace, her young son standing by her grey armchair. The older Knights and Dames avoided her. The younger men had been circling her before Lady el Jien arrived, but had been rebuffed by old Commander-Sir Flada Clathan standing close by. 

Arianna crossed to Sevianne with her warmest smile lighting up her eager face and the dimple dancing in her chin above the sparkling diamonds and lace over her full breast. Sevianne, rising to greet her, could not but smile in return and Commander-Sir Clathan's face softened to see Lady el Jien so happy. The Knights and Dames whispered to each other behind a hand that Dame Inien's faded green silk dress had a patch on it! but Lady el Jien did not seem to notice. Arianna took Sevianne's hand, brushing her formal greeting aside. Flada Clathan bent down to speak to her son, Hanya. 

"You are a beauty worth walking a mile for!" he said indulgently to the child, "but what are you doing here, hanging about your mama's skirts? Why are you not playing with the other children?" 

Hanya hung back shyly and said softly to his mother: "Where is papa?" 

Arianna looked down at the baby of her husband's junior officer: Captain-Sir Hanya Vashin, and caught her breath. 

Clair el Maien and Hanya Vashin had made an exceptionally handsome pair: lean and tall in their red and gold Sietter uniforms, Clair dark-haired and Hanya the pattern of the Sietter Knight with his rangy strong body, blond hair cropped at the back and sides and beautiful cold blue eyes. 

Hanya Vashin had been handsome but his child was like an Angel. Those beautiful blue Vashin eyes that had been like chips of ice in the face of his father in blood were shy and sweet and warm with the affection of the child's gentle heart in his seraphically lovely golden face. 

However even Arianna noticed that his shirt was too short in the sleeves and his little pair of breeches had been cut for a bigger boy and were only held up by his braces. She frowned in puzzlement that Sevianne Inien would bring her child to the formal reception rooms dressed so badly. The plain clothes did nothing to detract from little Hanyan's extraordinary beauty, his skin seemed to glow from within with health and sweetness of heart. When he smiled up into Arianna's face, she could not forbear to smile back, putting out a hand to cup about his soft golden-pink cheek. 

Sevianne had caught her breath up in an anxious gasp. "Your father is dead, my baby," she said quickly. "Papa is not here. Let me talk with Lady el Jien. Lady el Jien, I came because I thought Lord Clair would be here, he wrote me ..." she stuttered and blushed. "I will not need to see you." 

Arianna looked into Sevianne Inien's face with a clear inquiring stare. Sevianne's eyes swung off to one side. Commander-Sir Clathan stood back from the two of them with a bland expression on his lined gentle face. 

"Come to see me," Arianna said in a suddenly autocratic tone of voice. "Take Hanya to play with Arkyll, Ria will watch him for you while we talk." She attempted to soften her tone. "Lord Clair would like them to play, his son in blood and ... and Captain-Sir Vashin's son." She was conscious of Flada Clathan at her elbow, politely not listening to their conversation. Sevianne was still insisting to look aside. Arianna stooped to Hanya and gathered him in her arms, trying to reassure Sevianne by showing kindness to this child whom she knew was intimately high in Clair's affections. 

"Mays't call me Aunt Anna," she suggested. Hanya leant willingly into her caress and said softly in reply, "Aunt Anna." She gave Hanya's angelic blond head a kiss. 

Arianna moved gracefully away to walk between the Knights and Dames, pressing a hand here, making formal acknowledgement of allegiance there. Flada Clathan had gone over to the young Knights and the First Sietter officer. He stood with an irritated look on his affectionate old face, keeping an eye over the young men. He had taken the opportunity out of the pacifist Lady el Jien's earshot to remind them that her husband had cut the face of a member of the high nobility who had only written a poem addressed to her and to enquire if they wished to risk his glove by annoying a woman of a famous high chastity with their insulting attentions. Or worse, the glove of her brother by marriage: that infamous killer in the duel, Tashka el Maien van Sietter. 

Arianna noticed that there was a breath-taking display of confectionary on the tables: edible models of a fleet of fishing boats and sea creatures which were made not with flour but with a great deal of even more expensive sugar. Her brow creased as she realised that everyone was looking at her. She was too embarrassed to wrap the sugar crab in a napkin and sneak it into her pocket for Arkyll. 

After the reception she went slowly to the castle offices. They were in the old part of the castle, the other side of the huge entrance hall to the reception rooms, near the library and armoury. The walls of the offices had never been plastered and were still of grey stone. There were bookshelves with boxes of papers ranked around the tables of the office where the seneschal and chief clerk worked. Hanging between the long narrow slit windows were two black and blue silk troop banners. They were torn. Old brown stains were visible on them. 

"Lady el Jien," the seneschal was a tall robed man who wore his greying hair long, merchant-style. The younger clerk had been a Lieutenant in Clair's troop and had short hair and dressed in a felt suit. He still had a tendency to stand in the formal Sietter stance with his heels snapped together. When he came to greet people he always had to hold out his fighting arm, his right arm, now. He had lost the left arm from the elbow down. 

Lord van Sietter had not handed over any formal powers in the Sietter region to Clair and Arianna but he was occupied with his position as King's Representative for Foreign Affairs. Much of the work in the region fell on Clair's -- and therefore on Arianna's -- shoulders. (Sometimes van Sietter would countermand something Clair had laid down, simply it seemed for the pleasure of making his son look a fool.) 

When Clair first had these responsibilities laid in his lap, he was newly returned from the war with H'las. His bride had waited a year alone in his home for him -- only sometimes with Tashka to give her the pleasure of some company. After the dreadful victory of Shier Bridge, Clair went to court himself and persuaded his father and van H'las to treat for peace. 

Then he disappeared. He left his Lady wife and even the troop he commanded with no direction. It was Tashka who suddenly appeared one night bringing Clair home, stricken by what he had been through, his grey eyes suicidal with grief. It was Tashka who had to ride back out and lead the decimated remnants of Fourth Sietter back to the Generals' headquarters. And it was that wretched charming Tashka who talked Arianna into staying in Sietter and persuaded her to help Clair by taking up decisions about the region he was in no state to consider. Just for a short while, my dear. Do it not for Clair, nor even for my sake. Do it to annoy that snake van Sietter who only wants to prove Clair incompetent in revenge for forcing peace out of him before he wished for it. 

Tashka had of course no idea what it meant to Arianna to be involved in this small way in the regional management, what opportunities it opened up underneath the trivial business of dealing with the lesser aristocracy. Arianna was careful not to make apparent what it was she was about in the castle offices, when her husband was not there and she could do as she would with the support of the seneschal and clerks. 

The closest connection she had to Clair was in this strange disguised meeting of their minds: passages of reports she dictated to the clerks; recommendations which the reports said had come from Laran or Tarra but in which Clair recognised in puzzlement a more sophisticated political philosophy than theirs. 

Arianna had dealt with a number of petty and dull incidents which were of the greatest importance only to those directly involved when Flada Clathan was announced. She looked up with pleasure, assuming that Flada had only come to relieve their boredom. He was not one who continually brought small problems for his future sworn Lord and Lady to deal with in the hopes that they would notice him more. He had no need to seek Clair's attention, as children he had often taken Clair and Tashka to stay with his family. 

They made amiable small talk at first in which even Tarra was included out of Sir Flada's generosity of heart. They talked about the negotiations on taxes which would make it possible for trade to pass through H'las and Sietter. Arianna was the only one who thought such an important treaty might be signed. She sighed as she thought of the weaving trade in Arventa, failing to the point of no recovery because of a lack of investment. 

"It is a pity there is no chance of a marriage with the el Gaiels," Sir Flada remarked. "A marriage tie would persuade the merchants that Lord Pava is serious in his promises." 

Arianna thought of van Sietter's letter and her blue eyes suddenly sparkled with mocking laughter. "What, the honourable Lady Anastelle, daughter of the el Maiens, for young Commander-Lord Vadya el Gaiel van H'las?" she inquired. 

Sir Flada looked appalled then burst into loud laughter. Laran smiled but looked disapproving, these were serious matters. Tarra looked puzzled. Still laughing, Sir Flada put his hand in his pocket. He brought out a napkin and showed Arianna two sugar fishes. "You are to see Dame Inien," he said. "Perhaps you would like one of these for her boy and one for Arkyllan?" Her face lit up with pleasure and beauty so that he smiled nearly as infatuated a smile as the silly young Knights and the officer he had warned away from flirting with her. Then he said, with a curious emphasis, "Dame Inien's boy is a sweet-tempered child." 

He looked intently at her and continued, "Lord Arkyll will like to play with Hanyan. Arkyllan must miss it, not to have a brother to play with." Laran was muttering something and pulling papers together. The old Commander-Knight looked embarrassed but he continued in a determined and softly affectionate tone, "you would not take it out on the boy, my dear, if Clair ... Commander-Lord el Maien were to claim Captain-Sir Vashin's child as his own in duty bound." Laran coughed loudly, Arianna turned her face up to the lined face above hers with a clear blue enquiring look. She did not think of his kindly affectionate tone as an impertinence. He knew Clair and Tashka so well even she had started to call him 'Uncle Flada'. He said: "Dame Inien is sorely troubled now that her father has died. He housed her and the boy willingly in spite of van Sietter causing the family difficulties. Her brother is not so willing to suffer for the boy's sake, he is suggesting she go back to her studies but she cannot take the baby boy to the University and nobody has made provision for him." 

When the next appointment came in Arianna saw it was Dame Sevianne Inien. She wished that she could meet Sevianne alone. But it was clear Sevianne had only come because Clair had told her he would be there. Arianna tried to pretend that was like his slackness although it was not at all in his character to fail in support of one of his dependents. 

Sevianne had started speaking without giving Arianna the chance to give her the sugar fish for Hanyan. "I just want to ask," she looked down instead of into Arianna's eyes, "is there no chance that Captain-Sir H-Hanya Vashin's farm can come to my son?" Even without what Commander-Sir Clathan had told her, Arianna would have realised this was a subterfuge. 

"Lord Clair will consider the matter," Laran cut in with a sideways look at Arianna. "Dame Inien, you know that Lord Pava has refused but that Lord Clair will do what he can." When he thought that Arianna was not looking, he gave Sevianne such a fierce glare that she started to cry. Laran looked cross. 

Arianna got up and went to put a hand on Sevianne's shoulder. She looked at the opposite wall. The black and blue banners hanging on the wall were those of Fifth and Ninth H'las. Clair's soldiers had carried them away for him from the victorious horror of the battle of Shier Bridge. Shier Bridge, the most infamous battle of a terrible war; Shier Bridge -- where Hanya Vashin died saving Clair's life. 

When he received the torn bloodied strips of black and blue silk, Clair spent the whole day wandering the castle trying to decide where to hang them. He walked to and fro the great hall, the armoury, the family sitting-room, his own room, his grey eyes getting bigger and wilder. Finally Arianna suggested he put the banners in the castle offices, where he worked every day -- when he was home. 

Arianna bent to look into Sevianne's soft, tear-bedewed face. "Why did el Farin van Graiel send back the funding Lord Clair put up for your studies?" she asked. 

Sevianne looked back up at her in surprise. "I have a child," she replied. "How can I be concentrating on my studies if I am forever fretting about the child?" She said it as if quoting the famous scientist she had been working with. "Never mind that," she added quickly, feeling Arianna's hand tighten on her shoulder. "What could I do with Hanyan if I work at the University? Lord Clair has come as often as he can but he is not at court these days and he cannot be taking Hanyan all day while I am in the laboratories and library." 

Arianna bent a sudden look of astonishment at her. Laran Harca made a small moan. "Woulds't trust Hanyan to Lord Clair?" Arianna blurted out. "He is very hard on small children." 

"Oh no," Sevianne contradicted her. "Hanyan is lucky, I do not think Captain-Sir Vashin would have done so much for him as Clair has done." Her lip curled as she said it. 

"So Lord Clair has come often," Arianna repeated, noticing the familiar way into which Sevianne had slipped of using Clair's name instead of his titles. "To your family's homestead, do you mean?" 

Sevianne caught Laran's glaring eye. A look of terror appeared in her face. "Oh no," she faltered. "No, just once or twice he visited us. Captain-Sir Vashin was his friend." She looked in agony up at Clair's wife. 

"I thought he was always at court," Arianna said, as if to herself. She moved away from Sevianne, frowning at the papers on the table. "I thought he was with all sorts of .... He was often with you, helping you with Hanyan?" she asked, looking down at Sevianne. Sevianne looked back at her frozen with fear. 

"Wants't to go back to work with van Graiel," Arianna said slowly, staring at Sevianne's pretty immobilised face as if she could read her thoughts behind the smooth young forehead which hid a scientific intelligence. She felt curiously constrained, she could not help remembering how it was that she had learnt that Sevianne had been lured into the arms of ice-eyed Hanya Vashin, who had failed to protect her from falling pregnant in a deliberate and spiteful disregard for her honour. "Wants't my Lord to take Hanyan?" Arianna enquired clumsily. 

"I know I cannot ask that of him!" Sevianne burst out with a fresh gust of tears. "He lives here with you and Lord Arkyll, of course Hanyan cannot come to him here! My Lady, I mean Lady el Jien, since my father died my brother is asking me to go and I have nowhere, I have nothing! Where can we go, since Lord van Sietter denies us Captain-Sir Hanya Vashin's farm?" Her fair face twisted with agony at the hopeless situation she had found herself in. 

Lady el Jien's frown had disappeared in a warm soft pity in which Sevianne could hardly bear to place any dependence. "After all the times I have writ you, why has't not come to me?" Arianna said indignantly. "Surely does't not think I will shut Hanyan out of my heart -- what, for his father's sin in seducing you? Sevianne, his father ... he died saving my Lord's life. 

"My money is not under van Sietter's hand, I can give you a scholarship. And ... I have a correspondence ... a slight acquaintance I mean, with B'Dar of the H'velst Mountains whom I could ask to take you to work with him. Hanyan can live here, with Arkyll, truly as Arkyll's brother. B'Dar would let you come here often to see Hanyan because I could ... because we have a fine library. I will show you my ... I mean our, library. Shall't miss Hanyan but shall't know he is happy with Lord Clair, is it not so? If he calls Lord Clair papa, at the least I might be his Aunt Anna. Let him come to us, to make my heart glad." 

Laran and Tarra were staring fixedly at the table and the floor, anywhere but at the two women making so pragmatic an arrangement. They could not help wondering what their future sworn Lord was going to make of this agreement and whether he would blame them for allowing these matters to come to his Lady wife's ears. 

Sevianne was staring at Arianna, her mouth bunched up against her tears, her face flushed with fear. She broke suddenly into a smile and tears all at once and started hiccoughing with hysterics, to find an easy solution to what had seemed an intractable set of troubles. Laran and Tarra rushed to fetch water for her to drink although Laran looked as though he was tempted to throw it over her. Arianna only stood by her, pressing her hand on Sevianne's shoulder. 

When she had finished with the day's appointments, Lady el Jien moved gracefully back through the passages and entrance hall to the family's quarters. Her grey silk skirts swished along the corridors, she had a concentrated frown on her face and the servants she passed did not look on her in her elegant grey suit and diamonds as they would do when she wore the faded pink cotton dress (which Lord Clair had said through gritted teeth to her maid-servant that he would personally tear off her body and stuff down poor Lisette's throat if he had to see it again). She went up the stairs by her room and passed down the veranda to Clair's room, looking as she went into the inner courtyard at the flowers around the fountain bubbling into its bowl under the old pear tree. 

Ladda was forever complaining that they should enclose the walkways under and along the veranda off which the family's bedroom doors led. In summer it was pleasant to come straight out in the fresh air but in winter they all had to brave the bitter winds and snow when they wanted to come out of their rooms. Arianna had taken Ladda seriously when she first arrived in the castle and ordered some workmen to do the job -- what a to-do there was, Ladda pale with shock and trying to find ways to deny she had suggested it, the steward writing on behalf of the mutinous workmen to Clair himself at the battle-front to appeal to him. A most insulting letter came back from him to her telling her to keep her bloody soft Southern ways to herself and leave his home alone; she could move into the formal guest rooms or go back to Iarve if she could not take a bit of fresh sunshine in her damned interfering step. 

She passed through the sunshine now with a resentful pout of her full red mouth. She walked into Clair's room cautiously, as if it were the wolf's lair. 

It was a big room, lit by slit windows to the gardens on one side and a square window onto the veranda on the other. It had hardly changed since his bachelor days, she had come there to him only for a short time, for a few nights. Clair still slept on that hard narrow roll of trooper's bedding in the middle of the floor, too small for two people to lie in with any degree of comfort. She supposed he did use the bed in their bedroom in the family rooms at court. (She tried not to think too much about his bedroom arrangements at court.) 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 02



The stone walls were hung with an old tapestry telling a legend and some astonishingly beautiful works of art (some of which she had given him). There were shelves and heaps of books and a desk full of papers of all kinds: sketches he drew of the castle gardens and of Arkyll, requests from poets and artists for patronage, somebody's scribbled notes on a theory about Northern architecture, letters from people Arianna did not want to hear any more gossip about. The floor was scattered with cushions, baskets of nuts and jars of sweets, books, sculptures. Ladda and the maids complained bitterly about how difficult it was to clean but never to Clair's face. 

Arianna plumped up some cushions that Arkyll must have come to lie in. By the side of Clair's tidily rolled bedding was his old box-desk from his army days. She picked up off the top of it a sketch he had once done in his old troop, when he was still just a Captain together with Hanya Vashin and with Arianna's cousin, Pava el Jien van Vail. The sketch showed Pava and his four junior officers; Pava was sitting on the ground with the handsome young Lieutenants clustered around him. Pava was handsome himself in the high-collared Sietter uniform. His broad blond good looks provided a perfect setting for the exquisite dark-haired beauty of his favourite baby Lieutenant sitting in the affectionate curve of his arm. Lieutenant-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter sat leaning back on Pava with his mischievous slanted eyes sparkling. Pava's Lieutenants had all been famous for their looks and their high military intelligence, nicknamed the Angels. Pava was very proud of them but most of all of Tashka. Arianna traced a wistful finger over his warm smiling features, the tip of her finger rested briefly on the full curve of his el Jien mouth, which was just like her own. 

She put the picture carefully back down, then she saw another sticking out from under the box-desk lid. 

It was a drawing of herself, a sketch done for a formal portrait to send to van Sietter (as if he cared). She opened the lid to put it away, frowning in surprise, and discovered that it lived with packets of letters on which Tashka's seal had been broken and a drawing of Hanya Vashin. Hanya was standing easily back on one leg, his hand on his hip, his attractive blond face tilted and the beautiful eyes which were so sweet and warm in his son's face looking out of the pencil-lines at her. There was an uncharacteristically soft smile on his lips. Arianna considered his fit disciplined rangy body, the lean handsome face. She thought with a secretive smile that even with everything she knew of him, she could have been tempted as Sevianne had been to take him for a one-day-one-night. 

"What are you about in my boxes?" a tired husky voice cut in. She swung round, her heart jumping into her mouth and her round eyes wide with surprise. 

He was dusty with the journey, his dark blue linen travelling suit and the thigh-length black riding boots that encased his lovely long legs were grey with dirt, his lean tanned face lined with dirt. His slanted eyes were grey like rain-clouds, his elegantly cut black hair tousled, his graceful head was tipped back to stare mistrustfully at her past long lashes. One hand rested on the elaborate hilt of a rapier sword swinging off his slim hips against his mud-stained boots, as if he might draw his sword in defence against his own Lady wife. It was evident from the state of his clothes that the bridge was down over the Arven again, obliging him to ford the river, lose a day on his journey and fail to come home as he had planned in time to meet the Knights and Dames himself. 

"Why?" she said in a voice like winter. "What is there in your boxes that I may not see?" Her heart was still thumping in her chest, she tightened her full el Jien mouth in a frightened sneer at him. 

He could not answer that. He only stepped aside for her to pass and she left the room with her head held high. As her grey silk skirts swept by, he caught a breath of her perfume: sweet, soft, clear, like flowers by a stream in the early summer. He was weary with a week's hard riding, he could not help leaning towards that sweet clear scent and the full curving figure of his famously beautiful and chaste Lady wife. 

"Damn Angels to Hell," he cursed angrily as he turned away. "What the Hell business of hers are my boxes. Sweet Hell." He picked his way across his untidy floor, squatted down and took out the pictures of Arianna and Hanya: tall and strong and fair. 

"Hell," he said savagely. "Sweet Angels of Heaven and Hell."



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 03



Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.) 

*****

Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter opened his slanted grey eyes and stared dreamily across his floor. Dim light through his curtains glinted on a china statue of a Northern peasant girl which Tashka had brought back for him the previous spring from P'shan. Her china smile and the bright glaze of her wide-hipped trousers were softened in the dimness of the early dawn. Clair smiled to think of Tashka. Then his mouth tightened to remember that he had been obliged to let his own brother go into a situation of high risk in a H'las troop. Although Tashka was curiously glad to go, and insisted to stay even after van Sietter finally agreed he might come safely home. 

Clair felt restless, his muscles tense after the hard riding of the day before. He lay unable to drift back to sleep, his eyes floating anxiously from the china peasant girl across the cushions to a neat pile of books and then a basket of candied fruit with some wrappers loose among them. His thin mouth and his eyes curved in a sudden smile of extraordinary sweetness. Arkyll must have come in to eat the sugared fruit while he was away. 

After he had lain a while waiting for sleep to carry him back off, he traced a sensual pattern across his thigh with thin fingers running under his nightshirt. Dreamily he fingered his penis which was still soft and small, he fondled his own balls. He was thinking about breasts: big and soft. His cock was rising surprisingly quickly in his thin experienced fingers as he traced over thoughts of putting a hand about a breast like that. He tried to remember what the areola looked like, had he ever seen it? Stupid fool, he had never thought to put his mouth to her breast and get that nipple hard and the pleasure trickling around her body from his sucking on her breast, even a lick of the nipple might have done it. Were they large or small nipples? Had he ever seen them? There had been so many since. She had been ripe for pleasure, her cunt soft and wet to his fuck even without his teasing her nipple. (Was it large or small?) He could have given her such joy, and had fun himself, if only he had been able to think of it, and then he would be able to remember the nipples to those big soft pillowy breasts ... 

With an annoyed gasp, he realised he was attempting to get himself off while thinking about fucking his own Lady wife. He rolled irritably onto his side, his penis slowly subsiding without the pleasure of orgasm. He caught sight of the pictures on his box-desk by the bed. In an excess of emotion the day before when he found out that Arianna had taken Hanyan into their parental care without his having to come up with some story as to why this child was so particularly under his eye, he had put the sketches of Arianna el Jien and Hanya Vashin up there. They stood side by side, with a sketch he had once drawn of his brother officer Pava el Jien and the four Lieutenants of whom Pava had been so proud: Tashka and Tashka's friends. Clair stared at the two sketches of little Hanya's father and Arkyllan's mother. 

He loved the two children with all the passion of a hot heart. He had always hoped for a family but even so he had never realised how much happiness - and how much heartbreaking anxiety - it would mean to have children. And her, she loved them too. He had not expected this of the big blonde beauty with the sleepy veiled cow's blue eyes to whom he was forced into giving his ring. She was such a perfect Lady, of course when he heard she was with child he came home to arrange a string of nursery servants so that she might continue to spend her time as she wished. He had imagined she would start going to court - probably not when he was playing about there but he was already beginning to spend time elsewhere. But she was up to her big blue eyes in plans for the nursery, already locked into a maternal love that was often lured into indulgence and that provided Arkyll with a constant affection in which he grew so happily. (Her indulgence was a problem but with Hanyan also resident in the castle, Clair could keep a disciplined eye over Arkyll and correct it.) She never spoke of going to court or to her home in Iarve or to visit her cousin Pava el Jien in Vail. Her gaze seemed completely turned in on his baby in his castle home. 

He had supposed this was all she wanted, the child to play with. He was well content to think it, to leave her cocooned up in the castle with their baby while he took what measures were necessary to keep her honour bright. He provided the one nursery-maid to support her but left her to enjoy their child as he would have liked to have done. Now he was beginning to realise there was something else on the go. She did not spend her days sewing little garments and doing school-work with Arkyll; she looked strained as if she did not have sufficient time and needed him taking off her hands. Clair leaned up on his elbow in his narrow bedding, frowning off across the floor of his room past the piles of books and bowls of sweets, sculptures and a wheeled toy horse on a string. 

After a while he got up and put the two pictures away again in the box with Tashka's letters, leaving out the sketch of Pava and his clutch of handsome young laughing Lieutenants. The four young officers were so beautiful and so intelligent that they were nicknamed the Angels. They rose rapidly under Clair's loving command in the Sietter-H'las war, every one was a Commander now; except his beloved brother - the brightest and most beautiful of them all. 

When Clair walked into the huge stone-flagged kitchens, still only dimly lit by the dawning light through the windows, the night cook was dozing in a chair by one of the big ranges. He left the man snoozing while he fetched eggs and sugar from one of the larders. Working with a swift and quiet efficiency, he beat up a sweet omelette for himself, heating some jam to go in it. He cleared the table and the dishes he used in concentrated dreamy pleasure as he went. By the time he sat down at the end of the long table to the side of the kitchen with some coffee perfectly brewed as he liked it, the kitchen staff were starting to come in. They smiled to him but they knew he did not like to talk while he was breaking his fast. 

As he was finishing off his meal with an apple that he cut into careful segments, there was a sudden movement, the kitchen staff all starting to rise from their places, scraping their chairs. He looked up to see Arianna coming in. He said to the servants: "Sit down, I pray you. My Lady will not ask you to leave your breakfast on her account." He pulled out a chair round the corner of the table to his for her, dragging a plate of chocolate pastries over towards it. 

He took in with a quick flick of his grey eyes the fetching figured white and green dress that gathered about Arianna's full bosom, the little hairs sticking out of her plait and a smudge on her cheek revealing that she had not even washed her face. Evidently she had rushed down to catch him without taking the time to dress properly. Her casual untidiness made the appeal of her big curving body seem easier of access; he was forever telling Lisette she must dress Lady el Jien in a more formal style to prevent people thinking she might welcome their flirtation. This dress was reasonably smart if informal, not like that horrible pink rag. It was just that her hair needed doing (and her face a wipe with a cloth!). She was looking at him with her sleepy untidiness softening what appeared to be an anxious expression. He wondered ruefully what bloody birds' nest she had made in the household accounts. 

His eyes lingered on the bosom of her dress. The laced bodice and the cut in to the waist made the shape of her big breasts evident, ordinarily she avoided a close cut of the cloth, choosing dull garments which did not flatter her curving figure. Dimly he imagined what it would be like to give her a favour from behind, holding those big soft breasts, playing with them and squeezing them to add to his and her pleasure. He thought regretfully that he ought to have tried it while he had the opportunity. Surely he had pressed a hand to those breasts once or twice, his hands seemed to remember them if his mind could not. The callow kid that he had been! bewildered and wounded in his mind, regarding it as a duty to take that body of soft curves in his arms to fuck her as she lay submissive and even more ignorant than he was below him. What a missed set of pleasures, if he had known then what he knew now about how to get a young woman on the go. 

His dreamy face suddenly flushed up and he scowled. Angels' sake! he was as bad as his own footmen, after everything else he had brought on her head, to consider insulting her with his sexual attentions. 

He was going to have to see the two footmen who used wheelchairs later. He did not think Fiotr, who had been a trooper under his command, would be so mad as to cast eyes on Lady el Jien van Sietter but he had noticed a sly shyness in Petra's eye as the man offered her some dish at dinner the previous evening. His face became cold with the scowl still on it, his eyes slid up to Arianna's face and he saw that her face had become cold and he frowned. What now, what grievance was she going to choose from the many he had offered her to hurl at his head? 

Arianna's heart beat quicker with fear to see Clair cold and frowning, her face veiled over with coldness to hide her fear. Why must he be so hard to them all? Petra the steward was saying Clair was going to talk to the footmen. He was always packing off the young footmen as soon as they relaxed instead of going about so formally to fetch and carry. Was it a crime, for them to enjoy some sporting fun in the hallways racing their wheelchairs? but he was so unreasonable about it. She sat down by Clair, her head lifted high and proud. Dar brought her Hyaline bowl of drinking chocolate before returning to his own place further down the table. Tashka had commissioned the bowl for her from the artist Hyaline together with a set of wine bowls. Clair had grinned teasingly when he found out the wine bowls were for young van H'las but he was careful what he said nowadays about Tashka's passionate allegiance to the commanding officer who ought to have been a sworn enemy of the family's. He had gone too far teasing Tashka once about el Gaiel van H'las and Tashka punched him so hard that Clair had a black eye for a week. 

Clair's eyes turned back to his plate, his fingers curled around his own coffee bowl, too small, with horses and dogs painted round it; a child's bowl. 

Arianna reached restlessly for the kitchen accounts, piled in a heap to the back of the table, wishful to get the wounding recriminations over with as quickly as possible. A frown rippled over Clair's face, he sighed at the interruption to his quiet morning moment. As he was about to turn and ask for his second bowl of coffee, Arianna began defending a recent extravagant use of sugar. 

Clair gave Dar, who had still not finished his breakfast, a grimace. 

"I was only trying to make some cakes which did not use so much flour," Dar mumbled through a mouthful of sausage. 

"What did you say to Dar to make him try not to use the flour?" Clair said in a voice of cross resignation, leaning his head on one elbow and looking rapidly down the figures on the sheets of paper in front of him: so neatly set out, so badly out of balance with the totals he had agreed with Dar and Ladda when he was last home. 

"I only said ..." Clair switched off his attention and let her melodious voice ripple on by his side until he thought she had finished. Then he just said, "the price of wheat is very high." 

"There are rumours of an accord between van Sietter and van H'las," Arianna responded. "The price of wheat may be lower next year." 

"Do you think it will come to any thing?" Clair asked idly. "What tie could van H'las make with van Sietter? We should consider giving over some of our fields to wheat." 

"Our land is not suitable," Arianna reminded him. "van Sietter must come to some agreement for the sake of the weaving trade and the poor in Arventa." 

Clair laughed, his head came up with the grey eyes sparkling. "You are the only person with enough generosity of spirit to imagine van Sietter cares for the weavers and the poor," he said, the smile curling up his mouth to his eyes in the early morning summer light that fell through the narrow window beside him onto the table. 

"He is your father," Arianna said softly, looking sideways at their servants but they continued to eat unmoved. She knew nobody who had ever served Clair would go above his fingers to his father, who cared nothing for those less powerful than himself, not even his own region's poor. 

"May I have more coffee, of your courtesy?" Clair asked one of the junior cooks who had finished eating and was moving towards the bread ovens. Dar started to get up and Clair held a hand up to stop him. "Break your fast," he said. Arianna was already pulling some more papers out of the pile, her other hand holding a pastry from which she had only taken one bite, a skin was wrinkling across the surface of the drinking chocolate she was letting go cold. Clair's eyes hooded over, his face shadowed with irritation as his breakfast was disrupted - and for what. Angels! she lived in chaos, snatching at paperwork during breakfast, trying to think about the region when she was looking at accounts with Ladda. She had all the time of the day to do whatsoever she wished yet she tried to do two or three things at once and then was surprised to feel weary. 

"I have seen all that," he said. "What happened," he asked Dar, "that you wasted a barrel of seafish two weeks ago? What are you about, buying seafish this time of year in Sietter when it has to come all the way up from Port H'las in the summer heat, with duties paid on it to the full extent too?" 

Dar shrugged, starting to make an excuse. Arianna interrupted. "It is my fault. We always have fish in Iarve for the feast of the Angel of Baya. I pressed Dar to make an Iarvian feast - so that Arkyll would know something of how we celebrate the day. I prithou pardon me. Every year has't refused to let Dar cook seafish for the feast of the Angel of Baya. I did not understand why until now." 

How easily she apologised, for such a small error of judgement. How could it be so hard for him to apologise for the many insults and cruelties he had poured on her head. Clair inclined his head, his eyes still hooded over. Tashka would have understood the depth of feeling behind the tiny gesture. Arianna only thought what arrogance and lack of understanding he showed - as always. 

"What does't care," she said in a cold venomous spurt, "what I spend on the castle food when ar't not here? I will give of my own money if does't not wish to give to Dar and Ladda what they need. In addition to the allowance I give you!" 

Dar turned aside pretending to be absorbed in his breakfast. 

"You know that I do not give a copper coin's curse what Dar and Ladda spend," Clair said in a low voice. "It is my father who will give us trouble for it if I have to go back to him for more money for the castle accounts. You know he will say we are not fit to control our own money and send some spy to make us live on campaign biscuits. Is it not enough that he has had the disgusting insolence to push myself and my expensive brother onto your fingers to pay for our extravagance? What will you use for your library an' you spend all you have on sugar." 

"What does't care what I spend on our library?" she demanded, her eyes flashing over her chocolate pastry. "Has't the court libraries and the King's University library to use! Does't grudge me a few books?" 

"A few books!" he laughed suddenly, his grey eyes dancing. "Do you think I do not know what you spend on your library?" She looked suddenly frozen with fear, her long white fingers clenched on her pastry so that the chocolate inside it spurted out and smeared over them. "Keep your money to make a library that will rival the King's University," he said carelessly, turning his head to flick over the pages of the other household accounts. "For the Angels' sake, make van Sietter at the least of it buy the bloody flour and sugar. Why have you have signed for these new quilts? And what is this; one quilt has disappeared? How can that be?" 

"Ladda says there was a blue quilt with embroidered peacocks in the room next to Tashka's," Arianna answered. 

"Oh that one," he said. "Um. What nonsense, such a fuss over a stupid quilt. It is summer, Ladda does not need new quilts now. Forget this rubbish. Come and play chess with me." He started to get up out of his chair. 

Dar and the other cooks were making unusually loud conversation in the effort not to listen to Lord Clair and Lady Arianna quarrelling but Petra, Dar's chief assistant, could not help a groan at hearing this. He had known Clair all Clair's life. The young el Maiens were unfailingly courteous to their servants and dependents but they spoke to each other in arrogant tones of command: Do this. Do that. No. Yes,  but Arianna el Jien was unlikely to say, Yes. 

"Calls't it nonsense, does't!" Arianna exclaimed. "And no word yet from van Sietter as to who his guests are." She added in a spiteful outburst, "he sent some letter saying, 'I have writ to tell the Lady Anastelle be here to meet me'. This is no matter of concern to you, is it?" 

As she said the name that was never spoken in the castle Clair's face became thunderous with rage, his hand snapped to his sword, which he was even wearing at breakfast in his own home. Petra jumped to his feet and moved round to offer Clair a plate of fried eggs - it was the first thing that came to his hand. Clair stared blankly at it. "My Lord," Petra said. "My Lady has not finished breaking her fast." His insistent voice reminded Clair to whom he was talking and his hand slid slowly away from his elaborately decorated sword-hilt. Clair glowered hotly at his plate. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Arianna's head turn away from Petra, towards him, and a tear glinting in her round blue eyes. His thin mouth turned down at the corners. 

"Ladda presumes on your good nature," he said softly. "It is summer, our guests will not need quilts - even that cold snake van Sietter might keep warm with a blanket in summer. There is plenty of time before winter to send the quilts to the seamstresses in Arventa - or at court. So you wish a finer job, I will send them to court but the work is needed in Arventa." 

Her face softened in response to his milder tone of voice and in pleasure at a plan which might lend support to unemployed workers in their region. He seized at this opportunity when she might be inclined to be more forgiving. "Um," he said, sitting down and putting one hand out towards her in appeal. "I am very sorry, my dear." She lifted her head in sudden suspicion at this. "Er, it appears that yester day while ... attempting to take it to the kitchens more quickly than they ought, Fiotr and Petra dropped your tea set from the china workshop in Soomara." 

Vexed tears came to Arianna's eyes: the beautiful egg-shell fine pale red plates and bowls with elegant swirls of gold decoration! "Lady el Vaie van Soomara sent me that set!" she exclaimed. "It was so kind of her, since she is your friend much more than mine, to make me such a generous gift." 

"Um, yes," Clair said. A faint blush coloured his tanned cheeks and an embarrassed frown creased his brow. "Maive is ... very generous. I mean Lady el Vaie. I am so sorry." 

"Make them pay for my tea set!" Arianna demanded fiercely, dashing the tears quickly from her eyes with one long pale finger. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 03



Clair looked at her from grey eyes shadowed by a light frown. She read in them anger at her impulsive demand for a punishment that was excessive for the two footmen. She knew too that while Clair had spoken sharply to them, she had liked to see the two men laughing and having their sporting fun racing through the hallway with the trays of crockery on their laps and had indulged them in it. She felt his warm grey eyes judged her and, as usual when it was a matter of the tedious household management, found her wanting. But when he spoke it was in a conciliatory tone of voice. 

"I will speak with them," Clair offered. "I will make it plain to them what they have done." 

The tears were still sharp in her eyes and she said, "there is little chance of Lady el Vaie sending me another set, is there! since does't not care to invite her to your stupid hunting parties." 

Clair looked away to the side as if embarrassed by her making such a fuss over a tea set but she had so particularly liked it, elegant and fine in the Sietter colours. It had reminded her of Lady el Vaie who had been obliged by bad weather to ask for hospitality in the castle once on her way down through the Maier Pass. Lady el Vaie had proved to be hilarious company and Arianna had greatly enjoyed her visit, although Maive insisted on apologising very frequently for imposing herself. 

"Maive does not care for riding," Clair said in a stiff muffled voice. "Uh ... for riding to the hunt. She might ... misunderstand, if I were to invite her. She took kindly to you, my dear, and if you, rather than I, send her a particular invitation I feel sure she will be glad to come." 

Arianna was about to make a sharp retort when Arkyll bounded into the kitchen and ran across the stone-flagged floor straight to his father. He leapt into Clair's arms, laughing and bouncing, and Clair gathered him close, bestowing casual kisses on his head. 

Behind Arkyll's nursery-maid Ria, Lisette hovered anxiously. She raised her brows in surprise to see the pretty green dress that embraced Arianna's bosom like a flowering of spring. Lady el Jien was forever turning it aside when Lisette put it out, saying it made her look too thin. Then Lisette's face crumpled as she saw Arianna's hair. What would Lord Clair not say to her of it, that she had allowed his Lady wife to begin her day so untidy? Lord Clair was looking at her with a raised eyebrow. She knew he would be questioning her about it later but she did her very best! You could not always catch Lady el Jien who would run off down to her library sometimes at break of day, so neglectful of her appearance that she would leave her hair loose in the plait down her back like the stable-maids. Those slack-moral sluts from the stables would come round into my Lady's library if you please! pretending to have some ridiculous question with which to interrupt whatever it was my Lady spent her time on in there. Arianna had turned with a careless smile to say, "I will come and do my hair when I have broken my fast." She thought it was a nonsense! yet she was forever complaining about the time those stable-maids took up with their flirting ways, hanging over her and saying, What about a ride, my Lady, you look pale. Such impertinence. And as if anyone with their mind not addled by mucking about with the other stable-maids could not plainly tell that Lady el Jien was a man-lover, besides a sweetheart who would never willingly slut off the sides of her bed. 

"Will you not take Arkyll to school with me?" Clair enquired. "Arkyll, no chocolate pastry. You must eat some proper breakfast. Lisette, have you a comb in your pocket? Dress my Lady's hair up quickly here. My Lady, Dame Inien will be taking Hanyan to the school this morning, I had thought you might like to ask them to have lunch with us?" 

"It needs not two of us to take Arkyllan to school," Arianna said, taking an overly large bite of pastry and a quick slurp of cold drinking chocolate in her haste to get on with her day. "Cans't ask Sevianne to lunch yourself, is it not, has't not lost the use of your tongue." 

Clair's brow creased up. A footman crossing the kitchen with a tray of serving dishes laughed silently, turning his head away so that Lady el Jien would not see it. What would the Knights and Dames say of it if Lord Clair were heard to invite some plump pigeon who had carried a child without the Angels' blessing to a family lunch! especially this particular pigeon. Clair knew that the footmen gossiped with his personal serving men. Just after the war - in the second year of his marriage, when he spent most of his time at court with a bed barely ever empty of the warm bodies of strangers (and once or twice when he had drunk too deep to give them the go-by, a friend), he used to come home and find their faces curiously cool of expression. Then as he spent less time at court, more time travelling to stay with old Lady el Farin van P'shan in order to sketch the fascinating designs of Northern architecture or going to a simple country inn near the Iniens' house where he absorbed himself in Captain-Sir Vashin's boy or coming home to be with Arkyllan, the footmen smiled at him and served him more willingly. The warm loving laughter of the castle staff at Arianna's lack of sophistication was nothing compared to the cruel sneers of the Knights and Dames but Clair glared at the footman as he passed so that he tripped on a flagstone and the serving dishes rattled on his tray. 

"I prithou, ask Dame Inien for me," he said to Arianna in a toneless voice. She lifted her head and looked at him, he stared intently into her puzzled blue eyes in the effort to convey to her what he could not say aloud before the servants or their child. "Then we might go to the castle offices together to see Laran and Tarra?" 

Arianna lowered her head and said, "What would I do in the castle offices. I thought I might write some letters, in the library." A sudden scowl clouded Clair's face, just whom might she be writing letters to? Arianna's face became cold. Arkyll was shifting in Clair's lap, his gaze lifting from his mother's to his father's face. The child was turned to the two of them like flowers to the sun, whatever quarrel they might be making, he could not look away. 

Arkyll began saying he did not want to go to school. "Musts't go the day," Arianna coaxed in a softer tone of voice, "Hanyan will be there, it will be his first day." 

"Have you been going every day while I was away, as we agreed?" Clair asked. 

His child looked soulfully up at him, the picture of wrongfully accused innocence. "Of course!" Arkyll said. Ria spluttered from her seat down the table and Arianna laughed. Clair raised an eyebrow in enquiry at Ria. 

"He has missed some two days in every five," Ria said. 

Clair put Arkyll down out of his lap and turned a suddenly fierce glare at his son. "You have lied to me," he said in a hard voice. "You have broke your solemn word and you have lied to me. I promised you to teach you to ride if you could learn to write your name. Now how can I teach you to ride?" 

Arkyll's face bunched suddenly up, he looked sideways at his mother. Stricken, she raised her eyes to Clair, his slanted grey eyes were already raised to her in warning. "May not," she began hesitantly. "No!" he declared. 

She would not have paid mind to him, she would have braved his anger if he had been in the wrong. She knew it was her fault for indulging Arkyll. Her head swayed down on her pale neck like a cut flower with no water. 

"I want to, I want to!" Arkyll started to run towards his father, Clair held him back with one strong arm. 

"You gave me your word," Clair said. His face was as hard as the flagstones on which Arkyll stood. "What am I to do with you now? a son of the el Maiens and you have not only broke your solemn word but given the lie. Do you think this is the way a man of honour behaves?" 

Arkyll flung himself aside to his mother, sobbing, "mama, mama! Tell him to learn me, make him learn me!" 

"My sweetheart, when has't learned to write," she began in a pleading voice, trying to take him gently in her arms. He cried out and began hitting her with small soft fists, Clair suddenly stood up and caught hold of him. 

"What are you about, sirrah?" he demanded. "What way is this, to treat your own mother - who bore you, who has cradled you in her arms all your life! Has she ever hit you? How dare you strike your mother!" He put Arkyll aside and Arkyll crumpled over on the floor, sobbing and kicking out angrily. "If I have to take you crying, you will still go to school the day," Clair added, going to sit back down at the table. "Flava, of your courtesy, my coffee is cold. Fetch me another. And some more drinking chocolate for my Lady, hers is cold too." He turned his head to stare off into the kitchen where the junior cooks were starting to organise themselves for the day. When Arianna made the smallest of movements towards the ostentatiously sobbing Arkyll, he turned his head back and shook it at her with a mute glare. 

Arianna turned her head back down to her plate. Lisette was taking her hair up in hands that seemed even more gentle than usual. Arianna's long pale fingers, smeared with chocolate and with crumbs clinging to them, trembled. It was always so when he returned! There were always quarrels and disturbances to the peaceable ramshackle life she and Arkyll led here in the castle. Yet what brought the tears dripping from her nose onto her plate was the knowledge that it was because she indulged Arkyll and the servants and then it fell on Clair's shoulders to discipline them harder when he came home. She found a large kerchief pushed towards her fingers, Clair was not even looking at her, he stared idly off into the bustling kitchen, swinging one arm that was hung over the back of his chair and waiting for his coffee. After a while he said to her, "will you let it pass, that the footmen broke your tea set?" and she muttered, "yes," then he said, "you must break your fast now, Arkyllan, or you will be hungry at school." 

Arkyll got sullenly to his feet and trailed over to the table, glowering at them both with exquisite slanted blue eyes just like Tashka's. His father looked back at him unmoved. He was the only person who had ever been able to resist the tears with which Lieutenant-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter used to fill those exquisite slanted blue eyes in order to get out of scrapes in their troop.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 04



Copyright © 2015 Naoko Smith

Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.) 

One of the sentries was running through the camp. Vadya lifted his head from the diagram of the Palair box disposition which he had been drawing on a board. The young Lieutenants seated on the ground in front of him turned to look where he was looking and Basra got out of his folding canvas chair and stared down the hillside. 

"Sir!" the sentry shouted. "Captain Maien is coming!" 

Tashka's four Lieutenants got hurriedly to their feet. A huge smile lit up Vadya's face, he put the chalk down and said, "to Quarter," to the junior officers but Basra scowled at Tashka's Lieutenants to make them wait. 

Tashka was riding at a smooth gallop up the green hillside from the ford, with Commander-Lord Pava el Jien van Vail and a clutch of Ninth Vail officers. Tashka slowed to a trot, came neatly up through the excited groups of soldiers and swung off his grey horse Jewel, handing his reins to a waiting trooper with a warm smile of thanks. 

He was wearing yet another new suit: grey and blue, his blue shirt had a white lace edging and he had a sapphire and pearl earring hanging from one ear. He looked like the choicest dressed young Lordling fresh from court. 

He strolled lazily over to his commanding officer with that characteristic sensuous roll to his slim hips in thigh length riding boots. There was a sniggering grin on his rose-petal mouth. He gripped Vadya's shoulder with his left hand. Vadya grinned shyly back, giving the firm muscle of Tashka's arm the sort of casual clasp which brother officers give each other. Tashka was his junior, he ought to have gone to his knee and pressed Vadya's left hand to his forehead but Vadya was in the habit of treating him more as an equal. Vadya flicked Tashka's earring with one finger. Tashka shrugged a shoulder and said: "It is a present from Pava," by way of excuse. His impish smile said he was wearing it just because he loved to dress well. 

"Darling!" Pava called across. "We have brought you a picnic. I am sure woulds't be happy to provide for us but to be per-fectly honest, campaign biscuits are not quite to my officers' taste!" Even Pava, with his blond hair elegantly cut too long for the army, his big el Jien frame more softly muscular than the hardened bodies of the active soldiers around him, clad in an embroidered green cotton that brought out the colour of his laughing green eyes, and with a string of emeralds in his ear, was not quite as choice as Tashka. 

Vadya, laughing and protesting the quality of the food in his troop, went to greet young Lord van Vail. Tashka went to greet his hovering clutch of Lieutenants. Vadya swung round with Pava's hand in his grip to watch them swarm up to him with their babble of chatter, thinking that it was no wonder he was so pleased to have his Captain back. Those eager young cubs had run him ragged with their nonsense. They were as bright as their own polished buttons, they were forever laying out the tents in some interesting new disposition, arguing with each other about the qualities of manoeuvres Tashka had taught them and insisting on having his thoughts about the Maien Tiger and that was when el Darien forgot to throw his lightweight arrogance about to tease Lein about his politics. 

Hanya and Flava looked mockingly at Tashka's earring but Tashka only grinned and turned his head so that the sun sparkled off it. He put his arm around el Darien's shoulders and drew young van Trattai to Pava's attention, saying: "Volka is chasing your cousin Sevie's skirt!" and making him blush. Then he went to take a quick look round his Quarter. 

Vadya's man-servant Batren brought out Vadya's black and gold rugs and the embroidered cushions which Vadya had as a gift from his cousins in P'shan. He and Pava's serving men spread them in front of Vadya's tent in the shade of the entrance flaps raised to make a canopy and began unpacking the picnic hampers. 

Tashka came running back through the encampment to the other three Captains of Sixth H'las. Fiotr Araine said: "What is that in your ear? Some special medal you got for outstanding conduct in flirting?" and Tashka dragged him into a mock wrestling match, his lean muscular body rippling like a fish out of Fiotr's hard hands. 

Pava had brought the two of his Captains who were serious soldiers. Although everyone said his troop was just a play troop he did actually take some of it out on manoeuvres. He would say he did it to keep his figure trim for dancing. Tashka introduced the Ninth Vail officers and sat with all the other Captains, discussing manoeuvres and troop movements, the elegant earring twinkling as he moved his head. The bluff rough army Captains looked shyly at him in his lovely suit but they listened intently to anything he said. 

Vadya and Pava sat in the cushions in the shade in front of Vadya's tent, a little way from the Captains on one side and the aristocrat-Lieutenants on the other. Vadya had last seen Pava at his party, surrounded by scantily dressed women and visiting officer-aristocrats, quarrelling with a magnificent brunette. In his green suit he looked just as foppish as he had done then. 

"Did your friend forgive you for sending her to the inn while you let Tashka sleep in your tent with you?" he enquired with a smile. He watched Pava covertly to see if the young Lord blushed at the mention of Tashka sleeping in his tent but Pava only gave a lazy snigger. 

"Hartha?" he said. "She remained very annoyed that I would not give her the tent with such a lovely sweetmeat as Tashka. She left with a kind-hearted Knight-Captain from Avror who said he would, er, take good care of her till he could see her safe with her mama." Pava's eyes glinted humorously in the sunshine. "She is a sweet slut," he said, "but my darling, I do not think your papa will be pleased if I introduce Hartha to your consideration for a bride!" 

Instead of laughing and punching Pava in the arm, Vadya looked off into the distance, his big generous mouth screwing up. Pava looked curiously at him. "Why ar't so serious?" he asked, "I will find you a suitable girl if ar't thinking of the succession for the sake of the region. Angels! I have had to shuffle enough women off my fingers in my time." Vadya reached out and gripped his arm to make him stop. 

"My father has writ me," he said. "There is someone he has found for me." 

Pava made a sympathetic grimace. "Who is it he has chosen?" he asked. 

Vadya looked away down at the stream below the encampment and shrugged. "He does not say," he said softly. 

Pava screwed his face up at this. He put his hand on Vadya's hand on his arm and squeezed it, saying: "Your father is kind and loves you well. He is like my mother, he will never force you to a match." 

"Have they ever put a match to you then?" Vadya asked. 

Pava sighed, turning his handsome blond head to look at the woods in the distance. "Yes," he said. "I was betrothed, or nearly, twice. The first time, my cousin Arianna, I would have wed her with a singing heart but her brother had some more important tie he wished to make." Vadya saw Pava's face turn unexpectedly bleak in the sunshine, unlike the laughing careless expression the young Lord usually showed to the world. "The second time, my mother slipped the knot for me. My father was fooled into setting up the match but I went to the Generals ... I mean I asked my mother and she slipped the knot. I would marry any woman my mother found it necessary for our lovely region to be tied with and look for my pleasures outside our marriage bed – except that one. Your father is like that, Vadya, if it not be a good match for you, he will slip the knot." 

Vadya looked gravely at Pava. "I must think of H'las," he said. "Whoever the woman be, if it be in our region's interest, I will take her and be true to her, I swear it." 

Pava raised his eyebrows. "Oh do so, sweetness," he said in amused tones. "I only think of Pava el Jien. To keep me true, any woman my mama find for me must be intelligent, sweet-natured, with big breasts, devoted to me, an Angel in the kitchen ..." Vadya was laughing but he knew that it was the same for Pava as for him. If Pava's mother (who was the oldest child and had inherited the Vail region; his father was a younger son of the el Jiens van Iarve) wanted him to make a match that was in any way reasonable Pava would take the woman and abide by his vow to her – at least for a time. 

"You would not be like el V'lair van Athagine," Vadya said. "That poor woman, Lallia el Farin. Her brother is one of my Lieutenants. When we met el V'lair and Tenth in a tavern in Thiel last year we had a struggle to keep Hanya from el V'lair's throat. He did not even take a glove from his belt, just made for el V'lair with bare hands!" 

"Oh, Lallia," Pava said casually. "She escaped going to bloody Athagine to be chained and now they have broken her marriage." 

"Your pardon," Vadya said. "I forgot el V'lair is a friend of yours." 

"No he is not," Pava replied with unusual coldness. "On any road, how dids't keep young van Graiel from his throat?" 

"While we were holding him back, Tashka came into the tavern," Vadya replied. "I know not what Tashka has against el V'lair van Athagine but he went to him straight and hit him so hard that he broke his knuckles. He still carries the scars of it and I will swear el V'lair has a mark on his chin. I should say Tashka broke el V'lair's jaw from the way he lay on the floor after." 

"Tashka broke his knuckles in Tarra el V'lair's face?" Pava sat up, turning his head to stare at Tashka with a peculiarly knowing grin. 

Vadya sat up at this sniff of a clue to the mystery which had always shrouded his junior officer's background. "Yes," he said drily, "it is strange, is it not? that Captain Tashka Maien, a mere lesser aristo from Vail, should have any thing against Commander-Lord Tarra el V'lair van Athagine. When he went to hit el V'lair, el V'lair was laughing as if they knew each other well. el V'lair did not even raise his fists in defence yet Tashka struck him thunder and lightning." 

"Who said Tashka was a lesser aristocrat from Vail?" Pava responded cheerfully. "He is plain Captain Maien." 

"Oh yes," Vadya said scornfully, "and he can afford two matched horses and whatever weaponry he wants to buy himself, plays enormous sums of money at cards and wears a sapphire and pearl earring from Commander-Lord Pava el Jien van Vail as if it were no more than glass." 

"I wonder why he waited so long to give it el V'lair," Pava mused. He put one long finger up to his full mouth and put a kiss on it which he blew at Tashka, who had turned his head as if sensing that they were talking about him. Tashka sniggered that wicked dirty laugh, tossing his head and getting up to go to where Batren and the serving men were starting to hand out the food. 

"Well ask him then," Vadya said mockingly. "I am glad it is not only I who have questions about plain Captain Maien who is not a lesser aristocrat from Vail but was recommended so highly to my notice by Commander-Lord el Jien van Vail." 

Tashka – excellent young officer that he was – had secured three plates and three bowls of wine on a tray and was coming over to sit with them. Pava called teasingly to him as he walked towards them. "My darling, whyever dids't take so long to give it good and proper to that scum el V'lair van Athagine?" 

The smile dropped suddenly from Tashka's startled face, lifted to them. His eyes narrowed and he looked away across the camp, coming to a halt with the tray of food and wine in his lean tanned hands. His scarred right hand clenched on the edge of the tray, making the bowls of wine tremble. He looked up at Vadya with his slanted blue eyes wide and soft, as if tears might come into them, as if he were saying: Why did you betray me and tell of that?  

Vadya had never seen Tashka cry, not even when some scum in Thiel pulled a dagger on him and tore his back open, after calling on the Angel of Mercy. He felt stricken that he had been the cause of upsetting Tashka. He got hurriedly up and went to help hand out Pava's food and wine, saying: "There is nothing in it for us." 

Tashka sat down and looked quickly at Pava, a darting anxious blue glance. "Have you always known?" he asked. Pava nodded his head with a smile so gentle, so understanding – of what? that it made Vadya stare. "Do not tell Clair," Tashka said. "Tarra is Clair's friend and ... and he was ... I like him – a bit," he said defensively but Pava only smiled, "so I never sought him out but when I saw him ... he had that bloody grin on his face to see me!" His pretty face suddenly twisted in a vicious snarl and the cold killing gleam came into his eyes. 

"Am I likely to speak to Clair?" Pava replied with a wistful smile. 

Tashka looked back down at his scarred knuckles and Vadya said: "On any road it was a famous fight!" They grinned a wordless male grin, sharing the memory of a smoky old tavern full of flying fists and a glorious disorder of men all engaged in a hand to hand battle that would not end in death and terror as the real business of their lives sometimes did. 

"el Gaiel tells me he is to be betrothed," Pava said in an obvious attempt to change the subject. 

For some reason Vadya felt a nervous chill as he looked to see how Tashka would take this piece of news. Tashka's tanned face had become quite still and his eyes had gone cold again, he did not look at Vadya but away at the horizon as if he were not interested in some political marriage which had nothing to do with the business of the troop. 

Hanya el Farin van Graiel was walking towards them, he turned his graceful clear dark face to Pava with a smile, saying: "Pava el Jien van Vail," in semi-formal greeting. Vadya did not mind el Farin hearing about his betrothal, he knew el Farin would not gossip about it. 

"It cannot be my cousin Sevie," Pava said speculatively, "since she is caught up in el Darien's heartstrings. el Darien has a little sister but since he is your junior officer you already have a tie with Trattai, besides she is too young." 

Tashka sniggered suddenly, back in his nose. His slanted blue eyes came round on Vadya flashing with his wicked laugh. He said, "yes, a sweet little virgin sewing silk cushion covers in Trattai Castle." 

"If el Darien hears you, he will give you his sweet little virgin silk glove," Pava said. 

"No he will not," Tashka said with another snigger. "I am his sweet little senior officer." 

"She sounds a most proper maiden," Vadya said crossly. "You must not talk so of Lady el Darien, Maien." He looked away but out of the corner of his eye he saw Pava, Tashka and Hanya el Farin exchanging grins to his irritation. 

"You are unlucky to miss Sevie el Jien," Tashka sniggered. "What a storming beauty!" he nudged Pava. "Breasts and hips as big and soft as your pillows with that little waist she got from the riding, golden hair like the summer sun rising and eyes like summer skies." 

"The older sister, Lady Arianna el Jien, is a great beauty, is it not?" Hanya el Farin put in. "And an high intelligence." 

Tashka's blue eyes came round to el Farin in a curiously narrowed stare but then they flashed back at Pava with an enigmatic sparkle in them. "Are you thinking of writing a poem in praise of her high intelligence?" he said. 

Vadya and Hanya el Farin snorted with laughter; it was widely known that el Maien van Sietter had given el Parva van Selaine the glove and deliberately cut him in the face over some ridiculous epic poem he wrote about the famously chaste Lady el Jien – Pava's cousin who was bestowed off on young van Sietter. Pava looked cross. 

"There is Maive el Staten, of course," Tashka said, the glint flashing in his eye becoming wickedly teasing. Hanya el Farin looked up at Vadya who started blushing. Everyone in Sixth H'las knew he had once stopped out all night with the buxom young Lady el Staten whose whole family were notorious sluts. 

"Maive!" Pava exclaimed. "That pink-fingered vixen! Your father would never ask you ... what?" Tashka was nudging him. "Oh. Um, well, a most delightful young woman ... lovely breasts ... I mean mind. But not for your marriage bed, my dear."

"Shush, she is el Vaie's cousin," Tashka said through another snigger, jerking his head at the Lieutenants a little way off. "He is ... sensitive about his family's honour." 

"There is the daughter of the el Marins," Pava suggested. "She is a delicate piece of china if you like to take your tea in a delicate china dish. I saw her ankle in the dance once – ver-ry nice." Vadya looked aside in mortified embarrassment. "She reads darling little scrolls of poetry and paints pretty pictures of puppies and kittens which you could stick up in your lovely box-desk to moon over." 

"Oh Lisette," Tashka said, lolling back on the rug and cushions. "She is no high intelligence to trouble you with a lot of stuff about politics, just clever enough to turn her pretty eyes and wave her pretty leg at you and hook you to her way." 

"There is an el Shosta daughter is it not?" Hanya el Farin put in. 

"Ah yes," Tashka said drily. "Clipping rider to the hounds and a voice that can be clearly heard admonishing the houndsmen across three regions. The el Shostas have no truck with any clever artistic nonsense of course. They are an excellent solid kind of people who breed good strong army officers." Vadya's face became so glum at this prospect that the other three could not look him in the eye without bursting into unsympathetic laughter. 

"You have a younger sister," Hanya el Farin said to Pava but Pava shook his head, saying, "Vee's preferences make her ineligible to marry among the high nobility." Hanya el Farin's smile at Pava had a tinge of regret in it, he knew his own father was looking about for someone to bestow on him. Pava's sister was a charming and vivacious beauty. Hanya was sorry to have it confirmed that the el Jiens of the wine-producing Vail region would not be able to bestow her on any of the sons of the high nobility. After the disastrous attempt to palm off his sister on el V'lair van Athagine el Farin had refused to countenance a match until his father broke his sister's marriage. His sister was finally and happily settled and el Farin turned it over in his mind to ask Tashka who among the daughters of the high nobility might suit his brother. 

"Is there not a younger el F'lara Lady?" Pava was asking. el Farin tried not to show how keen he was to hear more about this younger daughter of the wine-growing V'ta region. "Your ... your um, somebody knowest of." 

Tashka shot him a sharp look and said, "Lady Ilya el F'lara van V'ta is too young," in a stuffy voice. "She can barely 'broider a napkin, some silk shirt for a commanding officer is quite beyond her needle and thread. She has never yet learnt to give a 'no' so if you are willing to wait, in time she will make you a perfect little mouse-wife. While you are waiting for her to um, learn to ... sew a shirt, she will embroider the whole set of napkins and a tablecloth to match. She might even learn to give a 'yes'." Pava rolled around the rug laughing at this. 

By now Vadya was feeling extremely annoyed about this list of the high nobility fillies being trotted out for his consideration. The objective and knowledgeable assessment Pava and Tashka put forward made most of them sound proper maidens appropriate for the hand of el Gaiel van H'las but also boring and he was suspicious as to how Tashka Maien had come by such a complete catalogue of their virtues – or vices, which he probably knew even more about. "If only there were an el Maien daughter," he said crossly. "I would know it well who my betrothed might be! the way things are with Sietter and ourselves." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 04



"Do not the el Maiens have a daughter?" Hanya el Farin asked. 

Tashka had turned to look away from Vadya. Pava lay on the black and gold rug with his head also turned away and the smile uncurling on his full sweet mouth. 

"What?!" Vadya exclaimed. "Why do you think that?" 

"Mm, well, I know not," Hanya said vaguely. "Perhaps I have wrong, sir." 

Vadya turned an irritated brown eye to Pava and demanded: "You must know if the el Maiens have a daughter; you trained in the Sietter army with the el Maiens." 

"Were not you betrothed to the el Maien daughter?" Hanya el Farin added helpfully. 

Pava sat up and looked sideways at Vadya and Hanya with a veiled expression in his green eyes. "Er yes," he said. "It is so." 

"Angels of Hell!" Vadya cried. "It was bad enough thinking we would get the younger el Maien in the troop! but to be married to one!" 

Pava risked a quick flick of the eyes at Tashka. The laughter had gone out of Tashka's face, he was staring impassively away, his face tilted up so that only Pava knew how angry his eyes must be. Pava had seen him kill over his family's honour. He wondered how often Tashka had to listen to the H'las soldiers he served with speaking like this and keep his eager fingers off his gloves. 

"Shut it about the el Maiens," he said roughly. "They are my brother officers. I will never forswear my love for them. Well, for the younger. The younger el Maien is the finest friend it has ever been my privilege to love. An Angel. He was my baby Lieutenant and will always be the junior officer of my heart. Anyone who wishes to speak any word against him may have my glove!" 

Vadya looked at him in surprise, he had never heard of Pava offering anyone a glove in earnest. "Is this the betrothal that you say was an impossible match?" he asked. "What for is the el Maien daughter an impossible match?" 

"Do not trouble your pretty head about her," Pava's words were light but his voice was steely. "No one will ask you to marry the honourable Lady Anastelle el Maien." 

"Pava, this is politics," Vadya protested. "Whatever she be like, they may want me to marry her." 

"Not this woman," Pava said with finality. 

"Why? What is wrong with her?" Vadya asked with a puzzled frown. 

Pava shrugged. "Nothing," he said unhelpfully. "Sweet nothing," he grinned suddenly, his eyes lit up by a wicked sparkle. "The daughter of the el Maiens is a splendid dancer, a clipping rider, a splitting player at billiards and will give you an hand at cards if ar't willing to risk your wines and horses. She has the quickest brain and the warmest ... er, heart and the nicest taste in art and the sweetest singing voice and the sexiest eye and the loveliest leg in Trossia." 

Tashka swung suddenly round on Pava and hissed: "Must you talk so of legs!" and then he blushed and ducked his head down. 

Vadya looked at him in astonishment. Pava burst out laughing. "Does't not care to hear me praise Anastelle el Maien's legs to your Commander?" he teased, turning his head to peer into Tashka's face where Tashka was stooping over the food in his lap. 

"Shut it," Tashka growled, chucking his plate to one side on the black and gold rug and turning his head away with the blush hot on his cheeks. His scarred right fist clenched up. 

"Why is it impossible that I should marry the honourable Lady Anastelle, daughter to the el Maiens?" Vadya said in bewilderment. Pava's description of her was extraordinary, she was easily the most interesting of all the young Ladies he and Tashka had reviewed. 

Tashka lifted his head and stared off into the distance at the grass waving in the breeze away to the horizon. Pava sat looking into his wine with an enigmatic smile on his wide red mouth. He had put one hand on Tashka's right arm above the clenched scarred fist. After a moment Hanya el Farin said: "I know of no reason, sir. If she is at all like her mother she will be a rare beauty; the mother was reputed to be an heartbreaker." He turned his dark face in polite query to Pava, the one among them who knew the el Maiens van Sietter well. 

"Is the Lady Anastelle el Maien beautiful?" Vadya asked Pava. His heart had started to beat faster. Pava lifted his green eyes, in which laughter and some other indefinable emotion were lurking. 

"The young el Maiens are all beautiful to die for," he said. 

"I met Lord Clair once. He is the friend of my aunt, your grandmother in duty bound on your mother's side, sir, Lady Hartha. They say of Lord Clair that he is the most desirable man at court," Hanya el Farin put in helpfully. Tashka made some involuntary jerk with his right hand. Pava gripped it harder and held it down. "What is the name of the younger el Maien son, el Jien, your former junior officer? He is reputed to be as beautiful an heartbreaker as the mother but to be honour itself. Lord Clair is ... would you say he is an heartbreaker?" he enquired of Pava in dispassionate polite tones. 

"Well he must have broken some hearts along the way," Pava replied with that enigmatic smile on his wide red mouth then he muttered: "His own hardest of all, probably." Tashka started to get up, pulling on the arm that Pava was still holding, Pava pulled him back down again, refusing to let go of his right, his fighting arm. 

"And is the Lady Anastelle an heartbreaker?" Vadya asked. He felt an odd surge of emotion to think about this young Lady, perhaps it was she whom his father was putting to him for a bride but his father did not like to give him the name in writing because having fought in the war against Sietter, Vadya might take against her. Perhaps she was beautiful, that would be something. 

He and Hanya both looked at Pava where he sat on the black and gold rug and embroidered cushions in the sunshine holding Tashka's sword arm. 

Pava turned his blond head about uneasily, his green eyes shifting away from their gaze, then he gave a sudden gurgle of laughter. "Oh my dear," he said softly. "She can hardly move for the strewn bodies of those who are dying for her favours but her heart is set on other matters, it is not often that the honourable Lady Anastelle el Maien gives the eye." He pulled on Tashka's arm so that Tashka was obliged to lean in against him and put his arm around Tashka's shoulders, holding the young officer close against his chest. Tashka leant stiffly on him, not as if they had ever been lovers, more as if he wanted to get away and not have to talk about Lady Anastelle el Maien van Sietter's beauty or admirers or legs, although why should he care about the honour of a van Sietter Lady. He was still looking away into the distance with a cold expressionless look on his face, his eyes steely. 

"Why did you ask for the knot to be slipped, Pava?" Vadya asked, his brown forehead creased in puzzlement. "If she is such a beauty, why would you not be willing for the el Maiens to bestow her on you? You trained with the brothers, surely you would be happy to take the sister in marriage?" 

Pava tilted his wine in his bowl, unusually he seemed to be lost for words. He pressed Tashka's muscular tall frame closer in to his chest and leant his cheek on Tashka's close-cropped hair. "Um, mumble mumble inappropriate match," he said awkwardly. Then he suddenly lifted his head and looked round into Vadya's and Hanya's eyes over the top of Tashka's dark-haired head. There was for once no laugh in his green eyes, he said very clearly: "I am not worthy the hand of Lady Anastelle el Maien van Sietter. She is as far above me as the stars above the mud in a field of cows. She is an Angel and I will give any man who speaks idle words about her name the glove." He added: "I was wrong to talk about her just now so lightly. If her brother were here he would have me for it and I would not lift my sword against him, I would cry on the Angel of Mercy and beg him to pardon me. And I would beg her to pardon me too." Tashka moved against him, he gripped his arm and held the young Captain close. Vadya could still not see Tashka's face. 

"Pava, this is ridiculous!" Vadya exclaimed. "Do you tell me that you persuaded your mother to refuse the offered hand of Lady el Maien on the grounds that she is too good for you? Why do you say you are not worthy her hand?" 

"Because it is so," Pava said with finality, swinging his eyes away and taking a sip of his wine. 

Tashka broke suddenly free of Pava's arm and turned to look at his Commander and at Hanya el Farin. Pava had grasped his right arm again and held it tightly while looking into his wine. Tashka's eyes were still cold, they had that killing look that came into them when he had given someone the glove. "Nobody will ask you to take the body of an el Maien in your bed, el Gaiel," he said roughly and crudely. "Talk about somebody-else's legs, for the Angels' sake." 

"Maien, explain it to me," Vadya asked. "The political situation being as it is, I should have said it is inevitable that my father would seek the el Maien daughter's hand." 

Tashka looked deep down into Vadya's eyes and his exquisitely lovely slanted blue eyes suddenly softened. He looked like he sometimes did when Vadya had put together a strategy for them that he thought highly of. A slow smile would come over his rose-petal mouth and he would lift his eyes to Vadya's with such warm admiration that it could not but make Vadya smile in return. Instead of a smile a kind of sorrowful yearning seemed to lie in his eyes. "el Gaiel," he said, "I cannot explain it to you." 

Vadya looked back into Tashka's clear sad blue stare. His heart missed a beat and then began throbbing so insistently in his chest that he was scared he would blush. 

"This talk of legs and betrothals is embarrassing," he said hurriedly, turning his gaze from Tashka's. 

"Has't heard," Pava put in, "Second Thiel set up camp yester day only twenty miles West of here. Tashka and some of my scouts found them. I think the poor fools are plotting a surprise attack on Ninth Vail! Clair el Shosta only wants some of my wine, the greedy dog." 

"They cannot yet have learned we are here," Tashka said, leaning back on the cushions next to Pava. 

"This will please Fiotr," Vadya said, gratefully seizing on the change of subject. 

"My dears," Pava drawled. "Will you take them out before they get to Ninth Vail? I will give you ten cases of Vail white and they are sure to have a good stock of V'ta, el Shosta likes his V'ta." 

"Why not," Vadya said cheerfully. "I promised you one last manoeuvre before you go on leave, Maien. I have to take leave myself now, my father has called me home." He looked at Tashka but Tashka was staring away again. 

"Shall't travel to Paviat and take ship there for Port H'las, is it not?" Pava enquired. "I will ride that long road with you, sweet officers. Yes, it is that season again when I am obliged to grace the ballrooms with my, er, particular kind of manoeuvres." He nudged Tashka and when Tashka sat up he smiled anxiously and appealingly. 

"We will be well glad of your company on the road to Paviat," Vadya said with a smile. 

"So I hear Revel broke his leg," Tashka said, looking into Vadya's face with a frown. 

"Yes," Vadya looked regretfully at him. "It is a bad break, Maien, I do not think he will fully recover the use of it." 

Tashka sighed and his shoulders slumped down. His lovely pink mouth pursed up and he ran tanned fingers over his short hair. "Damn the Angels," he cursed. "He was a good trooper and to lose it all over a silly prank." 

"I know," Vadya said. "I have not dealt with those involved, I left it for you." 

Tashka nodded. His blue eyes glanced away around his Quarter. Pava was leaning over to him but now Lieutenant-Lord Mada el Vaie van Soomara was coming up to talk to Pava. Pava had run a long-standing affair with Mada's oldest sister – they were both the oldest so there was no question of a match – but he had also written a letter recommending Mada's military potential to Vadya's notice so Mada was still fond of him. His sister called Pava the pinkest-fingered scum in Trossia. Tashka said she certainly had sufficient experience to make such a judgement – out of Mada's hearing. Tashka got up and went to sit between Hanya el Farin and Volka el Darien. He gave Pava's shoulder a shove as if to say: You are a slack-mouth fool but I forgive you. Pava swayed to his hand, his eyes shame-facedly turned down and that enigmatic smile on his lips. 

Tashka sat down with Hanya and Volka and started telling them something in a low voice, probably so that either Vadya or Pava would not have to hear some scandalous story about a relative of theirs. He sniggered softly and they both leant close to him, their faces full of intrigued amusement. Pava was still watching Tashka, crouched on the black and gold rugs and the embroidered cushions in the sunshine, his blue eyes glinting as he spun another gossipy story to make the Lieutenants exclaim in disbelief. "Angels!" he cried. "I am glad to be rid of you! Vadya, woulds't not believe it, every woman in the camp ran at the little lamb's heels. Even my own particular chicken, Hartha, tried to win his favours!" 

Tashka blushed and sniggered, coming back to Pava and leaning affectionately against his back with an arm over his shoulder. "She is not good enough for you to waste the jewellery on," he said carelessly. The sun sparkled in the earring Pava had given him. 

"Look at it!" Pava said idly, catching Tashka's chin in his long pale fingers over his shoulder. "Look at those adorable blue eyes and that mouth like a rose-petal, soft and pink and curved with the kissable tuck in it. The most beautiful of my beautiful Angels. Ar't nothing but trouble, my Angel. It was always so!" 

"Get off, el Jien," Tashka protested, casting an embarrassed look at the junior officers around them and pulling Pava's fingers off his chin. "Do you want my glove?" 

"Not I," Pava said with a laugh. "It is an horrid army issue one if I know you." Tashka leant on his back, his arm still hanging over Pava's shoulder, and continued to chuck stories out to make the Lieutenants exclaim and giggle. Pava leant his golden-fair cheek on Tashka's arm with a loving smile. 

Vadya watched them under his lashes.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 05



Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.) 

*****

As Arianna helped Arkyll and Hanya to break their fast, she looked up again at the kitchen doorway, her smooth pale forehead creased by a frown. She had seen Clair's door was open as she fetched the children but when they came down to the kitchens he was not there. She had wanted particularly to ask him to take the boys. It was Angel-day so there was no school. Lisette had told Arianna as she dressed her that Ria had had a message in the night that her mother was ill so she had had to go home. 

Once the children had eaten (she took care that they did make a good breakfast although it was Angel-day so she might have spoiled them but she wanted to be able to say to Clair that she had taken good care of them) she bethought herself that Clair was probably in the armoury. 

'Not a fit day for weapons,' she reflected crossly. Clair's duelling, his military past and her pacifist philosophy were so clearly grounds for the most wounding disagreement that they avoided any discussion that came near the topic. She walked with the children down the corridors to the armoury. Outside it was raining softly, the light fell grey through the narrow windows of the outer castle walls. 

The armoury was a huge echoing space with a smooth wooden floor, shafts of rainy light falling from windows high up in the walls and roof. Carefully ordered rows of weights and racks of gleaming weapons stood against the walls. The boys loved the armoury which was a combination of forbidden ground to them - they might only go there with Clair or the Captain of the Castle Guard - and a place which was peculiarly their father's; they knew that Arianna disapproved of soldiery. 

Nobody was so irreligious as to be improving their skills at killing in the large light room nor even enjoying exercise on the wrestling mats. Arianna sighed and called Arkyll away from a rack of rapier swords gleaming with oil. They went back out into the corridors and she asked the first serving man they came to: "Where is my Lord?" He looked at her hesitantly and paused before replying that he did not know. 

His look at her seemed strange, Arianna's suspicious mind leapt on the pause he had made before he had answered and her heart seemed to rise up and start beating like a bird in the hollow of her throat. The rational side of her brain reminded her that he never played at sex when resident at the castle but she frowned coldly down the corridors. Her voice when she called the boys was sharper than she had intended. 'What, am I never to get a moment's peace to myself,' she thought angrily, ignoring that she could have asked Ladda to take the boys. It was raining but she could have asked the library clerk to read to them or someone to play games in the sitting-room with them. She drifted down the corridors aimlessly with them trotting in her wake. When she saw Clair crossing the huge entrance hall she no longer felt relieved. She was still angry. 

He saw them, she knew he did, but instead of coming towards them he turned back on his steps and disappeared into the shadows of the corridor behind him. She gave an astonished gasp and, without thinking, picked up her skirts and ran down the dim corridors into the castle after him, showing her ankles as she ran. When she caught up with him he turned, his grey eyes big in a pale face and the fingers he lifted to his curling locks of hair trembling. 

'What, again?' she thought angrily. 'What is it now! van Sietter and I know not who coming and is he going to lose his nerve? and make me carry all the burden of entertaining them and also caring for him.' 

"M-my Lady?" it was an effort to him even to say that much, his eyebrow rose in his tense pale face over his wide grey eye. The boys were coming up to them, he flicked a look at them: dark-haired little Arkyll, beautiful blond Hanya. His eyes creased and he turned them away. He could not bear to look at the two boys that day. 

"There is a problem and Ria has had to go home," Arianna said. "Wills't take the boys for me ... Wills't come with me and the boys, perhaps, to ... to play cards in the sitting-room?" As she started to say it she could see in his face that he would not be able to take the boys on his own but she hoped he might come and spend time with them. Did it not make him feel happier, to be with the two children and the promise of a happy future which laughed in their eyes? 

"Wh-what problem?" Clair temporised, looking away from her and from the two boys. Arkyll was pushing at Hanya while Hanya smiled patiently and held him off. 

"It is no matter," she said, her voice becoming cold. "Has't some important business, is it?" 

He hesitated, his eyes still cast back behind him away from them. Now Arkyll was kicking Hanya, Hanya began protesting in his sweet melodious voice. "Stop it, Arkyllan!" Arianna said crossly. She had to go back and pull him gently away and while she did so, Hanya ran trustingly forward and put his arms around Clair's legs. 

Holy Hell! he was going to cry, he knew it. In front of his wife, in front of his children. He was petrified of upsetting the children, he caught his breath hard up, bit his thin lip, while his hands gently caressed Hanya's head. He could not look into that sunny golden up-turned face - so beautiful, so unlike the cold-eyed handsome face that Clair had loved so truly. Arianna was suddenly there, taking Hanya's hands and guiding him aside. She stood in front of Clair, shielding him from the children, saying to a passing maid-servant: "Cans't take the boys to get cakes in the kitchens?" With excited cries of glee they ran off with the maid-servant. She started to turn back to Clair but he had brushed past her and run, he was running hard away down the entrance hall - far too fast for her to catch him. 

"What is this?!" she exclaimed with an angry sob. "What now, what is with him!" She looked back round and saw one of the footmen wheeling his chair along. He must have overheard her but she stiffened her face and looked at him with expressionless eyes. 

The footman said: "Will you want a private lunch and dinner set out for the Commander as is his custom on the anniversary of Shier Bridge?" His considerate warm eyes did not blame her for forgetting that this was the day on which Clair had fought that most terrible battle of the Sietter-H'las war, had lost so many of his troopers and friends and had seen Hanya Vashin die before his eyes. This was the day the footman himself had broken his back fighting for Clair's banner but he did not blame her. For those of the servants who were ex-soldiers the day was so significant they did not think to remind her and for those who were not it was not a day they bore in mind themselves. But bitterly did Arianna blame herself. 

"Fiotr," she said remorsefully. "I prithou pardon me! Wills't not prefer to rest the day?" 

"I had rather work, m'Lady, I thank you," he answered. He wheeled himself slowly down the corridor to bury his memories of the physical agony and the terror and the grief of that day in his new duties. 

'How could I have forgot?' she mourned, as she passed back down the corridors to the kitchens. 'Oh-h! Now he will hate me more and quarrel with me while van Sietter and van Sietter's guests are here, and not guard me from van Sietter's meanness. No, I am not fair-minded to him. He has always tried to protect me from van Sietter.' She passed through the dimness of the entrance hall like a candle-flame lighting up Clair's home, her face still stricken with guilt. 

Clair ran as hard and as fast as he could, out of the castle doorway, through the soft warm summer rain and into the kennels. 

The kennels were quiet at that hour of the morning. The dogs had all been fed, the kennelmaster and two of the houndsmen were busy at the end of the kennels. They must have seen who had come in but they studiously ignored him, their kind faces turned away from him towards each other and their work. Clair went quickly up the passage between the dogs' pens and climbed into the pen with Tashka's ratting terrier in it. 

Tashka's terrier was called Emperor, a name that suited him not at all. Everyone called him Imp. He was snuffling in a corner of his pen at an old bone he had buried beneath a ragged blue quilt which had once had a pattern of peacocks embroidered on it. When Clair climbed in, he lifted bright black eyes and peered at Clair. Clair was not Tashka but he was the next best person so Imp trotted over and sniffed politely at him. 

Clair slid to the ground, his back pressed against the wooden partition of the pen. He drew in a sobbing breath and let it slowly out. No tear forced its way through his clenched eyelids. His eyes felt horribly dry, as if he had cried all the tears that he ever could in his life already over the tragedies he had survived. 

Imp was poking boredly at his hand with a cold nose. Clair reached gently out, without opening his eyes, and stroked the terrier's head. Above him he could hear the whisper of the rain on the roof of the kennels. 

After a while he felt able to look at Imp and start whispering to him without fearing the tears would leak from his tortured soul. 

"What," he whispered, "do you miss Tashka? Did he leave you behind and is it that you are lonely without him? He cannot take you all over Trossia with him, little one. You are too small and you are from Sietter, you would give him away to his van H'las Commander. But he loves you truly, yes he does. He will come home and play with you again, it is so, little Imp." 

Imp shifted nearer him and sat down, looking away out of his pen as if he were still waiting. He was always waiting while Tashka was away, he only lost the bored longing look in his eyes when Tashka was home to roll him round, tease him, pet him and play with him. 

Clair thought how Tashka would be hung for a spy if found in el Gaiel's troop. He wondered if Tashka would still come home now that van Sietter had foisted himself on them. Would he bring Pava too perhaps? But Pava would still be angry with him, Pava with whom he had shared so much, he and Pava and Tashka, and Tashka's fellow Lieutenants, and ... Hanya. His eyes grew huge in his strained face, he looked away where Imp was looking and suddenly his anguish broke in a sob, the tears came pouring down his face. He sat with his back leaning against the hard wooden partition. He could bear it that he could still feel something when many of his friends - and oh, Hanya! - could not, because the partition was so hard that it hurt him. Gently he tickled Imp behind the ears as the tears rolled down his face, Imp whined and curled up by his side. 

'Will it ever pass?' he pleaded as if to the Angels. It was too much to bear! losing so many friends, losing Hanya. The slow tears trickled down his long black lashes and rolled down his lean cheeks, breaking salt in his thin pouting mouth. 

He had sat there a long time, weeping had given way to a dull nothing in which he was content to sit and stare at the partition wall opposite with Imp's warmth curled to his side when he heard someone coming up the kennels with a swish of skirts. He turned his head and Arianna appeared by Imp's pen. He stared at her, she looked back at him with her round blue eyes softened and gentle although nervous. 

"I have had lunch put in the reception room for you," she said. "There is no one there." 

"I am not hungry," he answered, swinging his head aside. "I thank you," he added. 

"Musts't eat," she murmured. "Shall't feel worse of it so eats't not." She hovered uneasily by the gate to the pen. He knew she was obstinate, she would not leave him alone until he either went and ate or dredged up enough energy to fight with her. 

Slowly he began to get to his feet. His legs and back were stiff and sore. Imp got up too, gave a whine and made to come out of the pen with him. "I may take Imp to the reception room?" he said. 

"What ar't asking me for?" She exclaimed, her brow creasing up. "It is a matter for you if the chairs are covered in dog hairs ... um, of course. I am sure that Tashka would be annoyed if we made Imp ... stand at station, is it?" 

Her clumsy attempt at a joke went to his heart but his heart was broken, he could not give her any warm laughter in response. He climbed out of the pen and opened the gate to let Imp trot out. The gentle living look Arianna bent towards him veiled over in her eyes, she stepped in front of him so that he need not feel he had to talk to her or offer her any politeness he was not able in his raging grief to make the effort for. They walked across the courtyard with a footman holding an umbrella over her flaxen head of hair dressed high. He walked slowly in her wake with his elegantly cut head of dark curls bowed in the soft summer rain. 

As they came into the entrance hall she walked off towards the family quarters while he turned to the reception room, Imp at his heels. Then suddenly she came walking back. "Clair!" she said, he was caught by the unaccustomed sound of his name on her lips, she said: "It is not so bad as it was at first. I know shall't never be wholly better of what has happened. But sometimes ar't happy with Arkyll and now Hanya, is it not? Shall't never forget but mights't live now carrying the memory, perhaps? Some days it is very bad, of course, but other days will be better?" 

In the second year of their marriage she must have heard his screams in the night. His men-servants and Tashka had slept in his room with him while she lay in their marriage bed alone. She must have seen the men-servants quick to ensure he had someone to help him shave, she must have heard Tashka order the armourers not to sharpen his weapons, making excuses and quarrelling with him to prevent him being near the temptation of a sharp clean blade. When she came to offer him the great honour of her favours, he took them careless and without any word or caress. After he had done with her as she required, he walked away from her soft body, knowing she had had little pleasure in the heartless fucking he gave her. He ran away from her and for six months he fell in and out of so many beds that even he lost count. Sometimes if he went to court now he met someone who seemed unusually friendly and he wondered if he had taken a quick favour off them in the dark without bothering to look at their features. 

"Yes," he said in a soft dull voice strung with tears. "It is better." 

She nodded briskly and walked away through the dim shadows of the echoing great entrance hall, fair as a candleflame wavering in the wind. He watched her, thinking that any man ought to be happy - to be with her. Her ripe young beauty ought to make any man wish to live. 

He was the only oldest son of the high nobility who would never have asked to have bestowed on him this famous beauty. Here she was with a child already in her arms to prove her fertility; other oldest sons would enquire about his marriage to her with suspect solicitude. Her mother was a slut, her husband had become a slut and his mother's behaviours while in this very castle were notorious. Very early in their betrothal he had realised with an appalled sinking at his heart that she would never be a slut; she was a sweetheart. He had not deserted her at court where he knew that she would be lured into behaviours which were not her preference, although this would have allowed him to break his marriage to her and send her away with her head low. He sent her to his home, thinking he would choose out a separate establishment for her after the war. 

Here she bent so gentle and shy an affection on those clustering about her, Tashka and the older servants lifted their eyes to him on his return from war in anxiety about her. To his astonishment they had stepped to it to quietly protect her honour and happiness not for his sake but for her own. Even if he had been willing to expose someone so naive, and his own Lady wife, to an exploitative set of cold-hearted dogs whose predatory habits he knew intimately well, he could not have failed the relief and trust in the eyes of his nearest and dearest dependents, Tashka and the castle servants, when he finally recovered some sense of himself and came home to take under his eye the honour and happiness of someone he had never expected them to love. 

'But she will go back to Iarve one day,' he thought. 'Or to Pava who loves her. He can offer her laughter and the sunshine of the Vail plains, what do I bring her? An old castle full of shadows and an alliance with that snake who would sacrifice anyone for his interest. She does not belong here, she does not understand the old grievances and sorrow hidden in the corners of this castle. She will go back to the sunshine one day.' 

Outside the warm summer rain fell softly and lightly in the castle courtyard.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 06



Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.) 

*****

Vadya walked Midnight slowly down the hill into the river port of Paviat. He had enjoyed a riotous three day journey with Tashka and Pava doing imitations along the way. Pava had made up a particularly successful one of an amorous old court Lady, pretending to look over a fan at the two of them and calling them 'naughty boys' and making Tashka giggle so much that once he fell off Jewel. 

Vadya was nervous coming into a Sietter town although there was currently no open enmity between H'las and Sietter and he and Tashka were in civilian clothes, not the black and blue H'las uniform. He wondered whether to give another name at the inn. 

As he looked about him he was disagreeably struck by the dingy evidence of poverty. The Vail country villages they had passed through had seemed prosperous and healthy. Was it because Paviat was so much bigger a town that its people seemed ragged and thinner? Surely in Port H'las there were not so many empty shops. He saw that Tashka had dismounted beside a group of pinch-faced women queuing at a bread shop with children clustered to their skirts. 

Pava was smiling affectionately. "The little lamb had always a tender heart," he said. "He feels the responsibility - as if it is any matter of his." 

"Responsibility to Sietter folk?" Vadya asked, frowning. 

"Uh, er, to the poor," Pava said. "Because his family is also so poor." He grinned. 

"Oh yes!" Vadya said scornfully. "That is so evident from his wardrobe!" 

Tashka's summer riding suit was of cool black linen and he was even wearing a gold bird studded in his ear on a simple journey through the countryside. Vadya saw Tashka swing up onto Jewel away from the women whose grey faces were raised to him with grateful expressions. Vadya's mouth quirked in a smile, Tashka never could bear to see children in poverty. Tashka's face as he rode up to them was angry and he rode past without speaking of the low quality bread the women were trying to buy, the miserable wares set out in the few shops that were not boarded up, the people who sat in huddled groups on street corners instead of enjoying a cake and a bowl of tea in a comfortable café. 

As they rode on into Paviat, the road changed from mud to cobblestones and the shops became bigger and full of choicer goods: a rainbow of silks on display, a row of jewellers' stalls, a vegetable stall with fresh greenery and colourful young root vegetables. There seemed to be few people out buying, however. The shopkeepers wore anxious frowns as they idled by the racks of goods they had laid out so tidily that it was evident they had too much time on their hands. 

"There will be little custom at the Ship Inn," Tashka said when Vadya suggested Pava give his name for all their rooms. "Since there is no accord with H'las, the merchants do not come up from Port H'las and this town is empty. The landlord will be well glad to have someone of your quality to stay. He may even give you a better room in hopes that you will tell the H'las merchants to come back to Paviat." He looked sombrely at a row of seamstresses' workshops where the women were sitting out on the pavement in the summer sunshine, chatting and playing with their children because they had no work and no money to send the children to school. In H'las there was free schooling but that was not an expenditure Lord Pava el Maien van Sietter found useful. He argued that allowing children to work cheaply instead of getting learning beyond their proper place in life encouraged business to come to Sietter. 

They clattered into the cobbled yard of the old Ship Inn. The cheery yellow paint on its timber-framed front was peeling but the yard was kept weed-free. Two grooms came straight out of the stables to take their horses' reins with faces bright and eager to see well-appointed travellers come to Paviat. 

The landlord himself had come out, he came down the stairs at the front of the inn. Even his plump cheerful beaming smile seemed muted, his skin hung around his jowls and his jacket on his shoulders loose as if he had recently lost some firm fat that had sat comfortably around his tummy and hips. However he spoke up pleasantly: "Commander-Lord el Gaiel, Commander-Lord el Jien, Captain Maien. This way, your Lordships ... Captain." He looked uncertainly at Tashka, Tashka gave him a long hard stare and he smiled deprecatingly, bowed low and ushered them into the inn. "You have had letters," he added, handing a packet each to Pava and Tashka. 

"Some coffee? Some wine?" he offered, directing them into the sitting-room. The big light room looked out over the stables opposite and you could see through the many little panes in the window all the way down the hill to the boats tied up at the dock. There were comfortable armchairs and sofas in cheerful colours pulled up to make companionable groups around the room but they were all empty apart from one armchair near the fireplace where a lean young Knight in the livery of King's Herald was dozing with his despatch-box chained to his wrist. 

Pava and Tashka drifted over to the broad wooden sill of the window where some cushions were arranged to make an appealing seat, tearing open the packets of paper in which their letters were wrapped. The yellow sealing wax on each packet had no seal stamped into it, Pava was grumbling that it must be his tailor, how had the man found out his direction. Vadya asked for beer for them all and picking up a newssheet he flopped into one of the squashy comfortable armchairs. 

"Gracious Angels!" Pava exclaimed loudly. Vadya looked up at him. Pava was staring at his letter. Tashka gave him a savage shove. He looked at the young officer then at Vadya and said in a careless tone, "what an invoice. I am sure I must have had a suit dripping with darling emeralds all the way from the mines of the H'velst Mountains to cost this much!" 

Vadya looked back at his newssheet. It was full of speculation about better trade relations between H'las and Sietter. Vadya thought what that might mean for Port Paviat and also for Port H'las where he knew that his father had had to pay out heavily in order to keep businesses that would otherwise have been prosperous from being ruined. 

"It is from Anna," he heard Pava hiss, "inviting me to the Castle!" 

He was not interested in Pava's affairs but he was surprised to hear Tashka whisper back: "Yes, I know. Shall you come then?" 

"What, I come to Clair's place?" Pava murmured in a sour tone. 

"Come to my home and Anna's," Tashka replied. "Will you not be glad to see Ladda again?" 

"Are her poor bones still rattling around the castle?" Pava laughed softly. "Oh-h-h! Angels. Is Anna serious? She has writ that Clair himself asks me to go, most particular." 

"Why would he not?" Tashka asked. "He has always loved you, Pava. Have you forgot how he and Hanya sat by your side every night turn by turn when you were so ill in Falaise?" 

"Do not talk to me of Clair and Hanya," Pava's voice was strangely gentle. He did not sound like his usual flippant self, Vadya thought he sounded as if he were about to cry. "Hanya is gone: Hanya, with those eyes like ice and under them the heart as warm as summer. He died for Clair but I had rather Clair had lost at Shier Bridge and Hanya could be with us still." 

"Do you not think Clair feels as you do?" Tashka's voice was husky with sorrow. "How can you deny Clair one friendly visit when he has lost Hanya forever!" 

"My dear, leave it, leave it!" 

"And Clair? Who lost Hanya and who loves you so much but you will not give him your small finger in friendship. You know it well, he would never have married Anna if van Sietter had not forced him to it yet you tried to give him your glove for it - your brother officer!" 

"Tashka, the woman is worth the sun and moon and stars! Woulds't have offered a glove yourself to any who spoke slightingly of her except that she is such a pacifist. How am I to feel watching Clair giving her the go-by for such a quantity of trash going in and out his bed?" 

"You are a fine one to blame Clair for a few one-day-one-nights. And what is Clair worth to you? The soiling of a glove when he marched and laughed and fought by your side: your brother officer." 

Vadya was staring blankly at his newssheet. Shier Bridge, a brilliant victory for Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter of Fourth Sietter, Pava's brother officer, but hardly a subject that H'las soldiers ought to talk about so carelessly; particularly if they were referring to Commander-Lord el Maien only by his first name. There were two thoughts running through Vadya's head side by side. The first said it was absurd to think that a Sietter nobleman would join a H'las troop - except as a spy, and if they were sending a spy what for would they send a nobleman? The second said: Captain Maien, so keen for the honour of Lady Anastelle el Maien van Sietter? 

"My Angel," Pava said huskily, "my baby Lieutenant, give me peace. Has't always kept my heart twisted in your fingers. Little Lieutenant-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter, what a dance woulds't lead me back in Fourth Sietter. They must miss you so much, those other Angels who thought woulds't be their Lord General and who will always be for you through Hell and through life. Although I give it you, the H'las colours show off your beauty well, my dear." 

Vadya stood suddenly up from the armchair, the newssheet falling to his feet. He turned a brown face twisting with fury to the two of them. He saw Pava's face stricken with horror and Tashka: those exquisite blue eyes came up to him wide, the rose-petal mouth opening in appeal. 

"Hear me!" Tashka cried, reaching pleading arms out to Vadya. "Oh my Commander! Hear me!" but Vadya turned and ran from the room, furious with the idea that beat at his brain: 'Tashka is a spy! He was sent to spy on me!' 

An hour later it was Pava who came to look for him. He found Vadya sitting on a grey stone wall across the road from the hotel. Vadya was staring down the winding street below the wall, down to the broad river in the sunny distance, thinking bitterly how much he hated sneaking spies and trying to convince himself that Flava Trait would be an excellent Captain, better than Tashka. Although he would struggle with those two butterfly-witted aristocrats, they were hard enough for Tashka to handle ... but Trait would probably do much better. Possibly. 

"Halloo my darling!" Pava was standing cautiously well back from him. "Ar't angry still?" 

"How can I not be angry?" Vadya demanded but his face as he turned round was forlorn not angry, "suddenly finding an el Maien van Sietter in my troop, brother of the man who defeated us at Shier Bridge, an officer himself of Fourth Sietter, the very troop that decimated Fifth and Ninth H'las so horribly?" 

"Tashka is no spy," Pava said, sitting on the wall beside him. 

"I know," Vadya replied. "He has defended my honour and even saved my life but why did you put him in my troop? It was you who sent him me, what made you send me an el Maien van Sietter?" 

"I will tell it you," Pava said. He settled grumblingly on the hard stones of the wall and looked into Vadya's face with a gentle guilty humour in his eyes. "Three years back, his father came proposing a match that was ... impossible." 

"Why was it impossible?" Vadya asked. 

"Never mind why, dearest Vadya," Pava said evasively. His green eyes narrowed in a momentary glare. "We knew that van Sietter would have him killed if he gave him the No, van Sietter hates him so much. He would be nearly as glad of the excuse to kill him as of the chance to bestow him to make a tie somewhere!" 

"How can a father want to kill his own son?" Vadya objected. 

"Listen," Pava leant close to him and stared into his warm brown eyes. "van Sietter is not like your papa, dearest. He is a snake. He thinks that Tashka is not his child, he is convinced he is the child of a servant. It is for that reason that van V'ta, Tashka's uncle, is also out for Tashka's blood. He wants to wash off the shame of his sister's affair with her servant in Tashka's blood." Vadya looked incredulous, Pava made a dismissive gesture. "van V'ta lives by the Northern code. 

"We had to look about for somewhere to hide the little flower. I suggested as a joke an H'las troop. Tashka had been an officer of Fourth Sietter - he was too young for them to agree to take him to war but still van Sietter would never expect him to be willing to serve in H'las. But Tashka took me serious, he was happy to think of going to H'las because he says the structure of the command is the best in Trossia. Then he heard that hads't a vacant Captaincy and he started begging me to use my influence with you. I said it was too dangerous but he said the risk would be worth the candle-flame. I wrote that letter recommending him to your notice. And everything I said in it was the sweet truth, is it not? Do not deny that Tashka is the fine officer I promised you he would be and a loving friend to boot." 

Vadya shrugged, his eyes turned down to where his fingers pleated up the edge of his green linen riding jacket. "You should know," he said shortly. "He was your Lieutenant in Fourth Sietter, is it not? What a fool I am not to have guessed it, the way you talked about and with him. I never imagined that a Sietter man would have the insolence to present himself in an H'las troop so I thought there must be other reasons for your love of him," he scowled in embarrassment. He had even thought they were lovers when Pava had been Tashka's senior officer. Pava winced at the bitter tone in his voice. Vadya went on: "So why did the ... scum stay in my troop? Is his father still searching for him?" 

"Oh no," Pava replied, looking away down to the river with a more normal mocking grin. "After a year van Sietter said he did not care what became of darling Tashka so I sent to him and offered him Ninth Vail, I thought I would give it up to him because I love the pretty cherub so and I wanted him to have at least some rag of the military career he deserves. He ought to make Lord General one day, only his stupid papa is so against him and when we say Clair will make him a General he says the structure of the command in Sietter is not of an acceptable standard! Such cheek, he was always sure of himself that one. I thought I would get him a Commander's banner, my parents are not military minds so they would not understand why an el Maien van Sietter ought not to be in charge of some other region's troop and the Generals in Turaine would kill for the privilege of having him even if it was just in the field! But the little so-and-so, he would not come back to me. He said he did not think he was fit yet to be Commander, lying little fox, and that he just liked to be with Sixth H'las and you." 

Vadya looked away down the street to where the river sparkled in the distance and thought, 'he likes to be with me,' and felt like bursting into tears. 

"Does't not know how happy he was to come and be your Captain?" Pava asked. "When he was a baby Lieutenant he heard of some strategy of yours and ever since he used to try to get the H'las despatches so he could read about you. Clair and Hanya used to tease him about it, they could make him cry with temper if they said were't but a scum in the H'las chain of command uselessly focussed on duty of care. He thinks the way the chain of command is organised in H'las is superior to any other region and he thinks of you as the tip-top flower of military skill, my dear! When wrotes't to offer him the Captain's sword there was no managing the baby, he was that proud to go and be given his sword by you - the sworn enemy of his family." 

It made Vadya feel so stupidly thrilled to think of Tashka as a baby Lieutenant following his career in the despatches that he could not look Pava in the eye. "Where is he?" he asked gruffly. 

"He is in his room," Pava answered, swinging his grin back onto Vadya's face. "He says shall't throw him out of Sixth H'las and his heart is broken and he wants to die. I never saw anyone in such despair! Shall't throw him out?" 

"Of course not," Vadya said with a sudden grin back at him. "You have met my other Captains, what fun would Sixth H'las be without Tashka? and I am sure his Quarter would desert - even to Sietter! if I did throw him out. But Pava, I cannot say if it can be. My father and the Generals' strategic staff are sure to be suspicious as to why an el Maien van Sietter would wish to serve with me. My father loves Tashka well; he has been seeking to make accord with van Sietter, he may even approve, it would make a tie between the two regions but I must speak of it with him." 

"Do so, my dear," Pava said lazily, getting up off the wall and rubbing his bottom ruefully. "We had better go and tell that little lamb how things are or he will throw himself on his own rapier, convinced that shall't never love him the more!" 

Vadya lifted one knee up and rested his chin on it, asking, "Clair el Maien, he is your friend, is it not?" 

"No," Pava said grimly. 

"Why not? You were friends. You trained together as baby Lieutenants. What happened to break your friendship?" 

"Why," Pava said. "He married my own favourite cousin, Arianna el Jien. I was in love with her, sithou." 

"But you love so many women." 

Pava sat back down on the wall again with a smile that curled sorrowfully in his eyes. "Oh no," he said. "I have some fun with some women. She was the only one I ever truly loved, my first love. Although Maive - but we are both the oldest, it cannot be. Ah yes, Arianna el Jien, walking like an Angel in spring in a meadow in Iarve. She is the cleverest woman in the land yet made to hold a man's love. Her laugh is like the sound of streams in summer and her eyes are like the summer skies. Sweet Hell! Clair used to tease me about her but he himself would admit she is a beauty worth dreaming over. Then one day my father called me out of Ninth Vail to tell me ... van Sietter and her pig of a brother had stitched this match up. I thought Clair would slip the knot and run away with ... run away but the next I heard he had walked her to the altar at court. What a cold empty marriage for them and Angel of Baya, what a tragedy for this poor fool Pava el Jien, to see his best friend married to his beloved cousin!" Pava's green eyes staring up at the old Ship Inn were as hard as stones. "I tried to write to Anna, to persuade her to run away with me. I know not where I thought I would take her, my mother loves me and papa is a soft-hearted fool but for sure they would not shelter a runaway van Sietter bride! She answered ... so coldly, it broke my heart again. Later I found out Clair had his reasons for what he did but what did I care? I took my anger out on that arrogant cold-hearted scum who married my sweetheart without caring a copper coin's curse for her beauty or her intelligence or the warmth of her shy kisses." 

"What is he like, Clair el Maien?" Vadya asked hesitantly. He had heard a lot about young van Sietter, who was his age and had fought in the same war as he had - on the opposite side. They said he was the most beloved Commander of the Sietter army, that his junior officers would have followed him to Hell. They said Shier Bridge was worse than Hell but the juniors and men followed him into the valley there and that afterwards he broke his heart so badly over what he had put them and himself through that he went off to court and broke everyone-else's hearts. They said he was the most desirable man at court and as scandalous as his mother. His grandmother in duty bound said they talked a lot of horse-manure about young van Sietter and that he was a high intelligence and she was proud to call him a friend - but then she was quite scandalous herself. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 06



"Clair?" Pava heaved a great sigh as he looked up at the Ship Inn through narrowed eyes. "He is like Tashka only his eyes are grey. He is beautiful to die for. He has a mind like a rapier-blade, clean and sharp and quick. He looks an arrogant horse but he loves so hard and deep and true. Sometimes I think he loves too truly, he has suffered all his life for love. Clair is a clever, witty, beautiful, deep-hearted scum." 

"And you'll never forgive him?" Vadya leant his chin into his knee and looked curiously at Pava. 

"These el Maiens!" Pava exclaimed. "I tell it you, they twist their way into your heart like roses so cans't not pull them out without thorns tearing your heart away! Angels, let us go and see that sweet-eyed one who was my Lieutenant and is your Captain." 

But Vadya continued to sit on the wall with his chin on his knee. "So," he said slowly, "Anastelle el Maien is Tashka's sister." 

"Uh ... yuh, yes," Pava said. 

"Small wonder he was so angry when you were talking about her legs," Vadya reflected. 

"I had wrong to tease Tashka so," Pava replied. 

Vadya cleared his throat, looking away to the side. "Er, so Lord Clair looks like Tashka," he said. "Does the Lady Anastelle look like Tashka too? Are they all so ... beautiful, the el Maiens?" He blushed as he looked down the street. 

Pava's eyes narrowed up, he stared hard at Vadya, sitting on the stone wall in the sunshine and looking shyly down the cobbled street. "Dearest," he said softly. "I will tell it you once more and that is all. Shall't not have the good fortune to marry Anastelle el Maien van Sietter. Hear me. Do not ask Tashka about her. Dids't see how I held his sword arm while we were talking of her in Sixth H'las? If says't so much as her name to him, he will run you through." 

Vadya's head swung round, startled. 

Pava's green eyes looked hard into his eyes. "Now come on," Pava said. "Let us go and console that poor fool who thinks his Commander does not love him the more!" 

When Vadya opened Tashka's door, he found Tashka flung on the floor by the bed, his long legs hunched underneath him, his face buried in his arms. He lay completely still as if he had been thrown down by an Angel in battle and would never move again. Vadya's heart clutched up, he walked over to his Captain, his gentle brown face beginning to knead up with emotion. 

Tashka's head lifted, his huge blue eyes stared at Vadya from a face white and strained. He scrambled to his knees and reached pleading hands to grab at Vadya's left hand and try to press it to his forehead in the junior officer's vow of allegiance but Vadya fell to his knees, wrapped his arms around Tashka's shoulders and hugged him in a hard, tight embrace. 

Vadya pressed his cheek against Tashka's head, he tightened his grip around Tashka's shoulders. Tashka had an arm around his neck, he could feel the hard round bone of Tashka's shoulder pressing into his chest and Tashka's face was pressed into his neck. He felt the soft wet pressure of Tashka's rose-petal mouth on his neck. He pressed Tashka's head harder into his neck, one hand around the back of his head gripping on the velvety cropped dark hair, his eyes screwed up against his tears. 

Pava stood leaning in the doorway and looking at them. His narrowed green eyes were both amused and thoughtful, he drummed his fingers on the doorpost and pursed his large mouth in a soft pensive whistle. "Shall we go for dinner then?" he said loudly. 

"Um, yes, I am hungry," Vadya said huskily, wrenching himself from Tashka's embrace. He made a mock-punch at Tashka's face, Tashka caught his fist in a soft hand, his eyes went down with a flutter of those long lashes. 

After they had enjoyed a very fine dinner, during which they toasted better relations between H'las and Sietter, H'las and Vail, Vail and Sietter and all of the regions of Trossia several times, they decided to go out and make a roaring night of it. They staggered from tavern to tavern, sampling every kind of drink they could find and fiercely arguing for the virtues of their own region's beer, wine and spirits. 

The world was wonderful, amazing! Its edges were blurred but to think that Vadya knew who Tashka was and it did not matter. Pava was being sick over by the horse trough but when he had sluiced off his head he would be fit to go on to the next tavern, meanwhile Vadya and Tashka could stagger up the street ahead of him, howling a rude version of a famous song: 

Do not unma-an me, Swe-et virgin slut! Never unma-an me, No ne-ever more! 

Pava staggered after them, they found another interesting drinking house and reeled inside, grinning lovingly at the laughing faces which were raised at their entrance. Excellent! the place was full of soldiers. Tashka had stumbled over to a group of officers who were sitting apart from the main rabble, crying: "Caja! Upon my hon(hiccup)our!" 

A handsome head tossed round in the warm lantern-light, laughter rolled towards them. "My sword and banner! el Maien!" the young Commander leapt up to sweep Tashka into his embrace and exclaimed again when he saw Pava, reaching eagerly for his former Captain's left hand. 

"Young Nain, what a sweet pleasure," Pava slurred, beaming at him and pressing his hand to Nain's forehead. "How is it with you? How does't like Seventh Sietter? Is there enough jam in the provisions tent for you?" 

Tashka was grinning round from the embrace of the officer who had stolen jam from the provisions tents with him when they were baby Lieutenants - and who had borne the punishment while Tashka got off free. Nain was softly cuffing his head and saying in an intent voice, "for you through Hell and through life, el Maien." 

"Nain, this is my Commander," Tashka said, tugging Vadya forward. "el Gaiel of Sixth H'las." 

Caja Nain looked startled but they were too drunk to explain it to him. Pava had cast his arms around Nain's and Tashka's shoulders, he hugged them to him, saying: "My babies, my lovely Lieutenants! Look, el Gaiel, are they not beauties? Mine were the prettiest Lieutenants in the Sietter army." 

"Get off, el Jien! Leave it out!" they shouted, their heads flung back laughing: Commander Nain's handsome lean cheeks under the cropped head of brown hair, Tashka's exquisite slanted blue eyes and rose-petal mouth. Nain was muscular and fit with powerful thighs in the cotton civilian suit he wore with his brown army boots, Tashka was long and lean and lovely in Pava's affectionate arm. "They called us the Angels," Tashka admitted, "Vaie was the Angel of Flirting!" They roared with laughter to remember their brother officer. "Oh Nain," Tashka giggled. "I know something of Vaie! You will never believe it!" Then he started rolling about with laughter and saying it was privy and he could not confide it to them, to Pava's and Commander Nain's annoyance.  

They settled into seats round the table full of drinking bowls with the Sietter officers who were all reaching out to give Tashka a hand or brush his cheek or shoulder with a mock punch, who greeted Pava with hilarity and who accepted Vadya warmly since he was a soldier and their dear brother officer Tashka el Maien van Sietter's Commander. 

Tashka got up to go and order some drinks. Vadya watched him lean over the counter then a drunken soldier put a hand on Tashka's buttock and an arm around his waist and leaned horribly close to his back, saying something in his ear. 

Tashka's sword was straight out of his belt but he was swaying with drink and Vadya knew the man would never think this elaborately dressed creature could do him harm. He leapt up, swinging his arm back and let his fist fly at the soldier. His fist caught the soldier's jaw and Vadya howled with pain! The soldier fell crashing sideways into his fellows, who began moving forward in an ugly crowd but Commander Nain had seen what had happened. He came striding up on his powerful big legs with his face suddenly set so bleak and stern that you would never have thought he had a fondness for jam. 

"Stand to!" he barked. "Is this the way to behave to an el Maien? Son of the sworn Lord, who has been an officer in your own army?" 

The tavern-keeper was running about, crying: "No trouble, gentle men, no trouble, I beg of you!" but already the soldiers were falling back to their table, scowling angrily down at their fellow. Tashka glowered coldly at them, their eyes fell before his accusatory glare. "I'll pay for any damage," Caja Nain said curtly to the tavern-keeper. "To quarter," he said sharply to the soldiers, "and bring that man to me the morrow." He gestured contemptuously at the fallen soldier whom they had let slide down to lie on the floor. The soldiers rose in a sulky body, seized the arms of their fellow and heaved him up to drag him out of the tavern. 

"What is happening?" Pava was demanding blearily. "What is it, where is my drink?" 

Caja Nain laid one hand on Tashka's shoulder and said, "I must buy these drinks, el Maien. I am well sorry." 

"He did not know," Tashka said grumpily, sliding his rapier back into the sheath. "Must have thought I was a civilian. Give me a whisky to wash it away, then." 

"My naughty boys, what have you been doing!" Pava sent his voice up high and started pretending to look over a fan at them, flirting his eyes at Tashka. Tashka burst out laughing, flinging his long limbs back into his chair and giggling when Pava cried in a falsetto voice: "Ooh la! Sirrah, I swear, I faint, I fall, musts't catch me, quick!" 

"Look look," Tashka cried. "el Jien van Vail on manoeuvres," he swung his chair round and straddled it, immediately making it look like a horse, flipped an imaginary kerchief under his nose and drawled: "My sweet Captains, let us move closer to those virtuous young women over there." 

"Why you ...!" Pava exclaimed in the hot gust of laughter from the Sietter officers. He made a sudden jump for Tashka, who knocked into Vadya as he swerved aside, making Vadya spill his brandy down his shirt. 

~#~*~#~

When Vadya woke in the morning he was still drunk. He had that happy dreamy sense of fitting perfectly into the world, he felt absolutely contented with the weight of Tashka's head resting on his shoulder and Tashka's warmth curled in the crook of his arm. He knew this would soon pass and he would start to feel horribly ill. He wondered about getting up and going to see if he could vomit up some of what he had drunk. That bloody pale Angel Tashka had been sick already before they fell asleep. That was always his way. He drank them under the table and because he was slight of frame, he would be violently sick on the way back to the encampment. The next day while they all lay in their bedding moaning, he was able to stagger round securing the defences with a mocking laugh in his bloodshot blue eyes. 

Vadya turned his head to look into Tashka's face with a dreamy smile and tightened his arm around the shoulders of the lean body curled by his side to face him. Those ridiculous long lashes, how softly they kissed the tanned cheeks and even in sleep the rose-petal mouth pouted as if for a kiss. Vadya shook his head in amusement even while his cock started stirring softly with arousal. 

Then his heart seemed to leap into his mouth, he gave an involuntary gasp, a galvanic shock coursing through his body and his heart starting to thump so hard in his chest he was scared it would wake Tashka up. He did not take his arm from under the shoulders of the young officer curled round to lie sleeping towards him in a sudden terror that Tashka would wake up and find them lying together. 

Bloody pale Angels of Hell, he was lying in a bed with Captain Tashka Maien - his own junior officer! in his arms. Hell and the Angels of Hell, no! it was even worse! Vadya had become aware of a great slew of magnificent suits and garments over chairs and sofas in the room around him. He was lying in Pava el Jien van Vail's bed with Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter, formerly of Fourth bloody Sietter, in his arms. 

He did not want to remember what had happened the night before and how he had ended up here with a junior officer lying - at the least of it fully clothed still - in bed with him. He certainly did not want to wake Tashka up and for Tashka to realise that Vadya had climbed into Pava el Jien's bed to join him. Without moving his arm, Vadya lifted his head and saw that Pava was asleep on the floor wrapped in a blanket with a basin to be sick into. 

In spite of his efforts he was remembering. Tashka had been sick but not on the way back to the hotel. When they got back, it had seemed sensible to all tumble into Pava's room because Tashka's was up the next flight of stairs - although Vadya's was only next door. That was it, he had said Tashka could come and sleep in his room but Pava became drunkenly aggressive, saying he had been Tashka's senior officer before Vadya, Tashka should sleep in his room. Pava insisted they all go into his room for a final bowl then he fell over and just lay on the floor so Tashka chucked the blanket over him and put the basin by his head. He and Tashka lay about on Pava's bed because the sofas were covered in Pava's clothes, chatting in that dreadful way you do when you are so drunk you think you are saying something very important and nobody can understand a word of it because they are too drunk to listen. 

He had listened, though. Tashka had been staring into his face with those exquisite blue eyes wide, saying, "el Gaiel, I beg it of you, do not shake me off your fingers and send me away. I always wanted to serve under you and now that I have been your officer I cannot swear to any other man's banner." Vadya had started crying, Angels! how disgustingly shaming, sobbing over his junior officer in a vile drunken snorting way. He had blurted out that Tashka ought to have had his own banner already. He ought to have pushed Tashka to take up his father's offer of a banner in the strategic staff offices, he had held Tashka back arguing that he needed him to manage el Darien and el Vaie. He admitted now that when Tashka had refused the banner, he wanted him by his side so much that he just accepted it. Tashka gave a kind of sigh and sat closer to him on the bed, reaching out to grip his shoulder and saying in a pleading voice wholly unsuitable to a younger child of the el Maiens van Sietter, "I prithou, el Gaiel. I just like to be with you. I cannot take a banner and go into the strategic staff offices in Port H'las; I am van Sietter. Let me stay in the troop with you, it will make a tie between the regions will it not?" By then Vadya was incapable of controlling his stupid drunken tears, he only sobbed something so dreadful Tashka would surely have ignored it. It might possibly have been, I love you, I will never let you go from my fingers,  although hopefully he was not remembering this properly, and then Tashka kissed him. 

Or he kissed Tashka. 

Or he had dreamt it. Perhaps he had dreamt it, that sudden shock of happiness when the rose-petal mouth pressed to his mouth. His lips parting, a tongue pushing and pressing into his mouth; Tashka gripping his shoulder and pressing his shoulder. He had certainly reached to take hold of Tashka and start to pull him in to his embrace but Tashka suddenly broke his mouth from Vadya's, said, "Angels! I am going to be sick," and staggered off. Vadya passed out while he was waiting for Tashka to come back and now here he was lying in a bed by the side of a younger son of the high nobility from the region likely to declare war on H'las any day now, whose sister's hand in marriage Vadya's father must surely be seeking for Vadya. Vadya gave a horrified moan. Even if Tashka did not give him the glove, Tashka's older brother Clair el Maien certainly would. Or Tashka's former senior officer, el Jien van Vail - but Pava was asleep in the room with them, oh thank the Angels! Pava had been there all night too so nobody could say Vadya el Gaiel van H'las had stained the honour of a younger child of the el Maiens van Sietter or suspect him of seducing his own junior officer; which was a hanging offence. 

Very carefully Vadya slid his arm out from under Tashka's shoulders. Tashka lay breathing softly beside him, still turned towards him with that infamous rose-petal mouth slightly open as if inviting Vadya to kiss him. Again. Vadya could feel his penis still softly filling with excited blood just to look into Tashka's sleeping face and the lean body lying curled round to face him, he gave a sobbing gasp, staring at the long lashes kissing Tashka's cheekbones. Tashka had always been too bloody pretty. It was impossible to keep the juniors and the men from passing comments, there were always drunken fools attempting to snatch his kiss, hardly surprising then if in such a sodden state the night before Vadya, who had loved him so dearly for three years - as a friend! had succumbed too. 

Vadya passed a trembling hand over his own head. 'He is my junior officer,' he thought sternly to himself. 'Sweet Hell! if any thing had happened he would give me a glove over it. He fought and killed Vaian for accusing us of being too close for decency; he cannot possibly have kissed me and if I kissed him ... Gracious Heaven, I will be betrothed soon. How likely is it that I would go and kiss my own junior officer on the eve of my betrothal. We all do stupid things when we are drunk which are best forgotten. I must stop drinking with my juniors like some silly baby Lieutenant on a spree, I must begin to take my responsibilities seriously. I will be married soon and I will have to think of others before myself and I must always put the region before all else.' 

He lay very still, staring up at the ceiling above him and thinking: 'I will stop going out drinking in this silly way,' and: 'I wonder if Tashka's sister looks like him,' and horribly conscious of Tashka lying breathing softly through that rose-petal mouth in the bed beside him. After a while he slid slowly out of the bed and lay down on the floor with his back to Tashka in the bed. He closed his eyes against his tears in the hopes that he would not remember anything when he woke up. 

~#~*~#~

When they said their goodbyes on the quay they were all nauseous and pallid and nobody cared if anyone-else was being quieter or more reserved than they might usually be. 

"Good speed, lovely Vadya!" Pava said, in an admirably cheerful if husky tone. "Come back to Vail this autumn and I will give you hunting for ladies! a noble sport which woulds't hate." 

"I will hold you to your word, I would enjoy it above any thing," Vadya said, hurriedly fixing what he hoped was a lady-hunting sort of grin to his face. "Come down to Port H'las and I will give you a party aboard my caravel. With lots of ladyfriends." 

"Good speed," Tashka said, offering up his sword arm and smiling warmly into Vadya's eyes. 

"Come hunting in Halla with me when we rejoin the troop," Vadya said suddenly. "When the rest of Sixth are settled in the winter quarters we could take your Quarter up to my family's hunting lodge." 

"I should like that," Tashka said, his eyes brightening at this further evidence that Vadya forgave him being van Sietter. Vadya felt a sick qualm as soon as he had said it but he dismissed this as over-sensitive nonsense. His betrothal would soon be settled, his betrothed might even make one of the hunting party. Tashka was making a move as if to offer him a hug but he pretended not to see this and ran up the gangplank to hang over the side of the boat and wave to them. He winced as he waved, his hand was still sore from punching out that soldier. 

All around Pava and Tashka were boxes and bales bound up and down the rivers Gine and Arven for Vail, Arventa, Port H'las and Port Ithilien. Sailors and port-workers thronged the quay, a woman was selling good-luck charms of the Angel of the Waters. Pava and Tashka bought chocolates from her and hurled them at Vadya with deadly aim. Vadya dodged them and caught some, laughing, as the gang-plank was pulled up and the sails creaked above him and the boat pulled slowly out into the river with chocolates and husky farewells flying after it. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 06



"My Lord," Batren appeared suddenly at his elbow, "there was a shop in the town with a fine brown and gold velvet I bought you, will you come and see it?" 

"It sounds horrible," Vadya grumbled, turning reluctantly away from the side of the boat and realising just how unsettled his stomach felt. 

Pava and Tashka turned away from the harbour wall and walked slowly back to the hotel. 

"Well well," Pava said, grinning teasingly at Tashka. He had not bothered to shave that morning and his eyes were creased up against the bright sunlight. 

"It is not well," Tashka groaned, also squinting against the light and putting a tender hand on a queasy stomach. 

"Well well, my Angel, what of handsome old el Gaiel, eh? Another one hanging his heart from your fingers but I am wondering if your own heart might finally be at risk, eh? Eh?" Pava sniggered and jabbed an elbow into Tashka's ribs to the younger officer's annoyance. 

"Handsome ...! Heart hanging from my fingers ...! What do you mean?" Tashka said suspiciously, casting a slanted blue sideways look at him. "You of all people are not going to say any disgusting thing of my senior officer, are you?" 

"Oh my dear! How close helds't him yester day, when he came to forgive it you that ar't van Sietter," Pava grinned more widely. His green eye flickered in a wink. "Come on, confess it. Were't willing to offer him your kiss! And I swear, he would have taken it if I had not been there. Clair would have had him for it but now cans't ask Clair to offer to bestow you on him with propriety and honour. How pleased I will be to wish you long love and happiness!" 

Tashka stopped in the busy cobbled street and looked at him in outrage before admonishing him in disgusted and angry tones. "What are you talking of? Why should Clair have the right to bestow me wherever, just for that I am a younger child! I can bestow myself if I wish to. But I do not wish to. How dare you suggest I would go against the code in so disgusting a way after everything we have been through! Sweet Hell! Vadya is my senior officer too, you know." 

"Shall't have to leave Sixth after all," Pava laughed. "Then he will not be your senior and mays't take him - and all his castles and port cities, the caravel and whatever. And I'll swear that's a fine young stallion you have to your Commander, surely has't inspected his ... equipment if he was ever wearing hose out on the town? Shall't not let some cold code stand between you and the favours of so well-endowed a son of the high nobility, eh? Shall't not have given the go-by to that merry Captain in Thiel for a nothing then. Do not deny that loves't him." 

"Will you shut it about that Thiel Captain," Tashka said crossly. "He must be well married by now," there was a regretful glint in the annoyed slanted blue eye. "Of course I love Vadya. He is a fine Commander and the best of friends. My life is hung on his banner, I confess it," Pava snorted scornfully, "I love him much better than some panting one-day-one-night wriggle in the sheets!" 

Pava's eyes bulged, laughter spurted in a helpless burst from his mouth and he stood laughing in the street while Tashka scolded him in a husky angry voice.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 07



Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.) 

*****

The seabirds cried above, Vadya sniffed the salt tang of the air and felt a stiff breeze in his hair. It was a cloudy day with occasional sudden shafts of sunlight making the choppy waves in the estuary sparkle. There were flags hanging out on Vadya's caravel and the sailors raised a huzza!  as his boat went by, he waved his hat to them and they waved spontaneously back. 

He saw his father on the quay, a broad greying soldier with a gentle bearded face, wearing a long dark robe. 

The Port H'las band was there to play Vadya off the boat and into his father's embrace. There was a great crowd of people cheering him and the Port H'las Guard gave him three huzzas, to his embarrassment. His father had come down in the carriage, it was dull to ride up to the castle inside a carriage although at least they did not have people thronging round getting in the way of their horses in order to shout their love and gratitude to his father and their affection to him. As he looked out of the windows at prosperous people in many-coloured garments merrily engaged in choosing and buying wares and eating out in shops and at wayside stalls, he thought of the poverty he had seen in Port Paviat. His father's warm brown eyes were looking not at the shops but at him, Lord van H'las was asking about Fiotr's wedding which they had celebrated earlier in the year and about the raid on Second Thiel for ten cases of Pava's white wine. 

They went to his father's office as usual, a big room lined with bookcases of papers, his father's desk was piled with stacks of more papers. By the fire, his father had a clutch of old leather armchairs with his pipes in a rack on a table and a drinks cabinet conveniently hidden behind a fake bookcase. The square castle set on the hill above the port was full of reception rooms and sitting-rooms but since Vadya's mother had died, these had slowly become cleaner and tidier. General-Lord van H'las retreated from the maid-servants and dusters as he had never done in the field of battle and settled himself in the room where he spent so much time with his seneschal, secretaries and fellow Generals. 

He got out a special whisky with a gleaming look of pleasure. Vadya preferred brandy himself but to please his father he was happy to take a bowl of whatever his father brought out. "I found this in a small shop at court," van H'las said conspiratorially, sitting heavily back in his chair with a squeak of leather, his silk-draped knees comfortably spread out. "Ten cases! And half the price that I would have paid in Port H'las, I tell it you." His father was convinced he was good with money but Vadya knew that his generosity made heavy demands on an income which the dwindling trade through Port H'las had reduced. There were often arguments with the seneschal about taxes van H'las did not wish to raise and funds out to support his people which the seneschal would sometimes absolutely refuse to countenance. 

As Vadya sipped the whisky, which offered an aromatic and smooth yet hot taste in his mouth, he looked over at all the papers scattered on his father's desk and asked: "How in Hell do you manage with all that? Did you always have Prianne Fidor to help you?" 

His father pulled a grimace. "I am so lucky to have him," he said mournfully, "and he makes me so cross! Can you imagine, now he says I must make a tax on the boats mooring up the river. Only because some poor fisher-folk have taken to tying up on the river banks when they cannot afford the port duties." 

Vadya laughed. "You mean some smugglers!" he exclaimed. 

van H'las looked shifty. "Well," he said, "they let us have brandy and wine at a good price. It is a saving!" 

"You will have to let Prianne set the duty on the river banks," Vadya said with another laugh. "You cannot be countenancing smugglers!" 

"I suppose not," van H'las said with a sigh. "They promised to bring a fine old brandy down from Athagine," he put in temptingly. Vadya shook his head, smiling. His father said: "You'll have it all to do yourself some day." 

"Not for many years, I trust!" Vadya replied with a grin. "You can have the smugglers a few years more, papa." 

"I am well glad you have had a good summer in Vail," his father said. "You suffered in V'ta in the spring." 

"There were a couple of problems," Vadya said slowly, turning his small bowl in his big brown hands and staring into it. His father looked at him in query with gentle brown eyes. 

"You know Tashka Maien," Vadya said. "He is a fine officer who has demonstrated great loyalty to us." His father raised his eyebrows, one seamed by a scar, at this. He knew perfectly well how loyal Tashka was, he was the one who decorated Tashka for his action in V'ta. "I have always hoped that one day he would take a General's ring and serve me in strategic all our lives," Vadya said. "I love him ... like a brother." 

"And?" van H'las said carelessly, taking a delicate sip of his whisky with an appreciative sigh. "Tashka Maien is the one for me! I confess it, I would have him to my staff if I could steal him from you but I know his life is hung on your banner." His eyes lifted. "Maien is a great friend to you. He seems content to remain in the field and I allow it because I too imagine we will reward his loyalty to you one day. I deliberately held him back so that you two would develop that close working relationship which will enable him to serve better as your Major General." He gave an affectionate smile, tinged with rueful humour. Tashka had frequently stripped him of cash at cards on visits with Vadya. One over-enthusiastic night he won so much money off van H'las that when he realised what he had done to his most senior officer and host he tried not to take it. Of course the Lord General insisted on paying such a heavy debt of honour. Tashka used the money to buy a set of cannons, saying he had never understood why they had not utilised Castle H'las' strategic position overlooking the port in case of a sea-based attack. 

"Well ... it is, that Tashka is not plain Captain Maien," Vadya said hesitantly. 

"Not plain Captain Maien?" Lord van H'las repeated in a puzzled voice. "Does it matter who his family are? Is he born the wrong side of the bed, is that it? I have always thought he must come from an aristocratic family. Who is he, then?" 

"He is ... Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter," Vadya answered. 

There was a long silence. Lord van H'las' face was frozen, he sat with his small whisky bowl in his hand, staring blankly away. His mouth moved but no words came out. Vadya began to feel miserable, it did not look as if his father would pass the matter off lightly as Vadya had started to hope he would. 

"Damned Hell!" Lord van H'las said suddenly in a peculiar hoarse voice. "Tashka Maien! Surely ... he can drink the mess dry, and that story about the farmer's daughter ... Holy Heaven, he has been with you in the field three years! And ... he is your junior officer!" 

"Y-yes," Vadya said in an uncertain voice. "But papa, he is loyal. I swear he was not put in the troop to spy on us." 

"Sweet Angels of Light!" van H'las' face was suddenly full of rage, Vadya sat back in astonishment, he could not remember having seen his father so angry. "What is that damned dog Pava el Maien about! I will ... no, oh Hell! I cannot!" His face seemed to crumple up, twisted by a despair that Vadya felt was out of proportion to a simple request that a loyal young officer who happened to be from an enemy region's ruling family should be allowed to remain at his post. "We have got to accept it!" van H'las exclaimed. "I see it now! He is hoping to insult us and drive us to war again. We cannot go to war again, the people have suffered enough. Oh but my boy, my Vadyan," his face turned to Vadya was full of trouble and sorrow. "What am I asking you to do?" Vadya looked at his father, waited. His father sat in silence, biting his lip and frowning to one side, turning the small bowl of whisky in his hands, shaking his head and forming words with his lips only to reject them. 

"So ... Tashka may not," Vadya began but his father interrupted him, saying: "L-let us talk of your betrothal." 

They looked at each other in the grey bright light that fell through the big square windows of the office. Lord Esha's face was troubled and unhappy. Vadya shrugged and his face became gentle and mild. 

"Papa," he said. He blushed to hear his own gruff voice come out with the childish word when they were talking such adult business. "My marriage must be thought of some time. There is no special woman in my life and I have always known I might not be able to choose my own bride. We must think of H'las. I came through Port Paviat, papa. I was so surprised by the way people there have to live. Some of them are hungry! You can see it in their faces. I do not want to be the cause of our people in Port H'las and Port Ithilien going hungry. I only ... if she might be a pleasant woman, you know that I will do everything to make ours an happy marriage." He looked pleadingly into his father's eyes with clear gentle brown eyes. 

His father would not meet his eyes. He said, "even a betrothal would help. You might keep a betrothal for a year while trade settles. That might be enough." 

Vadya's heart felt heavy inside his chest. "Let me know her name at the least of it," he said, attempting a light tone of voice. 

"She is ... her name ... L-Lady ... er, Anastelle el Maien van Sietter," his father said. 

Vadya's eyes widened in surprise. Through his brain danced all the images of the honourable Lady Anastelle el Maien van Sietter he had made up out of the comments he had heard. A quick-brained warm-hearted woman with sexy eyes and a lovely leg. A fine dancer and rider and someone who instead of giving you some boring bit of lace for your shirt might take your shirt off you at cards. An Angel of a woman as far above an ordinary man as the stars. A woman he had been told he would not have the good fortune to marry. There was a flutter at his heart, a romantic surge of emotion that he profoundly mistrusted. This daughter of his mother's cousin from V'ta and that old snake van Sietter, there was little chance that she would be a gentle creature like his own mother. Did she favour her heartbreaker of a mother, who had scandalously crossed the boundaries of decency in an affair that was still talked about, or the cold heartless politician who was her father? Did she favour her brother who was already so close to his heart, whose beauty had possibly lured Vadya into a kiss nearly as forbidden as the ones her mother had succumbed to? 

Then he thought of Tashka. What would it mean to them if he married Tashka's sister, the woman whose very name caused his junior officer to reach for his weapons. That merry wit and the quick-thinking strategic mind, the tall lean muscular body, slippery as a fish in wrestling, skilful and strong in defence of his fellow soldiers in battle. Would he ever again share a book or a story of the day's manoeuvres or a ride in the early morning when the birds were barely singing and the mist was still on the ground with his young Captain who could make his heart jump in his chest with the joy of life? Would he ever again lift his eyes from the campaign table of maps, and meet those laughing slanted blue eyes full of warm admiration and love?



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 08



Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.) 

*****

"Come on!" Tashka yelled, leaning back in the saddle to grimace at Pava. Jewel leapt into the gallop down the winding road to the rambling old grey castle set like an untidy bird's nest above Sietter town in the hills. Pava grinned and nudged Star into a canter. His eyes were wary coming down the familiar road he had travelled often in the days when he and Clair el Maien were brother officers and best friends. 

He felt sweaty and gritty, his green linen riding suit was grey with dirt and his boots were caked with mud. Tashka had forced a fast pace up the Maier Pass but when they came to cross the Arven they had had to lead the horses through the river because the bridge was down, to Tashka's disgust. After that, Tashka had refused to wait for the baggage to catch them up. They had spent the previous night in an inn where there was no one to clean Pava's boots and he had even had to borrow a nightshirt! He was longing for a good long soak in a bath and a decent shirt to put on his back. 

Tashka slowed to a canter on the approach up to the castle, taking the opportunity to make a thorough reconnaiscance left and right, assessing the dispositions of two troop encampments either side. Pava frowned to see from the banners that not only was First Sietter encamped there but also First V'ta. A red and black banner with a silver emblem floated on the breeze away up to the East of the castle. 

They were clattering past saluting guards at the gateway into the courtyard. Tashka pulled up Jewel exactly right and sprang out of the saddle. Pava was making a business out of pulling Star up. He noticed a new ramp built up the side of the broad castle steps. His mouth quirked in a bitter smile; he knew Clair would have made them do it for those soldiers he had brought home with him from the war who now used wheelchairs. 

Tashka was running to the steps but stumbled to a sudden stop. Pava followed the line of Tashka's eyes and saw that there indeed was Fiotr el F'lara van V'ta standing to one side at the top of the steps in a long green and black robe, his slanted eyes staring down at Tashka. His two daughters were also there, though, one in blue and green and the other in pink, their Guards of Honour hovering at a suitable proximity. Tashka ran on up the steps, seized Clair about the waist and flung him round in the sunshine. Pava saw Clair el Maien's head flung back with laughter, his slanted grey eyes sparkled with happiness, his thin mouth was certain with joy. 

A smiling groom was saying: "Welcome back, Lord Pava!" and offering a shoulder and arm to help him dismount. The man's happiness to see him brought the smile to his own face, he gripped the groom's shoulder affectionately. 

Tashka had gone to throw muscular strong arms around Arianna. 

Anna el Jien! So tall and plump and lovely in a white and green dress like she was wearing the green fields of Iarve. That must be her baby boy, the little dark-haired one with exquisite slanted eyes like Tashka's, although there was another blond boy hiding behind her skirts. 

Tashka had gone back to cast an arm about Clair's shoulders. Standing so close together, the two of them looked startlingly alike, only Clair had a few inches height on Tashka and Tashka was slimmer. Tashka stared at van V'ta with curled lip and slanted eyes drawn out in a sneer. 

"Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter," van V'ta said a formal greeting instead of the familiar one and without moving to offer Tashka a hand. Tashka only nodded curtly. Pava raised his eyebrows to hear van V'ta give the proper title, if he knew Tashka was a Captain, he must know of what troop. 

"Commander-Lord Pava el Jien van Vail of Ninth Vail," van V'ta turned his gaze from the two el Maiens. 

Pava started strolling up the steps flicking his gloves into the palm of his big hand. He inclined his blond head to van V'ta, saying casually: "el F'lara van V'ta. Lady Laienne, Lady Ilya." The young women, pretty dark-haired maidens with modest smiles, came forward. He took the left hand of each with two fingers and brought it momentarily to his lips. 

"Pava," Clair attempted a smile but his eyes were anxious. He was trying to keep a watch on van V'ta and a restraining arm around Tashka's waist. 

Imp came shooting out of the kennels, barking furiously and trailing a broken lead. Tashka went down on dusty leather-booted knees and began rolling the dog around, trying to get a hand on his wriggling body to tickle his tummy but Imp kept lying at Tashka's feet and jumping up and lying down and jumping up again. van V'ta, having ensured he showed sufficient courtesy to young van Vail, took the opportunity to go back into the castle, ushering his two daughters before him. 

Clair had turned to Pava and was trying again to smile. "You have not greeted Arianna," he said, standing aside so that Pava had a clear path to her. 

Pava looked into the round blue eyes of his cousin, his dearest love. He stepped hesitantly forward, she came to meet him holding both hands out and he took her long cool fingers in his own long fingers, leaning forward to give her cheeks a chaste kiss each. 

Oh it was gone, his passion for her was gone. His life was easier without that flaming desire for her body but he felt a wild pang at his heart. She had meant so much to him once but he had not seen nor heard from her for years. She was a stranger again: graceful, cool, courteous. 

He was remembering lifting his head as he came riding into the courtyard of his uncle's palace, to see Arianna. Her eyes had tilted at him, a faint blush coloured her cheek. Then her red mouth, sweet as a bowl of cherries, softened into a pure smile, as if she were thinking he was her little cousin and how they had been children together. The blood went rushing round his cheeks and his loins. It was like a glove in the face to a dashing young Lieutenant, newly commissioned as he was, to see a beauty like her smile as if he were still a child - and her so evidently a grown woman with her full bosom and the curve in to her small waist emphasised by those rounded hips. He had been boyishly happy up till then in his life of sports and the excitement of being commissioned in a field troop in Sietter. As he saw the head of that magnificent blonde beauty turn apparently careless of him to his sister, his heart seemed to clutch up in his chest, his cock stirred softly and filled against his thigh and he fell for the first time in love. He had never been comfortable without some ladybird on his arm since. 

She was so hesitant, so shy of her kisses. Her skin, her arm, her breasts were so soft to his pressing hands. Her panting uncertain chastity both frustrated him and increased his desire to have more than a hand on one thigh quivering under the pressure of his fingers with her already rising out of his arms in the tall grass, in response to the other cousins calling them. He knew now that the kisses he gave her had been childish. His hands attempting to caress a hip, a breast had been clumsy and ignorant, but there was something sweetly sincere about those loutish attempts to raise the gleam in her veiled blue eyes. No experienced bird of paradise or laughing plump lovely since had made him feel as eager yet tender, so frustrated yet content. He was young and left it for months at a correspondence, dreaming only of her kisses. Then he realised with a shock that moves were being made to bestow her, so much older than him. He was confident his parents would agree to a match with so intelligent and honourable a fair Lady, when her brother and his own best friend stepped in to deny him. He had pretended that his rage at Clair was justified by his friend's treatment of her. In truth he knew he had never got over that first love, sudden and violent as a summer thunderstorm, for a woman who was so far above any man's touch that she hid more than half of who she was in a veiled coldness of eye. 

She smiled at him, oh his heart, the same sweet open trusting smile she would always give to her little cousin. He had tried to break that famous chaste honour in two and persuade her to run away from her political marriage for the sake of his body. She, so pure of honour that she always believed the best of people, still relied on his goodness of heart. His affection for her seemed to come flooding back; quietly. Once his passion for her had been all-important, now he felt a gentler respect for her happiness. He gave her a deprecating smile, knowing that he had only added to her difficulties at a turbulent time of her life when she had had to make a decision not for herself alone and not for him, but for her family and all of the people of the region she had come from and the one she went to. 

"My cousin," he said. His smile had a twist in the corner of a mouth that was exactly like her own. 

"Pava," she answered, looking into his green eyes with her limpid gaze veiled in that way that meant you could not read her feelings or thoughts. 

"Ar't my cousin too, is it not?" a little voice piped up. He looked down at the small dark-haired head tilted up with familiar slanted blue eyes sparkling in an unfamiliar little face. 

"Yes, my petal," he said lazily. "I am your cousin el Jien van Vail. Ar't well proud of it, I dareswear." 

Arkyll giggled, recognising that this was a tease. He looked like Arianna when he laughed, his face plump and dimpled, his big wide mouth sweet as cherries. Then he tilted his head and looked sidelong at Pava and he was Clair and Tashka. 

"And I am well proud to be your cousin!" Pava exclaimed, leaning down to tickle him under the chin. "Ar't as pretty as your mother! Has't el Jien bones, shall't be a fine soldier, my sweetheart. Just like me." 

"You!" Tashka snorted scornfully, scrambling up from Imp and strolling over to laugh at Pava. "You could not even defend your own troop's position in your own region! You had to bribe us to take out Second Thiel for you." 

"What way is that to speak of your sweet old senior officer, who loves you?" Pava protested, poking Tashka in the ribs. "Do not listen to him, my dear little cousin, he is jealous of my skill." 

Tashka burst into loud laughter. "Skill at what? Peeling potatoes and walking like a duck? Angels' sake, Arkyllan, you must be an el Maien like Clair and me. You'll come to me to train. Look how tall you are grown! I swear you are big enough to come already!" 

Arkyll hopped in front of them, delighted at this attention and turning to look eagerly at his mother. Arianna smiled reservedly, she did not like people to encourage Arkyll to be a soldier. She had brought Hanya out from behind her skirts; he was going to Tashka for a kiss. 

Pava looked at the boy's angelic beautiful golden face and lifted enquiring eyes. 

"This is Hanya Vashin's boy," Tashka said, pushing him gently towards Pava. 

Pava drew a deep breath, he went down on one knee and put out a big hand to take Hanya's little plump hand in his own. "My dear," he said warmly. "I was the friend of your fathers and I will always be your friend too. I prithou remember it, that el Jien van Vail will always stand by you if there is any thing has't need of." 

Hanya looked uncertainly up at Clair. Arianna came forward and took his hand, saying, "Mays't count on Pava as an uncle, he will always be there for you if has't need. He is a good friend." 

"Yes," Clair's voice said softly behind Pava. "He is a good friend." 

Pava looked back over his shoulder. He had to squint against the sun, he could not quite see Clair's face which was shadowed because it was in the sun. 

"Where is that old snake?" Tashka was asking. "Did he bring his Vilandian hag?" 

"He has more sense than to bring her here," Clair answered. "He wants to see you. Come in, Pava. You will be wanting your bath. Then you might take a turn in the gardens with Arianna? You must have much news of your family for her." He offered Pava his hand to help him get up; his sword hand. His face came out of the sun and Pava saw the warm hopeful hurt look in his slanted grey eyes, the quirk his thin mouth made as if he might smile that rare very sweet smile. Pava took Clair's hand and hauled himself to his feet, then, keeping hold of Clair's arm, pulled his brother officer into his embrace. He held Clair's lean wiry frame close to his big dusty chest, breathed in the scent of the oil that Clair used for his hair - so familiar from the days when they had shared the Lieutenants' tent in Fourth Sietter. "Angels! el Maien," Pava drawled, "a bath is the least cans't offer me after I have had to endure fording your river because your rotten bridge was down. I hope there is a clean shirt in this castle of yours, that pale Angel of a junior officer of ours made me come all this way without any clean clothes!" 

"If we had waited for that great wagon of all your wardrobe, we would not have arrived here until next week!" Tashka exclaimed. "Where is Ladda? Where is Petra? I must see Basra about Imp's lead, why has he been allowed to chew it through." 

"Musts't go see van Sietter first," Arianna put in, an anxious expression clouding her blue eyes. "He will be displeased if makes't him wait while goes't to see servants about the castle." 

Tashka's lip curled scornfully and an obstinate look came into the slanted blue eyes staring into Arianna's round blue eyes. 

"I prithou," Clair took Tashka's arm. "Go to see the old snake or he will make trouble for Anna." 

Tashka grimaced, exquisite eyes and rose-petal mouth screwing up in annoyance. "Best get it over with. I shall not make him wait while I have a bath!" Arianna made to say something but Clair shook his head at her. They all followed the tall lean figure of the young officer with the little dog running alongside into the castle. Arianna was looking askance at the back of Tashka's blue linen shirt which had dark patches of sweat and dirt on it, the dusty riding boots and saddle-grimed breeches disappearing into the dim huge entrance hall ahead of them. 

Tashka moved quickly through the castle corridors to the inner courtyard, mounted the stairs to the veranda in a few bounds and walked slowly up to the thin pale Lord in a green and yellow silk robe who was standing by the great bed-chamber. 

Lord van Sietter spoke in tones dripping with sarcasm and scorn: "My lovely daughter Anastelle, the flower of our family honour. Always such a pleasure to see your delicate and graceful figure. Do come in." 

Tashka's head winced aside at the mocking tone of his address. 'Scum,' she thought bitterly but she followed him into the great bed-chamber in silence, Imp trotting close at her heels. 

"Will you call for some tea?" van Sietter suggested, settling back in a carved wooden chair with a rustle of green and yellow silk. He leant his elbow on the arm of the chair, his chin in his hand, and examined Tashka with cold round grey eyes. She did not bear any resemblance to him; the Northern cast to her features made of her a different being to her father. It was debatable whether her fine-boned lean frame was his - and indeed this had been a longstanding subject of violent dispute. She had well developed muscles from the active soldier's life she led and this made her tall body look quite different to his thin pale frame. 

"Have you any ale here?" she asked, wiping her ungloved hand across her sweaty dusty brow. 

"It is hardly a Lady's drink," Lord van Sietter replied with a chilling sneer, "but then you are hardly a Lady. I believe that jug has ale in it." 

Tashka crossed to the sideboard and poured herself a brimming bowl of ale from a blue-glazed jug. She took a quick thirsty draught and turned to walk back to her father. As always, the way he looked at her made her feel awkward. She went nervously to the stool placed opposite him, she who would normally stride out with such a confident swing of the hips. She felt as if her boots were too big and was worried she would trip in them. She gripped her bowl of ale in scarred fingers that seemed suddenly clumsy. She ran her other hand over her cropped hair and was conscious of how short it was, she felt it ought to have been longer and then she might have been able to hide behind it. 

She seated herself cautiously on the low stool opposite van Sietter's carved chair, giving her rapier an easy flick as she did so, so that it would not catch on the back of her legs. Imp sat leaning against her leg. 

'It is like the old snake to make sure I am seated on a stool like a child brought in for a scolding,' Tashka thought, her eyes narrowing up. She stretched her tired legs insolently out instead of huddling them up under her chin. 

Lord van Sietter's round eyes looked closely at her dusty thigh-length riding boots, one eyebrow raised. His glance flicked over her saddle-grimed breeches, her sword and dagger in her belt, her close-cropped head and the sweaty loose blue linen shirt which failed to outline any feminine curve of breasts she might have. His face fell into a haughty expression of distaste. 

Tashka had a dreadful impulse to burst out laughing. 'What a game,' she thought, looking idly aside to where a sunbeam fell through the window from the veranda. She felt so much better that she even scraped together the courage to get up and drag the stool aside with one foot, using it to put her bowl of ale on while she pulled another carved chair over to face her father. 

"I have been waiting on you a week more than the date I bid you be here," Lord van Sietter said coldly. 

"It is as I wrote Clair. I had business to settle in my troop before I could get leave," Tashka replied shortly. She thought wistfully of their last manoeuvre: discussing how to approach Second Thiel with Vadya and the other Captains around the campaign table covered in maps, patiently explaining their strategy and each Unit's role in it to the Lieutenants, going around the woods in the Vail sunshine and ensuring that hundreds of men were in their proper place for Vadya el Gaiel van H'las' signal. 

"Well," van Sietter's voice was suddenly amused. She looked nervously back at him. His thin fair face was alight with his cruel humour. "Now that I look at you again, I see that it hardly matters. You are even more of a man than the little whelp who ran away three years ago." 

Tashka bit her lip, her beautiful slanted blue eyes crumpled in a frown. 

"You know young el Gaiel van H'las, I believe," van Sietter was saying. 

"You know it well that he is my Commander," Tashka said impatiently. 

"Is he?" van Sietter remarked. "I did not realise it was the H'las army you played in." 

'Liar,' Tashka thought. 

"His father and I ... ah, yes, you must know his father too." 

"Lord Esha is my sworn General, yes," Tashka said drily. 

"Your sworn General, eh? What does that mean, I wonder?" 

"I will die for him," Tashka answered casually. "Whereas I will never lift my smallest finger for you." 

The room became very quiet. Outside, Tashka heard voices, she thought it was Clair and Pava. Imp leant his head against her leg, peering up at her with button-bright eyes in the hope that she might scratch his ears. Tashka gripped her bowl of ale without daring to drink from it, waiting to hear what punishment would fall on her head for this insolence. 

"van H'las has come to me with the stupidest idea I have heard in my life," her father's cool dry voice was perfectly controlled. "He has asked for my daughter's hand for his son." 

Tashka's head whipped up, she leapt to her feet and her bowl of ale crashed to the floor. Imp sprang up with a sharp bark. 

"Heavens, what a mess," van Sietter said, peering in distaste at the foaming puddle of ale and the broken bits of bowl on the wooden floor. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 08



Tashka put her hands to her face, she brushed them over her cropped short hair. Her wide blue eyes stared in horror at the man before her. "No!" she cried. "You have done it! You have told him! Sweet Hell! you have told my General that I am your daughter and Vadya will know I am a woman and he will throw me out of the troop!" 

"Angels, what a fuss," her father said. "Whatever did you expect? that for the rest of your life you would be able to run loose with soldiers getting up to I know not what disgusting behaviour? Just look at you. I was hoping that a few days training you into dresses might cure you but I swear, it is an impossible task." 

"What in Hell ...!" Tashka stared at him from wild eyes. "Lord Esha - you told him I am an officer in Sixth H'las, is it not?" 

van Sietter looked disdainfully at her. "I told him that you were serving under a false name in some army somewhere," he answered. "I was of course unaware that it was his army and that your troop, Sixth H'las is it? is actually commanded by his son ..."  

"Liar! You know it well!" 

"Will you stop this hysterical behaviour! Sit down and listen to me, wench. I said sit down!" 

Tashka's immediate impulse was to scream No!  but she wanted to get the whole story out of her father - or as much of it as she could get him to tell. Also his icy blue gaze had a real power over her. She had spent the first years of her life in the mountain fortress of her uncle as a hostage. She had realised all along there must be a reason that her uncle van V'ta had been invited to Clair's and her home with a well armed troop. Her father had always been tempted to let her fall into her uncle's hands to be assassinated in the North and then the scandal of her military way of life, wholly inappropriate for a Lady of the high nobility, would be buried in the H'velst Mountains. 

She crouched down silent on the edge of her chair. 

"Now then," van Sietter drawled the words out, leaning back in his chair and placing his hands together in front of his cool fair face. "I do not think for a moment that young el Gaiel will take you to his bride," he paused. Tashka thought of Vadya el Gaiel, of his merry brown eyes and his wide generous mouth, of his warm voice talking about a book or strategies or a morning ride. She thought of teasing him about all the lovelies of the high nobility his father might have put up to him: every one a proper behaved Lady, even that vixen slut Maive el Staten whose well-endowed chest her beloved Commander had been lured off to. Her blue eyes clouded with tears. She blinked them savagely back. "However, van H'las has gone to try to persuade him to the match." 

"Hell!" Tashka moaned, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. "What will he not say about me now!" 

"I promised van H'las to make a more acceptable Lady of you," van Sietter went on. "Although once he realised you are actually his son's junior officer, I expected ..." he fell silent, Tashka looked quickly up at him. In an unguarded moment when he thought she was immersed in misery the old snake had allowed a look of puzzlement to appear on his face. 

"You hoped Vadya would be so insulted that it would come to war!" she shot out at him. "Hell! Oh Hell!" she moaned. "You have ruined my life! I always longed to go and train with Vadya, after losing my career once how happy I was to serve as his Captain and you must come and ruin it for me all over again!" 

van Sietter swung an icy glare at her. "You have some notion, oh my daughter," he said coldly, "that you are of importance in this world. Do not imagine I would go to all this trouble to cross you. I do this for Sietter and you must accept it for Sietter's sake. We must have this tie with H'las for the sake of the cloth trade in Arventa and to get the food prices lower for the people." 

"What do you care for the cloth trade or the people?" Tashka said listlessly, lying back in her chair with her hand over her eyes. She felt as if a tight band was over her eyes because she refused to be made to cry by this selfish snake of a parent. "You are not like van H'las. The el Gaiels care about their people, that is why Lord Esha and Vadya have not slipped the knot of this betrothal and cast it in your face in terms that might allow you to stir them up to declare war." 

"What nonsense is this!" van Sietter's eyes pinched up, his nose seemed to become thin and white with temper. "I will not tolerate you crossing me again. An' you give me trouble over this betrothal, you will go with el F'lara to V'ta. Is it not enough that you ran away from that betrothal with el Jien van Vail? It will not happen again! Gossip about my family could ruin my career ..." 

"What do I care about your Angel-damned career?" Tashka snarled, springing out of her chair and standing glaring at him, her hurt blue eyes wide and blazing. Imp sprang up and barked, van Sietter looked at him and Tashka turned a fierce glare at him, snapping: "To station, sirrah!" Imp sank down on the floor, looking with puzzled scared eyes at Tashka. "Have you ever given a copper coin's curse for my career? The brightest rising star in your army, my brother officers have all gone on to become Commanders but it is barely tolerated that I should be a junior officer in an enemy troop! My Commander, Stariel, even came to beg you allow me to go to the Generals' strategic staff. He knew I am a woman but he loved my strategic skills so much that he came back out of retirement to ask it of you. You let him think you would allow it! He rode all the way to Vail where I was with Pava, an old man, and he came himself to me to say: Go to your father, he has promised it me that he will consider a position for you in the Generals' staff. Lucky for me that I knew it could not be so, there must be something in the breeze. The next I knew I had a scrawled note from Pava who had been told to go home to his parents, telling me to put Ninth on battle alert and on no account set foot out of the encampment. When he came back at all speed it was to tell me I was to be forced to the altar, bestowed without being allowed to speak a word because I am the younger child, on Pava himself, my own Captain! Commander-Sir Stariel never lifted his head again for the shame of what he brought on me." 

"Insolent dog," van Sietter commented with an icy sneer. "What right did he think he had to tell van Sietter how to manage a younger child of the el Maiens." 

"He was my Commander, he had sworn I would be his honour and care and he loved me!" Tashka cried. van Sietter lifted his cold grey eyes in an expression of scorn. "And it was for your career that you fought mam's people in V'ta. I know how that war put the arms merchants in your pocket. I have seen the treaty: a war every five years and arms half-price for you." 

"And so you wish to stay out of V'ta, you will listen to me!" van Sietter was at last roused to some emotional response. "What is this talk of a treaty with arms merchants? As if an el Maien van Sietter would stoop to deal with riff-raff of trade! So you speak of this again, I will have the tongue from your slack mouth!" 

"I hope your Vilandian bitch stabs you one night!" Tashka snarled. "I hope your soldiers rape you as some have tried to rape me. I hope the King hears of your treaties and hangs you for a traitor as I have risked hanging for a spy!" 

"Get out!" van Sietter shrieked. 

"With pleasure, my Lord," Tashka swept an insulting low bow and snapped her fingers at her heel for Imp to follow her. She tried to be calm but her voice trembled and her face was pale and she could not forbear to slam the door behind her. 

She ran round the veranda on heavy booted feet to Clair's room, threw open the door and flung herself on some cushions on his floor. She clenched up her fists and her jaw, moaning through her clenched jaw. Imp scrambled after her and stood with two paws on the cushions, whining in puzzlement. She turned her head to him and then dragged him into her embrace, burying her aching eyes in his wiry coat. 

When Clair came into the room she was lying over the heap of colourful cushions, staring at the beams above her head with strained eyes, the muscles of her face tense, Imp curled close to her side. An old rope hung down from the beam above her, she and Clair used to climb up it to sit dangling their legs from the beam eating apples they kept in a secret cache there. 

"What is it?" Clair asked, his voice fearful, coming over to lie down on the cushions beside her and put his arms around her. "What has he done now?" 

Tashka turned her slanted blue eyes to him and spoke through her clenched jaw. "He has betrothed me to el Gaiel van H'las, my own Commander," she said through gritted teeth. 

"Angels!" Clair winced and screwed his face up, "that scum! but Tashka, little brother, el Gaiel will not marry one of his junior officers. He will laugh when they suggest it." 

"I know," Tashka moaned. Her face suddenly looked as if at last she might start to cry, her slanted eyes creased and her rose-petal mouth pouted up against her tears, "but he will never have me back to the troop now. They will persuade him to take the betrothal for a year, for the sake of trade and the poor who else must go hungry. He will agree to it only so he can ride here and spit in my face! Oh Clair, in Port Paviat that butterfly-wits Pava let it slip that I am van Sietter but Vadya forgave it me! I thought I would die if I had to leave him just because I am the child of that old snake but he came and ... and he hugged me and forgave me. He said he would ask his father if I might stay in Sixth H'las, he said it might even be a ... a useful tie with Sietter. Oh-h, when he hugged me I longed to press close to him and show him how I felt for it, I mean just his forgiveness, but I had to try and turn my shoulder into his chest so he would not guess. And then we went out that night ... No, Clair! How can I live now? I loved it so. He is the finest Commander in Trossia, he has watched over my mistakes and corrected me so gently I hardly knew it - you know how hard I take it if I think the Quarter is not perfectly in order. Who will watch over Mada's mistakes now, who will make Hanya and Volka be friends? Oh no, who will sit with Vadya and make the strategies and go for a ride with him and hear him talk about the stupid women he will go and get lured in by, or comfort him if he thinks of Mada Stanies, my fellow Captain and his childhood friend whom we lost in that duel over a barmaid. He will never want to see me but once more - to spit in my face, and I love him so!" 

"Hush," Clair said softly, rubbing a gentle hand over Tashka's short cropped hair. "You have said to me he is a good and generous man, fair-minded. He will forgive it you, he will know it is not you who has done this stupid thing. Pava will get you a Vail troop since I cannot yet give you a Sietter one. Then when I am the sworn Lord, you may come and be General here." He stroked the back of his hand down Tashka's cheek, her strained eyes still stared blankly at the beam above them in the roof. "Vadya el Gaiel will not take it out on you that van Sietter has tricked him." 

"You have not seen him angry," Tashka answered in a small voice. "I have only seen him so once, with a man we caught spying in the troop. He hung him from a tree. Sweet Hell! I shivered for a week, to think I was van Sietter in his troop; I would wake suddenly in the night from a bad dream of his face so cold and heartless! That was when I was still only a new officer in the troop, since then I came to know him so well and to love him so much. You know, my heart really hurts. You would not think it would physically hurt your heart, to lose a friend?" She raised puzzled despairing blue eyes to him, he looked at her with a question in his smile. 

"Perhaps," he suggested, "van H'las will persuade el Gaiel to the match and he may come round to be your husband and friend?" 

"How can you talk such nonsense!" Tashka cried. "I am his junior officer!" 

"But you would not give him grief if he took someone on the side," Clair suggested in an apparently careless tone. 

Tashka sat up in the cushions and glared at him from angry blue eyes. "I should not tolerate any such arrangement!" she said indignantly. "Vadya is a great deal too honourable for tricks of that kind. How dare you talk as if he had such slack morals." 

"My dear," Clair said drily, an enquiring twinkle still in his grey eye. "Slack morals are the way of it with political marriages." 

Tashka blushed to remember that Clair had gone through so many one-day-one-nights that even he had lost count of them. "Well," she said grumpily. "I can tell it you now that Vadya el Gaiel will not marry his junior officer. And then, we know where it is that I will be going." She put a hand on Clair's arm and looked into Clair's slanted grey eyes with her own slanted blue eyes wide. 

"No!" Clair exclaimed. "I'll not allow it, how can you think I would let it happen?" He put his arms out as if he would physically protect Tashka from being dragged from his arms. 

"What can we do," Tashka demanded. "He has brought First Sietter, you know how they are about the sworn Lord; they have to be. van V'ta has got First V'ta here and they have come fully armed, I could see the disposition of the troop was as if they were in an embattled encampment." 

"There are always accidents," Clair lowered his voice as he said it. 

"No! Clair, last time they caught the man and ham-strung him! And we have never been able to do a thing for him in case they proved that it was us behind it." 

"Hear me," Clair knelt suddenly up, gripping Tashka's arms and looking intently into her face as he said the habitual military phrase. "He will not send you to V'ta, I swear it. We must keep a battle-eye out ourselves. If van H'las looks likely to slip the knot, you could go to Soomara. Maive would be glad to help us, er, to help you. Since you have kept her little brother, your Lieutenant, kindly under your eye. If van H'las push the match, el Gaiel will surely allow you to stay here in Sietter with me. It will not be so bad, will it? I cannot match el Gaiel's strategic skills but I can give you a practice duel now and then?" 

Tashka made a grumpy pout, leaning her elbows on her dusty booted knees and putting her head in her hands. "What will you do with me, make me Captain of the Castle Guard?" she demanded with a chilling sneer that made it suddenly apparent that she was indeed the daughter of el Maien van Sietter. 

Clair laughed. "Even he will not live forever," he said. "One day he will be gone and the whole army will swear to my fingers. I will make you General at last." 

Tashka's lip curled. "The structure of the command in Sietter," she began. 

"Alright!" Clair cried, his slanted eyes curling with his laughter. "Give me peace about the structure of the command in the Sietter army! You can change it when I am Lord van Sietter, you can take the whole army and strip the strategic staff and make it exactly how you please. Have the army, have the region, have any thing but do not break your heart for one silly little H'las Quarter. You have many friends: Pava, and the Angels - Caja and Loisir who command Seventh and Fourth, that slut Vaie who has Tenth Sietter these days; el Farin van Graiel, el Vaie van Soomara and el Darien van Trattai are training in Sixth H'las, is it not? and I'll swear they would do any thing for you, just like the Angels who would always take the beatings while you got away free, you monkey. What does one Commander matter?" 

Tashka's head suddenly drooped and at last the slow tears rolled out of her eyes. Clair looked at her beautiful slanted eyes dripping with tears as rare as sapphires, and as precious to him, although he never would give way to her tears because everyone-else indulged them so and spoilt her. He put his arm gently around her shoulders. 

"Vadya will be more angry than a pale Angel," Tashka sobbed. "He will never forgive me, however his father decides it: slip the knot or force him to the altar with me. Nor will he be happy with Pava and you, who saddled him with a woman in soldier's clothes." 

Clair wiped the heel of his hand under her eyes and soaked up those precious tears in the embroidered cuff of his shirt. "Pooh," he said gently. "Your eyes, my brain and Pava's tongue could charm the Angels into bed, let alone a cross Commander into a better mood." He grinned at Tashka, nudging her head with his own head, she shook her head. Her tears ceased and she seemed easier for having shed them. She looked away towards Clair's door, her eyes full of a strange yearning. Clair reached out to hug her. He had trained her so hard that she even hesitated before allowing the small swell of breasts constrained in her bodice to press to him. She let him hold her briefly in his embrace then sat up in his arms and sniffed, saying she had better get herself into a bath. Clair looked at her sorrowful face. 

"Are you afraid?" he asked, in a very gentle voice. "Afraid to take a man in marriage? Is that why you think el Gaiel will be angry? You are afraid to take him in marriage?" 

"Afraid of what?" Tashka said, looking curiously at him. 

"Of ... of a man in your bed?" 

Tashka burst out laughing, her slanted blue eyes creased suddenly up in a sexy wink. "What do you take me for?" she cried. "I have been a soldier out in the field, do you think the chance to take a man into my bed has passed me by?" 

Clair looked angry and sat up saying: "What in Hell ...! Who was it? I will kill him!" 

"That will be why I have never told you a name," Tashka said with a wicked salacious grin. "Do you think I cannot take care of my own honour? I have defended my own honour. You know enough of my fighting skills to know that anyone I have chosen of my own free will to enjoy my body with could not have forced my favours. Why do you talk such nonsense? Have I offered to throw my glove in the face of any of your lovers? I would be pushed to deal with all the long long list in one short lifetime!" 

Clair scowled then grinned and shook his head. "Well," he said, "it is ... different. Alright! It is no different. I hope he ... or she, was ... kind to you? It must be an he if you defended your honour, I suppose. Did you have cause to defend your honour? Not serious enough for a glove, I hope?" He looked at her in loving anxiety. 

"Why do you think there was only one?" Tashka retorted. "Shut it about my private business, Clair. There is nothing in it for you." She brushed her scarred knuckles gently with her other hand. 

"What of el Gaiel," Clair suggested, "since you love him so much it makes your heart hurt to think of being without him. You have never thought of him in that way?" 

"'Course not!" Tashka cried, her tear-stained cheeks flushing with annoyance. "You are as bad as Pava! Vadya el Gaiel is my senior officer, I would be crossing my vow to his banner - yuk! I love him much better than that!" She bunched her scarred right fist up and glared at her brother but he only burst out laughing and seized her fist in a strong lean hand, saying, "do not be spoiling my face again over el Gaiel van H'las whose hands are so skilled ... on the horses' reins!" Tashka wrenched her fist from his hand and she and Imp set on him with cushions, barking and shouting and beating him over the head while he covered his head with his arms, protesting and grinning in the most irritating way.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 09



Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.) 

*****

Vadya climbed out of the saddle, looking warily at the people standing at the top of Castle Sietter's steps. All around him, the sunny cobbled courtyard was full of the van H'las retinue dismounting and Sietter servants taking their horses' reins or going to give a hand to H'las servants unloading packs and wagons of stuff or standing decoratively by. 

At the top of the broad steps on the side by a ramp, was Lord van V'ta in a black robe with gold scrolls; whose army Vadya had skirmished with the previous autumn - and Tashka had been wounded by his side, and had saved all their lives. 

van V'ta's daughters stood beside him with their eyes demurely cast down, one in dark blue, the other in light blue. They were proper Ladies, each with a Guard of Honour to guarantee their virtue. Vadya could just as well have been betrothed to the younger one, had the situation with V'ta been worse. Although as Tashka had remarked she was very young. Vadya had always hoped he would not get some naive child of the high nobility to his bride, whom he would have to coax in his bed. 

Pava - who had laughed so heartily at Tashka's description of someone Vadya realised now was a cousin to Tashka - lounged against the castle steps in a green silk suit embroidered with blue and red humming birds. Pava gave him a grin and a wink, Vadya stared coldly back. 

That thin fair Lord with the thin cold smile must be van Sietter, the old snake of a politician who was not to be trusted, the father who hated Tashka so much that Tashka had run off from him into a H'las troop. 

That tall arrogant-eyed Lord with one ringed hand on his hip and the other on the shoulder of a small boy who was copying his stance exactly was certainly Tashka's older brother. He looked astonishingly like Tashka, only his slanted eyes were grey and his mouth was thin like van Sietter's. He tilted his head at Vadya in a graceful feminine gesture and that too was strangely unlike Tashka's typically salacious wink and nod. 

The tall plump blonde beside Lord Clair el Maien with the beautiful blond boy leaning into her motherly red silk skirts must be Lady el Jien. Vadya could see immediately why Pava had wanted to marry her. She had the full figure and high held head of a Queen, she stood back from the menfolk she had been married into, looking with eyes veiled of expression vaguely into the courtyard, not inappropriately catching your eye and winking to make you snigger. She was a tip-top classic beauty, a highly honourable and great Lady, with a body rich in warm plump curves. The veil in her eyes suggested a maidenly modesty and proper subservience to the men standing about her. Her mother had a certain reputation but hers was for high chastity. How could his father have missed catching this gorgeous and honourable daughter of the el Jiens van Iarve for him? 

Outside the gates First H'las would be establishing their encampment. They would have difficulty achieving this without entangling themselves with First Sietter or First V'ta already disposed for active battle defence either side of the castle. 

'Sweet Hell!' Vadya scowled in disgust, 'all this for me to come to see my Angel-damned Captain. I want to spit in his ... her face. Where is he?' 

His father, looking like a soldier of the line in leather jerkin, breeches and riding boots, was going up the broad stone steps to politely greet all the nobles and Vadya also had to go through the formal introductions. 

"Lord Pava el Maien van Sietter." 

"How do you, Lord van Sietter." 

"Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter, formerly of Fourth Sietter." 

"I trust you enjoy good health." 

"Lady Arianna el Jien van Sietter." 

"Honoured," pick up her hand with two fingers and brush her cool long elegant fingers with his lips. The small blond boy smiled angelically up at him from her skirts and she lifted her veiled blue eyes to introduce him as, "Sir Hanya Vashin." A frown clouded Vadya's eyes. He knew the name as that of a Sietter hero of the battle of Shier Bridge but he gently pressed the fingers which Lady el Jien nudged the boy to offer and gave the innocent child a smile in return for his sweet shy smile. 

"Lord Arkyll el Maien van Sietter." 

"Is it true," Arkyll broke in eagerly, grasping Vadya's fingers inappropriately tightly with his small hand and looking up into Vadya's face with eyes exactly like Tashka's, "that caughts't the bear that Uncle Tashka has as a rug now in his room?" 

Vadya's face stiffened. Clair drew Arkyll back, glaring at him. Arianna bent to whisper to him. Arkyll replied in a piercing voice: "I only asked. It is not wrong to ask, is it?" 

Captain-Lord Fiotr el F'lara van Vta, formerly of First V'ta. Lady Laienne el F'lara van V'ta. Lady Ilya el F'lara van V'ta. Commander-Lord Pava el Jien van Vail of Ninth Vail. 

"Sweetheart," Pava murmured, giving Vadya his sword hand and looking warmly into his face with laughing green eyes. "I have been dying for you to come." 

"I bloody hope you will die for this!" Vadya hissed in his ear. Pava tried to hang onto his hand and pull him into a hug but Vadya wrenched his hand from Pava's grip. 

He looked around the top of the steps then down at the grooms, stable-maids and kennel-hands ranged up in the courtyard. Where was Tashka now, then? Perhaps they had stuffed the treacherous ... thing in a Vilandian troop but wherever the scum was hiding, Vadya would find him ... her. 

"I think Tashka went out for a ride," Pava said airily. "Let us go inside, for a cool drink." 

Vadya noticed one of the grooms looking over at the stables then the groom snapped his gaze back in front of himself. He turned to go down the steps towards the stables. 

"Vadya," his father dropped a hand on his shoulder and gripped it. His voice had a warning note in it. 

Vadya swung back and surveyed them all, standing at the top of the steps in their elegant silk garments. "I think," he said coldly, "we might all accept the fact that there is no need to formally introduce my betrothed to my notice, might we not? I should like a few moments in private with her. If no one has any objection." His voice was heavy with sarcasm, his brown eyes glowered hotly at them all, his big generous mouth set in a sullen line. His face was sweaty and dusty and angry. 

Clair went one step down towards Vadya but Pava took his arm and pulled him back towards the castle entrance. Clair went slowly, his anxious grey eyes still cast back at the angry big-shouldered young Commander striding away towards the stables. 

Vadya walked into the dim straw-littered stables and peered into the stalls, his eyesight blurred coming into the dimness from the bright sunlight. "Maien!" he said but there was no reply. He walked down past the stalls of horses, dust danced in the bars of sunlight that fell through windows in the roof. He listened to the clatter of hooves behind him as the grooms led their horses in and the bruffing noise horses made into their hay for the clink of a rapier or dagger then he found her, leaning on the partition of an empty stall, flattened out against it as though that would hide her. She was wearing dark blue silk doublet and breeches with pearls stitched into the puffed sleeves of her doublet and a pearl swinging in her ear. Delicate lace showed at her collar and cuffs. She also wore thigh-length riding boots. He knew exactly how it had been. First she thought she would face him out, be there with the others to greet him. She thought that her brother and her former Captain and his father would ensure he offered her propriety in public so she put on a formal silk suit. Then she decided that the sight of her in breeches and a doublet would only enrage him the more. Her father would be no protection; the old snake van Sietter would make no protest if her betrothed felled her to the ground with a blow. She would have decided to go out for the day on Jewel, come sneaking back when perhaps Vadya's rage might have simmered down. It was unlike her, but she had misjudged it, left it too late, torn between wanting to get it over with and wanting to avoid Vadya's anger, so he had caught her before she had time to saddle a horse. 

"So!" he hissed at her, his eyes snapping. "Spy, traitor ... traitress ... oh damn you!" 

"Sir," she said in that husky familiar voice, turning to face him and standing as if to attention. Even in this most difficult situation, she got it exactly right. Not quite the stiffness of a stance she would have adopted on formal parade since they were both in civilian clothes but clearly the demeanour of the junior officer. She used the H'las stance, her feet apart and her hands loosely clasped behind her back. He knew now why she had always had a tendency to snap her heels together - the Sietter soldier's stance. 

It made his breath come short and the blood start flowing uncomfortably in his loins to see her there. She was dressed just as she had so often dressed when they went out - perhaps to some exhibition of paintings followed by dinner. But suddenly now he knew she was a woman. That time her shoulder was slashed open in the duel in Thiel and she lay so still for him to bind it up for her, clutching her shirt and some other garment to her chest, she had been hiding breasts with her ripped shirt and what he had assumed was a vest. His penis stirred in his breeches to think about it: she had breasts and a woman's sex. He could enjoy playing with her with his tongue and his fingers, even his penis, in all the same ways he had done with any of his former lovers. If she allowed him into her bed. His junior officer. 

Looking at this honourable young officer with her close-cropped hair and military stance, he found it impossible to believe that she had kissed him while drunk in a hotel in Port Paviat. On the other hand, he thought it very likely she had started vomiting if her senior officer had tried to kiss her. The thought of that kiss that might have been made his cock stiffen harder in his breeches. It would have been permitted, he would not have been hung for taking it. She was his junior officer but she was also a woman, that particular woman whose body was to be offered to him to father children with. 

He walked up to her through the straw, took her by the shoulders, looked into her exquisite slanted blue eyes glancing to the side, bent forward and pressed his mouth to her rose-petal mouth. Briefly he felt with his lips the small curve of her lips. Tashka gave a cry in the kiss, pushed him away and stood in the straw, her blue eyes wide, her breath suddenly fast. Her scarred fingers flickered towards the dark blue pearl-sewn gloves in her belt and then round the curved elaborately decorated hand-guard of her rapier. Then she took them from her sword and ran them over her cropped short hair, her mouth set into a sullen pout that emphasised the soft pink kissable curve of her lower lip. 

He let out a sudden hiss of frustration and fury, snatched one of the heavy black riding gauntlets out of his own belt and snapped it into her face, catching her in the mouth. Tashka's head flinched back. 

"Well!" Vadya snarled. "Put up your sword, vixen, spy, soldier's bitch!" 

Tashka stood quite still on the straw-littered floor, no longer in any regional army stance since her head was turned down away from him. 

"Come on, liar, pale Angel, scum," Vadya said, glowering at her from angry brown eyes. 

"I could not offer to kill you, my Commander," Tashka said in a stifled low even voice. 

"No!" Vadya exclaimed. "You are a woman! You should never have learned to kill at all!" 

Tashka heaved a sigh at this, more exasperated in tone than regretful, to Vadya's fury. She stood staring at the floor so that he still could not see her face. 

"Never try your tears on me!" He snarled. If he saw her crying he knew that he would give way, submit, give her anything she asked for. He could not bear to think of those exquisite blue eyes flashing with tears in sorrow. If she used such a girl's trick on him as to weep for anything he would give it to her even if it were to ask him never to kiss her again. 

"No sir," she said, lifting her head up. Her chin was set firm, her eyes were dry. He saw that her face was thinner, her eyes looked tired with dark marks under them. 

There was a trickle of blood down her chin. He had split her lip with his glove. 

"I have seen you drunk," he said bitterly. "I have held your head while you vomited. I have heard words from your lips that I never used, stories that made me blush. I have seen you kill; I have seen you kill over my honour! What kind of woman do you think you are? Answer me!" 

"I am a bad woman, sir," she said in a voice without expression. She stared at him with the unspoken rider to her statement clear in her stance: legs slightly apart so that she would be perfectly balanced if she moved her right arm to her rapier sword. A bad woman but an excellent young officer. 

She had not even moved to wipe the blood trickling from her lip down her chin. The blood began to drip into the delicate lace of her collar and run along the threads, a scarlet stain spreading through the lace. 

"Let me see to your lip," Vadya said at last in an angry voice. 

He took out his kerchief and dabbed at the thread of blood, one hand holding her chin steady. She stood as still under his hand as she had lain that time in Thiel, even then her face never quivered with tears of pain. They would all say what an Angel of a killer Maien was, she never showed emotion in the duel, it would barely register on her face even if she was wounded although she always showed a proper feeling afterwards about any lifeless body she had left about the place. 

When he had finished cleaning her chin, pressing the kerchief on the split in her lip till it stopped bleeding, he frowned at her. He could not think of her except as the charming young Captain whose smiles were the desire of the whole Second Quarter, whose honour he had thought was for him to watch over, not ask to be bestowed on him. It was horrible, bizarre to find out she was a woman and feel his body leaning towards her and his cock rising in desire for her and think that this was not forbidden. She was his junior officer but they were offering her to him for a bride. 

"Will you kiss me?" he asked and blushed and glowered at her. 

"Mm," she said hesitantly. "So you ask it." 

"Why not?" he demanded resentfully. 

She flicked a quick blue look at him. "Well," she mumbled. "It is strange to kiss my Commander." She gave an embarrassed grin and blushed. 

He put up a hand to cover his eyes then pulled it away and said with a grimace, "this marriage may have to be, for the sake of our regions. You might try to get used to kisses." 

She poked the toe of her boot in the straw, looking away from him. 

"Would it be against your preference?" he asked more gently. "You have never kissed a man, I dareswear." 

"'Course I have!" she said with a sudden snigger and a scornful toss of her head. 

"Who?" he asked in surprise. "Who was it? Is it not my right to know? Pava? Have you ... with Pava?" 

"Sweet Hell!" she said angrily. "He was my Captain! What a disgusting idea!" She made a revolted face. "When they tried to betroth me to him I ran away to your troop." 

"You were betrothed to Pava?" Vadya said, also looking revolted. "They tried to bestow you on Pava el Jien when you had been his baby Lieutenant?" 

"I have said it," Tashka said shortly. "I prithou, we do not discuss it." 

"Well, who was it you ... I suppose it did not stop at kissing," Vadya said angrily. 

Tashka looked defiantly at him, a red blush rising in her lean tanned cheeks. "Tarra el V'lair van Athagine," she admitted in a careless tone of voice. 

"What?!" he cried. "Holy Hell! That lady-hunter! Is he not your brother's friend? What did your brother have to say to it?" 

"Yes, I know," Tashka said irritably. "Clair does not know, of course. He would have el V'lair's throat out if he knew! I met el V'lair in a tavern one night. He bought me dinner. And wine. I had recently killed a man in a duel, so I was in the mood for wine. He bought me a lot of brandy. He knows my brother. Somehow he guessed what I am," she looked into Vadya's frowning face with an angry glare. "He treated me like a woman, he was the first man ever to have done so. I liked it. A bit. So I stayed with him a whole week, there, just to see what it was like." 

He glared back at her, confounded by this revelation. "What was it like?" he blurted out and blushed hotly. 

"It was alright," she said indifferently. "I liked it, I mean after the first time. I was too drunk to remember the first time. el V'lair ... knows a lot ... about ... things. But he is a stupid boor and it was wrong of him to take my virgin favour when I was drunk. He did not realise it was my virgin favour he was taking then when he did he was sorry I had been drunk and could not remember it so he said he would give me another and then ... he gave me a whole week and ... it was fun." She looked at Vadya through those lovely long lashes that the troop's Lieutenants would privately sigh over, the blush creeping back up her lean cheeks. "And then he sent me a box of jewellery!" she gave a short hard incredulous laugh. "I sent it back of course and I gave the scum a gift of my own when we met up with him that time in the tavern in Thiel." She rubbed the scarred fingers of her right hand with her left hand and scowled. "Give him his due, he never gossiped of my name as he has of other women." 

Vadya had always felt a little sorry for young van Athagine who had lain over the floor in the tavern after Tashka punched him in a way that suggested his jaw had been broken but now he felt a savage satisfaction and hoped el V'lair's jaw had been broken very badly. "Have ... have there been others?" he asked hesitantly. 

"Ye-es," she admitted, "But ... not important," she mumbled. "And not recently." She lifted her eyes and looked anxiously at him as though that mattered. 

"And what of that woman in P'shan?" he exclaimed suddenly. 

"What of her?" she demanded. "What of your own women? I know it was not just kisses that you gave to that cow Lallia or to that pink-fingered vixen Maive el Staten. Am I standing here shouting about it? Would it matter to you if I had loved a woman? I told you Anata was only a friend. It was you who insisted she must be more to me." 

"Oh alright," he said grumpily. "My mind is muddled. Give me a bit of peace, Maien. And you must not talk like that about Lallia or Maive." Then he realised that she probably did have the right to be jealous of the women he had lain with and frowned angrily. 

She sat down in the straw and leant back on the wooden partition, tall and muscular in her fine silk suit and her thigh-length boots. She fingered her lip, squinting down at it to try and see what damage he had done. Vadya sat down beside her. He leant his big shoulders forwards to rest his arms on his leather-booted knees and stared at a bar of sunshine falling into the stall with dust motes dancing in it. 

"Um so," he said, "um, el V'lair treated you like a woman. And you liked it?" 

"Ay," she said, her fingers dropping to scrabble in the straw. "I am a man-lover, not a woman-lover." 

"Would you not like to be a Lady?" he asked hopefully. 

She turned her slanted blue eyes at him with a blatant expression of scornful hilarity and said firmly: "I love to be a soldier. It is everything that is me: to assess the lie of the land and the disposition of the enemy and make up manoeuvres with my fellow Captains; to organise the horses and manage the men and ensure there are the right provisions and equipment at the right time of year. I cannot care for 'broidery. I cannot ride side-saddle or trot along in the rear of the hunting party, crying: Oh la, my kerchief, sirrah! I have dropped it, prithou pick it up for me! Is that a bear, oh how frightened I am! Oh, only a wabbit! It was a very fierce wabbit!  I cannot wear a dress. Have you ever worn skirts? There is nowhere to hang a sword and when you run upstairs, you trip and break your nose." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 09



He gave a sudden snort of laughter then glared into her narrowed blue eyes. She looked just like she did when they argued about manoeuvres. They sat side by side in the straw, he turned his eyes away from her blue eyes which had sometimes in the past been soft and warm on him and then he had felt unable to press her to answer questions about her private family life. 

He said grudgingly: "I have never tried to wear a dress and I would not like it if I were asked to do so. Tell me how you came to be this creature that you are." 

She made a pout to hear herself described in such terms by Vadya, who had called her his best officer and friend. 

"When I was in V'ta," she said, "as a child, they tried to kill me. So dadi, I mean Fiotr - my mam's Guard of Honour ... Well you must have heard the gossip; he was not just a servant to mam. He is the one whom van Sietter says was my father in blood. I know not, except that he loved me a great deal better than van Sietter does," she glowered to one side. "Angels! mam must have had the entire rank of Sietter officers at her feet and she had to go and take the favours of her own bloody Guard of Honour. Although I give it to her, he was sweet at heart and Clair will not hear a word against him. He taught me to fight and put me in boy's clothes so I could run when they tried to catch and kill me. That was how it was in those vile mountains, if they tricked mam away from me they would try to kill me to wipe out the stain on the family honour because she had to go and lie with her own bloody Guard of Honour. When mam was ill it was getting worse, they were just waiting. Once she was dead they could take out dadi and there would be no one to watch over me. One night dadi came for me, we left the fortress by the wicket gate. 

"We ran through the mountains for that night and the next day. He told me to go on, to Sietter and to Clair. He turned back. I never saw him more. I was lucky, I fell in with some merchants and they were kind to me, they brought me here, to Clair, they realised van Sietter would only give me back to van V'ta." 

Vadya stared into the motes of dust dancing in the beam of sunshine ahead of him. He thought of how he had played happily in the warm love of his parents, learning to sail in Port H'las harbour, yawning at his desk in school. She had been fighting for her life. She was brought to her brother and in the strangeness of their parentless lives they must have become the closest of childhood companions. She continued to talk in an even husky voice, as if it were nothing, a normal childhood. 

"I have been with Clair ever since, even when he went to Fourth as a Lieutenant I ran away to be with him. I was only fourteen, and a girl! at first Commander-Sir Stariel said I could not stay but while Clair was arguing with him about it - breach of discipline but he was the future sworn Lord - I planned out a raid on the provisions tent with two-three of the other Lieutenants using a reverse Palair net and trident strategy. One of the Sietter Knights, Clathan, used to let us visit him and he taught us strategy when he realised I had a taste for it. When he saw what I had done, Stariel said I could stay. I was there under Pava with Stariel's son and Nain whom you met and Dar Vaie, we were the rising stars, they called us the Angels. Stariel gave me my own room in his apartments in the winter quarters in Luthian. In summer I slept in the Lieutenants' tent with Clair and when I was properly commissioned Pava took me into his tent instead of putting me with the other Lieutenants so there was always someone with a bloody eye over the bloody honour of the sworn Lord's younger bloody child." 

This was more like the life he had led: joining the army with his best friend, the two of them bored by the ceremony and pomp of First H'las. It was Mada Stanies who had thought of asking for Captaincies in a troop out in the field. Tashka had been commissioned in an active field troop since her early teens. Then she was put in the midst of a group of minds so like her own, the Angels. It must have been exhilarating; making up the strategies with brother officers whose intelligence inspired you to higher and higher flights of thinking. She would have been the mischievous one who thought up pranks and lured the others into raids on the provisions tents. There would have been clipping rides out in the hills, running races with the troop's messengers and practice duels. And real duels. Parties too. She and her friends would not have been like he and Mada, hanging round the drinks table, ignorant of women and tongue-tied with shyness. The Angels, out with their Captain el Jien van Vail and Captain-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter, probably other officer-aristocrats; there would have been women and men flinging themselves at the whole set of them. But he knew her to the core now. At her core there was no interest in women or men, there was only the code of honour. He knew she would not have cared about anyone dangling their favours before her exquisite eyes. She would have revelled in the military strategy they were so focussed on in Sietter and the occasional duel she probably fought. She would have been happy in the intense friendship of brother officers sworn to be for each other through Hell and through life. Her brother would have made it clear, too, that he would give the glove if any man came near her. Even his close friend - a scum of little honour - had only managed to sneak into her bed through a disgusting trick. 

He wondered if she had danced. She had been to a couple of parties with him in Port H'las but he had never seen her dance. 

"When war was declared they made me go to Vail with Pava. I begged and cried to go with the others but Clair said I was too young. Afterwards I meant to go back to Fourth, only they had to strip Fourth out, after what they had been through at Shier Bridge." The soldier in him turned to her, his brows raised in question. She lifted her eyes and smiled but her blue eyes were stricken with mourning. "Oh yes, they went through Hell and back, following my brother's banner. He went to Hell and stayed there. 

"First I had to go and fetch him home from where he was trying to kill himself in the back hills at that rotten little place of Hanya Vashin's where he buried Hanya. I had to leave him here in the care of my sister by marriage, whom he hated and treated like filth. I had to go and fetch the other Angels and Fourth and take them back to Arventa; they were in pieces in the mud up there. When I tried to get one of them to be the acting Commander so I could go back to Clair, he would just sit and put his head in his hands and cry. Oh, it was lovely! cursing and chivvying them along the Maier Pass to Arventa, having lost a Captain and ten Lieutenants, nearly everyone nursing serious injury, the men weeping, the officers like bloody cart-horses. I had to give them every order three times before they could listen and act on it. I could never allow them any loving kindness for what they had been through because if I did they fell apart. At night I put the Angels in one tent together, as they used to be when we were Lieutenants. But I had to sleep alone, there was no Pava to say: My baby Lieutenant, do not give it your mind. Put your bedding roll by mine then and if you wake in the night wills't hear me snoring and can kick me before goest back to sleep." She lisped Pava's accent exactly. "The whole way I was wondering if my brother was still alive, if they had been able to keep him away from the central tower or his own weapons." 

She put her head briefly in her hands, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. After three years as her Commander he knew how superb an officer she was but he felt a new admiration for her. She was so young at that time, still only a Lieutenant. She had gone into the aftermath of the bloody carnage that must have been Shier Bridge to bring together those finely balanced young minds so familiar to her from happier times. She had got that great mass of men and horses, like a beast with its back broken by the weight of that terrible victory, to collect themselves and move in an orderly fashion back through the hills, across the plain, along the river, slowly trudging away leaving their dearly beloved fallen dead behind. 

"You would think I would be glad that Clair had not let me go to war," she said, lifting her head to stare at the sunbeam falling through the roof. "But oh how I wished I had been there with them. I wished I were like them, staggering in the mud, their hearts bleeding for the fallen bodies of our comrades. I wished I did not have to be only in my mind, heartless: to witness the empty space by my brother's side where Hanya was no longer standing; to witness his madness, and in his madness his cruelty to that flower of honour and beauty, his Lady wife el Jien van Sietter; to witness the mindless routine into which those Angels of high strategy my brother officers were sunk. They were so wounded in their minds that all they could do was carry out over and over the daily orders left them by my brother whom they loved beyond death and who had not even died. They could not even mourn him and pass on but he was lost to them. How I wished I were as helpless in the mud as they, and that some other fool had to come and lead me with them back to the Generals who had told them to hold the Maier Pass at all cost."

He understood how it had happened. Caught by what in itself was a masterly strategy by Fifth and Ninth H'las, the Fourth Sietter officers were not solid working soldiers who saw their battles as everyday business, the cost to be considered and a retreat seen as the best means of saving men and arms to fight another day. The officers of Fourth were all of them rising stars, death or glory young things, the Angels. They had come up with a brilliant strategic defence of what was only one access route to the key pass through the hills. They had thrown themselves and their men into it, so many of them had died and those who remained suffered the dreadful glory of victory. It was typical of the structure of the command in Sietter that they had allowed this high-flying group of young officers to collect together without considering what might be the result if there were no experienced older soldier to put the brakes on their flights of imaginative strategic thinking. 

Tashka leant back against the partition with her head tilted back and her eyes staring blankly up. "After that little pleasure trip I had to come back here at all speed and spend three months more stopping my brother from killing himself. I had to persuade my sister by marriage - whom I had learned to love with all my heart - not to give him the go-by and run away. I knew that would have been the best for her but fighting with her seemed to give him something to live for, the only way to save him was to sacrifice her. She had been laid out on the altar already, bestowed by her pig of a brother in his interests not hers. Then, the damned dog! he ran off to court, leaving her here while he fell into anyone's bed who lifted a sheet for him. She gave him everything! a woman as splendid as the sun. He gave her the go-by for sixty-six yards of tawdry trimming and bits of stuffing. I could have killed him myself just then! 

"They had separated the other Angels and put them into different troops. I was in two minds whether to ask for a Captain's sword by the side of that sweet slut Vaie." Vadya was enraged to feel the familiar jolt of jealousy which he could now recognise for what it was. He had always felt it when she mentioned some other officer she was friendly with, even Pava el Jien. His judgement had been seriously distorted by his lust for the kisses from her which he had never allowed himself to imagine. "Vaie is a man-lover so Clair does not fret if I am out with him," she continued. He felt a disgusting relief to hear that at least one of her brother officers - her brother officers, fellow baby Lieutenants for sweet Hell's sake! - would not be after her favours, "or whether I should wait for Fourth to be reformed. Pava wrote me, he knew I was ... tired. He wrote to say, oh darling sugarplum, my little baby Lieutenant, come and have an holiday with me and Ninth, we will have sweet fun campaigning in Soomara, I will buy you all the chocolates in the region, my sweetheart, my Angel." Vadya could not help laughing, the imitation of Pava was so exact. "He only wanted to go and look on Maive with eyes, of course, silly pigeon. 

"I was well glad to go to my sweet old Captain in Vail after the time that I had had. We were preparing for our journey when that vile scum van Sietter tried to betroth us! He got round el Jien van Vail - Pava's father, who was fretting because Pava was hanging round Maive el Vaie's skirts. van Sietter knows nothing of the military, he thought Pava might be fond enough of me to take me in spite of my ... my bloody military brilliance! Angels! the bloody Generals in Turaine begged him to do it in order to get me into their offices but of course Pava had to give them the No. He has to think of the succession. The idea! that I would lie with my senior officer. When he put it to them in those terms the Generals had to back him and get his parents to slip the knot. 

"van Sietter did it because my old Commander had gone to ask him to get the Generals' strategic staff here to give me my Captain's sword. Stariel had always imagined I would stand the Lord General by Clair's side as the sworn Lord. He was a man of the highest military honour and could not conceive that van Sietter would think it any thing but a blessing from the Angels to have a child who could be a General but ... because of what mam did van Sietter thinks there will be some scandal over a daughter in the military. He thinks I would run off with any bloody soldier from the file or whoever!" Tashka's split pink lip curled in scorn, she said, "ow," with a wince of pain. "Pava said for a joke, better go and hide in an H'las troop and I begged him to send me to you, I had always wanted ... I hoped I had got peace from them all, at last, in Sixth H'las where I got such good field experience. I never really understood, with the Angels, how enjoyable the day to day business of managing the men and provisions could be. The chain of command in H'las is so ... and under you ... but I always knew a day would come that you would go to the Generals' staff and I would be unable to refuse my banner longer. I would have to confess that I am el Maien van Sietter and come back here to skulk in the castle, practising fighting with the Castle Guard and losing all the skills I have gained. I am sorry for it that it should come about like this." 

He sat in the straw by her side, leaning his arms on his dusty booted knees and staring away into the sunbeam falling into the stall. As her Commander he felt it in his heart that his young officer, one of the tip-top rising stars of the Sietter army, should have struggled so hard in her career. His sympathy was overlaid by the thin layer of his rage that he was being pushed to marry her, the two angers mixed so that he could not quite tell what it was he felt. 

She was looking mournfully aside. Vadya looked at the graceful curve of the back of her cropped head. He wondered what it would be like to have the military skills that he had and for his own father to do everything to prevent him developing them. Then he wondered what she would have been like if she had been that creature he had thought of as her sister: the honourable Lady Anastelle el Maien van Sietter, but that dream had long gone. He made an expressive face of repulsion. He reached out, meaning to give her a sympathetic hug. Suddenly he remembered how he had hugged her in Paviat; she had turned her shoulder to his chest. He realised it had been so that he would not feel the curve of breasts she hid with a bodice that flattened instead of displaying them. In a fit of rage, he made a grab at her shoulder instead. He pulled her back against him and Tashka's heavy muscular frame fell against his chest, knocking him onto the straw-covered floor. She held him off with strong arms, saying: "What is it? Are you looking on me with eyes now that you know I am a woman?" in an annoyed voice. 

"I was looking on you before I found out you are a woman," Vadya admitted. 

"Is it so?" she enquired, raising one eyebrow at him. "You must have been puzzled, turning man-lover after even going with Maive el Staten." 

He flushed up with embarrassment then he lifted his head and said, "kiss me." 

Her mouth twisted up and she winced again at the pain in her split lip. He felt completely ashamed of himself, asking this brilliant rising star of the Sietter army, his own junior officer, supposed to be his honour for the Angels' sake, for a kiss. Then he felt dully angry at having to feel ashamed for asking his own betrothed for a kiss. She looked nothing like he had ever imagined his betrothed might look, she just looked like the fine young soldier and friend who had fought for him so loyally and he burned for her kiss. He leaned closer to her, pressing against her hands, she turned her head aside but she let him brush her temple with his lips. 

Then she suddenly said: "Damned Angels!" and tried to get away from him. He gripped her in his embrace. She struggled in his arms, they fought briefly, wrestling as they had so often wrestled for fun and exercise in the troop. Now, Vadya was aware of the way she avoided pressing her chest to him, how clever she was at keeping his hands away from between her legs. He was struggling to get a hand on her breast or slide his fingers between her thighs - which was an illegal wrestling move whatever - when she suddenly screamed: "Angel of Mercy!" and he was so shocked that he let her go. They stared at each other. Tashka's blue eyes were wide. Vadya's eyes fell before hers. 

"I never said that in my life before!" 

"Maien," he pleaded. "I would not hurt you." 

"I would have killed you, had you gone further." Her narrow eyes stared into his, he looked away. 

"Maien," he repeated. "I would not hurt you." 

"What were you about, just now?" she demanded, standing up and moving beyond his reach. There was straw all over her elegant dark blue silk suit and in her short cropped hair. Some of the pearls had been wrenched from the puff of her right sleeve and hung dangling by threads. She rested back on one leg and stared at him with hard blue eyes, her fingers clenched in the curved elaborate hand-guard of her rapier. The blood was still red on the cut in her lip, staining the white lace of her collar. Her narrowed eyes looked down at him as if he were a trooper who had been caught stealing from the provisions tent, as if he were stupid arrogant Volka el Darien giving his fellow Lieutenant Hanya Lein grief for being a merchant's son, as if he were one of those fools they had so often had to warn off in taverns who had laid a caressing hand on her leg when she had not invited any attention by look or word. In all the years of love and loyalty he had had from and had felt for Tashka, he had never imagined that look would be turned so deservedly on him. 

"Prithou, Maien," he said softly. 

"What were you about?" she repeated. 

"I wanted ... a kiss!" he said, sitting back in the straw and flinging his head back to meet her stare. "What will you? For three years I have denied I felt a thing for you but friendship since you are my junior officer. You were my care, my honour and my victory, not my love. I have beaten men for things I heard them say of you in my troop and I can say it with a clean heart, I never let myself look on you with eyes. Then, I go home and am told ... you are my betrothed. All those years, you were a woman, you should never have been my officer ..." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 09



"What kind of stupid idea is that?" Tashka interrupted. "Why may I not be an officer because I am a woman? Is a woman too fragile, too stupid to be an officer? You know it well, that all these years I have been the best officer you could have had!" 

"I cannot answer these things!" Vadya shouted. "All I know is that my Captain is my betrothed! What will my friends and my soldiers say of it when they hear that!" 

Tashka went white with rage, her blue eyes shone vivid as jewels in her white face. Vadya felt suddenly scared, he knew Tashka was a much better swordsman than he was, she was a killer and in a stupid fit of rage he had given her the glove. She walked towards him on stiff legs but her hand stayed away from her rapier, flew into the air, clenched into a fist and struck him on the side of the head. 

"Is that it?!" she screamed. "You are ashamed of me now! and I am the one fought for you and obeyed you above all others, even my own brother!" 

He was clutching his head, thinking that he had done badly not to ward off the blow and vaguely grateful that she had not caught him in the face and marked him up. 'I did not see his hand move that way,' he thought, more annoyed at himself than anything else. His head hurt. Then he started to laugh. "Angels," he said. "What am I to do? I am so proud of you as my officer and so angry to find you a woman and my betrothed! Oh Maien, prithou," he could not say it, he had started to cry. He wanted to beg her tell him it was all a dream, to say she was just an officer like all of the others. But she had never been just an officer like the others to him. 

"What is it?" she shouted. 

He threw his head up with the tears running down his face. "Get out," he sobbed gruffly. "Get away from me, go on, leave me." 

She stared at him. Three years of quiet long talks by the fireside on night sentry duty and laughter in taverns and discussions about strategy over a campaign table of maps looked at him from her deep slanted blue eyes. Then she turned on her booted heel, failing to do the ritual stamping steps of the junior leaving the senior H'las officer, and left.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 10



Copyright © 2015 Naoko Smith

My dear reader,

I've been posting these chapters in the hopes of some feedback. I've had very few comments, votes or even anonymous messages via the feedback form. (I am extremely grateful to one person who let me know that the way I use the names in this novel is confusing so I should do some work on that.) The number of views on recent chapters has dramatically dropped, making me wonder if this story is maybe too old-fashioned? I did start writing it a long time ago, when FemDoms and women warriors were rare and wonderful beings, maybe it's not such a big deal today. 

If you managed to get as far as this chapter, you are a serious fan, and I owe you something for that. I'm going to post a couple more chapters so you get a little bit of closure on this bit of the story, then I'm going to edit the novel some more and come back and re-post it later on. Please please, if you have any suggestions I should take on board, please let me know. I do have the whole novel written up, and you may have a pdf copy of it all for free if you can't bear to wait while I tidy it up and repost the earlier chapters. Just drop me an email with your address; I love to think people are reading my stories so I will be very glad to hear from you. 

Thank you so much for staying with the story. I'm determined to write it up better - for you. :heart:




Vadya found Pava in the inner courtyard. He was dozing on a rug and some cushions, in the flickering light shade of a pear tree. Two cats had curled up beside him. He had a romantic novel loosely held in his long hand. 

"Which is my room," Vadya asked the footman who had been showing him to a bath. 

He walked past the nodding flowers around the mossy fountain and jabbed Pava in the ribs with the dusty toe of his boot. 

"Ow!" Pava groaned but he did not bother to open his eyes. 

"Get up!" Vadya said angrily. 

"Dearest Vadya, let me be," Pava said lazily, opening his sleepy green eyes and smiling up at the glowering Commander above him. "I promise not to tell anyone slepts't in the same bed as Tashka at the Ship Inn." 

Vadya went hot and then cold at this reminder of an occasion when in a drunken stupor he might have kissed his junior officer, not realising she was a woman and that very member of the high nobility whose hand he was going to have to ask for in marriage. "Holy Angels!" he hissed. "Get up, traitor! Snake! Pink-fingered scum!" 

Pava sat up at this, raising his eyebrows. "I prithou pardon me," he said. "Of course I would not tell. On any road I made sure I slept in the room too so no one could say ..." 

"Will you get up?" Vadya hissed at him, seizing the beautiful bird-embroidered silk of Pava's shoulder and hauling him to his feet. Pava swayed and stood, running his fingers through his longish fair hair. He made a deprecating grimace, attempting to look into the brown eyes of the big-shouldered Commander in front of him. Vadya's hair was dusty, his eyes glowered past dirt-lines on his face. There was blood on his kerchief where it hung out of his sleeve. 

"Is ... is Tashka alright?" Pava asked anxiously. 

"I am sure he will live!" Vadya snarled. "That pretty-eyed lying ... thing! Put up your fists." 

"Vadya, come come," Pava said with an idle grin. "Ar't surely not going to beat me for faults as if I were a common trooper in Sixth H'las." 

"It is you I can give thanks to for my betrothed, puh," Vadya spat neatly into the flowers, "in my troop. Come on, skinny-shanks." 

"Really," Pava said in an annoyed tone of voice, casting a quick look down at his calves (which he was proud of). "It is hardly my making that he has been betrothed to you or that he is how he is. What is it ar't so cross about? There are worse people mights't have been asked to take, was't a mad fool to get into Maive's bed and lucky the el Statens did not rush to pin you for it. Loves't Tashka well, is it not?" 

"What in Hell are you talking of?" Vadya shouted. "He is my junior officer! Hell and the Angels of Hell, what kind of commanding officer do you think I .... el Jien, you are a butterfly-wits! He is no woman, that the sworn Lord of a region could consider as a Lady wife. You of all people should understand, you were betrothed to him yourself! How did you like it?" 

A look of absolute disdain crossed Pava's face. "Tashka was my baby Lieutenant," he said in an unusually cold voice, his hand slipping negligently to the gloves in his belt. "There was no question that I could ever have walked the little lamb to the altar. I knew him as a scrawny kid and he slept years in my tent on the summer manoeuvres, his honour mine to give the glove for. Even my parents came to understand that there would be no securing the succession with someone whose honour was under my eye even more than is my sister's. But although he is your junior, darling Vadya, he was not a baby under your command. Does't not love him in the way I do." 

"And how do you think I love him?!" Vadya cried. "I am no man-lover and look at him! Anyone who marries him will have a guard-house to an home, he might embroider me a sword-belt but he is more likely to throw 's glove in my face if I ask for it! That creature. What kind of Lady wife would he make? I can just picture him giving me ten days on station for coming in the house with muddy boots, oh yes!" Pava laughed but Vadya threw such a savage look at him, strung with angry tears, that he bit the laugh back in his throat. He looked into Vadya's dusty angry brown face with his green eyes puzzled. "Bloody Angel of Baya!" Vadya snarled tearfully. "I would have done my best by any pleasant woman, were she stupid or ugly, and I am to be thrown into the arms of that creature, my own junior officer! Sweet Hell, he has even defended my honour, mine, on Lieutenant-Sir Vaian's body!" 

"Come Vadya," Pava interrupted, trying to put a hand on Vadya's arm but Vadya shook it off. "What is all this nonsense? Woulds't fight with any silly woman who tried to tell you not wear your sweet old dirty boots in your own house ..." 

"Well but most Ladies care a little about ... about the house, or sewing," Vadya put his big hands up and covered his dusty brown face. "They wear a dress, not the uniform of their husband's troop!" 

"Perhaps Tashka will wear a dress for you," Pava suggested in an unconvinced tone of voice. 

"What a disgusting idea!" Vadya cried through his fingers. 

"My sweetheart," Pava said in a firm voice, attempting now to put his hand on Vadya's shoulder. Vadya shoved his hand off and glowered past the tears and dirt on his face at Pava. "Vadya el Gaiel," Pava said gently. "Stop whining about all these silly things. What does it matter if Tashka is a darling little officer and not interested in the dusting or stitching you some awful garment. What does any thing matter, since loves't him?" 

"I? Love that thing!" Vadya repeated in withering tones of scorn. 

"Do not deny it," Pava said crossly. "What of how you were together in Paviat?" 

"Paviat?" Vadya's round brown eyes widened and he took a nervous step back, looking warily at Pava in the flickering shade of the pear tree. 

"Ay," Pava said. "When founds't he was van Sietter and forgave it him. You two held each other so close, never tell me woulds't hold those darlings Captain Basra Inien or Captain Fiotr Araine so close!" 

"Oh that," Vadya said in relief. "How stupid you are, el Jien! and it is you I can give thanks to for placing Tashka with me so I am going to beat you thunder and lightning." His face clouded over, he bunched up his fists and flashed a furious glare at Pava. 

"Nonsense," Pava said idly, putting his elegant long hand out and regarding the way the lace of his kerchief matched the lace of his cuff with a satisfied air. "Just because Tashka has got round you with his sweet blue eyes and has't some silly prejudice against striking an old snake like van Sietter, do not seek to take it out on poor little me ..." 

"Holy Angels!" Vadya exclaimed. "You could talk the birds out of singing! Will you put up your hands?" 

"Certainly not," Pava said, pulling out his kerchief and sniffing it aggrievedly. 

"Right," Vadya said and let his balled up fist fly into Pava's eye. 

"Angels of Hell!" Pava cried, falling back onto his rug. The cats started up and fled into the flowers. "Sweet Hell," he moaned, putting his hand up to his face, a tear of pain trickling down his cheek. 

"There," Vadya said with satisfaction. He felt much better, as if his anger and irritation had all collected up in his shoulder and gone down his arm into Pava's eye. 

"What will they say when I get to court?" Pava groaned. "Maive will think I have been round some other woman!" 

"Well you have," Vadya pointed out. 

Pava took his hand from his face and squinted up at Vadya, grimacing with pain. His left eye was screwed up and there was a lump starting to swell on his cheekbone. "Why dids't not make it my body, why my face," he said disconsolately. 

"Vain fool," Vadya replied. "It will be gone in a two-three weeks. You can make some story about it and appear an hero. Maive el Vaie does not care for you. She is too good for you. And she is the oldest, she will not put a ring on your finger." 

"Go and get Anna," Pava said, gingerly pressing the lump on his face. 

"Pooh!" Vadya grinned at him. "Do you need a bandage, poor little wounded soldier?" 

"No of course not," Pava said, wiping the tears from his face with his kerchief. "I want a fuss made over me. She is in her room, just there. It is the least cans't do for me." 

"Poor little baby," Vadya jeered but he obligingly ran up the stairs and along the veranda towards Lady el Jien's door. Behind him Pava was calling to the servants to bring him ice and special tea and sweets. 

Vadya knocked briskly and when a slow warm voice said, "yes?" he opened the door and started to grin in a friendly way at Tashka's sister by marriage then suddenly he felt shy. 

She was sitting in a blue and yellow armchair in the middle of a lovely room painted a warm golden yellow and full of colourful painted rugs and curtains and what-not. Her fair head was lifted to him, her round blue eyes limpid. She gave a smile and, tired after the hostilities he had provoked with both Tashka and Pava, he smiled gratefully back and leant in to the room. She was a magnificent beauty and he was unable to prevent himself staring at a ruby and pearl necklace which dangled into the cleavage of a full bosom curving down to a small waist. Then he hurriedly lifted his eyes up to eyes which had become opaque and cold. She looked a perfect Lady in her elegant red silk dress, with that suddenly cold blue look that was like an icy shower of rain after the polite warmth of her smile. The veil in her eyes seemed now only to hint that if you behaved badly to her you would regret finding out what power she in fact deployed behind it. He felt dusty and dirty and as if he might smell. 

"Er, I ... can you come to Pava?" he asked awkwardly. "I ... I have hit him in the eye." 

"Oh?" she said, as if her husband's guests were always fighting and although it was rather boring she did not care enough to interfere with their simple pleasures. She laid aside the scroll she had been reading. It was covered in complicated sets of triangles and circles. She frowned when she saw him looking at it, even more repressively than when he had looked at her breasts, rolled it up and put it back in its box. 

As she rustled down the veranda by his side, so dauntingly magnificent in her red silks with the frown still veiling her eyes, he attempted some politeness by saying how lovely the gardens looked, how pleasant to enjoy them from this open veranda. 

"It is cold in winter," she said. "We dislike to come out of our rooms in winter." 

"You do not think of enclosing the veranda?" he asked. 

"My Lord will not have it," she said in a prim proper voice. "He prefers that each morning we come out into whatever is the weather and so we experience something of the world each day." Vadya was astounded. It had never occurred to him to refuse any improvements in Castle H'las on such-like philosophical grounds. He was impressed too at the way Commander-Lord el Maien seemed to have his Lady wife under his fingers' ends but then he noticed Lady el Jien looking sideways with a mocking laugh lurking in her round blue eyes. "What was it about?" she enquired, "your quarrel with Pava?" 

"Er, well," he said as he stood to one side to let her pass down the stairs in front of him. "It was Pava who put Tashka up to me for a Captain's sword." 

"Mm, it is so," Lady el Jien said coolly, "but it is Clair brought Tashka up a soldier, musts't black his eye too." 

Vadya cast a startled look at the back of her head. The shining fair strands of her elaborately woven elegant hairstyle went gracefully down the stairs in front of him as she swung down, lifting her skirts up but in such a way that nothing but the tips of her red silk slippers showed under the edge of her red silk skirt. You could only imagine the swish of the large round thighs vaguely outlined in her skirts and petticoats, thighs which were probably creamy soft but as powerful as whatever lurked behind the veil in her eyes. 

"Your room is next to Tashka's," Lady el Jien said crisply, indicating the ground-floor room with one hand on which sapphire and gold rings sparkled in the sunshine. "There is always hot water available so mays't take your bath as soon as pleases't." The elegant long-fingered hand waved in the direction of the bath-house at the back of the courtyard. 

'Phew,' Vadya thought, dismissed as effectively as by any General. 'She is a fine Lady but she makes you feel like a foot-soldier caught in a tavern without leave! el Maien must have a firm hand if he manages to keep it on her reins.' 

~#~*~#~ 

Vadya came into a corridor from the courtyard and hesitated, unsure which way to go. To his left was a half-open door. He was about to turn into it when Pava's voice came from just behind it. 

"That's a stinging kiss has't had off your betrothed," Pava quipped. "I never heard before that he enjoyed giving strict discipline!" 

Tashka's voice replied grumpily, "shut it, el Jien, or I will make you." Vadya blushed to remember that it was his betrothed whose lip he had split with a glove. 

"I have not escaped his favour either!" Pava laughed. 

"Puh," Tashka said scornfully. "You are not going to the King's Council for reparations over that bit of bruise round your eye, are you?" 

Vadya heard a rustle behind him and turned to see Lady el Jien in the doorway from the courtyard. She was wearing a shimmering gown in green and yellow which significantly enhanced her already considerable beauty. "Lord el Gaiel," she said politely. "I prithou." She indicated a door on the other side to the room where Pava and Tashka were talking and he opened it to a wave of chatter and clattering dishes. 

Vadya stepped back to let Lady el Jien through ahead of him, seeing past her a busy chattering crowd in a great hall. Relaxed at the end of the day, the guards and gardeners, maids and men-servants shared a joke or a story about the day's events. They seemed content and well-cared for. He thought of how his father would say you could tell the quality of a person by whether the people who depended on them were happy. He did not think these people were dependent on van Sietter. 

"I must apologise," Lady el Jien was saying. "We have had difficulties in the kitchens, the head cook and his assistant have both been taken ill. My Lord el Maien has been obliged to undertake the management of the meal himself and will not be able to join us at high table." She led Vadya up the steps onto the dais at which a long narrow table was set for the high nobility. Pava and Tashka were coming behind them, Vadya made a business out of seating himself so he would not have to look either of them in the faces he had marked. 

It made him feel strange to be seated so high above the rest of the dining hall, as if on display. At home he and his father were accustomed to eat in a separate mess with the Generals' strategic staff and First H'las. If there were important guests some of the round tables in the castle's dining hall were specially laid out but there was not this clear distinction between themselves and their serving staff. 

"el Gaiel," Pava's idle warm voice came from Laienne el F'lara's other side. "Wills't tell me something of your college for wounded soldiers? I would like to tell my mother of your scheme." 

Vadya turned, saying: "Forgive us, Lady Laienne, I hope we will not bore you." She giggled foolishly. He merely smiled patiently in response. She was pretty with her magnolia petal skin and slanted Northern features but such a complete bird-brain that he was actually grateful she was an oldest child and ineligible for his hand. He had made the mistake earlier of complimenting her on her dress and had been obliged to listen to a long and boring account of how it had been made up from cloth given to her by Lord van Sietter and the cut was this and it was difficult to get it done like so and something about having to do the cuffs herself because it was so hard to find anyone decent to embroider cloth for you – like that was the most important matter for an el F'lara van V'ta to consider when they were on the brink of war with his cousins in P'shan. He had only made the courteous remark as a preliminary to trying to talk to her about this problematic hostility. It had rapidly become plain that if peace in the H'velst Mountains depended on her political skills, his cousins were doomed to a long-standing and expensive war. 

"A college for wounded soldiers," Lord van Sietter's cold voice said from Vadya's other side. To his irritation, Vadya had been placed not only next to young Lady van V'ta but in the seat of honour on van Sietter's left hand as his prospective son-by-marriage. He felt as if van Sietter was always listening to what he might be letting slip in his conversations although the thin pale Lord hardly looked directly at him at all. "Is that not a substantial cost to your coffers? Do you pay for that from the army budget?" 

"We have a fund we have established for training those who are without work," Vadya answered. "My father, the seneschal and the two port councils agreed to provide for my college from that fund." 

"What a great expense," van Sietter drawled softly. Vadya looked down the table to his father. Lord van H'las had had the good fortune to be seated on Arianna's right hand. He was turning a besotted smile towards her plump fair beauty and he had not heard what they were talking of. Since there was no guidance from van H'las as to what Vadya should say he spoke the simple truth. 

"The training gives the poor income, which they may spend to support their families, we find it helps to keep small trade in the town busier than it would otherwise be," he answered. "I hope too that it will make it easier for trade to return, if there are those already waiting with the skills to work for the merchants." 

van Sietter suddenly looked directly at him with more interest than he had previously shown. His cold grey eyes narrowed up. "I see," he said slowly then he added: "I am glad to hear you are confident that the trade will return since that must mean you will allow me to bestow that flower of our family honour, my lovely daughter, on you." 

Vadya's eyes widened at this flicking sarcasm. He could not forbear shooting a look down the table at Tashka, who was sitting at the far end beyond Arianna with her cousin Ilya between her and van V'ta. Tashka was wearing a watered grey silk suit which emphasised her dark hair and the blue eyes in her tanned face. It did nothing to display any feminine curves of her body and as usual she had an elaborately decorated set of weaponry swinging in her belt. She just looked like some gorgeous young son of the high nobility who would snap his glove in your face at the least provocation. A frown crumpled Vadya's eyes as he was reminded of the match he was being asked to make. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 10



His father had heard van Sietter's last comment. He got suddenly up and moved down the table to put a hand on Tashka's shoulder. Tashka looked up, startled, at her Lord General, her blue eyes creased nervously up. 

"Your Lordship," van H'las said loudly. "We must give the children some time to consider this serious matter, allow them a year, I prithou. If Vadya and Tashka feel they are not of a mind to marry, I will gladly take your ... your daughter up into my strategic staff. I do not think there can be a greater demonstration of my faith that a bond can be made between our families which will last beyond our lives." Pava had started at this extraordinary offer and spilt some of his wine. 

van Sietter looked very coldly down the table at van H'las. "If only the merchants could understand the significance of such an offer," he drawled. "Unfortunately the delicate issues of military security are beyond them so we must depend on our children's goodwill each to the other." 

"I have bestowed a medal on your daughter in recognition of the goodwill she has shown to us in H'las and my son has always sung her praises to me," van H'las replied, squeezing the grey silk of Tashka's shoulder and looking back at van Sietter with hard open eyes. 

Vadya saw Tashka's blue eyes suddenly flash with tears. His heart was pierced by a complex of emotions: pity; embarrassment for her – he knew she would feel it to cry in front of them all; anger at himself that it was his father not him, her Commander, who had stood up for her; shame as he remembered she was eating carefully past a curving pink lip that he had split with his glove. 

Tashka had laid a hand on Lord van H'las' hand where he still gripped her shoulder, her head stooped down over her plate of food, her slanted blue eyes turning aside from Vadya's gaze. 

"My officer, I will sit with you," van H'las said, "if the Lady Ilya will give place to me and sit with your sister by marriage in my place." He gave Ilya a courtly bow, she looked nervously at her father before moving to sit by Arianna. Arianna was looking with a warm smile at van H'las, who gave her that besotted smile back. Vadya made a mental note to remind his father to try not to behave in a manner inviting the dangerous glove of Clair el Maien van Sietter, who had once marked el Parva van Selaine's face over a most trivial matter to do with his Lady wife. Arianna had turned to talk to Ilya and make her comfortable and to draw van V'ta into their conversation so that van H'las and Tashka might be able to talk more privately but they did not speak, with van Sietter leaning in their direction to listen. van H'las sat back in his seat with his hand on Tashka's shoulder, looking inappropriately and surreptitiously at his hostess. Tashka sat in her seat with her head turned away, a diamond and pearl earring glistening like a tear hanging from her earlobe. 

"Is it not so that one of your Lieutenants has family in the cloth trade in H'las," van Sietter enquired in a bored tone of voice, poking at a beautiful arrangement of vegetables cut like flowers on his plate. "Do tell me what he says of the state of the cloth trade." 

Vadya was very surprised that he would know such a thing. He thought of Hanya Lein, whose family were involved in some political movement of the merchants, he did not fully understand it. He was just going to tell Lord van Sietter that Tashka knew much more about it than he did, in an effort to show her that he too could praise her to her old snake of a parent, when Arianna knocked over her wine. A thin red wave flooded across van Sietter's plate, causing him to jump back in his chair. 

"So clumsy of me!" she cried. "Jamies! Bring a cloth, quickly, quickly! Bring your Lord a clean plate. Dids't not try this cheese, I think, my Lord? Lord el Gaiel, we are planning a trip the morrow to the artist Hyaline's farm. (He is under my patronage.) I believe it is a pleasant ride up into the hills; I will of course be taking the carriage with my Lord van Sietter and the other Ladies. You may like to take some rides hereabouts. I am told there is fine hunting here in the Sietter Hills although there are some very high hedges," she dipped her lashes demurely as she said this. Pava sniggered into his wine and spilt some again. van Sietter was still crossly looking aside as the servants cleared his plate away. Vadya saw Arianna screw her face up at Pava in a quick hilarious grimace that only made Pava snigger the more. 

Vadya politely said that he had always heard the going was very good in the Sietter Hills. Arianna's face had become that of a demure proud Lady who occasionally trotted out to meet the men on their way back from the chase, too silly to realise that the hills around her own castle were famous hunting territory. Vadya glanced sideways at van Sietter and surprised a look of brooding irritation in that pale face turned towards his daughter by marriage. He felt glad he had not grown up in this atmosphere of secrets and spying, people making cruel sarcastic remarks and asking what seemed to be innocent questions but you were not quite sure if your answer might not give away something which would later be used in circumstances you did not wish to know more about.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 11



Please give feedback if you have a moment. I'm very keen to improve this story. Public comments or Anonymous feedback using the 'Send Feedback' button are both great :). I relish critical comments and am not at all sensitive about having weaknesses in my writing pointed out.

*****

Anna! Anna!" a quick husky voice was saying in her ear. 

"Mm-mm?" she murmured, turning her head in her pillows and opening one sleepy eye. "O-oh Tashka! What time is it? It is still dark." 

Tashka's lean tanned face loomed out of the dimness at her, grinning. "Dawn will break soon," she replied. "Come riding with me." 

"Wha'?" Arianna mumbled. "Now?" 

"Yes now! Come on, come with me. No one will see us, you can ride in a proper saddle." 

Arianna laughed drowsily, turning over in her pillows, stretching out her long creamy arms, her breasts rolling free. She sat up and stared in front of her with eyes still dazed by sleep. Suddenly she smiled and threw the sheet and quilt back, sliding out of bed and reaching to light the candles so she could find her riding habit and hard hat. 

It was still quiet and dim when she got to the courtyard where Tashka, dressed in jodhpurs, a green jumper and a hard hat, was waiting with the horses. The sky was a dark blue brightening in the East. A light breeze brushed Arianna's cheek soft as the breath of a whispered promise. The few clouds were unmoving above, there were only a couple of liquid notes sounding from birds in the chill still air. 

"Tashka!" Arianna scolded through a sleepy yawn. "I cannot ride in that saddle." 

"What! Do you think we van Sietter Ladies are going in the bloody carriage?" Tashka answered with a toss of her head and a snigger. She held out the reins of Arianna's strawberry roan mare Sweetheart impatiently. 

Arianna suddenly grinned, looking not in the least like the proud future sworn Lady of Sietter, more like the naughty girl running away from her embroidery. She took Sweetheart's reins and Tashka looped Jewel's reins round the pommel of her saddle then came and put cupped hands out for Arianna to step into. Arianna hitched up the skirt of her dark blue riding habit and Tashka threw her up, she swung up into the saddle, showing her whole leg off to the empty courtyard and soundly sleeping castle. Carelessly, she flicked the heavy cotton of her skirt about so that the guards on duty at the gates would not see more than her booted ankles. With a satisfied grin she clasped her knees on either side of her horse's shoulders, the leather saddle smooth and cool under the muscular strength of her thighs. 

Tashka swung up onto Jewel and hissed to Imp to stop him getting too close under Jewel's hooves. Imp whined impatiently, his little tail wagging his whole bottom at the prospect of a run. 

The horses' hooves clattered on the cobbles sounding loud in the silence of the dawn. They trotted quickly out through the gates, Tashka lifted a hand to her green hard hat in a quick Sietter salute to the guards, who pulled smart salutes in response. 

Tashka and Arianna bent low in the saddle. Tashka had set their stirrups high, as was her habit. They grinned in the blue dawnlight at each other as they galloped through the meadows past the still silent camp of First H'las, up a hill to the line of trees silhouetted against the lightening sky above. When they reached the ridge at the top of the hill, Tashka produced rolls and clay bottles of hot chocolate that she had got the night cook to put together so they dismounted, tied the horses to a post conveniently placed there and sat down to break their fast. 

Below them, smoke rose from one of the huge kitchen chimneys in a thin spiral. The castle walls were grey-blue in the dawning light, no one moved in the shadowed gardens. A dog barked in the distance. They saw the black dot that was Imp racing up the hill towards them. The air was chill on their faces and the grass was wet with dew, they had to squat on their heels. Arianna smiled, her bottle of hot chocolate warm in her hands. 

"Imagine!" she said suddenly. "There are those who would miss a dawn ride to lie a-bed with a lover." 

Tashka burst out laughing and said: "Ay! and I am one of them!" 

Arianna blushed, lifting her chocolate for a sip to hide her confusion. She turned to Tashka and said: "Has't not had many, though?" 

Tashka fell back to lie in the wet dewy grass, raising one dark eyebrow under her green hard hat. She looked like a slimmer Clair, lounging back so easy. "No, I am a sweetheart," she replied casually. "Well, truth of it is, my preference is for other officers and ordinarily I had rather put together a manoeuvre with a man than bounce on him for his pleasure," she grinned at Arianna's blushing fair face turned away from her. "Although I did go on leave without permission for a week once with a man. When I came back I had to pretend I had been too drunk to come back, all week! I had just killed someone in a duel so Pava let it pass. He guessed what it was I was about, that is why he did not beat me." She gave an affectionate smile. 

"Have they beaten you?" Arianna asked, turning to look at Tashka with startled eyes. "Has Pava beaten you?" 

"Only once," Tashka answered, smiling. 

"Once he beat you, Pava did?" 

Tashka laughed. "I cheeked him on formal parade," she said. "I was only a baby Lieutenant, I was bored that day and I thought I would make the others: Nain, Stariel and Vaie, laugh. They were giggling like doxies! but Pava was so angry, he took his baton to me there on parade. Nobody laughed then, I can tell it you. I cried for it all day in Clair's arms. Pava offered me everything under the sun to stop me crying. Commander-Sir Stariel said he would commend Pava for being the only officer who had been able to take a baton to me! I used to cry and they would let me off, you know. Even Clair never beat me, although he often gave me what-for and night sentry-duty and once he made Vaie and me wash up the troop's dishes for three whole days. Stariel made me polish all Pava's boots - all of them! Give me peace, Anna, we are in the army not a child's nursery. Discipline is necessary although beating is reserved for serious faults." 

Arianna sat considering the new light this story shed on her witty warm-hearted lovely little cousin before asking: "Tell me ... wills't tell me? A whole week with a man? Was it ... so good? Why dids't not stay with him longer?" 

Tashka laughed again, softly in her nose. "He was my first lover," she said. "A man well experienced in sex! If I wanted lessons on love-making I got the right one; if I were looking for my heart's companion, he would only have broken my heart. It was ... fun. Well, the first time I was drunk but he tried to make it up to me by teaching me some fun. Then one morning I woke up with his arms around me and ... I did not want him the more. He saw it, that it was finished. He was a man who knew about these things. I think ... perhaps he was hung on my heart, but he knew it was no good. He was a slut and I am a sweetheart. He sent me back to Pava with his earring in my ear and went back to the room with two bloody barmaids. I still have the earring although the next time I met him I gave him a thundering punch in the jaw!" She snorted with laughter to think of how she had dealt with lady-hunting el V'lair van Athagine, her brother's friend. "It must be different if you care for a man. Then I suppose you like to wake in the morning with him close to you." 

"Has't never cared for a man?" Arianna asked. 

"Not like that," Tashka flicked a buttercup with a tanned scarred finger. "Although I once had an one-day-one-night with a lovely of a Captain from Thiel. It was during the war, when they made Pava go home and the Vail Generals gave him his banner and Ninth Vail for us to play in so he would shut it about them taking him up to the strategic staff in Turaine. Angels only know why he thinks he wants to work with the Generals! the paperwork bores him senseless. Pava's sugarplum was giving him grief. I left him to it and went to a tavern for dinner alone. There was this man I could tell was an officer, he was giving me the eye and he was very handsome." Tashka's rose-petal mouth curved in a reminiscent smile, her slanted eyes creased with a sexy sparkle in them. "I thought he was a man-lover, but I was bored without Pava so I thought I would steal a kiss from another officer. We had a kiss in the yard against the stable doors, then he realised I am a woman. It turned out he was just a lover, it made no difference to him woman or man. He offered to take a room for me if I would be willing. I was well willing by then!" Tashka sniggered her filthy laugh in her nose. 

She could see in her mind's eye the lifted brown eyes of a handsome fit young Captain in a tavern in Thiel, where she had persuaded Pava to take Ninth Vail and practise some summer manoeuvres. The way such a gorgeous man looked across the room on her, his eyes lingering too long before they went down again, had made her snigger surreptitiously. She walked across to the bar in a self-conscious awareness of her own long legs and lean muscular body, as if she were bathing in the pleasurable wash of the admiring officer's gaze running over her. She put one foot up on the bar rail and turned her head slowly towards the barman so that she could still see the Thiel officer out of the corner of her eye. He was still watching her through his lashes. 

One of her brother officers, Dar Vaie, was a notorious slut and she knew how he went about pinning a favour if he saw a man he liked. She ordered a whisky, since she liked whisky she made it a good one. She shot it back then turned and gave the Captain the eye. He lifted his brown eyes to look straight back at her, she smiled and he smiled, she turned and walked to the door by the bar that she knew led into the stableyard. When she turned her head on reaching the door, the Captain had got up from the table and was saying something to his friends - probably pretending he needed a piss. How many times had she and her brother officers not laughed mockingly when Vaie said he needed a piss in a tavern with some lovely man casting him languishing glances from the bar! She turned out of the door with an excited grin. 

The steps coming up behind her in the stableyard, the hand on her arm, her turning into the Captain's strong arms and his kiss wet on her mouth. He pushed her back against the stable doors. She was laughing to think how Vaie would giggle if she ever told him about this hot Captain she had pulled. 

The kiss was so soft and warm, his tongue was unexpectedly gentle caressing her mouth. She had thought there would be more shoving and rough stuff but the Captain from Thiel was clearly like her - a bit of a sweetheart who had seen something too delicious to resist. His hands were gentle holding her arms. One hand went up, the rough weapon-hardened fingers were caressing the nape of her neck. Her head went back into his cupped hand, she started panting in his kiss, she lost the sharp awareness of the situation in which she had meant to pull away before he realised she was not the man she supposed he would prefer. He started pressing his body against hers, oh it was so pleasurable, and suddenly he was pulling away from her kiss and saying: "Holy Angels! you are a woman." 

She heaved a sigh. At the least of it she had had a kiss and perhaps he might be cross enough to give her a glove. She would not say No to the dancing engagement of a duel although she would give this sweetheart Captain whom she had tricked out of a kiss every opportunity to cry on the Angel of Mercy. 

Instead of giving her his glove he started pressing on her breasts in their hard bodice, feeling the inward curve of her waist. He said: "Angels, you must have a story to tell. You are an officer, are you not? Are you from Vail? Will you give me another kiss," by the time they parted panting from a pressed engagement of lips and limbs, his big thigh shoving between her parting legs and thrusting her into excitement, she would have gone with him against the stable door. 

She stood by him while he asked for the room, leaning on his side with his arm about her shoulders. He was so sweet in comparison to el V'lair van Athagine. Just to stand in the curve of his arm and lean on his hard muscular body and giggle with him because he insisted to sign for the room awkwardly without taking his arm from around her was delicious. 

She always carried one condom in her pocket in order to give the impression to the other officers that she had something to put it on but it was old. Luckily the Captain was more conscientious and the tavern was that kind of place where they put a basket of condoms by some lubricant in your room. Later they were able to put this abundance of protection to excellent good use, including one highly enjoyable fuck of a Captain as happy in the arms of a man as a woman when a condom came in handy to cover two of her fingers. 

When they got in the room they started kissing as soon as the door was shut. He wanted her so much but she could tell that if she were hesitant he would back away and not even complain about the cost of the room. Young van Athagine had poured a lot of bloody brandy down her and taken her unconscious simply because he wanted to boast that he had had the favour of a Lieutenant of Fourth Sietter and daughter of the el Maiens. (He never did boast of it though. She used to pretend to herself it must be because he did not want her brother's glove but in her heart she knew he became fond of her and realised it would be a serious problem if too many people found out she was a woman in the troop.) 

She had not wanted el V'lair and had put up with him out of curiosity. She did want this man, the handsome friendly officer from Thiel who was not troubled if she were a woman or a man, who just loved it that she was an officer regardless and was pressing one of her breasts in a gentle hand and moaning with pleasure just to touch her breast through a buttoned jacket and shirt and the hard shell of her bodice. She started ripping open the buttons of his breeches. He caught her hands, laughing huskily and saying, "hey, my sugar, we have the whole night. You are not on duty, out in civilian dress, and I am a Captain, the Lieutenants will not be giving me grief for it if I sneak back late the morrow. Give me a kiss and take me slow." It was exciting just to hear him address her so casually: a daughter of the el Maiens! to be called 'sugar' like some common wench by an affectionate soldier man. 

The long wet thrilling caress of lips and tongues, the hands gripping on her buttocks and pulling her in against him, coming up to slide under her jacket and shirt onto her skin. She laughed in their kiss at his touch and began pulling at his clothes more slowly. She pulled away from him to grip his boots and tug them off. He laughed at her skill in doing it, saying, "are you still a Lieutenant? and you have to pull the boots from your Captain if he has drunk too deep the nights out with you? Heaven and Hell, you are a pretty one. I will wager the seniors have trouble keeping their eyes to themselves when you are on parade." He pulled her up and rolled her over in the bed to drag at her own boots and start pulling open her clothes to finally put his hands on her naked breasts - the thrill of it! those sword-hardened hands so gentle on her sensitive breasts, his fingers caressing her nipples until they were aching with pleasure. Her head went back and she lay writhing in his tender hands in a way she had never done for Tarra el V'lair, for all his skills and tricks and wanton naked lust for her favours. 

Although to do el V'lair justice he taught her a thing or two she tried out with that sweetheart Captain from Thiel that were worth knowing about. 

Caressing her body with his hands while he stripped her and himself, the Captain kept her senses dancing with the pressure of his fingers running about her breasts and her waist and her thighs and finally, oh at last, softly gently about the lips of her labia, her clitoris, dipping into her vulva. She was already so wet and soft for him that he gave a kind of moan and said, "I cannot wait." He put on a condom in fingers that she saw trembling in the candlelight, the fingers of one hand came back round to grasp her buttock, the other was lifting a cock hard and rigid and so big for her, pressing the tip to her soft flesh and with a delicious heave he was sliding into her. 

He lay so muscular and strong in her muscular strong arms, the Captain who knew already the kind of person she was. They were just officers together, wrapping arms about each other's scarred torsos, pressing lips close, tongues wrapping and writhing, his body heaving into her, hers heaving up to meet his. She was too excited to use any of van Athagine's silly sophisticated means of increasing pleasure, or to wait for him. She came to orgasm in minutes with her head thrown back and a scream of pleasure. He pressed hard into her to help her maintain the moment, before thrusting to reach his own climax with a murmured apology. She only rose up again to meet him. She shuddered in a second thrilled orgasm as he thrust gently firmly down into her, uttering the hot panting guttural grunts of orgasm into her neck and clutching his fingers on her buttocks. 

Tashka sniggered to remember that wild first favour she gave to a mere Captain from Thiel - and the rest of that lovely loving night. She turned her sparkling dark blue eyes back round to Arianna, who was looking at her with an affectionate and inquiring smile. Chaste Lady el Jien, who could not guess at half of what Lieutenant-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter did that night with a fellow officer to play with. Or a few months later with a Knight she picked out at the Vail flat races; but the Captain was the best. 

"We had such fun," she said with a grin. "There was something, because he was an officer like me. What kisses he gave me as I left in the morning! He offered me his full designation and asked for mine so he could come to see me but I had to say No. Imagine it, what Clair would have done to him if he had found out!" Her smile became regretful. She had really liked him but there could be no question of a match with someone who was not of the high nobility. She knew she had been right to leave him after only the one night. Pava had been kind to her, moving the troop on as soon as he realised they were in the vicinity of someone who had touched her heart, managing to get hold of some privy army despatches about the Sietter-H'las war to distract her. They went to the Vail flat races and met up with his sister and had such a high time of it that Pava's mother was quite cross. She was regretful for a long time about having to give the go-by to the sweetheart Captain from Thiel but she also always thought of him with a husky affectionate snigger. 

"But then what about Vadya el Gaiel?" Arianna was asking. "Loves't him, is it not. He is an officer like you. Would it not be as it was with your Captain from Thiel?" 

Tashka frowned. "Vadya is my Commander, not another Captain," she said slowly. "Yes, of course I love him, I swore to be his life and days and fight and I would lay down my life for him. I love him much better than I would love some man I had a puppy passion for, like that boor Ta-, er, like any bitch in heat." 

"Why, Tashka," Arianna reproved. "There is nothing greater than the physical love human beings have each for other, the philosopher Piria has said." Her blue eyes looked at her young sister by marriage more in question than in instruction. 

Tashka shrugged, the joy and pleasure in memories of sexual fun had faded out of her face. 

Imp came bounding up and flung himself at Tashka, panting and bright-eyed with exercise and excitement. Tashka sat up and wrestled with him, turning him over and tickling his tummy while he wriggled and yapped then she let him go and told him to lie still. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 11



"Now see how it is," she said drearily. "Vadya will not speak to me. He gave me such a look the other day when he came in the sitting-room and found me there with his father. We were not playing cards, just talking. I thought he would come and talk to us but he went straight out again." 

Arianna looked away from the castle which she had been contemplating without really seeing. "He is confused," she said in a firm warm voice. "When he has time to think things over, he will love you again. Vadya el Gaiel is not a stupid man, I have so much enjoyed talking with him, my darling. He is well worthy the affection has't always had for him. He knows it is not your fault that he was betrothed to you. He knows it is not fair-minded to say shoulds't not be a soldier just because ar't a woman. Give him some time, he will come to you and be your friend again." She sighed and looked back at the castle with a mournful shade in her eyes. 

"He ... he looks on me with eyes!" Tashka said in an anxious angry voice. "He ... he tried to kiss me. Vadya, who has offered to hang men who did the same." 

"He did try to kiss you?" Arianna said in surprise. "That is how gots't that cut on your lip?" 

Tashka burst out laughing again, saying, "no! he never bit my lip, an el Gaiel van H'las! Their reputation is not for wild lovers. He tried to give me the glove because he kissed me and I ... pushed him away. He looks on me with eyes. He said he felt like it before he found I was a woman. Angels' sake! My senior officer!" 

Arianna sighed and generously let go the hope of more details on why Tashka sniggered with pleasure to remember one night with a mere Captain from Thiel. She turned to the young officer whose friendship had become so dear to her although on the face of it there could not have been a woman more different to herself. "I realise it is a serious crime for a senior and a junior officer to have an affair," she said. "I suppose it is like when an high aristocrat loves a servant, how cans't be sure there has been no coercion. However I know ... there have been cases. Your mother's affair, Tashka, there was no coercion in that was there?" Tashka looked off to the side at this, her mouth twisting up, Arianna continued determinedly, "and here in Sietter ... A Commander and a Captain who are more like equals might be lovers. The Generals might let it pass, is it not?" Arianna looked intently at the back of Tashka's dark-haired head which continued to be turned to the side, away from her. 

Behind them, their two horses stirred, blowing at each other. The dawn breeze made a wispy curl of Arianna's hair that had slipped out of her plait sway against her soft pink cheek. Tashka looked down the hillside and saw a tiny figure stirring in First H'las' camp, taking bowls of tea and hunks of bread around the night sentries who would soon come off duty. She bent her knees up and rested her chin on them. 

Arianna pulled up a blade of grass and examined it closely, pulled it between her long pale fingers and blinked slow tears away from her blue eyes. 

"Anna," Tashka said suddenly. "If ... if I ever have a child, can I come home to you to have the thing here?" 

Her sister by marriage lifted her fair head with the dark blue hat on, a tear still glistening in her eye, and smiled at the anxious lean face turned to her in the pastel shaded dawn. "I know does't not like to think of carrying a child," she said tenderly, "but it can be a great joy to do so, especially ... I suppose, for a man holdes't in love." Then she became concerned. "Is it likely? Ar't with child?" 

"Angels! no," Tashka lay down curled up with her head pillowed on her arm. "I just ... wanted to know. In case," she blushed. 

"Oh?" Arianna said, leaning close to her and tickling her face with the grass blade. "Shall't permit Vadya el Gaiel to lie in you naked if he ask it of you?" She blushed as she said it and sniggered, adding: "Only for the sake of the succession in H'las of course!" 

"Anna! Vadya is my senior officer!" Tashka protested, giggling and brushing the grass blade aside but her blue eyes were thoughtful and she fingered the healed cut in her lip with a regretful pout. 

"He has a fine figure," Arianna said, sitting up and carefully not looking in Tashka's face. "He has those lovely broad shoulders. He has slim hips, his legs are nice, he looks good wearing hose when it is easy to see that he has a big ... muscle." 

Tashka's eyes bulged. "Anna!" she exclaimed, wriggling in the grass. 

"He has nice hands," Arianna continued. "They are big too. Those truly are sweet big ... muscles he has. I will wager he is a gentle lover, his eyes are gentle but he is strong, he looks well fit, mm-mm! I suppose he does a lot of wrestling? Musts't have enjoyed the wrestling with him, especially when pressing on his big ... muscles." 

"Prithou!" Tashka squealed. "Anna, shut it! That is my ... betrothed you are speaking of!" 

They looked at each other. Tashka had her hands over her mouth, her eyes were staring with laughter over them. Arianna was grinning mischievously. They fell back in the grass beside each other and giggled till they were nearly crying with laughter, the rising sun washed suddenly over their wriggling bodies and sparkled in the dewy grass all around them. 

Arianna rolled over and poked Tashka in the stomach and said: "Tashka, come on, tell me about your first lover?" Tashka grinned, sitting up and sniggering. "He was experienced and he taught you how to make love?" 

"A bit," Tashka said with another snigger. Arianna's eyes crumpled in a frown, Tashka said: "Well, Lady el Jien, there are many men willing to help you practise and learn if you wish it, is it not so?" 

"Must one learn?" Arianna asked thoughtfully. 

"What!" Tashka said, "you were born the most accomplished harlot that the Angels created, is it?" 

Arianna turned an amused blue look at Tashka and shrugged one shoulder. "Does one not ... naturally," her voice trailed away. She looked back down the hillside at the castle. 

"Of course," Tashka answered lazily, putting her arms behind her and leaning back on them, "but there are some things it is fun to learn." 

"Like what?" Arianna asked. Tashka was still sniggering and wriggling at Arianna's description of her commanding officer's endowment. "Why should anyone want to teach me," Arianna added. "When they can go with some pink-fingered Lady and have all that ... fun without troubling." 

"Oho!" Tashka cried, sitting up again. "Do you ask it? You as lovely as a summer dawn and el Parva writ you hundreds of lines of poetry and the duels that have been fought over your honour!" 

Arianna looked annoyed. "Duelling is wrong!" She snapped. "What craziness, for a man to risk his life because some other man said a few silly careless words ..." 

"Give me peace!" Tashka interrupted. "We have promised not to quarrel about duelling. As you love me, do not give me grief about duelling." Her warm slanted blue eyes looked affectionately into Arianna's round eyes, she put her scarred fingers out to hold Arianna's hand. 

Arianna nodded, biting her full red lip. After a while she said: "Tashka, men have tried ... to take your favours by force, is it not? How cans't enjoy to lie with a man when has't suffered that?" 

"Gracious Heaven!" Tashka exclaimed. "What do the two have in common? Truly, I would not seek to lose the memory of an attempted rape in love-making but because some men are scum I will not forswear the pleasure of a man's body when I have freely chosen him. I am not such a poor victim, on any road. I can be confident of fighting off any man who tries to take my favours without my consent. It is not so bad for me as it is for Clair." 

"Clair?" Arianna said, turning to Tashka in puzzlement. The sunlight fell in a golden haze through wisps of hair sticking out around her face. 

Tashka raised an eyebrow at her. "Of course Clair has trouble," she said in her husky voice that was so like his. "What, you think men smell I am a woman and jump me for that? Clair and I look the same, we are too pretty and we look as if we could not defend ourselves. I am a better swordsman than Clair so he has more trouble than me. And there was that time someone took him sleeping, he has never been quite easy since then." 

Arianna stared, her brows were wrinkled in a tense frown of astonishment and pity, her usually bland fair face was full of what she felt to hear this of her own husband. "Someone took him while he was sleeping?" she repeated incredulously. "He has never said any thing of it!" 

"What, do you expect him to make it the subject of idle conversation?" Tashka laughed. "He had rather forget it of course. But he is still sometimes scared in the nights. What for do you think I killed that evil scum Darien? I would do it again, for what he did to Clair back in the encampment while we were all out in the tavern. Bloody scum! He could not be hung immediately because Clair could barely talk when Commander-Sir Stariel tried to ask him of it. One of that scum's scum friends lied for him and said he was with him so Stariel said we would wait till Clair was clearer in his mind and then hang him. But I knew and I gave him my glove." 

"But," Arianna said with a frown, "was this when Clair was a Captain?" 

"No no," Tashka replied. "He was a Lieutenant." 

"But how old were you?" Arianna asked, staring into her face with wide round eyes. 

Tashka hesitated then lifted her slanted blue eyes to her sister by marriage's blue eyes. "It was my first duel," she said. "I was fifteen." Her eyes slid aside and her face slid into a vicious snarl that Arianna stared at in astonishment. "That bloody dog," her voice was a low growl in the back of her throat. "He thought he would wipe out the stain in my blood and escape the hanging too but I proved him wrong!" Tashka's rose-petal mouth was suddenly distorted by a lupine smile that turned her eyes as hard as jewels. The light laughing wit, the warm generous heart, the sweet sympathetic temper that had meant Arianna had found at least one heart's companion in her marital family seemed to dissipate like mist from the diamond-hard code of honour at the core of Tashka's being. "I killed him like an animal," Tashka said. "He well deserved it! and I made his brother cry on the Angel of Mercy when the brother came looking for vengeance." Then Tashka shook her head and that extraordinary wolf's smile seemed to fall from her mouth, leaving her usual smiling rose-petal pout slightly distorted by the healed cut in her lip. 

Arianna stared at her sister by marriage who was now contentedly drinking hot chocolate as if she had just been describing some new silk she had chosen for a suit. She thought of how Clair must have felt at that time, raped in the middle of his troop. If ever there was a reason to fight a duel, this might be one. But she thought of Tashka's pretty loving features distorted by the jewel-bright joy that had shone in her eyes when she spoke of killing another human being like an animal. She did not want to know what that might mean. She looked away down at the castle, her fair face pensive in the warm sunshine that washed over her. She thought about her husband and how he had been with her and some things she had always blamed herself for were suddenly clearer to her. Her full mouth pouted with regret. 

"Does that give you to think so much?" Tashka asked. "Surely you must have known. You have to wake him firmly not gently so he knows he is not back in the tent with that scum holding a dagger to his throat. Surely you knew that?" 

Arianna shook her head softly. "I ... no longer wake Clair in the night," she pointed out. She looked down at her hands with the wedding and betrothal rings on her left, lying quietly in her lap. 

"Anna," Tashka sat up in the sunshine and reached out to clasp Arianna's arm with one lean tanned hand. "You have never blamed me for it, you have forgiven me? that I persuaded you to stay with him after ... the war."

Arianna looked back into Tashka's anxious face with surprised round blue eyes. She smiled. "Were't so kind to me," she said. "As soon as heards't Clair had married me and brought me here cames't direct from Vail even though Clair had gone straight back to the battlefront and Pava ... must have been angry. I was not sure what to think of it when my brother by marriage first came to see me! Does't remember? I started back from your kiss but calleds't me 'Anna' and insisted we must be friends. Has't been my friend ever since. As soon as heards't I was of a ... bookish mind, tooks't me to Master Inien's shop where I have had an huge account ever since. I was, Tashka, I was the happiest I have ever been, alone here with my new books, able to do whatsoever I pleased. There was no Prianne nor old nursery-maid nor stupid governess to scold me and say sums, er, I mean books are not Ladylike. The castle servants were always kind to me. I could ride out in the hills whenever I pleased. Because of the war they made me take two-three guards but they did not chatter and distract me. I could eat as we did, comfortably in the sitting-room. I was scared at first to do the wrong thing, I thought I had to eat always on high table - alone!" She broke into a peal of laughter ringing like golden bells in Tashka's pleased ears, to remember that painfully shy young woman who had been frightened in case she behaved improperly - towards her own servants. "But you, scallywag, tolds't me: The Lady wife may do whatsoever she wishes." 

"But," Tashka scowled, "I did feel badly for it, Anna, after the war, when you were so kind to Clair and he only went back to court and ... and gave you the go-by." 

"I know," she said, laying a gentle hand on Tashka's arm. "My sweet brother, musts't not blame yourself. I would not have stayed for all your persuading if I had not wanted to." 

"You wanted to stay?" Tashka leant to look into Arianna's fair face, Arianna turned her face downwards, looking at the grass between them but she did not lift her hand from Tashka's hand gently gripping her arm. "Why would you want to stay with Clair?" Tashka's voice became lower, huskier, although there was no one within a mile to hear them. "You had even gone to his bed. I thought you would make a marriage but then he went to court where his bed was never empty of some sugarplum who had ensnared him at a party. What happened?" Arianna's head remained turned down to look at the grass in the sunshine. Behind them the horses cropped the grass with little tearing sounds and Imp lay with his eyes half-closed, curled in a ball. "Do you love Clair at all?" 

Arianna lifted her head and her blue eyes looked into Tashka's with the bland expression which hid her feelings like a veil suddenly torn away. Her whole pale face was flushed with emotion, her eyes sparkled with it. 

"He is so beautiful!" she said in a hoarse voice as unlike her usual calm level tones as Tashka had ever heard. "Angels! He is beautiful to die for. The look of his eye and the turn of his head, those legs and the way he walks. When I was young, I thought I would marry Pava. I was happy to think I would marry Pava. Then my brother came to me to say I must take someone for the sake of the region. I resigned myself. I thought I would be marrying ... There was talk of marrying me to van Sietter himself." Tashka gave an exclamation of disgust and outrage. "Now that I know him I cannot imagine ... Yet I resigned myself. When I went to court to be bestowed on Clair I was only thankful to get someone more my age, I thought we might be friends. The first time I saw him was in a room at court, full of other people: my brothers and sister, my mother, van Sietter, other Lords and Ladies. He was so beautiful in his red silk parade uniform that it made my heart melt, I could not bear them all to see how passionate he made me feel. 

"But he was only cold and angry at that meeting. Our wedding he was the same and he did not even come to me that night. Then I saw him; I saw him with ... I knew I would not have his heart. He told me he must go back to war." Arianna's head stooped down, her eyes filled with tears that slid down her nose. 

Tashka shuffled over to her in the grass and put a strong arm around her shoulders. 

"My heart felt as if it were in three pieces," Arianna sobbed. "One belonged to Pava because I was always fond of him, he is ... so sweet at heart. One part was Clair's because he is my husband and he is so beautiful! I ... I wanted him. What is there wrong with that? He is my married husband. There is something, he walks as if he knows life all around him, like he is swimming in it, swimming in life itself. When he laughs, or looks at fields or valleys or rivers - never mind if it is sunny or the rain is falling, he loves it whatever. Even when he just walks through the castle, he opens your eyes to the beauties of the world in which lives't, it is as if he bestows on you the favours of the world just because cans't stand by him and look like he looks at life. 

"Yet although I gave up my sweetheart for him, he would not give up his for me. I pretended I wanted only a friendship with him but when it comes to it, I feel so angry. It is so easy for any other to catch his kiss but not for me." 

Tashka hesitated, hugging her arm around Arianna's shoulders, before saying, "you must have had his kiss, Anna. You bore him the child." 

Arianna looked away down at the castle with the tears running down her face. "I pretended to go to him for the succession," she sobbed, "and for him that was all it was. I have never had his kiss!" She cried heartbroken tears in Tashka's arms and when Tashka tried to ask more she shook her head. She could not bear to speak of it: the shame of going to her own husband in the night, having to dismiss the servants who were sleeping in his room at that time so that they all knew what was about. She had tried to wake him gently and had thought the look of horror on his face when he started awake was at the sight of her. Only now did she understand that if he was woken gently, he woke into the memory of being raped. No wonder then that even when he realised who she was, he took her without compassion or tenderness, in a resigned anger. In her desperation she had accepted it but she came to realise it was worse than the uneasy sexless partnership in which they quarrelled so she accepted that instead. Even now he must be sleeping in that roll of trooper's bedding in their castle home - a roll of bedding so narrow that after he had done with her what she was asking of him there was no room for them to lie together and he got up and walked away from his own bed. The most desirable man at court and she was nothing to him but the mother of his child, she sobbed desperately in Tashka's arms to admit it to herself. 

"I wish I had been bestowed on anyone but him," she sobbed. "It is torture! to be bestowed in marriage and cleave to the marriage only for the sake of the regions and my child, when I long to cleave to him for his body and his heart. Oh-h, there is no hope, none. He can have the pick of the pink-fingered set, he comes home only for the children, I know it!" 

"Shut it and stop being a bird-brain," Tashka admonished in an unexpectedly harsh voice. She gave Arianna's shoulders a hard squeeze, obliging her to sit up and stop sliding into self-pity. "He cares nothing for any one-day-one-night he has collected ... well, apart from ... and that is over with although they are still friends, but it was completely outwith the bounds of decency. You know that, do you not? He was a mad fool to run away from you but you knew he had gone mad with grief; it was not you. He would have run from the Angel of Virtue at that time if he had been offered any tender love. He is better in his mind now and if you want him, you have a chance at it - why not, you are his Lady wife. He has always had an eye over your honour, y'know." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 11



"What does't mean," Arianna sniffed suspiciously. "When he fought el Parva - my friend? That is what means't by 'having an eye over my honour'. I hardly call that a piece of loving kindness and care." 

"I mean exactly that," Tashka let her shoulders go and lay back in the grass, throwing her arms behind her head and staring at the turned head, the fair face flushed with tears and annoyance into warm beauty, of her sister by marriage. "What-for do you suppose Clair did it? What does he care for a bloody poem about your virtues as an housewife - other than to be cross that anyone would not realise what a dreadful housewife you are and credit him with the orderly management of the household!" She sniggered and Arianna could not forbear a laugh in reply. She had rolled around the sitting-room sofa aching with laughter when she first read el Parva's epic celebration of her supposed domestic virtues. But Tashka had raised a quizzical eyebrow and Clair stalked out of the sitting-room with his face livid with fury, had packed and gone straight to court without speaking about it. She had thought he was angry with her for allowing el Parva to develop the ludicrous infatuation he had fallen into then she heard that he had fought with that bird-brained young fool and had actually cut him in the face. They had one of their worst quarrels about his duel with someone whose languishing looks she had put up with only for the sake of getting to talk about politics and literature, someone who would not go on for hours about how somebody ought to have used some different strategy to kill more people in a horrific battle. 

"It is disgusting to try to take a life over such a matter," Arianna said now with a curl of her fine full lip. "And such hypocrisy! After the way he has behaved." 

"Oh yes," Tashka said drily. "After the way he has behaved anyone might imagine you are entitled to take whoever you wish to your bed - and after the way our mother behaved while living here in the castle without an husband to keep an eye over her honour. But Clair knows you do not care for men constantly throwing their favours at your feet and so he made it plain that if anyone pushed you to give up a favour, he would give them his glove. When he marked the cheek of another member of the high nobility for merely writing you a poem, he told everyone that your honour remains under his eye. He did not choose to have your honour bestowed on him nor did he shirk the responsibility, he took you under his eye along with me and all of the dependents he is always considering. Think what they imagine he would do to any lesser bloody aristo or officer who came sniffing at the skirts of his Lady wife if he did that to el Parva van Selaine over a poem!" 

Arianna was still cross. She said curtly, "it is an outrage that he supposes he may behave in so inhuman a fashion after the way he has played about." Her full bosom heaved and her head lifted, she was proud Lady el Jien - apart from the tearstains still evident on her flushed cheeks. 

Tashka answered, "oh well, I know nothing of any humanist argument against it of course. I am only grateful that first el Maien van Sietter and latterly el Gaiel van H'las have made it plain that they will give the glove if my honour is stained. It saves me the nuisance of men who will leave it at looking on me out of fear of crossing some oldest son of the high nobility who holds my happiness dear. And that is even though I am famed for the skills with which I can defend myself if any man try to snatch my favours." 

Arianna moistened her lip with her tongue. "There are always silly young men hanging about me," she pointed out. "Clair does not give them the glove." 

"Silly young men, yes," Tashka replied, still in a lazy drawl, "and sometimes an old man who ought to be wiser - like van H'las," she flicked a slantwise blue look at Arianna. Arianna looked sideways back at her and they both sniggered, "but not hard-hunting older men. Not men who know how to trick a woman into giving up more than she meant to and how to compromise her while keeping themselves unentangled so they can leave a woman dangling when her husband is obliged to break their marriage." 

Arianna frowned down at the castle walls, awash now with full morning sunshine. She could see movement on the battlements and in the courtyards. She would have been missed but the guards would say she was with my Lord's brother and a contingent of men at arms would not be riding out to secure her person. She still felt resentful of it, that she was dependent for protection on the very system of masculine violence to which she was fundamentally opposed and which occasionally came disturbing her peace of mind in some aggressive flirting behaviour. She had always had an irritatingly clear mind. She was obliged to acknowledge that after el Parva van Selaine's brush with her husband there had been fewer casual male visitors of a kind she had found troubling. It was not reasonable to be resentful that she had to depend for this on Clair el Maien, the man to whom she was least willing to feel grateful for anything. She was reluctant to admit that this was not because of the manner in which he had behaved towards her but because it was easier to quarrel with him than to admit to any softer feeling for him. 

"I owe him nothing," she muttered, more to herself than to Tashka. "His scandalous affairs have been notorious! The Church Council would not hesitate to break my marriage." 

"Then why do you stay," Tashka said mockingly. "Leave Clair to be reliant again on that miser van Sietter for his allowance." 

"Oh yes, go back to Iarve and be bestowed on some other region where Prianne wishes to make a tie," Arianna scoffed. "At the least of it Clair is not home much ... until recently," this was the feeblest of arguments. With his son in duty bound as well as his son in blood now resident in the castle, Clair was unlikely to spend much time away at all for the next few years. Arianna frowned down at the grey castle walls and the dots of colour moving about them, anxiously biting her lip. 

"No no," Tashka said softly. "You could go to court, my dear, and continue to work with your brother Hanya on this matter of the merchants. You are sufficiently strong-minded to resist attempts on Prianne's part to bestow you away again." 

Arianna's face was suddenly lit up by a secretive smile. Her face, tear-stained and pale with sorrow, became sexily alluring in the early morning sunlight with that secret smile on her full red mouth. "I know that knowest what it is I am about," she said. "Your Lieutenant is from a family who are in the cloth trade, the Leins of Port Ithilien. Vadya was about to say something of it to van Sietter the other night, I had to pretend to throw my wine in van Sietter's plate to stop him blurting out that knowest all about the cloth merchants' schemes from Hanya, the nephew of Master Lein in Carneo, Iarve. Does it trouble you, that I am mucking about with the merchants?" 

Tashka grinned and shook her head. "I am not van Sietter," she replied. "I like merchants. And you are my sister, I will defend your right to do whatsoever you will, even with my glove. No, no, do not quarrel with me about duelling! Anna, listen. Why do you not tell Clair what it is you are doing? If you go to court with Clair's ring still on your finger you will be saved a lot of grief." 

"But," Arianna took her full red lower lip up in her teeth, her eyes looked anxiously downwards. "It is so important, what Hanya and I are doing. And I love it so! What if Clair refuse to allow it? And there is my other work ... I mean, I mean nothing." 

Tashka burst into snorting laughter. "Oh yes!" she exclaimed. "And you are such a biddable wife, you will do whatsoever your Lord and husband tells you! How can you think that Clair would presume to say, This is not women's work. Go back to your cakes and your 'broidery. How can you think that Clair might prevent you if you wish to dabble in politics? And whatever other work you are engaged in, Clair would support you in it. What work is it you are doing?" Arianna muttered something about just a pastime. "Clair is the one brought me up a soldier, who gave Ladda Marin the chance to write that wonderful book of verse, who is the close friend of old Lady el Farin van P'shan and who defended Lallia el Farin against her husband's tyranny even though el V'lair is his friend," but Arianna glanced narrowly sideways at the mention of Lady Lallia el Farin, renowned beauty of high intelligence. 

"I am not Clair el Maien's beloved brother ... sister," she said coldly. "I will be the future sworn Lady, unless as suggests't I am such a fool as to fall into the clutches of some disgusting old man who is able to use me and toss me back to Prianne to bestow off wherever else he pleases." Tashka raised an eyebrow but said nothing to this, lolling with the ironic laugh in her eyes over the grass. "Perhaps ar't under Clair's eye in matters of your honour," Arianna pointed out waspishly, "but that has not saved you from being bestowed wherever van Sietter wishes. Has't suffered sufficiently yourself from the whims of the elders of the high nobility as to what ar't permitted to do or not do." She regretted this as soon as she had said it, she saw Tashka wince and turn her head away. She leant immediately over to take Tashka's arm and say penitently, "I prithou pardon me, darling. I am so cross the day! with so much to distract me from work I believe in and never have time for. I am so anxious that Clair will find out of it and prevent me doing it - never mind how he might, he can if he wishes. My dear, tell it me wills't pardon me saying such a thing when ar't so awkwardly placed. But if Vadya el Gaiel is looking on you with eyes, do not be such a fool as to give his favours the go-by when it is plainly evident that loves't him with your body as well as heart. It is so, is it not? Loves't him with a passion, ar't only troubled for a code of honour which has been written for men and officers, not for all humanity, not for us women - nor for the lower ranks of people. Has't served as el Gaiel's Captain for years always within the code and now, through no fault of yours but because those oldest sons who hold your honour in their hands wish it so, has't been offered his body for your own. His is a lovely body and he has a gentle heart to boot and a good mind. I have heard him talk of his people and the potential for wealth in his region intelligently, he will be the one to take H'las to the full heights of wellbeing. He will need an one like you by his side so he can concentrate on the region without having to bear the army in mind as his father has to. If wants't him, go take him, my dear. It would make my heart glad to see you honourably bestowed on so sweet an heart and a man so much to your preference." 

Tashka raised her blue eyes and looked mutely through her impossibly gorgeous long lashes at Arianna. 

"I must go back now," Arianna said with a sigh. "van Sietter and van V'ta have gone, thank the Angels, but there are still your so-beloved-yet-not-in-that-way Commander and his father to entertain. Swear to me, I beg it of you, I know there is some thing you soldiers swear on that means shall't never break the vow, swear wills't not tell Clair of my feelings for him." She put her hand on Tashka's arm and stared pleading into her blue eyes. 

Tashka turned her head about and said, "well ... only because I know he will guess it. He is not a baby in the ways of love, you know! I swear I will not reveal to him your heart ... on ... my Commander's life." She looked down as she made this vow, her rose-petal mouth pouting out against the unaccustomed tears in her eyes. 

Arianna said softly: "Think on what I have said. Do not give the chance of happiness the go-by for the sake of cold honour or because in some stupid confusion, el Gaiel made the mistake of giving you the glove instead of the sensible sympathy he always gave you before now. He is not agreeing to take you regardless in some arrangement of his father's without caring a copper coin's curse whether woulds't prefer to marry his best friend rather than himself, is he now?" The tears were rising in her eyes again, she pushed the heel of her hand impatiently into the sockets of her eyes, expecting Tashka to give her another tongue-lashing designed to stop her sinking into useless self-pity but Tashka caught hold of her skirt and gave it a tug. She looked round into Tashka's face. To her amazement Tashka looked shy. Birdsong was rife all around them, the sun was falling full on the hillside and on First H'las' camp and on the castle. 

Tashka leant close to Arianna and pressed into her embrace. Arianna felt a small round breast press to her side, she turned her head to Tashka's. 

"Once," Tashka whispered. "I ... I met Vadya in the morning. It was early, I was swimming in the river and he came riding out of the mist. He had been at dinner with Maive el Staten and ... and had stayed all night. I had taken all my clothes off, he nearly saw me! I had to lie in the shallows on my front so he would not, I was scared he might want to come and swim with me. And ... and his face was all soft, Anna, because he had been making love with Maive. He asked me to break fast with him. We did not say any thing of Maive. He wanted to talk of it but ... I turned it aside. All day he was a bit careless in his thoughts and smiled sweet if you asked him any thing. All day, Anna, I was ... miserable. Because he was not giving his full mind to the troop business," she added hurriedly. Arianna smiled but did not say anything. "Maive is a pink-fingered slut," Tashka added in a sudden spiteful spurt. "How could Vadya have thrown away a favour on a bloody vixen of an el Staten. Angels! she is a younger child, he is lucky he did not get that lord-hunter bestowed on him, he would have gone crazy trying to keep an hand on her reins. 

"I was angry with my Lieutenants. Hanya Lein was new to the Quarter, he had got in some tangle about his Unit's provisions. I gave him the night sentry duty! just for that. Poor Hanya. Then I had to go and sit with him all night on sentry duty to make it up to him. And Vadya never noticed how mean I was to Hanya, he never said any thing of it." She leant her cropped dark-haired head in the green hard hat against Arianna's shoulder and Arianna put up a gentle hand and rubbed her cheek. 

"And loves't him only as your senior officer?" she asked. 

Tashka made no reply. 

~#~*~#~

When Arianna trotted Sweetheart into the courtyard she found Clair sitting at the top of the castle steps, a pair of breeches slung casually on over his nightshirt, little Hanya in his arms. He was watching the stable-boys bringing out the horses for exercise, his grey eyes keenly aware of each horse walking past and whether its coat was combed and brushed to a gleaming shine or if it hobbled and might need the farrier to look at it. Hanya was wrapped in a blanket and fast asleep, his blond head snuggled to Clair's shoulder. Arianna saw her husband's lean face still soft with sleep and love for the baby boy in his arms, his eyes gentle on the castle servants, over whom he had always exercised a consistent and devoted attention, even writing frequently from the battle front to make considered judgement on the pettiest of problems which arose every day in the management of so many people as they went about their tasks. He looked up as he heard the clattering of hooves on the cobbles in the gateway. He made that smile when he saw Arianna which she had sometimes seen him bestow on the children or on Tashka: his lips curving not in an alluring look up to his eyes but in a soft sweet warmth. She could not quite believe he was giving that smile to her for her own sake, after everything he had done to her and the quarrels she was constantly making with him. He was getting to his feet with an effort against the weight of the big-boned child he held secure in his arms. 

Arianna frowned as she walked Sweetheart up to the steps, cross because she would have to show her booted leg to everyone in the courtyard: stable-boys, guards, a maid-servant crossing with bowls of tea on a tray to the kennels and Clair himself. Clair would not give Hanya to any of the servants as he would have done with Arkyll because Hanya was still so troubled. One of the grooms came forward to give Lady el Jien his shoulder so she could swing out of the saddle. 

Clair saw out of the corner of his eye the magnificent sweep of her leg off the horse; he saw the big booted leg up to the thigh which was creamy with a little layer of fat on it but he realised had a muscular strength. Her back had been very straight as she rode in, her head in a dark blue hard hat held up high. She handled herself with unexpected skill riding astride in the inappropriate saddle. He remembered that when he married her people said she was a good rider and that he had treated this as meaning that she would not have to be nursed through the hunt but could go round the high hedges on her own. She had never joined him in any of his hunting parties, acting the bare minimum of hostess. Considering the nature of the guests he had tended to invite, this was hardly surprising. While he noticed the beauty of her leg and repressed the feelings rising in his own body at seeing it, he also looked rapidly round the courtyard to check that none of the servants were watching her with a degree of interest which might mean he had to go and have words with them. He had often cursed her beauty as he made arrangements for yet another footman or groom or stable-maid to find work elsewhere, pointing out to them in crisp assertive tones that looking was one thing but finding excuses to annoy the future sworn Lady of an entire region when she was busy in her library was a piece of ridiculous folly for someone of their class. 

He walked down the steps towards her, saying: "Runaway! Where have you been, with that brother of mine? I will give him my glove if he tries to steal you from me. Or I would if he were not likely to cut me to ribbons and get you regardless." He sniggered. 

She looked with astonishment into his face. He was smiling at her differently now, with that alluring curve of the thin lips that went up to his slanted grey eye, lazily teasing because he was still too sleepy to hide an affection for her she could not quite believe was in his eyes. He stood with the big-boned child in his arms, his tan emphasised by the blond head that had rolled softly against his lean cheek. 

Arianna looked aside, she could not bear him to be playful with her, it made the hope rise in her heart, and her loins, the blood rise in her cheeks. She felt the old impulse to say something to him that would lead them to quarrel and so hide from him how much she longed for his caress. Then she thought she would try not to quarrel with him although she was not sure she wanted him to guess her true feelings. Clair looked at her head swinging to one side, the tendrils of hair floating from under her hard blue hat, the rosy flush in cheeks that were usually so bland and pale. Arianna was going to take Sweetheart's reins, to escape with the horse into the stables but the groom was there before her and was leading the mare away. She felt so foolish and inarticulate, standing with her own husband flirting with her and unable to think of any light laughing response such as the pink-fingered set tossed easily about. In her confusion she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. 

She turned to him and in that way she sometimes did, she asked him a question that opened up doors to the back recesses of his mind where awful terrors and grief lurked, always coiling in the back of his mind to seize him in that dreadful debilitating despair. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 11



"Ar't not frightened when the children come and wake you in the night?" 

She saw his grey eyes ice over, his thin mouth go into a compressed line. His face set hard and fierce against the tears, the memory of that violent night when he was taken against his will, his brother officers out in a tavern while he stayed back because he was unwell. Alone in the tent and unwell, he had woken with a dagger to his throat and had been obliged to suffer the most degrading of cruelties. 

He turned into the castle without speaking to her, taking the beloved child in his arms back to safety, attempting as he walked through the entrance hall and the corridors to shut that memory back in its box. He thought he could do it with Hanya so soft and warm and asleep in his arms. He had to do it for Hanya's sake, and for Arianna's. He went to the sitting-room and sat in his comfortable armchair with Hanya close in his arms. He pressed his cheek onto Hanya's head and remembered that the man who had done him that great wrong was gone. He was glad of it. He was glad that Tashka had left the man bubbling his life out in agony, killing him with a cut to the throat instead of cleanly through the heart. He was glad that there were those who loved him so well that they would avenge him to the uttermost extreme of cruelty, since they felt it so much not to have been there to protect him. Probably it was wrong to feel glad of something so bloody and cruel but he was glad. 

Typically she had followed him. She never did know when to leave well alone, she was not one to duck her faults or attempt to excuse any harm she had brought on you, even if through the cruelty of innocence. He looked at her from creased slanted eyes, her flushed face had become pale again, she twisted her long hands together and looked pleadingly at him, her face suddenly so sorry. 

"No," he said. "They make such a noise when they come. They are crying, they trip on something on the floor. By the time they are in the room I am well awake and I know I am not in a tent in the field with some scum coming for me. Did that slack-mouth Tashka tell you? I'll give it him when he gets back." 

"Mights't have told me yourself," she was trying hard to keep her voice gentle, to make it a suggestion not an accusation. "I ... never understood. I am sorry. It made me harder on you than I would have been." 

"Oh yes I might have told you," he answered bitterly. "If I were a decent husband in any way to you, my Lady." He saw her round blue eyes dip down and then she suddenly said, "or if I were a better Lady wife." 

He stared at her fair head in the dark blue hard hat bowed over and said softly, "oh my dear, you are a paragon of a Lady wife. It is a great burden, having to try so hard to live up to your perfection." She stared back at him at that, that full el Jien mouth that at court they compared unfavourably to her mother's parted in puzzlement. "You have secrets too, do you not? Will you trade me a secret, since you have this one of mine? Give me one that tells me you are not such a perfect Lady, since you know it well that I am not the perfect brave careless officer-aristocrat." He gritted his teeth in the smile against the fear in his eyes. 

She turned her head from one side to the other and said: "What secrets do I have?" He looked bleakly at her, his thin mouth twisted against the pain of that dreadful memory. 

She looked at the blond child she had not borne him, sleeping softly in the safe circle of his arm: the child of his Captain whom he had loved so truly and who had died before his eyes to save his life. "Has't lived through things no one should have to experience and afterwards found the courage still to love your children and the wounded former soldiers takest on here as servants, indeed all of the servants who depend on you," she said. "I think that is a better bravery than the careless bravery of bone-headed officers," her lip curled in that fine expression of scorn so that he wished he could bite it - softly, teasingly, to make her giggle instead of showing contempt. "I was bad at embroidery as a young girl," she said with a blush. "I always preferred riding. Astride." His mouth twisted in the smile against his pain.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 12



Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.) 

*****

Vadya walked into the castle courtyard, kicking a stone along the cobbles as he went. 

He had been down to First H'las' camp to lunch. The officers had annoyed him by talking constantly about Captain-Lord el Maien and how brilliant a military brain "he" was and how Vadya would miss "him" if his father were able to get around "his" van Sietter birth and take "him" up to the Generals' strategic staff. 

Suddenly Tashka herself appeared, walking out of the stables in muddy riding boots, jodhpurs and a green jumper. A grubby Imp was jumping around her heels, she was teasing him with a piece of biscuit she was holding above his nose. Her slanted blue eyes caught on Vadya's stare, she tripped on a cobblestone and stumbled to a halt, letting Imp take the biscuit without teasing him any more. She started to snap her heels together then she started to set her legs apart then she just stood staring back at him. 

"Um, er," Vadya could not decide how to address her. "Have you seen my father?" Of course she had. They always seemed to be together, even playing cards one evening! The number of times he had warned his father off playing cards with Tashka. 

"No sir," she tilted her head, narrowed her slanted blue eyes and then she began eyeing him up and down in a way that made him feel strange. 

"Oh," he said. 

She was looking in an unnerving speculative way, unlike the way any of his junior officers had ever done before. He could not quite believe she was looking at the part of his body her eyes seemed to be lingering on. She opened her mouth then looked down at herself and shut it again. Imp scratched at her booted leg and whined. 

"Shut it!" she said in an unusually rough voice. 

"Did you have a good ride?" Vadya enquired, half polite, half sneering. 

"Yes," she said. "I went into the hills for lunch at Vidor Hyaline and Faffie Velor's farm. Did you enjoy it there, when you went?" 

Vadya jerked his head in a sullen nod. He looked her over, yet again tried to think of her as a woman and failed again. She only ever looked like the perfect young officer. He gave a heavy annoyed sigh. 

"What?" she said roughly, "do you not like the cut of my shirt?" 

"Not much," he snapped back. "It is hardly the dress of a Lady." He immediately felt ashamed and walked off so he did not have to see her rose-petal mouth bunch up in the rueful pout that would only make him want to kiss her again. If only she would wear a dress but he reminded himself that that would not make her willing to give him a kiss, it would only make him feel better about lusting after one of his junior officers. 

At last her awful father and that scum her uncle had gone. Lord Esha had made it plain to van Sietter that the el Gaiels would not be ridden rough-shod into jilting his scandalous daughter. He had taken pains to demonstrate his affection and respect for her, reiterating his offer to take her onto his strategic staff with a hopeful gleam in his eye. 

van H'las had been moved into the great bed-chamber where van Sietter had previously been placed. (By moving him into the family quarters Clair had sought to demonstrate his gratitude towards his former enemy.) Vadya ran up the stairs and along the veranda and knocked on his father's door. 

"Enter," said Lord Esha's warm deep voice. Vadya opened the door and found his father sitting at the desk in the room, scowling and scratching at a letter. Lord Esha looked up to see Vadya and pushed the letter away with an expression of great relief. 

Vadya strolled moodily around the floor, poking with one foot at the stools set out by the fireplace and the chairs in a circle in the middle of the room. He came back round in front of the big curtain-hung four-poster bed and went to the narrow slit window by the desk, peered out of it at the hills rising behind the castle up away into the skies, standing broad-shouldered and muscular in his white cotton shirt and fawn breeches in the sunny light that fell through the window. 

"Where is your clerk?" he asked in a bored voice. 

"I gave her an holiday," van H'las replied, sucking on his quill pen as if it were a pencil and then looking at it with a surprised expression of disgust. "There is a long letter come from the Port Ithilien Council that is marked urgent and is probably a lot of rubbish. I concealed it and sent poor Ladda off to get some fresh air." He sniggered. 

Vadya sat down sideways in one of the carved wooden chairs near the desk and leant over the back of it, frowning irritably at the floor. He knew the letter would be crucially important and he ought to ask to look at it and tell his father what to do about it but he was too cross to care. 

"Was your lunch with Mada good?" his father asked. 

"Mm, it was very tasty," Vadya said sulkily. The Commander of First H'las was his father's best friend, Mada Stanies, he was the father himself of the best friend whom Vadya had lost in a duel. Vadya always took the time to go and sit with him when he could, Commander Stanies could not usually bear to talk of young Mada with Vadya (he would do that with Tashka) but Vadya knew it comforted him; he had seen Vadya grow up with his own son. 

His father sat patiently for a moment then Vadya said: "They all talked about Tashka. Uncle Mada said how sorry I will be when he comes to you in the strategic staff. When I tried to change the subject he said I should not let Tashka stay so hung on my banner. I should like to hang that little ... thing from my banner, I swear it!" 

Lord Esha got up, went over to the sidetable and poured himself a whisky and Vadya a bowl of the exceptionally fine brandy that Clair kept in his cellars. He fetched his long-stemmed curving pipe and filled it with his pleasant light tobacco, lit it and passed it to Vadya. Vadya drew on it and passed it back, continuing to frown at the floor. 

"I will not force you to this match," his father said gently. "I do not trust that old snake van Sietter. Just the betrothal for a year will make the merchants feel more secure and they will start to go from Port H'las and Port Ithilien through the Sietter Hills. Once trade is passing that way again it will be difficult for van Sietter to start raising the taxes once more." 

"van Sietter is a cold-hearted scum," Vadya grumbled, taking the pipe back from Lord Esha. "A fine father by marriage!" 

"Yes," his father said patiently, "but Lord Clair is of better worth than van Sietter and Lady el Jien is an honourable Lady. We know we do not have to trouble much with van Sietter and I will be happy to spend time with Clair and Lady el Jien, what do you say?" 

"I like Clair," Vadya said slowly. "He is a sportsman. He is like ... Tashka but not as mischievous. I like Lady el Jien, I am sure she is kind, but ... you know, papa, I always check my boots are clean when I see her! She is not a soldier's wife." 

Lord Esha laughed at him. "Not the wife of some rough Captain perhaps!" he exclaimed. "You are forgetting that she is the Lady wife of a tip-top Commander. Ladies are like her, Vadya. They are not for taking on campaigns." 

"Pava takes Ladies on campaign," Vadya protested then he had to admit: "Well, not Ladies exactly." 

His father said coldly: "Is that how you practise manoeuvres these days, with the women and children mixed among the baggage wagons? If you or any of your officers intend ..." 

"Of course not, papa," Vadya interrupted. "Pava is just ... who he is. Ninth Vail is a play-troop." Then he grinned suddenly, handing the pipe to his father and leaning back in his chair. "So I will not be permitted to take my Lady wife with me, even if she also be the Captain of my Second Quarter?" 

Lord Esha's eyes glazed over, he sat with his whisky in one hand and his pipe in the other, staring over Vadya's left shoulder. After a while, he grinned too and said: "I know not. I would not leave him at home if he were my Captain." 

"You think I should have him back to the troop," the frown was gathering up Vadya's brow again. 

"You know it well," his father replied, "if you do not take him back to the troop with you I will give him a place on my own staff, at the highest level of security, and think myself lucky to have him." 

Vadya looked over at the big bed in the corner of the room and crossed one leg over the other. 

"Will you have him back to the troop?" his father said softly. 

Vadya got up and walked to the fireplace, fiddled with a framed drawing of a hunting scene on the mantelpiece, walked back to his chair and sat down again. His face was completely lacking in expression. 

"Will you marry him?" Lord Esha asked. 

Vadya looked to one side then back at his father. His face still bore no expression whatsoever. 

"What is there wrong with it?" Lord Esha asked in a soft gentle affectionate voice. 

"What, with taking my wife: a woman, and van Sietter at that, back to the troop?" Vadya's generous mouth curled scornfully at him. 

"You do not have to tell people that he is a woman," van H'las pointed out. "We can say your Lady wife has chosen to live in Sietter, it will not be unusual. He will not be van Sietter the more if you marry him, either, he will be van H'las." 

There was a long silence. Finally Vadya said: "I look on him with eyes." 

"What?" Lord Esha was so astonished he dropped his pipe. It broke on the floor, his face bunched up in annoyance then he kicked the pieces carelessly to one side, staring at Vadya. 

"I look on him with eyes," Vadya repeated. "I cannot have him back because I look on him. He is my junior officer and I may not. I have thrown men out of the troop for it, I have beaten them for it, I have given so many sentry duties and extra runs in infantry kit to the Lieutenants for it. Am I to stand there now, knowing he is a woman and my wife and my Captain? I ... I have felt like it for a long time but it is easy not to pay attention when you are so busy in the daily life of the troop and you think you are not a man-lover and you know it is not permitted. Then, as we were coming home this leave, I ... I suddenly realised how I feel about him. And I hoped that being betrothed would cure it!" he burst out savagely. 

"But then," Lord Esha said eagerly, "you will marry Tashka? If you love him like that, why would you not marry him? As for the troop, you may leave him in the strategic staff, I will give him his banner then you will be equals and you will not have to be looking on him with eyes in the field." He sat back, well satisfied with this solution. 

"Papa, he does not feel like that about me," Vadya said angrily. "I am his senior officer, do you expect him to look on me with eyes? You know it well, they say the code of honour is engraved on his heart. I ... I tried to kiss him, that is how far it has gone. Actually I think his preference is for officers but he said it felt ... strange to kiss his own Commander. I should think it would! So, there, that is the problem." He took a sip of exquisite brandy and glared at his father. "Any road," he added, "I want a Lady to wife. Someone who will make the castle nice, sew me something, and ... and look after you." 

Lord Esha had been taking a thoughtful sip from his whisky and when Vadya said this, he snorted into it and splashed it all over his lap. He raised an incredulous face to Vadya, with whisky drops in his beard. Vadya's brown cheeks flushed up with red. 

"You are not that young!" he protested. "You might give me thanks for thinking of you!" 

"You are too kind," Lord Esha said drily, "I beg you do not trouble yourself. Believe me, I will find someone to change my bedpans when the need arises. So. You want an housekeeper and seamstress to wife is it?" 

"You know what I mean!" Vadya shouted angrily. "All this stuff about the troop and loving Tashka, it is all very well! but what about if there are dinners for important political people or parties. Who is going to be hostess at my parties?" 

"You want the kind of parties that require an hostess?" his father inquired in a voice dripping with sarcasm. "You are going to sit around a table drinking tea and eating little cakes made like models of boats in Port H'las harbour, is it? I thought you liked hunting in Halla with your cousin Stevan. How little one can know one's own child!" 

"Well, I might change," Vadya said feebly. "On any road, you know what I mean. Tashka, the way I love him, it is like he is a man. I do not want to marry him and live in a nice little house, I want us to be like we have always been in the troop. It is only that he is my junior, he ought to have been promoted long ago ... but he is a woman. And he does not want me. So." 

"So there," his father said mockingly. "You'll marry a nice maiden who will stay at home with me and cook me suitable broths for my toothless gums while you go off to hunting parties with your officer friends is it? Very well, when this betrothal has had a year, you may choose your bride yourself. Only one thing I advise you. My Vadyan, choose a good card-player. When you are too old to go out with the troop you might be glad of it for yourself." 

"Proper Ladies do not play cards!" Vadya shouted. 

"Alright," his father said gently. "I am only teasing you. I know you do not really think you want such a soppy milkmaid to wife. Lallia, at the least she was no milkmaid." 

"What was wrong with Lallia?" Vadya said, bridling and ready to take offence again. 

"I know not," his father said, sitting back in his chair with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "You tell it me. Why did you not marry Lallia?" 

Vadya looked embarrassed. He turned his head about, glaring resentfully at the stone walls and the plastered ceiling then he said reluctantly: "You were kind to indulge me in my affection for Lallia, papa. She was a Dame at the least of it and I was happy with her but ... she did not have my whole heart. She did not like it that I spent so much time in the troop." 

"Did she ask you to give up Sixth H'las?" his father asked. 

"Mm," Vadya said grumpily. 

"So you want a wife who will not ask you to leave your troop," Lord Esha said. 

"Of course," Vadya said irritably. "You know how much I love it. You encouraged us when ... Mada and I put our names up to go to Sixth H'las instead of staying in First. I must leave the troop one day to work on the region's politics and economic strategy. I think I will like it, papa, although I know it bores you. But I just want a two-three years more out in the field. And I want someone who will not make trouble for it if I go away with the troop, someone like ... like," he was about to talk about his Captains' wives: Petra's Sharianel and Fiotr's Izana but he remembered just in time that his father had met them both and knew that they were not quiet sweet milkmaid women who stayed at home with the children and elders. Sharianel was a doctor and Izana ran Fiotr's life out of the troop with as complete control as Vadya ran it in the troop. 

Lord Esha was significantly silent. 

"Oh yes!" Vadya snarled. "Tashka would not object to my going out with the troop! Provided I took him along too! He would never stay behind and make an home for me ... for us." 

"No," Lord Esha said. "You would not find him sitting over the fire with his knitting in his hands. He would want to be out there in the field your equal." 

"It is madness to think of marrying such an one!" Vadya snapped. 

"Well there is the succession to think of," Lord Esha admitted. "If Tashka's preference was for women any marriage would of course be out of the question and as it is ... He cannot continue to serve as your junior if you are looking on him with eyes but he would have to come in from the field to bear you children on any road. I think we had best take him up to strategic." 

Vadya's face screwed up in outrage. "Papa!" he protested. "I prithou!" 

Lord Esha's face became suddenly stern. "You are not a baby boy," he said, "to pretend you know nothing of these matters. You are my only child. If you cannot ask Tashka to carry a child for the succession there is no question of a match, we must think of the succession for the region." 

"Poor Tashka!" Vadya protested. "Why should he come in from the field just to have children, it is not fair. He is a magnificent field officer, look at the way he handles those bird-brains el Darien and el Vaie. We owe him so much for taking them under his eye, in such a manner that the Lords of Trattai and Soomara in the parallel trading route look to us with gratitude and favour." Lord Esha looked quizzically at him at this and he suddenly blushed, saying: "Angels' sake, papa, whether he is in the field or strategic, he is an army officer not a Lady wife. Would you marry him?" 

A thoughtful expression came over Lord Esha's face and he slurped at his whisky. "Mm," he said pensively. "It is a good soldier and I love him well for that. There would be great evenings playing the cards and he has a nice taste in whisky. And under the cut of his doublets, I will swear he has a shapely body, unusually good muscles for a woman of course. I like a muscular woman." Vadya's mouth fell open and his eyes bulged in horror but his father was not looking at him. "He is merry, affectionate, loyal and exceptionally honourable. You have been happy by his side these past three years and when you have been spending time with him you talk about art and music in a way you did not get from me. There is his strategic mind too, of course. Anyone with any military intelligence would be a damned fool to give the chance of taking that mind into their strategic staff the go-by. Even if there were not the muscles and the warm heart to go with it. He can probably be persuaded to bear at the least of it the one child for the succession. He is of the high nobility; he understands these things and he would strike any bargain for the chance to be a General one day in the H'las chain of command. He appreciates the importance of the emphasis we lay on duty of care. I understand young van Athagine offered him a Captain's sword but Tashka told it me the chain of command in Athagine is insufficiently integrated for the strategic work to be fully effective so he turned the offer back. He could not of course have gone higher than Captain in Athagine if he were still van Sietter so I suppose el V'lair thought of asking to have Tashka bestowed on him in order to get his strategic mind into the Generals' offices in Havanda." Vadya looked narrowly sideways at mention of Tarra el V'lair's attempt to win Tashka's heart with a military commission, he knew it was not Tashka's mind that el V'lair was interested in. Lord Esha said, "oh yes, if the el Maiens were offering him to me, I would take Tashka with all my heart! and teach him to love me after the wedding but alas, I am too old for him," and he chuckled into his beard. Then he said wistfully, "she sews and plays with the children while we are here but they tell it me Lady el Jien does a lot of riding ordinarily so I suppose she is a muscular woman." 

"Lady el Jien is a woman of great honour and her husband has considerable skill in the duel," Vadya reminded his father coldly. "We are here to seek a closer accord with the el Maien family not insult young van Sietter's Lady wife with uninvited attentions." 

'Disgusting old boar,' he thought, outraged, and meanly left his father to the letter from the Port Ithilien council without giving him the benefit of his advice about it. He went to sit on his own in the inner courtyard, sulking about the intractable problem of his junior officer and betrothed among the flowers and the fountain bubbling its soothing song under the pear tree. 

He had been sitting in one of a set of chairs put out there by a rug with some embroidery and toys scattered on it for half an hour, the sunshine washing gently over his scowling face as he glared at the flowers and tried to think about whether he wanted a Lady or a friend to wife and pretended he did not see why Tashka could not be both. Her voice hissed suddenly at him and he looked irritably round but he could see no one in the courtyard. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 12



"Up here!" her voice hissed. He looked up and saw a flushed young woman in a blue dress at the top of the stairs going up to the veranda. At first he could not think who she was although her face was so familiar to him then he leapt out of his chair with a horrified squeal. 

"Tashka!" 

"Is it nice?" she asked anxiously. "I will come down to you." 

When she walked down the stairs she suddenly became ridiculous. She had no idea how to control her skirts, kept heaving them way up above her knees. She was still wearing boots and the heels were catching in some frilly thing that she displayed in all its splendour to his appalled eyes. Near the bottom of the stairs she tripped with a long tearing sound and fell onto the flagstones in the courtyard. 

"Sweet Angels of Hell!" she snarled. "Damn this thing to Hell!" 

He rushed over to her, hauled her to her feet, anxiously he tilted her head about and examined her grazed hands. Then he looked into her furious slanted blue eyes and suddenly snorted with laughter. 

"Shut it!" she growled, embarrassed and angry. "This is what comes of trying to please you! I will never wear such a cursed stupid thing again!" Her eyes creased up in fury. 

"I should hope not," he replied, staring at her half in horror and half in laughter. "My Captains have never appeared before me in a dress and I do not think it is an uniform I can approve." 

"Holy Hell! I must get out of this!" She started across the courtyard, hitching her skirts up around her lean hips and striding out in a way that made the whole collection of cloths absurd. "Arkyll came into Anna's room and saw me," she moaned. "I know the slack-mouthed child will say something of it!" 

Vadya followed her to her room but stopped on the threshold and coughed, saying: "Er, I will wait on you." 

She looked miserably round on him then slammed the door in his face so that it nearly skipped off the latch again. 

When she threw the door open, she was dressed in a plain white cotton shirt, fawn breeches and knee-high boots. Vadya stood before her in the courtyard and looked pleadingly at her. His brown eyes stared into hers, his generous mouth trembled. 

Tashka looked suspiciously all around the courtyard, seized his arm, pulled him into her room and shut the door after him. He had of course never been in her room. He was dimly aware of paintings on the walls and painted curtains like the ones Arianna had, of an elaborately decorated writing desk at the back of the room, some wardrobes to his left but it was evidently the room of someone in the military: box-desk and clothes-chest stacked neatly in a back corner, her mailcoat and weapons hanging glistening on their racks. Even here in her home she slept in a roll of army bedding on the floor with some cushions around it making it a pleasant seating area in the daytime. 

He put his back on the wall by her door and she put her hands either side of him and leaned close to stare into his brown face. He had a little scar on his right cheek where he had cut himself once when he fell off Midnight while training him only three months after she had joined his troop. She considered his big shoulders in his loose white cotton shirt, her eyes flicked casually over his narrow muscular hips and the swell in his breeches which hinted at the big cock and balls Arianna had noticed. She allowed the thought of what he might be like as a lover to come into her mind. Her blood ran faster in her veins and she felt a tickling warmth in her sex. She licked her lip. Vadya's eyes flickered. 

"So you do not like your Captains to wear dresses," she said thoughtfully, raising her eyes from his groin to his face. 

He looked on the tanned face leaning close to his, at her narrowed slanted blue eyes, at her rose-petal mouth with the barely healed cut in it. 

"No," he said softly, "and you are my Captain. If you ever come before me in a dress again, I will discipline you for improper conduct." 

She stood away from him, her face suddenly lit up with an intense sweet smile. He wanted more than ever to kiss her. She was so happy that she could hardly bear to look on him, only give him a shy glance from under her long lashes. 

"So I can come back to Sixth H'las!" she said eagerly. 

"Of course not," he said. 

Her face fell suddenly, she stared desperately at him. "Oh why not?" she cried. 

"Hell," he said. "It has been such sweet Hell to live by your side these three years and deny my passion for you. At the beginning it was easy but now, Maien, I cannot. Angels! in Paviat I am nearly certain sure that I kissed you! You are so beautiful to look on. It has always been a problem, to keep the Lieutenants from passing remarks. How can I discipline them for it when I myself am longing for your kiss?" 

"They said things of me, in Sixth H'las?" she asked in surprise. 

"No one meant any thing by it," he looked anxiously at her. 

"Hmm," she raised a sceptical eyebrow then said, "but it was you protected me from them, you never even let me hear them speaking in that way. You protected me from your own lust too." 

The corner of his mouth twisted wryly up. "Maybe," he said, "but your skill with the rapier had a good part in it." 

"So you love me for my eyes," she suggested, provocatively flickering her long lashes at him. 

His heart fluttered. He smiled. "My Captain," he said gently, "if it were only that, I could forswear it. I am in love with your eyes, yes, but what I cannot control is my love for you. I am in love with your intelligence. It has always been a source of wonder to me, how you can tell what any troop will do from a few pieces of gossip, your knowledge of the army and what you have unconsciously understood of the terrain we are in. It has been a pleasure indeed to train your mind in military strategy, you are a born officer and," he hesitated then said: "I hoped you would become my Major General and stand by my side to work with me the whole of my life." 

She smiled wistfully, her blue eyes became dreamy. "Ay," she said. "It would have been my dream too." 

"And I am in love with your affectionate friendliness," he went on. "You have been the truest friend to me a man could wish for. Especially after ... Mada died. I love those filthy stories of yours, how you can always make me laugh when I am in an ill humour, how you are always there for me if I have cause to weep. I did wish it that I could have been the one to have your tears, your troubles, but I understand. You never cry with any but Clair or Pava in case others think you are weak because you are a woman." 

She looked at him in a kind of wonder that he knew her so well then she said: "And you'll send me away, although I am not weak, for that I am a woman," in a sobbing sort of voice. Her eyes were still dry but they had a hurt look in them that went to his heart. 

"No not for that," he said impatiently. "Because I look on you. I wish I had never found out who you are. But my, my dearest friend and ... and my love. I will not have you suffer for it. Come back to H'las with my father and me and have your Commander's banner. You know it well that my father will give you whatever you ask for. If you ask him for the highest position on his strategic staff, he will give it you gladly, he will give it you at double pay! He has said it, you may hold him to his word. If you say you want your own troop and to stay in the field, he will give you that. This stupid marriage must be, because some merchants will be happier if I put a bit of gold on your finger but it means you will be van H'las, not van Sietter. You can take any position in the chain of command that my father chooses to offer you. Except to be my Captain. Damn the Angels, Maien! how I am caught in this craziness like a fly in a web! I love you as truly as any one may love but I cannot have you any longer by my side without I lie with you. I have thought, Maien." His voice shook and he looked aside with tears in his brown eyes. 

Tashka stood perfectly still, staring at him with wide slanted blue eyes. His curly head was bowed, his generous mouth trembled. He lifted his head and she saw the tears in his gentle brown eyes. 

"Maien," he said huskily, "better I, who love you for what you are, than some scum like el V'lair van Athagine, who would chain you. He would try to make you wear skirts and might even force your favours. I will never force you." 

Tashka flicked her tanned fingers and said impatiently: "Forget el V'lair. Skirts or breeches, he does not care s'long as he can pin me. But I never cared about him. Sweet Heaven, el Gaiel, if I was to admit ..." She paused, turning her head and looking intently at him from her slanted blue eyes. It was the same unfamiliar narrow-eyed assessing gaze she had fixed on him in the courtyard. He felt curiously uncertain and shy. When her eyes dipped down from his, he still could not quite believe where they seemed to be looking. 

At last she looked away from him completely and said: "I do not want to be a Commander in the field nor go to the strategic staff." She hesitated, fiddled with the plain collar of her white cotton shirt. "I just like to be with you," she admitted. 

She turned and looked into his face. His round brown eyes were wide, he stared at her as if he could not believe he had heard her right then she said with a blush: "It was I who kissed you - in Paviat. Afterwards I tried to forget it, thinking I was too drunk to know what I was doing but I know now. I kissed you, because... I was too drunk to hide it; how much I like you," her head dipped and then came up with her eyes embarrassed and laughing and her mouth soft in question, would he, would he not take it badly? Her senior officer. He looked at her lip and his face screwed up. He reached out and touched the mark on her lip where his gauntlet had caught her mouth. Tashka suddenly licked his finger and he started at the soft wet kiss of her tongue. She raised an eyebrow. He could almost hear her husky voice saying: "Shall we move the camp more that way? That wood is an hazard." 

"Shall we move more this way?" Tashka suggested. "We can be seen from the window." 

Vadya looked sideways at her window and went obediently to the other side of the door. He was aware of Tashka looking at his bottom and hips as he walked, that made him nervous. Then her arms were suddenly around his waist and the small curve of her breasts pressed against his back. He turned in her embrace, looked into her face with passionate eyes, caught her head in his hands and put his mouth to hers. 

Tashka's tongue pushed at his lips, her strong arms were wrapped about his waist, her hips pressed hard in on his, pushing him back against the wall, her flat stomach pressed to his. Vadya made a little noise, his lips parted and Tashka's tongue curled in his mouth against his tongue. He held her head gently and firmly in his big hands. Her tongue was moving in his mouth. His lips were kissing at last with the rose-petal lips that were suddenly full of sweet passion for him. 

"Maien!" he murmured as their lips parted, his hands still holding her head. 

"el Gaiel," she whispered. "Angels' sake! do not let me go! Oh how much I have loved you and if you ever give me the go-by now that I have admitted it, I will die."

"Maien," he whispered, pressing a kiss under her ear. "My love, my love." 

He tilted her head to him again, turning to kiss her, feeling her mouth smooth under his and the curling pressure of her tongue against his. Tashka's fingers were tangling in his hair, she held his shoulder in her other hand and pressed the whole of her body with the hard muscles and curving breasts and waist to Vadya's. Her legs were spread about his hips and she was pushing against his cock and balls which were already rising softly in his breeches in response. He hugged her in against him with his arms. Slowly he pressed his hands down over her lean back, he spread his big hands on her narrow waist, feeling the curve of her hips with a kind of wonder at the shape that she was under her loose shirt. His hands moved down to press her buttocks so she would keep up that pressure of her mound against his sex while her mouth pressed hot and wet to his mouth. 

As their lips parted this time she said fiercely: "Give me the go-by and I will kill you and then die!" 

He laughed, breathily, holding her close to him, insisting to hold her whole body to his body and kissing her many times below her ear. 

"You know it well," he said. "I will never give you the go-by. My love, my Captain and my love! I have longed for your kiss since the day I saw you first." 

"I have loved you longer than that," she said with a curving lazy smile. "Even when H'las and Sietter were at war, it was my dream to be your officer. I was with Pava in Vail so I could get reports of the action from both sides. I used to look out for the reports of Sixth H'las' engagements and read them secretly and admire your tactical skill. I kept the reports under my pillow to look at in the night!" Vadya laughed to hear that, his arms full of this muscular warm young officer. "Oh, how I prayed for you to take me for your Captain when Pava wrote to you of me. He said it was too dangerous but I made him do it, I was happy to risk being hung for a spy just to have that time under your Command. I had followed your career for so long in the despatches, how I longed to meet you and hear your thoughts on your strategies from your own mouth." She leaned her head back and looked into his face. She did not move her hips from around his, as if she knew how much yearning pleasure he was getting from the pressure of her sex on his sex. (Considering the stories he had overheard her sniggering about to the Lieutenants, Vadya knew she did know.) He held her by the waist in gentle big hands, panting and smiling tremulously. He could not quite believe that she loved him like this yet she was standing in his arms, her blue eyes dark with passion for him and her mound pressed to his cock. 

Then she ducked her head and her face became uncertain and embarrassed, she moved away from him. In the midst of his disappointment at losing the pressure on his by now fully erect penis, he worried in case she were feeling it, to stand in the arms of her senior. She lifted her eyes to him, creased in anxiety and embarrassment, and said: "el Gaiel, prithou. You will not tell it to anyone, will you, that I was so desperate for your kiss that I was even willing to wear a dress?" 

He laughed then and squeezed his hands gently on her shoulders, turning his own head down in shame. "What," he answered, "and also confess that I was such a scum as to try to force a kiss from you before you were ready to give it then give you a packet of trouble when you would have been willing to be friendly with me. el Maien, what would anyone think of me, to have offered you a glove when you are not only the most beautiful officer of the H'las army but a killer who could have taken out my throat if you wished to. Am I likely to confess what a damned fool I have been?" 

She looked across into his eyes with a shy expression of ardent desire that went straight to his heart. When she came to him first from Pava, reporting to him in some silly party clothes she appeared to have flung on from the night before, she had looked on him with exactly that expression of shy admiration. He had been utterly confounded to read such a look in the eyes of a junior officer with such an alluring physical beauty. 

He had denied his passion for her ever since. He could not believe now that he had managed to stay out of her arms for three whole years in the field. How often had he lifted his head to meet that warm blue look of admiration across a campaign table of maps. He would turn his head aside, stuttering over his orders while the other Captains waited patiently for him to collect himself. They must have guessed their Commander's and his Captain's feelings each for other - they loved Tashka too well themselves to say anything; they trusted Vadya to respect her junior status and not to cross his vow. But it had been too long, he could no longer forswear the nature of his love for her, and she had been offered to him on the terms of a different vow. He could no longer deny his passion for her body. 

She reached her head forward to meet his soft generous mouth, turning into his kiss, parting her lips as his parted. His hands pressed on her back, she felt a warm joy tingling in her skin at the pressure of his fingers on her back and waist. She gripped his shoulder and pulled his head to her with her other hand, moving to spread her hips around his so that she could feel that big cock pressed against her. She could barely contain her excitement at the size of the thing. She had of course realised that her commanding officer was well-equipped - the troopers used to whisper and snigger proudly about it on night-sentry duty and she would clip them round the back of the head and give them some punishment, sternly ignoring the quivers of arousal in her own sex. She gave a little moan of exquisite frustration in the kiss, knowing that however much he might silently enjoy her pressing on him, el Gaiel van H'las would rather cut his sizeable penis off than stain her honour by taking her favour without giving her his ring. 

Vadya's mouth moved with hers. He pressed his tongue into her mouth. His hands pressed insistently on her back so that he could pretend he was just hugging her while ensuring she was still pushed hard against him. 

When they finally parted they were both breathless, the blood running faster in their veins. His eyes were vague with desire and she was flushed. They drew back from each other, smiling shyly and incredulously. They held each others' hands and stood feeling foolish but unable to let the other go. 

"It ... does feel strange, to kiss a Captain," Vadya said with a shy glance at her. He wriggled his hips in an attempt to get his erect penis more comfortably settled. 

"Yes, it takes practice," Tashka said impishly. "I think we should practice some more." 

Vadya grinned through a sudden warm blush. "I am well willing, Captain-Lord el Maien," he said, pulling her closer again. 

"Commander-Lord el Gaiel," she responded mockingly. "Do you order me to kiss you?" 

"No," he said, suddenly grave. She sniggered, he was so honour-bound! "but I will ask it of you as a favour from an equal." 

She smiled and said boldly, "You may have my favour freely since you ask for it." She put her arms loosely around his waist and lifted her mouth to his again, holding herself back from his groin to tease him - and get the reassurance of his hands pressing her into him in the irresistible desire for her body pressed to his. Vadya kissed her, holding her head and her waist in his big fingers, pressing the wet smooth exciting kiss to and from her mouth, panting lightly in their kiss as he pushed against her back to persuade her to press up against him oh! just a little harder.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 13



Thank you so much for the comments so far! I can get stuck into a much bigger re-write than I'd envisaged now. I'll post all the chapters to the novel. If you have any further feedback, I would be very grateful. Diolch yn fawr!

*****

Clair stood with his hands deep in the sink of soapy water, staring mindlessly out of the big scullery window at the sunny kitchen gardens. Gently he turned bowls and plates, wiping them clean then handing them to that scallywag of a pot-boy Caja who rinsed them in hot water and put them on the draining board. 

Lord van H'las had been gone a week. Pava had finally set off for court (his black eye had faded to his relief). Vadya and Tashka were packing to rejoin Sixth H'las. Arkyll and Hanya were 'helping' Tashka. They ran eagerly around her, dropping piles of freshly laundered clothes on the floor and treading on her papers. Tashka pretended to be a fat, old and unreasonable General, barking orders at them and sending them on missions for things she did not need so she could actually get some of her gear stowed. 

Clair was distraught to see Tashka go. He had hoped he might not take it so badly since she was no longer at risk of being hung for spying. But when he woke, he knew it was going to be a bad day. He sent a feeble excuse to the meeting which Arianna had asked him to attend. 

The castle servants had been on the watch for him. They were always ready to take pity on him when something was happening which might upset the delicate balance of his mind and emotions. When he arrived in the kitchens, glaring sulkily from narrowed slanted grey eyes, the cooks merely continued in their duties and when he sidled into the scullery like an intruder in his own home Caja just moved aside so he could join him at the sink. 

At a time like this a simple task was such relief. It passed the time, usefully. Clair could handle the bowls and plates gently as he wished he had been handled in life. The sunny view of the orderly rows of vegetables going back down to the fruit bushes in the kitchen gardens was soothing to his tortured heart. After an hour he would look at the pile of clean dishes and feel as if his life had some purpose after all. 

When they had finished the washing up, instead of going straight to dry the dishes that lazy dog Caja jerked his head to the door into the gardens. Clair followed carelessly. In the mood he was in it was nothing to him that Caja should take advantage of his being there to sneak out. 

Some of the kitchen maids were taking a well-earned rest on a sunwarmed beam of wood put beside the kitchen door in amongst pots of herbs. Caja sat down with them and lit a pipe of foul cheap tobacco which he passed to Clair. The rank smoke of Caja's evil weed caught the back of Clair's throat and made him cough and tears come to his eyes but that too was a sort of comfort. He sat wordlessly by Caja in the sunshine, hearing the kitchen maids chatter like birds and staring away at the vegetables and fruit, the old grey wall at the back of the gardens, the hills climbing up in green and purple sunlit heights beyond. 

He could hear a commotion in the kitchens behind him. As he turned his head, Arianna burst suddenly through the door into the herb garden. Clair jumped and breathed too much smoke in, coughing and spluttering he looked nervously up at her. 

She stood tall and ice-eyed above him, her hands on her hips. Lisette had put her into an elegantly cut suit of black linen, a narrow collar of white lace flowers fell over the lapels of the jacket, she had diamonds in her ears and on her fingers. The black and the diamonds made an intimidating beauty of her; with the narrow glare on her face she looked like the Angel of Judgement. 

"M-my Lady," Clair spluttered, starting to get to his feet. "Er, how was the meeting?" 

"What does't think?" Arianna spat out at him. "We set this meeting up for your benefit and sents't to say," her voice took on a mocking whine, "was't ill with the stomach ache! What was I to tell them? How coulds't do it to me!" 

"But ...," he hesitated, looking at her uncertainly. "I did not know. It was only with some merchants. You did not say ..." 

"'Only some merchants'!" she mimicked him. "Ar't so stupid about politics that wills't say: 'only some merchants'!" 

Clair's eyes narrowed into slits. He felt his temper rising and pushing the tears up with it. "Do not tell me I am stupid at politics!" he hissed. "I have been offered a place on one of the King's Councils." 

"Oh which one," she drawled. "The Council for hunting and flirting?" 

His eyes opened suddenly wide but he gritted his teeth and said to her: "I will not talk to you in this way." He turned to the kitchen door to go. 

"There is a messenger come for you," Arianna said abruptly. She held out two white packets of paper both addressed to him in the same curling and clearly feminine hand. 

Clair looked blankly at the paper packets with the green ink address flowing down them then he looked up into Arianna's blazing blue eyes. 

"Sweet Hell!" he said savagely. "I suppose I may receive a letter, may I not? Is that a crime now, to have a correspondence with a friend!" 

"Take them!" she shouted and flung them onto the flagstones among the blue and green decorated clay pots of herbs. 

Clair turned his head about, his eyes moving from the letters to her furious face. She was livid with rage, her eyes as hard as her diamonds. The corners of Clair's mouth started to pinch up with temper, his eyes narrowed again to slits. 

"I am tired of all this!" Arianna shouted. "Why do I stay here? I work so hard ... for Sietter and for the good of the people. People tell me to trust you, so I do. I invite you to hear about my work and what happens? Sends't to say has't a stomach ache and then tells't it to me: 'Oh, they are only merchants'. In your absence I must take care of your lands and your children and your castle and you, what does't? Runnest to and fro as it pleases you, flirting with whosoever catches your idle eye! I am tired of this, I am going. I can go too, I shall go home to Iarve!" 

"No!" Clair screamed. 

Caja and the kitchen maids suddenly scattered back into the kitchen like pigeons leapt upon by a cat. Arianna stopped with her wide red mouth still open and stared at Clair, her rage turning suddenly into heart-stopping fear. 

Clair's face was wild with emotion, his grey eyes were narrowed to slits through which he peered at her, completely beyond reason. His thin mouth twisted white at the corners. Arianna gave a gulp and took a step backwards; she was stopped short by one of the bigger pots. 

"I ... I can go if I want," she said. 

Clair fell to his knees and caught hold of her skirts. She tried to step aside from the pot and from him, reaching down to pull at her black linen skirts tight held in his lean tanned fists. 

"You'll not go! You'll not leave me!" he hissed in a low menacing growl, tugging her skirts towards him. She had to stoop with the strength of his dragging hands, she pulled savagely back. 

"Let me go, let go of me!" 

"I will not, you'll not go! I'll never let you go! I'll imprison you here if I have to but you shall not leave! Do you think your brother will defend you against me? Prianne has told me he does not care what I do so long as I keep you quiet here, and I will!" 

Tashka was suddenly there, that was whom Caja and the maids had run to fetch. Her strong hands gripped his and pulled them off Arianna's skirts. Arianna stumbled back again and stood staring at them from petrified blue eyes. Her heart was hammering in her chest. Clair was hanging in Tashka's grip and her husky voice was exclaiming: "What are you saying? Think what you are saying to your Lady wife!" 

He hung in her hands, his head bowed suddenly down. He could no longer control the terror that seethed through his veins: to lose Tashka, to lose Arianna, to lose the children, his family, to lose Hanya Vashin. He could not work through the loss and grief that surged through him and distinguish what was real, what had been whipped up by his overwrought feelings. He made a sudden savage pull, broke free of Tashka's grip and ran back into the castle. 

Tashka started after him, then she turned to help Arianna go and sit on the warm rough wooden beam among the sweet-smelling herbs. She put her arm around Arianna's shoulders. Arianna leant into her embrace and burst into tears. 

"Anna!" Tashka said, in a gentle, husky and reproving voice. "What have you done? You know how he was after Shier Bridge, do you want to drive him mad again?" 

Arianna pushed her away, putting her face in her hands and sobbing into her long fingers with the sapphires, gold and diamonds flashing on them in amongst her tears. Tashka sighed, leaning back against the stone wall of the kitchen under the scullery window. She stared at the kitchen gardens and the green and purple hills beyond the garden walls, waiting patiently for Arianna to stop crying. 

"Shall't always take his part!" Arianna accused her. 

"Ay, of course," Tashka replied, swinging her graceful close-cropped head sideways and smiling lazily. "He is my brother and was my Commander and I love him. He is the only man who can make me cry with rage, he is the only man who can resist my tears, we fight like cats and dogs and I love him with my whole heart. Anyone who gives him grief may have my glove. (Saving your sweet self, my dear, of course.) I love him just as you do." 

"I hate him!" Arianna growled. "I have tried to show him my work, just as saids't I should, and he could not be troubled to come to the meeting. He even said: 'it is only some merchants'. How stupid can he be!" 

"Of course he does not understand about the merchants," Tashka said. "You'll need to tell him much more about it before he understands what you are doing. When first you reveal to him how close you are dealing with merchants, he will be appalled. He will probably forbid it! and you will have a fine fight about it. 

"We two are el Maien and half of us is from the North, we are proud like pale Angels. You'll have to do much more to get him to understand about merchants. The only reason I understand is that I have spent hours talking the matter over with my Lieutenant Hanya Lein. Sweet Angels, when first he said his family were dealing with Lady Arianna el Jien van Sietter, the only reason he did not get my glove in his face was that I could not reveal you are my sister by marriage!" Tashka laughed. "I had to button my lip and listen to him talking to my other Lieutenant Trait about what the merchants could do for the people of this land if the aristocrats would only give them their way. Slowly I saw the sense of it. 

"On any road, I owe the merchants, after they saved my life in V'ta. But, Anna, what pale Angel inspired you to call a meeting with merchants for Clair on the day before I am leaving? He cannot bear me to leave, it makes him ill." 

"Yes, I know," Arianna said mournfully, lifting her head up from her hands. Black eye makeup was smeared under her eyes, Tashka pulled a kerchief from her pocket and wiped her face for her with scarred fingers. "Master Jeraie from Arventa was coming to Sietter town on other business, so I asked Clair and he said he would m-manage it." She burst into a fresh fit of sobs. 

"He has been trying to show you he cares," Tashka said, patting her briskly on the back. "What of those chocolates he bought you to thank you for taking care of the guests while he had to mind the kitchens. Can you not show him you care?" 

"Chocolates!" Arianna scoffed, her face flushing with indignation again. "What of those letters! Do not tell me Clair cares for me, he gets letters in that handwriting every week." Her face crumpled with tears again, she put her head heavily down in her hands and wept. 

"What do you care, since you hate him?" Tashka enquired, getting up to pick up the letters. Arianna seized her arm. 

"Leave them be!" she said. "If I do not know her name, I can pretend there is nothing in it for me and stay here. Where would I go? I cannot go without the children!" She started sobbing so hard that Tashka was obliged to help her into the kitchens and make her drink iced water. 

"Go and pick up those letters for Lord Clair," she instructed a footman in an undertone. "What are you looking at?" she grumbled to the kitchen staff, who were in fact carefully getting on with their work and not looking at their sobbing Lady sitting at the side table with a large handkerchief pressed to her red-rimmed eyes. "I suppose the Lady Arianna may get stung by a wasp without your permission, is it not? Jamies! go and fetch Lisette, Lady Arianna needs ... a cold compress and to lie down. Caja! no not you," with an irritated look at his gravy-stained apron and slouching posture, "tell one of the footmen to go and let Laran and Tarra know your Lady is indisposed too, now, and the merchants must come back to meet her and Lord Clair another day." 

~#~*~#~

Someone was knocking at his door. It must be a servant with lunch. After seeing him in such a condition they must have decided to knock, not come straight in. Clair was hungry but he could not bear to face the servants after treating them to such a scene. He lay still in his bedding as he had lain all morning. Even when Tashka came and tried to talk to him he stared blankly into her loving blue eyes and said: "Leave me be." 

He had thought of nothing as he lay there, he had lain in despair, trying not to think, not to remember. Images and memories kept fluttering in the dark spaces in his head. His mother's desperate kisses and the grip of her guard Fiotr's hand on his shoulder when they left with a baby Tashka. The dull agony of long evenings in the castle when Tashka was away at risk of hanging in a H'las troop and only a quarrel with his stupid Lady wife could keep him from screaming with terror for his beloved brother. 

The scream so anguished that it rose above the clamour of battle. Turning to see the tall mailed figure of Hanya Vashin, his beautiful blue eyes wide. Hanya's arms jerking out, the helmet falling from his fair head cropped at the back and sides. The blood that suddenly spewed from his mouth into Clair's face as he fell into Clair's arms with a H'las spear sticking out of his back. 

Clair's door opened and Arianna nudged her way through it with a tray of food. She had changed into that disgusting old pale pink cotton dress which did not suit her. He knew how it was, the light colour made her feel as if she could just be some silly young girl from Iarve who did not need to trouble her head too much. He thought it was the dress he most hated out of her wardrobe. Not only did this one make her lovely curving figure look odd, it was like a servant's dress and made her appear to be lower in degree and more accessible to flirtation. 

She saw Clair flung like a wounded animal in the tangled spread of bedding on the floor. His long muscular limbs were thrown out at angles, his head turned to her was stiff with fear and his grey eyes were stormy with tears. He looked like Arkyll after a crying fit, except that she could see he had not cried. He had held his grief in his heart, lying there and suffering. 

Her own heart softened with pity for the agony that was so clear in his stormy grey eyes. She tried to harden her heart, sure that he had fallen in love with another woman. If she did not manage skilfully, he would make her leave the region, the castle she had come to think of as home - and his children. 

She walked warily over and set the tray of food down on the floor beside him. As she lifted her head, their eyes met. Their faces were so close, it made her heart rise in her breast. The handsome intelligent eyes staring into her own eyes sent a sparkle of compelling energy fizzing along her veins. Clair's grey eyes were fringed with lashes as long and lovely as Tashka's that she would tease Tashka about, the shape of his eyes was like Tashka's too, and the fine-boned face, but his thin firm mouth was his own. 

Arianna's own mouth pouted for the kiss she wanted. Clair recognised the gesture she did not even realise she was making and frowned in puzzlement. 

She was getting up to go now but reluctantly. He thought of how she had said it was braver to live through the things he had been through and still love those who depended on him than to be a careless officer-aristocrat. He sat up and with a great effort said: "Will you stay a while." 

She went to a chair by his desk and sat in it. He got up, picked up the tray of food and carried it over to put it on the desk and sit in his chair beside her. "Have you eaten?" he asked, breaking the pasty on his plate and putting a piece in his mouth. She nodded her head then leaned her elbow on the table and her head in her hand, staring at the floor. 

"I think," she said, in a cool quiet voice, as if she dreaded what she were about to say herself, "we had better have the truth between us. Wants't me to go, is it not? Has't met someone and wants't me to go back to Iarve. I would be willing to go but not without the children." 

He dropped a piece of pasty on the floor and stared at her, uncomprehending. "What in Hell are you saying!" he hissed savagely. "You stupid cow, what evil dream have you been making up?!" 

Shocked by the way he spoke to her, she lifted her head to his eyes and started to cry again. The big round tears rolled out of her round blue eyes, she shook her head at him, her wide red mouth bunching up to try to say something but she could not. 

He took a deep breath, looked up at the roof above him, held the breath then let it slowly out. "Very well," he said, swinging his slanted grey eyes back round to look into her blue tear-drenched eyes. "Let us have the truth between us. 

"I will let you go back to Iarve if you so wish it and certainly you had best take the children because I will go mad if you leave me, Anna el Jien. For years I have denied your presence in my life, passing you off as merely the mother of my child. But we have worked together all those years, in the castle, with our child, with the region. The people I love have come to love you. I cannot imagine my home without you to fight with," he tried to smile, "or talk to about Ladda's silly quilts. 

"I am ... I do not wish," his voice trailed away, he lifted his stormy eyes up to the roof, the old beams, the beam with the rope hanging down where he and Tashka used to climb up to get to a cache of apples. He bit his lip as hard as he could without breaking the skin and he managed to force the tears back. He took a draught of ale which they had put in a bowl on his tray. 

Arianna wordlessly indicated two packets of letters to the side of his plate. 

"Sweet Hell!" he gasped. He grabbed them and tore them open, without looking at them he threw them angrily into her lap. "Lady Hartha el Farin van P'shan and I," he said through gritted teeth, "have been maintaining a correspondence on a theory of Northern architecture which I have put forward. I imagine her second letter will be to accept our invitation to come hunting in the autumn." 

Arianna went scarlet with shame, her head swung down. She looked at the handwriting on the paper in her lap of an old Lady of the high nobility, who came from a family of famous scholars and had married into a family of notoriously strict morals. 

There was always dashing gossip washing in Lady van P'shan's wake but Arianna knew that although she liked to play at their parties, she was not one of the pink-fingered set. Arianna kneaded the skirt of her dress and crumpled it in her long fingers, not daring to touch the letters which she had so disastrously misunderstood. 

"Are you truly jealous of me?" Clair asked. She lifted her head, looked red-faced into his eyes and tried to shake her head. He gave a tremulous laugh. "I should be flattered, perhaps," he said, breaking another piece of pasty off and starting to eat again. She sat still beside him, mustering her courage. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 13



"Yes," she said at last. His head swung back, those beautiful slanted eyes looked at her with a tiny frown gathering up his brow. "I am jealous. I ... I want to stay. I thought ... I imagined ..." The tears started forcing their way to her eyelids - yet again! what a baby. She heaved a big sigh and did her best to choke them back. "I prithou pardon me," she said, as slowly and carefully as she could. "I have not been kind to you. I was scared I would be made to go and I pushed you too hard, when has't suffered so much and need kindness." 

"Oh, well," he said in an expressionless voice. "We have all suffered." 

"No," she lifted her round blue eyes and her wide red mouth opened and he knew, he could feel it coming - one of those things she said, it would throw him as open to the world, as soft and vulnerable to her, as her own soft red mouth saying the words. "Has't grown up always without a parent's love, was't the survivor of so dreadful a rape and losts't your lover. In front of your own eyes! You two had such a passion each for other and he was killed for your sake, before your own eyes. I should know and should be so much kinder to you because it is dreadful to you to think mays't lose someone: Tashka, even me, since losts't Hanya Vashin in such a terrible way." 

He stared speechless at her, his brain was frozen by what she had just said. After a moment he got up, crossed the room and stood with his back to her. He stuck his hand into his hair, standing staring at the wall, at a picture of red hands rising up the canvas, into a celestial dance of blue and gold stars and moons. 

He swung suddenly back round on her, his face aghast. "How long have you known?" he demanded. 

She frowned in puzzlement. "How long have I known what?" 

"That Hanya and I ... were lovers." 

Now it was her turn to be astonished. "How cans't imagine I would not know?" she asked. "I have always known it. What other reason could there be that Hanyan would call you 'papa'? Of course it is because he is the child of your lover. Since Hanya Vashin was your lover musts't bear a parental responsibility for his child; that is the reason ar't Hanyan's father in duty bound. If were't but a friend - no matter how dear - woulds't be 'Uncle', as Pava and Tashka are, as Flada Clathan is to you." 

He gave a hysterical laugh, hit himself on the arm and bit his lip. He heaved a huge sigh, came back to his chair, pulled it in front of hers and slumped into it, letting his hands fall to hold her arms. 

"Angels!" he said in a hoarse, trembling voice. "I have been so scared all this time that you would learn of it. And you have always known! Why in Hell did you never speak of it?" 

Her face bunched up in a girlish expression of impatience. "Talk to you of the greatest grief in your life!" she repeated scornfully. "Make you suffer by reminding you of that? I have been waiting for you to come and talk to me!" 

He laughed a weird breathy laugh, staring into her eyes. "You have been waiting for me to talk to you about it?" he asked. "You imagine that I would come and talk to my wife about my Captain, my junior officer, with whom I was in an affair for seven years? The man whom I went to on our wedding night, you thought I would come and talk to you about him?" 

She considered this, turning her head about. Her wide red mouth bunched in a sulky pout. "Why not," she said. 

"Arianna!" he cried. "What do you imagine I thought you would feel for it, if you found out that for the first year of our marriage I was living in a love affair with my junior officer!" 

"What do I care if he was your junior officer?" she answered. "I know nothing of that. I know he was more your equal, I realise that." 

"My equal," he repeated. "Well ... I will tell it you. He was the better officer than I. It should have been him who had the Commander's banner for Fourth but because I am van Sietter, they offered it to me. I was going to refuse the banner but Hanya said to me, if he took the banner for Fourth they would find another troop for me and then we would be parted. 

"I was a fool to do it! I should have married him then," the tears rose in his grey eyes. "I should have married him while we were both Captains and equals. Then there could never have been any question of my betrothal to you, perhaps ... they would have let you have Pava." They both knew this would not have been the case, that if she had not been bestowed on Clair, van Sietter would have taken her. "I took the banner and we spent two years working side by side. He made the strategies and I managed the men and the provisions, we were a perfect team," he could not help smiling to remember it, pouting through the tears that had started to roll down his cheeks and into his thin mouth. "The Generals knew we had been both Lieutenants and Captains side by side, equals for the whole of our affair, so they shut their eyes to it." 

Arianna stared intently into his lean face as he spoke. He did not take his eyes from hers. The words poured out of him in a flood, surging free at last since the secret was revealed not to be secret. He had done everything to repress and hide something so precious, so meaningful, that it was an agony to have to treat it as if it were a dishonourable matter of shame. He said much more than he would have thought proper to his own wife. 

"I met Hanya when I was a baby Lieutenant. He had already been commissioned Lieutenant a year or so. He was told off to take me under his eye, the future sworn Lord who could not be offered a Lieutenancy in First because his father did not want him about, reminding him of the way his mother had stained the family's honour. I looked in Hanya's eyes the first moment we met and I was his. I felt my heart and my body melt, I blushed. Hanya looked in my face and laughed, he read my love for him so easily in my blushes. I was his future sworn Lord but he saw it straight that to give him any small pleasure would be my greatest happiness. 

"We were together seven years, we lived and worked and loved side by side every single day from that moment until he ... died." He could not help it, a great sob burst from him as he said it but he did not take his eyes from Arianna's blue eyes. "He died for me!" he sobbed. "I would have given it all for him, but he threw his life away for mine." 

He saw a round tear roll from her eye, she leaned forward and put her arms around his shoulders. He would not hide his face in her embrace, he insisted to continue looking in her face. "You always knew!" he cried. "You knew when you married me that he and I were in an affair." 

"Of course," she answered. "It had not been a secret, I mean before becames't his Commander. Of course every 'friend' came to tell me of it when our betrothal was announced." Her fair tear-stained face screwed up in loathing and scorn, to remember those kind people who had rushed to see if they could get a reaction they might gossip about some more by telling her this prize piece of information. "But what was it for me? Ours was a political marriage, not a love match. We married for the sake of our people, well I did. And what I felt ... what I truly felt," she paused, he continued to look into her eyes with those lovely slanted grey eyes out of which the tears rolled down his cheeks. "Well, since has't told me your secret, I will tell it you," she said. She hesitated, her head swung aside and he watched the blush rise in her fair cheeks. She muttered, "I saw you once, the two of you." 

"Wh-what do you mean, you saw us?" he asked. 

She had taken up her full red lip in between her teeth, she would not look in his eyes. 

She had seen them in the van Sietter family rooms at court, not three days after her wedding. For three days she had been waiting for her husband to come and ... something, surely something. That long-legged beautiful young army Commander with the lovely slanted grey eyes on whom she had been bestowed; he had been absent for three days. There was nobody she could ask what this might mean for her future. 

She came back through a reception room from sitting with some Sietter Dames, embroidering a shirt for him. She pretended she wanted a different colour of thread. She could not bear their sideways glances, the half-smiles on their faces that meant they knew something they thought she did not about her newly married husband. 

The tears clouding her eyes, she walked slowly along the rich pink and gold carpet of the corridor. When she saw the door to her ... their bedroom halfway open she only supposed some servant must be tidying. (Checking the bedlinen for her hymenal blood probably, unless some sneak from the van Iarve household had passed the message on: The Lady Arianna broke her hymen out riding. She is only permitted to ride side-saddle of course but the wild minx would insist on jumping regardless. We said it was too dangerous. She is wilful and needs a firm hand. Because of her mother's behaviours the younger children have been brought up close and we assure you that the first favour Lord Clair collects will be her virgin favour.) 

She paused in the doorway to get the tears out of her eyes and heard his voice saying, "Angels' sake, Han! Sevie is a bloody child in the ways of the world and even younger than Tashka. How could you be so cruel?" 

He was standing by one of the wardrobes, with a green felt jacket in his hands, staring intently at Hanya Vashin who sprawled over her ... their big bed with a sulky expression on his handsome face. Hanya's beautiful blue eyes were like chips of ice staring away from Clair. Clair was in the magnificent maroon silk doublet and hose with the sleeves slashed with gold which he had worn to their wedding. Hanya wore his red felt uniform with the gold-embroidered collar and the thigh-length brown army boots. He looked superb, lounging over her bed with his tunic buttoned tightly up to his collar and his strong lean legs encased in the highly polished brown leather, his fair head cropped at the back and sides and a sneer on his firm mouth. 

"What do you want me to say?" Vashin answered. "I thought she meant more to you than just some kid whose tuition fees you were paying. You spent so much time with her that time we were up here about your betrothal to that other cow. If you were pinning her favours I did not see why I should not sample them." 

"What are you saying!" Clair cried. "How could you imagine ... never once did I stray from our bed and you think I would go with Sevie Inien, who is under my eye because I will be the sworn Lord. I told it you plain myself: I tried to help her because I know el Farin, I know he will not be fair-minded to her. Damned Hell, Han! You have never cared a copper coin's curse for any woman, even as a friend. To lure some kid like Sevie Inien to your bed ..." 

"Give it peace," Hanya interrupted angrily. "I have begged you to pardon me for it over and over..."

"Begged me to pardon you!" Clair exclaimed. "I am not the kid whose virgin favour you have seduced, and now I find she will bear you a baby because you were too idle to step out the room for ten minutes and give an ignorant young woman you took out of jealousy and spite some protection!" 

"Women are disgusting pieces of meat liable to swell at the least provocation," Hanya Vashin said with a delicate yawn like a cat but Clair sprang suddenly on him at that and struck him round the head. Hanya Vashin took the blow without a sound, his head only swinging sideways so that his blue icy gaze briefly crossed Arianna in the doorway. 

She caught up her breath but it appeared he had not seen her because he did not speak up. He continued to lie over her bed with his head turned away both from her in the doorway and from Clair standing like an Angel of Judgement over him. 

"What will you do for her and the child?" Clair was demanding, hovering over him with his hands on his lean hips. It was plainly apparent that he was a commanding officer and Vashin below him both in the ranks of the army and because he would one day be sworn Lord. 

"Angels, my darling, what do you want me to do," Hanya muttered. 

"Your child," Clair said intently. "Your own child in blood - mine too, in duty bound. Oh! what would I not give for a child! Surely you wish for the child to have the Angels' blessing, not to grow up a bastard with the whispers there will be around such an one, even if you care nothing for a young girl you seduced without the least compunction, you bloody pig." 

"I am not the sworn Lord, to need to fret for the succession and have to give my favour naked to some vixen from the high nobility in order to secure it," Hanya drawled. He suddenly ducked his head as if expecting another blow for this. Clair seized him by the gold-embroidered collar of his tunic and twisted him round, saying, "do not speak of her like so. Pava's cousin whom he loves so much! Angels' sake, Han, have I not suffered enough for us? Having to take the woman Pava loves in order to save you from the Generals' noose. They have winked at our affair all these years but van Sietter has said it, he will force them to hang you if I cannot keep her quiet in Sietter." He started to cry, helplessly, with a sob that made his hands shake gripped on Hanya Vashin's collar. "And her, she will suffer enough - the gossip there must have been because they all know I left her on our wedding night alone." 

"And I suppose I have not suffered," Hanya Vashin replied sulkily, "seeing you walk that beauty down the aisle. Because she is a beauty, el Maien, with those big child-bearing hips. You are a fool if you do not pin her favours - since you do care a little for women." 

"Han, Angels' sake," Clair sobbed. 

Hanya's arms stole around his hips and as Arianna watched, she saw Hanya slowly pulling her husband in to his embrace. Clair's lean tanned fingers let go his collar, his arms hung loose as if he were still too angry with Hanya to embrace him in return. Now Hanya was pressing his head hard to Clair's body. Clair was not pushing him away. 

"My heart, my heart's heart," Hanya murmured. "Forgive it me, I beg it of you. You know it, I have never been able to think kindly of women, it is how I am. I am that pattern of the Sietter Knight who only ever cared for one thing in his life. I only care for you. Forgive me, I was so angry. Can you not understand how it was, alone in that hotel with only some wretched kid going on about her studies for company when I thought she was getting your favours and I was not? I was wrong to try to stay in Fourth with you, I should have taken your ring but you said it yourself, you would never be able to ask Tashka to secure the succession. 

"It was Tashka we were thinking of, the baby Lieutenant of our hearts: that bloody little sweetheart whom Stariel pinned for the great military mind that he is, so beloved of the other Angels, they would follow him to Hell. You want him to be the Lord General with the Angels at his back to secure the region, not some disgusting brood-mare forced to take the favours of some younger son of the nobility and secure the van Sietter succession. So we agreed it, to live in the troop together and look about for someone who would be willing to bear you a brat or two. Now you have had one bestowed on you, a famous beauty with a bloody fortune dripping from her fingers, but what of me, what of me? Will you forsake me for her, for the sake of a brat out of her big hips, my own, my lover, my secret heart." 

She saw his fingers clench on Clair's lean shapely buttock. Clair's thigh quivered at what must be a familiar move in their long-standing relations with each other. 

"You are talking nonsense," Clair sobbed. His loose hands came up. He tried to grasp Hanya's shoulders and push him away. 

"I know," Hanya said softly, "but I love you so much. I have never loved as I love you. I behaved badly when I thought I might lose you." His fingers were still insistently kneading at Clair's buttock, his head pressed to Clair's body - to his groin. 

"Stop it," Clair sobbed. "Let me just get some clothes and write her a note and we can go." 

"Oh-h Clair," he murmured. "Prithou. You are so angry with me. I will do what you will but give me a kiss at the least of it. Days without a kiss, my dear! Days without the hope of your sweet favours. I was so lonely the nights in that hotel without you." 

Clair's hands were still trying to get a grip on Hanya's shoulders and push him away. As Hanya's head lifted from his groin, his fingers still flexing on Clair's buttock, Clair seemed to crumple. He almost fell into the kiss. 

Arianna watched in silence a kiss of such absolute passion that it was if the memory of the shy childish pressing of one full el Jien mouth to another shrivelled up in its flaming splendour. She recognised suddenly the affectionate kisses she had allowed Pava to take for the friendly salutes they had been. She had thought that she loved him. She had loved him. But not like this. Not to press her mouth demanding, insistent, desperate on his mouth, to moan in a kiss that was evidently one where tongues were twisted into each other's mouths and yet it was not enough. 

Hanya had hold of Clair's shoulder and his waist now. He was turning Clair in the bed, rolling him round still pressing the kiss insistently into his mouth. He pressed a hand down Clair's hip to grip on his thigh. Clair exclaimed in the kiss, his thigh opening out to Hanya's hand and Arianna saw the swell of his penis in the tight maroon silk hose. She caught her breath up. Her fingers seemed to creep of their own accord together. She wove her fingers in together and pressed them. 

The long legs in the maroon silk hose and the red felt breeches and long brown boots were entangling. There was Hanya's hand on her husband's thigh, gripping the lean muscle of his leg, creeping over towards the swell of his penis. She saw Hanya's fingers press with expert skill on Clair's sex and heard Clair gasp. She saw his head break from the kiss. That head of elegantly cut black curls went back in the bedclothes which had become rumpled from the muscular writhing of the two men's bodies. 

"Han, what in Hell," Clair was muttering in a husky voice so charged with passionate desire that she trembled just to hear him speak. 

"C'mon, my lover, my heart," Hanya was saying. "Give me one favour to tell it me, you do love me true. I know it, I have been so cruel foolish by you. I am a slut by my nature. You have never complained of it but I saw the tears in your eyes. But I would never have risked our love for it, I'll give it the go-by if it is what you ask. Only tell it me, show it me, that it is me you love." There were tears in his voice. 

Arianna bit her lip to hear his voice tremble with tears. She knew a little of her husband's Captain. She realised that there were not often tears in his cold blue eyes. 

"If you ask it of me, I'll marry the wench, for the sake of her child, but give me just the one favour, my dear. I will beg it on my knees! show me that you will forgive me, that you do love me." 

Clair was trying to push him away and get up out of the bed in which he had been supposed to take the virgin favour of an el Jien bride. "Are you mad?" he whispered hoarsely. "Let us go back to the hotel and discuss it," "No!" Hanya moaned, "oh Clair, I beg it of you, on my knees." His fingers were there on Clair's cock, pressing up to his balls which were already pushing out the tight cloth of the hose. Clair put a hand down to his hand but he was already falling back in the bed, his fingers pushing feebly at Hanya's. 

"Ah, you know I cannot resist your tears," he said softly. "You are only using them to trick a favour of me. Yet you know you do not need to trick a favour of me. If you will come back to the hotel and treat poor Sevie half decent you may have one so willingly. What-for do you want my favour here? Because I was supposed to take hers here? You are a fool, Vashin. You know it well that I love you with my whole heart. Will you promise it me, that you will give Sevie Inien the honour of your ring? What is it to you, you will not be able to take mine, you may 's well give Sevie yours." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 13



"Give me your favour, I will do whatever you ask," Hanya said. 

"Come back to the hotel," Clair murmured persuasively. His long lean fingers ran caressingly through Hanya's blond hair cropped short at the back and sides but Hanya's hand came up and seized his tightly, gripping so that the bright new wedding ring flashed on Clair's finger. 

"Give it me here," he said in an intent rough angry voice full of tears that brooked no denial. 

His fingers had gone to the side of Clair's hose to pull at the buttons there, he was dragging at the hose and exposing Clair's cock and balls to Arianna's gaze. She saw Clair's head going back on the bedcovers as Hanya's fingers caressed Clair's sex, lifting the long cock free, pulling the maroon silk from around Clair's buttocks and pulling the hose down. His head came down, he slid to his knees by the bed. He took Clair's cock in his mouth and began sucking on his cock, fingering the round balls nestling in the coils of dark hair around Clair's sex as he did this. 

The virgin bride stood silent in the doorway watching. She watched as Clair's face softened into such beauty of affection and desire that it made her quiver. She heard him gasping and moaning at the skilled manner in which Hanya Vashin sucked on his cock, his thin muscular body in the rippling maroon and gold silk writhing over the bedcovers, his arms flinging out so that her wedding ring flashed again on his finger. 

Vashin was kneeling between Clair's legs, his rangy straight back in the red tunic upright, his hands on Clair's knees to push them apart. He took his mouth slowly from the rigid long shaft of Clair's cock. He slid his tongue up and down it. Arianna watched Clair suddenly rise up in the bed and push Hanya back into it, pull the army boots from Hanya's legs with quick expert ease. Hanya was hurriedly pulling off his breeches and underpants. Clair was pulling a condom from the pocket of Hanya's breeches and putting it on his own hard standing cock, that was so much bigger and longer than Arianna had imagined a man's sex could become. Her stomach clenched. Her own sex, wet and soft in excitement, seemed to quiver at the sight of her husband's long cock. 

She stood with her fingers twisted tightly together, the marriage and betrothal rings on her finger were cutting into the next finger. She watched her husband take his junior officer by the back of the neck and press the kiss to his firm mouth. Clair pushed legs still in only partly stripped down hose and knee-high boots between Vashin's naked legs. She watched them make love in her bed. 

When Clair had finished heaving and moaning in Hanya's arms, the low hard curve of his muscular buttocks rising and falling to thrust down between Hanya's willingly parted legs, Hanya uttering guttural cries which Arianna listened to in a wide-eyed state of yearning; when Clair was lying still with his head pressed into Hanya's neck, Hanya Vashin lifted his head round Clair's shoulder and looked straight into her eyes from a face suddenly flushed and soft with satisfied passion but his beautiful blue eyes were as icy as the snow-covered back hills of Sietter in mid-winter. 

She knew then that she would never have her husband's favours unless his lover gave his consent. Vashin was a brilliant cold clear thinker of military strategy. He had astutely described her to her husband in her hearing as a beauty who might be able to seduce Clair. She was herself a high intelligence and she realised that in doing this Vashin was telling her that her physical charm and fertility counted for nothing if pitted against the passionate embodied partnership which the two young men had shared for years. 

But what she felt was that they were so beautiful, that their passion was so fierce and gorgeous and flaming bright, that she was nothing beside the love they had each for the other. Hanya Vashin thought she was a beauty. She could bear a child for Clair, who needed one to secure the succession - but beyond that, he was someone who loved children and wished for a family of his own. 

Vashin was not a family man, he was scared she might steal Clair el Maien from his arms but when she looked at him lying holding Clair el Maien so close after persuading such a fierce favour out of Clair el Maien's body, she felt she was dull and dreary, so bookish and virginal. She could not believe Hanya Vashin was jealous of her. When he looked into her eyes, to say, I knew you were there all along, I only did it to show you, she lifted her proud head and looked straight back at him with her own blue eyes clear and unveiled and his fell and she stepped back and left them to it. 

Vashin was a clever military strategist. He had always known that Clair would have to secure the succession within the honourable hoop of a marriage ring. He had refused to marry Clair himself partly for this reason, out of his love for Tashka and his and Clair's wish to spare her bearing children when her heart was set on a military career. 

Arianna's was a mathematical brain. If there was a problem then a solution must be forged in the heat of her thinking. She thought that in time she would be able to put a reasonable proposal to a clever man like Vashin. She was clever too so she did not admit to herself that part of her motivation in considering this arrangement was because she longed for the passion she had seen the two men share and was even willing to be a complaisant Lady and not a wife if she could be close to such a hot fierce pair of handsome young male lovers, close in their grateful affection if not in physical passion. If she had admitted this she would have been too intelligent not to realise what a fool's game that would be to play. 

There were other reasons she would enter into such an agreement. It would mean she had a secure future. The mother of the future van Sietter would be well-placed and might be able to ask for freedom to do all kinds of things she preferred, rather than things which were thought proper Lady-like behaviours. 

She walked away without the coloured thread she had gone to look for and said to the Sietter Dames in her new marital family's sitting-room, "stitching is boring. I am going to the King's University library. You need not accompany me." 

To van Sietter she said, "they gossip so much. I hope wills't not be sending a contingent of Dames with me to Castle Sietter. My husband has asked me to go there and await his return from war. I had rather be alone there than with a gaggle of such gossips." 

Her father by marriage gave an amused laugh. He indulged her willingly since she appeared to be so complaisant a wench - and as she had guessed, after what he had been through with his own Lady wife he was morbidly anxious about gossip. He was not quite so amused when she obstinately refused to sign over the large income from her marriage settlement lands to his management. 

She returned to the familiar quiet life she had always loved among books and scrolls. She said to herself how content she was to live outwith the turbulence of passion in which happiness could be as much at risk as were her husband's and his lover's hearts. 

She finished the embroidered shirt. She sent it to her husband's lover, to try to say, we can quietly come to a reasonable agreement. She pretended it was not for his beauty lapped in the soft silk stitched by her fingers, for her husband's thin fingers taking it from his lover's hard-muscled rangy lean body. 

She knew Hanya Vashin must have died before receiving the shirt. It must have gone wrapped in the undelivered parcel, with other gear that Tashka chucked in with the dead when she loaded the Fourth Sietter carts with the wounded and took back to the Generals what remained of the troop after Vashin's victory which had cost them so dreadfully dear. 

Turning from this memory of passionate love-making which she had privately enjoyed for so long, Arianna lifted her flushed tear-stained face back up to look directly into her husband's slanted grey eyes. "Hads't been with Vashin years living together," was all she said. "I would have been a fool to imagine that could be set aside like an old story-book that no longer excited your heart. I was glad at the least of it that I did not have to take van Sietter into my bed." 

They sat still together, his hands on her arms, his eyes looking into her face. Arianna's eyes had fallen, she had let her hands fall into her lap beside the two packets of innocent paper that seemed to belong to another world. 

She understood now why Tashka and the castle servants had always turned the subject when Hanya Vashin's name came up, why Sevianne Inien had been told not to talk to Clair's Lady wife about the problems she faced because she had borne the son of the future sworn Lord's lover. van Sietter had threatened them, fearing that if she were to discover Clair's dishonourable affair she would break the marriage on terms disadvantageous to him. They had all tried to protect Clair by keeping this semi-secret from her that she had always known but was too polite to try to ask about in more detail. Too perfect a Lady, as ever, so they had imagined she would be shocked if they told her the truth about why Clair felt a parental love for Hanyan. 

Arianna lifted her head, Clair lifted his eyes to meet hers, "and so ... since was't so in love with Hanya, why dids't lie with me, after ... after losts't him?" her voice was flat and quiet but Clair knew she was waiting for the wound which his answer would inevitably deal her. 

"You came to me," he reminded her. "I was mad, whatever. You would come and lie beside me so I took you. What did I care, I had lost Hanya forever," his voice crumpled into tears again. "There was the succession to think of and there you were. He took Sevianne so why would I not take you. I was so angry with him for dying! I tried to revenge myself on him through you. But, Anna, I am not only man-lover, like Hanya was, it is the same to me if my lover is a man or a woman and you ... Well, you were there, I was lonely and seeking any means to forget what I was suffering. I fell into your arms and one night I nearly kissed you. A kiss would have been a betrayal of Hanya far beyond a favour. 

"Oh my dear. We quarrelled so much! I was so angry and bitter grieving but sometimes when you fought with me, it made me laugh. Do you remember how you came with that Namoon School painting for me, mid-winter Angels' day, after we had that fight about where to hang Hyaline's bloody Harvest Coming Home, and I was dreadful to you because ... I liked the painting so much. I could not bear it that you knew what-all to give me. You slung the box of jewels they got for me to give you to the side, I can see your face now - so red with fury that your blue eyes shone bright out of it. I had to look aside to hide the laugh I was making. After losing Hanya, I could not bear to care in such a way for anyone!" 

His voice went momentarily high then he murmured, "I went to court to try to forget Hanya, to forget how to love. I took any company that offered itself of a night so I would not have to sleep alone. There were a lot of offers, women and men. I did not care what people took from me, my favours or my jewels, so I did not have to be alone the nights and remember ... Oh, Angels! Hanya, oh, Hanya, you are gone!" His whole frame suddenly shook with a passionate fit of sobs, he fell to his knees, his head came down into Arianna's lap, his hands pushing the two packets of letters away, his arms wrapped about her waist. 

She let her hands fall on his shoulders, began to stroke his head. She ran the locks of his elegantly cut hair through her fingers and patted his shoulders which shook with tears. He pressed hard into her lap, shaking with grief. 

She did not think about the love-making she had been lured into spying on between her beautiful husband and his handsome Captain so many years before, which she had always treasured in her heart as her ideal of passionate love, nor about the mad mean-spirited way he had taken her offered love and they had made a child, nor about how afterwards he rode away and indulged in a string of silly one-day-one-nights to break her heart. Her face was soft with pity for him. She said to herself: 'Well, he is my husband. I may hold my husband and have his tears, is it not. His kisses are any silly creature's but his troubles and his tears are mine.'



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 14



Thank you for the great recent feedback. Critical feedback on both positives and negatives in my writing is always welcome :heart: 

*****

"I met your future brother by marriage, Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter, early this Summer," Captain-Lord Stevan el T'fel van P'shan remarked, looking down at his cards with cool slanted black eyes. "Pair of hounds." He laid down two picture cards. 

"Is he as lovely as they say?" drawled Captain-Sir Diodr Shanne, one of Stevan's fellow officers from First P'shan, in lazy tones. His green eyes flicked up from his hand of cards to Vadya's startled face. "Marriage." 

el T'fel frowned. "He has an interesting new theory on Northern architecture," he said repressively. "He is a great friend of my grandmother's, that is, my grandmother in duty bound. She will be visiting Lord Clair and his Lady wife for the hunting." He laid emphasis on the words, his Lady wife. 

"Have you heard lately from our grandmother?" Vadya said quickly, seeing Tashka's eyes glowering narrowly at Shanne. "I mean, our grandmother in duty bound. Pass." He kicked Tashka under the table and she looked away from Shanne. 

"You have heard from her more recently than I, I think," el T'fel replied, still in his repressive tone of voice. He was private about family in the el T'fel way but Vadya knew that all the el T'fels dearly loved old Lady el Farin. 

"Royal marriage," Tashka said. Shanne's eyes hardened as she laid the higher pair on top of his own marriage cards. "I met Lady van P'shan at court once." 

Behind them, Madam Stanies was presiding over morning tea while young officers and Dames chattered, played games and flirted all around her. She called Pava away from the cosy fireside sofa where he was dallying too intimately with one young Dame and made him sit by her side and tell her funny stories. 

It was pouring with rain. They had had to call off the deer hunt they had been planning for the day and were messing about in the sitting-room instead. Everyone was a bit too bright and the atmosphere was close, as if there was a lid pressing down on their bubbling young energy. 

"I hear," Captain-Sir Shanne remarked, putting three castles on the table, "that Clair el Maien threw 's glove in el Parva's face for the sake of a poem el Parva wrote to his Lady wife. Do you not wonder if there was just a poem in it?" 

Tashka's head shot back round to him. 

"Shut it," Vadya said fiercely and hurriedly added, "her brother is there." 

"He seems quite occupied," Captain-Sir Shanne said, surveying Hanya el Jien, who had come to the party with Pava and was sitting with Mada el Vaie, Hanya el Farin and Flava Trait, arguing about strategic manoeuvres. 

"I am to marry el Maien's sister," Vadya said and blushed as Tashka nudged him under the table. 

"Shanne," el T'fel's cold voice said, in warning. 

The blond young Captain looked at Vadya's blushing face with an ironic sneer. Tashka, he noticed, was looking away from Vadya with a bright sparkle of laughter in her slanted blue eyes. 

"el Parva's poem was ridiculous," Tashka said in a careless tone of voice, leaning back to the card table. "A lot of horse manure about how lovely it is to be in an home well-kept by a beautiful woman. Clair ... el Maien did mark his face for him but it was not for Lady el Jien's honour - I ask it of you, it is well known that she is as pure as the streams that come down from the snowfields of the H'velst mountains in spring into the River Arven." 

"Since you know so much about it," Shanne said lazily, "what-for did el Maien give el Parva the glove then." 

"el Maien was insulted because el Parva attributed his castle's cleanliness to Lady el Jien," Tashka replied. "He is the one who manages the castle and he felt slighted because the poem was not addressed to him." They all burst out laughing at her ridiculous story. 

They played another round and Tashka said, "did you meet Clair ... Commander-Lord el Maien at court or at Castle Sietter? Did you meet Lady el Jien as well?" 

"I regret," el T'fel remarked, "it was at court. I have long wanted to meet Lady el Jien. The scientist B'dar has spoken to me of her work." 

"B'dar?" Tashka said curiously. "Is he interested in working with the merchants?" 

el T'fel's dark-haired head lifted and he directed a haughty glare at Tashka. "What would B'dar have to say to merchants?" he said scornfully. "He has spoken to me of Lady el Jien's mathematical theorem." 

"Ah," Tashka said, suppressing a smile of enlightenment. "Of course. Lady el Jien's mathematical theorem." 

"On any road," el T'fel said. "I met Commander-Lord el Maien at court." 

"At court with his many affairs ... of business," Captain-Sir Shanne joked, playing a royal family and winning the game with a satisfied air. 

"Shut it about my brother!" Tashka snarled, slamming her hands on the cards. She and Shanne looked narrowly, angrily into each other's eyes. 

'I must break this game up,' Vadya thought. 

"You are Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter!" el T'fel exclaimed, his whole face lit up with a rare expression of pleasure. "It is you who helped our grandmother, that time in the tavern, er, that is to say, one time." 

"In a tavern?" Vadya said, puzzled. "What was our grandmother doing in a tavern?" 

"Yes, of course that is who I am," Tashka's eyes were still fixed on Shanne's green eyes, "and anyone who wishes to say any thing of my brother or my sister by marriage may have my glove for it! Deal the cards, Shanne." She lifted her hands from the pile of cards. 

"Um, perhaps we could," Vadya started to say. 

"And what about your sister?" enquired Shanne, drawing the cards towards him. 

"What are you talking about, my sister?" Tashka demanded. 

"I think the rain has stopped," Vadya lied, starting to stand up from the table. 

"What if we say any thing of your sister," Captain-Sir Shanne answered, "or say any thing to her of yourself and her betrothed - your senior officer." 

Vadya saw Tashka's eyes snap the unreasonable side of rage. He started to lean over but she had leapt up and snapped her glove into Captain-Sir Shanne's face before he could grab her arm. 

She was already seated again. Her bowl of tea had gone over in a flood across the polished wood of the card-table, it soaked into the pile of cards. Captain-Sir Shanne's head had snapped back at the slap of the glove. Now he was sitting still, one hand to his cheek, grinning at Tashka in the most horrible satisfied way. Stevan el T'fel was frozen still, staring at Tashka with wide slanted dark eyes. 

Behind them the chatter went on. No one had noticed Tashka's swift movement except Hanya el Jien, Mada el Vaie, Hanya el Farin and Flava Trait, who hurried over, effectively blocking off the card-table in the corner of the sitting-room from the rest of the crowd. 

"Tashka!" Vadya's cry was hoarse with anguish. 

"He called your honour into question too!" she said. Her eyes were bright and her breath coming quick and furious. 

"Shanne!" el T'fel snapped, suddenly jerking his head round. "That was a disgusting insult you offered my cousin! Apologise!" 

The blond Captain continued to rub at his cheek, Vadya could see the pulse beating in his temple through his fine blond hair. "No," he said in a cold and strangely pleased voice. 

'Holy Hell, sweet Angels!' Vadya thought in despair. 'They have been at each other all week! over the stupidest things. Angels of light, how has it come to this? This is just a small hunting party, oh why did not Tashka and I come here alone, why did Stevan have to bring this man!' 

"The armoury, then," Tashka said in a light voice. 

"Maien," Vadya said sternly, pulling himself together and taking hold of her arm (too late!), "a word in the hall. el Jien, el Farin, el Vaie, Trait, come with us. Pava!" 

Pava looked up from the sofa, where he was lounging by Madam Stanies, and excused himself in idle laughing tones but when he came up to them he said: "What is it?" in an anxious hiss. 

"Tashka has thrown 's glove in Shanne's face," Vadya said, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice. "Shanne accused us of an affair. Pava, go get him to apologise! For the sake of the Angels, that man is a killer, he is always crossing swords with whoever at court." 

"Yes, I know him," Pava said in a slow voice. "I will try, Vadya, but ... I do not think he will pass up the chance to fight Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter." He looked into Vadya's wide brown eyes, Vadya looked aside. 

Vadya walked into the hall and pulled the door to behind him. Tashka was standing there with her head flung up and a frown on her face. Vadya looked at her tall lean strong body and at the graceful tilt of her proud head and could not bear it. She looked like the perfect young officer but he knew now with the intimate intelligence of his hands that she had the perfect curved body of a woman. He wished desperately that he had not been so rule-bound as to miss collecting the favours he could have had from her. So often as they stole a kiss, he lay panting in her arms and saw her eyes crease up in question and he had put up his hand and said, No. Only for the sake of her honour! but he longed now to have the memory of sinking his cock deep into her cunt, moving on her in passion and feeling her body rise to his in that ultimate fulfilment of intimate love. 

Too late. He could not risk throwing the balance of her fighting mind by pressing a hurried favour out of her just before she went into the duel. 

Hanya el Jien, Hanya el Farin, Mada and Flava had collected in a muttering knot further down the hall. 

"Take it back," Vadya said softly. "I cannot risk the losing you! For my sake, take it back." 

Tashka tipped her head down and looked at him. She had not even heard what he said. Her eyes were full of a pale intense joy and there was a queer pleased twist to her mouth. Her fingers were resting lightly in the elaborate handguard of her rapier. She had fought her first duel when she was fifteen years old, she had never backed out of a duel. 

"Listen!" he said, flicking the side of her head to make her do so. "He is the best in the H'velst Mountains, he has killed so many times at court. Take it back, for me, for my sake, take it back!" 

"el Jien!" she called out, catching Vadya's hand to stop him flicking her head. "Will you stand my second since el Gaiel's honour is also in question so he cannot." 

"Gladly!" Hanya el Jien limped over to them, his eagerness to support Tashka evident in his blond scarred face. (Wardogs had torn his cheek open and shredded his leg years before when he had only just started training as a Lieutenant with First Iarve.) 

Vadya looked into his fierce blue eyes in the mauled face and could have hit him. "Shut it, el Jien!" he hissed in a terrified whine. "Tashka, hear me! He is not an easy fight and with you and him it will be to the death, neither of you will cry on the Angel of Mercy ..." 

"el Gaiel, I know it," she said irritably, turning her gleaming slanted blue eye on him. "I know it better than you do. You cannot stop me so at the least do not scare me! I will not back down. He questioned my honour and yours and I hate him. Get away if you can only stand there frightening me." 

"He questioned our honour!" Vadya repeated in an agony. "What did he say? He accused us of an affair. It is the truth! I love you, although you are my Captain and junior officer. I will avow it to anyone, I will say it with pride, I will shout it if I may." 

Tashka flicked a nervous glance at the three Lieutenants down the hall but even in his fear of losing her Vadya had not lost control so much that he shouted it to them. 

"That is not the point," Hanya el Jien said patiently. "The point is that he and Tashka hate each other. If he had not found your love to accuse you of, Tashka would have found something to say about his lover, only he is such a piece of slime he cannot get one." 

"What, are you ashamed of our love, too ashamed to stand and say to Shanne, it is the truth, I love my Commander, he is my betrothed?" Vadya demanded of Tashka. 

She swung an amused blue eye on him. In her blue eye danced all the fun and mischief and daring courage that was Tashka. "I will tell it to any fool who asks me," she answered, "and then I will cut him apart for having the indecency to ask. Who I give my heart, or my body," she added thoughtfully, "to, is my business. It is not something for a piece of scum to gossip about. Besides, he tried to insult my sister." 

"What sister?" Hanya said, the rough furrows of his scarred face folding up in a puzzled frown. 

"Come with me," Vadya said in a choked voice. He drew her into the study opposite the sitting-room. Now it was full of books Tashka had chosen, books he had started to look at and enjoy or fail to understand but he knew Tashka would explain them as easily as she explained the reasons why she thought they should move a campsite that was too near a potentially hazardous wood. 

He did not try to persuade her out of the duel any more. He knew she was going through with it and he did not want to do any thing that might affect her concentration. He pulled her close to him and she gave him fierce hard sexless kisses, already tensed up for the duel in his arms. He had got into the habit of pressing his hips into her legs when they were embracing but he felt no impulse to do so now. His penis was lying small and unroused. 

In the past he had been excited by the prospect of seeing Tashka fight even while anxious about his beloved officer and friend but now he was terrified. He drew away and looked at her lean tanned face, blazing with pride and anger and with hard cold predatory joy. He felt the tears flood his eyes. 

"Go," he muttered. "Go before I unsettle you!" 

She leaned over and put her hand around the back of his neck. Her blue eyes looked gravely into his brown eyes swimming with tears. 

"I love you, Vadya," she said, the corner of her mouth lifted in a teasing smile. "Maybe next year when we are married we can come back here alone and I will make a child with you? What say you?" 

He could not say anything. He bent his head down and tried hard, hard not to cry. They had never spoken about it but she knew how much he wanted children and she was saying that although the idea of carrying a child disgusted her, she would go through it for him. 

But before that, he was going to have to go through watching her put her life in the hazard. 

"I'll do it," she said, as if trying to convince him. "Hear me, I have said it. You may hold me to my word. Let us go." 

As they came out of the study, Diodr Shanne, Stevan el T'fel, Pava and the other First P'shan Captain who had come with Stevan came out of the sitting-room. Pava shook his head at Vadya, his face was pale but set. Shanne and the other Captain walked past without looking at them but Stevan came up to Vadya and took hold of his arm, looking deep into his eyes. 

"Cousin, I swear," he said in an intense voice, "an' he kill Tashka, I will have him thrown out the troop. I'll go to the Generals myself and make the case." The cold el T'fel mask had slipped to reveal his affection for Tashka, his slanted eyes were wide. His lip quivered as he made the offer, to abuse his aristocratic influence and get his brother officer slung out even though he had behaved within the bounds of honour. "T-Tashka is my second cousin," he said in excuse. Vadya only felt more nauseous at this ridiculous manifestation of the twisted Northern code of honour. The el T'fels and Tashka's maternal family the el F'laras were on the brink of war, never mind the el F'laras' efforts to assassinate Tashka, but Stevan raised his dark eyes to Vadya and looked intently into Vadya's face, adding, "whatever there is between you and Tashka." 

Vadya looked back into his pale face in silence, unable to return the pressure of his cousin's sword hand. 'What do I care?' he thought desolately as they went down the long corridor to the armoury. 'What use will any thing be, if I lose my Captain, my heart, my life.' 

The armoury was cold and Vadya called for a servant to light the fires at either end of the huge wooden-floored space. Diodr Shanne and Tashka went to the weapons rack on the wall opposite the door and looked closely at the sets of rapiers and daggers, they tried them out and Vadya even saw them exchange a couple of words about the weaponry as if they were comrades in a piece of work together not deadly enemies about to kill each other. Their heads bent together over a rapier Tashka was holding, one blond, one dark-haired, lifted and they looked into each other's eyes. There was a pause then Tashka gave a wide wolfish grin. She had almost tricked Shanne into thinking she would show him what weapon she was about to use. 

She strolled lazily across to Mada and asked him to fetch a particular pair of weapons from her room. Diodr Shanne drew the rapier he was wearing in his belt and tested the spring of the steel blade, watching Tashka's back in amused admiration of the way she had nearly taken him in. 

The rain was beating on the unplastered roof arching above them with a hard drumming sound and when Mada came back, his face was running with tears and his chest heaving with sobs. Vadya met him at the door and took the weapons from him, saying: 

"Get out of it, el Vaie!" in a fierce whisper. 

"But sir ...!" Mada pleaded, trying to get by him, his soft wet brown face raised to his Commander. 

"No," Vadya insisted. "You'll not upset the Captain with your tears." He turned round and jerked his head at Hanya el Farin who came walking rapidly over to them. "Angels' sake, take el Vaie to the study to sit it out." el Farin's dark face with the high cheek bones twitched but he took Mada's arm with a reasonable degree of sympathy in his eyes and pulled his fellow Lieutenant out of the armoury with him. 

"Here, el Maien," Vadya said stiffly, going to Tashka and holding her weapons out to her. Tashka, who was stripping off her blue woollen doublet, looked up and smiled at him without really seeing him. She had already taken off her belt with the weapons she had been wearing and laid them on a table. She took hold of the sword and dagger she had chosen for the duel from Vadya and drew them from the sheaths, sprang a few steps across the room and stood with them loose in her hands. She looked like a painting by Stianne, the subject of a poem by V'lava. She looked like an Angel, standing lost in thought with the cold clear rainy light falling about her. 

She shook her close-cropped dark-haired head and turned around, her quick blue eyes narrowed. She looked at Vadya then back at Shanne to make sure he was watching her. She turned round and blew Vadya a kiss and grinned at him. Shanne raised his eyebrows but she did not trouble herself over him again. 

Vadya bit his lip to force back his tears and crossed to where Pava was sitting with his arms folded and Tashka's woollen doublet lying on his knee. Pava looked up, his green eyes expressionless. 

"Do sit down, sweetness," he said in a careless tone of voice but he put a strong hand on Vadya's arm and gripped it so hard that Vadya sat up and opened his eyes wide and dry. 

"We do not have a neutral to start us," Captain-Sir Shanne's cool collected tones drifted over to them. 

"I will accept Captain-Lord el T'fel," Tashka replied. "You cannot wriggle out of it now, Shanne." 

Her opponent gave a lazy grin at this insult and, as if some signal had been given, they crossed to the middle of the floor and raised their swords. Stevan el T'fel walked reluctantly up to them. He looked pleadingly into each of their faces. They both looked impatiently back at him. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 14



He raised his sword and they crossed their own swords over it. 

"Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter of Sixth H'las," he said. "Do you wish to step down?" 

"No thanks," Tashka said in a sleepy dangerous voice, half-closing her glittering blue eyes. 

"Captain-Sir Diodr Shanne of First P'shan, do you wish to step down?" 

"No," he replied. 

"Stand," Stevan said. "Hold. Go," and he leapt quickly out of their way. 

Shanne sprang back as he said it but Tashka sprang forward and her rapier flicked at his arm. 

"First blood," Hanya murmured as they looked at Shanne's torn right sleeve and the queer sudden splash of red on the white cloth. 

Shanne's eyes showed a flicker of pain and anger as he jumped back again then narrowed back to cool green slits. He felt his way cautiously forward. Tashka waited for him, moving steadily from foot to foot, one arm out, seeming to invite an attack to her left side. Shanne sprang, she stepped aside, he whipped round as she did so, their rapiers flashed and clashed on their daggers. 

The door opened and the voice of one of the Dames said: "What are you doing? Come and play ..." before Flava hustled her out but the two duellers never paid the slightest attention. 

They were pressed close to each other now, staring into each others' eyes, dagger against rapier. They were pushing to catch each other off balance then Shanne gave an odd twist and Tashka started to fall! Vadya and Pava leapt up! but she had turned the fall into a step that tripped Shanne up. He was the one who fell and his rapier rolled clattering away on the floor. 

Tashka pointed her rapier at the ground, letting him get up and fetch his weapon. 

"Damn your courtesy!" Vadya whispered fiercely. "Kill him, fool! He would not do the same for you." 

"Angels," Shanne said, smiling as he turned around. "You are even better than I had heard, el Maien." 

It was only when his voice fell out in the huge space around them that they realised how quiet they were all being. 

Tashka gave a curt nod, raising her sword and crouching her back to give herself a longer reach. Shanne strolled towards her, his walk became fighting steps as he got nearer and then they had engaged again in flashing lightning strokes of rapier-work. Shanne was forcing Tashka back, his rapier whipping and stabbing at her. She came back slowly; crouching, striking with a flurry of defensive moves, then suddenly she sprang forward and then back again, twisting to avoid Shanne's rapier. They stood and stared at each other. 

Shanne's eyes opened wide and his dagger fell with a clatter to the floor. A queer uncertain look of dread appeared on his face. He sank slowly to his knees, letting his rapier roll away from him, he moved as if he could not stay upright but did not dare to fall. His second ran to support him. His face softened out and a trickle of blood suddenly ran down his chin from the corner of his mouth. 

Tashka straightened up with a sigh and let her rapier hang the bloodied tip down, her face tilted up to stare at the roof. Suddenly Vadya could hear the rain drumming on the roof again, he ran forward to gently take her arm. 

Tashka looked down, her face was blank. Her features twitched and she flung her weapons down with a crash. 

"Holy bloody Angels," she said in a flat even voice. She walked over to kneel by Diodr Shanne. 

She took his restless hands, listened to the breath sucking in his throat. He had been too good for her to kill cleanly; she had been obliged to stab him through the lung and not the heart. Diodr Shanne managed a horrible smile at her. The blood was dripping down from his chin to join a red patch spreading over his chest. She took the cuff of her shirt sleeve in her hand and wiped his mouth for him, he was clinging to her wrists as she did it, he pulled on them. She leant close to him, he gurgled something to her then his head fell back on his fellow Captain's arm, he began choking and coughing horrible gouts of blood from his mouth. 

Vadya went over and grabbed Tashka by the arms and jerked her to her feet. He started dragging her out of the room. She was pulling feebly against him, starting to stutter out some words in such a chaotic jumble that he did not know what she was saying. He dragged her past Flava, past the Dame who had tried to come into the armoury, who took one look at them and fled back to the sitting-room. Pava and Stevan came running after him, he dragged Tashka into the dining-room and shoved her into a chair by the fire. 

"Brandy, brandy!" he said fiercely to Pava and when Pava pushed the bottle into his hand, he pulled at Tashka's chin and slopped it straight into her mouth. 

She took a helpless gulp, her eyes still glassy and her hands pulling feebly at his, then coughed and spluttered, pushed his hand away so that the brandy spilt over her shirt. She started to shiver and to make a horrible keening noise. Pava knelt down to wrap her doublet about her and put his arms around her, she pressed her head into his shoulder and continued to make that awful grieving noise, muffled by Pava's shoulder. 

"Someone better go and tell them what happened," Vadya said. 

"I will go," Stevan answered. "We need not say who killed him, yet, need we?" 

"Laienne Piria saw us come out of the armoury," Vadya answered. "Get some blankets, will you?" 

Stevan let Hanya el Jien limp in as he went. Hanya was pale but his face was still fierce and he looked glad. 

"Get away!" Tashka gave Pava a sudden shove. "Give me a drink!" Vadya grabbed a bowl and sloshed brandy into it, flooding it over the sides. She was drinking it before the bowl was out of his hands, it went straight down and she held the bowl out to him again, hardly able to breathe against the fierce spirits burning down her throat. Then she dropped the bowl, the brandy he was pouring went in a flood over her knees, she clutched at her head and said: "No! Sweet Angels! What have I done?" 

"Shut it!" Vadya snapped, stooping to pick up her bowl and shove it back into her barely controlled hands. "Get this down you. Captain Maien, drain that bowl!" 

She gulped at it and coughed, he caught hold of her chair and dragged it nearer to the fire. Pava followed, putting out a questioning hand to Tashka, she did not thrust it away so he laid it gently on her arm. She jerked her arm without looking at him and he stepped back, picked up another chair and came to sit near her, not trying to touch her. Hanya was limping over but Vadya said: "Look to the door, el Jien. Let no one in but Stevan," and he went back. 

Stevan came in with his arms full of blankets. Behind him was a hubbub of cries and exclamations. Vadya handed the brandy bottle to Pava. 

"I will just go and tell them not to put lunch in here," he said in a firm loud voice. Tashka looked quickly at him and quickly away. Stevan and Pava started to wrap her trembling tall lean body in the blankets. Vadya went out into the corridor. 

"We will all stay here!" he heard Madam Stanies' authoritative voice saying as she shut the sitting-room door. 

They were carrying Diodr Shanne's body down the corridor, wrapped in a cotton sheet: Hanya el Farin, a pallid-faced Mada el Vaie and two Lieutenants Stevan had brought with him. Stevan's other fellow Captain was carrying Shanne's weapons behind them, he looked up into Vadya's face, his eyes were rolling with tears. He stopped, put out a hand and gripped Vadya's arm, shook his head and walked on. Vadya slipped down the corridor to the back door and met the housekeeper, Madam Jeraie, running across the courtyard through the rain with her skirts kilted up around her ankles and her husband - Tashka's former trooper Revel, hitching himself along on his crutches after her. 

"Listen!" Vadya said urgently. "Lord Tashka has killed Captain-Sir Shanne in a duel. I do not ever want to hear anyone talk of it, not now nor at any future time - is that clear? Lord Tashka must never hear his name again. We have got Lord Tashka in the dining-room, can you put lunch elsewhere?" 

"I will arrange for lunch to be served in the sitting-room," she said in a determined voice which trembled just a little. She turned back to the kitchens. 

Revel said, "I will send someone to clean the armoury, sir." Vadya nodded miserably at him. 

They were carrying Shanne up to his room, an awkward white bundle that was all that was left now of the dashing young officer with the insolent green eyes. An image flashed in Vadya's mind of the pulse beating in Shanne's temple and he winced. 

'Shut it,' he said to himself. 'It could have been Tashka.' 

She was still shivering in her bundle of blankets when he got back, one scarred hand sticking out of the folds of wool with the bowl of brandy in it. The cuff of her sleeve was filthy with blackening blood. She turned her head and stared at him as he came in, her blue eyes were desperate in her lean face. She made a movement with her head. Outside the rain fell insistently. 

"... and remember that time Dar and you took all the pegs from Hanya's guy ropes?" Pava was saying in an even gentle voice. "And Clair caught you at it and made the pair of you wash up the whole troop's dishes for three days in a row." 

Vadya squatted down beside her, confronting the naked terror in her eyes with a calm sweet look on his face. "What did he say to you?" he asked. 

Tashka's eyes rolled, she looked blank for a second then her face screwed up. She made a convulsive movement with her hand and more brandy spilt over her blankets. She looked back at Vadya. 

"What did he say?" Vadya repeated. 

"H-h-h-he-e! Damn!" she cried then fetched a deep breath and said: "He blessed me!" 

"There," he said gently. "He forgave you. Drink down that bowl." 

"It is empty!" she shouted at him, glaring into his face. Pava leant over and she watched him pour more brandy into her bowl, a sullen look coming over her face. "I want no more!" she declared. 

"Captain-Lord el Maien, you will drink down that bowl," Vadya said in a voice of steel. "I have thought." 

"Y-y-y," she took a gulp at it, rolled her head restlessly on her shoulders, took another gulp. Her blue eyes creased at the corners, stared into his eyes. She made a noise and a jerky movement, as if she could feel Shanne's death scratching on her nerves. She gulped at the brandy again. 

When the bowl fell out of her hand and broke in the fireplace, when her head nodded on her slender neck and then fell onto her chest and she slid down in her chair, he bent and scooped her over his shoulder, carried her and a fresh bottle of brandy up to her room. 

She was in the roof, at one end of the 'L' of the red brick farmhouse, in his old play-room: a bare place. There were just a couple of old armchairs and her folding leather chair by the fireplace and her weapons-rack, box-desk and clothes-rail. She had spread out her trooper's bedding on the floor. He laid her body down softly in it, her limbs sprawled unconscious across the bedding. Vadya unbuttoned her shirt and pulled the bloodied garment stinking with brandy off her. Brandy had soaked into her bodice too. He looked up at Pava who had come into the room behind him, took his lip between his teeth and gently unhooked the plain white bodice. He lifted her heavy body about, pulling her arms through the armholes of the bodice and keeping his eyes off her breasts as much as he could. He fetched a cloth from a washing bowl of water in the corner and wiped her body clean of the brandy then went to her clothes-rail and found a clean shirt which he carefully dressed her in, lifting her heavy torso and pulling her limbs gently into the sleeves, buttoning it up with just her collar button undone. He was unsure if she slept in her bodice. Surely not, he thought. He was too embarrassed to ask Pava who sat quietly in an armchair by the fireplace with his head turned courteously away from Vadya clumsily dressing Tashka's pale muscular body. He knelt by her side, watching the breath rise and fall in her chest as if each breath were the most precious thing he owned. 

He woke up the following morning feeling stiff and dirty. He was still in his clothes, in a bundle of trooper's bedding, on the floor of his old play-room. He sat hurriedly up as he remembered why and saw Pava's big blond frame sprawled asleep in an armchair by the fire. Beside him, Tashka's roll of bedding was empty. He looked desperately around him and she turned her head then turned it back without really looking at him. 

She was standing in the big window at the end of the room, a black felt doublet hanging off one finger over her shoulder. Beyond her tall lean body in the white cotton shirt, the newly risen sun shone through the rain-splashed glass of the window. Vadya got stiffly out of his bedding, scratching at his back, and went over to her. 

"Do not!" she said fiercely as he put out a gentle hand to caress her cheek. "Prithou, Vadya, touch me not and do not try to kiss me," she said. 

"No," he said quietly. He sat down in the wooden window-seat, his head turned towards the view of the long terraced lawn and the weed-straggled flower-beds, drenched with rain, running down to the forest in the distance. He watched the faint pale reflection of Tashka's face in the glass. 

"I went out there," she said, flicking nervously at the curtains drawn on either side of them. "I went out and ran down the lawns and breathed. I rolled in the grass and I sang and I laughed; I could not believe ... how good it is to be alive!" 

He could see the dark marks in the dew, beyond her faint reflection: footmarks and big long patches. "Ay," he said, "I am glad you are alive." 

"And then," she said, her voice soft and even, "as I came up the stairs, I saw Shanne's door was open so I went and sat by him. His face was like wax. I thought: 'He will never move the more. He will never laugh or make love or run down the lawns. I have let his life out of him.' Then I thought: 'He will never fight the more,' and I thought about all the men he must have killed, more even than I have, he has killed. Then I thought of him again and then ... I came back in here and looked on you sleeping and I loved you so much!" Her voice and her face lifted to him, her eyes shone brightly then she dropped back down again. "I wanted to make love with you. Here, now, even with Pava snoring there. But I did not do so," she drawled at him and strolled away to the ash and charred wood of her fire, to sit in her leather chair beside Pava in his armchair with her ankle set on her knee. 

Vadya followed her, pulled up a stool and said: "Will you come hunting the day, look, the sun is out the clouds at last." 

"No," she replied, staring into the cold dead fire. "I do not want to see blood, never again." 

"What will you like to do?" he asked. 

"Go riding," she answered. 

"May I come?" 

She looked impatiently into his gentle face. "Do as you please," she answered curtly. 

~#~*~#~

General-Lord van H'las rose up from the table and walked to the muddy messenger standing in the doorway of the council chamber. The port councillors frowned for they wanted to make their points clearly to him but the man was in a Sixth H'las uniform - six silver crosses embroidered on the left hand shoulder of his rain-drenched black cloak. He held his hand out and van H'las took the thin package of sealed paper from his fingers. 

"Give this man a bed, a bath, food, whatsoever he needs," he said to the footman who had shown the man in. "I pray you excuse me," he added to the councillors and walked out of the room into the stone-flagged corridor to break Vadya's yellow seal. 'What has happened?' he thought ruefully. 'Why did I let him keep her to Captain? I should not have let them persuade me to allow them the hunting together, I should have taken her out of his troop immediately. They were so happy together; I was so glad to see my boy honourably happy in love and I indulged them.' 

My father, he read, the weather has been poor with much rain but we have had enough sunshine to please those of us who prefer hunting deer to hunting kisses. We have enjoyed the company of my cousin el T'fel. However I am sorry to say his choice of fellow Captains to bring was not a lucky one. Tashka and Captain-Sir Shanne disliked each other from the start of the party and two days ago that dislike got into a duel. "Holy Angels!" van H'las whispered. "I should have gone with them. Damn this nonsense about trade, I should have just gone." It is Tashka who prevailed. Stevan and his brother officers have left to take the body back to P'shan. Madam Stanies, the Dames and Pava and Hanya el Jien remain with us. We got Tashka ...  Lord Esha peered at a crossed-out word and made out drunk with a grim smile ... to sleep at last. The next day and the one after Pava and I rode out with her. She went down to the tavern in the evenings and Pava brought her back. The day after that she slept much of the day. Yester day we went out hunting. We caught up with a bear but Tashka wanted it let go. It rained so some of us stayed in a cabin in the woods. We will break up the party soon and I will write to you again when we are back in Sixth H'las' winter quarters. 

I am that man who is always glad in his heart to sign himself your loving son Vadya el Gaiel van H'las. 

'Some of us stayed in a cabin?' Lord Esha raised his eyebrows. 'How many is 'some'? Another subject for a tactful father to avoid!'



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 15



Thank you for the great feedback! Some very useful critique has been given to me. Please make a comment if you have a moment. <3

Vadya stared at Tashka, sitting on her grey horse Jewel. Her hand was still clutched on his sleeve, her face was softened out, staring at the shaking branches the bear had brushed past. Around their horses' hooves, ten hounds crept and crawled, whining with puzzlement. 

They had chosen to follow an off-shoot of the pack, riding together at the front, so far ahead that the others did not see them take a diversion through the trees. They had not said or looked anything to each other about it. They simply rode after the hounds as if they had only one mind, fixed on riding side by side through the trees and the falling leaves, fixed on the animal they were hunting down. 

Tashka had looked fiercely happy, cantering after the baying pack on the scent. They had found the bear backed against a bank of earth, growling and clawing out at the ring of hounds around it. Suddenly she put a strong hand on Vadya's arm and cried: "Call them off!" so urgently that he lowered his spear and did it without question. 

Tashka let go of Vadya's arm, slid off Jewel and sat down under a tree, putting her head in her hands. Vadya caught Jewel's reins and watched her, waiting to see if she would become fierce and hard again and insist they ride off after fresh game. 

Tashka lifted her head, her slanted blue eyes had a soft warm glow in them. "He blessed me," she said. "He said: 'Angels bless, el Maien'." Her face twitched. Vadya got off Loyalty and looped the two horses' reins over a branch. He knelt down by Tashka, took her in his arms and held her close. 

She pressed her face into his neck and sniffed at the lightly scented oil Batren used for his hair. Her lean tanned fingers threaded through his curling hair. Vadya took her head in his hands and looked deep into her eyes. She smiled at him, letting her head lie heavy in his hands. She said softly: "Vadya, how beautiful you are." 

Vadya pulled her head close to him, bent to kiss her, her long lashes fluttered shut as she lifted her mouth to his. He had missed the wet caress of her rose-petal mouth; his lips lingered in their kiss. He lifted his mouth from hers and began to kiss her closed eyes. 

"I am beautiful," he repeated in a trembling voice as he kissed the delicate skin of her eyelids. "My darling! I cannot say how lovely you are." 

He sat down beside her on the ground under the tree, she snuggled her head into his shoulder. There was no one else to consider, they could hold each other and caress each other's faces and whisper a silly quarrel about who was the most beautiful -- and kiss. 

As they were riding back, it began to rain in long hard sweeping curtains. Tashka laughed and tipped her face to feel the kiss of the rain on it but Vadya frowned. They were a long way from the farmhouse and not wearing cloaks. 

"We have a cabin near here," he said. "Let us shelter there until the rain passes." 

Tashka reined up Jewel to stand by Loyalty and turned her face down from the rain to look into his eyes. Her eyes were very clear and such a soft dark blue. He felt as if she could read his dreams in his eyes, even the ones he had not yet dreamt. She smiled and said: "It is good." 

The simple log cabin was in a clearing. It had one window, a cupboard of dried food, a heap of blankets in one corner and the luxury of a wooden floor. There was a bothy on the edge of the clearing where a forester lived. 

They lit a big fire in the fireplace. Vadya made some feeble excuse and went out to the porch to get out of his wet clothes. Tashka did not even look at him as he went. She was carelessly pulling the buttons of her jacket undone, so carelessly that Vadya felt how silly he was to be shy of his body with his junior officer who had seen him swimming and bathing. Even so he spent as long as he dared outside, checking that the dogs and horses were comfortably settled in a lean-to full of straw. 

They wrapped themselves in the blankets and sat in front of the fire, drinking brandy and remembering funny things that had happened in the troop as if they were just a Commander and a Captain. They had been sitting quietly for a while, staring into the flickering heat of the fire, when Tashka said: "It is still raining and there is food in the cupboard. Why do we not stay the night here?" 

Vadya looked quickly up at her, suddenly conscious that she was a woman who had slung her blanket up over her chest and one shoulder rather than just wrap it around her hips. She was staring meditatively into the fire, her cheeks ruddy with heat and her rose-petal mouth curved in a sleepy smile. Her hair was cropped short but the poise of her head had a feminine grace to it. 

"The dogs have to be fed," he said. 

"Maybe the forester will feed them," she suggested. "Shall I go and ask?" 

"I will go," he said, getting up. He awkwardly pulled his riding boots on, trying to keep his blanket tucked in around his lean waist. She turned her head to watch him and her face was suddenly lit up by her wickedest grin. Vadya blushed. 

When he knocked on the door of the bothy, the forester looked at him with wild light-coloured eyes and said: "I have fed them. And the horses," in a hesitant rusty voice as if he had almost forgotten how to speak. "Will you take some stew?" 

'What shall I tell Tashka?' Vadya thought gloomily as he walked back in the beating rods of rain that still streamed down. The rough clay bowl of stew he carried with a plate balanced on top of it was hot in his hands. 'If I tell her the truth we will stay. If I lie about it we can go back to the farmhouse but it will be dark before we get there and we will be soaked through.' 

When he came in she had got out some biscuits and some red wine she had found. She was cross-legged in front of the fire with her face so soft and warm in the firelight that his heart turned over. 

"Are you cold?" she enquired in a gentle voice. "I have found some dry clothes." She fetched them from the cupboard: big shirts, too big even for him, that his father must have left there. 

They ate the food together out of the one bowl, scooping the stew up with biscuits and their fingers. They drank the wine, passing the bottle to each other in a casual disregard for the occasional dreg that came up as they got towards the bottom of the bottle. They lay in front of the fire and argued about a new manoeuvre Tashka had thought up. 

"What a butterfly-witted idea!" Vadya snorted. "Why, the enemy would break straight through the centre of your line." 

"They would not!" she declared. "They would be distracted by the wings." 

"They would!" 

"Would not!" 

Tashka sat up and pushed Vadya. He grinned at her and pushed her back. She jumped at him and grabbed the blanket he had wrapped around his hips. He squealed and tugged back on it, laughing up at her and grabbing at her hands if he got the chance to do so. Her strong tanned hands came darting at the fold of his blanket round his slim hips, she grinned and he laughed. He suddenly managed to catch both her hands, gave them a sharp tug and Tashka fell into his arms and pressed her mouth to his. 

Vadya caught her close to him, drawing kisses from her lips into his eager mouth. Her hands were pressing his shoulders, her teeth bit guardedly at his upper lip. Vadya rolled her over onto her back and pulled at her shirt with trembling fingers till he could rub his hands over her ribs to her small breasts. 

Tashka let out a gasp, half a laugh. Her nipples were hardening already under the rough gentle warmth of his hands. Her hands clutched on his back. He was kissing her throat, his fingers still eagerly exploring the extraordinary round rise of her breasts. He lifted his head from her throat, tugged at her shirt again to lift it away and stared at her muscular white body in his arms, the beautiful small round breasts she had, the flat stomach going down to the bush of dark hair between her legs. He bent his head to one of her breasts and began to mouth at it, licking the hardening nipple and suckling at her soft flesh. 

"Sweet Heaven!" Tashka gasped. Her fingers tucked into the curls of his hair, she pressed his head hard into her breast. She reached down and began pulling on his shirt, he let her pull it off, lifting his head away from her body for her to do so. He could not think, his head was dizzy with passion. The firelight was warm on his brown skin. Tashka saw it ruddy on his bare ribs and drew in her breath, sharply, then pressed close to him, kissing the scars on his ribs and pushing her hand slowly, slowly across his waist and down to his belly. Her fingers brushed over his penis. Vadya hissed and squirmed suddenly. He pressed her down with his weight. She put one light firm hand on the back of his neck. He turned his head to one side. 

"Tashka," he whispered hoarsely, staring away from her at the darkening window. "Wait. Wait a minute!" 

He had seen her risk her life in the hazard. He could not bear to refuse her favour if she were offering it with her whole heart. But if she hesitated, if she were the least bit unsure, he would stop. Somehow he would find the strength to drag his trembling body from hers. 

Tashka was not interested in giving him even the chance to hesitate, she was licking at his ear. She chewed gently on his earlobe, trailed her warm wet tongue round the curves of his ear and into his ear. Vadya's mouth opened in a smile. He took a firmer hold on her waist and brought his head round to stare into her eyes. 

Tashka smiled softly into his eyes. She pushed gently at his shoulder so she could reach beyond him for her breeches lying out to dry by the fire. 

He was an el Gaiel van H'las and had made a commitment to a chaste respect for the honour of his betrothed, but Vadya was not so foolish as not to carry some protection in case his will was not sufficient to keep him from her body. She knew, however, that he only carried the one condom. She had carried three or four ever since she was nearly caught out with the sweetheart Captain from Thiel. Ever since she had admitted to a passion for the body of el Gaiel van H'las, she had carried larger sized ones. 

Her heart started beating faster only to look at that big cock, thick and rigid with desire for her. A vein ran coiling down the length of his shaft, standing out in a curving line in the brown skin as if to lure your tongue to run caressingly down it. Already there was a glistening drop of pre-cum at the tip of his cock. 

She looked back into his nervous desperately eager brown eyes and grinned the wicked smile that he had so often seen lifted from the campfire at night when he went round to check the night-sentry duty. He would hear the tail-end of some outrageous story and cough artificially so they knew he was within earshot. That wicked glinting grin would flash up at him and he would frown sternly because his cock would be filling out -- back then he would pretend it was just because of the story he had overheard. 

She stooped and licked the drop of pre-cum from the slit in his penis' end before taking the condom to unroll it gently down the length of his cock. She brushed his balls, tight now in the darker skin, in a tickling caress. He moaned and twitched with lust. 

Tashka took hold of his shoulders and knelt over his body. He reached up to put his shaky big hands about her back and she turned in his hands, she rolled as he rolled, under him, submitting to his hands as she had never submitted on the wrestling mats, smiling into his eyes as she went over with her hands still lightly clasped on his shoulders. 

He drew in a shuddering breath. Her hands came stroking slowly down from his shoulders -- a long firm caress down towards his buttocks. 

He breathed shakily again. He felt he was trembling on the brink of laughter or tears, he did not know which would break from him. Tashka's strong fingers clenched on his buttocks, his face smoothed out, he reached forward and pressed his mouth to hers. She parted her lips for his kiss, his tongue came caressing in her mouth, her head was going back, her hips were opening out to his legs. His fingers were stroking her hips, stroking in towards the hair curling around her sex. Tashka was catching her breath in excited sounds, her arms clasped tighter around his shoulders. His fingers explored the tender soft flesh of her clitoris, labia and vulva. She started to make little moans of excitement as she felt the big gentle exploring fingers poking at her sex. She was more than ready for him, the muscles of her cunt wet and loose. He lifted himself to her vulva and pressed that big cock deep into her with a single sliding thrust and a long shuddering gasp of passion. 

"Maien!" he said. 

She gave an ecstatic cry of pleasure and raised her deep dark blue eyes to his gentle brown eyes. She gripped her arms more firmly around his body, her moans calling him on into her. Vadya began to draw and to press himself in and out of her cunt, Tashka lifted herself up to him, making soft breathy noises. He was so big, he filled her so completely and he had hit her sweet spot already. She was gone in his arms, urgently opening her legs to the exultant joy of his cock going deep and coming back, going deep and hitting her on her sweet spot to send the tingling pleasure quivering up through her whole body. 

Vadya was so aware of her body against him, his ears full of the sexy noises she was making. He gripped his fingers on her buttocks, pulling her legs wider open, pressing himself deep into her warm soft wet cunt with her hips opening out and her cries and her body writhing and thrusting up to him. Passion was singing along his veins and in his muscles. He was enthralled, enslaved by the splendour of the warm muscular body he pressed his body to and pressed himself hard down into. Love had become a physical sensation, rolling through him, through her. He was no longer sure what was the boundary of skin between them. Was it her feeling, were those noises him, was that great shout of rich dark passion her? 

When it was over, they lay quiet and still in each other's arms. Vadya's head was tucked in Tashka's shoulder. Tashka stared up at the roof without seeing it then had to stoop her head and push Vadya's aside to look in his eyes. His face was full of tenderness, his eyes dark and soft. He smiled at her, stroking the scar on her arm. Reluctantly he lifted his heavy frame off her and took the condom from his softening penis to put it to one side. He pulled the blankets closer around them. 

Tashka rolled softly in his arms, her face turned to him full of wonder, her eyes never moving from his. She put a hand to his cheek, reached and touched her mouth to his, too tired even to put her lips together to kiss. They fell asleep with their heads on his shirt. 

When they woke it was the middle of the night and still raining hard outside. The fire had died to a red and gold glow, hissing when raindrops fell down the chimney into it. Vadya made them a bed of the rest of the blankets. When he turned round, Tashka had taken her shirt off and was standing pale and tall in front of the fireplace, the firelight casting red and gold flickers over her shapely body. 

"I hurt," she said in a small voice. He crossed to her and knelt and kissed the inside of her thigh. "No, stop it," she said, moving to knock the fire back into flame. 

She lay down on the blankets on her face and Vadya trailed his fingers over her scarred back. Tashka turned over. She had no scars on her front, no one had ever got near enough to her. He put his head on her shoulder, cupping one of her breasts in his hand and rubbing her nipple with his thumb. It filled him with a strange glorious wonder that she had beautiful small breasts. 

"Ooh no," Tashka moaned, wriggling in his arms. His fingering her nipple made her juices start flowing again, stinging her sore vulva. "I hurt." 

"Is it bad?" he asked. 

"No-o," she grumbled. 

"D-did it hurt when we made love?" he looked anxiously into her face. 

"Angels, no," she said with a warm smile. 

He smiled back to her and lay down turned away from her. 

"Even if I look at you I will want you," he said. 

"What, so soon?" her voice had a self-satisfied purr in it. She came snuggling up to his back, he laughed and she felt the laughter quivering out in his shoulders and back. 

"Yes," he said. "I have desired you for so long! Do you hurt bad?" 

"No, I said not," she answered. "It is only ... you are quite big, you know." She considered telling him that even Arianna had noticed his natural advantages but she decided it would only make him conceited. 

He gave an embarrassed laugh and said, "am I?" in surprise, turning to lie facing her. 

"What," she said scornfully. "You have never measured yours against any other's while swimming in the river." 

He sniggered shyly and said, "no I do not customarily inspect my junior officers' equipment while swimming," and she laughed and said, "well, you are bigger than anyone I have known." He was secretly pleased to be better endowed than that scum el V'lair van Athagine. "It has been a long time since I lay with anyone," she added. "I suppose you become unaccustomed. I feel like I did the first time, a bit." 

He propped himself up on his elbow to look at her, aware of the tinge of sadness in her voice. She was staring away from him, her mouth pouted up. 

"You said you liked it with el V'lair," he reminded her, putting a gentle hand out to caress her short dark hair. She turned her head and looked into his eyes. 

"Yes, I liked it," she said. 

"Did he hurt you?" Vadya asked softly. 

She did not want to give him any more cause to think he should offer el V'lair a glove; el V'lair was a wicked blade in the duel. With his dishonourable ways, he needed to be. But it was too good a story not to finally share with someone. 

"Not as much as I hurt him," she said with an evil snigger. 

"What do you mean?" he asked in surprise, caressing her cropped short hair. 

"Oh well," she said cautiously. "el V'lair likes to play, you know." He looked at her in puzzled inquiry, she sighed and said, "he is always after some new experience to tickle his jaded fancy," but he was still looking at her to say, What do you mean?  

"I gave el V'lair strict discipline," Tashka said with another husky evil snigger. Vadya's eyes bulged and the snigger spurted from the corner of her mouth. "He had tried it with some fancy ladies of his acquaintance and he said it got him going. He wanted to try it with a proper officer. They never beat him as a junior officer, of course. They spoilt him in the Athagine army, they were that pleased he wanted to go into a field troop instead of First Athagine. So he asked me to give him a b-b-beating," she started rolling around with laughter. Vadya was still pop-eyed with astonishment that anyone would imagine being beaten like a trooper who had committed some grave fault was a piece of sexual fun. "H-h-he sent out to his t-t-troop for a proper baton! Angels! What must they have thought! Well, only the truth I suppose," she became incoherent with laughter. 

Vadya smiled doubtfully, saying, "and so you gave him the beating?" 

Through her laughter she said, "what, a man who had taken my virgin favour while I was out to sea on his brandy? Oh yes. I gave him a bloody good beating! stupid fool, to imagine proper army discipline would get him on the go. After only three blows he cried on the Angel of Mercy! what a dis-disappointment!" She wriggled with laughter and then said, "ooh," with a grimace, "I hurt." He looked guiltily at her. She smiled and reached to take his big hand and press it to her head again, running his fingers over her short hair, down to her rose-petal mouth which opened to suck softly on one of them. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 15



"I wish I had been your first," he said tenderly. "Do not you?" 

"No," she said with a grin, taking his finger out of her mouth. 

"But you are sad when you remember it," he said. 

"Not sad exactly," she answered, smiling dreamily into his eyes. "I remember how strange it felt, to have lain with a man. I felt like a different person. It was strange to walk back into the camp, everything looked different. I did not want anyone to look at me -- especially Clair," she giggled. "I had been absent a week without leave! I thought Pava would beat me. But he only looked in my face and he smiled and took me in his arms like a child. I stood in his arms and felt strange because I was no longer a child." 

Vadya's face looking back at her was gentle. He put his arms around her hips and slipped down to hug her hips to him, still looking up at her. She smiled dreamily down at him, her body relaxed in his arms. 

"Does it feel better?" he asked after a while. 

"I feel warm, in your arms," she answered. "How was it for you, the first time? Who was it?" 

Vadya grinned and blushed, turning his head aside. He gave her hips a squeeze and kissed her hard flat stomach. 

"She was a barmaid in a tavern," he said, "just an one-day-one-night." 

"And so how was it?" Tashka persisted. 

Vadya shrugged a broad shoulder up, still looking aside, then he said: "I was scared!" and laughed softly. "To be so laid open," he murmured, "with a stranger in a tavern bed. Oh my Captain!" he said suddenly, moving his head to stare passionately at her beautiful face. 

She raised a lazy eyebrow at him. "Well, my Commander?" she said. "Is there something that you want?" 

"I want you!" he answered, laughing and hugging her hips. She, who had asked the question for that very answer, smiled a contented grin and put out scarred fingers to caress his curling hair. "Is it still bad?" he asked. 

"It is not bad," she said patiently. "I just hurt a bit. Come kiss me," she reached down to pull at his arms so he crawled up, pulling the blankets around them. They lay quietly in the firelight, caressing and kissing, feeling the strange shivers of desire through their bodies, keeping them small. If she pressed too close and he found his breath catching up and his hips pushing at her, they pulled apart and just lay looking at each other for a moment. 

When he next woke it was dawn. There was Tashka's face in the pale blue light, her eyes looking straight into his. He gave an exclamation of pleasure and reached out to draw her to him, their mouths met and pressed in their kiss, her arm was flung about his shoulders, her leg scooped his hips firmly in against her. Vadya rolled onto his back in a delicious sleepy haze, his arms full of his shapely muscular Captain. Half his brain began telling him not to wake up then Tashka bit his lip and with a cry of pain he realised this was not a dream. He stared up into her face, still drowsy, licking ruefully at his lip. She gave him her wickedest, sexiest grin; her eyes crinkled at the corners, her mouth pouted up and out. 

"Mm!" he lifted his head and shoulders for her kiss but Tashka's head had gone over to kiss his shoulder, now she was licking at the keloid scar on his chest. Vadya rolled his head, his muscles tightened, the blood began throbbing in his loins. Tashka was rubbing his sides, caressing his stomach so that he laughed, gasped and his stomach muscles all clenched up. He reached down and seized her arms, pulled her laughing up and rolled so they were lying on their sides. He put his hands on her thighs and stroked her legs until she was pressing against him and breathing in uneven murmurs. 

Her eyes glinted at him in the dawn light. He grinned back. 

Her hands spread on his shoulders, her fingers massaging the hard muscle and bone of his broad shoulders made him roll them pleasurably under her touch. He bent his head to kiss her small plump breasts, almost the only soft part of her hard soldier's body. He kissed her ribs, licked at her belly. Gently he parted her dark pubic hair and his tongue licked down the tender flesh of her clitoris and her vulva. Tashka's breath caught raggedly in her throat, her hips tensed up, opening out in his arms. His tongue, his fingers caressed her excited little clitoris, played in the folds of her labia and one big finger went gently probing into her cunt. She was laughing above him, twisting in his arms, heaving up to that one finger sliding into her cunt. He lifted his head and she leaned down to take hold of his shoulders and roll him over on his back. 

Her face above him was intense with passion, her eyes dark. Her shaky strong hands were curling over his body, her scarred fingers took a gentle hold on his penis. He was already fully erect and hard, the big shaft of his cock rising thick and turgid with the smooth head of the penis pushing at the little slit in the top and the vein standing out down the side of his cock. Tashka gave the top of his penis a lick, Vadya let out a queer little sound and said huskily, "now, now, I cannot wait!" Tashka and he stared briefly into each other's eyes. His were desperate and his hips were shaking with the effort to hold himself in. Tashka reached behind her to pull the condom from his breeches, pulled it from the packet and pinched the tip. Her face was hard and fierce with desire as she rolled it slowly the length of his big hard shaft. She lifted her head to look in his eyes again and straddled him, pushing his shoulder back down with a firm hand when he started to rise up and attempt to roll her over. She took his penis in her curling scarred fingers, set the head of it against her sex, parting the lips of the labia about it, putting him to her vulva and pressed slowly down around him. Vadya's whole body jerked up to meet her and he gasped. 

She was leaning over him, pressing him into ecstasy, pressing herself to him. Vadya was clasping her close to him with strong arms, calling her name, his fingers reaching up to clutch at her short dark hair, then back to grip on her back. The muscles of her sex slid warm and soft about his big thick cock, she had not even had to move about to get him onto her sweet spot, he was just there again and again. He was grunting and gripping her in the back with the big strong hands she had so much admired taming the horses, his head and shoulders lifting, his hips driving his cock up to hit her sweet spot every time, throwing her into ecstasy. Her eyes had gone wide and dark in the blue dawn, her cheeks were flushed, she was biting at her lip and laughing. His face had gone tense below her, she pressed about him, his cock, pushing down on his balls, and suddenly great waves of passion were washing uncontrollably through her. She was vividly aware of him like a part of herself, Vadya el Gaiel van H'las jerking up in rigid orgasm in her wet wide open woman's sex and his hands on her back pressed her to him, dragged her into exultant yelling ecstasy. 

She lowered herself softly on his chest, her face turned into his neck, smelling the oil that Batren used for his hair. Vadya's hands were still loosely clasped on her back. 

"I love you," he was whispering, his face shining with sweat, his eyes dim with passion. "Oh my heart, my Captain, my friend, my life. I love you." 

Outside the air was fresh and blue with the dawn, a bird was singing and now another. Tashka lay staring at the curls of Vadya's hair against his muscular neck, drawing in the scent of the oil in it. She was conscious of his arms loosely cast over her back, of the warmth, the wetness of her vagina, of his penis still inside her, knowing they must move to take him out but oh, just a little longer let him be inside her. Vadya was whispering to her, the soft words as natural as the birdsong outside. 

~#~*~#~

When they crept into the farmhouse in the middle of the morning, Vadya did not want anyone to see him. He felt as if their hard looks would pierce the terrible vulnerable softness he felt and strike his heart. He and Tashka parted at the foot of the stairs with a long kiss. He started to pull her back towards his room but one of the servants came clattering down the stairs. They sprang apart and Tashka ran away. 

Vadya bathed and slept and felt stronger when he went in to lunch. He simply said they had sheltered from the rain in the cabin. Only Pava's wicked green eyes sparkled and laughed. 

When she walked into the room with that lazy sexy el Maien stroll, he felt his insides melt. He turned his head to the fire, he could not look at her, he was laid open to the world by her presence. She went and joked with Pava, he heard her light phrases and knew that she felt as he did. Hanya el Jien was watching him suspiciously, he forced himself to talk about the stupidity of Tashka's new idea for a manoeuvre, laughing scornfully and longing to carry her off. He wanted her body so badly that he could not bear to be near her. He knew he would give everything away because he would have to reach out and touch her. 

When night came, he stayed up into the early hours of the morning, desperately playing cards with Hanya Lein and Flava Trait and Pava. Pava sat there yawning and smiling at him over bowls of coffee and brandy, insisting that the others stay on and play out one more hand and yet another hand. When Hanya and Flava would not stay any longer, he sat by the fire and told Vadya rambling stories about the three women he was pretending to himself he might be in love with. 

Vadya smiled vaguely and nodded, leaning back in his armchair and thinking of Tashka asleep in his old playroom in a bundle of trooper's bedding. When Pava fell asleep he hardly noticed it. 

Pava lay loosely in his chair, the firelight flickering over him, his handsome blond head tilted back against a cushion, his mouth open. Tashka, with her breeches slung on over her nightshirt, came walking softly past on bare feet and laid a rug over him. Then she came back to Vadya, smiling sleepily. She sat down in his lap and hung her arm around his neck, leaned close to his ear as if to tell him a secret and hung a kiss in his ear like a jewel. 

He sat back with a soft sigh, a warm happy noise, his arms falling about her and his face turning to hers. 

"I waited for you," she said with a yawn. "'N then I fell asleep. Why did you not come? Did that old boot keep you from me, for the sake of my raggedy honour?" She grinned affectionately at Pava, who had started to snore lightly like a cat. 

"No of course not," Vadya said softly, stroking the side of her face. "Nothing can keep me from you." 

"Mm?" she said. "So why did you not come?" She looked at him merely in question, there was no doubt in her mind as to the strength of his love for her. She knew his love would not die away now that he had had the joy of her body. 

Vadya smiled ruefully at her beautiful face. "I do not want to hurry our love and spoil it," he answered. 

Tashka looked at him again, into his warm gentle brown eyes and at his generous firm mouth. She caressed the little scar on his cheek with a scarred finger. He put his hand around the back of her head and his mouth to hers. She held him close in her strong arms, her mouth opening to his kiss and her arms pulling him against her. 

"My love," he whispered as his mouth parted from hers. She smiled at him, he stroked the side of her face and asked anxiously: "Is that alright with you?" 

She laughed. "I will let it pass," she said in an amused voice, like an officer to a man asking leniency for some fault. "For a time," she added. Her blue eyes were regretful and she sighed, fingering the lace collar of his shirt with her head bent down.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 16



Thank you for comments and feedback. Please make a comment if you have a moment. 

I am looking for an editor for the novel, I know I need to do some work on it so feedback is highly valued. Just to mention that I sometimes have to cut the paragraphs about. Ch. 13 was initially rejected as Literotica editors asked me to make the long passages of monologue shorter for readers on small screens. 

*****

Arianna opened her eyes and stared at the exquisitely painted bowl full of hot chocolate hovering in Lisette's hands in her eyeline. She sat up with a dreamy smile. Lisette put the bowl on the bedside table and began arranging her pillows behind her for her to lean into, ignoring her half-hearted protests. 

Lisette was asking if she wanted to get dressed yet, saying the boys were already breaking their fast with Clair. She relaxed back in the pillows, she would take a few moments at leisure. As Lisette went to pull open the heavy painted curtains and let light drift in through the muslin curtains of her windows, she was already reaching for a scroll on the bedside table. 

Her bowl of chocolate was half finished when she heard steps running up the stairs by her room and a hurried tattoo on her door. Clair's voice was coming up to whichever of the boys it was, scolding. Her wide red mouth curved in her smile. 

Her door burst open and they both tumbled in, laughing. She held out her arms; they scrambled up onto the big bed, rolling in the quilts and embroidered covers. Arkyll pulled a pillow out from behind her and tried to put it over Hanya's head, Hanya shoved him back in the bed. They rolled up against her body, giggling and struggling, she giggled too as she pushed their kicking little limbs away from her. 

"I have said it, you must not disturb your mother, let her rest!" Clair's voice expostulated. Arianna hurriedly shoved her scroll under her pillows, trying to make it look as if she had been enjoying a quiet well-earned doze before the boys came tumbling in. She lifted her head to see him standing in the doorway: tall and lean in some old jodhpurs and riding boots, a white cotton shirt unbuttoned at the throat and a green woollen cardigan. He was resting one tanned hand on the door jamb, his expression apologetic. The boys were snuggling close to her and wrapping their arms about her neck, pretending that they had wanted a kiss not to bounce in the big bed. Their small bodies pressed affectionately to her, shaking with giggles. 

"Kiss your mother, your aunt," Clair said. "If you make us late for school, I will not take you to learn riding later. Is it understood?" They made cries of anxiety, rushing to press their soft little mouths to her cheeks and scramble from the bed. He was trying to ask above their shouting that it was not fair, there was not time, while they fell off the bed and rushed to the door, would Arianna be content to spare the boys for the afternoon to have a riding lesson. It would be a pity to spend such a fine day so late in the summer indoors. She pretended to hesitate but her heart leapt. An extra couple of hours in the library! 

"I have some correspondence I ought to attend to," she said, leaning back in the pillows with her lids half-closing on blue eyes already veiled over some other matter she was considering. 

Before turning to the anxiously calling boys who were already halfway down the stairs, he paused, unable to resist the temptation of letting his eyes drift over her. The soft light fell on the flaxen and cream shades of her big body lounging back in the white linen and silk of her pillows and nightdress, her blue eyes veiled in the abundance of pale sweet curves she was offering to his vision. His eyes narrowed up, he forced them to her eyes. She was smiling so contentedly but her blue eyes were covered by half-closed lids - there was something on the go. Who was it she liked to write to? Firmly he pulled the door of her bedroom on the latch as he went down the stairs after the two boys. He could hear two of his menservants joking with the boys as they came up the stairs. 

Later as he ran up the stairs, he saw her door still latched and he knocked casually on it, thinking she must have gone about her morning's business but her voice called out to him. When he went in, she was still lying about in the pillows in her heavy silk nightdress, some scroll in her fingers. She blushed when she saw it was him, hurriedly rolling up the scroll and putting it on her bedside table. Who could she have imagined would come knocking at her bedroom door? The servants would not have knocked. Her breasts heaved in the lace and silk of her nightdress. Clair turned his eyes to the side, unable to repress the thought of putting his mouth to the big soft breasts he could see the shape of, his cock started swelling softly in his breeches. 

"Um, I was wondering ... I noticed you had commissioned some report from an Iarvian merchant," he said huskily. Sweet Hell, look at the deep cleavage between her breasts but she had no idea what an effect she had on people. He knew how annoyingly innocent she had been brought up, they had taken great pains to assure him of it when he was obliged to marry her. So why had she blushed? Just to see her own husband in the doorway of her bedroom halfway through the morning? 

"What time is it?" she asked, seeming to become aware that the light falling about him was bright and clear. He laughed and said, "that must be a famous novel you are reading, for you to have been so absorbed in it that Lisette has been twice to try to get you up and dressed and you sent her away both times." 

"Twice?" she said in surprise, looking to see a tray with a plate of crumbs and a second bowl with the dregs of some hot chocolate in it by her bed. She put a long finger across and pressed it into the crumbs which she lifted to her mouth. Clair watched her wide red mouth closing around her long pale finger to suck on it. He felt his cock stirring harder in his breeches and stood further back out of the doorway, saying, "I will send her to you now. I only thought ... you wanted me to meet you and the merchants. I wondered if the report you commissioned might explain to me why you wish me to meet with some cloth merchants." 

Her finger was arrested at her mouth. (Her breasts heaved softly in the folds of her nightdress as she took a deep breath in.) "No," she said slowly. "Probably not." Her eyes swung round on him, her face was harder. He knew there was something to do but he was desperate to shut the door, he could hear someone coming up the stairs. 

"I will send Lisette to you," he said hurriedly. His eyes went round, there was Lisette at his elbow coming in the room. Clair watched her cross the room and collect the tray from Arianna's bedside table which she brought back to the door and put outside for the footmen to collect. As she did it, she lifted her eyes to Clair's. Clair narrowed his eyes back at her and she looked with a modest enquiring expression into his face. 

Her eyes had a laugh in the back of them, she knew it well why he looked narrowly at her but she maintained the bland expression of the well-behaved servant on her features: My Lord, I prithou. I am no bird-brained lusty stable-maid to whom you cannot entrust the famously gorgeous body I dress and undress every day, standing by in the bath house while your Lady wife runs her ringed fingers around her naked forms to clean herself. 

Arianna had seen Clair's eyes narrowed in the frown. She slid her muscular legs out of the bed, saying anxiously, "I prithou pardon me. I have been so slack the day. I should have been ... doing something in the kitchens perhaps?" 

He burst out laughing at this. "As if you would not have made a birds' nest of it!" he said mockingly. "Confess it, my dear, you are a dreadful housekeeper!" 

She looked cross and tossed her blonde head with the little hairs sticking out of the thick plait in which Lisette put her long hair at night. "Oh well," she said carelessly, sliding her feet into a pair of slippers. "What does it matter? Such boring nonsense." 

"Do you think that?" he asked, grinning as he leaned on the door jamb. "Do you not enjoy to live in an harmonious house?" 

She thought about the last few weeks with Clair settled in the castle. In the mornings she woke and lay in bed, dreaming of the solution to fascinating equations instead of worrying about what they might all eat that day. Lisette brought her bowl of milky hot chocolate to her room and she drank it still curled up in bed in sleepy happiness. 

The children behaved themselves. Arkyll did not come and pester her in the library while she was working, he went every day to school with Hanya and they both did well. Clair even got them to do a little schoolwork with him in the afternoon. He did not seem to mind their childish errors whereas Arianna was impatient, finding it incredible that anyone - even a little one of a few years old, could not add a few simple figures together since she herself could roll six figure sums round her head like a game of marbles. 

She had a bit of trouble sneaking about the castle offices to do her work with merchants but Clair was so absorbed in managing the castle and going down to the farm, sorting matters out in the stables, the kennels, with the Guard. It was always possible to find a time when he was not there. She had time because there was not a great procession of cooks and maid-servants, grooms, kennel-hands, footmen and gardeners all coming to ask her sometimes quite surprisingly silly questions about what they should be doing, hanging about her desk with foolish smiles on their faces and even when she had answered their questions persisting in saying, she looked pale, would she not care to come out and walk in the gardens, to come for a ride? 

"I prefer someone-else to manage the housekeeping for me," Arianna admitted. She tilted her head to him, blushing again at the strong mid-morning light pouring round him as he stood in the open doorway while she sat on her unmade bed in her nightdress. 

She was so lovely, flushed out of the cool proud Lady of the high nobility he normally had to deal with. He hesitated in the doorway, his cock softly swelling in his breeches. He was wondering if she might offer him a little flirt, enough for him to come into the room and give her just some small caress but he felt curiously shy. He started to turn away then he caught Lisette's eye. The maid-servant had a tiny snigger in the corner of her mouth, she stepped behind him to take hold of the door: And? She is your Lady wife. Do you think it is improper to talk with your own wife while I dress her hair? She jerked her head slightly into the room and he stepped in without thinking although when she closed the door behind him, both he and Arianna gave a nervous start. It was with a feeling of brazen impropriety that was exhilarating to his loins that he went to sit in one of the blue and yellow armchairs while Lisette came across to pull out the stool at the dressing-table. Hurriedly, he cast about for some idle thing to say. 

"Do you not like it, to feel in charge of the conditions of your life?" he asked. "It makes me feel that I am connected to life, just something small, like to make bread in the kitchens - or do the washing up. Sometimes I just like to wash the dishes. It does not take much, to wash them and then they are clean and ready and the next day they are there to wash again." 

She stood up, recovering her poise. She laughed mockingly and said to Lisette: "He would not like it so well if he had to wash the dishes every day all day like Caja." 

"That lazy lizard," Clair grumbled then he said with a curiously affectionate duck of the head: "Caja is well enough; he is happy to do some washing up and then sneak out for his disgusting pipe and to steal a bit of my brandy." He had always been indulgent towards Caja, even more than to the other servants. "I do not like my life to become a drudgery," he admitted. "Just every day to do some small thing and to look about me and see that there is harmony and cleanliness, that is a pleasure. To do something small, it reminds me of what life is." 

"Is it not enough, to come out onto an open veranda in the wind and snow and ice of a winter's morning and have be so frozen that you cannot but remember you are alive?" she laughed, turning to look at the dress Lisette was holding out of the wardrobe to her. 

He lounged back in the armchair and grinned at her. "Yes, I like to feel the weather each day," he said. "Is there not something that you like to do that reminds you of the world and life? You know that Piria has said, if each day we do some small caring task, we will be at home in ourselves and in the world." 

She had reached past Lisette and had pulled out of the wardrobe the pale pink skirt of her old dress. Lisette slid her eyes at Clair, Clair's eyes narrowed. As she thought about Piria's philosophy, she pulled the faded dress out and volunteered: "I like to do gardening." He smiled to hear this. "I like to put my hands in the earth and put plants in to grow. I like to see the flowers year by year, coming up in the courtyard because I put them there. Each year, musts't plant the seeds, at the right time, and tend them, then plant out the seedlings and guard them from snails and the like. I enjoy that." 

She added: "My father used to like to garden. I used to go with him, when I was little, and plant the vegetables. I prefer flowers." Her head swung away to look at the simple pictures of family which hung on her walls. Her curtains were painted by Hyaline but the pictures in her own room were casual sketches of her brothers, sister and father, of Arkyll, and there was one of Tashka lounging on a sofa with a book in one hand, one arm behind her head and a lazy sparkle in her eye. 

Clair looked from the picture of his sister sympathetically at his wife. She rarely spoke of her parents. Her father, who had inherited the vast wealthy lands of Iarve and had never liked to manage them. He had from early on been overshadowed by his ambitious oldest child. Her mother was a flaming beauty who ran affairs at court nearly as scandalous as Clair's own. Lady van Iarve was persuaded briefly back from court by her besotted husband to bear three younger children on the right side of the bed but had left their upbringing to nursery-maids and governesses. 

"My dear," Clair said in his husky warm voice, "have your gardens, then, and leave the housekeeping to me." She smiled at him, softly for once. He stood up and then he said, "will you do me a great favour, my Lady?" She looked enquiringly at him. "Will you let Lisette burn that dress you have in your hands which makes you look like a kitchen-maid selling her favours in the larder?" The blush went hot and red up her cheeks. She looked in a hurt astonishment at the faded pale cotton in her hands and then at Lisette. LIsette's eyes dipped in apologetic agreement with his Lordship's sartorial judgement. 

Clair said in a husky persuasive voice, "I will go to the dressmakers and choose you a ball gown if you will give up that rag." He added, "I have found a new café where they do a special chocolate cake, I will take you there if you will come with me to choose the cloth for your ball gown." He went to open the door and stood in the doorway with the bright light pouring around his long limbs, one eyebrow raised in his lean tanned face. Her face bunched up in a tearful blushing frown, she tossed the pink cotton dress into Lisette's arms. He turned out of her room and walked along the veranda, looking as he walked at the flowers in the courtyard below which were in mid-summer splendour now around the old fountain and the pear tree. 

~#~*~#~

The boys did well in their riding lesson and were filled with enthusiasm for this important grown-up activity they were being permitted to take part in. Clair sent them into the stables after their lesson to help groom the ponies and clean the tack they had been using. The grooms knew that he would expect the boys to be made to do a reasonable degree of work, not be indulged. The head groom was a taciturn individual who was disinclined to favour anyone in what he regarded as his rather than the future sworn Lord's stables so Clair felt confident leaving the boys under his eye. 

He walked back into the castle, idly smacking a crop on the side of his boot, and turned off towards the offices, intending to check on some assessments of taxes ahead of a meeting with the King's man. As he came past the library he thought he would go in and see if any new novels might have arrived which had not yet been put out in the sitting-room. It also crossed his mind that his Lady wife might be in there writing the mysterious correspondence which appeared to occupy so much of her time. 

A surprisingly large number of letters came addressed to her through the castle offices. Sometimes she got letters from her sister Sevianne and her cousin Veeda el Jien, rarely from her oldest brother or her mother, often from her brother Hanya who had never struck him as a literary type. Sometimes letters came with peculiar mercantile seals on the back and he had recently realised there had always been a constant stream of small packets from the University in the H'velst Mountains. Occasionally she gave him news of how Sevianne Inien was progressing in her studies but his brow creased in a puzzled frown as he reflected that the packets had been coming since long before Sevianne went to study there under Arianna's patronage. Arianna did not seem to have news of Sevie's life outside her studies, he got more about this from happy notes she would send with small gifts to Hanya. 

He had not been in the castle library for some years. What was it to him if Lady el Jien consoled herself with a book or two? Anything that kept her in his home was better left unquestioned. He had his own books in his room and was accustomed to work in the King's University library. When he was at home he did not usually have time to work on his theory on Northern architecture. The last time he had seen the library it had been a stripped shell with the old collection of books and scrolls taken away to his father's glass-walled palace in Arventa. He had tended to avoid the library as if it were some other animal's lair although he supposed she must have replaced some of what van Sietter took and made a decent collection of knowledge, given the amount she spent on it. 

As he opened the door and set foot in the big square room with the dark wood fittings, his eyes widened and his lips moved in a soundless Angels!  He would one day be a very wealthy man and his wife kept him in extravagant style, it was not his money that had been spent here and she had immense wealth from the estates which had been her marriage settlement when she came from Iarve. Yet he whistled to think what Arianna had spent to bring their library back to this condition. 

There was a hush in the room as if sound were deadened by the densely packed words on the shelves. The room was double-height with a gallery round the top. Every wall was shelved. Clair's eyes flicked from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling. He saw nothing but spines of books and boxes of scrolls. 

He walked to the middle of the room and turned slowly round, staring at the massed ranks of knowledge about him. He went to one shelf and ran his eye over the rows and rows of philosophical work, all neatly arranged according to date so that you could almost trace the history and development of thought by going from one title to the next. Other castle or palace libraries arranged their books by colour or size but these books were for use, not show. 

He crossed to a section that he thought would be art and architecture, his heart beating faster. Angels! here was a whole set of sketch-books by different artists - a set of studies of the scenes in their local regions, she must have commissioned that specially, what could it have cost? He drew his breath in with a gasp, went on one knee and delicately he eased one of the books out of the set with his strong gentle and experienced fingers. He looked reverently at the lines in the drawings by Stianne, beautiful clean depictions of the Trattai hills with peasants moving in the fields. Of course she would not have been able to get - but yes, she had. The crafty vixen! how had she done it, how could she have persuaded Inien to do some scenes from Soomara. Look at these, they were in watercolour, they were so beautiful! Tears came to his eyes. He loved the art of the Namoon School. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 16



He carried the book away to one of the three tables in the room, lifting his head to see which one might be free. One had some new books, pens and catalogues on it - that would be the one the library clerk used. One was empty, only the nearest one to him was in use although they all had pens and ink and pencils and sand on them and he knew that people like Hyaline and that bird-brain el Parva came here to work. 

The nearest desk was covered in papers and scrolls, there was a board standing by it with a cloth hung over it. As he walked past the table, he glanced at it, puzzled. It was clearly not correspondence that was spread over this table and he was wondering which was the desk Arianna used. Then he stopped short, staring. 

He could not understand any part of the mass of symbols, diagrams and equations set neatly out on papers which were arranged in a strange constellation and even pinned to the table to keep them in place. Clair had thought one of the servants must have been allowed to come and do some private study but this stuff was beyond even his understanding and he was well-educated, he had spent a couple of terms at the King's University going to lectures. He stooped over the table and opened the drawer to it, to look for any clue to whose work this was. The drawer had some neat boxes of pencils and rubbers in it - and a large box of Soomara chocolates which he knew was far beyond the pocket of any servant because he had bought it for his own Lady wife. 

He heard a sound at the door and lifted his head to see Arianna crossing the polished wooden floor, wearing the pretty blue and white cotton dress Lisette had selected for her with the turquoise earrings and bangle which he was always trying to tell her were a good match for it. Her head was back as if in defence. There was a smile on her face but it was guarded. The veiled look was in her eyes which were narrowed as if in anticipation of trouble. 

"What is it?" he asked anxiously. "Are the boys troubling you?" He was still holding the sketch-book; tenderly - not to risk damaging it. 

"Did they enjoy the riding?" she asked. 

"Yes of course," he answered. He hurried to make her a compliment in the hopes of avoiding the quarrel which seemed to be clouding her blue eyes. "My dear, you have made a magnificent collection here. If the scientific catalogue is at all like the artistic one, Sevie Inien will be most happy to come and work here." 

She said in surprise, "is this the first time has't been in here? I bought these especially... I should have thought woulds't have cared to at least look at your own library." 

You bought these books on art especially for me, his heart bumped suddenly in his chest. So generous a gesture, utterly wasted because the shy animal hid in a thicket of secrets. She never gave him the least hint that she was doing such a lovely thing for him. 

"I cannot imagine how you persuaded Inien to do these sketches for you," he answered her, showing her the book he held so carefully. His slanted grey eyes shone with a shy pleasure and she saw him start to give her that rare sweet smile of his. She was dreadfully anxious in case he disturbed the papers, it was awful to see that smile she longed for and not be able to respond properly to it. 

"Well, my d-dear," she stuttered over the endearment, "come and look at it, then." She moved towards the empty desk. 

Clair realised immediately that she was trying to get him away from the table of papers and frowned. He looked down at the papers again, the handwriting looked familiar. 

"Clair," she said. She had softened out her voice, honey-warm tones drew at his attention, mellifluous, alluring. He flicked his elegant dark-haired head in recognition of her appeal and said: "Just a minute." He put the sketch-book of lovely drawings carefully down to one side of the table on top of some of the papers in order to look more closely at the others. 

"Leave it!" she was by him in a sudden flurry. She picked up the sketch-book as if it was a pile of old recipes and dumped it on the clerk's desk then turned back to tenderly replace the papers which he had disturbed. He stared at her, his brows drawing angrily together. 

"Whose work is this?" he demanded. 

"Whose?" she repeated in surprise. "Mine, of course." 

"Y-yours!" he stammered. 

His eyes were wide, he stared at her lovely face. Her fresh young beauty looked back at him: blue eyes like summer skies, lips like a bowl of cherries, cheeks like a summer dawn - soft, warm, golden-pink. 

"What in Heaven and Hell," he blundered. "What is it about?" 

Arianna blushed. She flicked her eyes sideways and fidgeted and coughed. "Um, I am working on a theorem," she said in a constrained voice. He was used to prompting people, being - like her - a patron of artists and scientists. He raised an eyebrow and opened his arms in appeal to her. "Um, well it is about forces and matter," she said. "Perhaps we can think of them as strings by adapting partial differential equations." 

"What?" he said blankly. 

"I think we might think of forces and matter as strings," Arianna asserted. "B'dar disagrees with me," she tossed out the name of the most famous scientist in their land as if he were some casual friend. Clair realised in a flash who it was that the packets and letters from the H'velst Mountains were from. "He put me forward for a post to go and teach the mathematical students at the University in the H'velst Mountains where he has his own laboratory but of course I cannot go." She looked at him, her face was anxious. What would he say of it, that she was a mathematical mind. 

"H'velst Mountains?" he repeated stupidly. "You would think of taking Arkyllan to V'ta? You would have protected status if you were a scholar at the University but do you not realise that he would not?" 

"Because of the terms of our settlement I cannot take ... Of course," she said hurriedly. "That is why I cannot go, it would not be safe to take Arkyllan with me." 

"Although," he said slowly, "he is not a baby. You could leave him with me and go - like Sevianne. Angels! what will they say of it," his face lit up suddenly with laughter. "el Maien van Sietter left at home with the babies while his wife goes to work with his lover's lover in B'dar's laboratory!" 

Arianna looked cross at this flippancy. "I cannot go," she said shortly. "If I did I would not be working in the laboratory messing about like a scientist. On any road, there is not enough time to work on these ideas. There is too much else to do." 

"What is there to do?" he scoffed. "Housekeeping? Why do you pretend to be busy working in the house when you could be doing this? You will lose the path of your thought if you do not spend time every day considering these questions, is it not?" 

"I do spend time on it every day," she answered. "I read while I drink my chocolate in the morning and while Lisette does my hair and face; she takes such a time! Even if there is no one here to see it, apart from you. It does not matter to you if my hair is up or down, does it." 

But he suddenly frowned at this. "You are the future sworn Lady of the region," he answered. "And you are a proud beauty, my dear. Surely you realise the importance of dressing such beauty with propriety?" Her mouth bunched uncertainly at this and her blue eyes looked anxious. He remembered him that when they were growing up, she and her younger brother and sister had had their spirits unreasonably repressed because of their mother's reputation. He tried for a lighter tone: "Tashka and I are fine dressers, you know, we like to see our family well turned out. I like to see your beauty properly set out." 

"I should know you are fine dressers, the amount the pair of you have cost me!" she exclaimed, blushing and avoiding responding to his compliment. 

"Yes," he said reflectively, "I am sorry for it that my father tricked you into taking on our accounts. I know we are expensive." 

"Oh well," she said, "Tashka has his army salary and when he is married van Sietter will have to give him some estate as marriage settlement to pay his income. Tashka is not so expensive as you because he wins so much money at cards." 

"Surely you must long to be here in your library working on this theorem?" he asked. 

"Ye-es," she said. "But then there is my other work. On the region, I mean." 

"What, some nonsense about the Knights and Dames quarrelling or wanting their daughter placed in the Bishop's orchestra or whatnot?" he asked. 

"Um, yes," she said. "I find it fascinating." Her eyes came glimmering up to him with the laugh glinting behind that veiled look. He had thought he had finally got behind that veil and found out her secret but when she laughed like that he knew there was some other game afoot. His eyes lit up and sparkled at her. He liked to play a good game, especially if there might be a kiss at the end of it. 

"You have your stuff about art," she pointed out. "You put that aside to come home to Sietter." 

He laughed. "My little theory on Northern architecture!" he said in his warm husky voice. "I do not think it is in the same rank as your work on, er, strings of stuff." 

"Forces and matter," she said crossly. "So I know a bit more mathematics than you. Is it architecture workest on? I did not realise ... But knowest more of art than I do." 

"No I do not," he answered. "You are the particular patron of Hyaline and have commissioned this gorgeous work from Inien. When we fight about art you display a knowledge and understanding that at least matches mine. We have different taste but we are both renowned patrons of art." 

"Well, is it any matter?" she asked. 

She was like a prism. Every moment she turned her head she became a different facet casting off a different coloured light. At one moment the shy girl on the edge of a flirtation, the next the hot clean brain of the mathematician, then the mature woman with a deep warm sense of humour. He felt he did not know her at all, he had wasted years looking at one flat side of her character. Clair looked into the blue summer skies of her eyes. He felt the temptation, to give her some caress, allow her to lure him off into kisses, laugh with her, run away from this extraordinary business of her intelligence and the fear that it might lead her away from him. Instead he went and fetched the chair from the clerk's desk and sat down by her desk. 

"Will you tell me of your work?" he invited. 

She looked thrilled. Her eyes shone suddenly clear, her proud head dipped and then lifted and her full sweet mouth parted with excitement. She drew up her chair and began to explain, twitching the cloth off the board to reveal yet more symbols and diagrams chalked up there. She was extremely bad at communicating her ideas to him, or else the subject did not fit easily into sentences. He hardly understood a word but he loved to watch her wide red mouth bunching up as she talked and to hear her voice. There was something hilariously sexy about the fact that she talked about things which were so beyond his understanding. Eventually, though, she became irritated with the ignorance of his questions on the subject and put the cloth back over the board, saying the boys would be coming out of the stables and she must go and supervise their bath. 

He laughed as he rose from his chair. She was carefully replacing her papers, weighting some of them down with heavy gold and silver chess pieces. Clair suddenly recognised them from a set they had been given as a wedding present. All these years she had been using them in her work. He reached out to give her cheek a caress. She looked up in a shy startled flick of a glance, he smiled on her and left her to her papers. 

He went to the castle offices and chatted briefly with Laran and Tarra about the upcoming meeting with the King's man for taxes. Their own men for taxes were all returned for the year, ahead of winter when travelling would be impossible. The money was all collected and the King's share apportioned but he supposed there would be some dreary difference between their estimates and hours of discussion to come to an agreement. 

"Not so, sir," Tarra said cheerfully. "These days our meetings are brief, owing to the formula Lady el Jien has designed to calculate the taxes." 

Of course! She was a mathematical brain. No wonder that his regional economy was so efficiently run. He had always given Laran and Tarra the credit for it but it was her. 

He turned to go, delighted to hear they would not have to waste a whole day on meeting the King's man for taxes, then he turned back and said: "Is it not so that my Lady has received a report from an Iarvian merchant? Have you a copy of that report I can read before I go to dinner?" 

Laran and Tarra shot a quick hard glare at each other. Clair just caught sight of their startled anxious faces out of the corner of his eye. Tarra looked out of the window. Laran said: "Is it so?" gathering his papers together and putting them away in a drawer. 

Clair sat down on the chair in front of Laran's desk and put one booted ankle on his knee in the old jodhpurs, sitting back with lordly arrogance in the set of his leg. 

"Tarra," he said. "Fetch that study for me now, I prithou." 

Tarra looked at Laran and Laran nodded. Tarra went to the shelves of reports behind his desk and fetched down a box which he unlocked with an awkward fumble. He found it difficult to hold down the lock with just his left elbow and the key slipped in his right hand. Clair watched with a frown shadowing his brow. 

The former Lieutenant, who had lost his arm fighting under Clair's command in the war with H'las, looked up at him with an apologetic smile. He knew the Commander would be thinking he must get the locksmiths to design something more appropriate; Tarra ought to have considered asking about it himself then the Commander would not have to be troubled about it. He sometimes became so absorbed in the daily business of his work that he did not take sufficient time to look about him and consider what he might need to make his work easy and pleasant. Finally he got the box open, took out a neatly rolled scroll and handed it to Clair. Laran watched with hooded eyes. 

Clair took the scroll, unrolled it, read the first paragraph, rolled through on the wooden batons to the last few paragraphs, reading some parts in the middle as he went. His mouth pursed in a soundless whistle, he looked up at the banners hanging behind Laran's desk and his face was thoughtful. He got up, tucked the scroll under his arm and turned to go. 

"Set aside some time for me to meet with my Lady," he said coolly. "Angel three-day will do, since we will not have to spend so long with the King's man for taxes." Tarra looked nervous but Laran saw a laugh flit through Clair's grey eyes. 

~#~*~#~

Arianna looked with a frown at the castle diary, lifted her head and said: "Tarra, there is some mistake. Has't writ down a meeting after we are to meet the King's man for taxes but there is no one for my Lord and I to meet." 

The chief clerk lifted his head from the sloping desk where he was making a copy of a confidential report on the taxes to send to Lord van Sietter. "It is the Commander, Lord Clair," he answered. "He has asked for a meeting with you." 

"A meeting with me?" Arianna exclaimed in astonishment. "What does he want to meet me about?" 

"He took Master Lein's report away to read," Tarra said. 

Arianna's mouth pursed up. She turned back to the file she had come to see, made a quick note on it, put it on Laran's desk and went to look for Clair. 

She found him in the armoury, walking slowly about the wooden floor, inspecting the racks of weapons and humming a Northern lullaby to himself. There was no one else in the armoury, he had not gone there to practice anything. He was just strolling about, looking at the gleaming rapiers, broadswords, lances and daggers in their racks in a home-y sort of way. 

She stood in the doorway and watched him. 

He was wearing an old pair of patched jodhpurs, riding boots and a thick black woollen jumper. He stood easily relaxed in front of a rack of rapiers, humming his song softly between his teeth, staring meditatively at the oiled blades and drinking coffee from his small bowl with the horses and dogs running round it. 

He moved with grace, at ease as he strolled about in his armoury. In the armoury he could be just a careless fighting young Lord and officer. He would think only about how clean the weaponry needed to be or fighting steps and techniques. Outside the armoury he must face up to the troubles that haunted him, the uneasy balance of his mind. He was often bored, he had to constantly find complicated things to occupy his mind: a theory on Northern architecture, lyric poetry, abstract art. Sometimes, after everything he had been through, the balance of his mind tipped over and all he could bear to think about was washing some dishes or going down to feed the pigs on the farm. 

He looked suddenly up and saw her staring round the doorway. In her simple green woollen dress she looked like a little girl on the edge of another child's playground. He raised an eyebrow at her, with a smile. She stepped into the armoury with her head held high: Lady el Jien van Sietter, with the hot calculating brain that had come up with a formula that meant they out of all the regions never had trouble with the King's man for taxes. 

"Halloo, flower," he said casually with the sweet smile that went up from his thin mouth and made his grey eyes unusually warm and tender. 

She was startled, she even cast a quick glance behind her to see if there was someone-else coming in then she blushed. He pretended not to notice but the smile fell quickly from his hardening mouth. 

"Clair," she said. 

"Mm," he peered at a speck on one of the rapiers. 

"Has't ... has't asked to meet me on Angel three-day." 

"Oh yes," he said in careless tones, picking the speck off the blade. "It is so, I did." 

"Is it ...? It is about the report from Master Lein in Carneo, Iarve." 

He looked over his shoulder at her and grinned a different, a wickedly amused smile. "Yes," he said lazily, "I want to meet you about that entirely unimportant and trivial piece of work you are doing with your brother Hanya and some merchants, a piece of work far too insignificant for Laran to bring to my exalted attention of course. Do you want to talk about it now or can you wait till Angel three-day?" 

Arianna's eyes snapped into a furious glare. Her face frowned like a thunder-cloud at him. 

'Oh Hell!' he thought, 'fool that I am!' 

"Surely," she said in freezing accents. 

"Because what I want to do now," he went on, desperately trying to keep up the light teasing tone he had intended, "is play chess. Come and play chess. Er, I mean, I prithou, of your courtesy, to play chess." 

"I have insignificant and trivial business to attend to," she said scornfully, turning with a proud toss of her head to walk off. 

Clair ran across the room and stood in the doorway, saying: "Anna, Angels' sake! It was only a stupid tease! Do not take it like so. I meant to make you laugh, that is all." She looked to one side, a brittle nervous glance. She clasped her long fingers together, feeling like a foolish girl who has got the game wrong - again. "Anna, my flower," Clair said in his husky warm voice. "I love to watch you laugh, how can I make you laugh?" 

"I ... do not want to laugh," she lied, embarrassed and anxious. "We have serious business we should talk of." 

"Very well," he said. "Talk with me of the merchant's report." 

"I do not have my papers," she said stiffly. 

He repressed his amused grin and said: "You do not need your papers. You have your brain. I know what it is you are about. I have read Master Lein's report and I know you and your brother Hanya. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 16



"You must often have sat with Hanya in the hospital while he recovered from what the war dogs did to him. He was lying there a long time. He does not care for novels so you probably read him the newssheets: articles on trade and political arguments about the democratic rights of the poor. Then the two of you began corresponding with an highly political group: the cloth merchants who have family and trading connections right across the regions. Unlike myself, Hanya knew of your skill with the mathematics and when he was recovered he will have asked your opinion about returns on investments to make with the merchants. 

"But you, my dear, have always understood that the merchants are not so interested in profits. They want to create a cross-regional network to manage better the distribution of employment with the ambition of ridding our country of all poverty, in whatever region. This is not something which can be achieved by the aristocracy. In spite of our professed responsibility to the peoples of our regions, we are mainly concerned to maintain our influence with our wealthier Knights and Dames. Some few of us are like el Gaiel van H'las and work hard for the prosperity of their own people, only inspiring the jealousy of others. Most of us are personally ambitious. Even if we are willing to take responsibility for all of our region's people seriously, we can only operate in the limits of our own region whereas what the merchants suggest is a network all across the country. Only they can manage this. They want the King to create a King's Council for Trade and Employment of which the members would be not aristocrats but merchants. Now you and Hanya are scheming to take this highly seditious proposal to the King and to the Privy Council. Well, my Lady?" 

"It is so," she said. Her face had turned paper white, she looked at him with such fear in her wide eyes that he thought she might faint. He could not understand what had scared her so badly. He even looked behind him but there was nothing there but the empty doorway with a rack of broadswords by it. "What ... what does't think to it?" she asked in a trembling voice. 

"It seems good," he said casually. He was really interested in what was scaring her so much. "Of course there will be trouble with some of the aristocracy over it, including Prianne and most especially van Sietter. That must be thought of. van Sietter will make serious trouble for us if you pursue this ambition but in itself of course the plan is good." 

"And so," her face began to regain its colour, she swayed but took a deep breath and continued, "I may go? I may go with Hanya and the merchants to the Privy Council?" She leant pleadingly towards him with her full sweet el Jien mouth quivering so that he was almost distracted into thinking about kissing it. Her blue eyes were suddenly seductively beautiful: completely unveiled and crystal clear staring at him in desperate appeal. 

Clair looked at her in utter astonishment. "'May'?" he repeated blankly. "You'll go whatever I say of it, will you not?" 

They stared at each other. 

"Holy damned Angels of Hell!" he cried angrily. He threw the coffee out of his bowl on the floor in a fit of temper. The droplets bounced on the floor and grounds scattered in the puddle of coffee. He looked at his bowl and then cast it angrily onto the top of the rack of broadswords. "You have believed that I would try to tell you whether you should or should not work with whoever it please me? As if you were my dog on a scent? Bloody Angel of Baya! and this is why there have been all these secretive meetings and bloody strange attempts to interest me in your work on the region. Anna, for sweet Angels' sake! You have never believed me if in my madness I threatened to imprison you here, have you? How could I do it, you would simply walk out the gates with the children. Ladda and Dar, Laran and Tarra, even bloody Tashka would support you! I cannot beat you to my will, starve you or threaten you to it. You would leave me if I tried, you are no el V'lair broodmare chained in Athagine. You have more power over me than I over you, you can stop my allowance if you are not minded to approve any thing I want to do! How am I to force you to work with, or not to work with, merchants?" 

Her staring white statuesque face shivered. 

"M-mights't break the marriage," she said in a thin desperate voice, "and ... and keep Hanya and Arkyll. Hanya is your son in duty bound, the Church Council would never call him my child. Arkyll is the heir. It is in our marriage settlement papers. Has't the absolute right to send me home to Iarve but to keep Arkyll here." 

Clair's grey eyes were like ice. She suddenly felt what a fool she was to have told him. Just as he was about to agree she could do the work she was so passionately concerned in she had let slip this one thing that he could use against her. 

Clair reached out and seized her arm in a grip so hard that she gave a squeal of pain. He stared into her face, his face as cold as winter, his eyes like icy flints. "Come with me," he ground out. 

"No!" she cried. "Oh no!" 

He began to pull on her arm. Arianna pulled back into the armoury. Clair was trying to drag her out the door but she was a big strong woman. She wrenched her arm from his fingers and backed into the armoury, sobbing with terror. 

Clair looked at her then at his own hand, a flicker of puzzled anger at himself went quickly through him. He went to the door and shouted: "Tarra Larian! Come here!" in a terrible loud voice. The chief clerk came running through from the offices, Arianna heard his feet clattering down the corridor. "Fetch our marriage settlement!" Clair shouted. "Bring it here at once!" 

"B-but Laran has it in the safe, my Lord." 

"Then get him to take it out the safe!" 

"But ... he is in a meeting with ..."

"Even if he is in a meeting with the Angel of Judgement, you will go in and tell him to open the safe and bring me my marriage settlement papers this minute!" Clair yelled. "I have thought!" 

"Oh Clair!" she cried. "Oh Clair! do not break our marriage! Clair, I prithou. Do not take Arkyll and Hanya and send me away! I will do any thing, I will give up the work with the merchants, I will give up the mathematics, I will keep better house for you, oh any thing! I prithou, do not send me away from you back to Iarve!" Huge tears rolled from her blue eyes, she wrung her long fingers passionately together. 

"Anna! What in Hell ...?" his head tilted back round towards her, his grey eyes frowning. "I have told you I will never break our marriage and I have said that Arkyll can go with you if you leave me. You have so little trust in me, why do you trust me so little? What am I asking! Of course you do not trust me, but Anna, who do you think I am? Am I truly a person who will insist that you do not do the work that you love? Am I likely to insist that you manage the household when you hate it and are bad at it and I like to do it myself? How could you imagine, from what you know of me, that I will try to tell you how to run or not to run your own life? I, who am dependent on you for my expensive habits of living? 

"I will alter our marriage settlement. I will set it out fairly that you have the legal right to share caring for Arkyll if you ever go. I cannot give you any written rights in Hanya's care because he is my lover's child not my child but surely you know enough of me to know that I would not part him from you after all he has suffered. Take the children, take the castle, take the whole bloody region from me if you wish it! What would I care for any of it if you broke our marriage and went back to Iarve?" 

She stared at him, still wringing her long fingers together. She shook her head and sobbed desperately. He walked over to her and caught her hands, untwisted her fingers and held them in a gentle grip. 

"There," he said in a rough voice but his fingers were gentle. "Now you can take the boys and go to Pava, or back to Iarve or to court. Not to B'dar's laboratory because if you take him to V'ta the el F'laras will try to kill Arkyll but wherever-else you wish. You can finally leave me. Go on, go." 

He glared into her sobbing face, the blue eyes running with tears, the cheeks patched with red, her mouth bunched up and the tears rolling down her cheeks and her neck. She would not meet his eyes but she shook her head, letting her fingers lie easy in his. Then she stepped back from him, wiping her nose and eyes on her green woollen sleeve. He offered her his kerchief, she took it and blew her nose, loudly. 

"Is that the only reason you have not broken our marriage?" he asked. "You have been afraid I would keep Arkyll from you? Will ... will you break our marriage now?" 

"Arkyll loves you," she said in a rough voice blotched with tears. "I cannot take him from you. And ... ar't not so bad a match. Has't been patient with me while I have run the castle accounts very ill. I have been able to do my work on mathematics and with merchants and now says't will not stop me so why would I leave you? Prianne would not let me work with merchants. I cannot work with merchants if I am in the H'velst Mountains." 

Clair's eyes remained half-hooded in a frown at this. He sighed and stood back from her. "How could you believe I would interfere in your work?" he asked. "You are as obstinate as a pig, Anna, how could I prevent you doing any work you wanted to do." 

She shrugged then said: "Well, but men are like that," in a resentful tone of voice. "They think that women should cook and sew and play with the children. When I grew up, does't think any man encouraged me to sit at my desk in the library doing sums? No, they made me do sewing an hour a day. When they put me up to you for a match, did they say, she will be able to run the finance of your region so well that even the King's man for taxes will praise her? No, they made me embroider you a stupid shirt that you have never even worn." 

Clair burst out laughing and raised a sardonic eyebrow. "And I am like that," he said in his warm husky voice. "In spite of the fact that I brought my ... my sister up a soldier, I have encouraged women to write and paint in the face of their families' disapproval, I sponsored Sevianne Inien in her studies at the King's University and I honour the friendship of women like Lady Veeda el Jien van Vail, Lady Hartha el Farin van P'shan and Lady Lallia el Farin. With all this, I am a man and it must be that I think you should manage the cooking and cleaning, although you do it so ill that there is always a tangle of problems to come home to if I have to be away." 

"Has't never encouraged me to do other work than the housekeeping," she pointed out sulkily. 

"Oho!" he said mockingly. "And it is you who have always shown me how interested you are in any other thing. It has taken you years to admit to me that you are a mathematical mind. Whenever I have come home, you have hidden in the kitchens or the dusting although I knew very well you were doing other work with Laran. It is true, Lady el Jien, that I have not come hunting among the torn quilts to drag you out and force you to admit to your real interests but tell it me, what would you not have done to me if I had tried? You have cut me about enough as it is with that sharp tongue of yours." 

"Am I sharp-tongued?" her voice began to rise with temper, her breath came quicker and her full bosom heaved with insulted annoyance. He was delighted to see the colour go rising up her cheeks. He loved to provoke her out of the cold pale proud Lady of the high nobility she tried so hard to be. 

"And sharp-witted," he said, "to my great pleasure. What a burden it would be to me, to have some stupid cow to wife who would only give me a 'Yes, my Lord', 'No, my Lord' and totter about between my bed and the kitchens." 

She did not know what to say to that. It did not sound like much of a compliment but Clair evidently meant it for one. 

"Anna," he went on, "I cannot nurse you in your work, I am not sufficiently intelligent in mathematics although perhaps I can help you with this work with the merchants. You are good at the economics but I am not sure you understand what political problems may be the consequence. But what interests me most is to meet the keen blade of your mind in a fair fight and I will tease you until you unsheathe it. That is what I love of you, that you are a match to my mind. Oh how bored I have been with the silly woman I thought I had married, skulking in the nursery and kitchen!" 

She looked quickly at him and said: "Then have at you!" and flipped him in the face with his own kerchief like a glove. 

Clair started back, his hand automatically going to the hand-guard of his rapier. Then he let out a ringing clear laugh. Arianna felt a sudden surge of pride, to have made him laugh. 

Tarra came in and Clair turned regretfully to him, reaching for the enormous bundle of papers that set out all the details of their legal rights to each other's property and to each other and to their children. 

"Angels!" he groaned. "Look at this nonsense! Why can they not just leave us to fight it out fairly!" 

He grinned into Arianna's flushed tearstained face. She began to smile back at him and he watched the smile grow on her wide red mouth, irritably conscious of Tarra standing helpfully at his elbow. How much he wanted to simply kiss that wide red mouth as sweet as a bowl of cherries and settle things that way - but it would never be so sweet as the kiss she would give him if she knew she had a fair set of rights in the great mass of documents delineating their marriage settlements.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 17



Thank you so much for the comments and feedback. Please make a comment if you have a moment. ::heart:: 

*****

It was cold and the light was grey on the grey stone of Castle Sietter's walls but the courtyard was a milling mass of colours: people, horses, dogs. The kennelmaster and one of the houndsmen were in deep discussion, two rocks in a sea of bobbing sandy and brindled hounds' heads. The grooms were frantically busy, going from dappled horse to black horse, checking stirrups and saddle-girths, soothing a nervous horse, giving a friendly slap to a placid one. 

Vadya chewed mechanically on a piece of bread and ham, one hand in the pocket of his jodhpurs absently fingering a filigree button that had come off Tashka's breeches the previous night. He saw Pava in a dark blue hacking jacket chatting idly with Sevie el Jien and Volka el Darien. Tarra el V'lair was flirting with three giggling kitchen maids who had sneaked out to watch the hunt set off. 

Vadya's grandmother in duty bound, Lady van P'shan, dressed in a splendid dark green habit with a wine red pattern in it, was chatting to her groom. She had been unusually reserved towards Vadya, making him down-hearted. Angels' sake, some of the things people said she might have done (not usually to him) were a lot worse than being obliged to put your ring on the finger of your junior officer who ought to have been promoted your equal a while back. 

Vadya saw that Arianna was coming out of the castle on Clair's arm, wearing dark blue, her hair in a net at the nape of her neck and on her head a fetching hard flat dark blue hat with a brim and a little eye-veil. She had caught up her long skirt in one hand and was stepping out lightly by Clair's side, her eyes sparkling with anticipation and an appealing dimple dancing in her chin. 

Vadya thought longingly of what it would be like when he and Tashka were married, when they could walk or sit or lie together as and when they pleased. He might come out to his own hunting party with Tashka on his arm. 

Then he remembered that people would say Tashka had been his junior officer and comment on their being together whether they were married or not. Besides, Tashka would already be out there bossing the grooms about. 

Tashka came suddenly out of the castle in a black silk jumper, heavy cotton cream jodhpurs and black riding boots, a black hard hat on her head. She was slapping one glove idly in the other hand. Vadya's heart jumped, his body gave a warm lurch. He walked over and took hold of her arm with a grin. Tashka winked one lapis lazuli eye at him. She looked fabulous, the black emphasised her features: the dark hair and lashes, the pink lips, the slanted blue eyes. Tarra el V'lair was casting a look over at them. His eyes met Vadya's and he gave Vadya a grin that Vadya was already disposed to find offensive, but then Vadya remembered with satisfaction that he had a bigger cock than el V'lair's. 

Tashka was pouting her rose-petal mouth in a manner which made evident what she had done with it to his big cock the previous night, after luring him off into her room in spite of his reservations. (Angels' sake, Tashka! under your brother's roof! He'll have me for it.)

Clair cast her a penetrating look from one grey eye under a raised eyebrow. She sniggered and he could not forbear a curve of the lips in response but then he straightened his mouth and the look in his eye made evident what he would do if he was obliged to publicly notice the stain on her honour. He went to Arianna's side, his linked hands held out for her to step up into the saddle from. She saw his eyes distant; he was thinking about all the arrangements for the hunt, and for the dinner and entertainment of their guests, yet he had spared the time to come and put her in the saddle, a menial task. 

She put her foot in his hands and he threw her, she leapt up, clasped her knee about the pommel of her side-saddle (no chance to ride in a proper saddle today). She stooped down and said: "My thanks, sweetness," in accents as friendly as her siblings' and Pava's. He lifted his lovely slanted grey eyes to her and smiled, clasping the calf of her booted leg through her skirts before moving to his own horse. 

Clair swung into the saddle, looked quickly about the courtyard. They were all mounted, the horses moved restlessly over the cobbles, the dogs were already baying and barking. He lifted his hand high in the air, called the signal, waving his arm forward and they were away. Horses and hounds poured out of the castle gates, down the green hillside, away past a group of servants standing excitedly outside the gates, past Tenth Athagine who were gathered by the tents to watch them pass, past a few of the townsfolk who had come up to see them ride away into the rolling fields and light woodland, the perfect hunting territory of the Sietter Hills. 

Tashka was in the front at the tail-edge of the yelping pack of hounds, bent low in her saddle with the cold damp autumn air in her face, Vadya and Tarra a few lengths behind her. 

They were coming to a fence. Arianna drew a big breath in, she settled her weight carefully over Sweetheart's saddle. She went over the fence as light as a bird and landed with a heavy jolt. Ahead was the series of fences which always broke the party into two halves, some were high hedges and less able riders would go round them. Arianna saw Tashka take a hedge on Honour Bright so high that they seemed to be flying. Vadya had got over but Tarra el Vlair's horse refused the first time, almost shooting him into the hedge, it stopped so sharply. 

Arianna wanted to laugh at him, half hanging off his horse's neck, but she was gathering herself for the jump. She gripped her knee on the pommel of the saddle, made sure her weight was evenly distributed over Sweetheart's back. Sweetheart leapt from the ground and they were landing with the shock that jolted Arianna in the saddle. She gasped and laughed out in the cold grey morning. Clair's voice was raised beside her. He was shouting at her that she should not have risked the jump and her riding side-saddle - what if Sweetheart had fallen? 

"I'll race you to Hell but I'll jump if I want to!" she shouted back. He looked astounded to hear her talking so free. She laughed and pressed on after Tashka. 

As a hunt it was a disaster but everyone enjoyed a good ride so it was no matter. Tashka had gone off after the main body of the hounds so far ahead that even Vadya could hardly keep up with her and Clair lost command of the field. He pulled away after a little off-shoot of the pack which seemed to have picked up a scent going into the light woodland. 

The sun was rising and the grass was flinging back a myriad diamond sparkles. Clair cantered easily along, conscious of cold raw air in his lungs, of a breeze sweeping over his eyes and through his hair, of Arianna cantering just behind and beside him on Sweetheart. He was still admiring her riding skill, although he also felt an annoyed qualm at her leaping the high hedges in a side-saddle. Angels! yet another matter in which he would have to keep an eye over her wild ways. It was almost enough to make him wish she were the placid cow he used to think he had married. He laughed as he rode, the blood was dancing in his veins, his grey eyes shone. He slowed True View to a trot, to a walk, and turned in the saddle to collect the hunting party. 

Too late. In the distraction of thinking about his wilful Lady wife he had lost them. He could see a pair of figures on horseback disappearing in the distance, one in an elegant dark green habit. He sighed. They would never keep up with Tashka. Perhaps Vadya or Tarra might collect them together, perhaps they would all ride about in a ragged bunch and come home laughing and hungry and teasing him that the party had gone astray. 

Riding up behind him were Pava and Arianna, looking suddenly very alike, both in dark blue. They had the same lazy smile in their eyes, the same pink glow in their fair faces, they smiled with that full red mouth like a bowl of cherries. Clair grinned at them and turned to canter after the hounds as they trotted sniffing into the widely spaced trees. He turned his head back again and there was only Arianna. He met her serene blue gaze and looked for Pava but Pava had gone. 

Holy Heaven, she was lovely; her cheeks flushed with exercise and the fresh autumn air, her eyes bright, her golden-pink complexion picked up by her dark blue habit. She held herself in the saddle with such grace and poise, his Lady wife, his elegant and intelligent and thrillingly seditious wife. Clair turned and trotted True View after the hounds into the trees, his mind clouded by a myriad of thoughts about this situation. Alone with his own wife in a wood. The hounds were starting to splinter, to run separately in different directions, they had clearly lost the scent. It was an old scent, they were not excited by it. He reined True up, allowing Arianna to come and rein Sweetheart up beside him. 

They sat looking at each other. Then he slipped his foot out of the stirrup, swung his leg over the saddle and caught the horses' reins. He whistled the dogs off the scent and led the horses to a brook where he let them drink. 

Arianna sat still in her saddle, suddenly shy. She felt shyer than any of the young things whose sexual flirtations she was obliged to keep a check on at their parties: shyer than her sister Sevie whispering in a corner of the sitting-room with Volka el Darien, shyer than Tashka's friend Anata parrying with exquisite wit the attentions of Pava and Tarra el V'lair, certainly shyer than that bold young animal her sister by marriage Tashka. She felt as if she were a gauche young girl, alone with a man in a wood. Clair led the horses to a tree, looped their reins over a branch, settled the hounds down and came back to reach up to her waist. She put her hands on his shoulders, unhooked her leg from the pommel and slid down into his arms. 

He held her close to him, pressed her head to his shoulder. Her arms were around his neck, she hesitated and then ran her fingers into his hair and pushed her nose into his neck, sniffing at the smell of his clean laundered shirt, the scent of his soap, the oil he used for his hair, his sweat. She felt as if a tight band suddenly relaxed in her chest, to allow her to embrace her husband. 

Clair was holding her more loosely, he kept one arm about her and drew her aside to a bank drifted up with dry dead leaves where the early morning sunshine was falling in bright shafts through brown and yellow leaves that were still on the trees. He pulled gently at her arm to persuade her to sit down with him. She resisted, turning her head aside and blushing. He laughed, letting her arm go and flinging himself back on the bank. He lay back there laughing up at her, his grey felt riding jacket with the high collar and green trim caught up behind him, his slanted grey eyes watching her with an amused sparkle. He was as easy as if he were lounging on a sofa in the sitting-room. He was as beautiful as an Angel, long-legged and lean, the most desirable man at court. 

She wondered about all the other people he had been with. She felt suddenly like one of them, just a one-day-one-night that he had come away with from the hunting party. That ought to have been exciting but it made her want to cry. She turned her head and sat apart from him, trying to remind herself that it was she who had said to Pava: "Will you go with the others?" and her cousin had said teasingly: "Sweet hunting, sweet cousin," and ridden off to let her go to this man. 

"Anna," he said. His voice was soft and warm, hesitant. 

As ever, she tactlessly blurted straight out what was in her mind: "Is this ... the kind of thing woulds't do? Leave an hunting party with someone?" 

His face was confounded, he stared at her. He flushed up and his eyes narrowed. He looked insulted, angry and hurt, he sat up and drew his knees into his chest. "No," he said in a cold voice. 

She had wrongly accused him. As usual she had broken up his good humour, the mellow mood in which she might have had the kisses of a man well experienced in sex, the kind of man Tashka had described as her first lover. She felt her heart constrict in a clutch of sorrow. He had been in a caressing laughing mood, perhaps offering a sexy favour out here in the soft autumn woodland and in her clumsy fear about having to take her own husband's favour, she had lost the chance of the kiss that was all she wanted. She did not want a sexy favour that was as casual as had been those he had slung to people he had not cared a copper coin's curse for but it made her sad to think that she might not get a kiss. 

Was it an unreasonable question? If he had not come away from a hunting party to take a favour, he had certainly left other events to do so. She looked sidelong through her lashes and the eye-veil of her hat at her tall lean husband with his lovely long limbs and his beautiful slanted eyes, sitting hunched up with his arms hugging his booted knees to his chest. 

He started to kick out his long legs and stand up, saying, "let us go back, my dear, the children will like to see us return early," in a reserved voice. There it was, she had lost it, the chance of his kiss. But looking up into his face, she realised that it was not her he was angry with. He had turned those slanted grey eyes onto her with an expression which she had not expected of him. A patient warmth made his grey eyes soft although his mouth remained in a thin line. 

She lifted her head to look up at the yellow leaves dancing in a breeze above her head. "My ... my dear," she said. His eyes widened to hear those soft Iarvian tones, the voice so like Pava's which had never yet been affectionate towards him as Pava's silly loving voice had always been - until he had been obliged to take the hand of Pava's own beloved cousin sitting here on the bank of dried leaves with her back as straight as she was wont to sit on the sofa in the sitting-room. "T-talk to me. Tell me ... why ar't content to support my politics when thinkest they will bring trouble on us. Ar't an officer-aristocrat. I did not expect you to ... to have the intelligence to understand what Hanya and I are trying to do." She gave him a shy sideways deprecating smile in apology. 

Clair sat down again on the bank of dried leaves with a rustle. He rested his elbows on his knees and turned his head of elegantly cut curls to look at her through clear grey eyes. "Oh well," he said. "I suppose I believe in what you want to do." His thin mouth curved in a smile but she saw that his eyes were suddenly full of tears. "I have suffered, you know," he said softly. "I should like us to live in a way that my people can enjoy a good life and I might not have to fear going back to war." 

She cast her eyes down into the leaves, her long fingers shuffled among the curled brown leaves. "I heard," she said softly. "Wents't to court, bloody from the field of battle, carrying the weaponry of men who had died at Shier Bridge. I heard how woulds't not wait when they tried to make you an appointment - an appointment for such a matter! Wents't in to the King's meeting, pusheds't past the guards, brokes't through the doors. Threws't the weaponry on the floor - Sietter and H'las mixed together - and wents't on your knees to beg van Sietter, van H'las and the King for peace. I was so proud to be your Lady wife when I heard about that day. I was so sad because I knew what it meant to you and that for you peace was nothing, it was empty without Hanya Vashin, who should have been your husband." 

He stared at the back of her head, the dark blue flat hard hat perched on her rich flaxen hair. He could not remember it properly, that insane journey. He had screamed at the guards on the door so wildly that they started back from him. He staggered with exhaustion and the heavy weight of weapons in his arms and fell against the doors so hard that he burst them open by accident. He stumbled into the council chamber, his eyes wild with shock and grief. He could not speak, he could not find words. He threw the weaponry he carried in a crash on the floor, collapsed exhausted to his knees and burst into tears of frustration because he could not talk. After all his efforts he could not articulate what he had struggled here to say. It was van H'las who shouted out: "Give the boy peace, el Maien!" and suddenly there was a great call of voices saying: Peace, Peace,  but there was no peace for him only grief-stricken rage and madness because that rat Hanya had deserted him, had gone long years ahead of him into death. 

He swallowed and said in a cool even voice, keeping his grief back so that he could get to the truth of her feelings: "You are not jealous of that love I had ... have for Hanya?" 

"No of course not," she said, lifting her head to look directly into his grey eyes, watching the stormclouds of tears gather there and recede. "Since was't loyal to Hanya, since gaves't him such devoted passion in return for his love, I hope mights't one day ... not love me as dids't Hanya. I do not hope for that of course. I only wish for loyalty." 

"Loyalty?" he asked, with a light puzzled frown. "You do not want my love, you want my loyalty? They are the same." 

She hesitated. Her tongue ran over her warm wide red mouth, he watched it with a flick of desire but she did not seem to want to rouse desire in him. "Not to ... to give your favours so lightly," she said. She blushed and turned her face away. 

"Not to lie in the bed of every man and woman I trip over in the corridor," he suggested. The blush deepened in her cheek. "Mm," he said reflectively. "You can accept Hanya was, and remains, part of my life because that was a true love. It was before your time with me, it shows I am capable to be in a true love affair and Hanya ... Hanya is dead and go-one," his voice wavered but he bit his lip and kept the tears back. He felt them run down inside his nose and swallowed. "It is the one-day-one-nights. You cannot forgive me that I was casual with my favours. How can you trust me if I offer you a kiss since my kisses have been meaninglessly bestowed on anyone who fell in my bed." 

She looked down at the leaves beside her, rumpling them in her fingers. 

"I have never left an hunting party for anyone before," he said. "I like hunting too much. What does it matter to you if I pick up some light piece of trimming? It is not a two-three hours passing pleasure I seek with you. You are so fine a woman: your magnificent beauty, your elegant style, your understanding of art, your morality, your intelligence in mathematics. You can have any heart you put out your hand for, do you not know that?" 

"Oh no," she answered. "I am not even sure of it now, that wills't not turn and say: This is too much, I dislike it that works't with merchants and spends't your time making sums instead of sewing. When I was young, no one wished to be my sweetheart. Who would want to chat of equations or morality in political economics? I was lucky that Pava did not mind all that, he just liked me and wanted to dance, to have a little kiss. Sometimes I think back and wonder whatever did he make of the letters I wrote him, that would be full of my thinking on what the high nobility should do about the poor people or I would send him some book of simple equations I thought might lure him to share my interest." 

Clair smiled. "I can tell it you," he answered. "I have seen him in the Lieutenants' tent, secretly take some parcel with a book in it out from where he hid it in his bedding roll and kiss it. He never did read the books! but he dearly loved to have a letter from you. Never mind all those fools who gave your fine mind the go-by when you were a little girl, my dear. Am I them? You know that although I am not a scientific or mathematical mind I value science as well as the arts, you know it from how I have supported scientists. I am well willing to support your mathematical work, if that is what you wish. Can you not understand that I appreciate your mind?" 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 17



"What of it?" she asked. "We are not writing a book together. It is something to build a companionship on but it does not mean I can trust your kisses that have been given so lightly to so many others. The only difference between me and them, the only true bond between us, is that I bore you your heir. I know not even if there are other ..." she ground to a halt, her head bent over a brown leaf in her hands that she shredded slowly along the veins. 

"No," he said. "Think sufficiently well of me for that. I cared nothing for myself at that time but I have never been so careless of a lover in my bed as to do any thing that would place them at risk. And do not make of Arkyll, or Hanyan, a bond, a thing to tie us each to the other. Arkyll is a person, you could not use him to hold me to you. There are many things that might be a bond between us but not Arkyll. You do not care for the housework of the castle but there is our work on the region, for years we have worked together through Laran and Tarra on the region. There is our love of the arts. These things could bring us together." 

"Quarrels't with me about how to hang the paintings in the reception rooms," she pointed out grumpily. 

He laughed. "Are you still angry about that!" he exclaimed. "You cannot hang Hyaline between two pieces from the Namoon School. You cannot have a painting of harvest coming home in lovely colours between two abstract works - entitled Battle 1 and Battle 2!" 

"I just wanted to put one of my paintings in there," she grumbled. 

"Well, there it is," he said patiently. "I put it over the fireplace for you; it looks well there, is it not?" 

"Namoon School," she grumbled. "Why must they mess with circles and lines. Whenever I look at those paintings I feel uncomfortable because in Battle 1, for example, the line is not properly drawn to the ratio of the diameter of the circle." 

He gurgled with laughter. "You silly butterfly," he said softly. "It is a battle! Do you expect to say, How picturesque about the death and terror that is battle?" 

"Cans't see that our love of art can be no bond between us," she pointed out. 

"Yes it is," he answered. "Is love only cooing each to other like little white doves in a soppy picture by Velor? We can love to argue about art, even as we can love to agree about the need to help the poor of our country." 

"How can an argument make a tie between us?" she asked. "Think of your friend: Tarra. His arguments with his Lady wife did not make a marriage with her." 

"Oh," he said reflectively, "Tarra and Lallia." He gave a sigh. She watched surreptitiously to see him sigh over the famously beautiful and intelligent Lallia el Farin. "They were friendly enough to begin with and have danced and even flirted together. Yet even now Tarra does not like to hear of her and will tell it people she is a vixen bitch and the like, if pushed to talk of her." 

"Oh, why?" she could not forbear to ask. "He is courteous, he is handsome enough. And Lallia el Farin ... She ... she was your particular ... your friend, is it not?" 

He raised his head at that and looked round at her with a lifted eyebrow. He saw her take her lower lip up in her teeth and her blue eyes dipped and looked away. "Yes," he said in his firm husky voice. "She is my friend. You have seen that we still correspond. You may read any of my letters from her. I know that you enjoy to read a good account of poetry. Lallia was always devoted in her heart to her Knight lover back in Graiel. We enjoyed an affectionate friendship and I will not pretend that because of my light slut's ways I would not have taken a favour if she had offered it but she is like yourself, my dear. She is a woman of high honour and a sweetheart. She would not give out a favour lightly, even to her married husband." 

Arianna's eyes lifted to him again, the blush tinging her cheeks with pink. "Is that why their marriage broke?" she asked. 

Clair shook his head. "When she was first bestowed on him she was willing to lie with him for the succession if he could come to an agreement with her," he said, "but Tarra is van Athagine. He would not offer her any reasonable agreement." 

Arianna continued to look at him in question. Clair frowned at the leaves that still hung, yellow and brown, from the twigs of trees that were starting to look bare. Finally he burst out, anger and frustration bubbling up in his voice: "How often have I tried to tell it to him! A man like Tarra has no right to ask anyone to live in a marriage. Lallia was willing to excuse the numberless women who fell in and out of his bed but he would not countenance that she should bear him the heir and then go back to her heart's heart, that Knight in Graiel she loved. The el V'lairs are like that about 'their' women. To Tarra women are not people, they are possessions - in Athagine Halls the Girls are chained. 

"Lallia was willing to wear Tarra's ring but not to be chained in Athagine. I and her aunt, Lady Hartha, who is the sworn Lady of P'shan, supported her in asking for a legal agreement that she could be free to be herself but Tarra refused it. Then it was clear that he expected her to belong to him as the Girls chained in Athagine do to the sworn Lord, his father. What a thing to ask of Lallia el Farin van Graiel! How could that pig van Graiel have picked out Tarra of all men to throw Lallia away to? There were so many of the oldest sons of the high nobility who would have gone on bended knee for her hand and he had to bestow her on an el V'lair. He did it for the wine trade. Bloody bird-brain. Tarra of course was well content to have Lallia el Farin to his bride, when first I met them he had a kind of pride in her and I thought they would make a match of it but the stupid fool, to treat a woman such as her like a pet animal or a jewel to show off on his arm! 

"van Athagine women belong so absolutely to the el V'lairs that they do not expect marriage estates to be settled on women bestowed on their oldest sons, financial security if their marriage should fail. That selfish swine van Graiel had gone along with this and left Lallia wholly dependent on Tarra. Tarra started to hold back the money she needed, to tell it her to give him a kiss or caress if she wanted whatever. It was a disgusting way to treat her, if she would not he gave her what-for, to refuse her own husband a kiss - as if that would make her the more inclined to favour him. 

"Finally Lady Hartha and the brothers made van Graiel pay to break the marriage. Old van Athagine agreed because the el V'lairs had the succession to think of - and he wanted the cash, he is a profligate swine even more expensive than Tarra. Tarra ... well he was very angry. It is sufficient indication of how unfit he is to attempt to live in a marriage. He did not love Lallia in herself and he has a collection of ladybirds to rival his father's, yet he was angry that she managed to break free of his possession and he accuses her of all sorts." 

Arianna thought of the louche saturnine Commander-Lord el V'lair van Athagine. He had always treated her with a proper courtesy as his hostess, coming to sit and talk to her when Clair had had hunting parties in the past with people she did not want to know and who treated her with a slighting disdain. She did not quite understand what Clair meant, that he treated women as possessions or that van Athagine women belonged to the el V'lairs. The recipient of an exceptionally generous marriage settlement which she had astutely deployed in collaboration with her brother, whose husband was dependent on her, she could not imagine being without financial means. 

She had thought Clair and his friend were alike, lady-hunting officer-aristocrats living for pleasure, but what Clair said suggested that her husband had at least some dark streak of morality on which a lover might build trust. She turned it over in her mind whether to ask more about el V'lair's women, what did it mean to be a girl "chained" in Athagine Halls? but to know what the traditions of the el V'lairs van Athagine might be would not give her any more understanding of el Maien van Sietter. Although he had once threatened it, he had never actually attempted to keep her in the region. He had thrown to the wall the only legal agreement which could have bound her to Sietter. He offered her freedom to think about equations, to work with the merchants, to leave him with their children or leave the children to his loving care if she wanted to be completely free to do the work she loved. 

"You will not permit any bit of trimming if I offer you a true marriage?" Clair enquired. There was a lurking humour in his voice, she turned her head with her blue eyes creased up in annoyance and embarrassment behind the eye-veil of her hat. 

"How cans't have turned to such lightness after hads't had such a love for Hanya?" she demanded. "That time I saw you," he was looking at her in question, she blushed and tried not to remember in too explicit detail what she had seen. "Such devotion! He loved you as he loved nothing else in his life." 

"My dear," he said softly. "I loved Hanya for seven years with my whole heart and body. I never strayed from his bed but Hanya sometimes ... found pleasure elsewhere. I knew it did not mean a thing, it never came near his love for me, and I let it pass."  

Those naive round blue eyes, crumpled in incomprehension. He could have laughed, to see his Lady wife so indignant that his lover had occasionally strayed from his bed and that after losing his lover he had betrayed their passionate commitment with a string of casual favours he had picked up as carelessly as she had picked up brown leaves she was unwittingly shredding in her long fingers. He felt actually apologetic to have spoilt the beautiful vision of devotion she had imagined he and his lover had shared. He thought it would be impossible to explain to her how pure had been the hot animal passion they had enjoyed or how meaningless had been the careless slut's progress he had made through swathes of bodies at court. 

He had gone there ruined in spirit, angry with the world, careless of anyone - except to get as far as possible from the soft warm hope in her horribly candid blue eyes. One night after ploughing his favour into the warm big body she brought to him, ignorant and submissive in her ignorance but soft and gentle too, he nearly kissed her and was so angry about it that he nearly struck her. He waited two nights in a stricken paralysis of hope and terror but she stopped coming to him. He knew she was waiting for him to go to her. 

He told his servants to pack and he fled, carrying the memories of what he had suffered in warfare like festering wounds in his mind. He went in search of some place where he could not harm those who were innocent, hoping she might find happiness without his disgusting stricken presence to blight her life. He did not know where to go, other than back to court and the King's University where he thought he might get some sense of purpose by going to a course of lectures, any lectures. A life of the mind, he would forget what his heart had suffered in that. 

When he arrived at court, he heard that his old friend, who was the son of the infamous el V'lairs van Athagine, was throwing a party. He knew it would be an iniquitous and outrageous affair. Miserable with his own self, he thought he would feel at home there. He strode angrily in the door and saw a bejewelled bird of paradise on the arm of his friend lift her eyes to him and narrow them and pucker her lips in unmistakeable appreciation. el V'lair saw her do it and snarled round eagerly with his hand on his gloves. When he saw Clair stepping back into the doorway to leave he grinned as eagerly in welcome. 

It was not just el V'lair's scantily dressed companion that had caused Clair to suddenly realise he was in deeper than he had expected to be. There was a boy dancing on a table in the middle of the room in a manner which made Clair feel at the same time horribly pure himself and a bit sick. The wine was running freely in a silver fountain; there was already an officer in Athagine parade silks lying unconscious at the side of the room with the servants going resignedly to clear him away. 

el V'lair was coming himself to the doorway and offering his sword arm. This was a high distinction and Clair could not refuse it. The scantily dressed beauty had come with el V'lair, he took her by the arm and shoved her at Clair, laughing and saying in a slurred drunk voice, "give her back to me the morrow, after what I had from one of your women you may have any of mine howsoever you wish." 

Clair did not know what he meant and he was not sure he wanted to know. He tried to laugh it off, he just wanted to go back to his room now but the woman had draped herself around his shoulder and hip. He could feel one of her breasts against his back. Her arm wrapped around his shoulder and one of her hands came negligently brushing over his groin, making his cock stir. He tried to push her hand away but it had already gone back round to squeeze his buttock. el V'lair was saying, "give me the one hand of cards at the least of it. Let me win back some of what your brother took off me." 

"You have seen Tashka?" Clair asked eagerly but el V'lair said, "not recently." He took hold of Clair's arm, insistently, and said, "tell me any news you have of Lieutenant-Lord el Maien. Your ... your brother is dear to my heart." Clair was surprised to hear this. He had not realised Tashka had even met el V'lair, who was a kind of man he would have been scrupulous not to introduce to her notice. He looked suspiciously at el V'lair, who had once said something about Tashka's resemblance to their mother which had caused Clair to punch him in the face but el V'lair had only laughed this off as a champion blow. el V'lair was smiling softly with a respectful affection he never showed women so Clair relaxed and followed el V'lair to the cards, trying surreptitiously to push the bird of paradise off his hip and escape the embarrassing arousal of her gently caressing hands. 

"Get off him," el V'lair said crossly, seizing her arm and dragging her away so hard that she gave a small cry. When Clair looked at her she was holding her arm where el V'lair had twisted it with tears glistening in her exquisite dark blue eyes. "Do you want another one?" el V'lair asked. "Take your pick," he waved a negligent hand at a sofa piled with women all leaning on each other in a casual friendly way, their bodies stretched out to display the curve of their breasts and hips, slender ankles and soft-skinned necks and one was showing her lovely plump leg up to the knee. 

They were not chained, of course, because Tarra was not yet the sworn Lord, but his father used to pass on the Girls to him sometimes and from quite young he had collected a bunch of free Athagine beauties to play with, some of whom went on with his assistance to make spectacularly wealthy careers of a certain kind, to his great pride. "Your preference is not entirely for officers, is it?" he was saying. "You can have a man if you had rather. Have one of my Lieutenants." 

Clair turned his head and realised that there were at least five men giving him the eye. Two of them, draped about each other in the pale blue and black diamond patterned Athagine parade silks, looked on him in a manner which made plain that he would be a welcome third in their bed. The thought of the ways in which they would like to enjoy his body and to offer him theirs to enjoy made his cock harden some more. 

The bird of paradise was still coming along in their wake, slowly and holding her arm where el V'lair had twisted her away from Clair. Her lovely dark-haired head was stooped down. The thought of the tears glistening in her eyes made Clair feel bad at heart. She was clearly neither ignorant nor submissive, probably not soft or gentle either but Clair felt sorry about her twisted arm so he said, "will you just let me have this one to blow luck on my cards?" At that she lifted her head and grinned, her round dark blue eyes sparkled. 

He had never spent much time at court because his father liked to see him and Tashka as little as possible so he was still naive about what a catch he would have been even if he were not beautiful of body and face with the haunting appeal of the war-tormented veteran officer. He was flattered by the experienced seductress's evident wish to be favoured by him. She appeared to be willing even to risk el V'lair's valuable favouritism, although she was that lovely that he probably would still hang her on his arm a while yet. She was a slim tall woman and the blue of her eye reminded him of Tashka, although she was dressed in a manner his sister would have laughed heartily at. She blew softly on his neck and ear while he played cards for the kisses of the women around them with the half-naked dancing going on around the card tables and el V'lair groping a luscious plump brunette in between the hands. She kissed el V'lair with salacious abandon if he won a hand. 

She knew just how much of the exceptional brandy which el V'lair made them give him would get him going and when it would be too much for him. She lured him off into the corridors when he was bright with the brandy and the women's kisses, smiling into his eyes. She drew him behind the curtains of a window embrasure and stood looking into his eyes with that knowing smile. If he had been sober he would have given her the go-by but he was exhausted emotionally with what he had been through and physically with the long journey to court. 

He leant back on the wall in the narrow space behind the long window curtains, inarticulate and slow to respond when she started unbuttoning his breeches. She had already put a hand on his cock by the time he had a hand up to prevent her. It was filling with arousal but still soft and she murmured into his neck that this would not do. Before he could tell her that he wanted to leave, she knelt down and put her mouth around his cock. 

He grunted and tried to push her away. She put up her hands and pushed his back. He leaned back against the wall, grunting and suddenly giving way to her. She was nothing like either his lover or his Lady wife and she was mad keen for his favour and now the thrilling feelings were rising around his loins and his buttocks were squeezing. She started to let his now hardened cock slip from her mouth but he put his hands to her head and grunted to her, "take me like that," fiercely because he was drunk and starting to cry and could not bear it for some pink bird of paradise belonging to el V'lair to see his tears. 

She pulled away from him and looked sidelong up at him with a grin, slipping a ring off his finger and saying, "gimme this then." He gasped, he was too far gone now to protest. He put his hand back around her head and pushed it to his cock. Her warm mouth came expertly sucking at his bulging cock's head. Her tongue ran round it, she plunged her mouth down and sucked hard on him. Her fingers came playing knowledgeably with his bollocks, around the sensitive areas between his arsehole and cock. Soon he was spurting off into her mouth. Willingly she held him in her mouth through it. 

The tears ran suddenly down his cheeks. He leaned heavily back on the wall. She stood up, swallowing his cum, licking her lips in front of his face to show him how much she had enjoyed him. She ran her hand caressingly down his chest. "My darlin'," she said softly. "Du you not know how precious are yer favours. I would have done it for yer without a bloody jewel. Du not be giving yer jewels away another time." She had the thick accent of the Athagine lower merchant class. 

"I do not care for jewels," he said bitterly through clenched teeth. His eyes were clamped shut and the tears trickled slowly through his lids. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 17



"Still, bear it in mind," she said softly. "Yer not a nothing, yer know: el Maien van Sietter and so pretty 's a maiden under the flowering trees in spring. They will all be offering me I know not what to lie with them since they know I had yer favour. Why el V'lair will give me whats'ever I ask fer now, he is that hung about the fingers of yerself and yer brother. Take yer fun wherever yer want and du not pay over the odds for it the more." 

She left him leaning on the wall, spent. After a short while the curtain was gently pulled back and one of el V'lair's officers in the pale blue black diamond patterned parade silks looked in at him with a sympathetic grin on his face. "Come along, my dear," he said in the lazy aristocratic tones of a Knight. Considerately he buttoned Clair up before heaving his tired body up as if it was just that Clair was too drunk to walk. He helped him back to the van Sietter family rooms, Clair leaning heavily on his broad muscular body as they went. 

None of the servants were up. Clair turned to thank the officer - he was a Captain, as they came in the door. He was a little too close, they looked into each other's faces and then their mouths met and Clair's tired head went back in the kiss. The Captain's mouth was large and soft, not like Hanya's firm lips. Possibly like Arianna's but Clair had no way of knowing and by now he did not care, he was beyond thinking. He only opened his mouth to the pressure of a tongue which caressed his tongue and the inside of his mouth. He gave way to the familiar strength of an officer pushing him back. 

He was being pushed to the sofa in the reception room. His breeches were being pulled from him. He was being turned. He lay over the sofa, holding to its back. Fingers came caressing his arsehole, pressing lubricant. He moaned and trembled with the rising pleasure in his body. The tears were softly rolling down his face again. The pleasure in his arse was familiar and sweet. He spread his hips as much as he could in the restriction of the breeches he was still wearing. He could hear the officer grumbling about trying to put on the condom in the low light of the reception room and he just knelt waiting until the cock came pushing at his hole, an arm about his chest, a kiss kindly pressed to the back of his neck where it tickled up his fancy. He started to smile and respond - tiredly. 

He leaned back in the arms of the Athagine Captain and whispered, "give it me slow, I am so tired." The Captain fucked him softly and slowly, grunting happily into his neck, making the feeling dance about Clair's body so that he knew he was alive and might one day be happy. He was spent with the mouth fuck el V'lair's bird of paradise had given him. He just held onto the sofa back and let the feelings buzz softly about his body. The Captain suddenly shoved up into him and grunted in his ear with casual pleasure and that was satisfying in a different way. 

The Captain did not take a jewel off Clair, only gave him another kiss to the back of his neck as he pulled free, leaving him lying over the sofa in the family reception room. Whenever Clair saw the Dames sitting primly stitching on that sofa afterwards he would struggle not to snigger. He was not quite sure how he had made it back into his bed but he had a decent night's sleep, the first for months. When he woke up he lay in a sort of stupor for a while and then fell asleep again and only got up to go back to el V'lair's rooms to see if el V'lair was doing anything entertaining that night. And he certainly was. 

They came flocking: men, women; with big soft breasts and small delicate breasts, muscular chests or a sexy leg. It would always give your spirits a lift, when you dragged yourself out of a night and someone's eye lit on you, narrowed up and made it plain that they wanted your body. It would always help you get to sleep. 

You took them in some corner you found or their room and went back to your own room for a bath the men-servants prepared with expressionless faces (meaning they disapproved but you only gave a thanks with your habitual courtesy) and you slept long and deep and easy. Sometimes you woke in the morning to a warm soft friendly body with whom you had another idle caressing tumble. Few of them were like Hanya and none of them were like that chaste honourable beauty, Lady Arianna el Jien, so sometimes he could even forget the two of them for a whole evening. 

He had never expected a life of the body to be the means of escaping the heartbreaking grief of warfare but when he went to the lectures at the King's University he too often found he was staring out the windows, still stricken in his mind. Only if he had some other means of distracting his heart could he concentrate on the thoughts about Northern architecture which danced like moths in his head. 

The entertainments where he was picked up by fancy favours and sometimes a more elegant sophisticated night's companion were not always louche affairs like el V'lair's parties. (Although they once went to one of van Athagine's dos which made even el V'lair blink and say, Um, how would it be if we just went out to that woodland hotel for a quiet game of cards?  They stole a couple of van Athagine's lovelies to take along and play each other for and had a highly pleasurable couple of days, swimming in the woodland lake to clear their heads early in the morning with the sunlight dawning softly through the mist floating on the cool waters.) 

Clair tilted his head at his Lady wife and said with a soft snigger in the back of his nose that was reminiscent of Tashka, "I miss it a bit," a look glinted out of his eye so sexy that she could almost regret asking him to give up whatever games he played at in other people's beds, "but it is not worth going by the chance of a full marriage with an high stepping beauty such as yourself. If you ask it of me, I will be true to your body alone. You are an honourable chaste Lady with the force and matter to make a robust moral framework that you live by and you insist to love me by it too. I will take the time to show it you, I can live in your high morals for the sake of your love, my dear." 

"Why did you stop ... going to parties?" she asked him. Her head tilted back at him with the deeper question still in her eyes. Was he or was he not a man whose kisses she could trust? 

He sighed and rested his head in one hand, leaning his elbow on his knee and looking off into the sunlit woodland where the leaves twirled softly in a breeze. "There were a lot of pleasures," he said quietly, "but sometimes ... there was someone who had been hurt. I did not like it, when someone got hurt." When you thought some ladybird or kid was coming freely with you and then she or he started to cry in your arms and you realised they had just drunk too deep and had got scared, that was no fun. He used to push them out with a sharp lecture on playing in the shallows if you were a tasty little fish but he fretted about them afterwards, wandering the parties in search of fun with their vulnerable innocence the legitimate prey of people like his friend el V'lair van Athagine, people who were completely selfish about what pleasure they took and did not care if you got none. He saw el V'lair at his worst during that time because it was then that his marriage was broken. Initially el V'lair had been a surprisingly congenial companion. He would even go to art exhibitions and poetry readings with Lady el Farin but in the end he and Clair argued badly about the way he had behaved to a woman of great intelligence and warm humour. Clair knew that their friendship survived only because el V'lair insisted to continue his friend - and he was too loyal to slight someone who had stood by him in some very dubious situations. 

Finally there was the one serious affair he got into. He looked sideways at his Lady wife and he knew he was going to have to explain that to her. 

"You know that I got into an affair," he said. "You must have seen it when I bought that stables." 

She gave a sudden sigh. Her fingers trembled on the leaves she was shredding and her head stooped down. He realised with a dreadful pang at his heart that she was crying. He watched in a stricken shame her long fingers tearing down the veins of the dried old leaves in her hands. 

"Yes," she said finally in a soft voice blotted with tears. "I never normally look at your accounts but they brought them to me that time because it was so much money. I realised ... it must be for a lover. I thought it was probably that hads't f-finished with s-s-someone but I was not sure. I waited. To see if woulds't break the marriage. Arkyll was so small. I was s-so scared to be made to leave him!" She stooped her head into her hands and sobbed and he sat watching her in a bitterly sorry silence. 

"I prithou pardon me," he said at last in a husky softly ashamed voice. "It never occurred to me that you would think I might ever make you do any thing you had no wish to. I knew I would not abuse any power I might have over you, particularly since it involved the happiness of a child, and so I did not realise I had that power. I thought that you had so much power over me and that it was obvious that I would keep your happiness under my eye. I was so sick in my mind, I had treated you so badly, I should have realised that you could not know I would never separate you from your baby. There are many people who do not take their responsibility to those in their lives seriously and you did not know me, you could not know that I am not that kind of man. Forgive me." 

She was wiping the tears from her eyes with her long fingers, soaking them into the cuff of her dark blue sleeve. He sighed and shuffled closer to offer her his kerchief, her hand came out to take it but she would not look at him. 

"It was more of a friendship than an affair," he said in an apologetic tone. "Do you blame me, that I made a friend of such an one?" 

"What one," she said. 

"You do not know?" he asked. "You do not know who my lover was?" 

"I never listen the more to idle gossip," she said. "I had enough of it when they tried to tell me my own mother had pinned your favours. And cousin Vee. As if she would have you with her preferences." Her proud head lifted and turned to him. Her full lip was curled with scorn, she was starting to rise, she did not want to know but he had to tell her. 

"I had an affair with a groom," he blurted out. 

She was arrested half-risen in the rustling brown and yellow leaves on the bank in the woods, her fair face turned back down towards him, her clear blue eyes looking into his upraised grey eyes. 

"Say it," he said with a twist of his head, not exactly ashamed; ashamed that he might be made to feel ashamed. "I am like my mother." 

"And if ar't like your mother?" she said. "What is there wrong with that?" 

"What are you saying?" he asked. "She lay with her own Guard of Honour!" 

Arianna sat down again and turned to face him. Her pale face was tear-stained, her blue eyes were concentrated with intelligence on him. She said, "is that a serious problem for you?" 

"Is it not for you?" he asked. 

Her creamy brow creased in a frown. She said: "I am planning to ask the King's Council to give voting rights to merchants and you think I will be troubled because your mother lay with a guard?" 

"Well ... yes," he said. Then he started laughing. She was staring at him in incomprehension, he said, "so you care nothing for it; that I had an affair with a groom?" 

"Saids't it was more of a friendship," she said stiffly. 

"Mm, yes," he tilted his head at her with that sexy glint in his eye so that she knew it might have been more of a friendship but it had not been only a friendship. The blush went rising in her cheeks and her blue eyes snapped crossly at him. 

"It is done with, is it not?" she demanded. "I have paid out enough, I hope! not to be troubled by demands to support him the more." 

"Well ... I go to see him sometimes but only in friendship," Clair said. "He has an husband now and their relationship has a closed door." 

Her face looking back at him was frozen to hear this. He started laughing again, saying, "my dear, he is a merry soul. You would like him yourself. No no! I understand. I will never introduce him to your notice, I promise it, but I must tell it you. This is why they say, el Maien van Sietter is a scandal and has crossed the boundaries of decency. Not because I had a string of men and women falling in and out of my bed but because I would have married my junior officer and I had a serious affair with one of the palace servants whom I still hold dear in my heart. They say I am like my mother, who lay with her personal guard. For those madmen in the H'velst Mountains it is not just that he was a servant; he was supposed to guard her honour and she laid it at his very feet to sully. And because I met a groom I liked enough to take to concerts and out for meals in the fine restaurants, I am like her! There. Do you ask me not to see Stevan again? I swear to you, it is only in friendship. You need not fear he will fall dependent on you to fund him the more. He does very well with the stables. The King may make him his own horsedealer." 

"I am so pleased to hear that has't made such a good investment," she said in a frostbitten voice, "with my money. I hope hads't a little fun out of it too." 

He felt he deserved this so he took it with a deprecating grin. The glint remained in his grey eye, he knew, he tried to hide it by turning his head away. 

He did not want to pretend to her that this serious affair was a nothing. It was the point on which his life had turned, away from the bitter grief and hard hunting for pleasure in which el V'lair had been his companion and paradoxically, back towards her. 

He said: "I prithou pardon me that I never explained why I had to buy a stables for ... for a friend. He was just a sweet lovely whom I had picked up without considering the consequence. At court they would have thought nothing of it if I had run an affair with my friend's wife or my wife's mother, who are of the high nobility, but they did not forgive me treating a groom like an equal partner in life. I ...liked him, and instead of hiding him in a set of rooms to visit when the mood took me, I took him to concerts and poetry readings and exhibitions. Those who go to concerts for gossip not music looked at him sitting by my side, his face lovely with pleasure in the music, and whispered behind their hands. 

"I was not troubled for it, of course, but Hell did he pay for it! How much trouble did they give him in the King's stables. He was pushed here and there for it, that he had dared raise his eyes to Commander-Lord el Maien van Sietter, they did not consider that it was I who had lowered my eyes to him. He was forever coming to me with cuts and bruises, a black eye or twisted arm that he could not explain until finally I realised what was in the breeze. In the end I had to buy him out and so I set him up in his own stables - yes, my dear, I am sorry for it, with your money." 

Arianna sat listening to this with her head still turned away but he knew her now. She would not punish his lover by taking away his livelihood if she understood that Clair had done this for him out of a humanist sense of obligation not some profligate kiss-off for a particularly fancied favourite. 

"Tashka was punished for my indecency too. They tried to send me to the wall at parties but I cared nothing for it so that year they banned Tashka from riding in the King's and Nobles' race. He was the previous year's Champion and to get at me they banned him. I had to sit and watch him cry his heart out because they would not even let him ride over some cheating rule they made up the night before. I swore I was done with court life. It made me live again, my anger that a merry soul like Stevan could be treated so badly or a fine rider like Tashka be unjustly punished. My heart woke from the dead misery in which I had been sunk to recover my love for them."

(He was the lowest degree of servant, but in spite of the scandal of it, Clair loved Stevan Velor then and till the end of his life. Apart from his wife, his family and extended family also always maintained the most affectionate of connections with this one former lover of his.) 

"I began to think about the child you had borne me. At first I only thought that there would be an heir so I could be left in peace about the succession. But I was going to see Sevie and try to help her with Hanyan. I learned to love Hanyan for his own sake not for Hanya's and I began to wonder about my baby in blood. I bought out Stevan and set him up in his own business and I came home to help you with the baby - and fight with you about art and whatnot! Forgive me that I never explained to you that I had no intention of breaking our marriage - only trying to do something fair by someone-else for whom I had unintentionally caused problems." 

She sat on the bank of dried leaves with her head turned away, looking into the trees at the thin sunshine washing over the brook, the yellow and brown leaves, Sweetheart and True View standing quietly and the hounds lying down or sniffing around each other. She wondered what kind of marriage she could possibly make with Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter; something between the perfect physical passion she had seen between Clair and Hanya and the happy friendship Clair appeared to have had with a groom whose body he had occasionally also enjoyed? What kind of life was that for a woman of strong moral principles? He was beautiful but he was not the man she would have chosen for her heart's companion: an expensive and highly strung fighting young Lord who had thrown away his favours to sluts and strangers. Yet he had a curious way of looking out over the Sietter landscape or talking kindly to someone or handling some object that seemed to bring the world into vivid life. 

"My Lady wife," he said. "I know not if we can patch our marriage up after I have cut it about so cruelly. Might we say ours has been a marriage of words - although also of bodies, since in your generosity you came to me a few nights, but that only recently we have started to make a true marriage of hearts and minds? Might we think of our marriage as beginning from now when we are finally realising we could be serious one for the other rather than before when I tried to run away into sex from losing Hanya. I have learned to know you much better now and I think you are my match. I would be honoured if you would consider bestowing yourself on me of your free will to work together at a marriage. I am willing to work by you as best I can. I will care for the castle and the children so that you may work on your strings of ... of forces and matter. I will do what I can to keep van Sietter at bay while you work with your brother and the merchants." 

"van Sietter?" she said with a frown. 

"Hear me," he said urgently. "Now is not the time but I must say this to you. You have no idea of the workings of van Sietter's mind. Yet even you must realise that this idea of a King's Council for Trade and Employment is one van Sietter will do all in his power to prevent. I know you and Hanya mean to meet with the merchants while Hanya is here. I have done my best to hide it from van Sietter by making noise about Sevie and Volka and how Prianne should not stand in the way of the match. I hope van Sietter will think Hanya has only come to chaperon Sevie at a family hunting party. Hanya has been more than helpful, becoming so besotted by Tashka's friend Anata!" 

The frown was still etched on her brow. "Speakest as if it will be a problem for him," she said. 

He raised his eyebrow at her over a surprised grey eye and said, "surely Prianne must be planning to bestow him on one of the oldest daughters of the high nobility? Perhaps Maive el Vaie? Hanya is too honourable to try to keep Anata on the side but Prianne will be angry if he offers his ring to the daughter of a penniless P'shan Knight." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 17



Arianna suddenly burst into a warm golden peal of laughter. She said, "my dear, Hanya has earned so much money in our dealings with the merchants that he and I have been able to secure the regional debts for Iarve. Prianne does not presume to tell Hanya what he should do." 

Clair wondered how much she had earned in those dealings with the merchants but this was not the time for such a vulgar question. He said: "You must be careful, Anna. We know not what this work of yours will bring on our heads." 

"If it brings whatever on our heads, we must do what we can!" she exclaimed. "How cans't stand by seeing people starving in Sietter, unable to work in Port Paviat, the cloth workers of Arventa going hungry, trying to decide this winter: should they keep their houses warm for their elders or feed their children?" 

He glared back at her. "Do not accuse me that I do not care for the poor of Sietter," he growled. "Can you not imagine what I feel for it, to stand idly by while they starve, powerless to intervene except to send a few stupid quilts to be mended to Arventa instead of to court? I am not asking you not to do this work with the merchants. I will do everything I can to help you with it. I only ask you to beware of van Sietter, you are too fine a mind to know how evil a pale Angel he can be. I do what I can to protect you and your work, can you not see that?" 

She tossed her fine head. "Protection!" she scoffed. "All 'your' women need protection is it? Tashka from the soldiers then he has problems when he is betrothed to his senior officer. I have to have protection to hamper me in my work with merchants!" 

He sighed and lay back on the bank of dried leaves, putting his arms under his head and looking up at the yellow and brown leaves hanging on the trees above him. "I knew you would not take it well," he said. "You must do whatsoever pleases you, my Lady. I had to warn you and it is done. You and Tashka are not my 'women' like a brace of el V'lair bitches. You are my Lady wife and Tashka is ... my brother and I will do what I can - because you are mine in my heart. There, give me peace about it now." 

He lay looking at the leaves hanging above his head and the bare twigs of the trees showing and the pale autumn sky he could see through the twigs while she sat turned aside from him, looking grumpily off into the woods. 

Then without turning her head she said: "Was it because ... because of your mother that, during the war, if I wanted to ride in the hills they would always make me take a two-three guards, however short a ride it was? They would never send just the one."  

Amusement made his thin mouth curl up at the corners. "Is it so?" he said through his smile. "How very ... thoughtful of Captain Lariat." 

She turned her head back then, her clear blue eyes gazing at him through her little eye-veil with that warm intelligent sympathy that opened his heart. He was still nervous about opening his heart, especially to her. She had a piercing intelligence and was quick with her clever sharp words, it was worth considering how she might take a matter before you laid it all bare before her. "Your mother was a famous heartbreaking beauty," she said. "Surely she could have had an affair with any of the high nobility or a Knight or any officer she put out her hand for. I never heard that she had any other affair. If she chose her personal guard, crossing so high a boundary of decency to have his favours, she cannot have meant to sully her honour. Must it not have been because she truly loved his heart with a passion?" 

Clair's grey eyes clouded with sadness, he gave a sigh. "She was very beautiful," he murmured, "and she loved Tashka and me with all of her heart. Hers was an hot loving heart to be bestowed on a cold snake like van Sietter." After a while he added: "Mam let me call Fiotr dadi." 

His face was unusually blank of expression, Arianna understood that because of the scandalous nature of his mother's affair, Clair was never normally able to talk about the affection with which her lover must have treated him in his early childhood. 

"I am so grateful," he murmured, "to his memory. It is plain to see that he threw his life to them to save Tashka, whether for her sake or for Tashka's own because ... he was Tashka's - and my own - father in duty bound." He looked away above him at the leaves and the pale sky, his mouth twisting in shame, his eyes creasing against his tears, that he was ashamed of acknowledging someone who had cared for Tashka and himself like a true parent but who came from such a low class of person. 

"People are envious if they see beauty and high happiness in others," Arianna said. "I think people talk stupid gossip about her and about you because they are envious." He turned his eyes down and raised his eyebrow at her. "Perhaps she was like you," she said. "Has't such beauty of life in you. People long to take it to light their dull lives with. If they cannot, they will try to put it out. No, I know does't not understand," she said softly. "It is a part of your beauty that some days walks't with life all shining about you and that knowest it not. Therefore does't not understand how cruelly envious you may be making those of small minds." 

He did not believe her. He shrugged his shoulders in the leaves. "What is it to me if a guard was my father in duty bound and my lovers were my junior officer and a groom," he answered defensively, "I am still el Maien van Sietter. I care not what trashy things idle fools say of me. Except," he added with an apologetic twist to that thin firm mouth, "when it comes washing round your skirts, my dear Lady, to make your life unpleasant." 

She looked candidly into his eyes and said: "I will let it pass." He could not quite meet her clear blue generous stare, his eyes screwed up against the sting of tears while his mouth quirked in a smile to her but she understood that the reason he did not say anything of it was that he felt it too deeply. She smiled warmly on him with the wide red mouth like a bowl of cherries, the mouth that was el Jien, not like her mother's mouth, which the courtiers called the Sugar Kiss. 

Clair lifted his grey eyes, shining with tears, to her. "My mother was called Ana too," he said softly. "She was Anastelle like Tashka but dadi called her Ana - if we three were ever alone together I mean, on a picnic or something." Arianna's smile became if possible softer and warmer. He turned his eyes down, blinking his tears away to stare at the dried brown leaves on which he lay. 

"Well, my dear," he said at last in a light brittle voice, "if there is nothing more you wish to ask about mine or my mother's scandalous loose morals perhaps we had better return to our guests and the children." He got up, brushing the dried leaves off his legs and his back. 

Arianna sat still in the leaves, looking down into her lap where her long fingers lay holding her gloves. She said: "Kiss me." She lifted her head and looked away into the woodland. "I have read long poems of love," she said in a cool even voice. "I have talked into the night of their merit in terms of rhyme or image. I have even had a love poem written for me yet I know nothing of passion. I feel like a mole talking about the sunshine." 

"If you take what that butterfly-wits el Parva van Selaine said about you for love," Clair said sharply, "you are ignorant indeed!" In a softer voice he added, "I prithou pardon me for it, that you came to me offering your favours at a time when I could not give you the loving pleasure you hoped for." 

"Oh well," she said in that cool even voice, "I am older than you. I ought perhaps to have known more about how to please you and myself." 

"You want my kiss do you," he said. His voice had softened to a husky warm sexy tone. 

"Since I am your Lady wife," she said stiffly. 

He laughed at that, his husky soft laugh, and said, "if I give you a kiss it will not be because you are my Lady wife but because you are a storming lovely with a mathematical mind and your politics are so seditious that we will probably all be hung for them!" He laughed again at the startled expression in the face she swung back round to him. "I like a risk, you know," he said. "I have always thought you were a milkmaid of a woman but sometimes I saw a flash in your eye that suggested there was a touch of the wild in you and so I pushed you, to see if you would offer me a more risky marriage than the dull contract that has lain in your pocket all these years." 

He walked over and sat down beside her. She tilted her head his way but would not turn her face to look at him. He looked at her poised head with the tendrils of fair hair floating in the sunshine under her elegant dark blue hat. He put out his lean tanned fingers and tucked a curl back behind her ear, she turned her face at that, startled. He smiled to her. 

"Come here," he said softly, huskily. She hesitated, looking nervously into his eyes. "Trust me," he said. "You know that I will die for you. I have put my life in the hazard." 

She made a pout at that, still holding back from his caress, and said: "I prefer that you live for me." 

That candid blue look, it went straight to his heart, piercing as those things she sometimes said when she would not go roundabout to spare your feelings but straight to it. He said softly: "May I have that honour?" 

"Honour," she said slowly and with another pout. "Mays't have it as ... a favour." She was still looking clear into his eyes. Slowly she allowed herself to lean into his embrace, he took the warm golden weight of her and lay back in the crackling leaves with her in his arms. She lay still in the leaves beside him, he leaned up on one elbow and reached across to caress her pink cheek, she looked at him from blue eyes which had become anxious behind the silly nonsense of her eye-veil. 

Clair stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers then his fingers slid down to caress her neck. He caught at the knot of the lace cravat at her throat, pulled it undone, slipped the top button of her habit undone and his fingers caressed the creamy white hollow in her throat. He put his mouth down to the hollow of her throat and kissed her softly. He put his mouth up and kissed her neck under her ear with the simple gold stud in the pink earlobe. He considered the erogenous nape of her neck with the soft tendrils of hair floating away from it but he decided a kiss there would raise feelings in her beyond what she would be willing to indulge so soon. He lifted his head and smiled at her. 

"Kiss me again," she said in that cool even voice. "Kiss me here," she lifted one hand and pointed at the hollow in the base of her neck. 

"As my Lady commands me," he said lightly and bent down and licked at her soft white neck. Her eyes widened, she felt a thrill run all through her body to her loins, in her anxiety she retreated into crossness. 

"I said 'kiss'!" she said, getting to her feet and looking down at him lounging on the bank of leaves below her. He grinned back up to her, lounging there as easy as if he were on the sofa in the sitting-room, his slanted grey eyes creased teasingly, sexily at her. He got up and came and brushed down the leaves off her back, her hips and her skirts. His lean tanned experienced hands swept in broad swift strokes down her body, she stood still with her eyes half-closed and when he was done she said: "I thank you," in that cool even voice as she walked off to her horse, doing up her button and knotting her cravat as she went. He watched her with a knowing smile on his thin firm mouth. 

~#~*~#~

When Arianna came down to the sitting-room after a bath she found Tarra el V'lair standing in front of the fire. He was still tousled from the hunt with a long muddy streak down one green woollen sleeve and on his cheek. He raised a warm laughing face to her as she came in, saying: "I fell and lost the others. Tashka is one to ride through Heaven and Hell!" 

Arianna smiled politely and settled in her armchair to talk to him. "Was Vadya still at the front too?" she asked, reaching down beside her for her sewing basket. Tarra looked down with his wicked sardonic grin at her flaxen head stooped to the side of her armchair, her pink and gold beauty lapped in a warm blue felt pinafore dress over a plain white blouse with an open neck. From his vantage point he could see down the deep cleft between her breasts, he smiled softly. 

"Ay," he answered, swaying lightly from heel to toe in the warmth of the fire. "They two will be back with a deer, unless some other ... game distract them," he grinned. 

Arianna had smiled before it occurred to her that Tarra's joke was crude and then she could not be bothered to pretend she did not understand what he meant. She and Tarra looked into each other's eyes. Tarra el V'lair had a bold dashing grin but his eyes were sad and even desperate. He had managed to spoil his looks even more since his last visit, someone had broken his nose and it had set badly. He had that scar on his chin too, running towards his neck inviting your finger to trail down it, the rough knotted scar not like the smooth fine duelling scars she had seen on other men's faces and on Tashka's back and which her husband probably bore on his body. These physical marks left by wild riotous episodes which must have contributed to his bad reputation only added to his raffish desperate charm. 

'He runs two, even three women at the same time,' Arianna mused vaguely. 'How much he must know of love-making.' She thought of Tashka saying men would be willing to teach her about sex. She blushed and looked aside, fishing a piece of embroidery from her sewing basket then stuffing the flimsy camisole she was making for Sevie back in favour of a torn shirt of Clair's that she was mending. 

Tarra squatted on his heels on the fireside rug and looked into her face. The muscles of his thighs bulged in his jodhpurs, she could see the definition of his fit muscular legs in the tight swell of the cloth over his legs. He was the active Commander of a troop in the field, which he had brought with him. He had excused himself from the company for two days while he had been at the Castle in order to run manoeuvres which must have involved considerable physical activity. She was aware of his crude strength crouching on the hearthrug beside her like an animal which comes into your home but is not tame. 

"Do you like to hunt?" he asked. "Why have you not come out with us in previous years? You are a fine rider, Lady el Jien. It is hard to jump side-saddle." 

The formality of the title gave her a false sense of security and his reference to his previous visits reminded her that he was a trusted friend who was often invited to Clair's home. Arianna lifted her head and said she did love to ride but that she could not go out as often as she wished, there were the children, the work on the region to attend to. She could not quite bring herself to say the housework about the castle took up her time and did not mention her mathematical theorem either. Tarra continued idly and expertly complimenting her on her riding. 

As they chatted he began to call her Anna. He squatted beside her, his big hand coming across to rest on the arm of her chair beside her arm and then resting on her arm and then gripping on her arm as if in emphasis of something he was saying. Even she could not fail to realise he was flirting with her and because he was of the same rank as herself she was more aware of the possibility than she was when the servants came softly offering their services to her. She withdrew her mind into the quiet place from which she would look at unfamiliar situations, her eyes veiled over. 

She felt excited, she was not used to realising men had a sexual interest in her. Since her solemn girlhood she had always feared that she might not catch anyone's eye, might spend her life with the mathematics she loved but without the companionship and kisses she also longed for. The men she met from the aristocracy were usually men of honour who recognised that she was only interested in a serious love affair, no matter how much she thought she would like to try a kiss. They gave any chance of a casual favour from her the go-by because her husband had made it plain that he took her honour seriously. 

She imagined trailing her finger down the scar on el V'lair's chin. 'The el V'lairs treat women as possessions,' she thought. Was that more sexy perhaps, to be handled like a thing? Did it mean that someone was capable of fingering you in more exciting ways if they were not constrained by respect for your humanity? She looked into his sad eyes, his greatest asset. He did not know that women fell for the vulnerable appeal of his eyes, it was the side of himself that he most tried to hide from. 

Arianna's eye went casually down to the swell of el V'lair's jodhpurs at the groin, the blood ran faster around her body as she thought underneath their chatter about what it might be like to lie in his arms and feel him pressing to her body. She looked briefly up at his face again and knew she was bored by the idea of an affair with brainless sexy sad possessive el V'lair van Athagine before she had even thought it out long enough to realise that she had had the idea. As always she felt a sense of disappointment sink within her, that that mysterious side to herself that she was not always sure was there had failed to take fire from Tarra's offered warmth. She continued to chat to him, barely conscious of the play of thoughts and feelings in her mind but her eyes moved to the shirt she was mending. 

Tarra was stooping closer to try and get her attention back, he was asking if he could fetch her some of the food set out on the table by the long windows. She shook her head. She lifted Clair's blue shirt in her fingers and suddenly caught a wisp of the smell of Clair's sweat. The shirt must have gone unwashed into Ladda's mending basket from which she had taken it. Arianna's eyes slid aside, she smiled dreamily and had to ask Tarra to repeat what he was saying to her. 

Tarra recognised her lack of interest. He looked at her wide red mouth, imagining it wrapped around his cock. It was not as sexy a mouth as the famous Sugar Kiss but had its own beauty and he grinned as he thought how hilarious it would be to boast of having the kisses from the daughter's lips as well as the mother's - and the sister by marriage's, not that he was so stupid as to risk his life boasting of those. 

Lady el Jien was a chaste and honourable maiden, her honour would be worth flaunting precisely because it would be impossible to get - except by some trick and he was enjoying his friend's hunting party, he was not sure he could be troubled to trick - or force - kisses from the el Jien mouth. He had not come off lightly from his previous tricking of favours from a van Sietter woman; he ran his finger ruefully down the scar on his chin. If he forced a kiss from Anna el Jien he would certainly have to face that young killer her sister by marriage again and he was reluctant to take the glove from Tashka el Maien. Most of the time he could pretend he did not particularly care about her but not in the bloody duel. He always flirted with women who were at all worth attention. When he flirted with the storming beauty to whom his friend was married, though, he knew that Tashka would take him for any stain he made on the future Lady van Sietter's honour. 

He stood up, looked around the room and saw Clair standing in the long windows to the courtyard. Clair had a concentrated frown on his brow. Tarra smiled at his friend. 

To treat women only as potential bed-fodder came to him so automatically that he barely gave it a thought that he had been attempting to seduce his best friend's wife. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 17



Clair shut the long window behind him and came stalking over to the fire, an aggressive fling in his lazy sexy stride. He sat down in his armchair opposite Arianna's, reaching down to the dog basket beside him to scratch his old hunting hound behind the ears, while watching his friend and his wife with narrowed eyes. 

Arianna's face turned up to Tarra was blandly attentive but her long fingers stroked the collar of Clair's torn shirt with a gentle unseeing motion. 

Vadya came into the sitting-room with Tashka one step behind his shoulder, they had both bathed and were wearing casual felt suits, Vadya in green and Tashka in blue. Tashka's slanted blue eyes were sleepy, she was going to get Vadya a plate of food when Arianna got up and came towards him with a warm smile on her wide red mouth sweet as a bowl of cherries. Vadya turned to her with an answering smile. Tashka walked across to the fireplace and sat in Arianna's armchair. Clair's narrowed eyes noted a sharp glare she directed at his ladyhunting friend but when he looked back up at el V'lair, he was staring carelessly away at the long windows. 

Arianna was offering Vadya plates of food and asking him about the merchants of Port Ithilien. His voice held a cheerful surprise as he made a considered response. Because he was an officer-aristocrat people did not normally realise he had an intelligent understanding of the mercantile networks he would one day rule over as Arianna and Clair would one day rule the Maier Pass and the weaving trade of Arventa. Clair grinned aside to see his lovely Lady wife smiling with that wide sweet appealing mouth as she drew into an apparently idle discussion the future sworn Lord of the neighbouring region with its key trading posts, a young man who could get voting powers on the King's Councils. In the casual smiling discussion Arianna was playfully engaging him in, young van H'las would without being aware of any undue persuasion come to accept the importance of managing trade not just within but across regions so as to secure the prosperity of the people. Dashing sexy el V'lair van Athagine was left way behind in Lady el Jien van Sietter's wake; the chance of him using his voting powers for the merchants and the poor was so negligible it was not even worth flirting with him for it, never mind delicately setting out the serious argument she was carefully carelessly outlining to young van H'las. 

Clair looked back up at Tarra el V'lair. He was looking down at Tashka again. His saturnine face had softened, his dark eyes were unusually warm and sad, even wistful. Clair looked at Tashka and found that she had fallen asleep in his wife's armchair, her long muscular limbs lounging completely relaxed and her dark-haired head tilted into the wing of the chair, a ruby and gold earring Vadya had given her lying softly against her lean neck, her long lashes kissing her tanned cheeks, her rose-petal mouth slightly open and bunched as if only waiting for her heart's heart to press his mouth to it.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 18



Thank you so much for the comments and feedback. Please make a comment if you have a moment. :heart: 

*****

"Your brother is a sportsman. When I said to my father would he be willing to countenance my offering for Sevianne el Jien van Iarve, he said straightaway that that would mean an alliance to Sietter and Lord Clair and that he would like it. Lord Clair has a reputation, of course, er, um, but my father says it is mostly gossip and nonsense. Lord Clair is a fine rider, and Lady el Jien too. She has been so kind to me." 

"Mm," Tashka grunted. 

Tashka, Volka and Pava had climbed up the central tower. Tashka was looking through her telescope at the surrounding countryside: the hills rolling softly down to the little town below the castle, the woodland on the lower slopes and the high hills to the West through which wound the long road to the Maier Pass, Arventa, the road North to court and South West to Port H'las. 

Pava was leaning on the parapet, breathing the cool fresh air in to clear his head after a night's heavy card play. Volka had come along to ramble on about his forthcoming betrothal. Pava was not a good confidant, he was too likely to talk knowledgeably about the lace on Sevianne's petticoat, but Tashka was Volka's Captain. She had always been willing to listen patiently to his anxieties about the match and to offer him sound advice and good opinion on its chances. 

The autumn wind blew fresh around the grey battlements, ruffling Pava's blond hair and making him gasp and laugh. The guards had been huddled in a corner with some dice when Tashka burst through the door onto the tower. Now they stood one to each corner, at stiff attention, staring miserably at the muddy autumn landscape with watering eyes. 

Tashka suddenly said: "My Captain, I mean Pava, come here!" Pava's head snapped around at her appeal and he came over to her side. Tashka shoved her telescope in his hand and pointed away up the road through the hills. 

Pava lifted the telescope to his eye. "Where? There is nothing ... Angels! what is that line of sparkles." 

"It is a troop," Tashka answered. "It is Fifth Sietter. It must be them, they were deployed near here." 

"Fifth Sietter?" Pava repeated in astonished tones. 

Tashka took back her telescope and peered closely through it. "I can see Darien's banner," she said. She looked blankly at Pava, then turned and shot off down the stairs. 

"What is it?" Volka asked nervously. "It is not unusual, is it? for a Sietter troop to come here?" 

Pava did not answer. He was looking after Tashka, an expression of dread on his face. 

Clair was in the armoury, inspecting the racks of weapons and drinking a large glass of water. Tashka shot in and waved her telescope at him. Her face was fierce with rage and suspicion. 

"Fifth Sietter," she said abruptly. "Coming down the road here from where they have been mucking about in the hills round the Maier Pass." 

"Fifth?" Clair repeated. His face froze over with terror, he looked back at her with his eyes wide. When she nodded, he dropped his glass on the floor, it broke into six pieces, scattering jagged glass and water all over the polished floor-boards. He ran with her to the castle gates. 

When the troop came wheeling up the road to the castle, the gates were closed against them and the Guard falling into place around the cannon on the castle walls. The cavalry and footsoldiers were obliged to stop outside the gate and after some angry parlaying with the Guard Captain, the Commander and two of his Captains dismounted and came one by one through the wicket. 

They found the two el Maiens waiting alone in the big castle courtyard, standing at the bottom of the steps. They looked startlingly alike in their breeches, jumpers and boots. Clair stood on the step behind Tashka with a hand on her shoulder, staring at the officers coming into the courtyard with an expression of terror on his face. Tashka glowered at them with an ice-cold suspicion and hatred. 

Tashka stepped forward, Clair's hand dropped from her shoulder, she stamped her feet together and gave the nervous irritated Sietter officers the sharpest of Sietter salutes. She fell into a formal stance with her heels snapped together and her hands loose by her sides. 

"Commander-Sir Lial Darien of Fifth Sietter," she said crisply. 

He was a rangy tall blond man - a typical Sietter Knight; he hurriedly pulled a salute in return. "Lieutenant-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter of ... of, formerly of Fourth?" he hesitated, realising he did not know her current designation. 

"It is Captain, actually," she drawled at him, suddenly separating her feet and clasping her hands loosely behind her back. "Captain-Lord el Maien of Sxith H'las, just so you know what kind of glove I will throw in your face for your family's next act of dishonour." 

The Commander flushed with rage, his fingers flicked up as if in defence. He had a terrible livid scar which cut down his whole face, crossing his forehead, narrowly missing his left eye, across the bridge of his nose and his cheek. Tashka looked hard at him with a steely stare in her blue eyes. He looked aside at his two Captains, he could not meet her steely unwinking stare. Tashka looked at his Captains, they looked aside too. 

"What ..." Clair took a step forward and put his hand on Tashka's shoulder again, not it seemed in order to hold her back but rather to protect himself. His hand was shaking. 

"Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter, formerly of ..." 

"Enough of this nonsense!" Clair screamed. "How dare you come to my castle? What are you doing here with the whole of your troop pulled up in military formation at my gate?!" His slanted grey eyes creased against tears as he glared at the Commander in front of him. 

"M-my Lord," the Commander said stiffly, reluctant it seemed to acknowledge the man who would be his sworn Lord in time. "I have a letter from Lord van Sietter." He put his hand into the breast pocket of the red silk surcoat over his mailcoat to pull some packets of papers out. 

Clair tore open the packet handed to him and skimmed his eyes quickly up and down the page inside. He went pale and lifted a pair of blazing eyes to the men in front of him. 

"What is it?" Tashka asked. 

He looked quickly at her lean tanned face. He looked back at the Fifth Sietter officers. 

"Darien!" he said in a constricted voice. "Do you know what is written here?" 

"My orders are explicit," Darien answered. 

"Is even your honour so beyond soiling that you will practice what ... what this calls for?" Clair choked on the words, crumpling the packet in his fist and shaking it at Commander-Sir Darien. 

"I ... I have my expressed orders," the Commander answered. "I have sworn to the fingers of the Generals' strategic staff, I am their honour, and they have sworn to the Lord of our region." 

"What am I?" demanded Clair. "Am I not van Sietter?" 

"No," Darien said. "Lord Pava is van Sietter." 

"What is it?" Tashka demanded. 

Clair swung round and glared at her. "Get in the castle!" he said fiercely. "Do it now! I have thought!" 

She looked in bewilderment at him then turned and ran up the steps, frightened by the level of rage which stormed in his eyes. Behind her she heard Clair's voice raised in argument. Darien had the nerve to argue back! Tashka hovered just inside the solid wooden doors at the top of the steps, still clutching her telescope. She could hear them, their voices going to and fro, shouting out this, then that; her name, Vadya's. Finally she heard Darien and his officers jingling and stamping as they went back out through the wicket gate. Clair yelled to the Guard to secure the walls on full alert and came striding in through the doors, shaking with fear and rage. 

He stopped when he saw her and they stared at each other, white-faced, burning-eyed. 

"No!" she shouted, she flung her telescope to the ground where the expensive lenses shattered. 

"Tashka!" he pleaded. 

"No!" she shouted and ran back through the hall, fast as a deer, like a deer being hunted she fled back through the shadows, screaming: "No! No!" 

She burst into the sitting-room and ran past a startled Arianna and Tarra, who were helping themselves to the food spread out for the family and their guests to break their fast. She was running so hard she could not stop. Clair heard Arianna scream and a window shatter. He arrived just in time to see her disappearing across the courtyard into Vadya's room. She had thrown herself through one of the long windows and he ran to stare at the shards of glass on the carpet and flagstones, crying: "Was he hurt? Angels, was he hurt?" 

"By Heaven, I do not think he was badly hurt," Tarra spluttered, "but what is going on?" 

Tashka flung back Vadya's door and he started out of a comfortable morning doze, grabbing at his sword hung on the bedpost beside him. He let the weaponry go when he saw it was her, staring sleepily at her, rubbing one hand over his dreamy brown eyes and into his tousled hair. 

"Your face is cut," he was suddenly wide awake. "What is wrong?" he demanded. 

She was milk-white with a bright red wound down one cheek. Her blue eyes burned in her strained face, her right fist was clenched, the other hand stretched wide. 

"V-Vadya," she stammered. 

"el Maien? For sweet Hell's sake! What is it?" 

"M-my father. He has broke our betrothal." 

"What?!"

"He ... This morning he declared war on H'las." 

"Tashka, no, no!" He clutched at his hair, staring at her. 

She walked across the room towards him, moving like a puppet, her limbs stiff, her eyes wide and staring. Blood was starting to drip from the cut on her cheek, a scarlet thread showing livid against her milk-white face. She scrambled onto the bed beside him, reaching out to seize the cotton cloth of his nightshirt. 

"My Commander," she said. Her voice shook. It was thin with despair, with fear. "You are my life, my days, my fight." Her slanted blue eyes stared into his, ugly with terror. 

"el Maien?" he reached out to grip her shoulder and her arm. "What are you saying, why repeat your vow to me?" 

"I cannot live without you," she said. "I was a raw baby Lieutenant of sixteen when first I heard of you. It was my dream, to serve with you. When I came to Sixth H'las, I was so proud ...!" Her husky voice went high, she drew in a sharp breath and held it for a second, staring desperately into his eyes. "I am the best Captain in this land," she said quietly. "It is because I long to please you. I am a fool for your praise. My life is hung on your banner. I am van Sietter and have managed to stay with you; I am a woman; I am your betrothed and yet you have let me stay with you but now ... oh Vadya! I care not whom you marry but I prithou, on my knees I prithou, do not shake me from your fingers no longer your officer and send me away!" 

Vadya stared at her. He frowned, he glared and then he began to cry. Tears squeezed from his screwed up eyes, he pulled on her shoulder so that she fell into his arms. 

"For sweet Hell's sake!" he sobbed. "What, am I to let you go so easy? Who do you think I am, el Maien? I, who have lain in your arms, who owe my life to you! I love you! As my Captain, as my friend, as my lover, I will never, no never, shake you off my fingers to send you away." 

She clung to his shoulders, she was still stiff with terror. He was crying into her short cropped hair, trying to soothe her, stroking her back and rubbing her arms and neck. 

"Oh Vadya," she said, still in the same high dull voice. "My father will send me to V'ta." 

"Shut it, shut it!" he was trying to cover her mouth with his hand, hugging her to him with his other arm and crying into her short short hair. "el Maien, for the Angels' sake! How could you doubt me? How could you think I would let you go so easy?" 

"I am so scared to lose you," she said, suddenly relaxing her whole body to lie heavy in his arms. "el Gaiel, I love you so much. I care nothing for the marriage, you know I'll lie in your bed without the ring, I will even let you take someone-else if you will only let me stay by your side." 

"Well I care for the marriage!" he flung his head up, pushed her back and glared at her. "What is this now? I am to take some simpering bitch into my bed, for politics' sake? I, who have known your love, who have taken your favours, stolen moments of such joy with you, I am to be cheated of my right to lie with you in a wedding bed now? Forget it, el Maien. I believe in the Angels and I want their blessing to my love for you and to our children. Stop whining about this nonsense. I will marry you. I have thought." 

They looked into each others' eyes and then Tashka lifted her chin in a nod, the colour began to creep back into her cheeks. 

"Besides, what would my father not say to it," Vadya pointed out, "if he does not get the chance to take you up to his strategic staff after all. I swear, he would rather have you than me! And what is this?" he demanded roughly, taking hold of her chin in gentle fingers. "What folly have you been at now, to cut your face like that?" 

"I know not," she said, raising one hand to her face and looking at the blood that appeared on her fingers in surprise. "It ... hurts." 

"Angels only know what you have done," Vadya grumbled, pulling the sleeve of his nightshirt down and pressing it to her cheek. "You are so impetuous, el Maien! Why can you not stop to think before running off." 

"Oh what are we to do?" she said in a small desolate voice. "Fifth Sietter is come for us. They have orders to take the two of us prisoner and bring us back to van Sietter in Arventa. You will be held over Lord Esha's head and I will be sent back to V'ta." 

"But you and Clair have been officers in the Sietter army," Vadya said. "Surely they will not be willing to take you a prisoner?" 

"It is why my father has sent Fifth Sietter," she said thinly. "I knew there was something on the breeze when I found out they were deployed to the Maier Pass - at this time of year. I have been keeping half an eye out, just in case. 

"I forced their Commander to call on the Angel of Mercy. If you see him you will see what I did to his face. It was he who challenged me. He should not have done it but he could not accept the stain to his family's honour. Sithou, I killed his brother, killed him deliberate with a cut to the throat. I had good cause, el Gaiel, it was within the code, but Darien will be glad to see me sent to whatever kind of death most pleases them in V'ta." 

"Hell!" Vadya ran a desperate hand through his hair. "el Maien, I must get dressed. We must talk with the others and someone must see to your face. Wait on me a moment." He pressed a beautiful pure white silk scarf that he found dropped on the floor into her hand, obediently she put it to her wounded cheek where it was stained with blood and ruined. Vadya got distractedly out of his tumbled bedclothes and went to his clothes rail to grab some clothes, throwing his nightshirt carelessly off as he went. 

There was a knock on his door, it opened and Clair strode in. He went straight to Tashka, saying: "Sweet Heaven and Hell! Are you still in one piece? Holy Angels, let me look at you." He seized her arms, looked at her hands, pushed her head about and made as if to cuff her head. Tashka ducked and looked back at him, still holding the silk scarf to her face. "To run straight through a window!" Clair growled. "For Heaven and Hell's sake, Tashka." 

"Oh yes," Tashka said vaguely to Vadya. "I remember now. I was running too fast to stop and open the window." 

"What?!" Vadya came over with only his underpants on and a doublet and hose in clashing colours in his hands. "el Maien!" 

"Has he told you of Fifth Sietter and their orders?" Clair demanded, swinging suddenly round. 

"Yes," Vadya answered. "We must talk." 

"I have made them go back," Clair said. "Tarra came and threatened them with pitched battle against Tenth Athagine but there must be reinforcements on their way. Now that van Sietter has formally declared war there will be a lot of troop movement. Holy Hell! that scum, to send a troop take you prisoner before you had notice of war when you have come here in trust with no troop of your own. I beg you to believe, el Gaiel, that I will not be standing by him in this war." 

Vadya smiled, coming over with his unbuttoned shirt hanging open to his chest, to take Clair's sword arm and press it. "My brother," he said. "I know I will never get any thing but friendship from you." 

Clair gave him an unexpectedly shy and sweet smile, clasping his arm in return. His eyes drifted to Tashka, lolling on Vadya's bed with the scarf pressed to her face then he looked back at the half-dressed officer-aristocrat by his side. Tashka raised an eyebrow. 

"Why do you not wait in the courtyard," Clair suggested. 

Tashka laughed. "Because el Gaiel does not care if I see his tummy," she answered. "What does Tarra say of Tenth?" 

"He has sent out to call them into the castle," Clair replied. "We are bringing up produce from the farm but we cannot sustain a long siege." 

"Let us go," Vadya pulled on his boots and led the way out of the door. 

He strode over the courtyard and into the sitting-room with Tashka at his shoulder. Tashka looked round. All around the sitting-room table, the faces lifted to her: Arianna el Jien van Sietter, golden-pink with those intelligent blue eyes staring warmly up at her; Hanya el Jien van Iarve, his golden face inexpressive with scars; Tarra el V'lair van Athagine and Pava el Jien van Vail, both experienced Commanders and the powerful heirs to rich lands; her Lieutenant, Volka el Darien van Trattai; Hartha el Farin van P'shan, her face like dark oak and her black eyes bright under the densely curled white hair cut into a fashionable high sculpted shape. When she turned her head there were the beautiful slanted grey eyes of her own brother, Clair, and the warm brown eyes of her Commander and lover, the man she had sworn her life to, who had promised her his gentle heart (and his well-endowed body too of course). 

"el Darien," Tashka said crisply. "You must wait on us elsewhere. You are van Trattai and your father will not want you caught up in any H'las-Sietter quarrel." 

Volka looked at her in sharp disappointment. "I could take the notes, sir?" he pleaded. 

"I have thought," Tashka answered. She went over to him and pressed his arm, giving him an apologetic smile. "Go sit with Sevie," she said softly. She winked, he giggled and blushed, saluted the crisp flicking salute to Vadya that Tashka made them practice incessantly, did the ritual stamping steps of the H'las junior officer and went slowly out of the room. 

Tashka went over to the table of breakfast food, to one side of which Clair was spreading out some maps. She chucked the silk scarf she had been holding to her face aside, collected a plate and gathered some food onto it, while at the same time she cast intent glances at the maps. 

Arianna went to try and look at her cheek. Tashka lifted her head and gave her such an irritable glare that she sat back down again in silence. 

Tashka took the plate of food to Vadya, saying, "my Commander," and went back to the maps, over which she began to trace her finger, reaching for a pencil with which she made notes on small pieces of paper she stuck to the map. The others gathered around her, casting puzzled glances at Clair and Vadya. Clair sat down by Pava, who draped an arm about his shoulders. Vadya started eating the food Tashka had brought him. 

"el V'lair," Tashka stood back on one leg and looked into his sad dark eyes with her slanted blue eyes creased in thought, "to what extent can we count on your goodwill and your troop? el Jien will of course stand by us - he is our brother officer, but you may go freely with your honour unstained." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 18



Tarra leaned on the table and looked at her with an easy smile. He ran his eyes over her tall muscular figure in a way which made Vadya stop eating and put a hand to his belt but he had forgotten his gloves in his haste. Tarra said: "el Maien, I tried to send you ... a gift once but you returned it. Here is something you will value: take my troop. I cannot speak for my father's army, the Athagine council will have some political reason which side this war they want us to fight on, but Tenth Athagine follow my arm. You once pointed it out to me as a weakness! that the structure of the command in Athagine is such that I can do this. I am glad of it the day, since I can offer you my troop as your own." 

"As my Commander's own," Tashka corrected him. 

Tarra turned and looked into Vadya's angry brown eyes. "el Gaiel," he said, "do not mistake me. I offer this you in friendship." 

Vadya jerked his head irritably. 

"An' I recall, Tenth Athagine are particularly noted at this time for two of your scouting sections," Tashka was saying. 

Tarra looked at her in surprise and nodded. "How do you know that?" he asked. 

She shrugged. "It is so," she answered, standing back with her hands clasped behind her back and a cool frown on her face. "Pava, you will bring us Ninth Vail." 

"Of course," Pava drawled. "You are my sweet brother officers; but knowest it well, I send half of the troop on leave when I want to do serious manoeuvres." 

"Prianne Baraie will come," Tashka said in an abstracted tone of voice, "he knows cannon." 

"Cannon?" Pava repeated. "What does Captain Baraie know of cannon?" 

Tashka frowned at him. "Shut it, el Jien," she said. "He used to be one of the Castle Vail Guard and he still goes to check out the latest guns when he gets the chance." 

"Does he so?" Pava said with a grin. 

"What is in that scheming strategic mind of yours?" Clair asked, leaning affectionately back into Pava's arm. 

Tashka looked at him and then deep into Vadya's eyes. "Hear me," she said. 

"Captain, I will hear you," Vadya replied automatically, through a piece of bread and ham. 

"The border will be closed to H'las troops," she said. "They will never break through to rescue the Commander ... Commander-Lord el Gaiel. Fifth, Eighth and Tenth will have us surrounded by the day after the morrow. It must be Eighth and Tenth, they are nearest." 

"How do you know?" Clair asked in surprise. "Are they not in their winter quarters yet?" 

Tashka shrugged. "I just know," she said. "Eighth will be against us, like most of the Sietter army, because van Sietter will have let them know Anna has been dealing with the merchants." Arianna looked up with a startled gasp. "The Generals have accepted that they will not have me to Lord General and pinned my former brother officer Commander-Sir Dar Vaie of Tenth Sietter for Major General. They think his ambition and his adherence to the code of honour will put him in their pockets although they know his love for myself and Clair will make this a sad choice for him. But I know something of Vaie and I can pull Tenth over onto our side." 

"What can you know of Vaie?" Clair asked. "The sweet slut has slung his favours far and wide but he is an honourable man and has never done any thing anybody could keep in their pocket against him." 

Tashka shrugged. "He is hung on your banner," she said. "That would not be enough in itself but you must trust me. The three troops will surround us. Vaie will be troubled in his heart but he will do it since he has the expressed orders of the Generals' strategic staff.

"We must use Tenth Athagine's two scouting sections: one to take a report to Lord van H'las, he must be told our situation and our intentions; the other to go with Pava's orders and fetch the two active Quarters of Ninth Vail. Ninth must go to Clathan's Hall on their way here. He has an arsenal the like you should never have allowed so near your castle, Clair. They must bring Clathan's cannon on wagons with them. It will take them four days from Tinian..." 

"How does't know that Ninth are at Tinian?" Pava demanded. 

"... and two days from Clathan's Hall. They must come up in the night, secretly. I will persuade Tenth Sietter to withdraw from around the castle that night. We will launch an attack on Fifth and Eighth using Tenth Athagine from within the castle, with the Castle Guard in defensive line, and from whichever side Tenth Sietter are supposed to be encamped on, using Ninth Vail and Clathan's cannon - Palair net and trident, sithou. If we can drive Fifth and Eighth Sietter back, we can send to Fourth Sietter in Luthian, who will always follow your arm, Clair, and push up through the Sietter Hills to meet the H'las troops coming up the river from Port Paviat. Sir," she said, turning abruptly to Vadya with a cold steely gleam in her blue eyes, "we will take the Maier Pass." 

"Holy Angels!" Vadya breathed. 

"What?" Clair cried in anguish. "H'las troops to take the Maier Pass!" 

"Holy Heaven!" Tarra said with an easy laugh. "I wish I had taken you into my troop from the get-go, el Maien, instead of my bed!" Then he blushed scarlet. 

Clair swung his head round and stared at Tarra then looked at Tashka. She looked nervously sideways back at him. He started to stand up, the colour rising in his lean cheek. He was pulling his glove out of his belt, Pava was grabbing him by the waist, Tashka leapt to his side and caught his arm, saying: "What business is it of yours!" in an anxious voice. 

"I have trusted you as a friend," Clair hissed at Tarra. Tarra gave a deprecating shrug, his face still blushing with embarrassment. 

"I would have waited if I had realised I would be the first," he said apologetically. 

"What?!" Clair hissed. 

"For Angels' sake!" Tashka cried, trying to push Clair back into Pava's arms. "You have not so many friends that you can risk the losing this one." 

"el Maien," Vadya stood suddenly up. "If it is for any man to take offence at the stain on Tashka's honour, it is for me now. We have not time for this, sit down." 

Clair looked into Vadya's intent brown eyes. Slowly he relaxed back in Pava's grip. He sat down, giving Tarra a highly unpromising glare. 

"Why is it that van Sietter has suddenly called this war out of nowhere?" Lady el Farin's rasping voice spoke up for the first time, "and why is he willing to take prisoner not only his prospective son-by-marriage but his own son?" 

Tashka glanced sideways at Clair. He shrugged one shoulder, he was still casting angry looks at Tarra el V'lair. 

"I am not his son," Tashka replied with a sudden smile. "I am his daughter." 

Lady el Farin started and stared incredulously at the muscular tall officer-aristocrat before her. "His ... daughter?" she repeated slowly then she laughed. "Of course you are! Anastelle el F'lara only had the one boy - and a girl. How can I have forgotten? And here was I courteously not asking to meet my grandson's betrothed because I thought his heart was tangled in her brother's fingers. I should never have suspected an el Gaiel of such interesting behaviour." Vadya had started choking on a piece of cheese. "My dear," she stood suddenly up and rustled over to her grandson in duty bound, laughing and holding her arms out. "Long love and happiness! I prithou pardon me that I have not been as hearty in my congratulations as I ought. 

"So," she said, swinging back round from Vadya coughing and blushing in her embrace to Tashka, "that time you stood up in that card-playing hell where I was in difficulties," Vadya lifted his head, frowning, "and rescued my honour at the point of a rapier-sword, you were a woman too! Well, I wish I had half your spirit - besides your skill at the cards. My grandson is a most fortunate man." She looked into Vadya's eyes with her warmest smile. He attempted a smile back which came out twisted between embarrassment at the idea that he had been suspected of an affair with his own betrothed's brother and annoyance to hear that his grandmother in duty bound had gone off to a card-playing hell without adequate protection. 

Tashka cleared her throat. "Hear me," she said. Vadya nodded his head impatiently. "van Sietter has signed a treaty with arms merchants," she said. "He engineers a war now and then and they supply him arms half price." There were exclamations of anger as those in the room thought about several recent regional conflicts which had not been expected to come to actual war. "van Sietter was negotiating with van H'las to reduce duties on trade from Port H'las through Sietter earlier this year," Tashka went on. "But he wants to crush the cloth merchants in Arventa because they have been growing too powerful. Meanwhile Arianna el Jien, his own daughter by marriage, has been scheming to ask the King to commission a Council for Trade and Employment. Run by merchants, this would ensure that trade is fairly distributed across Trossia and encourage full employment of all people to eliminate poverty. This is not to van Sietter's advantage. To prevent it he has taken us to war." 

Arianna had raised her hands to her face. Her blue eyes looked in horror at Clair over her long pale fingers. "Not war!" she murmured. "How can I have caused a war, I do not believe in this vainglorious killing and death!" 

"Listen to me!" Tashka said urgently. "For once it is not vainglorious, it is for the people and their right to work and eat and feed their families. van Sietter must have been fretting at this problem of yours and your brother's work with the merchants all the time he was in those negotiations with van H'las. And then van H'las asked for his daughter's hand for young van H'las. van Sietter knew very well I am Vadya's junior officer and that of all matches that could be proposed, this would be the only one Vadya could be expected not only to refuse but to be so insulted by that it might come to war. He expected Vadya to hang me for a spy, that would have been just cause for he himself to declare war. But the el Gaiels did not refuse the match, they were determined to get an agreement for the merchants. van Sietter tried to use the betrothal to drag Clair back to the castle, he hoped Clair and you would quarrel and you would go back to Iarve. All this has failed. The el Gaiels even liked the proposed match, after some early, er, difficulties with it," she cast a wicked glinting grin at Vadya who scowled at her. 

"van Sietter has had to declare war himself. He hoped to take Vadya quickly. He knows van H'las will not be willing to take another bride, he thought he might wipe out the succession in H'las but even so, this is a strangely clumsy way to manage it - so many of the high nobility friendly to young van H'las here. Remember it: van Sietter is married to a Vilandian Princess. In his career as King's Minister for Foreign Affairs he has built up his influence in Vilandia. If he can pull other regions of Trossia into war by capturing young van H'las in a dirty enough trick, he can bring Vilandian troops into Trossia, apparently as an act of defence. There will be chaos! The threat of Vilandian armies conquering us from within will cause the King and his Ministers to turn to the man who has most influence in Vilandia, the man married to the sister of the Vilandian King: Pava el Maien van Sietter. Once van Sietter has that control, he will never let it go. He will rule the King, the Ministers and Trossia through the fear of Vilandian conquest which only he will apparently be holding at bay." 

Distantly the noises in the castle could be heard around the edges of a horrid silence that had descended on the room. 

"This is a fine basket of fruit!" Lady el Farin growled. "How are we to take out that old snake van Sietter when none of us can support you in case he brings Vilandia in on his side? What do you propose now, Captain-Lord el Maien?" 

Tashka shrugged. She was suddenly a couple of shades paler, the red cut vivid in her grey-white cheek and still dripping blood. She put one hand to her head, she felt drained with the effort of putting together so much so quickly to tell it all to them and she felt a terrified horror that she had spilt so many of van Sietter's secrets. But he had pushed her too far, there was no worse that he could threaten her with than to divide her from the Commander she adored. 

"Tashka," Vadya's voice sounded tinny in her ears, "take my seat." He stood up and put a hand under her arm, easing her into his chair. She obeyed him, black spots were dancing in front of her eyes. 

"Pava, Tarra," Vadya said. "Get that scouting section on the road to Tinian. We Commanders should reconvene here, in one hour, with lunch on the table?" he looked at Clair who nodded. "Hanya, you could take notes of the discussion for us, is it not? We need a copy for my father and you know enough of military strategy to write the notes. Or do you mean to go back to your brother in Iarve?" 

"No, Hanya cannot go," Tashka cut in. "Lady el Farin and Volka, also Tarra and Pava if they wish it, will be allowed safe passage but Hanya will be taken if he tries to go because he has been involved with the merchants. Anata is only a Dame, they will not look to hold her. Sevie can go, everyone knows Sevie has fluff for brains and would not be dealing with merchants! If she goes alone with el Darien to Trattai, it will compromise her honour and force van Iarve to agree to bestow her on Volka - who is mine and Vadya's junior officer." 

"I will do whatever I can!" Hanya's ordinarily inexpressive scarred face was twisting with guilt. "I introduced the merchants to Anna's notice and have supported her in her work. At first I only thought we would make money but I came to believe in what she is doing and I will support you now any way I can." 

Clair looked at Arianna. She was crying, her big blue eyes stared at him, flashing with tears. "I prithou pardon me," she sobbed. "Trieds't so hard to warn me!" 

"My dear," he answered, his husky voice heavy with affection. "Tashka is wrong to say you have caused this war. It is van Sietter who has brought this war on us all. Even I did not imagine any thing quite so terrible as this. I am very sorry for it, to be the son of such a pale Angel who has caused you such difficulties in the noble-minded selfless strategy you devised. I would always have stood by you, right or wrong, but I can stand by you in this war with my hand on my heart and say I believe in your strategy for the people." 

"And you'll come to the Generals' strategic staff headquarters in Port H'las," Tashka cut in. 

Clair swung an astonished head round on her. "What for would I do that?" he asked. "Mine is not a strategic mind, you know it." 

"What of Shier Bridge?" Vadya asked. 

"Oh no," Clair said. "That was not my strategy, it was my Captain's ... my lover's. His strategy won us Shier Bridge, and lost me him. I cannot go back to war!" His voice was starting to go high. 

Tashka started up in her chair, she glared at him, her voice a low growl. "You must come or else it will be just H'las against Sietter. Fourth and Tenth will not come unless you lift your banner; other Sietter troops may come to our side if you do. Caja Nain is still hung on your banner, although he has been deployed near Arventa. The General, his father, will probably lean on him too hard for him to cross his vow to the Generals' rings. You cannot hide out this war here with Anna, you must come down to Port H'las." 

Clair stared at her with all the terrible tragedy of the war he had suffered etched in the lines of his lean face. The other Commanders in the room were sympathetically silent. They knew that Clair had put his arm up the signal to lead three quarters of his troop: one thousand four hundred and fifty-nine men, into their graves in one battle alone. It was not only for his lover's sake that Clair had never put up his banner again after Shier Bridge. 

"It was Hanya's strategy, not yours," Tashka said in a low intense voice, staring into Clair's eyes. "I will swear that when he drew it up, you told them how it would be but the Angels will have pointed to the orders from the Generals' strategic staff: hold the Maier Pass at all cost. Tell it to me, did not their faces light up when they saw the beauty of Hanya's strategy? Mine did when I read of it. 

"But you and I are van Sietter. You looked in your men's faces and wanted to take them home. Yet you were sworn to the hoop of the Generals' rings, sworn to take Hanya and the Angels as your victory. The structure of the command in Sietter is such that the lives of the ordinary men are as nothing, most especially in Fourth as it was then with three Angels and Hanya in charge and a clutch of tip-top rising stars for Lieutenants, not a single steady hand among them to side with you and point to the lack of care in such a strategy. You took them to their deaths for an idle selfish whim of van Sietter's but you used it to get us all peace: Sietter and H'las alike. 

"I have heard van H'las himself, in the days before he knew us, speak highly of the great personal honour you showed, and brought to the lost Fourth Sietter officers and men, using what many would call a victory of high military honour to get us peace instead of pushing forward from it to attempt to conquer H'las. You are not being asked to go back to throw men away like broken potsherds now. You will be in the structure of the H'las command, where they take their vow to care for the men seriously. You will not be out in the field to act on the orders whether you believe them or no, you will be back in the offices and will be able to give the No to any strategy that costs too highly in the men of Fourth and Tenth Sietter. You will do it for the sake of the poor of our own region, not for that old snake in his nest of secrets." 

Clair's face crumpled, he hid it in his hands. Arianna felt a terrible pity and guilt, to have brought this on him. She got up and went to him and pressed his shoulder. 

"We all have our parts to play," she said to him softly. "I must put my pacifism in my pocket for the sake of our people." 

He lifted his slanted grey eyes and looked into her eyes. "We were so happy making our marriage," he murmured through his tears. "Now must I put our marriage in my pocket and leave you again?" 

"I will keep our marriage in my pocket with my pacifism," she said, gently pressing his shoulder. "You came back before. I will trust you to leave me only to come back to me again." She turned and said, "Tashka, you must come and have that cut seen to. Come with me to my room." She went to Tashka and took her arm. Tashka and Clair stared at each other. He gave a jerky nod with his chin and she let Arianna lead her out of the room. 

"Hartha!" Arianna shouted to a maidservant. "Bring some salve and warm water to my room." She started up the stairs with Tashka just behind her. 

When they were halfway up the stairs, Vadya caught them up and took Tashka's arm, hovering nervously on the step below her and casting agonised looks at Arianna. She smiled at him and said: "Well, I will wait for you in my room, Tashka, but do not be long," turning with a swish of skirts to go on up the stairs. 

"T-Tashka," Vadya said urgently. "I want to say ... I was very angry this morning, that you have so little faith in me. I thought you must have realised by now that I will never renounce my vow to you. I tell you plain, el Maien, you are my care, my honour and my victory. You are my Captain and you'll be Commander soon and one day you will be a General - in H'las. You are the finest soldier I know and I will not let any thing stand in your way. I have thought." 

Tashka's blue eyes lit up. "Vadya!" she said. "I hoped ... I never thought ...! I knew I could be Captain but I thought ... Vadya, I do pray one day I am worthy to be your General, I do pray it." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 18



"Liar," he said affectionately. "You know you already have the skills, only you are too young. I know there must be children, for the succession, but I will manage it. You are too good a soldier to put to the side, even for the sake of children." 

She grinned at him, suddenly vividly happy in the midst of all their troubles. 

"Oh yes," Vadya added, looking shyly aside. "I asked Clair and he is willing to bestow you on me and let us be married the night." 

"What?!" Tashka's eyes crumpled in annoyance. "He has no right to bestow me anywhere!" 

"Shut it, el Maien!" Vadya laughed. "It is just how it is, you are a younger child. You have to be bestowed while I have the so-great privilege of buying the rings and whatnot. Any road, we can be married!" 

"The night?" Tashka repeated. "This very night?" Her face looked suddenly uncertain. 

"Yes, this very night!" Vadya said then saw her face. "Why, what is it? Do you ... do you have doubts about marrying me?" 

"No of course not!" Tashka replied scornfully. "It is only ... I know not what to wear." 

"What?" Vadya said incredulously. "Whatever does it matter what you wear!" 

"You would say a thing like that," Tashka said grumpily. "Look at you now, you are wearing a green hose with a purple doublet." 

Vadya looked down at his clothes and snorted crossly. "'Fore the Angels!" he snapped. "I had better things to think of than the cut of my suit this morning!" 

"Yes but this is our wedding," Tashka said. She hung her head and scuffed at a step with the toe of her boot. "I ... I wanted to wear something special." 

"el Maien!" he groaned. "What does it matter what you wear? I do not care what you wear! We are to be married then your father cannot give you trouble the more because you will be van H'las, no one can put us apart and we can lie together whenever we please. What would you have worn even if you had had a year to plan it in? Do not tell me you would have worn a pink dress for me!" 

"N-no," she admitted. "Pink does nothing for me and my Commander has said he will discipline me if he ever sees me in a dress again," she put a soft fist out with a smile and buffeted his cheek. "Well, I will wear my parade silks then." 

"Oh, er, no," he said. "I would feel ... it would be odd because I will be marrying my junior officer. Not your parade silks." 

"But you'll wear your uniform, is it not?" she demanded crossly. "I will have to marry my senior officer!" 

"I care nothing for what I wear!" he protested. "I might have worn my uniform," he admitted, "but if you ask me as a favour, I will not." He looked up into her blue eyes as she stood on the step above him and said softly: "I will wear whatever you command me to wear." 

She laughed and said, "just be sure you do not wear that doublet and hose! Batren will dress you, he will find something for you to wear. He will die of shame when he sees that doublet and hose! I must go to Anna now or she will be cross." 

"Kiss me," Vadya asked, trying to move up onto her step but three serving men came rushing down the stairs and Vadya had to be content with a wink from his lean and bold-eyed bride.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 19



Thank you so much for the feedback and 'votes of confidence' as I put up the latest chapters, which mark a shift in tone. I was anxious about how that would go down, so I'm very grateful to see you are still enjoying the story. :heart: 

*****

Tashka trailed into Arianna's room and sank into one of the blue and yellow armchairs. She shut her eyes and lay still. Her mind was like a herd of deer, so many thoughts running this way and that, appearing in brief dappled shadows in a sunny wood. Her body lay absolutely still and relaxed in the soft cushions. She felt a touch on her cheek and started up, seizing Arianna's cool hand in a hard grip. 

"Prithou pardon," she said, letting Arianna's hand go and sinking back into the cushions. Her blue eyes turned aside while Arianna cleaned her cheek and applied some salve to it. 

"Anna," she said mournfully, "Vadya wants to be married the night." 

"Ar't sad for that?" Arianna asked in surprise, putting the jar of salve onto a table beside the armchair. 

"Oh no," Tashka said carelessly. "It will be nice to be able to lie with him without him fretting about my honour and whatnot. Only, I know not what to wear," her mouth turned petulantly down at the corners. She turned her eyes upwards, trying to smile at herself but Arianna did not laugh at her. "Of course, I never thought I would wear a pink dress, ha ha," Tashka said. She sat up and fiddled with the handguard of her rapier. "I just thought ... I would think of something special but I never did. I mean, of course Vadya does not care. He has the worst sense for clothing I ever saw! Only ... he must marry his officer, who drinks and swears and fights, and Anna, when I had to be betrothed to him, I started to wonder what sort of woman I would have been." She looked nervously at Arianna, who had seen her in a dress. 

"Woulds't have been an heartbreaker," Arianna said promptly. "Has't such beautiful eyes, has't a merry witty way with you and a strength of heart to make men swear their lives away. And ar't sexy, there is no denying it." She smiled into Tashka's shyly pleased face. 

"Oh well," Tashka said. "I would have liked to be a woman for Vadya, just for one night. But he does not like me to wear a dress. In fact, he forbid it!" she laughed. 

"How about a suit made in the style your friend Anata wears?" Arianna answered, looking with a warm love into Tashka's wistful face. "She does not wear dresses but nobody will say she is not a woman." 

Tashka thought about her friend's Northern peasant clothes: wide-hipped trousers and little jackets made from fabrics in dashing colours embroidered with animals, birds and flowers. Anata Yrai was a storming P'shan beauty and Pava and Tarra had both rushed to flirt with her, but she had dismissed their attentions with a biting wit. She barely tolerated the advances of the immensely wealthy Hanya el Jien only because he was so shy that he always treated her with extreme courtesy. 

"I could still wear my sword!" Tashka said, her eyes brightening, "but Anata is too short, I cannot borrow her things and we will never have time to get me a new suit before the night," her face fell again, she pouted and her eyes glinted with regret. "Perhaps Vadya would let me wear my old Sietter parade silks or there is my brocade suit I suppose but I have lost a button off the breeches." 

Arianna got up off the stool she had been sitting on and went over to her door. "If gives't up this easily on the field of battle," she said, "I am amazed ever wons't a name for yourself as a soldier!" She leant out of her door and shouted: "Fiotr, go and beg to come to me the Lady van P'shan, the Lady Sevianne, Dame Anastelle Yrai and Mistress Faffie Velor. Ask Vidor Hyaline to come too. Get Lisette, Ladda and Tisha! Run to it!" 

Tashka stood up and stared. Arianna crossed over to a big wardrobe in the corner of her room, opened the doors and pulled out a deep drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe, out of which she began taking bolts of silk cloth. 

"Are ... are you going to make me a wedding suit?" Tashka asked, her eyes narrowing nervously up as if she could not bear to believe it. 

"It might be difficult to go down to the shops and get you any other wedding present," Arianna answered with a laugh. "So musts't accept this suit instead." She threw a pink silk on the bed, unrolled it and held up the edge of it to Tashka's face. "Oh dear! no, even I can see pink really does nothing for you. But it is more like your luck that I invited Vidor Hyaline and Faffie Velor to our party. Faffie worked at embroidery for the King's robemakers, so you will have a royal edge to your wedding suit. And Vidor has been trying to get Faffie to help him do some stitching but she only laughs at him. That is something to make you smile, my sweetness, is it not? To have a wedding suit designed by Hyaline and embroidered by one of the King's robemakers." 

~#~*~#~

Clair got up from the table of food laid out for lunch and looked with a frown out of the sitting-room windows - one of which had had to be covered over with a board. "Where is Tashka?" he said irritably. 

"I will go and see," Vadya started for the door, Clair came with him and they passed out of the sitting-room and up the stairs to Arianna's room together. A footman came hurrying down the stairs past them with a tray laden with beautiful bowls slopped with dregs of tea and matching plates covered in cake crumbs. 

"What! are they having a tea party while this war crashes about our ears?" Clair said crossly, knocking perfunctorily on Arianna's door and opening it without waiting for her to say he could enter. 

He and Vadya stood on the threshold and stared. Arianna's bed was a mess of material: ivory silk, peach silk, pale blue silk. Tangled amongst the lengths of cloth were bits of lacy lingerie that made Vadya's eyes start in their sockets. Two servants, Anata and Sevie were kneeling on the floor cutting out some fawn raw silk cloth. Faffie was sitting in an armchair, embroidering something. Lady van P'shan was sitting in the other armchair dangling snippets of cloth for Arkyll and Hanya to play with. 

Arianna was standing by her mirror with Tashka, who was wearing nothing but a flimsy cotton dressing gown over her underwear. Vidor Hyaline was holding bits of lace lingerie up with an intent expression on his face while Tashka said: "No. Angels no! Not red." The two noblemen both narrowed their eyes up at the total lack of sexual interest in the artist's eyes as he dangled pieces of outrageously alluring lace and silk around the body of the woman whose honour was about to be bestowed by the one young man on the other. 

"What is all this?" Clair exclaimed. "Tashka, what are you doing? We have been waiting on you!" 

Tashka blanched, turning around and striding across the room with the edges of the dressing gown flapping about her body in her utilitarian men's underpants and plain white bodice. "Oh I forgot!" she exclaimed, her face stricken. "My Commander, I prithou pardon me!" She hurriedly seized her breeches and began pulling them on. 

"How late is Tashka?" Arianna asked. 

"Ten minutes," Clair said. 

"Oh is that all," Tashka said in relief. "You are not angry, el Gaiel? It is only ten minutes and I am coming imminently." 

"Can you not start without Lord Tashka?" Hyaline inquired politely. "The cut of the suit is such that it is not possible to fit it without him." 

"Suit?" Clair repeated, his slanted grey eyes narrowing in annoyance. "What are you doing here?" 

"My darling," Arianna laid a hand on his arm, she smiled winningly at him, her warm eyes dancing, "we are making a wedding suit for Tashka." 

"What?!" Clair exclaimed. "We are making the strategy to ensure we can start this disgusting war properly, we need Tashka's military mind to do so and you are off making a suit for him to get married in? What in Hell does it matter what he wears when he marries?" 

Hyaline looked sideways at Arianna and moved softly off to where the women were lifting their heads from the fawn silk laid out on the floor to look apprehensively at the Lords el Maien and el Gaiel and Lady el Jien. 

"Clair, be reasonable," Arianna coaxed. "Let him have a suit to be married in: your own brother. It has been so hard on him, he wants a wedding suit, let us do it, to make you proud." 

"I do not need to see him dressed up like a parrot to feel proud of him!" Clair said furiously. "Any man who will not take him as he is is a fool - and can have my glove for it!" 

"But it is Tashka," Arianna cooed, pouting her warm red mouth up at him, sweet as a bowl of cherries. "He just wants a little suit, it is a nothing, my dear. Come, my darling, my dear, give us just twenty minutes. Vadya," she turned warm blue eyes suddenly on Vadya, "sweetheart, wills't not deny Tashka twenty minutes so we can fit his suit properly?" She tilted her head down, pouting her mouth up, her eyelashes fluttered and her eyes looked sweetly through them up at him. Vadya was completely confounded by the sudden melting of the elegant Lady el Jien into this flirtatious maiden. He flicked his eyes sideways at the husband who was notorious for leaping into the duel over quite trivial suggestions that her honour might have been compromised, and who had already had his temper tried high that day by revelations about the honour of other members of his family. 

"Twenty minutes!" Tashka stood suddenly up, dressed only in breeches and the thin cotton dressing gown. "What is that? If my military mind is so important to you, you can wait twenty minutes for me, is it not?" She flashed a freezing glare into Clair's face. 

"How dare you address me like so, who have been a Lieutenant under my Command!" Clair snapped. "If I have any more insubordination of this kind, I will ... um," 

"I am not under your Command the more!" Tashka said furiously. The two el Maiens glowered into each other's slanted eyes then Vadya saw to his extreme consternation that Tashka was going to cry. "So I was your Lieutenant! I am your brother too, is it not? You might let your own brother have a bloody suit to his wedding. Your brother, what am I say-aying! I am not your brother, I am your si-i-ister! I grew up with you a soldier even though I am a woman. Men looked on me with eyes in the troop and I fought them. You tau-aught me not to go with them! When I met the man I love, who is to be my husband, he was my Commander! And he will no-o-ot marry me in my parade silks, he does not wa-a-ant to marry his ju-u-unior offi-, officer and who can blame him? Not you! You would not have married Ha-a-anya in parade silks, would you? with your C-C-Commander's bu-u-uttons. And you damned dog, you are to bestow me! Like I am a thi-i-ing that you are presenting, not as if I were giving myself of my free will!" 

Out of the corner of his eye, Vadya was aware of the other women in the room hustling Hyaline out the door with the two little children. He started forward but Clair stepped up and said in a furious hiss: "I think there has been quite enough giving of yourself of your free will! How could you have gone with el V'lair? Exactly the kind of man I tried to protect you from but you had to fling your favours at him like any pink-fingered vixen!" 

"I never!" Tashka howled, her furious blue eyes flooded with tears. "H-h-how can you th-th-think it? He t-t-t-took me drunk! I th-thought I would be safe to have a d-d-dinner with him; he is your friend!" 

Clair swung suddenly round to the door, his face incandescent with rage. "I'll have his throat for it," he ground out. Tashka caught at his arm, clinging to his arm and sobbing. 

"It is a nothing!" she said fiercely through her sobs. "I have dealt with it myself. It, it, it is a nothing for you! Why can you not let me have a bloody suit and give myself freely if I want to." 

Vadya stepped up between them and put one arm around Clair's shoulders and the other around Tashka. She took one look at him and then buried her face in his shoulder, sobbing bitterly. He felt her head press into his neck and her tears run cold down his collar. 

"el Maien," he said to Clair. "I do understand how you feel about el V'lair but this is not the time. I prithou, let it pass. Afterwards you can fling what you like in his face but for now we need his troop, to protect Tashka as much as the rest of us." He looked into Clair's face until Clair's eyes became more reasonable and Clair nodded curtly then he released Clair's shoulders and turned to his sobbing junior officer. He cupped his hand around her cheek, the only part of her face he could see, she had pushed her face so hard into his shoulder and neck. "Tashka," he said tenderly, "my heart, my betrothed, my love. Have twenty minutes, have your suit, have whatever you like. I beg for your pardon that you must be bestowed on me the night. In return I will bestow the whole of H'las on you, is it a fair exchange?" 

She lifted her eyes to him, those exquisitely beautiful slanted blue eyes, with tears hanging off the lovely long lashes. Her rose-petal mouth pouted. "The wh-whole of H'las?" she repeated, he nodded his head with a smile. "Including the structure of the command?" she demanded. He looked confounded then he laughed. "Of course," he said warmly. "All of it. The Generals' strategic staff will be yours, my darling. My father's heart, the Lord General's heart, is already yours and the night you will have mine. You may have sworn allegiance to our fingers but we are wound around yours, you know it." 

Tashka gave him a pouting look then freed herself from his arm and strode back across the room, wiping the tears from her eyes with the heel of her scarred hand. 

"We will adjourn for one half hour," Vadya said to Arianna, who was standing by biting her lip as if she were trying hard not to laugh. 

"Well I will see you then," Tashka said grumpily. "Sir," she added as an afterthought. 

"My Lord, I prithou send back my friends," Arianna said in a mockingly prim voice to Clair. He glared at her as she took his and Vadya's arms and walked them to the door. "And Clair," she lowered her voice. "Shall't go to the castle strong-room and take out what has't of your mother's jewellery and send it to me here for Tashka. That jewellery belongs to him and it is time gaves't it to him. Not just the earrings, everything. Cans't use this half hour to consider what lands shall't be giving to Tashka as his marriage settlement, when ar't Lord van Sietter, because shall't not be sending him to H'las empty-handed, is it?" She looked meaningfully into Clair's cross face as she pushed two of the most influential Commanders in the country out of her door. "Hads't best ask Laran draw up the papers now so Vadya knows shall't not play a trick on his father and him and push Tashka off on them with no means to support himself. Tashka is expensive, knowest it well." 

Firmly she shut the door behind them. 

"Phew!" Vadya said. "We came off the worse in that battle, el Maien!" 

Clair suddenly started laughing and clapped him on the back, saying: "You gave up the banner, el Gaiel! You surrendered." They started off down the stairs, grinning at each other. "el Gaiel," Clair said. "You must not give way to Tashka's tears. I know it wrenches the heart when he cries, he has such pretty eyes, but you must not be indulgent and spoil him. You will have insubordination in your home else." 

"I never had her tears before," Vadya answered. "I will never be able to resist them, el Maien, but I will not have insubordination in my home for I will obey her in everything." 

Clair stopped on the stairs and looked into his smiling warm brown eyes. He took Vadya in his arms and hugged him close. "el Gaiel," he said. "I will give Tashka the Maier Pass when you marry her the night. I will tell Laran to get the lawyers write it for her." 

"You will be a fool if you do that!" Vadya exclaimed. "What for will you give such a strategic position to a younger child who will be van H'las, and a General in H'las to boot! even though it will come back to you after she passes." 

"What does it matter," Clair answered, "since the finest military mind in our land will be van H'las from the night." He gave a rueful sigh. "There is no strategic position that Tashka cannot take. He may as well have it as a gift, he will be kinder to me if I give it to him than if he takes it from me!" 

Vadya laughed and said: "You have loved her and cared for her very close, el Maien. It cannot have been easy guarding her honour in the middle of a troop. You must not blame yourself for it that el V'lair was such a scum as to steal her favours under the cloak of your friendship." He looked warmly into Clair's eyes, pressing his arm. 

Clair made a vicious pout with his mouth then a rueful smile. "Tashka has the look of our mam," he said, his slanted grey eyes turning away. "Mam loved me dearly although they made her leave when I was very small. When she sent me Tashka it was like having a piece of her back, I took him straight to my heart." Clair lifted his slanted grey eyes to Vadya and said: "If you can imagine a woman with Tashka's beauty, that was mam." Then he thought about what he had said and they both laughed as they passed on down the stairs and back into the sitting-room. 

Clair paused to ask a serving man send his seneschal to him then went into the sitting-room and straight to Tarra el V'lair. Tarra saw him coming and backed up behind the table, saying easily: "No glove, el Maien, I'll not take it from you. I would not give you a glove over my wife and I will not take one over your ... sister." 

Clair leant menacingly over the table. "If you think I'd accept a glove for my friendship with your unfortunate wife," he hissed, "you are even less of a friend to my heart than I had supposed. I will have you one day for what you did to my baby brother." 

Vadya came over and obliged himself to be a lot more friendly to Tarra than he wanted to be. He put his arm around Tarra's shoulders and brushed his chin with a mock punch, Tarra flinched back. "There," Vadya said with a laugh. "Do you see this scar, el Maien? That is what your brother has done, for the sake of her own honour, is it not, el V'lair?" 

Tarra's saturnine face broke into laughter. "That was a merry battle of fists!" he exclaimed. "I knew he was coming for me as soon as I saw him in the bar! I was unlucky, my former brother by marriage Hanya el Farin was there, he would have given me a softer blow. I did not mean the rest of Tenth to start fighting too. I was trying to tell them to stand easy but I could not talk because she broke my jaw so badly!" He laughed out at the thought of it. "And she is not the only one to come after me," he added, looking over at Pava. 

Clair turned to glare at Pava, who had been sitting at the table watching them with a glint in his green eyes. Pava gave him a deprecating smile. "Sweetness," he said, "at the time he was my Lieutenant, my honour. It was just after he had killed in a duel so I was not particularly surprised when he did not appear on duty the first day but the second I was worried and went to the town my silly self to seek him out. From what they told me in the tavern I realised he was not being held by el V'lair against his will - as if anyone could do it to that young killer - so I came away and hid it from you that he was not on station and I pretended to the Commander that I had given him some leave because of the duel. He was of age, it was his own sweet business to whom he gave his favours but I knew woulds't not take it quite like that! and that the Commander would fret for it too: such a stain on the honour of a younger child of the el Maiens. Then from something Tashka said, I realised el V'lair had taken him drunk so I rode after el V'lair and offered him a glove," he laughed mockingly at himself. "Luckily for me el V'lair would not take it, he admitted the fault freely and made me a most abject apology. He promised me never to wave Tashka's honour about since he recognised that it would cause Tashka problems and also I pointed out that he would have to face you - a much better dueller than I, if word of what he had done got out. And till now, he never has spoken of it." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 19



"I saw his knuckles are scarred," Tarra said. "Did he do that on my jaw? I will pray his pardon for it, was he badly hurt?" 

"She has had worse," Vadya said callously. "Come, el Maien. You can see that both Tashka and Pava have stood up to wipe the stain from her honour. Tashka has forgiven el V'lair so you must too. Shake hands and arms?" 

Clair eyed Tarra coldly over the table; his lady-hunting friend, who had defended him even when he was in the wrong, had stood second for him in duels over the most trivial and stupid of reasons. He had only laughed and let it pass when Clair hit him for something he said about the resemblance between their mother and the beloved brother about whom Clair was over-protective. Tarra's casual comment had caught Clair on a raw nerve and Clair had given the secret entirely away by reacting without thinking as if Tashka had the honour of a daughter of the high nobility which required a closer eye kept over it. Tarra came hesitantly round the table. Clair lifted his chin in a curt nod and took his arm about the elbow with his right hand, Tarra gripped his arm, smiling. 

"Shall't leave the van Sietter women honour bright now," Pava teased him. 

"She's a proud beauty," Tarra laughed. "It would almost be worth it to storm those fair battlements but out of respect for Clair's glove, I'll give her the go-by." 

"Tashka, a proud beauty?" Pava laughed. 

"Oh no," Tarra said, "Anna el Jien." 

Clair started for him, reaching for his gloves again, his face twisting with fury. They seized Clair and held him back, laughing and saying to him: Be reasonable. If your Lady wife is beautiful, you must expect people to try and throw her their favours. Tarra said: "No no, el Maien. She will never bestow her favours on any but one and that will not be me," coming forward to hold his arm while they restrained Clair from slapping him in the face. "I'll never get so much as a warm word from that magnificent mouth, be generous and allow me only to admire her."



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 20



Thank you for the feedback and votes.:) 

*****

Vadya felt nervous. It was quiet and dark in the chapel. Huge candles cast a warm religious light on the stone pillars. High up, the painted vaulted roof was dim although the narrow windows up above let in a little starlight. Vadya was standing by the altar: a row of painted wooden boxes each of which held a statue of an Angel; each of the thirteen Angels had been carved by a different craftsman to Clair's commission. The chapel itself was old and plain, it formed an ideal setting for the religious works of art which Clair had brought into it. 

Vadya moved his weight to rest on his other leg, his eyes flicking uneasily over the murmuring people in the chapel. Batren and some of Clair's personal servants had been fussing over him for an hour or more, nearly sending Vadya's taut nerves snapping. He had such a fierce argument with Batren over whether he ought to let one of Clair's men-servants buff his nails that it only brought them closer together. 

Batren had chosen a brown velvet doublet and hose embroidered with gold roses for him. He helped Vadya into an ivory silk shirt with gold edged lace at the throat. Ordinarily Vadya would have had fits at the very idea of wearing anything so choice but he had gathered dimly that it was important to Tashka that they should dress well so he submitted with a bad grace. When Batren was done with him, he looked splendid in a way that surprised Pava, who was his Guard of Honour. He had big shoulders and narrow hips and the well-fitted hose showed the muscles flickering in his legs and a soft bundle at his groin that Pava inspected with covert approval. It was good to know that his favourite baby Lieutenant was going to get a decent sized endowment along with the beach resorts, two port cities, hunting lodge, caravel, several castles, large trade revenues and the much admired chain of command in H'las. The extravagant flood of lace on his shirt made Vadya's features stand out more clearly: his warm brown eyes, his gentle generous mouth, his broad forehead and cheekbones. An elaborate gold earring with rubies and the H'las insignia worked into it swung softly against his lean muscular neck. 

Batren finally redeemed himself by saying, "and I have arranged for a jewellery merchant to bring some rings to my Lord and borrowed one of Lord Tashka's rings to measure for size," in a choked miserable voice because Vadya had been so horrible about everything else he had done for him. Vadya had assumed he would have to use one of his own rings to put on Tashka's finger. He could not imagine how Batren had smuggled a jewellery merchant with a box full of gold marriage rings through the siege into the castle. He had stopped picking sulkily at the lace on his cuffs and had reached out and pulled Batren into a hug, by way of apology and thanks. 

In front of him, Vadya could hear the servants and guests and family chatting in a low buzzing hum. Arkyll's little voice piped up, interrupting Lady el Farin and Anata Yrai with some doubtless embarrassing question. Hanyan's clear tones pitched in. Ladda and Faffie were exchanging reminiscences of weddings they had been to, their kerchiefs ready to be cried into, Vidor Hyaline was sketching them on the back of a scroll of religious songs. Hanya el Jien had managed to get a seat next to Anata Yrai, he was stuttering beside her tantalising beauty. Clair had arranged safe passage for those of his guests he could so Anata would be leaving the next day. She was to travel back to P'shan with Vadya's grandmother in duty bound, Lady van P'shan. 

Batren had tried to sit unobtrusively at the back of the chapel but Pava had seen him and had made him come and sit in the front with some of the senior castle servants. 

Vadya felt queasy with worry. Pava, standing slightly behind him, gripped his arm reassuringly and Vadya gave him a sick smile. 

'Why so much fuss?' he thought miserably to himself. This was nothing. He and Clair would say a few ritual words and then he would go and lie with Tashka in the great bed-chamber which Ladda and the maids had made up for them as a wedding suite. There was nothing in that to get excited about. They had lain together already and everyone guessed they had. The morrow they would be just the same as ever, young officers planning out a campaign together. 

Clair stood in Arianna's doorway and looked at his sister, standing by Arianna in the soft light of the candles. 

She wore a suit of fawn raw silk, wide-hipped trousers, narrow at the waist and ankles, falling into pleated folds around her sparkling jewel-encrusted sword: the Captain's ceremonial sword that he himself had sent to be presented to her when she became a Captain of Sixth H'las. Her jacket was wasp-waisted, sweeping into a point at the back and filling out around her breast in a ruched puff that emphasised her small breasts. It buttoned up with a row of tiny gold filigree buttons, it had puffs at the top of the sleeves and long tight cuffs buttoned with more tiny gold filigree buttons. The small lapels of her jacket and the cuffs of her trousers were stiff with gold embroidery and she wore gold-embroidered slippers borrowed from Arianna on her feet. 

Lisette had persuaded Tashka to wear a little paint on her eyes and mouth. Her face sprang into vivid beauty around a curving gold vine that Hyaline had curled alongside the cut on her cheek. She had dark rubies set in old gold hanging in one ear and a Northern designed chain of rubies around her neck and another chain of gold and rubies wrapped around her left arm up to the elbow. On the finger of her left hand gleamed the woman's ruby betrothal ring Vadya had given her which she had not been able to wear openly in the troop. Her rose-petal mouth glinted in the candle-light with the gloss on it. The slanted blue eyes looked at Clair from gold-lined eyelids, she looked shyly down, her long lashes flickering on her cheeks. He caught his breath. 

He came to her, tears in his grey eyes. Arianna was smiling at him, standing beside this fabulously beautiful creature whom he would never have imagined Tashka could be. Clair took a gentle hold of Tashka's arms and lightly brushed each of his cheeks on her cheeks. 

"My sister," he said in his warm husky voice. "You are so beautiful! Go take him, that Commander of yours. After he sees you the night, he will never look on another woman again." 

Tashka lifted her shy eyes and smiled tremulously at him. Arianna put a hand out and pressed Clair's arm in his maroon silk suit with the sleeves slashed to show cloth of gold underneath: his wedding suit. She could not forbear a sly giggle to see him in it again, she had fantasised about what she had once seen him do while wearing it so often. Clair smiled softly on her. "My Lady," he said. "I have not words to thank you for your great kindness to us." 

"There is no time for this," she laughed. "They will all be waiting!" She rustled out of the door in the lovely red and gold frock he had recently had made up for her, hurrying off ahead of them. 

Tashka waited for Clair to step out in front of her. He laughed, saying: "My sister, you must walk before me this time." She blushed and hesitated. It felt odd to have him, her older brother and former Commander, walk at her shoulder like a junior officer. They came out down the stairs, through the corridors and the great echoing hall to the chapel. The cooks - who had to stay and prepare the wedding feast - had sneaked out of the kitchens to see her go past, she turned and went to press their hands and say: "I thank you," looking warmly in their eyes. They stared at her in wonder then recollected themselves to wish her long love and happiness and she smiled and went on in front of Clair. 

There was a rustle at the door, Vadya straightened up and peered over, his heart thumping in his chest - no it was just Arianna but that must mean Tashka and Clair were on their way. His eyes were ridiculously blurry. He hoped desperately that he would not embarrass them all by fainting. She was there. 

He had never imagined she could look like this. He had walked, eaten and even slept by her side for four years but the memory of young Maien, his smart junior officer, grew dim in the extraordinary beauty of the Northern heartbreaker walking down the aisle to him. She was not used to wearing slippers and tripped a bit in them. He could hardly bear to see that somehow, it made him want to rush down the steps to hug her. 

He felt so shy. He felt he did not know her at all. She was beside him, she reached for his hand with her left hand, it should have been her right because he was right-handed and he must be able to reach for his sword. He smiled nervously, took her offered hand and then reached for her right hand as well and she blushed. 

Her hand was familiar to him. Not her left hand, on which sparkled the gold and ruby betrothal ring he had given her, her scarred right hand. He could still see the lean tanned fingers bunching into a fist and flying into Tarra el V'lair's laughing riotous face in a smoky old tavern in Thiel. Her head turned to him and behind the dusty gold shade and the lightly painted gold line on her lids, he knew the beautiful intelligent eyes as well. He heard an echo of her voice in his ears: 'Shall we move the camp further this way? that wood is an hazard.' He smiled tremulously at her. He wanted her so much that the tiny fear she might suddenly back out was almost too much to bear. 

The priest was advancing on them, he tugged at Tashka's hand but she was slow kneeling down because she had to flick her sword back with her left hand not her right as she was used to do. She lifted her head and he looked at the curving gold vine painted down her cheek, the thin red wound beside it. He knew she would soon be riding to war and that he would have to stay behind the lines with the Generals and the strategic staff. He knew she would come back with worse wounds than this one and that she might not come back to him at all. Up till then he had accepted it. Brother officers must risk themselves, one must accept it, however hard it be, like Mada Stanies' death was still hard for him. But now he was kneeling by his lover. He looked at the thin red wound in her cheek and felt a low trembling in his heart. Up till then he had loved Tashka as a comrade, a colleague. He had enjoyed her companionship, enjoyed training her brilliant keen intelligence, these had been the most important parts of their relationship. He was lucky that they had never allowed their physical passion to displace these. But at this moment their warm working friendship was only a setting to carry their passion for each other as lovers. It was not that she was suddenly so beautiful, that was just the wind that blew through his mind and cleared out some old dust and left him so conscious of her physically that it made his flesh creep to imagine losing her. 

Clair was answering the priest in his husky warm voice to say that he would bestow Captain-Lady Anastelle el Maien of Sixth H'las on Commander-Lord Vadya el Gaiel van H'las of Sixth H'las. Pava nudged Vadya and he lifted his head to look at the priest and say he would take her and bestow on her everything that was his. Tashka's head turned to him, he could see she was still cross that she had to be so silent and passive to be given to him. He made a deprecating smile, his heart trembling with awe at her beauty. Pava put her ring in his hand, he slipped it on her upheld finger, Pava leant over and pressed his ring into her hand, she lifted her head to her former Captain and smiled and Vadya's heart fell wide open, he was absolutely hers, he knew he would never be complete in life unless she were with him from that day forward. 

When the service was done and he was standing on the altar steps beside her, he did not want to let go of her scarred hand but she was nervous of having her sword hand held so long. She pulled it from his grip then glanced sideways at him - a flash of gold and blue from those shatteringly lovely slanted eyes. She stepped in front of him and took his left hand in her left hand, sliding her fingers between his, their heavy gold wedding rings clicked together. 

Clair put an arm around Vadya's shoulders and said how sorry he was that van H'las could not be there. (They all knew that van H'las would have had to stop the marriage on political grounds and would be greatly relieved that Vadya had married Tashka without his blessing so that there was nothing he could do about it.) Tashka let Vadya's hand go to walk into Clair's embrace and Arianna came to embrace Vadya, smiling at him lovingly and calling him brother. The children were coming for a hug, he went on his knees to hold them close to him, Arkyll said: "You are my uncle now so will you get me a bearskin rug?" 

As Vadya stood up again, he was aware of Tarra el V'lair coming to congratulate Tashka. He tensed up but el V'lair did not attempt to kiss the young van H'las bride. Instead he took Tashka's left hand, holding the fingers like a junior officer does, although as usual he had that salacious grin on his sardonic face. "Young el Maien," he said to her gruffly. "You know, is it not? I liked you ... too much." Tashka bunched her right hand into a soft fist and made a mock punch at his jaw with a sudden grin. 

Pava pressed Vadya's right hand briefly, Tashka reached for his left hand but Pava just took her in a big warm embrace, hugging her close to him, pressing his cheek into her hair. "My baby Lieutenant!" he said, pretending to wipe tears from his eyes. "The most beautiful of my Angels. Dear me, weddings always make me cry!" They laughed but Tashka shook a genuine tear from her hair and squeezed his arm affectionately. 

And now she was walking with Vadya to the great bed-chamber. She was thinking dreamily of the huge four-poster bed in there. Habit caused her to drop one step behind and walk at Vadya's shoulder so he kept having to wait a step for her to come up to his side but he did not say any thing of it and she also felt too shy to speak. As they went along the corridor beside the dining hall, they could hear the noise of the feast being served in celebration. They walked up the stairs and along the wooden veranda. 

It was silent all around them, there was no one else in the family quarters. Beside her Tashka could hear Vadya's boots clicking. The embroidered cloth of gold slippers she had borrowed from Arianna felt strange, they were so light compared to her boots. She had to take little tripping steps in them, she could not stride out as she usually did. It was so strange to trip along at Vadya's side and have him moderate his pace for her in a gentle consideration instead of striding out at his shoulder. 

Vadya was opening the great bed-chamber door, he was standing aside to let her go in first, she hesitated before stepping in front of her senior officer. She was in the room, it was dimly lit with golden candle-light and scented oil lamps. She had hardly taken two steps into the room, the door was not properly latched, when Vadya's arms closed about her waist and he pulled her back into his embrace. She tipped her head back so it rested on his shoulder and he pressed his mouth to her neck, just under her ear, where he met the familiar scent of the oil Batren used to put in his hair and that she had gone down and pinched from his room. That made him stop and laugh. 

Tashka was turning in his arms, she put her arms about his hips and inched her hands over his buttocks, murmuring with pleasure into his ear. His buttocks and thighs were firm and muscular, she could feel his muscles tense and relax as he shifted his weight. Vadya breathed a soft sigh into her hair and she slid her hands away up to his back where they met the heavy thick soft silk of his shirt. 

"Oh my love," he breathed into her hair. 

"Shut the door," she said, "and then come and say that again." 

"Yes sir," he murmured into her hair and she laughed. 

When he turned from shutting the door - and cautiously locking it, who knew what horrible joke Tarra or Volka or Pava might think up if they got drunk enough - he turned to find Tashka standing by the four-poster bed and poking at the quilts. 

"Holy Hell!" she said gleefully. "What a great big bed!" 

She turned to grin excitedly at him and then she kicked off the elegant cloth of gold slippers she was wearing and threw herself backwards into the pile of quilts and elaborately embroidered silk sheets and pillows in a tumble of fawn raw silk clad limbs. 

Seeing her at a distance from him made Vadya's heart beat louder, faster with a renewed awareness of her wild feminine grace, her beauty. He walked slowly over to where she was lying back in the quilts and embroidered silk. She was laughing, her head and her limbs flung out in the sumptuous bedding. He sat beside her and reached for her foot and gave it a kiss. Hers was a hard narrow foot with callouses from marching and riding and running on it, it reminded him that she was an officer, he caressed it thoughtfully. 

Soon she would ride away to war with their brother and junior officers and he would be left behind. 

He stroked her ankle, she sat up and he turned his head, meaning to say: I am scared to lose you. I promised you would be my Commander and my General but can we talk about it again? 

Luckily for their marriage, he forgot about it the moment he looked into her eyes. He reached out and clasped his hands behind her head and drew her beautiful face to him and began to kiss her, sinking back with her onto the bed. His mouth pressed to hers, their lips opened. Tashka was pressing her tongue against his. He put his arms about her, pulling her close. Tashka ran her hands up his back and gripped the cloth of his shirt at the back in her lean strong fingers. 

He was rolling them over, she gave his shirt a hard tug to drag him on top of her, there was a rip and his shirt tore all the way across the shoulders. Vadya lifted his head from her kiss. 

"Oh Hell!" Tashka said, her face guilt-stricken. "Batren will be furious!" 

"Sweet Angels," Vadya grumbled. "Must you be so eager for my body that you tear the clothes from my back?" 

"Do you prefer a virgin bride?" Tashka demanded, her golden and blue eyes laughing at him. "Would you like me to lie still and moan a two-three times while you take your pleasure of me in ways I have never dared to dream of?" She fell back in the quilts, her arms flung out, and twitched feebly a couple of times. 

"You could try to restrain your passion!" Vadya said, burying his face in the ruched raw silk of her breast. The tiny gold buttons pressed into his face. He still found it exhilarating, that small curve that meant she had breasts he could play with. "We have the whole night and all the rest of our lives." 

"I have waited long enough," she lifted her head and grinned at him. The candlelight glinted on her rose-petal lips. "Take this off before I tear it off," and she started pulling at his doublet. "My darling, my love, my sweetheart," she crooned the unfamiliar endearments in that familiar husky warm voice, none too gentle fingers hauling at the arm of his doublet and reaching to tug at the buttons of his shirt. 

"el Maien, wait, wait a minute!" he protested, tangled up in the silk and velvet sleeves of his doublet and shirt but she was already unbuckling his sword-belt and unpicking the buttons of his hose. "Sweet Heaven!" he moaned, "these damned sleeves!" the silk tore away from his back. Tashka had hold of his left boot and was tugging it off with the expert hands of the junior officer, she was pulling at his right boot. She set the boots neatly by the bed, hung his weaponry around the bedpost for him, turned and he was standing naked by her, his muscles tense on his big-shouldered narrow-hipped fit body. One muscle in his thigh was trembling, he held it in so tight. His cock rose out of the cloud of dark hair around his balls, already hard and erect - and big.  




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 20



Tashka took a step back and looked into his face, her heart beating fast and light so that her breath came quicker and the blood sang in her ears. Her eyes were alight with joy, her head set high with pride and her mouth soft with love. Her lips parted and the edge of her tongue ran around her lips. Vadya caught his breath up, his heart jumped to see that little red triangle slip around her glistening lips. 

She was still fully dressed. She tilted her head to one side, casting him a look as long and lovely as any fine Lady across a dancefloor, from gold and blue eyes more beautiful than he had ever seen. Desire for her was making his heart beat so fast that he was nearly dizzy with passion. He ran trembling fingers through his hair. 

Tashka took two steps forward and stood staring into his eyes, so close that he could smell the light spicy scent of his perfume again. She grinned at him and went down on her silk-clad knees and kissed the inside of his naked thigh. 

Vadya trembled. His mind was already lost in a cloud of sensation, he was living with the ends of his nerves. He stared unseeing through the room, his hands resting on Tashka's shoulders. She had gathered his hips in her arms and was feeling the hard shapely muscle of his buttock with her left hand. She licked thoughtfully at one soft-skinned ball, tight and swollen, and Vadya jerked and gasped in her arms. She could smell sweat and musky male scents. She sniffed delicately in the dark wiry curls of his hair then she brought her right hand round to hold and caress his balls. She ran her tongue along the vein coiling down the length of his cock, caressingly, and softly, gently took the head of his cock in her mouth. It tasted salt. The head of his penis was smooth to her flicking tongue. She sucked softly on his rigid hard cock, she caressed between his arsehole and balls in that erogenous place where she knew the thrilling feelings could be tickled up even more. 

Vadya was gasping above her, his hands moving helplessly on her shoulders and in her hair. He could not think clearly enough to control his fingers, he could only move his hands jerkily around her head. 

Tashka let him go and stood up again and stepped back two steps. Her lips parted and the edge of her tongue ran around her lips. She looked slantways at Vadya, he smiled and stepped forward to put one arm around her and ruffle her cropped hair with the other hand. 

"Sweet Angels!" he said huskily, his fingers slipping behind her collar to caress her neck. He scooped her face up between both hands and leaned forward till his mouth met hers. Her lips were still hard and firm, they tasted strangely of lip gloss. His lips were soft, his kisses slow. She ran tapping fingers over his buttocks and he broke away from her kiss to laugh, his eyes laughed, his hips thrust quickly against her, that big cock pressing to her thigh, he came enough out of his sexy trance to match the fierceness of her kiss. 

"My love," she said and

"My love," he said. 

He kissed her quickly once more then took a step back and began gently to unbutton her little jacket. There were a lot of tiny buttons, her tight-fitted sleeves as well as her jacket had to be undone, his big fingers shook, he kept stopping to smile into her eyes. Finally it was undone and he eased it off her shoulders and dropped it on the floor. 

Under it she was wearing a bodice made of lace so delicate that it hardly existed: flowers and leaves traced in golden silk thread, through which he saw her muscular white body and the little purple areolas of her nipples. He caught his lip up in his teeth, coming so suddenly on her body, dressed and yet not dressed. 

He fingered the buckle of her sword-belt and she let him take her weaponry off and lay it around the bedpost with his (although she watched to make sure of where he put it; the soldier in him was glad to notice that). He undid the few tiny buttons of her trousers and she stepped out of them. She was wearing flimsy knickers to match her bodice, through the delicate golden lace he could see her flat stomach and the lift of her hip-bones, the dark brush of her hair. She stood looking gravely at him, tall and muscular in rubies and old gold. 

He took her left hand and pressed a kiss into her palm and unclasped the chain of gold and rubies about her arm. He kissed her neck, softly, under her left ear, in the hollow of her throat, under her right ear, and undid the chain of rubies hanging about her neck. He unhooked the dark rubies hanging from her ear and laid the heap of jewellery aside on a chair (she did not bother to watch where he put those). 

She was tall in the candlelight. The shadows danced through the lace onto her pale skin. He could see the old scar down her left arm. When she turned and walked to the bed while he put the condom on he saw the duelling and battle scars on her back through the delicate tracery of golden silk flowers and leaves. 

"Oh my Captain!" he said suddenly. 

She stopped and turned to look at him from her exquisite dark blue eyes. With the make-up still clinging to her lids and in spite of the cut down her cheek, her face was that Northern heartbreaker who had astounded them all. 

But the woman he loved was much more than a Northern heartbreaker. She was his best friend and companion. She was his brother officer. 

"Vadya?" she said, hesitantly. She thought he meant that as his junior officer he felt strange to have sex with her on a wedding bed, a small fear clouded her beautiful eyes but he was by her in a few steps, his arms around her and his mouth on her throat. As he kissed her, his fingers were gently sliding the fragile silk lace of her bodice up over her rib-cage and small breasts. 

She let her senses slip the leash from her mind and run free. 

His big blunt fingers and the cobweb fragile lace were gliding up over her body. His big hands were moving with certainty to her breasts, covering them, caressing them. One of his hands could easily cup the whole of her breast, pressing gently on the soft flesh. He ran his fingertips over her nipple which hardened at his touch. She was making long sounds of pleasure at the aching tingling promise of joy flickering out from his playing with her breast, she wrapped her arms around his neck, her hips already starting to buck against him. 

Vadya pushed her backwards, they fell into the softness of the big four-poster bed. He was pushing off her flimsy knickers, he was caressing her buttocks and thighs, her vulva, her clitoris. 

She started pressing her hands between the back of his legs, down through to touch his sex organs. Vadya's knees were pushing her legs apart, he was pressing to her. He was lifting his big cock, the head was pushing to her willing wet soft sex, he was pressing into her, with a thrust and a grunt his cock went deep in. 

She was gone, lost; lost in herself, in his arms, in their love-making. It was like running with her best friend in sunny woods, swimming with her best friend in clear sunlit pools. She threw her hips wider, lifting up to meet him thrusting his big cock deep down into her, her arms about him, her head thrusting back in the quilts like he thrust down into her, lifting helplessly, insisting to look into his gentle warm brown face above her so soft with love and so intent with passion. It was all physical joy, there were only the thrilling feelings of him on her sweet spot lapping stronger and stronger through her body until she was completely awash with love and joy, writhing in the firm grip of his strong muscular arms, and Vadya was calling out Tashka in her arms, she was aware of shouting his name. 

She was trembling, she was lightly beaded with sweat. She ran one shaky hand gently over Vadya's shoulder. He lifted his head and stared into her eyes, he caressed her short dark hair. She lay with his cock still swollen big inside her, helpless to move - he was moving now to take his softening cock from her, she moaned with regret. She put her hand behind his head and drew it close to hers again and he put out one arm to drag a quilt over them and they fell asleep.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 21



Thank you so much for the feedback and votes! :heart: 

*****

Arianna walked into the kitchen and there was Clair standing at the cooking range making himself breakfast. He was sloppily dressed in an old pair of breeches slung on over his nightshirt, a woollen cardigan and a pair of slippers. He lifted his head and smiled when he saw her in the doorway: that unexpectedly shy smile so sweet that she could not but smile in reply. She walked slowly over to him, elegant in a grey woollen dress with a high collar. The fitted waist showed off the beauties of her small waist and big round hips and breast but Lisette said the high collar made it apparent she was not looking for improper attention. 

An assistant cook came up to start making her hot chocolate. Clair put out a hand to stop him and said, in a voice even huskier than usual, rough with a late night and much drinking: "Will you have chocolate or would you like some coffee?" 

"Tashka says makest good coffee," she said shyly. 

"Oh ay," he answered with a yawn. "I can make good coffee even on a campfire, they always pushed off the coffee-making onto me." He crinkled his slanted grey eyes at her, waving his hand at the side table. Most of the servants had finished breaking fast, she went and sat down at the corner of the table. He came and put their bowls of coffee down: his little child's bowl and her glorious Hyaline bowl, then came back again with two plates of fried mushrooms on toast. 

"Ar't about very early," she said, turning to look into his face as he sat down at the end of the table around the corner to her. He had heavy shadows under his eyes and had not yet shaved, he looked dissipated and gorgeously sexy. She looked shyly back down at her plate, waiting in excited anticipation of his husky voice with the sexy rough rasp in it. 

"There will be a lot to do the day," he answered, "what with the supply chains to establish for Tenth Athagine as well as everyone in the castle, and Ninth Vail to think of. There will be preparations needing to be made for the wounded. I like to have a peaceful half hour breaking my fast before I start my day." He gave her that soft sweet smile again and she understood with a warm thrill at her heart that he had come to find time with her could offer him a moment of peace in a busy life. He turned his head back, cut a piece of toast off, loaded it with mushrooms dripping with garlic and lemon juice and butter and put it into his mouth. 

She had stayed up late for her but it had not been as much fun as she had hoped. Instead of coming to flirt with her, as soon as they had eaten the grand wedding dinner her husband had swept Tarra el V'lair, her brother Hanya and her cousin Pava into a game of cards, on which he remained intently focussed the whole evening. She had tried to go and stand at his elbow as she had seen women do once at a scandalous party her mother took her to at court, before Prianne discovered her there and hustled her back to the family's rooms. Clair looked at her narrowly, making it plain she was not welcome. She had sat with Lady van P'shan, Volka, Sevie and Anata. The others did not stay up late since they would start long journeys the next day, when they went to bed she did too. 

"So," she said, a sudden smile widening her big red mouth. "Dids't take el V'lair for everything he owns?" 

Clair turned his slanted eyes to look out of the window by his side with a grin then swung his head back round to look laughingly at her. He had an incongruously elaborate gold earring, heavier than his usual style, hanging from his ear. "Pretty much," he admitted. "I got his vineyard, his dogs and horses, all of the jewellery he has with him and about thirty thousand suns in notes of hand." 

Arianna gasped at the thought of the high stakes they must have been playing then laughed out loud. "Whatever will you do with it all?" she asked. "What will he do? How can he live now?" 

Clair leaned on his elbow, his slanted eyes creased in his grin. "Oh, his father has drunk himself to the brink of the grave," he answered carelessly. "He will not last long so there will be loan-bankers happy to lend Tarra money - at an high rate of course. Maybe I will let him have the vineyard back one day. If he ever has a daughter I will give it to her," he sniggered at this idea; a daughter of the el V'lairs would be chained, it would cause an entertaining political upheaval for her to own anything. "I will give Tashka the greyhounds and racehorses; he will like to run those. He might even ride Stargazer himself next year in the King's and Nobles'. Tarra will curse the Heavens down if someone-else wins on Stargazer! I will use the money to start a foundation for poets in Athagine, in Lallia el Farin's name." He sniggered again, in his nose. 

"No," Arianna said sternly. "People will say dids't have an affair with her and that will cause her trouble in her new marriage." 

"Yes, you are right," Clair said. "Well, we will spend it on something else to annoy Tarra." He took a contented draught of coffee. 

Arianna cautiously tasted her coffee, she was obliged to admit that it was a smooth creamy brew with just the right amount of sugar in it. She noticed that Clair's was stronger and darker. How could he know how she would like her coffee? She smiled sleepily into her plate. 

"M'dear," Clair said, in that gorgeous husky rough-edged voice with the rasp in it that made a shiver go through her body, "I prithou pardon me, I have skinned your brother close to the bone too. I will not of course cash in his notes of hand. Will you make sure he takes them back?" 

"After everything he has earned speculating with the merchants, Hanya can afford a few thousand suns," Arianna said carelessly, lifting a forkful of mushrooms and toast into her wide red mouth. "Is that about what he lost? How about Pava?" 

"Pava knows I will not come after him to honour his notes of hand," Clair anwered. "All of us but Hanya knew what the game was. Tarra looked like a pale Angel when I first proposed cards to him! but he thought he might win something because he knows Hanya and Pava are not that good. But when Pava plays with me we can guess the pattern of each other's game because we were brother officers and Hanya of course is his cousin so they know the disposition of each other's minds. When I was paired with Tarra, I threw the cards away like a schoolgirl! His face was like a thunder-cloud! Then when he suggested we play single-handed, Pava and I between us continued to manage it so he was completely skinned!" He burst out laughing, well satisfied. "I will pray Hanya pardon me. I could not ask el Darien to play because he is such a young hot-head, he would have messed up the game." 

"Could I not have stood with you to enjoy it too?" Arianna asked, lifting her round blue eyes to look into his eyes. 

"What, as if you were my pink-fingered doxy!" Clair exclaimed in outraged tones. "Why do you not put on a gown that your bosom nearly falls out of and paint your face like a butterfly while you are about it. No no, besides I know you. You would make faces at my cards and Tarra would know my hand." Arianna giggled at the idea of being Clair's pink-fingered doxy, putting her long fingers up to wipe a dribble of butter and lemon from the corner of her mouth. Clair leaned over and pinched her cheek. "You can dress up and play at being pink-fingered some evening when we are alone together," he sniggered, "but not in front of my friends, I prithou!" 

Arianna's cheeks went pink with embarrassment but he noted with a glint in his eye that she was smiling that secretive sexy smile as she turned her face shyly aside from him. 

"Shall't have a lot to do, then, the day," she said, turning back to him thoughtfully with the blush fading to leave her cheeks pink and white cherry-blossom pretty. 

"Mm," he said, not troubling his head about it but watching her cheeks and her wide red mouth move as she spoke. 

"Would it help you if Hanya and I were to take on the care of the wounded?" she asked. 

He looked into her face in surprise. "Why ... yes, of course," he said slowly, "but I think you had better not." Her face slid into disappointment, he explained: "Anna, you have never been on the field of battle yet you are a pacifist. It will be ... very terrible." His eyes turned down in sorrow, he pushed the memories of screaming and blood and death back out of his mind. He had to go back to it, he would have done anything to avoid it but it had been brought on his head again. 

She put her hand on his arm. "I am not a baby girl," she said earnestly. "Hanya and I want so much to do something, we feel it that it is our negotiations with the merchants which have brought this war on you all. No no," she put up her hand to stop his protests. "I know it is that snake van Sietter but it would make us feel the better for it if we had something to do to help you." 

He thought about it, smiled and said: "I would be grateful, m'dear, but I warn you. It is the worst of the responsibilities, will you not take on the supply lines instead?" 

"No," she answered gravely. "Knowest it well, I am no use to organise supplies and in truth I do not understand in the least when says't musts't set up supplies to Tenth Athagine. It is the same for me as it would be for you to do a partial differential equation! I have seen people with terrible injuries when I have gone down to visit the hospital and talk to the surgeons in the town about what they need for the people's health. I know the hospital and the surgeons so I can liaise with them. Hanya and I understand what it is we are asking to do, I prithou allow us to help, my Lord ... my d-dear." Her eyes swung aside, the blush rose up in her cheeks again. 

He put his hand out, cupped it on her cheek and said softly. "Yes, it will greatly help me if you can do that. I thank you," and turned his head to his breakfast again. 

~#~*~#~

Vadya and Tashka lay in each other's arms, curled close between the soft silken sheets and quilts where they had crawled in to make love again when they woke in the night. Vadya's arm was about Tashka's waist, hers about his chest, her head was on his shoulder. They breathed softly in their sleep, the sunshine peeping through the cracks in the window-shutters cast a dim golden light about them. 

~#~*~#~

Clair, striding through the entrance hall from the kitchens to the castle offices through the bustle of servants running here and there with piles of goods they were stacking against the walls of the hall for lack of storage space, saw through the open door Hanya el Jien standing at the top of the castle steps. He paused, flicked a look at the castle offices where Laran and Tarra would be waiting for him, smiled and went out into the chill autumn air to his brother by marriage. 

Hanya had evidently been standing there, tall like his sister and cousin but leaner in build than them, for the last half hour, ever since the other guests had ridden away through the lines of Sietter troops now massed up outside the castle. 

Hanya was looking at the closed gates, his hands clasped loosely behind his back, it was difficult to read any expression in his scarred golden face, the dogs had torn his flesh about so badly, but his blue eyes were sad. 

Clair put an arm about his shoulders. "I must thank you," he said, "for supporting me in taking el V'lair to the bottom of the well. Arianna has explained? of course I will return you your notes of hand." 

Hanya turned to look at Clair. The left side of his mouth, the side less twisted by scars, twitched in his smile. "I did not quite realise at first," he said. "Ar't so angry that el V'lair was Tashka's first lover? el Gaiel was not troubled for it and Tashka has already dealt with it himself, is it not?" 

"No, not for that," Clair answered, "I realised that el V'lair had taken Tashka drunk. You would not be happy for it if a man took your brother ... your sister drunk." 

Perhaps it was lucky that Hanya's expression was not easy to read. As he said it Clair remembered that Hanya's sister was his wife and that he had given the el Jiens plenty of reason to be unhappy with how he had treated her. He blushed and looked regretfully into the courtyard, giving Hanya's shoulder a squeeze. "I'll make it up to Anna," he promised. "This bloody war, when it is done, I'll give her the keys to Heaven. I swear it on my juniors' lives, I have never abused her to get her favours." 

"You will go to the Generals' strategic staff in Port H'las?" Hanya enquired, politely changing the subject. "You are not happy to do so?" His eyes were envious, he would have loved to have gone back into the army but he could no longer face the dogs in battle, he did not have the full use of his right arm and he limped badly after what they had done to his leg although his riding had not been affected. 

Clair sighed, staring away into the bustle of the courtyard where there were too many horses and men clattering about on the cobbles because Tenth Athagine were having to be quartered here and there around the stables and kennels and Guard house. "No, el Jien," he said. "I would I could stay here with your sister, finding out what it is that is the key to Heaven for her so I could give it her. But I must go, since there are those in the Sietter army who will follow me if I do. What use I will be to anyone when I get there is a question." 

"No no," Hanya answered. "Your reputation is for excellent lines of supply. They will be badly in need of someone to ensure the lines of supply are well managed since the resources at their disposal will be small." 

"Oh I suppose," Clair said grumpily. 

"And I will be here," Hanya said with a little laugh, "where you long to be, while you are there where I would like to be." 

"Not for long," Clair answered. "Give Anna some company here for a two-three months then why do you not go to P'shan ... to visit the el T'fels for the winter sports. Lady Hartha took kindly to you, you know, and the el T'fels will welcome you for their grandson and cousin Vadya's sake." Hanya looked shyly at his brother by marriage, the blush rising in his face. Clair gave his shoulders a squeeze. "You should be more forward," he said gently. "You are a wealthy man, an excellent match for her. Go to her, if her fingers are where your heart longs to nest." 

"She is not interested," Hanya muttered, blushing. 

"So what," Clair said. "Go and talk to her father. The family is so poor they will push her to a side-slip affair never mind if you wish to offer her your ring." Hanya looked uncertainly at him. "Hanya," Clair said. "You will give her the sun and moon and stars - bloody Angel of Baya, you can afford them! Her heart is not fixed, there is no one she would give the go-by to for you. If you catch her now you can teach her to love you, you have a gentle heart and a keen mind and you are probably the richest aristocrat in Trossia! She will be a great fool if she gives you the go-by. Or you can leave her to be hunted down by some scum like el V'lair van Athagine. You know now that he will not stop at much if a woman has caught his eye. It is only because he knows she is Tashka's friend and Tashka will kill him for it that he has not moved on her already. Tashka and I will both be at war soon. It would be a great favour to me if you will keep her honour under your eye. I feel bad at heart, that I introduced her to el V'lair's notice by foolishly trusting el V'lair to come as a guest to our party even though I knew there would be honourable women here." 

Hanya looked thoughtfully away over the tops of the closed castle gates to where the road to the Maier Pass wound through the Sietter Hills. Then he turned in Clair's arm and said: "If wants't to make Anna happy, it is her mathematics shoulds't help her with. She does this work with the merchants because she believes it is right to help the poor but it will sadly interfere with her theorem on forces and matter. B'dar has even writ to Prianne to ask him press her to continue with that work, since she wrote and said she would have to give it the go-by and being from V'ta he cannot write to you. Of course Prianne does not care a copper coin's curse, he will not say any thing to Anna. When I try to, she only says a mathematical theorem cannot feed the children of the poor. If cans't find a way that she can still do the maths while she manages the castle and the negotiations with the merchants, she will give you any thing you ask for." He made his jagged lop-sided grin at his elegant sophisticated brother by marriage who had such a reputation for winning hearts and bodies but needed advice on wooing his own wife. 

~#~*~#~

Tashka lifted her head from Vadya's shoulder and regarded him sleepily. His gentle brown eyes looked back at her, he smiled and put a hand out to caress her cropped hair. 

"Mmm," she turned her head into his caress and then snuggled her face back into his shoulder. 

"Tashka," he said softly. 

"My h-husband," she said it hesitantly, lifting her head again. Her voice had a note of wonder in it as if she could not quite believe it were so. He laughed, his eyes dancing. 

"My Lady wife," he said with a teasing grin. 

Tashka pulled her left hand free of the soft sheets and quilts and looked at it, with the ruby betrothal ring and heavy twisted gold wedding ring on it. Vadya put his own left hand out and their finger-tips met, their fingers touched to the other's, the palms of their hands pressed together. 

"My wife," Vadya said again, lifting himself onto his elbow and putting his left arm around her, catching the back of her head with his left hand and drawing her smiling wondering face towards him for his kiss. 

As their lips parted she said: "I am hungry." 

"Me too," he looked vaguely over his shoulder as if expecting morning coffee to magically appear out of the thin air. That was how he usually woke in the mornings, with a bowl of coffee hovering by him in Batren's hands. 

Tashka groaned and stretched, he saw her neck muscles tense, her shoulder muscles stretch out, her torso lift and her small breasts quiver on her muscular chest. She relaxed back down then clambered grumbling out of bed. 

"Do not get up and go yet," he pleaded, sitting up. 

She turned round and laughed at him. It made his blood beat fast in his veins again to see her standing casual and naked before him. She stood with one hand on her hip, one foot set in front of the other, her shoulders flung back, exactly as she was used to stand in the middle of an army camp, shouting at her troopers as they ran around eager to get her praise. Yet she stood naked and bold before him, smiling into his eyes. He could still feel amazed that he had her body's love to enjoy. 

"I am not leaving you," she teased. "You'll not get away from me so easy, el Gaiel." 

She turned and caught up a shirt from the floor: his shirt, with a great rent across the back of it. She wrapped it scantily around herself and went to unlock the door, open it a little way and call out: "Hey! I prithou. Bring us some coffee and some food to break our fast." Then she came running back across the room, flinging the shirt off as she came, her long lean legs reaching out between the clothes discarded all over the floor. She leapt into the bed and his arms and wriggled back into the warm bedclothes with him. She was pulling him into a delicious tangle with her, a strange wrestling match where they were not trying to win only to enjoy the feel of their own and each other's bodies. Her leg came shoving down between his legs, pressing against his cock which was already softly filling out. Her hand came down to caress his stomach and hip and cock. He chucked his head back gasping with laughter, his own fingers skating over her hip towards her sex. He saw the door opening and pulled hurriedly away, sitting up in the big bed while she tumbled down into the bedclothes. She was grinning that salacious grin so familiar to him. How often had he seen that grin by the light of the camp-fire, when he came round to check on how the night-sentry duty was going and her head would lift up to him at the tail-end of some disgusting story. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 21



~#~*~#~

Clair came into the kitchens with the lists of provisions. A clerk was trotting after him with a half-written copy of them which he must take to Lord el V'lair and Tenth Athagine as soon as he had been able to finish it. 

Clair saw Vadya's man-servant Batren putting two plates of hot food with covers on them onto a tray. Batren's expression was that of a stuffed frog: the attempt to pretend nonchalance and suggest disapproval at war with his embarrassment and delight. Clair went laughing up to him. "What?" he exclaimed. "Are those two lazy pigs not going to get up for lunch?" Batren ducked his head shyly at Commander-Lord el Maien, his master's new brother by marriage. 

Clair picked up a bottle Batren had been about to put on the tray with two wine bowls, looked at it and swung round to shout for his wine steward. "What is this rubbish!" he said indignantly. "What will Tashka give you for it if you send a miserable ten year old V'ta to him. Get me a bottle of Athagine from the H'thuriel vineyard, year of the Angel of Honour twenty-three ... oh, um, el V'lair's vineyard ... Bloody Angel of Baya, get me that Athagine, do you think I will send this vinegar to my brother on his wedding bed?" 

~#~*~#~

Tashka was propped on all the pillows with Vadya lying between her legs, his head on her breast. Each of them held a bowl of wine and they drank dreamily of the thin warm red vintage Athagine. The wine smelt of long ago summers. 

Cracks of sunlight were tracing a course from one closed shutter to the next, slowly crossing the floor, their discarded clothes, the bowls and plates full of dregs of coffee and food from their breakfast and lunch. Outside the room they sometimes heard a voice or a footfall on the wooden veranda. 

They talked of their love for each other. One might describe how he had felt the first time he saw his Captain, how she swung off her horse with such an easy grace and turned a face to him that was so pretty, especially in the party clothes she had hurriedly thrown on in her haste to come and report to him, that his own face went hot with desire and embarrassment. How he had felt dismayed, sure that it was a trick Pava had played on him and that this sweet young thing before him would be running back to its mother in tears within a week. How his heart fluttered when she smiled shyly at him, her ardent admiration for his military reputation so evident in her dark blue eyes, so he was brusque with her and she immediately cooled to the perfect young officer: Yes sir, No Sir, It is done, sir. He walked to her Quarter with her, telling her with emphasis to come to him with any problems she had. That afternoon he went back to the Quarter, worried because he had not had any word from her. She was in immaculate H'las uniform with the troopers running about her like ants whose nest had been kicked. 

The other might tell how she loved his hands: the big gentle fingers that were so famously capable on a horse's reins, which would rest firmly and confidently on her shoulder while she pointed out their route or brush her head in an affectionate acknowledgement of some cheeky tease. She might tell how the dark hairs and powerful taut muscles of his thighs excited her. How the little scar on his cheek made her heart turn over, and at last she might reveal why particularly that one. 

They caressed every part of each other's body, some parts dearly familiar from their four years' companionship, other parts exhilaratingly unknown. They had always had an intimately affectionate friendship and when they brought a physical passion to that it was like exploring a much-loved place by starlight. 

Tashka's hand was sliding across Vadya's shoulder, the fingers rubbing at his muscles as they went. He was looking at her eyes but her face was turned away to smile dreamily at the dim room. She turned her head down and met his gaze. He crawled up to his knees, took her wine-bowl and put it with his on the floor. 

He put his arms around her, pressing his face into her stomach. He rolled over onto his back, dragging her over with him. She held herself up on her hands, looking back down at his face with a grin. She wriggled down in his arms until she was level with him and could feel his penis against the inside of her thigh. She carried on wriggling, smiling into his eyes. He had his lip between his teeth, he was catching his breath in little gasps. 

She sat up in his arms, his arms fell loosely about her, he began to caress her buttocks and she giggled and wriggled and enjoyed it. She reached down to push his fingers to her arsehole and the fun spot between her hole and her vulva, grinning and making grunts of arousal as his fingertips danced about. She put her own fingers to the inside of his thigh, his balls, the peritoneum between his arsehole and cock, his cock. He was already thick and hard, his cock firm in her thin scarred fingers. She rubbed him up and down a couple of times just for the pleasure of seeing his face tense up with passion, feeling his body thrust up beneath hers. He was making those passionate grunting noises back in his nose and throat. She reached hurriedly for the basket of condoms which someone (probably Clair) had placed ostentatiously by the bed, scrabbled for a large one and unwrapped it. 

She held his cock in place and positioned herself, watching his face with the glinting grin on her rose-petal mouth and in her exquisite blue eyes. She knelt over him, teasing him by holding him there to her soft warm sex. He tried to thrust up into her, moaning, his hands coming away from her buttocks and arsehole to grip on her hips and pull her towards him. His face was twisting with the agony of desire, she pressed down to slide herself around him. 

Vadya made a guttural low throaty sound of pleasure, thrusting up to meet her. He reached out to her and she let herself gently down to lie on his chest. Now that he was in her, Vadya was content to lie still for her, she put her arm about his neck and leaned on the other elbow, her hips clenched and released. Vadya's arms were lying loosely on her back, his arm-muscles were tensed and hard. Tashka was enjoying the slow warm pulses that her movements raised up in her, she began to make small noises. Vadya lay taut and still beneath her, excited by her noises, her movements, her excitement. He stared into her face, saw the unfocussed splendour in her eyes, the soft wonder start to tense up in her face. He reached one hand to cup gently about her cheek and she was gone in his arms, murmuring to him in ecstasy, trembling with joy, her hips clenching about him, her face suddenly twisted up with pleasure. 

She softened out and lay down on his chest, rested her head on his shoulder, his hand still cupped about her cheek. Vadya lay quite still, every part of his body thrilling to the feeling of Tashka, so relaxed after her orgasm against him. He turned his head and met the ecstatic sparkle of her clear blue eyes, smiled and saw her beautiful face lift in the smile back to him. 

Then she began moving on him again, he laughed, stroking her cheek, grinning and rolling his head with the almost unbearable fun of it. Something in him was wanting to roll her over and take his pleasure but he was enjoying hers too much to give in to it. Tashka paused, holding herself in tight, and raised herself up on him to make the bigger movements that he would enjoy, he tried to pull her back down but she laughed and shook her head, carried on until he was arching his back beneath her, on the verge of orgasm, when she dropped back down on his chest. A long murmuring exclamation broke from him and he shook with passion, his eyes dark, his hair damp with sweat. She kissed his rough stubbly cheek, feeling him jerk with every movement of her body, building the feelings back in her own body, in his, until they came together in a strange small way that did not leave them quite satisfied, that was not the end to their love-making, more like a pause. 

~#~*~#~

Clair stared meditatively through his telescope, watching the glinting line of the troop wind down the road out of the green and brown Sietter hills. In the fitful sunshine that broke through clouds blowing away to the West he could see the Fifth Sietter officers riding out to greet their comrades. 

"Tashka had right," Pava said beside him. "That is Tenth Sietter." 

"Yes," Clair answered. "There is that little flirt Vaie's banner, look," he handed his telescope to Pava. Pava and he both sniggered. Vaie had been a junior officer to both of them, Tashka's chosen companion in many pranks and misdemeanours, an honourable slut who had utilised his handsome body to full advantage when they all went out together of the nights. 

"Should we let Tashka know that Vaie is here?" Pava asked, peering through the telescope. 

"So you wish to die young, go to it," Tarra said with a laugh. Clair turned and grinned at him. He felt a lot more friendly to Tarra now he was in possession of all Tarra's worldly goods, especially that magnificent racehorse Stargazer which he intended to give to Tashka. He reached up to make the unusually heavy elaborate gold earring swing in his ear; he was only in a pair of breeches and a cardigan and would not normally have worn a jewel. Tarra looked at the earring with a rueful twist to his mouth. 

"Angels, it is not easy to know what to do when the Captain and the Commander in charge of our strategy are lying together!" Clair sniggered. "How in Hell did Tashka know Tenth and Eighth were nearby?" He took his telescope back again and raised it to his eye, looking round to where Tenth Sietter were making camp, setting up their tents at the back of the castle. 

"La," Pava said idly, "he is the best soldier the Angels ever dreamed of. Were't a fool not to offer him a troop instead of your favours, el V'lair. He might have gone to you for a Captaincy since ar't Clair's friend and it would have made a tie with Athagine." 

"Of course I offered him a Quarter of Tenth," Tarra laughed. "We spent a week together, it is more than I have spent with any other woman before or since! We rode out and he chose the wine in the tavern for us and we lay in baths in the bath-house together. And, er, at night I taught her a few ... er, things - to make it up to her that I took her virgin favour using a scummy trick. 

"I tried to talk to her of gossip and clothes and whatnot like I would to any woman. He talked to me about the disposition of this troop and that troop and the structure of the command in the Athagine army. Before the Angels, when I heard what he had to say of the structure of the command of my own army, I nearly fell out of the bed. I wanted his military mind even more than that sweet young body. 

"But he was very young. I knew that Clair would not let him go so young, even if you were willing to let such a tip-top strategic mind go to another region, my friend. Stariel had set up a training regime for him second to none and I had forced his favours, he turned my offer of a Captain's sword aside scornfully. He thought I was offering it just to get his body in my bed, although I tried to assure him not. All I could give him was a ring from my ear. He had already skinned me of what cash I had at cards. He had to pay for the tavern in the end of it, with the money he had won off me! Stupidly I sent him some other jewels but I got them back, not even a note with them, then I knew I would have grief off him some day." 

He looked into Clair's narrowed slanted grey eyes. "You would not have bestowed her on me," he said softly. "We quarrelled enough over Lallia! never mind what you would have done to me if it were your own baby brother, coming unwilling. I knew your father would be glad to throw her to me. I thought of it but ... she is so free-minded and I ... like it in her. I ... I went to the Halls intending to get my father to ask for her hand. They had just chained him a fresh Girl. All morning I heard the screaming and when it stopped and I went to his room they were carrying her down the corridor. The stupid wench must have taken against it, he never likes it if they resist. You know what it means to be a van Athagine woman, the women belong to us absolutely. I did not care for it, to chain someone I ... like, in Athagine." 

Clair did not say anything, he merely turned back to look at the troops around them through his telescope. Tarra looked at his unresponsive back in the scruffy old warm cardigan and then at Pava. Pava's round green eyes glinted back at him. "The country is littered with the broken hearts of those who were not worthy the hand of the honourable Captain-Lady Anastelle el Maien van Sietter," he murmured mockingly. "el Gaiel does not know how lucky he is." 

"Oh I think he does," Clair said drily without turning round. 

~#~*~#~

It was drawing in to evening and the room was getting dark. Outside Vadya could hear birds twittering and the servants' voices as they moved about getting the bedrooms ready. There was an autumn hush in the air, it was chilly. He and Tashka had huddled up close together under the sheets and quilts and were lying in the warmth of each other's arms, staring into each other's eyes. 

Someone tried to open the door and then knocked softly. Vadya lay still for a moment longer, got up and put his shirt on before going to unfasten the lock and hold the door open for Batren with their supper. Batren was followed by a servant with candles and firewood. He put the supper down on the table near the fire, took the wood and candles and began building up the fire. 

Vadya sat down in a chair, looking to one side. He felt embarrassed to go and lie by his new bride with Batren in the room. Tashka lolled about in the bedclothes and pillows and winked when she caught Batren's eye, making him giggle, blush and look furtively at Vadya. Vadya looked up, startled by Batren's incongruous giggle. Their eyes met and they grinned sheepishly. 

"Shall I bring fresh nightshirts?" Batren asked Tashka. Vadya was astonished at the low tender tone his rough old manservant achieved in his voice. 

"What for?" Tashka laughed her smuttiest laugh, back in her nose. It was hours since she or Vadya had felt the need to speak and her voice came out with a sexy rasp to it, "but ask Clair for some more large size condoms will you? and, hey," she jerked her head and he went over to the bed. Tashka muttered something to him. Batren gave her a quizzical look then went to pick up the clothes they had left scattered over the floor. 

"Do you wish for baths?" he asked. 

"Not I," Tashka replied, stretching and yawning in the bedclothes. "el Gaiel, do you wish for a bath?" 

"No," he said. He got up and crossed over to lounge on the bed across her legs. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Batren freeze at the sight of the long tear across the back of his shirt. Then Batren's face eased into a tolerant smile, he lit the candles he had set on the table, spread their supper out and kicked up the fire into a blaze. He put the remains of their breakfast and lunch on his tray and left. 

"What did you tell him?" Vadya asked. He was not quite sure he wanted to know. 

"I said if he asked about the condoms in front of Tarra I would give him a tip on the Vail flat races," Tashka sniggered. 

Vadya expostulated, blushing softly. He reached out to caress Tashka's grinning face. Behind them, bowls of soup steamed gently by the covered dishes of food. Clair had sent them two bottles of wine and there was a box of chocolates. Vadya went to look, it had Pava's seal on it. He smiled to think of laughing lovely Pava el Jien who had sent him Tashka four years before and had understood the nature of their love for each other long before they had. 

"Come and eat," he said. 

She sprang out of bed and came to sit by his side at the table, the warmth of the flames washing about their bodies. It felt strange to them to be separate beings eating, they stopped often to caress each other or say something about the food they were sharing and the fabulous wine Clair had sent them. 

"He is hoping to get us out of our heads," Tashka laughed, "to prevent me from having a child!" 

Vadya choked on his wine and said, "Angels! you'll ride to war in a few days, he must surely know I would not put you at such risk." 

"Ah, he knows he can rely on me," Tashka said, tossing a chocolate in the air and catching it in her mouth. "Since he brought me up a soldier he can be confident I will be able to deliver on a proper strategy for my wedding night," she laughed affectionately. 

But darker thoughts crept into his mind. He remembered the coming war and sat turning his wine-bowl sombrely round in his hands. 

She said hesitantly: "What is it?" He raised his head and looked at her warm blue eyes in her lean tanned face, at the cut down her cheek, at the scar on her leg which she got in battle riding out of the rocky defile in V'ta to save his troop and his life, at the old scar on one arm where she had been speared by a Vilandian while she rode in and out their ranks with Pava's banner to take Ninth Vail to safety once when they were attacked on manoeuvres on the border. 

"Oh my Captain and my wife," he said softly. "You'll ride away to war, to danger, to the risk of death. I will be left with the Generals and strategic staff. Every night I will wonder what has become of you. Every minute of every day I will fear for your life. I do not know if I can bear it, Tashka. I do not know if I can risk the losing you." 

"You'll not be with us?" her voice shook and she stared in sudden consternation into his face. "No of course not," she said, glancing aside. "Fool that I am, I had forgot. After the last war they promoted you to be seconded to the strategic staff if there should be war again." 

Her face stared unseeing into the shadowed room. He was so glad to see how much she wanted to be with him, he blurted out: "And you can stay behind with me," in a happy eager voice. 

There was a long awful silence. She turned her head slowly to meet his eyes. Her eyes were regretful but determined. He bit his lip, he felt as if someone had stabbed him to the heart. "Tashka!" he pleaded. She shook her head. "But you are so fine a military mind! You would be invaluable on the strategic staff. We would both be Commanders, equals, making the strategies together as we have always done!" he cried. 

She got hurriedly out of her chair and crossed to the fire to lean on the mantelpiece and stare into the flames. He saw her straight muscular back, he saw the old and new scars: short and long, criss-crossed about her spine; that one she got in the duel in Thiel, this one from some scum at court. Twelve times she had flung her glove in a man's face and had confronted death. She had skirmished all over the country with hostile armies. 

"Tashka," he pleaded. 

"You know it well," she said gravely, "one of us must stay out in the field. You have been called up to the Generals' offices and you have not secured the succession. Clair cannot be asked to suffer standing in the field. The Generals will have to send me." 

"Do you think I will take some brood-mare to my bed if any thing happens to you!" he cried. "Am I to skulk in safety behind the lines while my troop goes to war under your banner?" 

She turned startled blue eyes on him. "We will be under Fiotr's banner, is it not?" she said. 

He struck his flat hand on the table and glared at her. "el Maien, for sweet Hell's sake," he said. "Fiotr does deserve to be promoted but I would be a fool indeed to make any but you acting Commander while I am gone." 

"Oh my sweet Angels!" she breathed, staring wide-eyed over her shoulder at him. "I will be acting Commander of Sixth H'las? Heaven and Hell!" 

He stared at her. The pride and joy in her eyes made him dumb with grief. He felt jealous, he felt frightened. He could see that behind her flaming ambition her heart was torn at the thought of leaving him behind and that she was scared of taking control without him there to guide her but still the bitter sense of loss surged darkly about his soul. He would lose his troop and he might lose his lover. It was not that he wanted the silly semblance of convention but he did want his wife by him during the war, not leading his troop away. He knew it was stupid and unreasonable to ask such a thing of Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van H'las but he wanted it. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 21



"St-stay with me," he muttered, his eyes filling with tears. 

Tashka laid her head on her arm and looked at him. She felt full of pity for him. He had married his Captain, had sacrificed so much for her when he could have taken another simpler woman to wife. He was crying, the tears rolling down his brown cheeks. He looked at her and asked her to stay, when he was her Commander and now he was also her future sworn Lord because she was van H'las. He could order her to do whatever he would, she would be obliged to do it. 

She walked to him and sat beside him. She wrapped one arm around his neck, he leaned to rest his head on her shoulder, his tears ran over her shoulder. 

"I prithou ... stay," he sobbed. 

She made no reply. 

After a while his tears dried, he got up from her embrace and walked away across the room. She sat with one arm hanging idly over the back of her chair, fingering the wooden bars of the chair. He wandered about the room with his back visible through the great rent in his shirt. He came to the bedside and stopped. She stiffened in her seat. He unhooked from around the bedpost her sword-belt with hanging off it the elaborate ceremonial sword, the jewel-encrusted gift that Clair had sent to be presented to her when she was finally made a Captain in Sixth H'las. Vadya slid the sword halfway out of the scabbard, turned its shining oiled beauty about in his hands. Then he caught some hint of her anxiety and turned his head to look at her. 

She was leaning forward in her chair, her head turned sideways to him, her slanted eyes narrowed. She rested her hands lightly on her knees, the fingers were half-curled, ready to spring into action. She had married him, silently allowing her brother to bestow her heart, body and mind; her honour, her soul, on him, but she could not trust anyone with her sword. 

He slid the blade back into the decorated scabbard and carried the whole belt with sword and dagger to her. She waited on the edge of her chair, forcing herself to trust him. 

"You are my care, my honour and my victory," he said solemnly to her. He slipped the gold-tooled leather belt about her naked waist and buckled it, took her face between his hands and brushed her cheeks lightly with his cheeks, as is done when an officer is promoted and presented with the badge of his office: a sword for a Captain, a banner for a Commander, a ring for a General. 

"Vadya!" her voice shook, she reached up to hold onto his shoulders. 

"Oh my love," he said softly. "I will not deny you. You are my love because you are the fine soldier and merry Captain as well as the woman of my heart. I will not gainsay my love for you, although the world and its ways pull me so hard to do so. Had you been the woman that you might have been, you would have wept to watch me ride away to war and I would have been impatient if you had pleaded with me to stay. Shall I now play a role I would despise in that woman? My heart, you'll take my troop to war and I will play the braver part, staying behind to face my fears for your safety." 

She stood suddenly up in his arms, pressed her body - naked apart from the belt of weapons around it, to his. He grasped her close and their mouths met in a savage soldier's kiss - lips pressing hard, tongues aggressively pushing to the other's mouth. Vadya gripped his teeth on Tashka's upper lip almost hard enough to break the skin. She reached a scarred hand up to wipe the tears from his face, still pressing into his kiss. He seized her by the belt and pulled her harder in to him so that the buckle pressed into his belly through the heavy silk of his shirt and she sniggered suddenly in their kiss and broke from it. He was still holding her hard to him, too moved to speak but she pulled away and took his hand, tugging him towards the bed. He followed her although he was not sure he could manage yet another erection but perhaps she would be content if he gave her a finger - or two, he glanced uncertainly at the soft cock she had said was bigger than other men's. 

When they got to the bed Tashka unbuckled her weapons and slung them around the bedpost with his again. She started pulling the buttons undone on the shirt and stripping it from him, saying huskily: "Clair has bestowed my body on you, you have bestowed on me the region in return but I want your body too now." That made him giggle through his tears. This was not how a younger child ought to speak, it was sexy to be bossed about when he was an oldest son of the el Gaiels van H'las. Then she added, "my Commander," turning her head with an extraordinarily filthy grin; a flashing sparkle in her exquisite blue eye. 

Vadya gasped and felt a kind of quiver go through him. He had of course sometimes had to inspect smutty pictures of senior and junior soldiers which he disciplined the troopers for keeping in obscure hiding places. He had never quite understood the appeal of this forbidden material. He knew that soon she would be beyond addressing him as a senior officer - and here she was doing it on their wedding bed! It made his heart beat faster, the blood go rushing around his body with a sense of the forbidden and improper. There was good reason why relations were forbidden across the vows in the army, yet he could not but acknowledge a thrill to crossing the boundaries of the code of honour in order to engage in sexual play in her body. 

She was not really speaking to him like a junior to a senior of course. The way she spoke reminded him of her tone when she chatted with her former brother officer Caja Nain in the tavern in Paviat about misdemeanours she had lured Nain and their fellow Lieutenants into. When he had heard that low husky evil snigger in her voice he had felt sincerely grateful she had never turned so seductive a tone on to his other Captains in Sixth H'las and lured them into the kind of tricks with which she had no doubt made her old Commander from Fourth Sietter dance about like a ferret after rabbits. 

"Wh-what do you mean to do? with my body," his own voice was still husky with tears and now he was embarrassed to hear a nervous squeak in it. 

"Say it," she insisted, giving his shoulder a push, "my Captain." 

"You are joking!" he cried in horror but she grabbed his arm and forced it round and he said, "ow! ow! alright, my Captain!" 

"Shut it and lie on the bed," she said softly, pushing him down on his front. He lay there giggling and watching her sideways as she rooted in the basket of condoms. His cock was only softly happy rather than hard and big for her and he wondered lazily what-all she was going to do about that. Then she came and lay over his back, pressing her breasts into his back and kissing the nape of his neck. This was so pleasant that he half-closed his eyes and lay panting into the quilts, relaxed in her arms while she started kissing down his spine. He was tired with all the physical exertions they had enjoyed and the emotion of admitting how he felt about her riding back to war without him. He felt it would be pleasant to just have this soft puckering of the infamous rose-petal lips on the sensitive skin of his back - even if he had to address her as his Captain and order her to carry on doing it but she had reached his buttocks. Her hand had started flexing on his buttock and her fingers pulling his crack open. She was kissing his arse and he tensed suddenly up as he felt a soft firm tongue poke at the rim of his arsehole. He gave a moan, reaching round but Tashka pushed his hands away, saying in that soft husky inappropriately assertive tone, "my Commander, lie still or I will make you!" 

"Stop it, Tashka!" he sniggered, wriggling with embarrassment and the pleasure of her tongue on the rim of his hole, part of him felt mortified with shame that she was doing such a thing to him but part of him really liked it and was thinking, Do not give her the No for it, Angels' sake!  so he just wriggled in her strong thin hands, not sufficiently to prevent her continuing, instead of dragging his arse away from the strong firm muscle of her tongue. 

"Call me your Captain," she said. "Or I will stop." 

"No, no ... this is too much," he moaned then he suddenly said: "Oh my Captain! I will obey you in every thing. Take my body. You saved my life so my body is yours. I will bestow it on you if you bestow on me your favours in return." 

He heard the husky evil snigger of the junior officer he had loved for so long and felt her tongue press down again to his hole. Now a finger had come caressing the rim of his hole. She had put a condom on it and was pressing a bit of lubricant around his arsehole, he had never had to use any for her but sometimes his former lover Lallia had asked for a little extra lubrication and he thought as he felt Tashka smearing it around him that if he had realised how pleasurable it was when the finger gently poked it around he would have done a lot more of it. He gave a series of little moans, he was starting to suspect where this was going and he felt a great trepidation about it but he trusted Tashka, his beloved Captain, so completely that he let himself go in the capable manipulation of her scarred fingers. 

Her finger was dipping into his hole, pressing in deeper, pushing gently down and stretching the rim of his hole, there was a pause and then two fingers came gently pushing down into him. He quivered with the excitement of the feelings this raised in him. She was pushing deeper, probing about then suddenly he felt her press and his whole body shook, a ripple ran right through him. She was pressing there again. He started grunting and spreading his legs to her, his backside felt as if it were begging, he wanted it so much: the rhythmic pressure to that sweet spot deep up inside him. He was curving back up to her fingers, grunting and moaning. He had been wrong, his cock was rising and filling, hardening up, he could not believe it. He was spreading his legs and pushing and heaving to her pressure in him, the pleasure was rippling out from her thrusting fingers, he was in her hands to do with as she would, his cock was like a rock, his balls were so full they were hurting, he would have thought he wanted to sink it all inside her but all he wanted was for her to continue as she was doing, thrusting those scarred fingers down into his arse, fingering the sweet spot she had found there, oh! oh! the pleasure in the rim of his arsehole and the tense rising pleasure deep inside him. He started screaming with excitement and suddenly he was cumming in spurts in the sheets with the husky evil snigger of Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van H'las in his ear. He went rigid with a final exhilarating orgasmic shudder and completely relaxed under her. She laid her body down on his back, her fingers still pressed deep into his arse, sniggering that evil laugh in his ear. 

~#~*~#~

Clair had fallen asleep in his armchair, exhausted after the long day's hard concentrated effort organising everything he had had to put in place. The firelight and candlelight flickered over him as he lay with his long lean limbs in his breeches and cardigan sprawled out. In Arianna's chair opposite him, Pava sat with his legs in green woollen hose elegantly crossed, looking through a book about hawking. 

Arianna and Hanya sat at the table, going through a list of surgeons from the town which Arianna had drawn up. At the end of the table, Tarra sat turning over a hand of patience in the light of a branch of candles, his ear and his fingers bare of any ring and his saturnine face glum. 

"So," Pava said, lifting his head from his book with a laugh in his green eyes. "el Gaiel and my sweet junior officer have not troubled to get up at all the day!" 

"el Gaiel may be up," Tarra said with a filthy leer. Arianna sniggered then tried to give Pava and Tarra a reproving look. Hanya gave her a surprised and disapproving stare, Pava laughed and Tarra grinned. 

The sitting-room door opened and one of the footmen looked in, negotiating his wheelchair carefully round the door jamb. Arianna got up and crossed the sitting-room with a swish of grey woollen skirts. It was Fiotr, the footman who had broken his back in action with Clair at Shier Bridge. Petra, the other footman who used a wheelchair, had lost the use of his legs in an accident in an overturned wagon. Fiotr said: "M'Lady, the Guard have sent to say they are ready for the Commander's inspection." 

She looked sideways at Clair, deep asleep, his head turned into the wing of his armchair, his long lashes kissing his tanned cheek, his thin mouth just a little open, the incongruously elaborate gold earring dangling down his lean neck. She sighed, he had been so busy since so early. She was tempted to tell Fiotr that the Guard must stand down or stand to or whatever they did, or to ask Pava to take the inspection for Clair but she knew it was crucial that they be fully prepared when battle commenced. "I will tell the Commander," she said and Fiotr wheeled nimbly backwards out of the room. 

She went over to Clair, Pava looked up from his book and said: "Wake him carefully, do not do it gentle." 

"I know," Arianna said. She stood at the side of Clair's chair and gave his shoulder a firm brisk shake. 

Clair started up in his chair, those heartbreakingly lovely slanted grey eyes flying open. He looked blankly at her, his mouth moving. He passed one hand over his tired eyes and smiled dreamily on her. 

"My Lord, Fiotr has come to let you know the Guard are ready for inspection," Arianna said to him. Clair sighed and passed his hand over his eyes again. Then he stood up and snapped into attention, his tired eyes focussed, his lean body tensed for what must be done next. He turned to her. 

"My thanks, m'dear," he said, his husky warm voice blurred with sleep. He put his hand up to the earring, it had irritated him where it had lain against his neck in his sleep, he took it out and turned to put it on the mantelpiece. He turned back and caught her arm and spent a silly wasted minute taking out the simple gold stud she was wearing and hooking the heavy earring in her ear. She giggled. Tarra watched them glumly, Pava looked fixedly at his book on hawking with a smile on his wide red mouth, Hanya looked politely away out of the window. 

"My thanks," Arianna echoed teasingly, as she put her hand up to the dangling masculine earring - too big and elaborate for a woman, "my d-dear." She blushed as she stammered on the unfamiliar endearment. 

"My Lady wife," he murmured with a grin. "I do like you to be well dressed." He pinched her cheek and laughed when she bridled and giggled like a schoolgirl then he went stumbling tiredly off through the castle corridors and the hallway stacked with stores to inspect the Guard. 

~#~*~#~

Vadya and Tashka had squashed themselves together into an armchair with the remains of the box of chocolates and were driving away thoughts of war by talking about their childhoods. Vadya laughed to hear how Tashka and Clair had run away from court when they were ten and fifteen and how Tashka had moaned all the way back to the castle for cakes. Tashka's eyes danced to hear Vadya talk of sailing races in Port H'las harbour, dodging in and out the galleons. They lay in the warmth of the fire and the armchair and each other's arms, their minds drifting at ease, their bodies relaxed over each other's, occasionally putting a chocolate in their own or each other's mouths. 

Then Vadya got up, tipping Tashka out of the chair onto her feet, chucked the chocolate box on the table and gave Tashka his hand. His face became intent with desire. She clasped her hand on his and followed him to the bed. 

He sat down on the rumpled bedclothes, drawing her forward to stand between his legs and pressed his face between her breasts, his gentle strong hands massaging her buttocks and lower back. He kissed the softness of her small breasts, opened his mouth around one, flicking the nipple with his tongue. She laughed back in her throat, her fingers tangling in the big soft curls of his hair and caressing the nape of his neck. 

Vadya pressed his face lower into her belly and lower still, parting her legs and kissing the inside of her thigh, licking at her. His fingers slid between her labia, stroked the curl of flesh, her clitoris, and she gasped, her knees buckled under her. Vadya swung her round and pushed her back onto the bed. He began caressing her vulva and her clitoris with his gentle fingers, with his tongue. The big soft muscle of the tongue came flicking at her clitoris, making the feelings start buzzing out in her loins, her juices start flowing. He pressed his tongue to her vulva, pushed in, pressed his tongue into her cunt. She started laughing, helplessly beginning the long slow thrusting movements of love-making up to his tongue caressing inside her. When at last he lifted himself away to put on a condom, she moaned and clung to him, making it difficult for him yet at the same time exciting him so that his cock became even harder. His fingers shook with passion as he fitted the condom on. 

He turned in her clinging arms, taking his rigid hard cock and pressing it quickly into her eager yearning cunt, deep down into her. She gave a cry of passion, thrusting up to meet him, he held her close in his arms as he moved with her. Her blue eyes were lost in passion, staring at him empty of thought. She was crooning gentle noises in time with their movements. She was not even aware that she did so. The sounds she made kept him just on the edge of consciousness until orgasm began to build in them, he began to call out to her himself. A huge force flooded through him, all his muscles tingled with intense nervous sensation. He was aware of nothing but their two selves, rocking together; of the feel of her body against his skin, of the strong clasp of her arms around him, his around her; of his cock pressing into her warm wet cunt, her head lifting so that he suddenly pressed his big generous mouth to cover her rose-petal mouth, grunting with orgasm into her mouth; the sudden rush of blood and cum and semen and thrilling waves of passion that carried them away and then fell back, leaving them stranded in each other's arms as if they had been washed into a new world. 

~#~*~#~

Vadya stepped out of the doorway into the pale morning light, the chilly autumn air. He paused, wriggling his shoulders sleepily and comfortably in his favourite old buckskin jacket. He moved slowly forward, still dreamy with sleep and sex and the warm bath Batren had brought to them. As he walked down the stairs from the veranda, he became aware of Pava's laughing face in the courtyard below. He stared coolly back into Pava's mocking green eyes. 

Behind him, Tashka came whistling down the stairs, still adjusting a red silk cravat she had made Batren pinch from Vadya's wardrobe for her at the throat of her cream jumper. Batren had already moved in on her clothes, he was thrilled to have someone to care for who liked to dress well. They had spent quite five minutes that morning discussing whether she should wear her blue woollen suit or black breeches and a cream jumper so Vadya had managed to get away with his soft old buckskin which he loved so much. 

Tashka paused on the step behind Vadya and raised a dark eyebrow at Pava. She was the same perfect young officer as before, a step behind her Commander: poised, elegant, cool-headed, warm-hearted. Pava looked at her tall lean figure and frowned curiously through his laughter, remembering what a heartbreaking beauty she had been at her wedding. 

Vadya reached behind him and hauled her roughly to his side. He stepped out across the courtyard with her, giving Pava a casual: "Halloo," and leaning across Tashka's shoulder to whisper a rude story in her ear. She sniggered filthily as they strolled into the sitting-room, that same laugh that he had heard in his ear while she fucked him in the arse with two fingers. It made his cock swell to hear it even after the night and day and night of sex they had enjoyed. And her mounting him that morning before Batren brought the coffee and bath. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 21



Tarra el V'lair lifted his head from the table of breakfast food to look at them and Vadya felt nothing but a satisfied friendliness, seeing the wistful envy in Tarra's sad eyes. 

Clair was helping himself to bread and honey, he looked up as they came in and smiled a warm smile, his slanted grey eyes creased in his smile. Tashka smiled back, her slanted blue eyes creasing in reply. She disentangled herself from Vadya's arm and went to embrace Clair. They kissed each other on the cheek and then Tashka went back to Vadya and began heaping his plate with all the things she wanted to eat and nudging all the things he wanted off it. 

Her dark blue eyes had dancing stars in them, her rose-petal mouth kept twitching up at the corners. She was such a lovely that he could not even grumble at her teasing, only laugh back to her and struggle to get a few of the things he wanted back on his plate.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 22



Thank you for the feedback and votes. Some kind comments have kept up my confidence in the writing in spite of some odd voting LOL. 

*****

"And so here we all are," Tashka said softly in the darkness. 

They were on top of the central tower: she and the Commanders. Pava and Tarra leant on the parapet looking down at the Sietter troops encamped around them. Clair stared down with an expressionless face, to see his brother officers taking arms against him. Vadya stood by her side, one arm around her shoulders. She had borrowed his telescope and was looking at the dispositions of the forces, nodding her head in a satisfied way as she saw where they had laid out their encampments as she had predicted. 

The castle was surrounded by the flickering ruddy fires of the three Sietter troops. Shadow-black figures moved between the dark outlines of tents in the firelight. Torches and fires were alight on the castle walls, too, where the Castle Guard and Tenth Athagine shared out the watches of the night. The Castle Guard were uneasy, below them were soldiers they had thought of as comrades; there was muttering against Pava el Maien who was such a snake he sent troops out against his own children. Down below, the Sietter troops would be grumbling about Clair and Tashka, who ran with merchants and the H'las and were so wayward that they defied their own father. 

Tashka's voice had a satisfied ring to it. The game had begun. Her mind was running straight now, her many complicated thoughts all sorted to head for the same aim. Using Vadya's experience as a map, she had worked out all the different routes to victory. She was so engrossed in thoughts of the coming campaign that when Vadya squeezed her buttock she jumped and stared at him then sniggered in such an obvious way that everyone looked at Vadya and made him blush. 

"I will go and have the pleasure of a word with Commander-Sir Vaie," Tashka said cheerfully, as if she were arranging to meet her brother officer for a drink, not sneaking into the enemy camp like a spy - for which she would be hung if she were caught. 

"What, the night?" Clair demanded, his head swinging suddenly round. 

Vadya said nothing but his blood turned to ice, his face was frozen with fear. 

"Why not," Tashka laughed. "You have no special party planned, I will not be missing any thing, will I?" 

"Tashka, this plan is crazy!" Clair said fiercely. "What kind of secret can Vaie have that you might know?" 

Tashka shrugged. There was a queer intense look in her eyes, her face was set on this one purpose but the fingers of her left hand shivered so that the rubies and gold of her rings sparkled briefly in the torchlight. "I do know something of him," she answered. 

"What can there be for you to know?" Clair demanded. "Vaie is an honourable man. Since his father's death he has managed his troop and lands and the people on his lands whom he must look to as a Knight admirably, with conscientious care. He has been mindful of the respect and duty of care he owes his mother and young sisters, one of whom he will bestow on your brother Commander, Stariel, next Spring. He is a slut, it is true. I never heard of him giving the No to any he wanted who offered a favour but he has never forced a favour and he has never crossed a vow of allegiance to take a senior or junior. He is an handsome enough puppy, he can have whomsoever he wishes. If he has caught the eye now and then of someone-else's husband, he has asked them to pardon him or taken the glove as he ought." 

"It is not my secret so I cannot tell you," Tashka answered. "It is not a matter that stains his honour, it is just something I know that means Vaie will give me an hearing. And we were baby Lieutenants together." 

"And so?" Clair demanded. "Pava was your Captain, I was your Commander. Vaie was my Captain as well as Lieutenant, at Shier Bridge ... at Shier Bridge ... But now Vaie has sworn to the Generals' fingers. Even if they call on him to hang you, he will do it although he will weep for it. His allegiance will not be divided - especially to an H'las officer." 

"Vaie may have sworn to the Generals and through the hoop of their rings to van Sietter," Tashka answered, "but you know it, he will never renounce his vow to you. You'll be his life and days and fight until the day he dies. His life is hung on your banner to this day. That is why it must be I who goes; not you, nor Pava who was his Captain under you. Vaie's allegiance will never be divided because it belongs to you. If you speak one word to him he will follow. He knows it so he will not give you the chance to say that one word. There is something I know about Vaie that will persuade him to give me an hearing. Once he has heard me call on your name, he will come with us." 

Clair opened his mouth to tell Tashka that he was not going to let her go down into Tenth Sietter to her certain death but Vadya interrupted him. 

"el Maien," he said stiffly. "That is my Captain you are speaking with. Is there any thing more you have to say?" 

Clair turned and looked through narrowed eyes at Vadya. Young van H'las' face was pale and pinched. His eyes were full of terror, his lips pressed hard together, yet Clair saw that he was going to let Tashka go. 

"Captain-Lord el Maien," Vadya said formally. "Go and get ready. Will you go over the wall or is there a secret gate?" 

"A gate," Tashka answered. 

"I will walk with you to it," Vadya said. His voice was clear but cold. He sounded as if he cared nothing for the terrible danger Tashka was about to run into headlong but he would not look at her while he spoke. His eyes were fixed out on the dark bulk of the Sietter Hills away in the night. "Meet me in the hallway," he said. 

"Sir, it is done," Tashka's voice was not as emotionless as his, there was an undercurrent of joyful excitement in it. She pulled a flicking H'las salute, did the ritual stamping steps of the H'las junior leaving their senior and turned and walked off without a glance at Clair or her former Captain Pava el Jien who stood with his long white fingers twisted together so hard that one of his rings cut into his thumb or her former lover el V'lair van Athagine who watched her go with the louche smile for once absent from his face. 

Pava had come across to put an arm around Clair's shoulders, Clair turned his head into Pava's shoulder. Vadya slipped away down the stairs, biting his lip to make the tears go down in his eyes. Behind him he could hear Clair starting to sob in the torchlit darkness, louder and louder: My brother, my brother, my brother! 

~#~*~#~

Tashka walked softly and slowly through the shadows by the fire until she was standing actually behind the nervous Tenth Sietter sentry. He was shifting from foot to foot, looking up at the castle. He jumped when she addressed him: "Hey! you. Take me to Commander-Sir Vaie." 

He spun round and looked at her from wide nervous eyes. She stood staring back at him, tall and lean in her old red felt Sietter Lieutenant's uniform. Her eyes flicked over him, she snapped: "Your belt is not buckled properly to! Adjust it!" 

"Sir!" the young sentry pulled a hurried salute, his heels coming together in the Sietter stance. He looked down at his belt and tugged it more securely into the buckle. He came forward to lead her into the camp, calling to one of his comrades to stand to station. As she followed him, Tashka kept a casual series of grumbles going: It was so hard to get provisions; why were these el Maiens quarrelling; it was an horrible time of year for a siege, why could they not have their family squabbles in the Summer. The sentry responded eagerly, complaining of the quality of food squeezed from reluctant merchants in the town and giving away all the troop gossip about why she and Clair might be regarded as the enemy. Tashka's brain went: supplies hard to get, morale will get lower, easy to counter that reason, bit harder to get over that one. 

"My thanks," she said casually as they came up to the Commander's tent. It would have been better to get the sentry to find out if Vaie had his officers with him, tell the sentry she had privy business and he must announce her under some false name - but she felt a pang of pity for his young naivity and let him get well away before she called out: "Thy time for my allegiance!" 

"Enter," said a firm warm voice. 

Tashka walked into the tent and grinned at Commander-Sir Dar Vaie, her face relaxed, although her nervous eyes flicked quickly round to see, to her great relief, that they were alone. He stood staring at her with astounded grey eyes, his mouth hanging open: a handsome man a couple of years older than her, also dressed in the single-breasted red felt Sietter winter uniform with the gold-embroidered collar. He had the lean rangy build of the typical Sietter Knight, hardbitten and wiry. He was a strawberry blond, his hair fair with an attractive reddish tone. There was a wine-bowl in his hand, it slipped from his fingers and the wine spilled all over the colourful cloth rug by the bedding which had been made up into a couch. 

"Halloo Dar," Tashka said lightly. She strode forward and sat comfortably down in a folding chair in front of a table full of maps. Without looking at them, she reached behind her, caught the edge of the maps and folded them over on themselves so that they, and all the military information pencilled on notes pinned to them, were hidden from her eyes. 

"T-Tashka," Dar Vaie stammered. He glanced at the entrance to the tent as if estimating his chances of getting there before Tashka ran him through. 

Tashka's blue eyes creased up in her easy smile. She set her ankle on her knee and clasped it with her scarred right hand. "How is it with you, Commander?" she said politely. "Offer me some wine, then, you dog!" she added. 

"Er ... of course," he said. He looked at his empty right hand, hurriedly bent and picked up his wine-bowl from the ground. He came nervously over to the table, took another bowl from a stack with his left hand and sloshed some wine into it. His left hand, which had a slashing set of scars across the knuckles, was shaking. He kept looking at her and at the entrance of the tent, past a lock of his strawberry hair that was falling in his keen grey eyes. 

"Heard from Hanya lately?" Tashka enquired, taking the bowl from him with a steady scarred right hand and a warm smile. 

"H-H-Hanya?" he repeated with a nervous start. He stopped edging towards the entrance and blushed patchily, staring at her with those piercing keen grey eyes. 

"Ay, fool. Hanya Lein. My Lieutenant. Lieutenant Hanya Lein of Sixth H'las." 

"Sweet Angels!" Dar said. His face suddenly lit up with delight and he focussed his attention entirely on her, stepping closer to her and away from the entrance. "You are Hanya's Captain Maien! My sword and banner! I ought to have guessed from what he told me of you. He has written me so often and so lovingly of you that were you not his senior officer I would be ..." he cut himself off and his face went blank. 

"You would be jealous," Tashka prompted him, sniffing thoughtfully at her bowl of wine. She picked up the wine bottle and gestured with it at Dar Vaie's bowl, hesitantly he put it forward for her to pour wine into it. In order to do this he had to come right back into the tent up to her. 

"He ... he told you?" he asked. His head went back, his eyes were scared. The blush rose in red patches in his cheeks. 

"Of course," Tashka said, lifting her close-cropped head to look straight into his grey eyes. "I am his Captain and his friend. Of course he came to discuss it with me, that he is in love with someone who could any day become an enemy officer to us. 

"You two met last summer in Iarve. He was visiting his uncle and you were there with the troop practising manoeuvres. You met one night in an hotel bar. It was you gave him the eye and when he looked back at you, you offered him a drink. Both of you could tell the other was an officer but you assumed each other was in the Iarve army. 

"You thought it would be just an one-day-one-night, although I was glad to hear you took a room for my Lieutenant, you slut, and did not treat him like your usual bits of trimming and take him for ten minutes in a doorway or a stables or whatever!" Dar sniggered, blushing in the candlelight. "You stayed two nights with him, in fact by the sound of it you abused your position to leave one of your Captains as acting Commander in charge of establishing the encampment while you ran off playing with the affections of my officer! Your heart got so entangled in his fingers that you offered him your name, full title and troop designation and it was then you discovered - too late - that he was an H'las officer. 

"Now you manage to write to each other sometimes, sending the letters through Hanya's aunt. When he goes on leave, you juggle your dispositions in the troop and meet him for a day or two. You both try to believe there is nothing in it if Sietter and H'las go to war again but I will tell it you, Dar Vaie. I have seen Hanya read a letter from you that was creased with so many readings and he still smiled and held it to his lips and put it in his pocket next to his heart. Hanya Lein will be yours, Vaie, through Hell and through life." 

Commander-Sir Dar Vaie looked intently at her as she said this then his head stooped down over his bowl of wine, his face warm and tender in the candlelight. The blush had gone down in his cheeks. He looked shyly at Tashka and smiled. He did not speak, just sat down opposite his brother officer, the brother to his future sworn Lord, his lover's Captain, his enemy. 

"Who would have thought it," Tashka laughed. "The Commander and the Captain will never believe me when I tell them that your heart has been pinned. And you are of course loyal to my Lieutenant's honour, hmmm?" 

Dar sniggered. "Oh well, you know me," he said easily. "I am no virgin Angel! Now and then my eye is caught but Hanya lets it pass. He loves me for who I am, he knows there will never be another one that is serious and that it is not easy when we can see so little of each other. So long as I do not wave it in his face, he lets it pass." 

"He is a lovely, I'll give you that," Tashka said. "And he is also a very fine young officer, I'll have you know. It is a pity you are from H'las and Sietter, you might marry him else." 

"Oh yes I would!" Dar answered eagerly. "I'd give him my ring the morrow if I could, el Maien. You'd bestow him on me, would you not?" 

"What nonsense, he can give himself to you freely," Tashka grumbled, momentarily remembering in annoyance how she had had to submit to being bestowed on her own husband. She hurriedly pushed the thoughts back in her mind. "I mean, I would have no need to, Vaie. He would come running if he thought he had the chance of your favours, never mind your ring!" 

"Oh I wish ...!" Dar's head lifted and he looked yearningly to the side of the tent then he turned back and said: "What is it you are about here, el Maien. 'Fore the Angels! are you crazy, coming into my camp like this. How did you penetrate the camp? Which side did you sneak in from, you fox. You have come to ask us to let your Commander, el Gaiel, slip through our fingers I suppose?" 

Tashka looked slantwise at him over her bowl of wine. She gave a soft evil snigger, he shivered and grinned nervously at her. It was the kind of laugh that always accompanied outrageous dares: to sneak off from tidying up their kit and race frogs on the river bank, to take the pegs from her brother's lover's guy-ropes so it would collapse on them, to give the eye to a General on formal parade. "Oh my dear," she said in that husky familiar voice. "I want much more than that. I have come to ask Tenth Sietter stand behind my brother." 

"el Maien, you are mad!" he cried anxiously. "The Generals have given us expressed orders from van Sietter. We cannot disobey." 

"And if I have brought you orders from Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter? Does your vow to his fingers mean nothing to you? Is his banner now some rag you have blown your nose on and chucked aside in a dirty drain in the street?" 

Vaie half-started to his feet. "I'll never forswear my vow to the Commander!" he growled, his face suddenly tense with rage and his fingers going to the gloves in his belt. 

Tashka laughed. "Exactly so," she said drily. 

"No! Tashka! It is not like that. We have sworn to the Generals' fingers. Hear me, el Maien. I have no wish to cross the Commander, or yourself. But el Gaiel van H'las is another matter and the Commander's Lady wife has been making trouble running with merchants. Hell! I cannot but obey my orders, you know it." 

"You may have sworn to the Generals' fingers," Tashka said quietly. "Your Captains and Lieutenants and your men have sworn to you. You have sworn another allegiance, to take them as your care, your honour and your victory. I tell it you, Vaie, if you follow your vow to the Generals, you will cross your vow to your men. You will stain your honour and theirs and show that they are not your care." 

Dar burst out laughing. "el Maien," he said, leaning forward to softly punch Tashka's shoulder and shaking his head. "How well I remember that persuasive way of yours - your sweet eyes looking clearly into mine, just so! And before I know it I am up before Captain-Lord el Jien waiting to hear what my punishment is to be, while you get off free as a bird! Do you remember that time we got through the First Quarter sentries and untied Captain-Sir Vashin's guy-ropes but your brother caught us at it! I have never been able to look at a tub of dishes without wanting to run away since." 

Tashka laughed too, a quick spurt of amusement from the side of her curved rose-petal mouth that she could not help, although she knew it was a mistake. It was so important that she convince Dar Vaie but seeing him brought back such merry memories. 

"Vaie," she said, leaning forward to clasp her scarred right hand on his knee. "I wish I had time to talk through the night of those days. But Captain-Sir Vashin is dead now and I will be too if I cannot convince you I am in the right of it this time." 

Dar Vaie looked at her hand gripped on his knee then into her eyes. His own grey eyes sparkled with tears at the reminder of Hanya Vashin's death. "el Maien, what a strange meeting is this," he said. "I never thought I would have to take arms against you. Sweet Hell! you are always trouble. You should hear the things the Fifth Sietter officers say of you, it makes my face hot to hear them and I have had trouble keeping my glove in my belt!" 

"I fought their Commander," Tashka said. "He has good reason to hate me, for I hate him with all my heart." 

"What did you fight him for?" Vaie asked, curiously. 

Tashka looked him full in the face and said: "I killed his younger brother in a duel with a cut to the throat. The scum raped my brother, the Commander, when he was but a young Lieutenant. That is why I hate all the Dariens." 

Dar Vaie looked appalled. He sat back, taking a sip of his wine, his eyes creased up and his mouth pinched. 

Tashka took a slurp of wine and said: "Well, tell it me, Vaie. Why have you decided to join that scum Darien and stand against the Commander and Commander-Lord el Jien and I?" 

"I am not against you!" he protested. "It is this business of the merchants, el Maien. Lady el Jien wants to give over the management of our land to merchants, for the Angels' sake. How can we allow a rabble of merchants to run the land?" 

"Angels, Vaie, you are a butterfly-wits!" Tashka exclaimed. 

Dar Vaie blushed patchily red with annoyance. "el Maien, I may not be a political brain but I can see the sense in this war. How can you, yourself an officer-aristocrat, countenance handing power to the merchants?" 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 22



"Vaie," Tashka said with a winning smile. "What is Hanya?" 

"Hanya?" Dar Vaie had lifted his wine-bowl to his mouth, he paused to look warily at Tashka. "What has he to do with this?" 

"Hanya is a merchant's son," Tashka said slowly, as if explaining that one and one must make two to a small child. "He is an officer, he is one of us. Who runs this land, Dar?" 

"What do you mean? We run this land." 

"We? Who is we?" 

"Well, the aristocrats. And the armies." 

"You and I run this land is it?" Dar nodded his head more confidently. "And Hanya? Hanya the officer who is also a merchant's son, does he run this land?" 

"Whatever family he grew up in, now he is an officer," Dar Vaie asserted. 

"Nonsense," Tashka said crisply. "We are not so divided: a merchant here, an officer there. Hanya the merchant's son has become an officer. The high nobility engage in trade." 

"Whatsover they do, they do for the good of the people and the regions," Dar said. "Like your father, he works ... for the good of the region." As soon as he said it, he knew he had made a mistake. 

"Oh no," Tashka said softly. "You know it very well. That old snake works for his own interest alone." Dar bit his lip and looked away into the candlelit shadows of his tent then back at Tashka. 

She leant forwards in her seat, resting her arms on her knees and tilting her lean tanned face towards him. There was a line of crumbling blood down one of her cheeks. "Dar, are you willing to cling to the Generals' fingers, the Generals who sent you into that valley at Shier Bridge, who have always been willing to throw your life and mine away for victory? Are you willing to act on the expressed orders of one you know will send the poor of his region, all the people of his region, to Hell if it serves his interest? Are you willing to turn your back on the Commander, whose eyes you have looked into and seen how much love he holds for the whole troop, tell it me, was he willing to throw you into that ditch at Shier Bridge? You know how he loved the laziest trooper of Fourth so you know how much affection he would have for the poorest beggar of his region. 

"Hear me!" she said quickly, raising her scarred right hand to stop him as he opened his mouth to speak. "Lady el Jien - the Commander's Lady wife - wants to set up a body of merchants who will write reports and advise the King and the Privy Council just as the other councils do. Their interest is partly in the network of trade across the whole country but they also want to make it so that nobody need be poor, so that trade is managed to give everybody work and sufficient money for the work they do. Why should we live as we do now, when some work too hard for too little money and others cannot work at all? The merchants are sick of seeing the poor begging at their doors. They know too that if people work, they will buy goods and then the money will flow more freely and we will all benefit. Is that such a terrible strategy, Vaie? Do you think the Sietter army is wise to take arms against Lady el Jien, and Lieutenant-Lord el Jien van Iarve, for wanting to take such a strategy to the King and his Ministers to consider?" 

"Well ... why should your father be against such a plan?" Dar asked, puzzled. 

"Because he cares nothing for the poor, not even the cloth trade in his own region. Such a body will undermine his power. He has a chance now to bring Vilandia in; he will do it, Vaie. He is married to a Vilandian bitch. Do you want to live under Vilandian rule or under the rule of the King and the Nobles, guided by Trossian merchants and workers?" 

"The cloth trade," Dar Vaie said thoughtfully. "There was a riot in Arventa not three weeks back. First Sietter had to battle with weavers. I was glad at the time that we were out in the Sietter Hills so could not be called to support them. Imagine it, to use weaponry on the unemployed and unarmed poor. I ... I have heard it is bad throughout the country," he looked up through his lashes at Tashka. 

"Yes," Tashka said, sitting back in her chair. "Hanya's father is being ruined by van Sietter's machinations against the cloth trade. This year Hanya has had to send half his salary home when they were used to give him enough to keep two horses. He could not afford to come to meet you when he was last on leave. He had to go home and help his family and of course you would not come to a rabble of an H'las merchant's house to see your lover. You would never ask them to bestow Hanya on you, would you? Who are they, only his parents." Her lip curled at him. Dar Vaie looked shamefacedly up at her through his fair lashes. 

"I do not understand politics," he said mournfully. 

"Well I do," Tashka said, "and I tell it you. If van Sietter wins this war, you'll live in a country where no one has enough, where there are poor who creep in and out of corners, starving - literally starving to death, their children dying in rat-infested hovels, while we officer-aristocrats ride over their bones and kick them back for fear that they will justifiably rise up against us - we who were supposed to take them for our care and our honour and our fellow humanity." 

Dar looked into her face and saw how intensely serious she was. He sighed and shook his head. "I know not," he said softly. 

"And you will take me a prisoner to Arventa," Tashka added. "That will not leave any stain on your honour, I suppose, to take your brother officer a prisoner to that old snake van Sietter?" 

"Why should you not go to him?" Dar asked. "He is your father, however much of a snake he be to any other. He has called you to come to him. Why do you not go and persuade him, as you do me? He must be angry to find you an officer of an H'las troop but he will surely forgive it you. Maybe he will get them to give you your banner for Sixteenth? We could campaign together then. You could bring Hanya to Sixteenth with you, perhaps?" He blushed. 

Tashka laughed but through a sigh. "No," she said quietly. "He will not give me Sixteenth Sietter. He has often denied being my father and he wants to hand me over to el F'lara van V'ta." 

Dar looked narrowly at her. "But ... did you and Sixth H'las not do battle in V'ta?" he asked. 

"Ay," Tashka said. "I did so. I was the one led the charge out of the trap they sprang on us and fetched Ninth P'shan to our aid." 

"Oh that was a magnificent ...!" Dar began then he said: "el F'lara, he will have you hung so as to wipe the stain from his army's honour that they sprang that assault on you!" 

"It is so," Tashka agreed. 

"Tashka, surely not! No man will send his own child to such a death!" 

"Dar, I have told you! When it suits his mind, he denies my parentage. Look at me! Of course I am his, I have his cursed thin body yet he denies me. He is a snake. He has sent three troops to carry off his own son and his, er, his daughter's betrothed before he even broke the betrothal or made a formal declaration of war." 

Dar leant closer to Tashka and stared into her slanted blue eyes. Tashka stared intently back into his grey eyes. "Hear me," Dar said slowly. "None of us, not even Fifth Sietter, want to take you prisoner back to Arventa. Fifth Sietter curse you, although to do them justice they have never said any thing of the Commander, some of them even agree it was a fair fight and say Darien should let it pass now. el Gaiel is another matter. I know he is your Commander, I know you have sworn to his banner but he is van H'las. You were not with him from a baby Lieutenant, as you were with el Jien. He cannot mean as much to you as we Angels who trained with you in Fourth Sietter. What about if you give us el Gaiel and I will persuade them to let you go?" 

"No!" Tashka cried, she bunched her left hand into a fist and banged it on the arm of her folding canvas chair. The rubies and gold of her rings sparkled in the candlelight. She and Dar both saw the rings and she thought: "Damn the Angels! Curse me to Hell!' Dar said: "What ... is that?" 

"You butterfly-wits," Tashka said roughly, whipping her hand into her breeches' pocket where she tried to work the rings off her finger - too late! "A wedding ring." 

"But the other," Dar said, raising his wide grey eyes to stare into her face. "el Maien, that is a woman's betrothal ring." 

"Oh is it?" Tashka said carelessly, unable to bear looking in his eyes. She looked to one side, hunching up her shoulders as if she could feel the rough scratch of the noose about her neck. 

Dar stared at her with his mouth open. Then he started to laugh. "Sweet Angels!" he cried. "You are a woman! Heaven and Hell! and I who used to long for your favours when we were Lieutenants together. How I used to sigh over your long legs and your lovely eyes and curse the Captain for putting you in his tent instead of letting you sleep with the rest of us Lieutenants. And how wasted my passion for you was." 

"Is it so?" Tashka turned her head back again to look at him, relaxing into a still half-scared grin. "You hid your desire well." 

"I surely did!" Dar's face was still alight with laughter. "You never gave any of us the eye and we all knew that anyone who looked on you would have words from the Captain; and a lot worse than words from the Commander! I thought it was because you were el Maien van Sietter and that el Jien took you into his tent because you were too pretty to let lie loosely around for us scummy Lieutenants to fumble with. I thought they were protecting you from me but it was Stariel and Nain they wanted to keep you from! You dog, el Maien. Give me your hand." 

He leant across and grasped Tashka's openly offered sword hand with his sword hand. They held each other's right hand, took hold of each other's arm with their left hands and sat looking affectionately into each other's face. 

"It is el Gaiel, is it?" Dar asked, "your husband." 

"We have been married three days," Tashka said. Dar smiled to see how her face lit up with tender joy at being married to Vadya el Gaiel van H'las. 

"Long love and happiness," he said softly. 

"Thank you," Tashka said shyly. 

"Mm, so, was not el Gaiel a bit ... troubled to find his betrothed was his own Captain?" Dar asked. 

Tashka flashed him a wicked wink. "He was livid!" she said, "but I seduced him." They sniggered evilly. 

"He is the lucky one," Dar said to her. "I wish I had any preference for women, el Maien!" 

Tashka tossed her head. "Loisir and Caja will laugh at us," she said, "both gone over boots, cavalry and honour to the H'las!" 

They sniggered again to think of how their brother officers would tease them then Dar said, looking puzzled: "Your father arranged the match. That must have caused some trouble for you in the troop when el Gaiel first found out. Did he not know it was el Gaiel's troop you were commissioned in?" 

"Of course he knew," Tashka said gravely. "I was nearly hung for a spy. I nearly lost my commission. But Vadya's father - van H'las - offered me a banner and a desk in the Generals' strategic staff in Port H'las. The Lord General is a sportsman, Vaie. You will like to meet him ... If you come with us. Vadya was piqued, he did not want to lose me to the Generals' strategic staff. We have a bit of trouble now and then. You know me, I cannot resist to tease him, sometimes I give him the eye in the Captains' meetings just to see him blush." She grinned at Dar and Dar burst out laughing. "He tried to give me grief too about whether I should ride to war but he knows he must let me go." 

"Well take your rings off before your next raid," Dar said with a grin. "They catch the light! And your father?" he asked. "Why does he no longer want the match?" 

"He never gave a copper coin's curse to tie me into H'las," Tashka answered. "He was hoping el Gaiel would be so angry to find me van Sietter, a woman and his own junior officer that he would hang me, that would have given van Sietter an excuse to go to war with H'las, stop all the negotiations with the merchants to lower duties on passage through the Maier Pass and also put a stop to my sister by marriage's plans with the merchants. I am more fortunate in my father by marriage. I know Lord Esha loves me well and will honour me as his ... well, not his daughter, because what he wants is for me to swear to his fingers and go and make strategies with him!" 

"You must be well content," Dar said. "You have always admired the structure of the command in H'las." 

"Why yes," Tashka said, "sithou, the way the command is structured here in Sietter ..." 

"Yes yes!" Dar laughed, "I have heard you cut about our structure enough times with your analysis! You know I agree with you. You can leave it out." Then he said: "But why does van Sietter want another war? Angels, it is but five years since the war with H'las," his face was mournful. He had lost many friends in that war and in this one he was likely to be fighting not only his lover but also his senior and brother officers. 

"He has signed a treaty with the arms merchants," Tashka answered. "They give him arms at half the price they offer the rest of the regions yet make a fat profit because he provokes a war every so often so we are all scared of war and go about fully armed." 

"van Sietter signed a treaty with some merchants?" Dar asked incredulously. 

"I have said it," Tashka answered. 

The young Commander Knight sat back in his chair and frowned at the ceiling of his tent, rocking his wine in his bowl. Tashka watched him, her slanted blue eyes sombre. It was a serious thing she was asking him to do, to give his vow to the Generals the go-by was a big thing to ask of any Commander. 

"Dar," she said in her husky voice, so familiar to him. She stared intently into his eyes as he brought his head down to look at her. "What are the Generals' strategic staff to you? Have they marched and laughed and fought by your side? Have they held you while the medical staff saw to your broken leg, as Captain-Lord el Jien held you? Have they stood before you in the field of battle with their arm your signal, as the Commander has done? We can think and talk of these political matters but at the end of it we are soldiers and the only thing we believe in is each other. 

"I have believed in you enough to walk alone into your tent. You may take me now, if you will, and bind my eyes and hang me for a spy in front of my brother, my former Captain and my husband. You would be richly rewarded for doing so, Dar. Even Clair would never blame you, he would know you had to do your duty by your expressed orders from the Generals. 

"If you come with us and we fail, you know it well, Vaie, the Generals will want to show you mercy, they will understand if you cannot forswear your vow to Clair's banner. But my father will force them to the worst, you must understand this. If you come with us, you may be hung for a traitor and your lands stripped from your family in consequence. Your mother and sisters will be flung out to starve. There are not many can come to fight for us. Fourth will come, of course."

Dar Vaie was nodding, he said: "Yes, Fourth will always and forever be the Commander's. And on his deathbed Commander-Sir Stariel made Loisir swear that if ever he could do you any service he should cross his vow to do it. He never lifted his head after you had to go to Vail that time although he would not explain to us what he felt he was to blame for. And Caja will bring Seventh." 

"No," Tashka answered with a bitter smile. "Caja will not want to give the Commander the go-by but he has been deployed the other side of Arventa. If you and Tenth come to us, Vaie, the Generals will call him in. His father, General Nain, will tell him that victory cannot be ours and will appeal to him, that he ought to remember it, that his men should be his victory, he should not lead them to so uncertain a future as to fight on our side but rather should remain with the strategic staff and plead for Clair and I when victory is theirs. 

"el Jien will bring us his proper half of Ninth Vail and we have Tenth Athagine just now but I think the Athagine Council will make young van Athagine fall back once he is out of this siege, he has not secured the succession and his father will not last long now. All we have against the Sietter soldiers is our strategic minds. You know my strategic mind, Vaie. You know the Commander's abilities. Do you think the Generals in Arventa can prevail against us and give Nain the victory they will promise him? You must decide now, Dar, will you side with Nain and the Generals, hang me and cling to the rings on the Generals' fingers or will you join Loisir to wipe out that stain to the old Commander's honour, he who sought out us four as the rising stars, put us together, Angels of military skill, trained us and then thought he had betrayed me because when he went to try to persuade my father to let me go up to the strategic staff, instead my father tried to bestow me on the Captain." Her brother officer let out a cry of disgust and anger, she gripped his arm with her scarred right hand, staring intently into his eyes. "Never mind that, nor Loisir's vow, will you from your own heart believe in Clair's and my minds?" 

Dar bit his lip and looked aside, his grey eyes full of conflicted loyalties. 

"You were with the Commander at Shier Bridge," Tashka went on. "I was not permitted but Nain, Stariel and you, you stood with him and tried to hide his madness after he had gone to get peace for you." 

Dar looked down at the floor, his eyes screwed up. 

"And you stood at his back while he wept over Hanya Vashin." 

"Prithou!" Dar Vaie burst out. Tashka fell silent. Dar put a hand to his eyes and tears dripped through his fingers. Then he began to speak: "I would have died for him myself," he said softly. "We say it, that someone is our life and days and fight but sometimes it is true to the core of our heart. You know what a Commander he was - or perhaps you cannot see it, being his brother. Angels! you led him a dance in the troop, el Maien. He was forever cursing you out for something you did that got him on the go although he was the only one whom you could not get around with your tears. For us he was different. He knew how to make us laugh when we were walking with heavy packs in the snow, he knew how to talk with us, how to hold us if we had cause to weep, he knew how to get us to give up the last ounce of effort that we did not know we had in us. Vashin was the strategist but the Commander had the command of our hearts. 

"It is the truth, Vashin was his junior officer, but it was nobody's business, el Maien. They had been baby Lieutenants and Captains together; the Commander wanted to marry him but Captain-Sir Vashin made him take the banner so they could stay together. I would have done it too. I mean, not for Commander-Lord el Maien, of course, he was my senior," he looked nervously at Tashka but Tashka's face was grave and without judgement of his love for her brother Clair. "And Vashin died for him. Angels! Stand at his back while he wept for Vashin, we had to stand there ... while he ... s-s-screamed. He was mad, he was crazy with grief. He s-s-set us all about our d-duties: f-f-fetch the wounded, collect the weaponry, he was about it all ni-i-ight and his face - there was nothing in his face but the orders he gave us. In the morning we could not fi-i-ind him, there was s-s-some st-stupid thing we needed. We ran to look for him. 

"He was there where V-V-Vashin had f-f-fallen, with him in his arms. He screamed curses on Vashin for dying before him, prayed his pardon for the curses he screamed. We had to t-t-tear him from Vashin's dead body and drag him b-b-back to the camp, oh my Commander! My Commander!" Dar put his head in his hands, his whole body curled over in grief. Tashka leant over and put her hand gently on his back, he lifted his head, his grey eyes flashing with tears. She pulled her chair nearer to his and wiped her own hand under his eyes, wiping his tears away. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 22



"el Maien, he went to get peace like someone dead. We none of us thought he would come back to us. We tried everything we could to be his companion, not to let him go alone. He would not have us. He did not care. He cared for nothing. He whom we would have died for like Vashin died for him. 

"All he came back for was Vashin's body. For two weeks we waited in the hills, hiding it from the Generals' strategic staff that he had gone with Vashin's body. Every day we three Captains: Caja and Loisir and I, met in his tent and said: the morrow when the Commander is back he will be asking about this or that. He was so excellent a Commander, he always laid all the dispositions out so clearly. Even when he was gone for so long we knew what he would have been asking after and we did it for him, although he was not there and would never care again. We feared so greatly, we were stricken with shame ... Sithou, it was us. Vashin drew up the strategy and the Commander looked in our eyes and said No; he said it would lead to the loss of too many men and even ourselves but we insisted to throw our lives and our men into that ditch of a valley for that the Generals had called on us. The strategy was brilliant and as ever he directed us perfectly in its execution, Tashka it was so beautifully executed! But ... oh Tashka! if you had seen his smile when he gave way to us. He was already lost in mourning, his smile is burnt on my memory's eye. He knew; he knew how terrible a victory it would be. 

"We had to be completely stripped out and reformed, you know. Not one of us, trooper or officer, could do a thing together the more without him there to guide us. Eventually, Loisir got back Fourth but back then if we were made to work together we would just look at each other and weep with shame and grief and love for him that he had cared and he was in the right of it and he listened to us and he lost Vashin. He is our life, our days, our fight and we were always his care. We would have died for him, I tell it you, and when Vashin gave us the strategy that offered him victory over our lives we said Yes. And we still would. We would still lay down our lives and die for him, for what he was to us, standing at the head of the troop with his smile our dearest hope. Hell but his smile was rare for us - and sweet." 

"And now you'll take arms against him," Tashka said. 

Dar Vaie looked at her with the tears glistening on his fair lashes. "el Maien," he growled, "you are a pale Angel! You have always had my heart in your hand. You have marched and laughed and fought by my side and I am for you through Hell and through life. You are a scum, a dog! I would I had never met your pretty eye in a wink about hiding the other Lieutenants' parade silks just before inspection." 

He was reaching for her sword hand. Suddenly they heard voices outside the tent. They both turned in their chairs, a hand appeared on the tent flap and started to pull it open - it was the other two Commanders come over for a parlay! 

Tashka felt Dar's hard grip on her arm, he dragged her into his embrace, hiding her head with his, pressing her face into his neck with a hard scarred hand on the back of her head. 

"I ... I prithou pardon us!" Commander-Sir Darien's voice exclaimed. 

Without moving his head, Dar said angrily: "Sweet Hell! What time of night is this to come and disturb me!" 

Tashka pressed her face into his shoulder, her left hand was stuffed up under his red felt tunic. Dar held her in a painfully hard grip and her hip was caught on the side of his chair. She had a nervous desire to giggle. She bit her lip, trying to relax her red felt clad body over Dar's. It was so difficult to ignore Clair's training and allow the small curve of her breasts to press into her brother officer's muscled chest. She could feel his cheek burning against her temple. 'Vaie always blushed easy,' she thought and had to repress another snigger. 

"We, er, we just wanted to look at the maps again," Darien was saying, "and since your candles were alight ..." 

"Angels' sake! Take the cursed maps and give me a bit of peace!" Dar growled. 

There was a quick crackle and a rush and the embarrassed Commanders were gone. 

"Hell!" Dar breathed, letting Tashka go. "You are always trouble, el Maien!" 

She sat back on the ground at his feet and looked up at him. His face was pale now. She was trembling. Dar put a shaky hand through his hair and then moaned: "Oh Hell! They will look round to see which little Lieutenant is missing from their troops and find them all on station! They will think I have been seducing one of my own juniors. You damned dog, el Maien!" He added fiercely: "And make sure you tell Hanya the whole truth of it or he will hear some rumour and think I have given him the go-by." 

She started giggling. "'Fore the Angels!" she exclaimed. "You think it is bad for you? Hanya knows what you are like, you slut. What trouble will my husband give me for it, not three days married!" She flashed him a wicked wink and they both sniggered nervously and helplessly. 

"So you are with us," she said in warm arrogant el Maien tones, giving him a loving grin. 

"I know it will be bad for me!" he groaned, burying his head in his hands. "You are always trouble!" 

~#~*~#~

It was early in the morning, not long before dawn. When it became light they would lose hope and give Tashka up for a prisoner at best. Vadya sat in Clair's armchair in the sitting-room with one finger hooked in Imp's collar. If he let Imp go, Imp would run off through the hallway and try to go after Tashka. 

Clair lay on the sofa with Pava. Some hours earlier they had fallen asleep but Vadya sat staring into the embers of the fire and biting his lip. Opposite him, Arianna slept in her armchair under a warm blanket that Pava had put gently over her when her eyes closed. 

Imp gave a sudden whine, starting up under Vadya's hand. 

She came walking softly out of the shadows, her tired eyes gleaming in the dim light thrown by the fire. He looked up at her and nodded, curtly. If he tried to get up and hug her, he would burst into tears, he knew it. She sat down on the carpet by his feet, gave Imp a buffeting caress and hugged Vadya's legs to her. He put his hand on her head. 

"Is Vaie with us?" he asked huskily. 

She sniggered. "Of course," she said softly. "He will never give his vow to Clair the go-by. Nobody who has ever served under Clair would go above his fingers." 

Vadya looked over at the sleeping face of his brother by marriage. Sleep softened out the arrogant slanted eyes and thin mouth, it smoothed out the habitual light frown of suffering under which Vadya knew now that Clair hid a hot loving heart. Clair lay softly over the sofa against Pava el Jien's broad shoulder, his head resting against Pava's neck, Pava's arm loosely cast around him. 

"I had better report to him," Tashka said, getting up again and telling Imp to lie down and stay on station. She leaned over and pressed her mouth to Vadya's forehead, he half-lifted his hands but then he let her go to that first allegiance, her brother.  

Tashka trod softly through the sitting-room. It was strange to see her in the red Sietter uniform with the silver Lieutenant's buttons and gold embroidered collar. When she got to the sofa she gave Clair's shoulder a firm shake so he started quickly awake. He looked up at her and then reached and gripped her to him, pressing his head into her chest. She sat back on the sofa and let him hide his tears in the red felt of her single-breasted tunic. Pava was stirring and Arianna sat up. 

"Angels," Clair said at last, sitting up and wiping his hand over his face. "You smell of some other man's perfume! Whatever have you been about?" 

"Oh it must be Vaie's," Tashka looked apologetically over at Vadya. "I'll explain it to you, el Gaiel." 

"Vaie's perfume on you!" Pava exclaimed. "You cannot have been dallying with him. The sweet slut has never had a woman among the long list of his one-day-one-nights." 

"One-day-one-nights!" Clair said sarcastically. "Vaie's little bits of stuff are lucky if they get ten minutes in the back of a stable. Although he used to give Tashka the eye to a dreadful extent if he thought we were not looking. Ow! What?" as Pava kicked him. He looked over to the fireplace into Vadya's gentle brown eyes and Arianna's intent blue eyes and blushed. "Er, not that I would know about Vaie's preferences. Personally. Being his commanding officer. Um, although of course there are circumstances when a commanding officer, um, er." 

"And how is young Vaie?" Pava inquired. 

"He is very well," Tashka stretched and yawned, "and thinking of getting married." 

"Shut it!" Pava and Clair cried both at once. 

"What a story!" Pava scoffed. 

Tashka grinned at the two of them with a glinting smile. "We have had a fine old chat. And of course he is on our side." She put her hand gently on Clair's arm. 

Clair sighed, leaning his elbows on his knees and putting his face in his hands. "I know not why," he said softly, "after I deserted them all at Shier Bridge." 

"You got them peace," Tashka replied. "And you stood with your arm their signal and they love you. You know it well. Their hearts are strung on your fingers, Clair. Be happy that they love you." 

"And now I have to use that love to lead them to war," Clair said bitterly. 

"Better they come to war for your love than for van Sietter's money," she answered. "You will lead them truly in the best interests of their hearts. That is why they will always love you." 

He shrugged and his mouth pouted in a mournful smile strung with tears, as thin as a spider's web glistening with dew. 

"My darling," Arianna got up and came over to stroke Tashka's head and cover it in kisses. Clair turned and watched with narrowed eyes as she ran her long fingers caressingly all over Tashka's head. Tashka turned her head contentedly into Arianna's hands like a cat, sleepily smiling. "Come and have a bath, I will sit in the bath-house with you." 

"Oh that would be nice," Tashka said in a pleased voice. "And, Clair, can I have some tea and toast? Ask them to make the toast just golden with no black edges and to spread the butter thinly. Vadya, come, come with us. I will explain to you about Vaie. It is not what you think." 

Vadya walked over to her, his eyes full of a complete loving trust. He said, "yes, I will come and then you might make us a full formal report, before you sleep a while?" 

"Sir," she said smartly. She got out of the sofa and, casting a wicked glinting look back into Clair's narrowed eyes, put an arm tightly around Arianna's waist, whistled Imp to tell him he could get up, and went off, leaning very close to Arianna and sniggering about something she was whispering into Arianna's ear. 

Clair watched them go, staring narrowly at his sister's red felt clad arm around his wife's waist and his wife's blonde head leaning close to his sister's infamously beautiful rose-petal mouth. Pava watched Clair with a laugh on his wide red mouth. Tashka had always been able to get him on the go!



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 23



Thank you for the feedback and votes. 

*****

Hanyan clung to Clair's shoulders and sobbed. The bustle of the last few days, the news that his father would be going to war, the dim knowledge that his other father had died in war, had brought back all the anxieties he had suffered from when his mother had left. Clair knelt patiently on the sitting-room floor in full mail with the red silk surcoat, his helmet on the floor beside him, and let Hanyan cling to his shoulders. Arianna stood away from them, holding Arkyllan. She had tried to persuade Hanyan to come to her but as soon as Clair started to leave them, Hanyan ran and clung to him again, gasping with unnameable terror. 

Her brother Hanya had come through into the sitting-room in search of her. He came up to her and looked a question. She sighed, turning to try to resolve his difficulty at least but then Hanya went suddenly forward to Clair and Hanyan. 

"Ar't Hanya like me," he said. The child turned, startled, and stared at him, catching his red lip up in his teeth and looking through his tears at the scarred golden face close to him. The child's face was like an Angel of the Sorrows, achingly lovely with tears scattered like pearls on the golden fair cheeks. The scarred man said to him, "We have to be brave now, is it not? I too wish I could go to the battlements with your father and uncles but we have our duties here behind the lines. What says't?" Hanyan hiccupped and stared with his beautiful blue eyes into Hanya's summer sky eyes. 

"Shall't be a soldier one day?" Hanya enquired. Behind him, Arianna started forward. She hated it if people encouraged the boys to think of going into the army. She was even cross when Tashka gave them toy soldiers and books about uniforms and battle formations. Clair scowled at her to make her let it pass. "The other Commanders are waiting on papa. Shall he go and say, it was little Lieutenant-Sir Hanya, he would not let me go? That would not be right, is it, that a Lieutenant should order a Commander to stay with him." 

Hanyan let go of the thin red and gold silk surcoat on Clair's mailed shoulders. He reached out and put one hand on Hanya's scarred right cheek. Hanya knelt patiently on the floor and let him. 

"Does it hurt?" Hanyan asked. 

"Sometimes it itches," Hanya answered. 

"Did it hurt when the dogs bit you?" 

Clair saw el Jien's eyes veil over but Hanya replied in a quiet voice: "Of course. It hurt terribly but I was brave and I went to the hospital and as sees't, I am better of it now." 

"I will be brave then," Hanyan said. "I will be brave like you, Uncle Hanya." 

"There it is then," Hanya said. "Shall't be my brother Lieutenant, is it not? and help me and Aunt Anna roll the bandages." 

"Yes," Hanyan said, letting Clair's shoulders go. 

Clair leant over to give his son in duty bound a soft kiss. He put his hand on his brother by marriage's shoulder and gripped it in thanks. He went to Arianna and knelt to give his son in blood a hug, stood up and put out a hand to Arianna's head, he tucked a curl behind her ear and she smiled into his eyes then he was gone. 

'I did not kiss him,' she thought wistfully. 'I wish I had kissed him. Too late. I stop to think about it so I am always too late.' 

She turned with Hanya and the boys to go through to the dining-hall. The dining-hall was filled with servants, the tables pushed back against the walls on one side to make room for rows of spread out mattresses. The children who ordinarily lived in the castle and any servants who could be, had been evacuated to the town but there were a large number who felt it their duty to remain in their Lord and Lady's service. The footman Fiotr and some other servants who had come out of the army had helped Dar and Petra set up a makeshift kitchen army-style in the huge fireplace, Dar was presiding over cauldrons of stew and pots of coffee there. Petra and the five remaining assistant cooks chopped ingredients on a nearby table. Arianna was surprised to see that the filthy pot-boy, whom Clair would always grumble about but in whom he put up with a high degree of slackness, was still with them. She had assumed he would be among the first to run off and idle about the town. 

About an hour later there was a most terrible crashing roar. Their heads lifted and some of the servants screamed. Arianna started up to look over to the children but they had fallen asleep in a pile of bedding, cuddled close between Ria and Lisette, even for a noise like this they did not stir. 

She walked about the hall saying: "We knew the attack would begin at some time, clearly it has started early. Remember, it is only we who have cannon, not the troops besieging us." Slowly the twittering servants settled back down again, starting up at the second roar and staring about them but not so desperately scared. 

It was so terrible, staying there in the hall in dreadful ignorance of what was happening. Occasionally some one of the Guard would come and say something incomprehensible, like: Fifth Sietter sent a scouting unit out behind Tenth and found they were withdrawing. Therefore the battle was engaged early. We are using a version of the Palair net and trident strategy. She would nod and say: "Tell my Lord that we are ready to receive the wounded." Then she would turn to Hanya and he would explain: Tenth were withdrawing to leave the field free for Ninth Vail to come in with Clathan's cannon. "But why are Tenth not fighting? I thought they had joined our side?" No, Anna, we cannot ask them to fight with those they have been living with, side by side. It would soil Tashka's honour to ask that of them, he has only asked them to withdraw and not take part. They will fight for us later in the war, when their intentions have been formally declared. But it is a matter of concern that Fifth have realised early that Tenth Sietter are withdrawing, it is a question whether Ninth Vail and the cannon are in place yet.  

One of the cannon on the battlements burst during the night and they brought the wounded down the corridors to put them in the family quarters around the courtyard. Hanya stood up to go and assist but Arianna put her hand on his arm and said firmly: "There are enough people there, people who have medical skills." He sat back down by her side restlessly twisting his long pale fingers together. 

Shortly afterwards Clair came striding through the dining hall. She was so glad to see him, she stood up and went straight to him. Heedless of the servants all about them, she walked into his embrace. The rings of his mailcoat were hard and pinching under his thin silk surcoat to her soft plump flesh. Her soft breasts pressed into the military mail, he gripped her arms with tight fingers and stared into her eyes, his grey eyes fierce and angry under the ridge of his shining helmet. Her heart bumped uncomfortably in her chest in the fear that he had come to tell her they had lost already. 

"We have the advantage," he said in a clipped tone of voice. "I came to tell it you myself and to ask about the wounded from that cannon exploding." 

"The report is here," she answered, "Hanya is just finishing it. Wills't sit a moment and cans't take it back with you." 

"Good man!" Clair said, walking over to Hanya. "I will take your report back for the Guard Captain." He sat in her chair, his arm hooked about her hips, he drew her to him. She came close to him in a hesitant uncertainty, feeling aroused at the hard pressure of his mailed arm, feeling guilty at her enjoyment of it considering her pacifist principles and that here they were at war with many already wounded and dying about them. "You have made preparations for the wounded," he said, just for something to say, he knew she would have done a thorough job of it. 

"Yes," she answered, taking up the topic of discussion gratefully. "Any Castle Guard will be brought through to spare rooms here in the family quarters. Tenth Athagine and Ninth Vail soldiers are to be put in the armoury and castle offices. Sietter soldiers are to be put in the reception rooms." 

"Tenth Sietter soldiers?" he asked, turning his head up to her. Hanya el Jien lifted his head and looked at Clair with a twist of his mouth in his scarred face. "There will not be enough wounded in Tenth to take up all the reception rooms, if there are any at all." 

"No, the other Sietter soldiers," she answered. 

"Oh no, Anna!" he exclaimed. "They will send back for their wounded, you cannot take them into the castle!" 

Hanya started to speak but Arianna cut across him, "Hanya has explained to me it is not the custom," she said coolly, "but since I realise it may take two or three days for the Sietter troops to send back, I have decided we must take them in." 

"They will think they are being taken prisoner!" 

"We will explain that it is not so." 

"What?! You are going to patch them up and send them back out to fight us again!" 

"Clair!" she said, "tolds't it me we could take care of the wounded. Musts't let us do it in our own way." 

"Angels, Anna! I never imagined," he swung his head round on Hanya. "How in Hell did you come to let her make such a damned stupid plan as this?! Do you not know what a problem it will be? It is completely contrary to the code of honour!" 

"If cares't to try to stop her when she has decided, go to it," Hanya answered with a shrug and a grin. "I have explained the matter to her but she is decided." 

Clair looked up at his wife's obstinate pale face. Suddenly, in the midst of the bitterness of battle, of standing on the battlements watching his friends and brother officers tearing each other to pieces and dying in front of his eyes when he had hoped never to suffer such sights again, he laughed. Her simplistic humanitarian philosophy; he should never have trusted her. "My Lady wife," he said, squeezing her big round hips with his arm. "It shall be as you have decided. You will reap a storm in doing this but you know that already. There is no purpose to arguing with you. You are an obstinate boot when once you have made up your mind that you have found the right road to go down. You give me hope for my region and my people and my country." He stood up and turned, took her by the shoulders and pressed his mouth on her warm wide red mouth, sweet as a bowl of cherries. She had set her mouth in a hard line ready to argue with him, she was totally unprepared for his kiss, it came bearing down on her hard mouth in a sudden fierce pressure then he had taken the papers from Hanya's hand with the ink still wet and was gone. 

She stood in the middle of the hall, her hands pressed to her breast, staring at the ceiling, hearing the cannons roaring about the castle. She had been so glad to see him alive! oh why had she immediately started fighting with him. She remembered him saying that love was not just white doves cooing to each other in a soppy painting by Velor and she smiled. 

It was not clear when victory happened. Only, not long after dawn, their lovely laughing gentle-hearted cousin Pava came through the dining hall to find them, his face haggard with fear. 

"H-have we lost?" Arianna could not forbear asking fearfully. He looked so wretched, so distraught, she thought it must mean defeat. 

"No, cousin," he answered, staring desolately into her eyes. "Victory is ours." 

In his eyes she saw how empty victory could be. 

She turned to Hanya, he was already collecting together the lists of surgeons' names from the town. Tarra Larian was to ride with him and they would bring any medical assistance they could back to the castle. 

"I am going to N-Ninth," Pava said. "W-will you make ready? Cousin, I am afraid there will be very many ... There will be very many." 

She pressed his arm. "I will ride with you," she said, as warmly as if they were going out in the morning for a trip to a country inn where they would have lunch and then come home. 

"Oh no!" he said. 

"Let us go," she answered, taking up the cloak which she had already laid out ready. 

Outside it was a dull cool autumn day with a grey sky although no rain. The castle gates were already open. Arianna was surprised to see one of the Guard horses saddled for her, although Pava's own Star was there. The grooms lifted rueful faces to her and hurried to excuse themselves, many of the horses were unrideable this morning after a night plunging in the stables terrified by the cannonade. One of my Lord's racehorses had injured herself so badly that they had had to destroy her, the grooms' eyes turned desolately aside as they blurted this out, they had not been able to tell Clair as yet. 

Arianna and Pava rode through the gates and Arianna gave a sudden cry which she immediately stifled. 

The hillside down which they had galloped for their hunt not two weeks before was torn and blasted in the frail wreaths of the morning mist which mixed with remnants of cannon smoke. Campfires still burned here and there among the torn and trampled tents, the rags of bedding and clothing. Bodies lay about the wet grass, there was a dull faint persistent moaning borne up to them on the light breeze. Arianna twisted back in her saddle to look into the gates, she saw that servants were starting to come out with table-tops and chairs to collect and carry the wounded as she had ordered. She set her face and turned back in the saddle to go with Pava. 

Down the hill they went towards the little wood where she had sat and her husband had opened up his heart for her to explore. There was an officer in Vail green and gold riding out of the trees to meet them. As he came closer to them, she saw that his head was bleeding and his silk surcoat over his mail torn and bloody. He was weeping. While he spoke to them, while he rode with them, the whole time, the tears rolled down his craggy face. 

"Commander!" he cried as he approached them. "Hear me!" 

"Captain Baraie, I will hear you," Pava leant over as he said it and gripped the man's shoulder. His Captain looked blankly into his face and the tears continued to slide down the furrows of his weathered cheeks. 

"We were discovered by a scouting unit early," he said dully. "When we deployed the cannon, some of us were among them fighting in the trees - we could not but deploy the cannon early, sir!" 

"I know it! tell me of it later. What of the wounded?" Pava's voice wavered high up with fear. 

"T-two hundred dead," the Captain sobbed. Pava flinched. 

"Marin?" he asked through gritted teeth. 

"Wounded to the arm. S-s-sir. Loisir ..." 

"No!" 

"Loisir is ..." 

"Not now!" Pava hissed savagely through his gritted teeth. "Baraie," he said in a trembling pleading voice. "I cannot hear it now. Oh my Captain! Tell me the rest of it." He had gone paper white and his green eyes glared into the wood as they rode up to the blasted trees. The trees were blackened, their trunks split and shattered. As they rode, Pava's Captain was reeling off a great list of names: dead, wounded, wounded, wounded, dead. Pava clenched his long pale fingers on his reins and gritted his teeth. 

Pava assisted Arianna to dismount, she tied the reins of her horse to a broken tree. Her face was blank of expression as she moved between the corpses flung among the fallen leaves. The golden and brown leaves were stained with clotting red and black blood and there was a stench of smoke and raw flesh about her. Arianna went to see what wagons were still in fit shape to take the wounded back to the castle, she knew they had brought the cannons here in wagons. 

Her clear firm decisive tones came cutting through the misty woodland, telling the soldiers staggering with fatigue and loss of blood to bring the still jostling terrified horses under control and lead them round in a line in front of the woodland. She went to assist a young officer in the red Sietter uniform with a petrified face who was trying to stand then she realised that his foot was shattered and bleeding and gently she eased him back onto the leaves, saying: Wait here, sweetheart. Let me just see to this cut. She started to try to ease his boot off, he gave a terrible scream. One of the castle servants came to help her, saying they had better get the young officer into the wagons and look at his leg back at the castle. 

As she walked among the trees, sometimes she met her cousin. He was helping to carry his men to the wagons, his voice murmuring to them, gentle soothing warm. He sounded just as he used to when he was wooing her for her kisses back in sunny gardens in Iarve. He looked at her when they met as if she were a complete stranger, passing on to assist his men without a word to her. 

She came upon Commander-Sir Flada Clathan with a terrible wound to his head. She had to fight down a sudden impulse to call for a special carriage for him. There were no special carriages here. She knelt by his side, taking his loose hand, searching desperately for a pulse and for the first time tears came to her eyes when she found it. She blinked them fiercely back, tears were only a hindrance now. "Ar't an old fool!" she whispered. "What for has't come out again, at your age, does't think Clair and Tashka would ask this of you? I know how it is. Has't done it for love of them." 

Some people were coming to carry Flada to the wagons. They were moving out, she stood up and looked about her. Servants from the castle had come down, there were many figures now moving through the woodland to check if there might be some still living among the torn young bodies in red and in green and gold uniforms lying among the yellow and brown leaves and the shattered trees. 

She went to find Pava, to see if he wanted her to ride back with him. 

He was kneeling in the fallen leaves, his fair head stooped over a body in his arms. When he lifted his head to her, she saw that he was holding a boy of about seventeen. The boy's face was still downy, frozen in its youth with a broken arrow that stuck out of his throat. She knew he had died a terrible, painful death. 

"Loi-sir!" Pava sobbed. 

She knelt beside her lovely courtly laughing cousin, stroked his head with trembling long fingers. His green eyes, staring wildly at her, were flashing with tears. 

"M-my youngest Lieutenant!" Pava moaned. "What will I tell Tashka? He said to me, send an order expressed ... in writing ... to leave him behind! I did, I did it! Why would he come? O Loi-oisir!" 

~#~*~#~

Arianna walked through the castle hallway, where the servants were running to and fro again, carrying medical supplies and trays of food, directing the surgeons who had started to arrive to the rooms where their skills were needed. Distantly she could hear the screaming of the wounded but she knew that they were being attended to as best they could be. It was of no use to go and torture her nerves and irritate those in charge of them by just checking everything was in order. She walked through to the kitchens. Dar and Petra were back at their range, some of the servants who had children and had evacuated had returned, leaving their children with relatives and friends. Everyone was active and busy - even the slatternly pot-boy hurried to and fro, not carrying anything but looking busy. 

Arianna went back to the castle offices where Laran and Tarra were putting the papers back in the safe and the strong-room. Finally she felt she could go and see her children. 

When she got to the sitting-room, she was shaking. She walked in on unsteady legs. Luckily the children were not there. She went straight to the drinks cupboard and poured herself something, she had no idea what it might be, it went into one of the little bowls and she tipped it into her mouth and gasped as the spirits hit her throat. She coughed and gasped again and blinked the tears back in her eyes then wiped her mouth with the back of one hand. She saw blood on her hand, looked down and there was blood all over her skirt and her cloak. She turned to the stairs to go and change; she could not allow the children to see her like this. As she moved to the door, it opened. Clair came in, no longer in his mailcoat, he was wearing a blue felt suit. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 23



She looked narrowly across at him. She suddenly understood, all the times she had been impatient, wishing he might help her with this or that, be less nervous and irritable, he had had things of this kind on his mind. Clair's narrowed slanted eyes looked across at her. "Where have you been?" he asked. 

"D-down in the wood," she answered. "Has't seen Flada?" 

"Flada?" He lifted his head, suddenly fearful. "Uncle Flada?" 

"I am sorry for it, my Lord," she said. She gave him the title she was used to calling him by without thinking. "Flada Clathan has been wounded, although I think he will live." 

"Why did he come!" Clair moaned. "Could he not resist it, one more military operation, he has put his whole family in danger for it! Diodr serving in Second will be hung for his foolishness if we do not get him out in time. If only he had just let us have the cannon he could have pretended we had forced him give it us but now he has put his children in danger by making it so evident he has joined us." Then his head lifted, he looked at her hands and the skirt of her dress. "You have been in the wood?" he repeated. "Where Ninth Vail ..." 

"Someone had to go with Pava," she answered. "Let me go and change, I prithou. Has't seen the boys?" 

"They are with Ria," he answered. "They have been asking for you but she has explained that you have work you must do with the wounded. Anna, why did you go there? My darling ..." 

"No!" she hissed fiercely at him. "Not now! Call me your Lady for now so I may do this work! Cans't not understand, surely you of all people understand! I have so much to do, I cannot stop to be your darling now. Loisir is dead." 

He took a step back, looking into her eyes with sympathetic grey eyes. "Who?" he asked. 

"Pava's youngest Lieutenant. Tashka knows him, I thought mights't too." 

"Ah, Hell," he said softly. "You have seen the poor boy dead. I am very sorry, my ... my Lady. Where are Pava and Tashka?" 

"They are washing and eating then they will go and help the Ninth Vail soldiers to write home," she answered. 

He looked into her eyes with such a warmth of love and affection that she could not bear it, she turned her head away. "You have done this - you thought to give them that task which will help them, in the midst of everything else you must think of," he murmured. "Go, you must wash and change yourself. And I must go and make sure the lines of supply are being respected. Then I will meet you here. I'll send Lisette to you and ask them to bring us all some food here, will that suit you, my Lady?" 

"Yes," she said through her gritted teeth. "I thank you." 

When she came back down to the sitting-room, Tarra el V'lair was lying on one of the sofas, propped on some cushions, his leg heavily bandaged and a bowl of soup in his hand. He had been at the front of Tenth Athagine as they charged out the gates into the ranks of Sietter soldiers, his troop had not sustained such heavy losses as Ninth Vail and as the Sietter troops but Arianna knew he too must have lost people whom he was used to work alongside every day. He looked at her, his sad eyes sunk bitterly in mourning. She crossed to him and pressed his arm, his dark-haired head swung away unable to bear the gentle sympathy she offered. 

Hanya and Vadya were helping themselves to bowls of soup and some bread and cheese that had been laid out. Tashka and Pava came through the long windows as she went up to the table, clean and tidily dressed in civilian clothes. The four of them looked at each other but did not speak. Tashka went over to el V'lair. Her face was expressionless and she waited until he lifted a hand, when she clasped it hard in hers. el V'lair gripped her hand then continued sullenly to eat his soup while she went to stand at Vadya's elbow to collect her food. She followed Vadya across to sit on a sofa with Pava. 

Clair came into the room and went straight to Tarra. He pressed something into his hand, saying: "My dear friend. You have often thrown yourself behind me to second me when I flung my life in the hazard. I never would have expected you to put yourself in the field of battle to defend my whole family and I hope that you know what I feel for it." Tarra turned his louche head to look at the bundle of papers in his hand and opened his mouth in protest. "Shut it!" Clair said roughly. "Take the silly money and spend it how you will. I cannot give you back Stargazer because I have already given him to Tashka but take back the vineyard and cash at the least of it." 

He crossed to Tashka and Pava, sitting angrily on their sofa, and knelt before them. "Listen," he said softly. "Of course it hurts now, it is terrible now but it was a good plan, well-executed and it had to be done. It has been done not for our selfish sakes but for the sakes of our family, our regions and our country. My brother, my brother officer, my dears. Do not rack your hearts out with it. You must have the strength now to go and help Pava's soldiers write home so eat well and remember: it is van Sietter brought this death and horror on all of us while he hides in his palace a long way from the front line." He gripped a knee of each of them. The tears dripped down Pava's nose, Tashka gritted her teeth and nodded curtly. They began to eat, lifting their heads more easily. 

Vadya watched Clair go to fetch himself a bowl of soup. He could see Clair's eyes abstracted, he knew Clair was thinking of the lines of supply for all the different troops now quartered within and outside his walls, of political issues which would need to be managed, of how different Sietter troops might react now that war had been declared but that Commander-Lord el Maien, formerly of Fourth Sietter, had declared that he would be going to the Generals' strategic staff in Port H'las. Clair had suffered as Tashka and Pava suffered, as he had not, watching friends and brother officers fall beneath the cannon and sharp steel. Vadya understood suddenly why it was that Tashka had laughed when he had asked if Dar Vaie would be on their side. He knew that if he had ever been led by his hot-hearted brother by marriage, who hid behind a cool arrogant demeanour the ability to move rapidly between grand strategy and attention to the smallest of details and a heart of extreme tenderness and care for his friends and dependents, he would never have been able to refuse any thing that Clair asked of him. 

There was a cough at the door, they turned and saw Petra the steward there. The old man looked at Clair nervously. 

"My Lord," he said. "Commander-Sir Darien is asking to see you." 

Clair flinched and took a step back into the sitting-room. Tashka leapt up, spilling her bowl of soup over the floor. "Is that rat calling on us from outside the walls?" she hissed. "Has he not gone back to Arventa yet? What does it take to rid us of those scum?" 

"Commander-Sir Darien was brought into the castle with the other Sietter wounded," Petra said in a wooden toneless voice. 

Clair clutched at his hair. Tashka stepped forward, absolute rage incandescent on her face and blazing in her blue eyes. "What do you mean?" she growled, "the Sietter wounded have been brought in here? What, are we taking them prisoner? What dishonourable dog has done this to them!" 

"I ordered it so," Arianna answered, coming forward. "I have undertaken the care of the wounded, that means the Sietter soldiers too. They were your brothers in arms when you were in Fourth Sietter. How cans't bear to let them lie and die outside our castle walls. Time will be, they will swear to Clair's fingers. How can they do that if we have left them in agony outside our walls? They are not prisoners, although some will be well advised no doubt to remain here as such after being torn apart by our cannons!" Her face was marble white, her blue eyes blazed as fiercely as Tashka's in her fury at the violence she was having to witness. 

"It is against the code of honour!" Tashka hissed. "They know the code, they would swear to Clair's fingers whatever in time but how can they now after being dragged in here against the code?" 

Pava had stood up and come forward to take Clair's arm. "Anna," he said, "cans't not ask Clair to go and talk to Darien. Does't not know ..." 

"Of course I know!" she ground out. "I know everything of you officer-aristocrats with your code of honour that means only death and injury and pain. Even you, Hanya, I suppose have sometimes thought of throwing a glove in someone's face over some silly quarrel!" Hanya looked up and across at Clair, Clair turned his frightened head and shook it at Hanya. Arianna suddenly said: "What! Has't thrown your glove in my husband's face! What for?" they could almost see her quick brain figuring it out. "Has't done it in my name! For some imagined slight to my honour! Without even telling me!" 

Clair started forward out of Pava's loose protective grip. "Anna!" he said angrily. "You cannot expect him to have stood by while there was so much talk at court. He is your brother and loves you! He is not like Prianne who does not care a copper coin's curse if you are happy or unhappy in your marriage, whether I beat you to my will or imprison you or what I do so long as I stop you from engaging in politics. Why do you look at me so. Do you think Prianne has not come to speak to me sometimes; not to remonstrate with me for the gossip about my affairs but to ask me to rein you in! He made it plain that I would not have trouble from him if I mistreated you so long as I reined you in. You stare at it, do you? Do you not know what kind of man Prianne is? 

"Hanya did try to give me a glove; it was when we heard you were with child. He thought ... but I would not take your brother's glove. I assured him, I swore it on my juniors' lives, I have never forced a favour from anyone. I asked him to write to you, to come visit you and find out for himself from you. I represented to him the scandal it would mean for you if it were known we had duelled over such a matter. He took the glove back. But do not think it meant he disrespected you. He did it for love of you, Anna." 

Her scarred brother with the limp that restricted his walk so badly, who could not possibly have defeated her agile husband, expert with the rapier and constantly in and out of duels at that time of his life, looked deprecatingly at her from the table of food where he stood. He held his hands out, not in apology but in appeal. 

"I will go and deal with Darien," Tashka announced, her face writhing with impatient anger at this irritating distraction from the issue at point. "I will throw that damned dog out the gates and back to the field of battle where he can die in what agony he like, for what his brother did to mine!" 

"No shall't not," Arianna said in a freezing cold voice. "Has't killed his brother, has't forced he himself to submit to you already in a duel. Is that not enough for you but musts't now abuse my hospitality to throw my guest out of my doors? There must be an end to this violence and hatred. Perhaps a war is not the best place to start that work but start it I will." She turned to the steward, who was looking as blank-faced as he could manage, staring with intense concentration at the bookcase by the side of the door. "Petra, take me to Commander-Sir Darien." 

"You cannot go alone!" Clair cried in agony. 

She turned around and surveyed them all with her blue eyes raging in her marble white still cold face. "Who among you can come with me?" she demanded in tones dripping with scorn. "Who among you has not killed a man over some matter of 'honour'? Who can go and speak to Darien and not risk him provoking you to offer him a glove, or provoke him to offer you a glove? I thought so." She turned with a whisk of red skirts and stormed out of the room in Petra's wake. 

They stared after her. Tarra suddenly said, "el Maien, she is a storming lovely but you know, I think I will leave her to your management!" Hanya gave a quick snort of laughter. Tashka kicked her soup bowl and Vadya got up and gripped her arm, gave her a hard glare to say she was behaving badly and must stop it. 

Clair stared after his wife, his eyes were still clouded with fear. He could not bear to go after her even though he knew she was not safe in the rooms full of soldiers who had sworn allegiance to van Sietter's fingers. 

Arianna went seething with rage down the corridor, Petra scuttling before her. The servants all backed aside as they saw her face, white with temper and the blue eyes blazing out of it, coming down on them. Rarely did they see Lady el Jien in a temper, ordinarily she was over-indulgent and allowed them too much latitude but when her face was like it was now they all jumped suddenly to it and acted on her orders immediately and without question. 

Petra led her to the corridor off which the formal reception rooms were situated. There were some of the Castle Guard standing on duty there, she had ordered that it be so, to make sure that there was not trouble between the different groups of soldiers in the castle rooms. At the entrance to the corridor, she paused. Petra hesitated by the Guard, looking nervously back at her, she took a deep breath and tried to calm her over-stretched nerves, to get a grip on her temper. It would never do to try and go to negotiate with yet another angry and frightened officer-aristocrat while in a temper with a different set of the stupid romantical inhumanly cruel ... That would never do. She jerked her head in a nod to Petra and he led her forward into the corridor. 

Even the corridor was full of nervous dirty wounded soldiers in torn red felt uniforms. Those who could move were hovering there as if frightened of being struck down if they sat down to rest. Some who could not move were sitting up on bedding in the reception rooms, calling to their comrades in the corridor, desperate to ask what was happening. Others lay between life and death, still on their spread out bedding. Surgeons and servants moved between them, attempting to offer them assistance, food and water. Some warned others that it must be poisoned. Arianna gave a big sigh as she followed Petra down the corridor. 

The Fifth and Eighth Sietter soldiers recognised the authority in her face and fell away before her but began to cluster behind her and follow her in a frightened bunch. Arianna's heart began to thump in her chest. There were many of them, they were rough troopers, tired and scared. They had gone to war because she, a woman who was walking through them alone apart from an elderly servant, had tried to suggest there could be a council of merchants to advise the King and the Privy Council. 

Petra was showing her into the big reception room. The sofas and armchairs were full of wounded men, men lay spread out on the floor on bedding, under the irritating black and red circles and lines of Battle 1 and Battle 2 and the lovely joyous gentle colours over the fireplace in the painting of the harvest coming home by Hyaline. 

He was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace in his red felt tunic, huddled close to the blazing fire. He was a typical Sietter Knight and officer: tall and rangy and blond like Hanya Vashin, although not handsome like Vashin had been. He stared at her from furious pale blue eyes in a lean and angry face with a long scar cutting down and across it. She realised it must be Tashka who had marked his face so cruelly. There was a bandage around his head and his leg was bandaged up, his long brown army boot had been cut away and the red felt breeches of his uniform had been cut from the thigh to the ankle and hung loosely about his leg. Like many of his men, he had clearly not had time to get into his battle gear when the fighting began. 

"Commander-Sir Lial Darien of Fifth Sietter," she said politely. He glared at her as she moved so statuesque in her red dress towards him, her flaxen head held high and proud with the hair dressed elegantly up on it, her pale face veiled with a cold expressionless look. "Lady el Jien van Sietter," she said formally. 

He stared, his mouth dropping open. He looked behind her. "Where is Lord Clair?" he asked. 

"The arrangements for the care of the wounded are my responsibility," she answered. "I know it is not the custom but I cannot see you lie wounded outside my walls so I have brought you and your men into the castle. I beg you to tell it them, the medical help that is offered is offered in good heart and the food is good." 

"We ... we are prisoners?" he demanded. "el Maien has determined to make us prisoners for obeying his father, our sworn Lord, against him? Or is it Lord Tashka who has done this to us!" 

"It is me!" she insisted. "You are not prisoners. I cannot bear it, to see you wounded outside my walls. When they send back for you, those who are able may go back to Arventa. I thought ... we might agree that those who are not able could take a vow to keep out of the war then I will allow them to remain here and be cared for here." 

Darien began to look desperate. "Will Lord Clair not come?" he asked, turning to Petra, who stood to the side of them with his old white head bent down. Petra lifted his head and looked at Arianna. 

"Lord Clair will have none of you," she answered. "I think knowest why." 

His eyes flickered, he said: "Lord Tashka? Does Lord Tashka know I am here? Will he not come to me?" 

"By all means," she answered. "Lord Tashka has expressed great willingness to come and throw you out of my gate to die in a lot of pain while waits't for them to send back for you. I imagine it will be about two days before they can do so, they suffered heavy losses. I have forbidden Lord Tashka to do this but so wishs't it, mays't send for him and I will allow him to throw out you alone - not your men, for that is not taking them as your care, is it?" 

He stared into her pale cool face with the veiled look in the round blue eyes. "Is it ... that you are on van Sietter's side in this war?" he asked in puzzlement. 

"Of course not!" she showed the first sign of emotion, her eyes snapped with irritation then cooled back down to the shaded pools of blue that told him nothing of what she felt. "van Sietter and I are completely at odds. I am the one wishes to resolve the poverty of the people through enlisting the merchants' help. He wishes to increase his power and influence. I understand that has't sworn a vow and must fight to support van Sietter. Musts't understand that my vow is to the betterment of the people. That also means you and your soldiers, I will not allow you to suffer pain and death on my doorstep when I can prevent it." 

Darien said: "You swore a vow to your husband, is it not? How can you be going against him in this way? He surely did not wish you to bring us in here, especially me." 

She tilted down her veiled blue eyes and stared at him. "I was bestowed on him," she acknowledged, "and in return he bestowed all he owns on me. That includes the region. Sietter will be mine when he is the sworn Lord. Shall't be mine too since ar't a Sietter officer. I will take you as my care." Darien stared at her, the proud Lady using the words from the military vow with confident knowledge. Her round expressionless blue eyes looked back at him. She was not a pacifist out of naive girlish sentiment, she was a scholar who had considered in detail the life which the menfolk around her led. "Ar't truly content?" she asked him, "to take arms on behalf of someone like van Sietter? Knowest it well, he does not have the good of the region in his mind in this war. Is it truly van Sietter's road that your heart tells you to go down?" 

His head swung away, staring to the side of the room where the carpets were rolled up off the floorboards so that they would not be ruined with blood and the dirt of battle dripping on them. "My heart is buried in my brother's grave," he murmured. She had to lean forward to hear what he said. "And I have sworn a vow." 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 23



"Oh well," she said in a toneless voice, "if it is a question of honour, I completely understand." He looked up at her. Her face was still like a marble statue with her blue eyes veiled of emotion. 

"You too are honourable," he said slowly and as if he were thinking aloud, "since you will take us Sietter soldiers in even though we came to lay siege to you." 

She hesitated before replying to this. She knew that for the Sietter soldiers, the region was paramount. It was the region that was above the slippery fingers of the sworn Lord whom they knew in their hearts was not worthy the allegiance they were obliged to bestow on him. These soldiers in particular had been sent to fight many wars and bitter skirmishes in the name of their region and so they had to put a value on it even above their lives. She could make an appeal to their hearts through her position as Clair's Lady wife, the future sworn Lady of their region. 

She took a deep breath and raised her flaxen gold head, standing tall and plump and beautiful above him in her red dress, the mother who had borne a future sworn Lord. "I will take you in," she said, "because my honour will be compromised if I do not do all I can for any one of humanity." His pale blue eyes lifted to her were puzzled and she knew she was in danger of losing his influence with the men clustering behind them, watching nervously to see what the outcome would be of her discussion with the one commanding officer they could refer to. But she was not a politician, she was a mathematical mind. It was impossible to lie in mathematics, she had not the habit of it. "Even you and Lord Clair and Lord Tashka," she said, "might call each other brother officers. I prefer to think of all people as my brothers and sisters in common humanity. I will take you all in not because you are Sietter but because you are in pain and I can help you. 

"Darien, I know has't suffered for my Lord's sake. To lose your brother is terrible, although let us admit it here, Lord Tashka had what you might call honourable cause for what he did. However I am a pacifist. I do not think it is right that shoulds't lose your brother in vengeance taken over Tashka's brother. I am sorry for it, Darien." 

He stared at her from pale blue eyes suddenly full of tears. "Lord Tashka had no need to kill him with a cut to the throat," he said in a choked voice. "He could have done it cleanly at the least of it." 

Her eyes clouded with pity and horror. In a movement of unthinking simple charity, she leant close to him and gently took his hand. He let his hand lie heavily in her long pale hand, her eyes looked softly and sadly at him. "I am truly sorry," she said. "Lord Tashka was very young, I believe. Although I know it is the truth, he is a killer." 

Darien looked at her dimly through his tears. Then he gripped her hand and pulled her gently so she had to bend even closer to him. She smelt blood and smoke from the cannons and a sour dampness. He said, "do you realise that we had expressed orders to take you and your brother, el Jien van Iarve, prisoner? We were to take you back to Iarve but," he dropped his voice so she had to lean even nearer to him, so that the other soldiers and Petra the steward could not hear him, "you would not have arrived there." He looked intently into her startled round blue eyes. "I did not have time to destroy the paperwork when we had to go into battle formation," he whispered. His eyes stared into her eyes. She realised that he was trying to tell her that incriminating papers with van Sietter's - and perhaps her own brother's - signatures were in the battle-torn tents of Fifth Sietter. "When we have won the war," he whispered, "do not go with any troop to Iarve. Get away to court or some region friendly to you." 

She straightened up, her face remained blank of expression, she did not give away in her astonishment any hint of what they had been discussing, to his relief. If the Generals' strategic staff ever found out he had passed information to her he would be hung for a spy. "Does't think you will win?" she enquired, as if they were talking about whether it might rain or not. 

"Yes," he answered honestly, lifting his blue eyes to her blue eyes. "We have more men, they are battle-hardened for in Sietter we are often skirmishing and at war. We have unlimited arms and other supplies, too. The H'las have a better structure to their command but if they cannot draw in other regions to support them, they will struggle. Arms in particular will be an expensive drain on their coffers and General-Lord van H'las has spent too much succouring his people, he has not the reserves in his treasury that Lord van Sietter has." He saw her eyes focus on him more sharply in appreciation of this surprisingly intelligent analysis from a bone-headed field officer. 

"But if you lose," she murmured, not concentrating on what she was saying, thinking about the extraordinary information he had just passed to her. 

"I'll not swear to Lord Clair's fingers," he muttered. He lifted his head and looked at her and said: "If we lose, I'll swear to your fingers." 

Suddenly her eyes unveiled, her face seemed to melt. She looked at him in startled enquiry, the faintest of pink flushes in her pale cheeks. 

"But if we lose," he said, "I'll be stripped out of the army a traitor for having taken arms against Lord Clair in support of the sworn Lord. Lord Tashka will be well glad to see me turned out of my position and home." 

"Does't not think you will lose," she pointed out, "and Lord Tashka is van H'las now, it is not for him to say who is stripped out of the Sietter army or named a traitor because when their loyalties came into conflict, they chose to honour their vow." 

"van H'las?" he said, puzzled, then his eyes cleared. "He's married his senior officer, el Gaiel," he muttered. "Crossed his vow like the brother did." 

"He obeyed van Sietter in that at the least of it," Arianna pointed out. "It is Lord van Sietter arranged the betrothal." 

"Yes," Darien said. Now that he was no longer angry the battle weariness came over him, his head tilted aside to rest on the back and the wing of the armchair he was in. "And Lord Clair was like an equal to Vashin, that's the truth of it," he murmured. The pain of his wounds was starting to cloud his mind and he had forgotten exactly whom he was talking to. "They conduct themselves with honour, the el Maiens. I should not have suspected them of taking us prisoner." He raised his voice to her, his head still leaning exhausted on the wing of the chair, tears for his slaughtered brother still glistening in his pale blue eyes. "I will tell the men to accept the medical help and the food. I will command those who are badly wounded to stay here out of the war until it ends, under your orders." 

"I thank you, Commander," Arianna said politely. 

"My Lady," he answered with great courtesy, managing to lift and bow his head. 

As she walked away with Petra she said softly: "I prithou ask one of my Lord's men-servants to come and assist the Commander. He needs fresh clothes. Tell the man to bring one of the old Sietter uniforms we have, I think the Commander is more Lord Tashka's size but tell the man not to say whose is the uniform and not to tell Lord Tashka nor my Lord." 

As she came out of the corridor into the entrance hall she saw Clair pretending to check up on the wooden cases which had held blankets for the soldiers and were piled up to the side of the huge hall. He started when he saw her coming towards him, unable to keep the relief and fear out of his lean face. 

"My dear!" he exclaimed. "What happened? Darien did not offer you any insult, his soldiers have treated you with respect?" 

She looked full into his face with a frown and said: "Yes of course. Darien has agreed that those who are able will be taken back to Arventa when they send for them and that those who are too badly wounded will stay here out of the war for its duration."  

Clair's mouth dropped open, he stared blankly at her. He said: "What, is that it? Darien said nothing more?" 

"You must swear ... on your Commander's life not to tell that I learned this from him," she said it like a child confiding a secret to another child but he saw in her round blue eyes that she was in deadly earnest. 

He smiled a bit and said, "I swear on my juniors' lives that I will not reveal where you learned this from." 

"There is paperwork in Darien's tent," she said. "He had expressed orders to take Hanya and myself back to Iarve and to kill us on the way there. He has not destroyed the paperwork, it is still there for us to take up to court." 

Clair gave a cry of anger and disgust, he swung round and looked about him, then ran across the hall to catch Fiotr, the footman who had been in military service. He spoke intently to him for a moment, Fiotr straightened up in his wheelchair and pulled a salute before setting off towards the castle offices for Tarra Larian, the chief clerk who as well as discretion in confidential matters, had both military experience and the ability to read. Clair was coming back to Arianna where she leant heavily on the empty wooden boxes, her pale face still set immobile with her blue eyes staring dimly away out of the front doors to the chaotic movement in the castle courtyard outside. 

"My Lady," Clair said softly, looking with astonishment into her pale set face. "How in Hell did Darien come to tell you this? What more did he say?" 

"Mm, well," she could not resist telling him, "he says they will win because they have more men and van H'las has not funds to buy the arms he needs but that if they lose he'll not swear to your fingers but he will swear to mine." 

She almost burst out laughing at the incredulity in Clair's face, only she knew that if she laughed she would start sobbing and have hysterics in the entrance hall. She bit her trembling lip, keeping her face as still as she could. 

Clair stared into her statuesque pale face with the veiled round blue eyes. He gave a sudden grin and said: "My Lady, I do begin to think that Prianne did not look high enough when he married you to me. You ought to have been a Queen! You would run the King in training reins." Her lip curled in scorn at his suggestion, he laughed, that she was derisory towards the King himself as a potential match. "It would have been a good thing for our country," he said. 

She looked sideways at him and suddenly she gave him that sly secretive sexy smile. "Perhaps," she said softly, "but not so much fun as being married to you." Then her pale statuesque face shivered, she gave a great sob. He looked quickly around them, put his arms about her and drew her back into a gap in the piled up wooden crates where they were hidden from view. She leant into his warm embrace, sobbing into his shoulder while their servants bustled on by, arranging everything in methodical fashion, following the sets of orders he and she had given them. His hand was round the back of her head, gripping so gently in her elegantly dressed hair, his arm wrapped about her back so comforting. He knew, he knew how terrible it was to see men die for a nothing, for the whim of an old snake plotting towards his selfish ends far from the misery he caused. 

The pity of it! The wasted lives and the wounded. All because that old snake of a father by marriage had to be so pig-headed. He thought he was always right and he only cared for his own interests. Why could he not be more intelligent and say to her: 

Well my dear, you are a clever girl. Even if you are a younger child, not the oldest. A scheme to get the merchants help us give the people wealth and happiness which would also give us wealth and happiness. Of course you may look into it. And if you are a good girl, I will take you one day to sit in on a Privy Council meeting and see how we men do these things. 



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 24



Thank you for the fantastic feedback and votes :).

*****

The sky was a mass of dark and grey feathered clouds. A strong wind rolled rapidly over the crude greens and browns of the Sietter Hills. Tashka and Vadya rode over the brow of a hill, the wind whipping their cloaks against their faces and tearing at Tashka's blue cap and Vadya's brown hair. In the dull metallic light, they saw the weather-stained grey and fawn tents of Sixth H'las set out on a flat area of ground near a stream. 

"Should we move the camp more that way?" Tashka said immediately. "That stream might flood." 

Vadya, who had been smiling fondly at the sight of the familiar old tents, studied the terrain more carefully and nodded an agreement. 

Behind them, Tenth Sietter were moving to make camp at a sufficient distance from Sixth H'las. There was still uneasiness between the H'las army and the two Sietter troops who had so far declared formally that they would side with Clair, Arianna and Tashka rather than Lord Pava. Vadya, Tashka and Dar had all been agreed that for Tenth Sietter and Sixth H'las to make camp together would lead to trouble. 

There were arms waving from among the tents and the troop's banner-bearer was running to set up Vadya's banner. As they galloped into the camp, Petra was there to take Vadya's reins, Flava to take Tashka's. Tashka swung off Jewel and took Flava's arm in a warm firm shake then went on to take Hanya's arm. Hanya clasped her arm tightly and said: "W-what troop was that behind you?" 

Tashka grinned into his face. "That is Tenth Sietter, you butterfly-wits," she said affectionately. "Can you not see Vaie's banner? I should have thought you would recognise his insignia by now!" 

Hanya stared up the hillside to where the soldiers were wheeling into place with Dar's red and gold banner unfurling in the wind above them. He took a quick step in the direction of the Sietter troop then looked back at Tashka. 

Tashka laughed. "Wait a bit," she said. "Let Dar arrange the dispositions of his troop. He will come to look for you, he told me so only six times while we were riding here!" 

Hanya looked away up the stream, smiling and wriggling his shoulders and blushing. Tashka gave the puzzled Flava a wink and made a kissing pout, to indicate that yes it was a love affair. Flava laughed, handing Jewel's reins back to Tashka and going to give his fellow Lieutenant an affectionate buffet on the shoulder. 

"We've enough to do ourselves," he said to Hanya, "with two Units each to move higher up the hillside away from the stream. I told Captain Araine how it would be as soon as the Captain arrived! but he would have it that if we camped nearer the stream it would be easier to water the horses." 

"Lazy pig," Tashka scoffed, starting to walk towards Second Quarter. "Mada got away alright then?" 

"There were a few tears," Flava said with a smile, "and he tried to say his father would be glad to support Lord Esha's cause but we put it to him that they were your expressed orders that he should go back to Soomara and asked if he wanted to face you in a courtmartial. We promised he can come back when the war is over." 

Tashka smiled mechanically, there was a flicker in her mind that said, if it goes our way. They had taken the Maier Pass, they were holding papers which demonstrated that van Sietter had conspired with van Iarve to assassinate his daughter by marriage - just cause for Clair to go to war with him, but the King was under the influence of these two Privy Councillors. Clair had shaken his head when they asked, did this not mean the King might command van Sietter to withdraw his declaration of war. He said it should mean other regions, Iarve in particular, would be warned off taking van Sietter's side but that it was unlikely to give them more than that. Meanwhile, there was the problem of the chronic shortage of expensive arms for the H'las Generals' strategic staff to try to resolve. 

As she led Jewel through the encampment, Tashka smiled at her troopers, pressed a hand here, gave a mock punch there. She enquired after the wellbeing of this or that trooper whom she gathered had suffered small injuries, she remembered in embarrassingly precise detail whose equipment ought to have had what done to it, telling them of it with an intent look that also said: And I will be round to check on it shortly. 

She spent a busy couple of hours organising the removal of her Quarter's tents further up the hill. Once they were well underway with the re-setting of the tents and picket lines of horses and she had ensured that her own horses were being well cared for and that her kit was stowed in her tent ready to unpack, she strode off through the camp to find Vadya and get her orders from him. As she went, she met up with Fiotr Araine who said he would walk to Vadya's tent with her. She was glad of the chance to talk about tactics for how they might ensure the defence of the Maier Pass but not as pleased as she would have been six months earlier. She had been hoping for a surreptitious kiss with her husband. 

She went into his tent first and he looked up from where he was crouched over his box-desk and smiled widely and warmly at her. He was still in civilian clothes: tight-fitting hose and a warm jumper. He had carelessly kicked off his boots which were lying to the side, his big feet were comfortably clad just in his socks. She was already in her felt winter uniform, her highly polished black thigh-length army boots. The H'las colours had always suited her, the severity of the black emphasising her powerful tall lean physique, the blue details picking up the blue of her eyes. She smiled down at him and he grinned back, his cock giving an excited hopeful quiver in the tight hose. Then Fiotr came in and he said: "Oh! Er, yes, your orders. Yes, well, I am glad you two are come together. Very glad. We must talk about replacing your Lieutenants: el Darien, el Vaie and el Farin, who have all had to go back to their own regions." 

Batren was unpacking Vadya's clothes-chest and hanging his clothes on his clothes-rail at the back of the tent. Vadya's boots were already arranged below the rail and his mail on its stand. Batren came forward now and said to Tashka: "Have you unpacked your gear?" 

"No," Tashka said, chucking herself onto Vadya's bedding and looking away from Batren out of the tent. She lounged long and hard-muscled in the cushions of the bedding, leaning on one elbow. Vadya glared at Batren, who looked back at them with puzzled hurt eyes. 

"You can come back and finish that later," Vadya said in an unusually cross voice. 

"Well then I'll go and unpack Lord Tashka's ..."

"No you will not," Vadya hissed. "Go and get me ... some biscuits." 

Batren stared at him in a very obvious and hurt way then looked at Tashka. She made a face and a shooing motion at him with her fingers and he backed out of the tent. Fortunately the whole business completely passed Fiotr by, he only wanted to get into a heavy discussion of the brilliance of Tashka's strategy in escaping a siege and capturing the Maier Pass in one fell swoop. 

"Let us talk of that in a minute," Vadya said firmly. "In your orders you will find the names of those currently put up for Lieutenancies from the H'las region. Fiotr, we will explain it to you in full some other time but we must rely only on H'las for this war. H'las and the two Sietter troops who are with us, that is," he added hurriedly as Tashka's blue eyes swung round towards him in a frown. "And, er, Ninth Vail." Fiotr gave a grin at the mention of young van Vail's play-troop but even Vadya frowned at him for that, after having to witness what the two Quarters of Ninth Vail had been through. 

"I have two troopers myself I would like to bring up from the line into the ranks," Fiotr said. He ran briskly through the respective merits of his reliable troopers. Dull, dull, dull, Tashka thought as he described their maturity, level-headedness and the respect they commanded from their fellow troopers. She half-closed her eyes, looking as if she were intently concentrating on what Fiotr was saying. Actually she was thinking how sexy Vadya's leg looked. He was crouched down on a stool by his box-desk and his thigh muscles swelled tightly in the close-fitting hose Batren had dressed him in that day. The hose was so tight that she could even see the defining line running down his thigh, she thought vaguely about running her tongue down it. Perhaps while caressing his bollocks. 

She always picked out smart rising stars for her junior officers. She had the skill to train them on, the patience to manage their high-strung intelligence, they clamoured for any empty places in her Quarter. She was too demanding to put up with the solid steady reliable Lieutenants such as the other Captains tried to get. That was part of the reason the Generals had started saying she ought to go up to the strategic staff. 

"...well, el Maien?" Vadya was saying. 

"What?" she said blankly, sitting hurriedly upright and looking sheepishly at him. 

Vadya's brows drew together in a frown. Her heart clutched up, she felt suddenly guilt-stricken. 

"Do you have anyone in mind for your vacant Lieutenancies?" Vadya said in that firm patient voice that meant he really was quite cross with you. 

"Um, yes," she said. "There is a Sietter Knight I want: Diodr Clathan. He is currently commissioned in Second Sietter but will have to desert because his father has been declared a traitor for loaning us a few cannon." She grinned at Fiotr, who started laughing then caught sight of Vadya's cross face and turned it into a cough. 

"Sietter!" Fiotr remarked scornfully. "I know that some Sietter are going to join us in this war but they are ..." 

"Fio," Tashka said in a warning voice, sitting upright and glaring at him. 

"Araine, as I wrote you, you must try to remember that Tashka's full title is Captain-Lord el Maien van Sietter," Vadya said firmly, putting a hand out to make sure Tashka did not start reaching for her glove. He blushed, remembering that in fact her title was now van H'las. 

Fiotr sat with his mouth open and his eyes glazed over, still feebly trying to say something about Sietter people while his brain suggested he gave it the go-by. "Oh," he said flatly. 

"Fiotr has some reason behind his objections," Vadya said to Tashka. "There will be prejudice against a Sietter Lieutenant in your Quarter. You yourself have been with us long enough for us to learn to love you," Tashka raised a mocking eyebrow at him and he blushed again, "but Diodr Clathan may struggle." He gave Tashka such a grim look that she cast her eyes down and nearly burst into tears. 

"Well?" Vadya asked, after an uncomfortable pause. 

"I have heard," Tashka said in a cool voice, her head still down, the unringed fingers of her left hand fiddling with the seam on the heel of her boot. It made her feel worse to see her bare hand on which she had been so proud to wear Vadya's rings. 

"I am asking your thoughts on the matter," Vadya growled. "We are talking without favour here." 

"Oh," Tashka could not resist saying. "Without favour." She heard Vadya's teeth grind and saw Fiotr give her a narrow-eyed glance. "Um, er, I think Clathan can survive it," she said, sitting up again and glaring defiantly back at Vadya. "He will have me to support him. And Hanya Lein is not prejudiced against Sietter men." She tried out a grin. Vadya was still looking furious, she put her head back down again. 

Fiotr watched her with a tolerant smile. Maien - el Maien, always took it hard if Commander-Lord el Gaiel was in a temper with them. "Why take a man from Sietter, who will probably look to go back there for his Captain's sword," he said, attempting by rabbiting on to cover over the awkward mood between his fellow Captain and their Commander. "There are sufficient rising stars in the H'las army for you to choose from, are there not? Besides, the Commander will be going up to the strategic staff soon and it will be you they give the banner to. Will you not give Trait his Captain's sword then? How will Trait manage, as a new Captain with all these rising stars from wherever under his eye." 

Tashka flashed him a grateful look and sat up again, saying: "I want Dio. I owe it his father, who has risked his life and lands many times for my brother and myself and who has always asked me to take Dio as my junior. Dio is like a brother to me, he will give his life for me an' I ask it already, even before he has vowed it to me. Trait is no fool, he will have me to support him and when he goes up to take his sword I will give him one of your reliable troopers to Lieutenant, Araine. We must take Diodr Clathan because it will make a stronger tie with Sietter. My Quarter is the only one where he will not get prejudice." 

"The Commander has married an el Maien van Sietter," Fiotr pointed out. "Is that not tie enough? Oh, must be your sister Maien, er, el Maien." 

Tashka looked away at the back of the tent, Vadya looked away out of the front of it. Fiotr felt embarrassed, evidently they did not wish to discuss their closer relationship for some reason. He supposed he would feel strange about it if one of his wife's brothers came to be his junior officer. He concentrated extremely hard on supposing that this was the reason why Maien - el Maien - and the Commander were not keen to talk about his marriage to el Maien's sister. 

"Yes, indeed," Vadya said coldly. "We ... we already have you, Tashka, er, el Maien. We do not want to be the only troop in H'las with Sietter ties." 

"I thought Sietter ties pleased you," Tashka said innocently. Fiotr snorted with suppressed laughter. The blush rose up in Vadya's cheek yet again. "I cannot take someone completely raw," Tashka went on, switching unnervingly to a completely serious and focussed tone of voice. "We are to ride to war now. And if I take two of the rising stars out of the army when I already have Trait and Lein, whom you well know others have tried to poach from us, someone will say I am being favoured. Give me Clathan, I know he will be well-loved by the men once they have had a chance to work with him. Give me too that one in First who is looking for a transfer, Alaara Shaada." 

"He is from the West," Fiotr said. "You will have two Lieutenants who are not H'las boys - oh and there is yourself but I think we know now that your heart lies in H'las." 

For some reason this made el Maien bite an upper lip and look away as if repressing a huge giggle and the Commander suddenly dropped a set of papers the other side of his desk and had to bend right over to pick them up again. 

"No no," Tashka said in a stifled voice. "Shaada's parents are from Soomara but he himself was born and brought up in H'las. He is like the Commander, you have your van Soomara grandmother's looks but you are H'las itself." Fiotr grinned at this piece of wit, shaking his fingers in appreciation. "Hear me, my Commander, ask Uncle Mada, er I mean First H'las for me if they will let me take Shaada." 

"Why is he seeking a transfer?" Vadya asked, he was carefully concentrating on re-arranging the papers he had dropped, not looking at either of them. "If he is a rising star, why will First be willing to let him come to you?" 

"Oh ... I know not," Tashka said with a vague shrug. "Just ask them for me, they might let me have him." 

"el Maien," Vadya said firmly. "Tell me why." 

"He is a bit bright," Tashka admitted. "He plays the cards rather high and they caught him smuggling a woman into the barracks one night. In fact, you may as well know, they have had to discipline him so often for chasing skirt that he is oftener on night sentry duty than off it! Which of course makes it a lot easier for him to smuggle them in," she and Fiotr burst out laughing at the idea of a Captain giving his bright Lieutenant such a convenient punishment. 

"We are not a bright troop!" Vadya said crossly. "We are not First, stamping around on the parade ground looking pretty for the ladies. I do not want a bright officer in Sixth." 

"He is only like it out of boredom," Tashka said, lolling back on his bedding again and kicking one boot lightly against the side of the other. She raised her blue eyes to look at him through those gorgeous long lashes; he felt his cock start swelling only to see her smile winningly about some bloody junior she wanted, Angels of Hell! and in this tight hose, Araine was looking politely out of the tent now. He cursed the huge size of his equipment which up till now he had been delighted to pleasure his bride with so thoroughly. "He will not have time to be bright in my Quarter, el Gaiel, you know that. Let him come, he has come to me in person to beg it of me." She continued to look smilingly on him through those lashes, he knew she would get her way in the end, he could deny her nothing. 

He started to smile himself, to Fiotr's relief, saying: "How did he come to be chatting to you then, do you mean while we were at Castle Sietter and First H'las were there with my father?" 

"Um, er, yes," she said. "While ... while we were having that picnic." He looked at her in sudden suspicion. She smiled innocently at him then finally admitted: "Well, we did have a little game of cards now and then, down there in First." 

"And just who is 'we'?" Vadya demanded to Fiotr's surprise, his brows suddenly drawing thunderously together. 

"Um, er, well, Shaada and me and Commander Stanies, and, er, your father," Tashka admitted. 

"Oh Angels!" Vadya moaned, putting his head in his hands. "I have warned him so often about playing cards with you! What has he lost now?" 

"You really will not mind this," Tashka said consolingly. "We played very low stakes. I lent him some money and let him put up rooms in Castle H'las for stakes since he is a bit short of cash at the moment. It means I have to pay the maintenance on them too so he is well out of it." She suddenly remembered that Fiotr was listening to this conversation with his mouth open in astonishment, she straightened up on the bedding and said: "Commander Stanies asked me particular to take Shaada if I should get an opening, he said the boy will be ruined if he stays in First where the Captains do not understand how to manage him. I prithou, my Commander, let me have Clathan and Shaada." 

"It will be nothing but a packet of trouble," Vadya grumbled, still evidently brooding on his father's gambling losses. "Very well. So Araine, you are going to take Caja Levair up to Lieutenant and you may speak privily with Pava Dorian if you wish, to tell him he will get his chance when Trait gets his Captain's sword. I will write to First to ask for Shaada. I can hardly write to Second Sietter to ask for their Lieutenant! so if he can get away without being hung to wipe out the stain of his father's treachery, you can make the arrangements, el Maien." 

"Sir," she said smartly, sitting up straight-backed on the bedding. Her head went high and stiff on her neck. He noticed the edge of a red mark just inside the collar of her black felt tunic and felt the warm blush start to creep up his cheek - yet again. She had grumbled a lot about it when she realised he had sucked so hard on her neck under her ear in an excess of excitement while fucking her from behind with her breasts gripped in his hands that he had left a visible mark. 

"Thy time for my allegiance!" it was one of Fiotr's Lieutenants come to look for him. Vadya held out Fiotr's papers without looking in his eyes, Tashka rose to go with Fiotr but Vadya said: "Um, just a minute, el Maien." 

Taska turned and laughed silently down at him as Fiotr left the tent. 

As soon as Fiotr had let the entrance flap drop, she sprang on Vadya and dragged him off his stool and over to the bedding with her strong muscular arms. He went very willingly, crying out as he fell into the bedding with her: "Pig! you cheeked me in front of Fio! Sweet Hell! I have never blushed so much in my life! You torment, you flea, you pig!" 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 24



Tashka was laughing and pushing him back on the bedding, she had pinned his legs down with her booted legs and was holding his shoulders down. He grinned up into her face and she bent her head for his kiss. She let herself fall into his arms and his kiss, their mouths softly pressing and his tongue flicking over her rose-petal lip, his hand creeping to her leg to grip on her thigh inside the top of her leather boot. 

As their mouths parted, he said: "You'll come dine with me the night?" 

"We have just spent a whole month hunting together," Tashka pointed out, letting her legs fall in between his legs so that his hand slipped to press on her sex and putting her mouth in a kiss to his neck - a soft one, thank the Angels, not one that marked him in revenge for the mark he had impressed on her. "They will think I have seduced you!" 

"Holy Angels!" Vadya groaned, "did you see Fiotr's face when you said that about 'without favour'? They have always known we are too close for decency. We must be careful, Tashka." He removed his hand reluctantly from between her legs in spite of her trying to clamp her thighs to keep it there. 

"Exactly so," Tashka answered, caressing his ear with one tickling finger. 

"Although," Vadya added with a laugh, "I have married your sister, we might be talking of her at dinner." 

"Shut it," Tashka said grumpily. She stopped tickling his ear and started to get up out of his arms. "I do not like them to think you are married to my sister. I prefer them to think I have seduced you." She looked regretfully at the lean bare fingers of her left hand before pulling her tunic down and tucking her shirt back into her breeches. Her sex felt warm and wet and eager, she gave a wriggle of the hips in thigh-length black army boots that Vadya watched with a flick of his tongue around his generous mouth. She could feel the seam of her underpants up against her swollen juicy sex. 

"Then dine with me," Vadya answered with a grin. "It is the truth. You have seduced me, my Captain, and I think we ought to discuss the matter." 

"Invite them all to dine," Tashka said crossly. "It is what you would have done before you became such a fool for my body." 

"Oh, I am a fool for your body, is it?" Vadya enquired, looking over her long booted legs, her lean muscular frame, his eyes lingering on her crotch and then lifting to her slanted blue eyes appreciatively. 

"You are not a fool for my body?" Tashka responded, raising one mocking eyebrow at him. "Then we might have dinner alone some other night, is it not? You might be able to wait one whole day before dining alone with the Captain you have just spent the whole month with." 

"And you?" Vadya countered. "You care nothing for my body?" 

Tashka trailed her blue gaze lazily over his broad shoulders and narrow hips. She ran her red tongue slowly round her rose-petal lip. Her eyes came to rest thoughtfully on the long fat swelling in the crotch of his hose. 

"I will consider it and make you a report," she said, grabbed her orders off his box-desk and ducked out of the tent before he could jump up and grab her. 

As she walked back to her Quarter, glancing over the papers in her hand, she saw Dar Vaie coming up through the Sixth H'las encampment. The wind was flinging his red Sietter cloak and his strawberry blond hair about. It was getting so dark that it was obvious it was going to pour with rain any minute and Vaie's red felt uniform moved through the black and blue H'las troopers like a flame. 

Dar walked nervously like a cat, flicking his eyes from side to side, his cheeks patchily flushed. The H'las soldiers peered up at him from their tasks with hostile glances. 

Tashka saw Hanya talking to two of his cavalrymen beside the picket line of horses, his butter blond hair being flung about in the wind like Dar's strawberry blond hair. He pointed away down the hill then brought his hand back to shake it at the cavalrymen in emphasis of some point. He dismissed them, turned and saw Dar Vaie coming towards him. 

His whole face lit up golden with love. He ran to the Sietter Commander, his long strong muscular legs stretching out over the grassy hillside. He cared nothing for the troopers staring at him go by, only for Dar, whose face broke into a smile so full of thrilled love and warm happiness that Tashka laughed and only wished the other Angels could see it. 

Hanya flung himself into Dar's wide-flung arms, they stood in the middle of the camp, pressed hard in to each other. Dar took Hanya by the back of the head and forced him into his kiss, completely careless of Hanya's soldiers all around them. He pressed his red Sietter breast to the black felt breast of Hanya's H'las tunic. His red Sietter cloak, whipped up by the wind, wound around them where they were kissing with abandoned passion in the middle of the encampment, Hanya's head was going back with the pressure of Dar's kiss. A melting submissive demeanour was coming over his big hard-muscled body toughened by active battle experience and Tashka suspected that under the cloak Dar was fingering his lover's body in ways which it was probably not necessary for the troopers to know about. 

Hanya's cavalrymen had stopped what they were doing and were standing looking open-mouthed at their Lieutenant. Tashka strode up to them saying fiercely: "Get on with it. What are you staring at?" 

"He is Sietter!" one said. 

"So am I," Tashka growled. "We were baby Lieutenants together, he is my brother officer. What business is it of yours where he is from? I suppose the Lieutenant may give a man the eye without your permission? What is your business is that water for the horses, now get on with it before ..." 

"Sir, it is done!" they shouted hurriedly, running off so fast that one of them slopped half the contents of his bucket down his boot. 

Dar was pulling Hanya off down the hillside towards Tenth Sietter now, doubtless with the intention of sneaking into his tent for half an hour, or however long it took for him to inveigle Hanya into fucking him senseless. Tashka shouted out at him: "Hey, Vaie, you dog! Where is it you are stealing my junior off to?" 

They swung round, Hanya's face was already soft with yearning desire, his expression tightened up to look anxiously at her but Dar sniggered filthily as he let Hanya go, shouting back, "you were not wanting him for your sweet self were you, you sly fox! Your own junior!" Hanya looked in appalled astonishment at him and the troopers gasped to hear Captain Maien so addressed. 

"Watch it, slut!" Tashka grinned, strolling lazily over to them. "It is not the junior I have got my eye on, you know." 

Dar Vaie became convulsed with laughter, the troopers stared at Tashka and at him, then in mute horrified appeal at their Lieutenant. "You have got the morals of a virgin slut's cat, el Maien!" Dar shouted. 

"At least I have got morals!" Tashka retorted, coming up and standing in front of Dar and Hanya with her hands on her hips, a huge grin on her face. "You priest's doxy," she added. Dar sniggered again. 

"Er, Captain, I'll not be long," Hanya assured her, looking uncertainly from the one grinning officer to the other. "I know you only have Trait and myself to rely on, I will be back in ten minutes." 

Tashka raised a mocking eyebrow at Dar. "Ten minutes!" she snorted. "Is that all you intend to give my Lieutenant, Vaie? I hope you are not going to treat him like your usual bits of trimming and oblige me to offer you a glove on his behalf. So Lein, you mean to just have a little ten minute chat about the disposition of the encampment, is it? You must make me a report on it, I am sure it would make fascinating reading. Why are you not asking for an afternoon's leave?" 

Hanya gave her a suddenly huge smile. "May I?" he asked eagerly. 

"Get on with it," Tashka laughed. "Tell Flava I'll be here all day to support him. You must be back the evening though," she looked meaningfully at him. "The Commander will have the other Captains to dinner the night so I will have to look to the whole troop and I will need your support with the Quarter. The evening, you must be back, mind." 

Hanya grinned shyly, blushing, and pressed her left hand in gratitude. He did the ritual stamping steps of the H'las junior leaving a senior officer which Dar inspected with a gleam in his grey eye and ran off to make a few final arrangements in the two Units he was responsible for, shouting: "Wait on me, Dar! I will not be long!" 

Dar was busy watching his big buttocks in black felt breeches flashing above the tops of his black thigh-length boots as he ran. Tashka gave him a buffet on the shoulder that caught him off-guard and rocked his lean rangy body back, he sniggered and made a mock punch at her jaw. She started to chat about the problems of the terrain they were encamped on and how soon she thought they ought to move on further into the Sietter Hills. Although she was still only a Captain, Dar listened deferentially to what she was saying, considering her points with the respect he bore her from long association with her military mind. He considerately turned his eyes away from the paperwork in her hand, noticing this, she waved it deliberately under his nose and drew several quite sensitive bits of information on it to his attention, making sure that any troopers around them could see and hear her doing so. 

When Hanya came back and they were walking away through the camp together with arms casually about each other's shoulders, Dar overheard one of the troopers say to another: "He was the brother officer of the Captain's." He looked round and met smiles and deferential nods of the head in place of the hostile glares the H'las men had bent towards him earlier. He turned, still enjoying the warm presence of his lover against his body, the promise of the exquisite immersion in his lover's body which he was so rarely able to indulge in, to look back after Tashka but she was already too far away to see his smile. She was giving some troopers a word of praise for the way they had set out their tent. 

'Sweet Hell, I have all my kit to unpack yet,' Tashka thought as she strolled through the encampment of Second Quarter, flicking her eye beadily over the dispositions of the troopers as she went. She arrived at her tent, lifted an eyebrow to see the entrance flaps were fully open and discovered Batren in the middle of unpacking her kit. Her mail and weaponry were on their stands, her boots set out under her clothes rail, her books already arranged in a shelf by her box-desk. 

"Batren!" she gasped in horror. "What in Hell are you about here?" He turned and looked at her, bewildered by her outraged tone of voice. "Damn Heaven and Hell," Tashka groaned. She had a quick look round to see a number of troopers looking curiously at them and hurriedly dropped the tent flap. "What are they going to think of it, that you are laying out my kit?" she demanded of him. "You are Vadya's man-servant, not mine! They will know I am his lover!" 

Batren's mouth dropped open in horror. He looked at the folded heap of shirts he was holding and hurriedly put them on her bedding. 

"M-my Lord!" he moaned. "Your pardon!" 

"Oh-h!" Tashka groaned, flinging herself onto the bedding and scattering the pile of shirts onto the rug he had arranged so carefully there. She stuffed her face in the cushions set out over the bedding. "Have you had the entrance flap open the whole time?" 

"Well, I thought I should air the bedding," he said. 

"Hell! Damn!" 

"You ought not to be left to unpack your own ..." Batren began sulkily. 

"Alright!" Tashka interrupted, sitting up. "I know you meant it in good heart. Go back to Vadya, take him his silly biscuits." 

"Should I not finish ...?" 

"No!" 

"Your pardon," he said mournfully, backing out of the tent. 

'Between those two,' Tashka thought crossly, going over to re-hang her weapons the way she liked them set out, 'what with Vadya wanting me to be alone with him all the time and Batren doing this stupid thing, I will be lucky if I am not court-martialled for seducing my own husband! Papa van H'las will love it when that case comes up before him.' 

A thought crossed her mind and she froze where she stood, a look of absolute horror appearing on her face. She rushed over to one of her saddle-bags and burrowed frantically in it. 

She sat back with a deep sigh of relief and a set of flimsy embroidered black and gold lingerie in her hands. Faffie had made them for her for a wedding gift. 

'I will wear them next inspection parade,' Tashka thought cosily, a wicked glint flashing in her eye. 'And I will describe them minutely in the report on the Quarter's presentation details.' She sniggered softly to herself as she locked away the little bits of lace in the secret reports drawer of her box-desk, together with her wedding and betrothal rings, an elaborate gold earring with the el V'lair insignia imprinted in it and a miniature portrait of Clair. 

There was a splat on the canvas as outside her tent a few huge raindrops came hurtling out of the black sky. Tashka went to lift the entrance flap and look out at the men running around her to cover, all dressed tidily in good felt winter uniforms. They were at war now, the casual light gear they had been permitted in their careless summer on the Vail plains was stowed away. There would be real trouble if any man's weapon had rust on it or his boots a hole. It might cost them a limb or their life in the field of battle but worse than that, Captain-Lord el Maien might spot it from the entrance of her tent and start shouting: "Mada Thuriel! What kind of rag is that around your shoulders? Is that supposed to be an H'las trooper's cloak?! What has happened to the hood? Ay, you may well look up to the sky and pray the rain will fall to one side especially for you, you'll not keep dry any other way!" 

~#~*~#~

Vadya lay on his elbow in his bedding, staring at the brazier of red glowing coals by his box-desk in the shadows beyond his flickering candle. He had had a pleasant dinner with Petra, Basra and Fiotr. Whereas previously the four Captains might have left one of the more experienced Lieutenants in charge and enjoyed dinner together, in the field of war they could not afford to relax discipline. Halfway through their meal, Tashka had sent one of Basra's Lieutenants with a report of unusual movement to the East. They had all sat at the table tensely listening out until the Lieutenant came back to report it was just a flock of sheep moving through the evening shadows. 

Vadya felt restless and strange, suddenly alone without Tashka. Sleeping with her at Castle Sietter, in inns and occasionally Dar Vaie's tent on the way back to Sixth H'las, he had so quickly become accustomed to the warmth of her lean body and the pleasures of her favours. She was not even far away, he thought mournfully. Yet he had only seen her briefly that night when she came and made a formal report to him at the end of the dinner, full of Hear me's and To the West; all quiet, sir. She had given him no opportunity to keep her back, stamping her feet in the sharpest of salutes as soon as she had made the report and turning to leave without even waiting for him to say: to Quarter. His cock was soft, not hard and pulsing, but he felt a queer yearning in his body; in his heart. He just wanted her warmth in the curve of his arm, up against his side, wrapped in the hook of his leg flung over her long legs. 

After a while Vadya got up, pulled a pair of breeches and a jumper on over his nightshirt, pulled on his boots and buckled a sword and dagger into his belt. He wrapped himself in his H'las army issue cloak and went to see her. 

'I could just spend an half hour, er, checking on her Quarter's dispositions,' he thought as he trudged through the camp past the silent tents of Fourth Quarter encamped around him. 'I did not quite understand what she said about where she put the provisions tent.' Only because you were too busy looking at her bottom to listen, an accusatory voice in his head said. 

The rain had passed and the sky was bright with stars, an occasional cloud scudding across the white crescent moon. Up the hillside on the opposite side of the stream Vadya could see the flickering fires of Tenth Sietter. The ground was soaking wet and between the two troop encampments Vadya could hear the stream, which had indeed flooded, gurgling through the hills on its way to the Arven River. The Sixth H'las camp-fires flickered sullenly around him on the wet ground but there was cool starlight to allow him to pick his way through the troop. 

He reached the Second Quarter and a rough voice suddenly demanded: "Give the word!" 

"Huh?" Vadya stepped nervously backwards. 

"Give the word, fool!" the voice repeated. 

Vadya, who had set the troop's password for the night, gaped as a dark figure suddenly rose from a banked-up campfire and began levelling a spear at him. 

"F-fellow!" he stuttered. 

"Oh!" the voice exclaimed. "Commander! Sir, your pardon." 

"What is this?" Vadya demanded. 

"Captain Maien ... er Captain-Lord el Maien set an internal guard," the trooper said nervously. "It is normal procedure in times of war, sir. In case the enemy penetrate the camp." 

"Yes, yes, I know that," Vadya snapped, vaguely remembering that Tashka had said something in her report about normal wartime procedures. "Er ... very good. Well done, er ... Iada. I was just ... taking the air." 

"Yes sir," the trooper said in a colourless voice. 

Vadya strode off into the tents of the Second Quarter. He felt mortified with embarrassment. 'What a stupid thing to say!' he cursed himself. 'Taking the air in this wet bog. Can Iada see as far as Tashka's tent? No. Damn the Angels, she is a fine military mind but sometimes her zeal annoys me.' 

He identified Tashka's tent, looked nervously around him and started to pull open the entrance flaps, tugging awkwardly from the outside at the hooks on the inside through the gaps in the canvas flaps. It was dark and silent in the tent, a brazier of coals glowing by Tashka's box-desk made the rest of the tent less easy to make out. Vadya groped hesitantly forward towards where he thought the bedding might be. Tashka's voice hissed suddenly in his ear: "Surrender! My dagger is in your back." 

"Ow!" he said, feeling the sharp point prick his spine. 

"el Gaiel!" she exclaimed. There was a spurt and the sudden flare of a match and her startled eyes appeared in a face artificially hollowed by the shadows thrown by the match's flame. She lit the candle by her bedding and flicked the match out, chucking it into the candlestick's base. 

"Sweet Hell!" he said angrily. "Who am I to come into your virgin presence? Oh no one but the man who loves you. What is this, setting an internal guard and then when I get here, you act as if I, your husband on whom your own brother bestowed you, am some scummy assassin!" 

"Of course I set an internal guard," she whispered. "It is normal wartime procedure. Look what happened to Fifth and Eighth Sietter because they did not watch Tenth sufficiently closely. Oh! you mean the other Captains have not set an internal guard? Hmm, so if we spring a practice attack on Fourth ..." 

"Tashka, hear me," he said. "I have to go back. Iada saw me come through here." 

"Mmm," she said sleepily, climbing back into her bedding with a shiver. "Tell him what a good job he is doing." 

Vadya's brown eyes narrowed up and he said in a cold hard voice: "So now we are nothing but a Commander and a Captain is it?" 

"What?" she whispered indignantly, lifting her head to stare at him in the flickering shadows. "What are you saying? Are you crazy?" 

"Obviously you have decided that is all we are to be to each other," he grumbled in a loud grumpy voice.




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 24



"Ssh!" she hissed. "The Lieutenants' tent is pitched right up against mine." 

"And?" he demanded. "What is it to me if your juniors hear us talking? since you have decided to maintain strict military discipline - even towards me, your Commander." 

"You are talking rubbish, el Gaiel," she whispered sleepily. "After the way we were flirting with Fio watching us and Batren coming and putting out all my kit with the entrance flaps wide and the whole Quarter watching him, I felt it was better to keep my head down a night or two." 

"Oh Angels!" he moaned, putting his head in his hands. "I told him not to!" 

"Oh well," she yawned. "Just a night or two, el Gaiel, then you can put your tent in my Quarter and we will manage something." 

"Manage what! How! This is impossible." 

"Ssssh! Shut it! The Lieutenants! Listen, come and I will give you just a little (yawn) kiss, then you might go back and we will sort something out in the mor(yawn)ning." 

Vadya grumbled in his throat, sitting down on the bedding and reaching out for her. Suddenly the entrance flap to the tent was flung back. Flava Trait stood there in his nightshirt and breeches, with his sword drawn in his hand and a horrible scowl on his face. 

"Stand and fight then!" he shouted then he went scarlet and said: "Oh, sir. Your pardon. I thought it was Fourth Quarter springing a practice attack on the Captain." 

Vadya leapt to his feet and strode off through the camp, past Iada - snarling the password at him, through the tents of the Fourth Quarter and into his own tent. 

He hauled off his boots, unbuckled his sword and dagger and threw the belt of weaponry in a jangling heap on the floor by his bedding, dragged off his other clothes, jumped into his now miserably cold bedding and lay on his back, fuming and glaring at the shadows thrown by his candle and brazier of coals on the ceiling of the tent. What made him really angry was that Tashka was perfectly right: to set an internal guard, to warn her Lieutenants to be wary of an attack. It was he who was behaving in a way that fully justified the army's restriction on relationships between senior and junior officers. His mind boiled angrily on for a few more minutes, thinking moodily about how Hanya Lein had not been there to help Flava defend Tashka's life. Gone right over to the Sietter, boots, cavalry and honour! that one. He grunted in envious irritation. 

His entrance flaps, which he had not bothered to hook up again, were flung back and Tashka walked in and threw an armful of clothes on the floor. 

"I am going to move in here," she said. "What is the problem with it? Is my father by marriage going to court-martial me for coming to lie with my own husband? No! He set up the match. He will only congratulate me for being so considerate of the succession." She sat down on a folding chair and pulled her boots off. 

"But, but," Vadya said feebly. "You are the Captain of Second Quarter, you have to sleep there. Especially since there is only Flava there the night." 

"He is a well-experienced officer and I am sure he can manage to keep an eye over five hundred men who are all fast asleep," Tashka snapped. "He has got the vigilant Iada to help him, is it not?" 

"No, no, go back the night and we can talk about it," Vadya said anxiously. 

"Talk?" she said, standing up to tug off her black felt breeches and looking down at him with that wicked grin curling up her rose-petal mouth in the dim shadows. "Is it talk you want?" She came walking slowly, with that alluring roll of her hips, towards him, pulling up her nightshirt as she came. He watched her pull it off and fling it carelessly over a chair, he gave a moan as she climbed into the bedding and snuggled deep down against him. Her eyes glinted in the candle-light then she started shuffling down and her head disappeared under the quilted cover. Vadya felt her fingers tracing her route over his thigh, her lips followed, brushing kisses across his suddenly sensitive skin. 

"Oh oh!" he moaned, "Tashka, sweet Heaven! I prithou, then ... fuck me, will you? Just fuck me in the arse, my Captain. I'll ... I'll order you to do it!" 

"What?!" her head came suddenly up out of the bedclothes, her eyes were wide with horror. She said, "shut it, el Gaiel, Angels' sake. How could you address me like so in the troop?" She gave an embarrassed giggle. "Have you no shame?" 

"Sweet Hell!" he moaned, "I do not care, do what you will. Just hurry!" 

Tashka's head disappeared again. She was kissing his balls, his cock. She was licking his cock. His eyes closed, he caught his lower lip up in his teeth. She had taken his cock in her mouth and was sucking up and down on it, he caught his breath up in a gasp. His thigh muscles, his buttocks, tensed. He began making sounds that caught at the back of his throat. His fingers spread and curled. He moaned desperately as Tashka let his cock come out of her mouth, his hands going to her head to try to push her back again. She pushed his hands back, pulling herself up level with him, reaching out to scrabble urgently in the pocket of a pair of breeches by the bed for a condom. He could not even be troubled to feel ashamed of the whimpering he was making while he waited desperately for her to unwrap it and pull it onto him. The minute he was covered he wrapped his arms around her, caught up the back of her head in his hand and lifted his head to press his mouth up into her kiss. He brushed his other hand gently down her back, fingering the sensitive nape of her neck, the hard flat shoulder-blades, the muscles of her ribcage. Tashka's hands scooped under his back up to his shoulders, she was rocking herself softly as she kissed him. His hand trailed over her buttocks and he pulled her higher so he could reach her tender sex. She was already wet and soft, eager for him. He caressed her with gentle fingers, her head was going back above him. He started to roll her onto her side, to push her onto her back. Tashka resisted, pushing back at him. He moved his hand from her cunt to wrestle with her and suddenly she went over, submitted under him as she never did in the wrestling ring, pulling him over on top of her, pressing up into his kiss. She made a low sound of pleasure. He pressed between her legs and pushed himself into her with a guttural contented murmur of relief. 

She was clinging to him, moving with him, making soft sounds into his ear. Vadya was pressing into her, pressing his cock deeper into her. She was throwing her hips wider for him, lifting up, writhing to his penetration, the noises she was making were getting louder. The idea sank into Vadya's brain and kicked a conscious thought into life: someone is going to hear her. 

He put a hand over her mouth. 

Tashka suddenly fell silent and lay still under him, her hips open wide around his hips. 

He lay on top of her, deep inside her, holding still. Just as he was thinking: I have spoilt it! she sniggered through his hand. 

"It is not funny!" he whispered, moving his hand but she could hear the grin in his voice. "Basra's tent is pitched close to mine!" 

"There is nothing I can do," she whispered back. "I did not know I was making a noise." 

He groaned and moved on top of her and felt the buzz of feeling run up his cock and down his back. 

"You are as bad as I am," she said. 

"el Maien!" he murmured. "Swe-e-et Angels!" He began to kiss her and press his cock down into her cunt again. He tried to keep his mouth pressed to her kiss, to muffle her noise. She gripped his shoulders and licked his mouth, she was giggling. He hugged her close to him, his mouth slipping from hers, he was pressing his cock into her cunt, her hips were throwing wide, his hips grinding into her crotch, he was being carried away on the flow of erotic energy rippling through him. 

Tashka was making noises again but he was beyond hearing her. There was a great rush of passion pouring through him, she was heaving up to him and grunting in orgasm, clutching his back with her strong lean hands, he shouted out el Maien!  in her arms and then lay still, his face pressed hard into the side of her neck, his arms still gripping her close to him. 

~#~*~#~

When Vadya woke in the morning Tashka was gone. Her armful of clothes had gone too. Batren was standing by him with a bowl of coffee. He struggled up in the rumpled quilted covers and took the coffee with a sleepy moan of thanks. He wondered what time she had crept back to the Second Quarter and what Iada had thought and whether Iada would gossip of it in the file. 

'Oh no!' he groaned to himself, clutching on his coffee bowl. 'I am a fool for her body, a fool for it! I will ruin her life in the troop. Damn it, I will not be here for much longer, I have been called to the strategic staff. No one could deny us these last few nights. Could they?' He thought of what his father would say of it, if his lust for Tashka led to life in the field being made impossible for her and she had to come back to Port H'las with him and he winced. 

When he had got up, shaved and dressed, he came out to find it was an unexpectedly beautiful sunny day with the wind whipping a few puffy white clouds across a blue sky. 

To one side, Tashka stood in a knot with Dar Vaie, the four Tenth Sietter Captains, Hanya Lein, Fiotr and Basra. Basra had his arm around Tashka's shoulders. She was waving her arms about in explanation of something, the wind flipping up the edges of a green scarf slung about her neck which she had taken to wearing to hide the love bite still evident on her tanned skin. The sun scintillated off the gold and ruby rings on her left hand. 

Vadya smiled lovingly to see her engrossed with the other officers, turning to call for his breakfast, then froze. He turned round again and ran towards the group. They looked up at him as he slowed to a walk on approaching them, staring with nervous eyes at Tashka's hand and his marriage and betrothal rings gleaming on her finger. 

"My Commander," she said formally. "I have invited Dar and his officers to break fast with us. We are discussing whether we might have a practice battle. Only I think we had better mix the two troops in together or the battle might become serious." 

He looked quickly round at the other officers. The Sietter men looked politely back at him. They knew as much as they wanted to know about that deadly killer in the duel Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien already and their main opinion on whom she had to cross her vow to lie with because of how her family had decided to bestow her was that van Sietter was even more of a fool than they had supposed because he had not kept her in the region for their own Generals' strategic staff offices. 

Things Hanya had said in the past made it plain that he had known all about Tashka for much longer than he ought to have done too. Besides he was too busy looking at Dar Vaie, his eyes shining with little stars in them, to trouble with the commanding officer he had sworn his vow to as opposed to the one he had given his heart - and in the previous night his body, probably more than once - to. 

But Basra and Fiotr were giving Vadya looks of salacious humour. He had had considerable fun at Fiotr's expense when Fiotr got married the previous year and he felt a nervous qualm as he watched Fiotr turn amused blue eyes in his direction. 

"Did you sleep well, yester night?" Basra enquired solicitously, squeezing Tashka's shoulders in his affectionate arm. 

Vadya choked. 

"There is Batren," Tashka said hurriedly. "Let us go and see what he can give us to break our fast. Gentle men, be seated, I prithou," she waved her hand courteously at the campaign table, which Batren had already laid for breakfast. 

As they walked off, he moaned: "Gracious Angels! You'll be the death of me! Pale Angels of Hell, what did they say?" 

"Um, they wished me long love and happiness," she said, turning her head shyly to one side. "And Basra gave me an hug. Hey, Batren! I know you have hidden some special ham for the Commander, put it out with some eggs for us." 

As they walked back to the table of officers, he stopped and turned to where she was strolling one step behind his shoulder. He looked into her concentrated slanted blue eyes and made a face at her. "I beg you forgive it me," he said, "that I did not act as professionally as you. I will try to learn from your example. Come, let us talk of the practice battle, then." He laid his arm lightly over her shoulders and strolled on by her side, as he was used to do since long before he found out she was a woman, and his betrothed, and the dearest love of his heart and body. 

~#~*~#~

Vadya set his hands on the pommel of his saddle, put his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up on Midnight's back. He reined Midnight in and cast a last longing look around at Sixth H'las, standing in parade formation in front of their camp to bid him farewell. The sun shone fitfully through the clouds and glinted here and there on a spear, a bit or stirrup. Horses lifted a foot and were reined back in place, the soldiers' eyes were turned towards him, while their faces were set rigidly forward. 

That morning he had presented Flava with a Captain's sword and Tashka with a Commander's banner. A body of First H'las cavalry had come to escort him back to the Generals' headquarters in Port H'las, bringing with them the sword for Flava, from his family, and the black and blue silk banner for Tashka from his own father's hands. He was to return with them now for the remainder of the war. He did not want to go. 

Tashka was standing to his left, close to Midnight. She suddenly took a step even nearer and got hold of the heel of his boot with her right hand, he looked quickly down at her but she would not lift her head to look at him. She clung on to his boot, her scarred fingers wrapped around his ankle. Midnight shifted uneasily. The First H'las officers walked their horses round again. 

"Get back!" Vadya said savagely. "Midnight will bite you!" 

She lifted her face to him then. Her exquisite eyes were huge with tears, her infamous rose-petal mouth set hard against them. Her grip on his ankle tightened. Midnight turned that wicked head back. 

Vadya stooped in the saddle and dragged her hand off his boot, she was clinging to his fingers, he pulled them away, shaking her off his fingers and said: 

"Get back, Maien!" in a choked voice. 

She turned and ran through the ranked mass of officers and the lines of men to his old tent, now empty of his things and full of hers. Vadya looked after her, he stood up twisted in his stirrups as if he would leap out and run after her. 

"Sir!" the First H'las Captain said. 

Vadya sat back down in the saddle and eased his reins so that Midnight pranced forwards. Fiotr stepped up into Tashka's place and led the troop in three loud echoing huzzas. Vadya cast a strained smile of gratitude to Fiotr and raised his arm to wave to the troop then he and the First H'las men moved into the trot and rode away. 

His face twisted with tears as he rode. He had to set the pace slower because he could not see clearly. As they trotted through the flashing autumn sunlight along the green hillside, he thought: 'Oh my heart, my love, my Captain! She has never before failed in her duty, she will rack her heart out about it. What can I say to make her not feel it so bad? Oh-h! I will not be there. I will write it. I must write to her, how can I send it back? First H'las will think I am moonstruck if I send back to her the night. Can I pretend there is some thing of the troop I forgot to tell her? My sweetheart, my darling, how will you manage without me?' 

He rode further along in the flashing sunshine and thought: 'She will be the perfect young officer. But how will I manage without her?"



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 25



Copyright (c) 2015 Naoko Smith

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Arianna stood quite still in the doorway of the library. 

Clair was sitting at her desk where her papers on her mathematical theorem were all spread so carefully, pinned into place. Beside him stood a tall fair Sietter man, lean and handsome – the Hanya Vashin type, but so young. The young man looked down shyly at the floor. Clair leant over the desk, clearly attempting to encourage the man, his slanted eyes with that charming sparkle in them, his thin firm mouth smiling in so kissable a way while he spoke honeyed words to lure you on to tell all your deepest secrets. 

 No, no, her rational mind said.  He never plays at sex in his home. He offered you a marriage of mind and body and heart as well as words – a marriage of two souls; he knows that with you that means he must keep his body for you alone. 

Clair's head turned so gracefully above the open grey felt jacket with the high collar under which his breast was lapped in an elaborate white lace of flowers. He leant across and tapped the young man's hand where it lay on some of the papers on the table so that he would lift his head up and look into those beautiful slanted grey eyes. 

It was his last day! His last day before he rode off to the Generals' strategic staff in Port H'las. How could he do this to her on his very last day? Could he not have come and offered his favours to her? She wanted him so much! Arianna gave a gasp of jealous rage which she sought to suppress as soon as she had made it but Clair had heard. His head lifted and he looked across at her, he stood up behind the desk. 

"My Lady," he said with a warm smile. "You come timely." 

 Oh indeed, a voice inside her scoffed. She remained in the doorway staring at him from a still expressionless pale face. 

Clair was beginning to look puzzled. The young man was turning towards her, his face still shy but now also full of eager hope. Arianna looked coldly back at him. 

"This is Arkyll Inien," Clair said. "He was studying in the H'velst Mountains but an unfortunate family circumstance has led to him having to come back to Sietter. I took the liberty of writing to B'dar recently and asking if he might know of two-three students who could come here and work with you on your theorem. I thought if you could delegate some of the work, as I used to delegate to my junior officers in the troop, you might be able to finish your theorem, even while I am away and you have to have the management of the castle as well as work of the region under your eye. I had intended to show you B'dar's reply if he were to send details of anyone who might be suitable but he wrote direct to Arkyll who has come here keen to talk to you about any possibility that he might work under your direction. Perhaps you might spend an hour with him just now? er, talking to him ... about your work?" 

The statuesque face of his Lady wife remained expressionless. She stood in the doorway staring at the two of them quite still for a minute and then she said: "I ... prithou .... One moment." And disappeared. 

The two men stared after her, disconcerted. Arkyll Inien's fair lean face fell into anxious lines. "Have I offended Lady el Jien at all?" he asked in a worried voice. "I ought not to have presented myself in person. I should have writ." 

"No no," Lord Clair said, thinking, 'I should not have writ to B'dar myself, I should just have suggested she do it.' "My Lady just ... needs a moment. And so, er, tell me again of your thesis." He turned his persuasive patron's face towards the young man, leading him on to talk of his work as he was so used to do with poets and artists and scientists and all kinds of people. 

Out in the corridor, Lady el Jien van Sietter had run over to a window embrasure where she pressed her head against the cool stone sill and allowed the tears to flood down her suddenly flushed pink cheeks. She sobbed silently in the window, the cold autumn light pouring over her flaxen head, her shaking shoulders in the green woollen dress, her hands hanging by her sides and the tears running down her face. 

So much of his energies had been bent on making good arrangements for the castle management so that she would not be troubled. He made arrangements for the children's schooling and to find another nursery-maid so that she would not be reliant solely on Ria. He even went to discuss with the book merchants whether they could bring scrolls and parchments from the King's University all the way down through the parallel trading route then by sea to H'las, up the river to Port Paviat and through the Maier Pass to her. Now this! and she had so vilely, jealously misunderstood. 

She pressed her green woollen sleeve to her eyes, gently so that she would not leave her eyes red with tears. Sniffing, she mopped up the tears from her face, took a deep breath and went to interview this prospective student. 

She came walking lightly into the library, her home within a home – not the place where she most loved to be, the one where she did not even think about it, she just went there and worked whenever she could. She lifted a face flushed and pretty, completely melted from the cold white look she had turned towards the two men earlier. She looked in her green dress like the Arven River in spring when the ice melts and the birds are singing and the hills are suddenly verdant with new life. She smiled warmly with that wide sweet red mouth and her eye sparkled as brightly as a spring sky. The two men stopped talking and stared as she came up to them. 

She looked full into Clair's slanted grey eyes, pressed his hand and said: "I thank you, my dear." She turned to handsome young Arkyll Inien to ask about the studies he had undertaken with B'dar's mathematical colleagues. 

"Um," Clair said, looking suspiciously at the two of them: fair and handsome by the mathematical papers, "well I will leave you to talk." He went slowly off to the castle offices, casting a cross look back at his Lady wife, suddenly so beautiful, smiling encouragingly into young Arkyll's face, to get him to talk to her: el Jien the great mathematical mind whose equations B'dar used to cite in his lectures. 

Two hours later, he came walking back to the library with some papers he wanted to ask her about. He thought she was likely still to be there, drawing diagrams on the board, pulling books and scrolls out and arguing that,  No, no! this was the only  way the problem could be approached, her pale face flushed with passion and her blue eyes sparkling with excitement. 

She was there on her own, standing by the desk smiling down at her papers. She lifted her head as he came up to her. Her eyes were a soft blue and warmly happy with the pleasure she got from the life of the mind she revelled in. 

"My dear, I prithou pardon me for troubling you," he began, looking back down at the papers as he approached, "Tarra tells me that you ..." 

She caught hold of the lapels of his jacket in the grip of her long pale fingers and pulled him into her kiss. 

Caught completely unawares, Clair threw the papers onto the library floor and gripped her to him with hard passionate arms. His mouth opened to hers, his tongue began to flick at her soft wide mouth, sweet as a bowl of cherries. Her mouth was moving softly in her kiss, she had started sucking gently on his tongue, he tried to soften his flicking desirous tongue in response. She was pulling the lapels of his jacket towards her so that he was pressing up against her big soft breasts, now she was pushing him back, back onto the table of papers. Chess pieces went clattering on the floor, papers floated away, some tore from the pins holding them to the desk. His eyes opened wide, he reached hurriedly out and seized the buttons of her green dress, pulling at them with hasty thin fingers, tearing them out the button holes. She was tugging at her dress herself with one hand, the other hand still gripped on the lapel of his jacket, her mouth opening to his in their kiss, his tongue pressing into her mouth. She made a low moan. He was about to put a hand into her dress onto one of those soft breasts in the bodice, to start pulling the hooks out of her bodice. 

There was a most inopportune flurry at the door, his eyes flicked sideways. He knew it was one of the servants, of course they never knocked and he had left the library door wide open. He was turning back as quickly as he could to the hooks of her bodice, he was willing, he was eager to take her favour on the floor of the library with the door wide open. 

But her head had flicked up and across. She too had realised that someone had come in and seen them. She started to think again, to think about what she was doing. She had flung her own husband on her mathematical papers to get his favour with the door wide for anyone in the castle to come in and see them. Who knew who it had been who had come in just then. Her face was already flushed with desire, she went a deeper pink with embarrassment. She let the lapel of his jacket go from her stiff long fingers, stood up and gave a kind of gasp. 

Clair sat up on the table of scattered papers and chess pieces. He stood up and put a hand to his head. Arianna was hurriedly doing up her buttons again, flushed and trembling, her head bent down. 

"Um, er," Clair said. "Yes. I ... I might just go ... lie down." He stumbled off out of their library, his eyes wide and his breath coming fast. His legs trembling, he stalked rapidly down the corridors to the family quarters, down the veranda, staggered into his room and, slamming the door, he fell over to his bedding, dragging the buttons out on his breeches. He lay down with a moan, his hand going to his rigid erect cock. He lay with his wide grey eyes staring off into the room, thinking about his hand on her breast in the simple lacy white cotton bodice, about her soft big body which for a brief time she would bring to lie under him in this narrow roll of bedding. He gripped his fingers on his cock, rubbing quickly up and down, moaning with need, quickly quickly. The familiar warm energy came surging up through his loins, his buttock muscles tightened, he was making quick high gasping moans as the impulse came thrusting up in him and he was spurting into the sheet of his bedding with a final series of cries. 

He lay still in the bedding, staring with his wide grey slanted eyes at the painting of red hands rising up towards blue and gold stars and a moon hanging on his wall. He loved the hot surge coming through him in orgasm but sometimes afterwards he would feel so desolate and alone. He lay still, longing for a warm human body in which to press that impulse towards life and happiness. 

For so long he had sought only some fun and escape from love in casual physical games he played at in sex with any body that came his way, even now he thought he would be reasonably content with some stranger's body in his arms, against his legs, around his cock. It was easy to be with somebody about whom you knew little or nothing so you could imagine you had a close intimacy when all you had was the warmth of the common humanity you shared. If you got to know them you found they did not like lace lingerie, were bored by the fine distinctions between Northern and court architecture, hated riding and it was over. It was better not to get to know them. 

He knew now, though, that he had gone beyond that. He would never wholly recover from what they had put him through in warfare but he had got to a place where he could bear to be loved again and he wanted it so much. He wanted someone who liked a ride in the hills even when it was raining, who could make a witty joke with him about some idle matter so that he would suddenly laugh in the middle of the mundane business he was undertaking, who would argue about politics or a comic novel or art or what cake to have for tea. He wanted someone who would take his favours and make of them something beyond a bit of fun in the bed, put the little pieces of intimacy offered up in favours together with some other friendly bits and make a happiness in which they might live side by side. 

When he saw her again with the children and her brother Hanya, she had the veiled look in her eyes. They had a family lunch in the sitting-room and afterwards they played board games. Hanya went off at supper time to deal with some correspondence that had arrived for him and they sat chatting while the boys ate. 

After the children's supper, he had to go back to the castle offices. When he got there, Hanya el Jien was sitting with Laran and Tarra. Hanya lifted that scarred golden face and stood back from a table where he had laid out several letters and a despatch box of the kind the King's Heralds used to put papers in. 

"I prithou pardon us," he said, "that Anna and I could not tell you before. We have only received this packet of letters this afternoon. When Anna realised that it would be a problem that the arms merchants will charge you so dear – unfortunately they have to abide by their treaty with van Sietter according to their own mercantile notions of honour – and because the H'las treasury has been stripped with the lack of trade in the region, she and I wrote to our bankers. But it is of course difficult to get letters of credit through the Sietter Hills just now and Anna and I are not entitled to use the King's messengers. These have had to come right round by a mercantile route through Vilandia. 

"Anna and I pray you to ask van H'las to accept these funds and use them as he will. I will tell it to you, this is not the half of our monies, even though Prianne is holding back our income from our estates in Iarve, so if you in H'las need more, prithou write to us and we will send it. I wanted to send all of it but Anna prevailed, she said this should be enough. She has also said, musts't tell van H'las it is to be used for arms for the men, not for playing cards with Tashka." They both laughed. Clair came forward, touched by this gesture, and looked casually at the papers set out for him. Then he gasped and his eyes opened wide to see the enormous sums of money that his Lady wife had command of. No wonder she had never bothered to complain of it, that he and his brother cost her so dear! No wonder that she carelessly spent so much on her library and would buy a hunting horse as a betrothal present as easily as a silk cravat, or even a stables for her husband's lover and only care that it might mean her marriage might be about to be broken. 

"Hanya," he said, "I cannot ...!" 

"It is not for you, Clair," Hanya said carelessly. "It is for the H'las army and for them to win this war so that we can take our case for the poor to court and so that we may have a politics that considers the people, not the narrow interests of the likes of Prianne and Lord Pava. Of course, my brother, if needs't money, has't only to ask," he grasped Clair's offered sword arm and his eyes creased in what passed for the smile on his scarred face as he looked into Clair's warmly affectionate eyes. 

~#~*~#~

Arianna, staring into the drawer of lingerie in her wardrobe, could feel Lisette hovering behind her. The maidservant's restrained longing for her to dress in some of these barely existent garments was so great that she did not dare say anything for fear her enthusiasm would make Arianna shy. Arianna lifted out a sort of string with a frill hanging off it and gave it an incredulous anxious look. 

The morrow Clair would ride away to war. He was less likely to be injured or killed than Tashka out in the field. 'But if we lose,' Arianna thought, thinking about how Commander-Sir Lial Darien had predicted they would lose. 

If they lost, Clair would be dragged back to Arventa, a traitor to his own father. There was another heir, Arkyll, and Lord Pava had a second and young wife. Clair's life was not worth much to him. 

If they lost, she would be taken from this castle and sent home to Iarve – particularly now that she and her brother had funded the H'las war coffers; but she would never arrive there. Lord Pava had early in her marriage tried hard to jostle her into handing over to him the management of the wealthy Iarve estates which were her marriage settlement, this latest manifestation of independence was beyond even her insistence on keeping her own money in her own hands. Prianne had tried fair means and foul to get her to give up the work she was devoted to, which he was convinced was against his interests. She did not know what he might do to her, she no longer knew who her oldest brother was. If they lost this war she or Clair or both of them might die. She would never again see that arrogant, quarrelsome, expensive, promiscuous beauty; that fair-minded, hot-hearted, attentive man with experienced fingers, her husband. 

She reached into the wardrobe and started pulling at the skirts of the dresses hanging there, getting into the row of dresses in the back, ones she had never worn, hanging in linen bags to protect them. She pushed her lip out with a determined pout. Her eyes were desperate, so full of yearning. 

Clair scrawled his signature across a final set of papers for Tarra and Laran, lifted his head and smiled at them. He was still in the grey felt suit and cotton shirt with the flowering lace collar he had been wearing all day. The flowered lace collar had lost its crispness and was drooping softly about his chest now but he thought as it was his last night, and although he and Arianna had been put up on high table with her brother in some misguided notion that this gave them family time, he might get away with not changing. 

"You'll have a drink with me?" he suggested, reaching across to press Laran's arm in wordless gratitude. He had witnessed years of service from the older man, who now demonstrated his devotion in not going over to van Sietter even though he was nearing retirement. They knew van Sietter would make him suffer for it if van Sietter won the war. "My Lady will come here to fetch me when it is time for us to dine." 

They were lifting their bowls for a toast and Laran was just saying a wish for a good journey for him when a sound at the door made them turn their heads. 

Clair nearly dropped his bowl. 

Arianna stood with her hair elaborately arranged on her head. One alluring curl drooped bouncing down past her cheek, her cheeks were pink with powder and her eyes stared out at him from a full make-up in purple and gold. Her mouth was as red as a cherry tart, glistening in the candlelight. From her ears dangled a long gold chain with tiny rubies glinting in it, it hung from one ear under her chin and across to the other earlobe. 

She wore a black and gold figured gown with a neckline plunging so low that it had to be held together with a thin gold strap across her big breasts. Through the gap in her dress, Clair could guess at the sight of tiny bits of black lace. Lisette seemed to have decided not to put a jewel to dangle in the cleavage of that creamy soft bosom or perhaps Arianna had balked at it. 

Tarra had choked on his wine and Laran was staring at her with his mouth open. Arianna looked at them in a nervous horror. Tarra's eyes lifted to hers were full of an appreciation of her beauty that was not what she wanted. She was going to have to work with him again the morrow, she did not want him leaning close to her at her desk with that look in his eye. Laran's face was hotly disapproving. She preferred that, although she felt sorry for it. Her face blank of the anxious emotions she felt, veiled and cold, she looked past the two servants to Clair. 

He was looking sidelong at her, an appreciative gleam in his eye and a smile curling the corner of his thin mouth. Was this the way he would look at some sugarplum at court? and he would flirt with her and later lure her back to his room? But suddenly, thinking about what she had heard of his days at court, she knew he had never bothered to look at anyone appreciatively or flirt with them to lure them back to his bed. They came for him, throwing themselves in his way, wearing dresses like this to try to catch him; he did not care, he took whatever fell in his path and moved on, careless. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 25



He was not careless of her. His eyes drifted over her body in a way which would have been offensive in anyone-else but towards him she felt an excited trepidation, to see one of his eyebrows go up and the smile which could be thought arrogant and mocking lift the corner of his mouth. 

"My ... Lady," he said in that husky warm voice, stepping forward to take her hand. He had recognised the anxiety, the shyness lurking behind the purple and gold make-up on her eyes and reached out to offer her the reassurance of his hand's grasp. "Forgive it me, I have not yet changed." 

He looked sideways at her, considering. How would she react, to sit high above all the castle servants in a dress like this? How would they treat her the morrow, guards and gardeners, maids and men, to have seen her flaunting her gorgeous plump beauty in so obvious an attempt to win her own husband's favours. He knew the whisper had already gone round the castle like a flock of birds in the wind, Lady Arianna has been seen in Lord Clair's arms in the library. There was a suppressed excitement and sideways glances fluttered quickly at him when he walked through the castle. He knew she would dislike it that their marriage and whatever they felt within their marriage had become a public entertainment for the whole of the castle staff, however much she appreciated the importance of their intimate relations to the people who depended on them. 

"Would you take it unkind?" he inquired, "if we were to eat our dinner in the sitting-room in a quiet way? It is my last night." 

"Oh," she said uncertainly. She worried in case she did not look well, he did not want people to see her because she had dressed like a pink-fingered doxy. With the regional policy servants looking on her so intently she realised that she and Lisette had gone too far in the maidservant's excitement and her own desperation. But she thought, 'he wants to dine with me alone,' and felt hopeful. "I will go tell Petra," she said. As she moved towards the door her skirts swung against her legs, outlining the big rounded hips curving in to her knees, the cloth swished between her legs to make their shape along the entire length evident to the three men. 

"I prithou," he said, courteously refusing to look at her legs. "I will do it." He took her hand and put it firmly in his arm, he turned and pressed Laran's and Tarra's hands again and smiled at them. He also looked hard into Tarra's eyes. Tarra blushed as he turned his head aside from the glowing vision of sexiness that the statuesque Lady wife of his former Commander and future sworn Lord had suddenly turned into. 

They walked down the castle corridors together. Arianna let her hand lie in his arm, feeling the unusually narrow skirts sliding against her legs. When she asked Lisette about underskirts and petticoats for the dress, Lisette laughed so knowledgeably and said: the less cloth in his way the better, my Lady. She blushed in the flaming torchlight in the corridor. 

Clair offloaded her gracefully into the sitting-room, going to excuse them to Hanya and ask the servants to serve them dinner alone. She walked hesitantly to the fireplace. She felt she could not just sit in her armchair and mend a shirt nor pick up a scroll and start tracing out some of the equations she had been discussing with Arkyll Inien earlier in the day. She picked up a china cat on the mantelpiece and looked at it without seeing it. She walked over to one of the bookcases and stared at the bad piece of embroidery hanging framed beside it. 

Clair had seen it one day lying in her embroidery basket and she had haughtily explained that ordinarily she embroidered much better than that. To her great annoyance, the next time she saw it, it was hanging framed up here with the sketches of family to which every so often he added another pretty light pencil drawing or a painting. She had thought he meant it as a calculated insult, showing off her careless clumsy schoolgirl stitching when he had never worn the exquisitely embroidered shirt she sent as a betrothal gift. How could she not have recognised back then the kindness of his warm heart in that misplaced gesture? Why had she not been generous enough to explain that she resented the sewing which kept her from her mathematics. 

But underneath it all she had recognised him. She had quarrelled with him constantly because she could not bear to reveal to him how much she loved his passionate kind spirit when it seemed evident he would never be able to give love to her. 

Clair was coming back in the room and had sat down on a sofa. Hesitantly she crossed the room to sit beside him, a little distance from him, looking shyly off into the candlelit room. He looked along the sofa at her sitting too far away for him to press his leg to hers. 

"I think B'dar will write to you of two-three more students you could have to work on your theorem," he said. "Will that suit your mind, my dear?" 

"Um, yes," she said in a constrained voice, looking up at him through her black-painted lashes past the lacquered curl of hair hanging by her artificially pink cheek. 

"Arkyll Inien is sufficiently clever to work with you?" he enquired. His slanted eye gleamed on her charmingly, his thin mouth pursed up in his persuasive patron's way, which unfortunately also made it look as if he were seeking a kiss. 

"Um, yes," she said, her eyes swinging down. 

There was silence between them. She was stumbling about in her own mind to try to find something to say to him. 

"You want my favour?" he suddenly asked. The blush started rising in her cheeks, she would not look at him. He leaned over and hooked his finger in the gold chain of little rubies under her chin, tugged gently on it. She lifted her eyes at that and looked at him in a kind of agony, she resisted his pull on this silly golden chain. The pull of his fingers was too gentle to force her to come although this would have been easy since the chain was hooked into the tender lobes of her ears. He let it go. 

Her head stooped down, she felt her mouth go soft with tears. She had tried hard to be like one of the pink-fingered set through which her own mother and her husband cut their paths easily but in this moment all she felt like was some ignorant stupid girl from Iarve. She glanced sidelong at him, her blue eyes veiled and tense with anxiety. He was looking along the sofa at her with that gentle patience in his slanted grey eyes. 

She knew then that he cared nothing for the pink-fingered set although nor was he excited at the thought of toying with some ignorant silly girl who could allow him to feel his power over her stupidity. He had said that he liked her because she was a storming lovely with a mathematical mind and seditious politics. Finally he knew who she was and he liked her and he was willing to be intimate with her. She wished now that she had put on some simple gown such as she customarily wore: something pretty but not one which made her feel as if not only her breasts but her soul was exposed raw to his hot gaze like a piece of meat to be cooked to his taste not like a living match to his soul. 

Clair looked at her blushing cheeks and veiled blue eyes. Probably she thought she wanted his favour. Of course if she said she were willing he would be able to raise the softness in her body, press here and there, slip a hand in her dress to rub a nipple and get her going sufficiently that she would open her legs for him to push his cock into her warm soft body. Of course he knew how to pleasure her and make her body sing to his tune. 

He sighed, his head swinging wistfully away to look off into the room at the wall of pictures of family where the bad piece of embroidery she had once done hung. He liked it because it suggested she was not always a perfect Lady, once she had been a young girl who was bored at being made to do embroidery and did it badly in consequence. He had guessed it and now he knew that as a young girl she would sneak off from the stitching to ride wild and laughing with her little brother and her cousin or to hide in the library doing sums. It made his heart smile to know that under her cool elegance she was like that. 

"I want your kiss." 

He swung his head back to her. The blush had gone flaming up her cheeks as if she had asked for some exceptionally outrageous sexual treat, as if she had said: Take my favour on the table in the middle of a dinner you are giving for the officers of First Sietter, or, Let me watch while you give your favour to your own junior officer and lover on our wedding bed. 

"I just want your kiss," she muttered. Her mouth was so soft and trembling with her tears, her blue eyes liquid with shame to ask it of her own husband, whom she had once had to try to wake gently in order to secure the succession for the region and her own future; the bride of a member of the high nobility who might give her some degree of freedom to do as she wished not force her to be what he wanted her to be. 

His eyes glanced briefly at the deep cleft between her creamy big breasts where no jewel hung. His cock swelled softly in his breeches but he ignored this. He put his arm out across the sofa and she started to move along to him then the door swung open and the footmen began carrying in their dinner. She swung away to hide her blushing face by looking at the pictures of family hanging on the walls. He sat listening to the clinking of the plates being laid on the table until silence indicated that the dinner was all laid out and two footmen were standing by their chairs to serve them. He lifted his head and gave them a fierce glare. Their eyes fluttered nervously to each other and back at him, he jerked his head at the door. One coughed and shuffled hesitantly sideways, the other followed. They were unable to prevent themselves giving him sly and hopeful grins as they went. He tried to glare at them but his eyes were creased in his warm tender smile as they shut the door carefully behind them. 

"Take it then," he said in that lazy husky el Maien voice. "If you want my kiss, take it." 

She turned her head and found he was leaning back into the sofa cushions, looking slantwise at her along the sofa back. His grey eyes were creased in his smile. The smile was that rare very sweet one which he occasionally bent towards the children or Tashka if Tashka was not looking at him or the servants when they did something small and kind for him. 

She felt a fool, asking for such a thing, dressing like some sweetmeat on a brothel table and then only asking for a kiss. But he was so beautiful and his smile was so warm and she might never have the chance of his kiss again. She leaned over the sofa towards him, the blush was still high in her cheeks like the sun rising over the Sietter hills in summer, he came up out of the sofa cushions and took her in his arms. Her arms went about him. His hand had come up to the back of her head and was holding it, his fingers spreading about the back of her head, his other arm about her back pulled her towards him – gently. She gripped her two arms around his lean hard chest and his thin mouth came in to her mouth and pressed softly on her kiss. 

So gentle, so tender, the long soft pressing of his mouth to her mouth. The grip of his hand on the back of her head held her to him and his arm about her back pulled her against his lean muscular strong officer's body. She closed her eyes and let her mind, her thoughts, her objections to all that he stood for slip away. Her big sweet el Jien mouth opened, her lips parted to his kiss. 

His tongue had come pressing into her mouth, she caught up her breath in excitement, her tongue caressed his tongue, his lips pressing about hers, his tongue playing in her mouth. Gently he withdrew his tongue, her lips pressed together, his too and they parted from the kiss. He held her warm and close, she held him firmly to her big soft breast. They sat closely wrapped in each other's arms on the sitting-room sofa with a magnificent dinner spread behind them in the candle-light, breathing softly, listening to the other one breathe, feeling the heaving sigh of the affectionate breath in each other's chest against their own chest. 

Suddenly she lifted her head and turned it, he turned his towards the long windows leading out to the courtyard. He got hurriedly up and moved swiftly to open the long windows and listen intently. She watched him run out of the windows, calling softly as he went up the stairs to the veranda. 

Hanya was standing at the door to his room, turned towards his call, his face wet with tears and his soft mouth still pouting with his sobs. Clair reached out and gathered the child to him, wiped the tears from his face. "It was just a dream," he murmured. Hanya pressed his round soft limbs into Clair's hard chest, sobbing his tears down his papa's neck. Clair knelt and then lifted the heavy little body up in his arms and walked down the veranda, he saw Arianna coming up the stairs towards him. 

The boys' nursery door was open and now Arkyll's small figure was trotting out of it. He paused to look at his mother coming up the stairs in sleepy surprise. His mouth was already opening to make some comment on a kind of dress he had never seen her wear, Clair said hurriedly: "You want to sleep with your mama, is it, baby boy?" Arkyll grinned with a satisfied yawn. Arianna was already kneeling to him, he leant into her soft bosom, snuggling his dark-haired head to her shoulder, his eyes already drifting contentedly shut. She lifted her head to look at Clair. He said, "will you permit the two boys to sleep with you, my dear? We might eat our dinner at your table, Hanya will sleep easy if we are in the room with him." 

"It is your last night," she said softly. "I have a very big bed, my dear. Perhaps you might like to sleep there with us?" 

He lifted his head at this and his mouth quirked briefly in a surprised and grateful tender happiness. Her wide red mouth smiled back to him, sweet as a bowl of cherries. 

Later he lay in the big bed, not accustomed to being so high up off the ground, uncertain about the softness of the pillows and covers in which he felt nestled as if in a cloud. He looked across the pillows in the light of his candle. There was Hanya's golden head turned sleeping towards him, the long lashes kissing the serene cheeks of that extraordinarily beautiful seraphic face. Arkyll's dark locks of hair were flung about on the white pillow, his cherubic features too were softened out in sleep. He looked so innocent with his mischievous slanted blue eyes closed. You would never believe he could try to climb up the shelves in the pantry and pull a whole bowl of raspberry jam all over himself and the floor, falling all the way down the shelves yet managing not to hurt himself. 

Beyond the two children was the lovely pale face of his Lady wife, her blonde hair in a simple loose plait, her wide red mouth bunched softly and sleepily, her blue eyes looking back on him with a clear soft smile in them. A high collar of lace on the linen nightdress she was wearing lapped her neck in a pattern of flowers. He smiled on her and at his sons before reaching out behind him to pinch out his candle and settling himself to sleep. He lay nestled in the softness of her bed, listening to the breathing of his family in the soft darkness, his eyes drifting shut.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 26



Thank you for the feedback and votes. :)

*****

Tashka sat still on her horse staring across at the long line of red-clad Sietter soldiers ranged on the opposite hillside against the grey morning sky. A cold breeze riffled over her cropped hair and flapped in her banner beside her. She blinked. Her mind flipped quickly through her strategies. 

Yes, they had massed themselves to the centre, their wings trailing off in the Vashin bird. She had thought they might do so, given the terrain they were on. Sietter had won here at Shier Bridge using that strategy before but then it had been Fourth, standing where she was now standing, in defence of the Maier Pass. Fourth, watching the arm of Clair el Maien, her beloved brother. They had chosen to make a stand here, thinking she would feel it, to stand here where her brother had lost one thousand four hundred and fifty-nine men including ten Lieutenants and one Captain whom he loved not only in duty of care and with his heart but with his whole body. They thought she would feel it, an officer of the H'las army where duty of care was paramount. They thought she would weep to think of the men and juniors flung away here, so many of them personally known to her. They forgot that she had been trained in Sietter. When she looked down this green valley she did not feel but thought with a cold admiration of the elegance of Hanya Vashin's victorious strategy. 

It was their men who would feel it, looking across this ditch of a valley and remembering that a Sietter troop had been through such Hell here before using the Vashin bird to get victory that the officers and men who had made so elegant an achievement would still go white and weep for it. She had not been here on that day but because Fourth had been stripped out and redistributed among the other troops some of their men were sure to be standing white with horror already and stricken in remembrance; this was the failure of a structure of command focussed on victory and not duty of care to men such as those. 

She had set out her troop on the brow of the hill in such a way that they looked as if they had formed a square Palair box formation. In fact there were two Units separated off on each side who would come over the brow of the hill wide of the Sietter soldiers' wings, dragging them out until Fourteenth Sietter fell apart. 

The two troops were poised in place, looking across the shallow valley at each other, each waiting for some trigger of the battle. It was their first chance to assess each other's strengths, each thinking: they have this, they have that. 

Tashka was thinking: 'Thank the Angels they have not got war-dogs. I knew they had an Unit of archers. Commander Rian has a nervous horse, he is a fool to use that kind of horse in battle but Rian always was a fool for a piece of horse-flesh.' 

She heard Fiotr make a tense moan behind her. Her banner-bearer's horse shifted uneasily but she would not give Sixth H'las the signal. They all knew they had to wait for Fourteenth Sietter to move first because of the archers. 

'Rian,' Tashka thought sadly. 'We have practised manoeuvres in these hills together, when you were a baby Lieutenant in Ninth and I was in Fourth.' 

No tears came to her eyes in spite of her sorrow at taking arms and planning strategies against people she knew so well. She ran through her strategies again, pulling her mind to the cold clear emotionless rational place from which she would be able to bear fighting this battle - as if it were just a gigantic game of chess and afterwards they would say: Well played, that was a magnificent strategy, el Maien, and all go for a bowl of beer to laugh about what had gone wrong instead of weeping for it.  

A ragged cry came up from Fourteenth. Rian's nerve had broken and he had sent the soldiers forward. The line of cavalry broke down the rough green hill, the infantry running after. 

Tashka flung up her arm, straight up, her left arm. Cold grey light gleamed on the gold and rubies on her finger, her signal holding Sixth H'las back until the moment when they could go without fearing the archers. The moment had come. She flung her arm forward and kicked Challenger to jump forward! 

Pouring down the hill, heart hammering, the blood singing in the ears so that the yell of other soldiers was almost blotted out. Sword leaping out of scabbard, spear down towards those Sietter scum, eyes wide with fear, mouth open to yell in anger. 

In the engagement there was no time to think. One must get on with one's weapons as well as one could. Nobody did well. Everyone was tense, frightened, too slow, too fast. Frightened of being wounded, killed; frightened of wounding, of killing; angry, angry, hang on to anger! 

A soldier falls by one's side. Do not think of it, do not look to see who it is, just hack, stab out at whatever scum brought one's fellow down. Inevitably those scum Sietter archers had been given the order to shoot although their own men were down in the field of battle - yes, any sacrifice for an elegant bloody victory - those scum! 

Tashka was dragging on Challenger's reins, her sword rising and stabbing. Faces swam about her horse's shoulders. She was at the front of it all, stabbing into a clutch of Sietter red and gold uniforms, too terrified to look back and see if she had any support behind her, not even sure if her banner-bearer had been able to keep up with her. 

Fiotr's horse forced a passage to her left. He was left-handed so they could keep their horses practically pressing flank to flank and each forget one side and strike out on their fighting sides. 

Fiotr was screaming mindlessly rhythmically as he fought but Tashka was eerily silent, her lips in a tight line, her dark blue eyes wide and glaring. Then Tashka's Challenger plunged forward, Fiotr's Maiden fell back. Before she could turn her head to see what was on her left, Tashka felt a ripping agony in her upper arm. 

She flung back her head, her knees automatically clenched tighter on Challenger's sides, her right arm came over to plunge her sword into someone's throat. 

She heard the banner-bearer cry out behind her. Fiotr was furiously struggling to her side screaming Scum scum and striking out at the Sietter troopers. They were through the knot of infantrymen and engaged in hand to hand with the cavalry. 

Tashka could feel great gouts of pain from her left arm. Her fingers were curled tight about her reins but the arm muscles were too weak to make the hand move, she must guide Challenger only with her knees. Her wide glaring eyes stared into a petrified young officer's face as her sword crashed down on his with a jolt. He jerked on his reins in his terror, she nudged Challenger to jostle his horse and he was flung off down under the hooves of the cavalry. 

Before even she heard his scream she was pushing on to engage another soldier then she became aware that H'las cavalry were on either side of her and behind her, she was momentarily safe - except from some chance bloody arrow just as likely to fall on some poor Sietter scum. She took the opportunity quickly to stand in her stirrups and look all around the field. 

She saw Flava Trait at the head of some infantry, going in to a section of Sietter cavalry. She saw a Sietter sword flash, Flava's arms fling up and he disappeared from his horse's back, down down into a writhing sea of men's arms and heads. She cried: 

"Trait!"

but she knew he would never lift his head to her call again. 

"Trait!" she screamed, she twisted her knees into Challenger's sides to try to get to him. He might, he might still be alive, might he not? 

She had broken away from Fiotr and Fiotr's cavalry. They had not time even to stop and stare or wonder what she was about. She was trying to ride across her own infantry, her banner-bearer struggling in her wake. Hanya's hand was on her bridle, he was pulling her horse round to face forward. 

"Are we going for the wing?" he thought it was part of her strategy. 

She stared wildly at him and gasped: "No!" flung her head up and looked round the field again. 

The two Sietter wings were pulling out to reach the two H'las Units at each side. She caught sight of the furling red and gold Sietter banner, swept her sword up and round to indicate it. 

"Follow me!" she said fiercely to Hanya. 

"B-but that is the thickest part," he gulped. "Should we not go to cut in half where they are thin?" 

"I have thought!" she hissed, she pressed her knees into Challenger's sides so that he jerked the bridle free of Hanya's grip and rode off towards the banner. 

Hanya only paused to collect what cavalry riders he could to him and rode after her, struggling through the infantry to where he could see her black and blue banner floating at her side. He was right-handed but he was trying to fight twisted in his saddle, to protect her wounded left side. She was pulling them on, thrusting, cutting a path to that thick bunch of soldiers in the centre. They were there; she was battling in the heart of the Sietter troop with only a Lieutenant, five H'las cavalry and her banner-bearer at her back. The rest of her troop were desperately struggling to break through and catch up with her. 

She was face to face with Rian. They stared at each other. Their swords met with a crash. Rian's horse jinked to his left, he was shaken in the saddle, distracted, his eyes flicked away from hers. She shoved her sword through the arm-hole of his mail, grating into the bone and flesh of his breast, so hard that her sword stuck in his body and jerked out of her hand as he fell off his horse, leaving her weaponless in the midst of the Sietter. 

But they were panicking. Their line had been pulled out too far and had broken in three places. The H'las were beginning to appear behind them. Hanya had torn the Sietter banner out of the hands of its bearer, who, seeing his Commander fall, let it go. Hanya pointed the banner to the ground. 

The Commander and two of the Captains were gone. Another young Captain suddenly stood in his stirrups and waved his arm above his head, yelling on the Angel of Mercy. He turned his horse and galloped away, his Quarter ran raggedly after him. The remaining soldiers fell back and began to scream on the Angel of Mercy and to run. 

~#~*~#~

Tashka walked down into the valley in the grey dull light of the afternoon, her legs shaky, her face still and pale. She was grimy with the dirt of battle: sweat and black marks where her helmet had rubbed on her forehead and her mail on her undershirt. She had taken off her mailcoat and helmet but had just thrown her black and blue felt tunic on over her sweaty undershirt, pushing Batren coldly aside when he tried to get her to take a bath. She let the medical unit bandage her left arm but only while the three remaining Captains and Hanya Lein made their verbal reports to her. 

She had spent the day going to and fro in the littered valley where they had fought. She organised the taking of the wounded H'las back to camp, her tall lean figure stood patiently waiting for news by the medical tent. She was back in the valley to ensure there was no looting of the dead bodies. She was instructing one of Petra's sections to load the Sietter weaponry into wagons to be sent back to the depot. She was looking to ensure there was no cruelty to the Sietter wounded lying screaming and dying, waiting to be sent back for. 

She had set Lieutenant Shaada to collecting the H'las dead. His face was pale under its natural brown colour. He did not look like the bright card-player and lady-hunter he was reputed to be. He and his men were walking the hillside, pulling the bodies out and carrying them aside while trying to shut their ears to the cries of the Sietter wounded. Those pale Angels, the Sietter, would be writing their reports back to the Generals in the effort to explain the defeat and contribute to some possible future victory before troubling their minds about duty of care to the wounded - if they could get their muddled heads around the shameful failure to take due care of their strategic head, the commanding officer. In H'las where duty of care to the juniors and men was paramount, someone would have had the heart to step straight up into command, simply out of concern to ensure that the wounded and dead were immediately attended to and thus there would be no break in transition of command. 

Hanya Lein walked at Tashka's heels as she strode down the hillside. Batren stood on the brow of the hill and watched them gloomily before turning to Tashka's tent and her bloodied muddied mail. 

Tashka walked purposefully to a particular place in the valley, stooped and pulled a Sietter body aside from a heap of flung limbs and tossed heads. One red-clad body opened his eyes as she did it. She looked into his eyes. His eyes widened in hopeful recognition of the el Maien face then his gaze fell to her black-clad form. He gave a soft moan, his eyes turned away from her and he lay still in the heap of bodies, staring away up the hillside in the vain hope that they might come before nightfall. Her slanted blue eyes narrowed, her rose-petal mouth set hard, she turned her fine-boned face away. 

Tashka gathered the one H'las body in the heap up under the arms and dragged it free. She fell on her knees, she did not have the strength to hold him up. She let Flava lie in her lap, cradling his head with her right arm. 

She stooped her head to look into his face. It was cold and white. It had been twisted as it lay in the pile of bodies and set in a grotesque mask. His eyes were open and the brown eyeballs stared lifeless at the sky. She put out her left hand and clumsily managed to pull his eyelids shut. The sleeve of her black and blue felt tunic oozed ominously damp, she had re-opened the wound in her arm with the effort of pulling him out from the heap of bodies. 

"Flava," she murmured, "gentle one, my Flava." 

Hanya fell to his knees behind her, pressed himself shivering against her back, his head pushed hard on her shoulder, he was shaking her with the violence of his sobs. The Sietter soldier had turned his eyes back to them and lay staring at them, speechless with pain and loss of blood. Tashka stooped over Flava Trait, stroking his cold face with the clumsy ringed fingers of her left hand and murmuring to him:  my officer, my junior, my friend. 

~#~*~#~

Hanya Lein sat in the canvas folding chair by Tashka's bedside, staring off into the back of her tent, his hands twisted together. There was a bandage round his head and one of his eyes was still a mass of cuts and bruises, swollen up so he could hardly see out of it. 

Tashka lay propped up on some cushions, her slanted blue eyes horribly bright. Her face was so thin that the bones jutted out of it like a strange sculpture. She had no expression on her face whatsoever. 

"So Iada died this morning," she said in a cold thin voice. 

"Yes sir," Hanya's voice in reply was as colourless as hers. 

"The surgeon said he would live." 

"It is so." 

"And so why did Iada die?" 

"Th-the," Hanya stammered, paused. They both waited for him to collect himself. Tashka stared away in silence. "The surgeon could not say," Hanya answered at last. "Sometimes ... it ... happens ... like that." 

Tears were rolling down his cut and bruised cheeks, stinging the cuts around his eye. Tashka did not look at him but she reached over one skeletal tanned hand with her rings loose on it and shook her fingers at him. He took her hand and pressed it to his forehead. She let her hand slide down, caressing the tears on his face, and said: "Go to," and he went, letting Batren in as he lifted the entrance flap. 

Batren limped to the clothes rail at the back of the tent to hang up some tunics he had managed to get washed in a village nearby. 

Tashka said: "There is a paper on the floor," in a voice of absolute horror and disgust. 

Batren looked around the absurdly clean tent. Two folding chairs stood at almost exactly equal distance from the table. A stool was set with geometric precision in front and to the middle of Tashka's box-desk by her bed. Each rug was laid square on to a piece of furniture or the edge of the tent and the one rug that had a fringe to one edge was so tidy it looked as if it had been combed. Batren could not see anything on the floor. 

"Th-there," Tashka said, her eyes huge with disgust, pointing a shaking finger. 

Batren saw a small crumpled white scrap to one side of the chair where Captain Lein had been sitting. He went and picked it up and set the chair square on to the bedding again, edging it about until he was sure it was in line with the end of the bedding.  

Tashka relaxed and lay staring at the ceiling of the tent. Batren looked at the piece of paper. It was just a scrawled note that must have slipped out of Captain Lein's pocket while he made his report to Tashka. Batren put it in his own pocket to give back to the Captain in case it was important. 

~#~*~#~

Batren came into Tashka's tent from the rain and darkness outside and paused, his face disappointed in the light of the fluttering candles. She had been sleeping when he last looked in and he had hoped she would sleep soundly, at least for a few hours. Her slanted blue eyes stared at him as bright and strange as ever as she laid the papers she had been looking over in her lap. 

He limped in and set a little pot on the brazier of glowing coals close to her. He took a packet from inside the breast of his jacket and held it out to her, showing her the yellow seal on the back which he had recognised although he could not read the name written below it. 

"A letter from Lord Vadya," he said gently. "It came one half hour ago." 

"Why did you not wake me?" she started nervously back against her pillows, snatching at it. 

"It is not a report nor orders," he said in a clear gentle voice. "It is a letter." He went and bent over her. She put her arms about his shoulders and he lifted her up, plumped up the pillows behind her and let her down in a more comfortable sitting position. 

She stared at the paper packet in her hand. At her full title in Vadya's familiar extravagant handwriting scrawled all the way down the creamy thick paper. He had never yet sent her anything but her orders handed down through him from the Generals and occasionally the kind of supportive report a senior might send to a junior officer working under stress. He always praised her, he guessed how she would be blaming herself for not doing this or for doing that and he showed her why she was not at fault. Those reports kept her just enough alive but left her dead enough to cope with the horror of war all around. 

She turned the letter over and stared at the yellow seal with the two towers, signifying Port H'las and Port Ithilien, the wavy lines in between signifying the sea: the van H'las crest with VeG and a banner in between the two towers. She ought to have been using that crest herself with AeM on it but they had gone to war before she could have a new seal made. 

Batren was setting her tray of food out for her: the bowl of soup in the exact centre of the tray, the spoon at the same distance from the bowl and from the edge of the tray. He ladled soup carefully from the pot on the coals into the soup bowl, ensuring there were no drips or splashes, and brought the tray to her. 

"I told you not to get me special food," Tashka said automatically. She was not even looking at her food. Batren was surprised at the quietness of her voice. Sometimes she threw her tray on the floor if she thought it was obviously special. 

"This is the same as what all the troopers are eating," Batren lied as usual. 

It was the same clear good soup that all the invalids had but her other obsession, besides the tidiness, was that she was not ill and would be walking about the camp in an hour or two. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 26



She put her letter down carefully behind her bowl of soup, nudged it until it was exactly in the middle of the tray and began eating. Batren hovered anxiously nearby, pretending to give her already shining mail an extra burnish. When she had finished only half the bowl, she stopped and sat staring into space. He sighed, came and lifted the tray from her lap. 

"Your letter, my Lord," he said, holding the tray towards her. 

She took it and lay among her pillows and cushions looking at it. Batren put her tray down on the table where the officers came to receive their daily orders in a fierce half hour meeting that always left her white and exhausted. He came over to pull her covers back and shift her onto her side. She submitted to the firm deft skill of his hands with a mute glare in her eyes but when Batren tried to see if the bandages on her leg needed changing, she said: "Leave me," in a queer tense voice. Her fingers clenched on her letter, she stared at it, at Vadya's familiar handwriting drawing out the words: Commander-Lord A. el Maien van H'las of Sixth H'las. 

Batren covered her up and went to clear up her meal. "Leave that," she said in a clipped voice. He looked at her in astonishment then went hurriedly out of the tent. 

She traced the curling words of her name and title with one thin finger, turned the letter over and broke the seal. 

He wrote to her that he understood how it was, that to carry love about in the midst of war was impossible. He said that he would understand if she did not want to read his letter, she could send it back to him to keep till the end of the war if she wanted. 

He told her how much he missed her, how he lay down every night and felt the space beside him stretch into the early hours of the morning because she was not there to press her warm body against him. He said how often he turned to tell her or show her something, but she was not there. It did not comfort him to think when the war is over. They would never have back the months they should have spent together when they had been separated and at war. 

He wrote it down, how much he loved her, what he loved about her: her courage, her humour, her beauty, her vivid intelligence. 

He told her how desolate he felt, at Flava's death, at Petra's death, and this friend and that colleague. He worried about how she must feel, her heart must be breaking. He wanted so much to be by her, to give her comfort and to have comfort of her. 

He talked about how difficult it would be, even if they could win the war, but they would be together and would love each other and would build a life that nobody could threaten ever again. 

He loved her more than he loved his own self. He trusted her with everything that was most precious to him: with his troop, with his region, with his life, with his heart. He longed for her to caress, to caress him. He was dull without her joy of life. He wanted her kisses, he wanted her hands on his body, he wanted to lay his hands on hers, to feel her fingers in his hair, on his back, in his arse, to press his fingers to her shoulders, to her buttocks, to her sex. She knew he must lie in the nights angrily jerking at the big cock she had been thrilled to take into her mouth and her cunt, the lonely tears of frustration rolling salt down his brown cheeks and into his generous big mouth. 

She lay still on her side, staring at the first love letter he had sent her, the first she had ever received in her life. She knew his writing so well. She had read hundreds of warrants and provisions orders in his hand, had received friendly letters, via an address Pava set up for her, when they were on leave away from each other. 

"V-Vadya," she whispered. She let the letter go and her fingers crept out as though to feel if he might be there after all. He might be beside her as he ought to have been. 

She looked at the empty bedding beside her. She gave a small moan. Her head, her shoulders relaxed, her fingers clenched up on her letter again. She screwed her eyes up, she began to cry. She was not used to crying, she shook with queer sobs, the tears forced their way through her lids. She wept into her cushions, motionless except for her left hand which clung to her letter and waved it to and fro. 

When Batren came back, she was sleeping, her fingers still curled around her letter. Her face and her head and her shoulders were all relaxed, her breath barely lifted the covers over her thin chest. 

She woke as he was collecting her tray, looked dimly at him from soft slanted blue eyes and fell asleep again. He crept quietly out.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 27



I have been editing the first couple of chapters and have reposted them up here - new versions of the Prologue and Ch.s 1 and 2 should be up by now. If you are re-reading the story, I would really welcome feedback on whether they are better in the new versions, either in comments on the chapters or via the Feedback form. I haven't got round to tackling the names yet, although I know I am going to have to change them. (Aww, I will be sorry to do that as I have lived with them for so many years but I know they make it difficult to follow the story.) 

Thank you so much everyone for your support with the votes and feedback, it's meant a lot to me :heart:

*****

Clair walked through the Port H'las streets in the darkness, his head bent and a moody scowl on his face. It was evening but he had not even eaten any dinner, had just slipped out of the castle and down into the town in civilian dress with an old cloak cast around his shoulders. He edged along the streets, kicking a little stone now and then and glowering at the glowing windows of shops and the braziers of coal around which people gathered to buy and eat roasted chestnuts and ask each other what news there might be of the war, which way was it going? 

Gradually he worked his way into an area of the port town where there were fewer shops and no braziers of coals with chestnuts roasting. Dark alleyways led off the street he walked down. He was going past a slatternly looking tavern. Clair was hungry as well as sulky by now and this place looked as if there was little chance that any of the Generals he was obliged to work with would turn up in it. Reluctantly he admitted that his bad temper would only be worsened by hunger and that he ought to try to be less angry. He strolled over, his lazy sexy stride and the quality of his clothes and weaponry attracting curious looks from the few passers-by, pushed open the door and went in. 

It was a dirty place with tables to either side of the room and a dark wood bar ahead of him. To one side of the bar a rickety wooden staircase led up to the rooms above. There were few people in the dimly lit room, Clair stumbled in the poor light as he went to the glowing red dully flickering fire and sat at a table beside it in the warmth. 

A woman strolled slowly over to him, he lifted his head and raised an eyebrow. She was surprisingly pretty for a place of this kind - or rather, he corrected himself, she was exactly the kind of sugarplum one might expect to find here. Her dark hair tumbled careless about a heart-shaped face. He could see the cleft between a pair of breasts like apples and an edge of lace escaping from the neckline of her dress. Her dress curved in tightly to a slender waist and then out to swish playfully about her hips. She was not wearing petticoats so the shape of her legs showed in the skirts as she walked. They appeared to be well-shaped legs. She smiled mechanically at him, not looking in his face. He was piqued by her lack of attention, he put his hand on hers where she had put it on the table and then she lowered her eyes to meet his and her eyes lit up to see him so beautiful before her. Her eyes were the same dark blue as Tashka's although they were round. He gave her the smile he gave to people whom he was seeking to encourage: poets, scientists, his silly Lady wife and she gave him back a sparkling-eyed laugh as if to say: I know you, my lovely. He laughed too, then. It was always comforting to get this cheating bit of love and warmth. It was only an acknowledgement of how sexy he was, not real love but it was from someone who was looking on him with eyes not because he was a wealthy aristocrat, someone who did find him in his own self attractive. 

"And what might we be able to do for you, your fine Lordship?" the woman enquired. 

He was startled then he realised she had no idea who he was, she was mocking him with the title. He grinned up at her, his slanted grey eyes creasing as they looked deep into her dark blue eyes. She put her other hand up to her neck and eased the shoulder of her dirty red silk dress down. The dress was dirty but the edge of lace he saw was crisp and clean, to his pleasure. He liked a bit of lace but he preferred it clean. 

"I am hungry," he answered. "For food," he added. 

"My honey," she drawled. "If you are hungry, you had better eat." 

"Do you have a stew I might have?" he asked. 

"If you can spare an half hour, you can have a chop." A flick of the eyes at the ramshackle staircase by the bar suggested the pleasurable way in which he could pass that half hour. 

"No, if you have a stew I'll take it now," he answered. "Any thing worth my while drinking?" 

"There is a fine brandy," she admitted. "We keep it for one of our regulars. It is the only thing here that is up to your style," she looked meaningfully at the lace which flowed over the fine felt cloth of his jacket at the lapels. 

"No wine fit to drink?" he asked. 

"I can send out for a bottle from the merchant's," she offered. 

"I may as well wait here for the chop, then," he said. "Give me some bread and sauce, and you will let the wine breath, my Angel, will you not?" She laughed and promised to do so. 

When she had fetched his bread, he sat with his head bent towards the warmth of the dully glowing fire, sulking. 

That day he had received a long letter from Arianna. It was all about her work and how Arkyll Inien had done this and her other student had done that and she thought they might write a scroll to send to B'dar, perhaps he would arrange a conference at which they could present these wonderful brilliant findings which were utterly incomprehensible to Clair. There was nothing about the children. In her last letter she had said something about Hanyan's drawing, he had written to beg her to say more but she had not troubled to reply to his request. There was nothing about the servants. Had she made it clear to Fiotr and Petra that they were not to race their wheelchairs in the snow and risk sliding down the hill, injuring themselves and damaging their wheelchairs? Had she made proper provision for young Lallia who had foolishly gone and got herself pregnant in spite of his making sure all the maids and men understood how to avoid having a child? Was Petra the steward suffering from his chest as usual in winter and if so had she made sure he went to see the doctors? 

There was nothing either about the enormous box of chocolates he had been to such phenomenal trouble to send her. Bloody Angel of Baya, to write himself to Lady Maive el Vaie van Soomara and beg her, of her indulgence, send his Lady wife - his own wife - a box of Soomara chocolates across land and sea and all the way up through the Maier Pass in a state of siege. Maive had sent him a hilarious letter in reply, promising him that the biggest and most luxurious box ever created had been put into a special carriage and taken to Sietter. She had tried to refuse to let him pay for it but he insisted and added a pair of earrings for herself, just a friendly token, sweet friend, hope it will not make trouble for you with your latest bit of trimming - or your proposed betrothal to el Wyming. Tell it him from me he will be a lucky dog if he can get himself bestowed on you. And that indifferent mathematical brain could not even trouble to write and thank him but must send some great screed of stuff about her wretched partial differentials. 

A self-indulgent tear slid through Clair's lean fingers. He stared into the fire, not even raising his head when the woman came back with a bowl and the bottle of wine he had ordered. Then he felt bad to be so ill-mannered and said in a husky voice strung with tears, "have a bowl yourself, my pretty." 

She reached over and ran her warm fingers down his cheek. "Ah, she is not worth it," she assured him. "Have yourself a bit of fun and forget the maid." She gave a throaty sexy chuckle. 

He lifted his head and smiled mechanically at her. Their eyes met again and hers smiled into his, promising at least half an hour in which he would forget his half-thawed Ice Queen of a wife, his lost lover, his brother and his brother officers out in the wintry weather dying in a war he would have given his own life to avoid. Just half an hour? those breasts like apples would be fun to the touch. She would probably give him a real favour not pretending to moan and rise to his cock sinking into her cunt. He would be able to get her going, she was eager for it already, leaning hopefully towards him. A small voice in his head said, Are you crazy? to risk losing the love of that splendid beauty, Arianna. She is not like Hanya, she has a rigid moral framework, she will never forgive it you if you take an one-day-one-night after offering her a complete marriage of mind and body and heart. He kicked the voice down, saying to it: She would never know. 

There was a stamp of feet on the floor of the room above the bar. The woman lifted her head and frowned. She flashed Clair a saucy wink from an eye as jewel-like and blue as his beloved sibling's and went back to the bar to take some bottles out from behind it which she put on a tray and took up the rickety stairs. 

Clair stared after her. He was remembering how he had wept, the few times Hanya Vashin had come back to him with the scent of some other man's perfume on his lean neck. He had not said any thing, he had not blamed Hanya for being tempted by some lovely he had picked up who knew where, he had known that he was the only serious lover Hanya would ever take but it had pierced him to the heart. He had shed his soft tears in Pava el Jien's warm nonjudgmental embrace, trusting to Pava never to mention them either to Hanya or to that fierce killer in defence of his honour, his young sister. In spite of the many eyes that looked on him - the beautiful future sworn Lord, he had been entirely true to his lover for seven years, had never felt tempted as he was now to throw a casual favour to someone outside his lover's bed. He bowed his head down. 

He thought of the new life he had slowly made in Castle Sietter. He thought about taking the children to school and standing waiting for the tutors to open the doors of the castle schoolroom in the morning. He did not of course talk to the other parents waiting there patiently who were all sworn to his service and could not but have treated it as an opportunity to seek advancement but he used to enjoy standing and overhearing their parental gossip, the complaints of cheekiness or naughtiness which made him realise how normal his little Arkyll was - and how lucky he was in the exquisitely good behaviour of Hanyan. They would sometimes spontaneously break out into praise of Hanya's extraordinary beauty, making him glow with happy anxious pride. 

He had missed picking fruit in the orchards. When he left, the apples and pears were not ripe yet, he had missed the golden autumn days with apples hanging red and russet, pears with the silvery-grey tracery over their skins. He missed the trees with big gnarled boughs along which the children climbed and sat and played while the gardeners, some of the maid- and men-servants and he picked the fruit and put it into the big wicker baskets. Later the cooks would come to set a hearty meal on trestle tables under the orchard trees, with weak ale and cider to drink, and he would feel content after a long hard day's work in the gentle autumn sunshine. 

He thought of cooking in the castle kitchens; quietly absorbed in turning a perfect omelette out of the pan, completely focussed on cooking it just so - a little bit liquid still in the middle. If he were cooking himself some breakfast he would not think about any of the irritating business which his day would bring, just enjoy preparing his food while drinking his coffee from a child's bowl which that old dear Flada Clathan gave him. 

He thought of working with Tarra and Laran, of telling Ladda off when she wanted new this and that or tried to persuade him - yet again, to enclose the veranda and the walkways around the inner courtyard. He thought about Fiotr and Petra racing their wheelchairs in the big dim hallway and about the guards flirting with maid-servants and about Ria the children's nursery-maid, standing in the stable doorway sheltering from the rain and enjoying a kiss and a cuddle with her lover the stablemaid. 

He thought about his last night in the castle and waking in the morning: the two children, Arianna and himself all curled together in the close warmth of the sheets and blankets and quilt in the chilly autumn air; blond and dark hair scattered over the pillows, their faces so soft in sleep, their big red mouths bunched up in the dim morning light as if for his kisses. 

He thought about Arianna el Jien van Sietter, so tall and plump and fair, moving through his castle like a candle-flame lighting up the old dark corners and driving out the wounded secrets, staring at them with her terrible rational mathematical brain to say:  that is not a problem, and they could straighten up and walk free in the light and the air. 

He loved it so much, the quiet domestic life that he enjoyed with all the passion he could feel in his hot passionate heart. 

He hated the work which was keeping him from that life: the long meetings in the Generals' offices, where he was frequently praised for the excellence of the lines of supply he managed. He suspected (quite wrongly) that they only tolerated him for his wife's money, which poured in to pay for the excessively expensive arms they had to buy. (The merchants looked so queerly at van H'las when he placed the orders that Vadya had to do it, van H'las' open face gave it away that there was money coming from somewhere-else for their supplies.) 

Clair hated eating in the First H'las and strategic staff mess hall surrounded by the men and officers. Occasionally there was a flirt going on that he enjoyed surreptitiously watching but mostly it was just bluff men talking about war and weapons and horses. He avoided the parties, particularly since quite often an officer would look on him with eyes; he had that thin gold band on his finger but his reputation was notorious and he was not a senior officer of theirs, not even of their army. At least they would leave it at looking on him since he was the brother by marriage of their future sworn Lord, and since they knew that the hero they worshipped more than they did the Angels, Commander-Lord Tashka el Maien, would give them a glove as soon as a look if they caused her brother any embarrassment.

If he could have been out in the field at least although he knew he could never have raised his arm the signal to take men to their deaths again and would certainly not have been able to take arms against those like Caja Nain, his beloved junior officer who had remained locked to the hoop of the Sietter Generals' rings. To be stuck back here trotting to and fro his desk in the strategic staff offices and going back at nights to a bare big guest room. He hated the boyish bachelor life he was obliged to lead with all his fine mind. 

He just wanted to go home: to his children; to the people who served him and who were under his loving care. Home, where sometimes he could have a party and invite his brother and brother by marriage van H'las, his wife's cousin and his own brother officer Pava el Jien, his scandalous sister's scandalous one-day-one-night el V'lair van Athagine - no not el V'lair, since he had proved unworthy Clair's trust around the women of his family, maybe a friend or two like Lady van P'shan or Maive el Vaie - although unfortunately Maive would not come if Pava were there. 

He just wanted to go home to that secretive sly animal, his Lady wife. She did not keep ordinary secrets like an affair with a junior officer or a servant, oh no, she kept it secret that she was involved in a splendid humanitarian project with merchants, that she corresponded with highly respected scientists about a mathematical theorem, that she was in love with her own husband. 

She was not even ready to lie with him in passion, perhaps she would always be too chaste and shy to enjoy the kind of sexual games he could enjoy with this pretty bit of trimming in a tavern bed. But she was at the heart of his home, his domestic happiness. She might never know of it, if he did chuck out a favour to a stranger like one of the piles and piles of kerchiefs he had in his drawers. She would probably even forgive it him, she was a rational mind and would understand if he said: I was far from home and from you; I was lonely. But he would never forgive himself for soiling that honour that had been bestowed on him to hold at his heart, the shining bright chastity of his storming intelligent beauty whose happiness he had come to care about so much. 

He put his hand to his eyes and the tears slid slowly through his fingers. After a few minutes he fetched a big sigh and wiped them away and sat on there, staring sulkily into the sullen fire. 

The prostitute was coming back to Clair with his food, still smiling that lovely smile that curled up to eyes that were the same colour as Arkyll's. He smiled mechanically back at her, pouring a bowl of wine for himself. She saw that his mood had changed and good-naturedly she left him to himself to eat his dinner although she was disappointed. It was not often she had a client who suited her eye as well as her pocket. 

The food was quite good - for the kind of place this was, and he was hungry so he enjoyed it. As he was finishing, the door opened, he turned his head and saw to his great annoyance his brother by marriage, el Gaiel van H'las. 'What?!' he thought, 'has she got him following me now, to make sure I stick to my vow to her! She is so unreasonable jealous.' In thinking this he conveniently put to one side the fact that he had challenged men to put their lives in the hazard over completely absurd suppositions that her honour had been compromised. 

Vadya did not look at him nor at anyone-else in the room. He stamped off to a table in an alcove on the other side of the room, where it was even darker than where Clair was sitting, and disappeared into it. As soon as she had seen him coming in the barmaid had reached under the bar. She poured out a small bowl of brandy which she put on a tray and brought to this latest customer. 

Clair realised in astonishment that Vadya was a regular customer in this dreadful place. Considering the pretty face of the woman serving, he was inclined to be suspicious then he remembered whom it was he was suspecting of soiling their honour with a barmaid in a tavern. The husband of that killer Tashka el Maien van H'las! he would be worse than dead if he ever gave her the go-by. Clair got up and went over to Vadya, calling to the barmaid to bring him a bowl of that good quality brandy that they kept for this regular customer. 

Vadya lifted his head as Clair came up to his table and looked out of the darkness at him with no friendly eye. "What are you doing here?" he asked in a sulky voice. 

"It looked like a place where there would not be anyone I would know," Clair answered with a wry smile. Vadya gave a nod of comprehension. "Would you rather I let you alone, el Gaiel?" 

"No no," Vadya said with a sigh. "Bear me company if you wish, Clair. I am not very good company, though." 

"None of us are, just now," Clair said sympathetically. 

"To lose all the foreground to the Maier Pass," Vadya grumbled, "after the troops had won it with such valour." 

"Well, we have held the Maier Pass," Clair pointed out. "Never mind all that. We can talk about that in the Generals' strategic gossip-chamber." He characterised the strategic meetings to which Vadya and he had such privileged access in the scornful tones of a field officer. "You did not come here to talk about military strategy," he cast a meaningful eye round the dark corners where there might be any sort of person sitting with their ears waggling. "Why have you come here?" 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 27



"Oh, you know," Vadya propped his head in his big hands and glowered into his brandy. "There will be nobody I know here." After a while he lifted his head and nodded towards the stairs. "They run a card-playing hell upstairs," he said. "Tashka found it on her first visit to Port H'las. When she is in Port H'las she comes here." 

"Angels!" Clair exclaimed crossly, looking about him. "What, on his own?" 

"Oh yes," Vadya said gloomily. "I mean, if she can she will arm-twist one of the juniors to come along and watch her back but she quite often comes alone. At the least of it, thank the Angels, she has not yet introduced my father to this place! That I have expressedly forbidden." 

Clair grinned sympathetically. "Your Lady wife is not a placid cow to manage," he said. 

"Yes, thanks for bestowing her on me," Vadya responded. "You can talk. At the least of it my wife does not run with the merchants and start a civil war." Clair laughed. "There is a parcel come for you from Anna," he added. 

When they had finished the bowls of brandy they got up to go back to the castle together. As they went out the door, Clair said: "I prithou, el Gaiel." He popped back into the horrid bar, the barmaid was wistfully clearing their brandy bowls from the table. He went up to her and stuffed a couple of suns in her bosom and waggled his left hand with the marriage ring on his finger at her, to say: It is not that you are not lovely; if I were not married, my sugarplum, but I am. 

Back at the castle there was a parcel wrapped in waterproof cloth which had come all the way down to him through the Maier Pass by special messenger, the small packet of the letter she wrote him about her work must have overtaken it on its way. He cut the sealed cloth and out of the soft wrappings fell a couple of pots of special jam from Ladda, a length of pretty lace - all suns and stars and moons - for him to have sewn onto a shirt, and some framed pictures. There was a scrubby drawing of what looked like a cow. No, in shaky writing under it was written: Arkyll horse. There was an extremely good drawing, a picture of Arianna, with neat lettering saying: Portrait of Aunt Anna, Hanya. He looked in astonishment at his son's art-work then with a pleased smile at his other son's name written by himself then picked out her letter. It was a long letter telling him all about how the children did, and the servants. Ria wanted to marry her lover, Arianna craved his indulgence, she had agreed to bestow her on the stablemaid in Clair's absence. She wrote: I thank you, my husband, my heart. How much I enjoy myself eating my chocolates in the library; sometimes while dreaming of what else we might do here than sums if only we could lock the door... I am that woman who is so glad in her heart to sign herself your Lady wife your dear Arianna el Jien van Sietter.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 28



Copyright (c) 2015 Naoko Smith

Thank you so much for continuing to read and give me such great votes. (Apart from that trolling 1-bomb, LOL.)



In early Spring Vadya got a commission to ride through the troops and make a complete assessment of their resources in arms and men. Arianna and Hanya el Jien had written to Clair to put up money for a spring offensive – a letter that had come in a dirty package stuck to the dead body of a Castle Sietter servant found in a gutter in Port H'las without any of the other letters she had been carrying, over whom Clair wept bitterly. 

The war had been swaying from one side to the other. The Generals felt on the whole pleased and surprised that they had held the Maier Pass and not been overwhelmed by the superior numbers of Sietter men with their ample provisions of arms. Vadya was excited at the prospect of forward movement in the war in spring but when the commission began to be talked of, his immediate thought was: If I get to go, I will see Tashka. 

It was her strategic recommendations which had allowed them to hold the Maier Pass all winter. There had been an argument in the Generals' offices about bringing her in from the field. The rumour went round that her own father by marriage ruled against it. Vadya was barred from the meeting but Clair had gone. The reports of Sixth H'las wounded were silent on the commanding officer's state of health so Clair realised that she ought to have been invalided in but he knew Tashka el Maien van H'las would never leave her soldiers in the field of battle so long as she could crawl onto a horse and lift one arm their signal. That battle-hardened warrior van H'las knew what was to do as well. He had structured the command of his army around duty of care and he opened his mouth to say they should bring Tashka in. Clair, the commanding officer trained in the Sietter army, interrupted in an ice cold voice to point out that without the sharp analysis she provided from the perspective she gained out in the field they might as well lay down arms for the Sietter army directly. He knew that Tashka would refuse to come if they called her in, she was a supreme strategic officer who could weigh up the cost of each sacrifice and put any life in the hazard in the interests of duty of care to the wider mass of her whole army. 

Vadya worried horribly in case the Generals did not realise he was the best person for the commission. Clair was in charge of the lines of supply, possibly he would be the better officer for the task of assessing what resources were needed. It was two days before he realised that the only reason the Generals had not come to tell him the commission was his was that they assumed it was as obvious to him as it was to them. 

One fine chill morning with a fresh wind whipping the clouds through the skies he rode down into Sixth H'las' camp where the tents were laid out on a wide hillside near a village. He could see Tashka's black and blue banner flying in the wind above the fawn and grey sides of the campaign-weathered tents clustered around hers. There was a knot of officers in black and blue felt uniforms collecting to meet him; they had known he was coming but not exactly when of course. He was glad they had not been able to get together a parade. He could not have borne seeing a parade of Sixth H'las with so few people he knew and those few badly wounded. 

As he rode through the camp he was pleased to see how neat it was. Despite the rush and panic of war, the work of falling back to regroup twice, everything was in its proper place. He avoided looking in the men's faces. It felt like a strange troop to him – Sixth H'las, where he had been a Captain and that he had commanded for seven years. 

He came up to the group of officers and saw that Tashka was not among them. His mouth went dry with fear. He swung off Midnight into Hanya Lein's strong grip and stared desperately into Hanya's face. "He is sleeping," Hanya said immediately. "Batren refused to allow us to wake him." 

Vadya gave a short laugh of relief. Hanya was trying to go on one knee and press Vadya's left hand to his forehead. Vadya gripped his arm to prevent him and gently brushed Hanya's cheek with his soft fist. He felt a twist of sorrow. Hanya's cheek – formerly so smooth and young and handsome – was lined with tiny fine red scars. He turned to Basra and made him rise up and come into a fierce hug. Basra clung to his shoulders, he felt a tear go down his neck but they made no attempt to speak of what they felt. 

He turned to greet those six or seven Lieutenants he still knew and the officers he had not commanded. He introduced round the officers helping him make the assessment. They moved through the camp towards Tashka's tent, talking casually of the journey he and the Generals' strategic staff officers had had. 

Batren came limping from Tashka's tent to greet him. It went to his heart to see how his old friend had been hurt, he strode forward and, to his horror, Batren also tried to go on one knee to him. He hugged him close, Batren was still trying feebly to pull away and go on his knee. "Batren!" he said, "how I have missed you. Lord Clair says I dress like a priest's doxy without you by my side!" Batren grinned shyly, blushing with pleasure at this compliment from someone who dressed nearly as well as the beloved Lord Tashka. 

Vadya went to the entrance of Tashka's tent, lifted the entrance flap, looked casually inside and let the flap drop again. He stood quite still, staring at the stained canvas of the entrance flap. 

"Leave us," he said in a short clipped voice. "Give me one hour with my ... my junior." 

There was a short silence behind him then Hanya said, "we would perhaps do best to prepare some of our reports with you, gentle men," to the strategic staff officers. 

"Yes," Vadya said. "You should do that." 

As they all moved off, he heard Basra, evidently in answer to puzzled looks and raised eyebrows, say: "Commander-Lord el Maien was his Captain," as if that would explain it. 

He lifted the entrance flap again and went softly into the tent to sit beside her bedding. There was a stool so conveniently placed there that he knew she dictated most of her work from her bedding to the Lieutenants. 

She was lying on her side with a rug pulled over her. A set of orders was still sitting in the curl of her fingers. She had fallen asleep while reading them and Batren had covered her over with a black and green rug that had a thin red stripe in it. 

Her face was so thin. 

He was reminded of birds, of mice, of little creatures with tiny bones. Her rings hung loose on her finger, he saw that she had wound thread round them to keep them on. His heart contracted to see that she still insisted on wearing his marriage and betrothal rings. Her long lashes lay on the shadowed dark hollows under her eyes. Her neck that used to hold her head so gracefully poised was too skinny in the circle of the black cotton collar of her shirt. 

He wanted to cry, to kill, seeing her worn away by war. He wanted to surrender, to shout to someone: It is not worth it, losing so many of my friends, seeing my lover so changed, nothing is worth that. Let me be taken away and hung, rather than this. 

But it was not like that, this war. They were not fighting just to save his skin or his lands. He thought about the old snake, van Sietter, with such a rush of hatred that he felt even if he had been the lowest trooper whose vow went up through the whole chain of command to such a piece of scum floating on the top, he would have compromised his honour to desert. 

He caught sight of a packet of papers lying to one side of the cushions Tashka rested on. It had been tucked under them and had got nudged out. It was creased and worn. It had a stain in one corner that looked like old blood, as if she might have carried it into battle in the inside breast pocket of her surcoat, where she could still get to it if she were fatally wounded, and she had let some dying soldier rest against her breast even though his blood soaked through her silk surcoat into the precious paper she carried there. 

It was his letter. The only love letter he had written her, she never replied so he knew she could not bear more but she kept it and so he knew she was glad of it. 

His shoulders huddled together, he bowed his head. He felt too sad to cry. 

She stirred suddenly in her sleep and her eyelids fluttered open. The slanted clear dark blue eyes stared intently into his eyes over the crumpled love letter on her bedding. She sat up and reached out to grip his shoulder. He put his arms eagerly out to take her in his strong embrace but she held him off, her head swung to one side. 

"M-my report," she said in a shrill voice. "I know our losses in equipment are the heaviest, I can explain." 

"Tashka!" he said in an appalled gentle voice. 

"Let me just see my papers," she started to scramble out of her bedding. 

"Later?" he suggested. "The others will come in one hour for our meeting. Per- perhaps you might sleep a little longer?" 

She turned her head and looked into his eyes. She relaxed her stiff right arm that was holding him off then she said simply: "I dream." 

"I know," he said softly. "Wait, I will come hold you. You might sleep then." 

She nodded and he hurriedly pulled off his boots, his weapons and his cloak. He lay carefully down in the bedding beside her; he felt as if she were so fragile she would break if he jostled her. She reached out to put her arms about his neck with a sigh of relief, snuggled her head into the hollow of his shoulder, shut her eyes and slept. 

He held her thin light body gently against him with his left arm, with his right hand he covered her head as if to protect it. 

He felt fat, sleek, luxurious beside her. He felt like some rich monster with her thin wounded body in his arms that were too strong, they might break her. He had dreamt for months of holding her in his arms. Sometimes he had imagined her lying there like his Captain, her head close to his, her rose-petal mouth discussing this or that strategy, her blue eyes sharing his grief at the loss of their friends. Often he had remembered her body open to his pressing in sex, and the ecstatic joy and the fun of moving in love with her, his cock going deep down to her sweet spot to make her cum and start her vagnial muscles gripping on his shaft, the delicious feelings rippling up out of her into him. 

Stupidly he had hoped he might come to her again like that. He had forgotten that she would be just like the other soldiers: seeking to get on with her duties ice cold celibate and denying her heart; or using sex as the violent means to express her hatred of what she had had to do. She was a Sietter officer, her mind fixed on victory at any cost; and she was an el Maien trained in the H'las chain of command. She had a heart as tender as a baby rabbit not only for the men who followed her arm, but also for young creatures in red and gold she slaughtered even though she thought of her brother officers the Angels while she did it. 

Only because he was a brother officer, he too had been through what she was going through, could she come to his arms at all. She came like a wounded animal seeking protection. 

She slept fitfully. She moaned and twitched in his arms, her eyes would fly open, her head jerk up, she would struggle briefly in his loose arm. She would see his gentle brown face turned to her, put her head back on his shoulder with a small sound of relief and fall asleep again. 

After exactly an hour, she lifted her head and looked straight into his eyes. For a second he thought he saw the old smile curling up her rose-petal mouth to her slanted blue eyes. 

"My love," he said softly. 

Her eyes turned dimly away to the back of the tent. 

"Commander," he said. "The Captains will be waiting on us." 

She nodded and sat up, the rug fell loosely about her hips. He got out of the bedding and went to sit in a folding chair by her table. She got up slowly and went to a basin of water across the tent. She went dragging her right leg behind her like a bird with a broken wing, staring mindlessly into space as she walked as if she could not bear to think about how badly she limped. 

Vadya got quickly out of the chair and walked to the entrance of the tent. He stood there, his mouth covered with his hand, biting one finger hard and staring intently at a hooking hole in the canvas. It had a metal ring set in it to stop the cloth fraying she had lost the full use of her leg. The ring shone in the light falling through the hole she used to walk with such a glorious sexy stride and she had lost the full use of her leg. One side of the ring was rubbed smooth from the hook which caught it back. 

"Thy time for my allegiance," the appeal was spoken very softly, even though he was standing right by the entrance he could hardly hear the words just a murmur of a voice. 

"Call them in," Tashka's husky voice said behind him. 

He flung the entrance flap savagely back and glared into the knot of officers waiting outside. Hanya's and Basra's heads flinched aside as if he had shouted at them: Why did you not let me know?  

The four Captains and his three strategic staff officers came into the tent and found her standing by a chair, one hand on its back. The strategic staff officers sensed a queer constraint about the situation but she looked to them just as they had heard Commander-Lord el Maien van H'las looked, only they had heard she was irresistibly pretty and she was not. She raised a cool eyebrow at them as they were introduced and apologised in a dry humorous voice for having been resting when they arrived. "It is too quiet these days to do any thing but sleep!" she quipped lightly. 

They talked for a few minutes of the general situation in the war while they settled into their seats and got out their papers. She showed a sharpness of analysis and knowledge of what was happening that startled the strategic staff officers. Something she casually mentioned made Vadya's eyes open wide then he forced them to relax. He had thought no one outside the Generals' strategic council knew about it but it passed the others by. 

"And I heard," she said hesitantly, "that there was a plot discovered against Lord van Sietter?" 

"Ay," one of the strategic staff officers answered her. "Some Sietter officers were hung for traitors." 

"I had heard it," she said. Her head turned to one side, her mouth puckered briefly in sorrow. She did not ask for the names of those who had been hung and Vadya, who had had to restrain a screaming Clair for a whole night when Clair found out who they were, did not want her to know. 

"Are you set?" he enquired of the officers around the table. 

She started to turn her head back to him then he saw her head suddenly freeze, hanging from her thin neck like an icicle from a tree. Her whole face changed from a weary unemotional mask to an expression of absolute terror and loathing. 

Batren, who had been bringing a tray of glasses and a jug of water across to them, suddenly dumped it on the table by Hanya so violently that some of the water spilled from the jug into the tray. He reached quickly down beside Tashka to snatch up a tiny piece of paper that had fallen on the floor. Hanya started noisily handing the glasses round, standing up to pour water into them and effectively blocking Tashka off from the eyeline of the strategic staff officers. Tashka watched Batren intently until he had replaced the piece of paper in the little box of scraps put on the table for the officers to make rough notes on. Then she relaxed and turned her apparently careless face to them again. 

Vadya sat beside her and faced the table of officers with an expression colder and more inhuman than Hanya or Basra had ever imagined he could wear. 

That night he lay down and took her gently in his arms. He waited for her to fall asleep and then he wept. He wept softly, without shaking, which might wake her, or making any noise. The tears rolled silently down his cheeks in the dark. She lay restlessly in his arms. Sometimes he sensed she had woken but she would grip on his shoulder or in his hair, not particularly gently, as if she could not remember that he had feelings too. She would sigh in the darkness and fall asleep again. 

In the morning he opened his eyes and found her staring at him. Her arms were wound around his neck, her legs loose between his. Her face looked easier, the shadows were less dark under her eyes. She shifted and lifted her head. She put her mouth to his and kissed the lips that he held softly still for her. She lifted her mouth away, her blue eyes dim, and said: "My report. I know we have had the heaviest losses of equipment but I can explain it." 

"Yes," he said gently. 

"Shall I make my report now?" she asked. 

"Let us have some coffee first," he suggested. 

"Sir, it is done," she said, sitting up beside him and stretching her arms above her head. "Batren!" she shouted out. "He is not usually late with the coffee," she added aside to him, with a frown. 

"I know," he said softly. 

~#~*~#~

When the H'las big spring push forward came, Sixth H'las broke through the lines of Sietter troops so quickly and easily that they had swept ten miles from their morning's camp before they pulled up to a nervous halt. 

They had stopped in the midst of rich farmland. In front of them Second Sietter had broken a frenzied trail through the green spring crops in flight. Tashka had reined up her big grey warhorse Challenger and was holding him in, a concentrated frown across her face. A narrow cut ran across the bridge of her nose as if someone had slashed at her face and she had flung herself backwards in the saddle just in time so he had only caught her with the tip of his weapon. Challenger jittered in a circle under her guidance, still blowing from the unexpected canter through the fields. The Sixth H'las soldiers who had ridden and run in Tashka's wake watched her. 

Her head suddenly lifted and she looked intently round at them all, her eyes focussed but on something beyond their tense watchful faces and keenly fixed eyes. "Inien!" she called in a firm clear voice to where Basra was walking his horse in a circle and staring at her and bleeding from a gash on his cheek. "Order the camp dismantled and the baggage wagons brought to join us here." 

"H-here?" he stuttered, "but ... we are so far into their lines ...!" 

She turned her head to look into his eyes with an intense expression of annoyance, opening her mouth to say she had thought. Before she could speak, he saluted and said: "Sir! It is done." 

"Shaada!" 

He cantered quickly to her side. The sweat stood out in beads on his smooth dark skin, his eyes were still wild with fear and rage. 

"Collect two of the messengers from your scouting section to take a message each to Ninth Vail and Tenth H'las. They must be good, Alaara, they have to get there and back as quickly as they may." 

"Sir, it is done." 

She swung off Challenger and led the horse round to calm him down, clucking absently to him and frowning as she limped along. In her mind poured a torrent of facts, so many and so quickly tumbling into place that it was like a great river of thought in flood. She was barely aware of each individual thought coming to her, there were just things she knew. 

She knew that the big spring push had happened about a week earlier than the Sietter had expected – she herself had written to the strategic staff to recommend an early date so that the Sietter should be caught off guard. She sensed that the Sietter had been forming defensive lines and so she knew their morale was low. Everyone knew the other Trossian regions had been forbidden to come to support her father after it had been proven that he and el Jien van Iarve had conspired to kill his daughter by marriage and her brother. (el Jien van Iarve had also been heavily fined, which money had gone to Arianna and Hanya and thence to the H'las war coffers.) van Sietter had been unable to draw Vilandia into the war because the only soldiers who came to H'las' aid were two of his own troops and Ninth Vail, which everyone knew (or thought they knew) was only a play-troop for el Jien van Vail, the cousin of Arianna el Jien van Sietter and brother officer to Clair and Tashka el Maien. van Sietter was offering half-price weapons to his officers; they would be crying out for men, while the young men of Sietter went over the border. They would be wanting the inspiration that Vadya and Clair gave to the H'las and their allies. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 28



Vadya went round all of the troops (including the Sietter troops and the little play troop of el Jien van Vail) and listened to what they wanted. He went back to the Generals' strategic staff and el Maien van Sietter ran the lines of supply through his fingers like fishing lines in a shoal of mackerel. He laid it all out for them not quite as they said they wanted it but exactly as he knew they needed it. Then he rode round to Fourth and Tenth Sietter himself, riding all day and all night to get to them. He walked through them, their future sworn Lord, his husky voice praising common troopers and young officers, his hand gripping a shoulder or shaking a hand and arm, his rare smile sweet over his juniors, their two commanding officers. 

Tashka could see the whole thing in her mind: nine H'las troops, two Sietter and little Ninth Vail to either side of her; the whole Sietter line falling back in front of them to the second line; the second line only a few miles from Arventa. 

"Paper!" she said fiercely to Hanya Lein, who had come to ask for his orders. 

He groped hesitantly in his black and blue silk surcoat although he knew he was carrying no paper. He looked blankly at her, holding out his empty hand. 

"Pen and ink?" she shoved Challenger's reins in his hand, her face was pinched with desperation. Someone limped up with a stub of a pencil. She breathed a sigh of relief, drew her dagger and started sharpening the pencil with quick efficient strokes. 

"Lein," she said, her eyes focussed on the pencil, "pull all the men into that field to rest, in a properly defended circle. Have the wounded seen to and send back to fetch any wounded we have left behind. Tell Inien, Shaada and Jien to meet us here in one half hour." 

She dragged off her silk surcoat and her mailcoat and squatted on the ground, pulling out a creased old letter from the breast pocket of her surcoat. The letter had a bit of space at the bottom of it and on the back of one page and there was the paper it had been wrapped in. She rested the paper on her mailcoat and began sketching maps on this crumpled sheet with an old bloodstain in one corner. She was so completely focussed that she did not even lift her head when he said: "Sir, it is done," and led Challenger and his own bay horse away. 

Four hours later, messengers began riding in at the gallop. She was sitting on some cushions at her box-desk in the exact same spot where she had dismounted from Challenger. Sixth H'las were collected in the meadow off to one side. Batren was putting salve on her cut face, wiping off her head and limbs and massaging her shoulders and back while she wrote. She had ordered the troop not to set up camp, to prepare to move forward yet again. She was desperately writing out several sets of orders addressed to the other troops in the line, using the ream of spare paper which she had dragged out of her box-desk and flung in a heap on the ground beside her. The messengers gave her reports from their troops which she flicked through at lightning speed, nodding her head as if these only confirmed things that she already knew. She handed them orders already written, telling them to go straight back at full speed on fresh horses which she bade her Captains find for them at any cost. She even told one to take her own Jewel. 

Hanya, Basra, Alaara and the new Captain Mada Jien came to talk to her. She waved her hand at the grass about her as if they were at the table in her tent. Batren hurriedly threw some rugs on the ground and they sat heavily around her. She put before her four Captains the original crumpled bits of paper on which she had first scribbled her plan of action. 

"They are breaking up before us," she said. "They did not expect us to be on them so soon. I know the second line is not yet at full strength. They are waiting for a shipment of arms to come down the river but it has been held up by a dispute with the bargemen." 

It would be Hanya el Jien's work. On his way back from enjoying the winter sports in P'shan he would have called in at one of the Master arms dealers' warehouses, perhaps enquiring about a couple of special sets of weapons as wedding gifts for friends who had married in haste before going away to war. 

The Master dealer would have come rushing down from his office when he heard who was in his warehouse: Lord Hanya el Jien who with his sister was so renowned among the merchants tangled in their fingers' ends although as younger children they were so little considered by the aristocracy. The merchant would have offered Hanya a bowl of tea, wine, whatsoever he wished in his private office. 

Once they were alone together Hanya would have said carelessly: "'It must be costing exceptionally dear to send arms to Sietter across country and down the river instead of through the Maier Pass, even if ar't able to get full price for them. I hope you and your colleagues will not have to reduce the bargemen's wages, which might lead to a dispute and hold up those shipments. That would be disastrous for Lord van Sietter's cause. By the road, I have acquired some letters of credit in your name, do come to talk to me about them - at your convenience." 

Tashka continued: "There will be a panic in the second line when the first line retreats back through them. I have got messengers to run to the troops either side of us, tell them to hold the ground they have won and send messengers to the troops either side of them again, and so down the whole line. In this way I learned that almost all of us broke through with the same ease. Some of the troops pulled back, those I have instructed to come forward again. Fourth H'las had more trouble than the rest of us but Seventh and Third have gone to their aid and they are also now on the road to Arventa. 

"We have not time to report to the Generals' strategic staff and wait on their orders. We must take this opportunity. I have used my van H'las designation to take command of the line and ordered all troops to push forward once more, with the intention: to engage with the second line of defence. We must break up the second line which I estimate we will be engaging with the morrow. They are: here, here and here." She bent over her stained old letter and pushed a grimy long finger at the diagrams sketched out over it. 

"How do you know that?" Mada Jien demanded, forgetting his rank in his astonishment. Tashka's blue eyes lifted in outrage and he blushed, "b-but of course sir," he said hurriedly. 

"You may see that eight troops might quite well engage what is in this line," Tashka continued confidently. "Meanwhile, five of our troops, that will be Fourth Sietter, Tenth Sietter, ourselves, Ninth and Seventh, may slip through the battle lines and march on Arventa. We will take the two Sietter troops since if we can break the line their knowledge of the usual lines of communication and supply in Arventa will be of use to us. 

"van Sietter himself is currently in Arventa. If he get to court it will be a question whether he may involve us in some legal battle where our valour may not prevail. If we can get him in Arventa, victory is ours." 

The four junior officers looked into each others' eyes. Their faces were suddenly tense with yearning: one last desperate effort and then peace. Whether it would be the long sad peace of victory or the terrible bleak peace of defeat, they felt they could not go on now without it. 

Then they stooped to study the battle plans again and work out the details of the strategy their young Commander had drafted. 

Hanya suddenly took one of the pieces of paper off Tashka's box-desk and folded it quickly over so that the writing at the top of it was hidden. Tashka lifted her head to look in his eyes, startled, took the paper back, unfolded it and stared at the long curling words of passion in Vadya's extravagant handwriting. She raised her head once more and the four Captains sitting in front of her looked quickly away. 

Hanya suddenly sniggered. Tashka let out a startled snort of laughter. They all grinned sheepishly at each other. Tashka put the plan back down, carefully folding it over as Hanya had done. She lifted her head to explain in more detail what their precise orders were, caught Hanya's eye and laughter spurted from her mouth. 

"I swear," Hanya laughed, "I never saw a Commander addressed so in my life before!" 

"Shut it!" Tashka begged, biting at one thin finger and grinning at him. "Do not tell me that slut Vaie never got such words from you!" 

"I did once see," Basra put in daringly, "a Captain look on a Commander with such eyes that he would have been court-martialled had the Lord General not been his father by marriage." 

"Ours is a political marriage!" Tashka protested. 

"Oh! Is that what it is?" Basra exclaimed. "So those nights I heard you in his tent, that was just to secure the succession, was it?" 

"Yes," Hanya added, "and when he moved his tent to your Quarter, even though it was Third's turn, that was just part of his duty of care to protect you as his Lady wife, was it?" 

Tashka's eyes started in her head. "You dogs!" she exclaimed, springing up and jumping on Hanya. They rocked in a close embrace, too exhausted and laughing too much, to wrestle. 

She kicked at Basra, he dodged her booted feet, sniggering and saying: "We are so grateful for your unselfish devotion to securing the succession." 

Then they suddenly realised that Alaara Shaada and Mada Jien were staring at them with astonished eyes. Hanya awkwardly let Tashka go. She stood up, brushed down the front of her jumper with a frown in her eyes and flicked a hand over her cropped hair. Basra looked away into the woods ahead of them, a salacious grin still lurking on his lips. 

Tashka's slanted blue eye flashed in a wicked wink at Hanya, for a fleeting moment Mada Jien saw why the troopers who had known her before the war would grin and roll their eyes if they were asked about Commander-Lord el Maien of Sixth H'las. She said: "Oh well, if you had the chance to engage Commander-Lord el Gaiel in ... intimate manoeuvres, would you give him the go-by?" 

"How can you!" they cried, giggling with embarrassment. "He is our senior officer and future sworn Lord! el Maien, you have the morals of a virgin slut's cat! Shut it!" 

"Senior officer, puh, what does that matter?" Tashka said airily and then, realising whom she was talking to, went into a rare blush. Her thin face flushed suddenly with colour and her eyes looked uncertainly aside while her mouth pouted with a kissable tuck in it. Shaada gave a gasp. "Uh ... yes, your precise orders," she said grumpily. "Gentle men, this is serious business. Hear me." 

But they were all rolling on the rugs laughing. It was several minutes before they could settle down to hear what their orders were. Every time she started to address them one of them would start sniggering and all four would be rolling around the rugs in the spring sunshine, holding their sides and crying with laughter as she scolded them with the laugh curling up her own beautiful rose-petal mouth.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 29



Thank you for the feedback and votes, especially an anonymous commenter who bought the novel previously before I took it off 'for sale' sites. 

My last chapter got 1-bombed twice! How great is that? It must be good stuff for the trolls to give it such a thrashing. :) 

*****

The clean spring sunlight fell through the branches and budding young green leaves. Round yellow and green splashes of light lay like translucent sweets on the mulched old leaves, nearly become earth, through which the insistent straight saplings pushed up to the bright sunshine. 

Mail clinked and chinked, horses whinnied, men grunted as they swung through the trees. The lines of cavalry rode by, the infantry walked quickly among them to the beat of the troops' drums. The round splashes of light danced on helmets and on lances, on spears and on the hilts of the officers' broadswords. A leathery scarred face showed in a pool of

light where there was a gap between two trees, then a bandaged young head with frightened eyes, then a bearded face with only one eye. 

The earth was moist and fresh beneath their feet. It was good ground for marching and the day was not hot nor too cold. The officers rode back and forth between the files of men, cursing someone who was chattering and tripped on a treeroot or another who had not checked his boots before they started and had only now discovered one sock was wet from a hole in them. 

Threading her way among them all went Commander-Lord el Maien. Her thin tanned face with a recently healed cut across it was set hard under her gleaming helmet, her rose-petal mouth was in a line but her slanted blue eyes looked softly at them and they reached for her hand as her horse passed them by, pressing her thin ringed fingers to their foreheads. 

She would wheel her horse to the front of them again where the other Commanders deferentially questioned her on the route ahead. She would answer in clear certain tones, a small look of impatience in her eyes as if to say: but of course it is so. She would glance about her and bark out an instruction, there would be a sudden cry of command and the lines of men would alter direction, change speed. 

It was a shock to them all, all the hundreds of men in the five troops, when they broke suddenly out of the woodland onto the level plain where Arventa stood. 

The rich green land rolled gently down to the great wide curves of the Arven River in its slow flow to the Maier Pass, Port Paviat and the sea. Glittering in the distance, set apart from the sprawling mass of the town, was Palladia Arventa: an architectural miracle of glass, held together by the most delicate web of structures. 

Between the town, the palace, the river and themselves an untidy rush of men was coming to meet them. Without the time to form a considered plan of action, without the walls of a castle or fort to shelter in, van Sietter's troops had been thrown forward in the desperate bid for defence. 

"To me!" Tashka's tall figure on Challenger was suddenly in front of them all, her arm flung up their signal, her banner flying proud by her side in the spring breezes. The cavalry of five troops jumped to follow her, a ragged roar rose from the troopers' throats and they flung themselves into the charge! 

Running, riding, over the green plain at the untidy wave of men rising up to meet them. Tashka on her great grey warhorse was like a star flashing several lengths in front of them, thundering down on the red and gold ranks, even her banner-bearer had been left behind her. They were desperate to catch up with her, not to let that fine creature, their life and days and fight, be overwhelmed and cut down by the Sietter troops. 

She pulled Challenger up in a flurry of turves as she neared the Sietter lines, her sword was raised, her wide blue eyes in her thin pale face stared. 

A young Captain riding at the front of his cavalry had been making for her but he looked in her eyes, as he must do to engage her in combat, and his face turned, he hesitated. 

"Rania Stariel!" Tashka shouted. 

The Captain was holding his horse in the midst of a sea of cavalrymen who all looked to him for leadership. He flicked his eyes from side to side and saw no engagement yet, he had come forward too fast. He and Tashka were way ahead of their armies but his Commander was catching up. 

"Rania Stariel!" Tashka shouted again. "Come to me!" 

There was his brother Loisir, the Commander of a troop as he was the Captain of a Quarter: Clair el Maien's junior, Lord Tashka's brother Lieutenant from Fourth, thundering up the field of battle to meet him with his familiar eyes set in an unfamiliar glazed glare of war. 

Rania's nerve had gone. He knew if he fought now he would be killed because he had lost the stupid unreasoning rage of war. He had looked in the eyes of his brother officers, whom he deeply admired in his heart. He knew in that moment that the Generals had been right to argue that he ought to be hung in his brother's place. His Commander had been wrong to swear his own life as forfeit that Rania would not break his vow. Yet he had sworn his vow with his whole heart in it and his Commander was beside him now. 

"Caja Nain!" Tashka's voice was like the thin sweet cry of a bird calling across to them. "Caja! Come to join Dar and Loisir and me! Will you deny the Captain, now Commander-Lord el Jien? Will you go by his fingers?" 

"I have sworn to my men, victory will be ours!" Commander Nain was screaming at her, grabbing Rania Stariel's bridle and pulling him to one side. 

"Will you truly fight us: Dar and Loisir, el Jien and the Commander, and I? Oh Caja, my dear! Will you fight us?" 

"I will!" He was shaking and Rania saw the terror in his handsome face. "I will, I will!" 

"Then why is it you are going backwards?" 

Caja Nain, who had raided jam out of the provisions tents of all the Quarters in turn in Fourth Sietter with her until they were caught and he was punished and she got off free because she wept when Rania and Loisir's father, their old Commander, tried to discipline her, let go Rania's reins and stared at her from a pinched petrified face. Her face was motionless. He saw a recently healed wound ran across the bridge of her nose. He saw her slanted dark blue eyes staring intently into his. He could not bear those eyes that loved him, and she had been a baby Lieutenant by his side, to look at him so. 

He gave a yell and kicked his horse forward, his sword was raised to meet hers. 

Her sword flashed up in her hand, her other arm came up, she was holding Challenger only with her knees. Her sword met his with a crash. She stabbed shallowly into his shoulder with her dagger and caught him in her strong embrace as he slid in his saddle. He dropped his sword as he clutched at his shoulder, staring into her slanted blue eyes, his face twisted between agony and sorrow. 

"Lie still there," she said to him softly, "Angel of Honour. I know you have been in Hell. Victory will be ours the day and you will be for me through the rest of your life. We will come for you when the battle is done," and she let him slide gently to the ground. 

Rania had flung his sword down and dismounted. He was huddled into the flank of his horse, quivering with fear and waiting to be struck down. His cavalrymen were in turmoil behind him, his Lieutenants crying: Sir, sir, what are your orders? My Captain! Sir! 

He turned savagely on them and said: "Get back! Call on the Angel of Mercy! I am for Lord Tashka and Lord Clair. My heart was always with them and yet I was true to my Commander and his vow but now I cannot." He stepped up to where Commander Nain lay weeping on the battlefield and stood over him with his hand gripped at his horse's head to hold it still. 

They stared at him. Half of them dismounted to stand by him and their Commander, half of them rode wildly forwards into the H'las ranks, leaderless and hopeless. He watched them go to their deaths and bit his lip so hard that it bled. 

Tashka trotted her horse to him and laid her scarred right hand on his helmeted head then she was past him and into the battle. 

There were other places where men were facing those who had been comrades. Fourth and Tenth Sietter in the red uniform with a black sash across it were slow to engage. The troopers battling with them sometimes fell back saying: I cannot!  Sometimes a Fourth or Tenth Sietter man failed to guard himself in his confusion at confronting a friend and was wounded or killed. 

The Sietter enemy were ill-prepared and desperate. They knew that behind them was no strong united force of strategic staff and sworn Lord to the region. There had been plots against van Sietter. Some of their officers had been arrested, some hung, others obviously had little heart for the war they had been thrown into. 

Tashka struggled through a mass of faces whom she tried desperately not to recognise and then she looked up and saw one she was glad to see and made straight for him. 

Commander-Sir Lial Darien and Commander-Lord Tashka el Maien van H'las met in the field of battle with a crash of swords that jarred each of them to the backbone. Tashka's sword was up and stabbing fiercely at Darien. He avoided the blow with a quick jerk on his reins, at the same time his sword came sweeping round in a flashing circle. Tashka ducked down, flung her sword up and it met Darien's on the second sweep round with a violence that nearly threw them both off their horses. 

Their horses skittered back. They both urged them forward again, cast a quick look round to ensure that no other soldier was heading for them. Their swords met and pressed, they pushed at each other. Tashka's left hand flew up, her rings, her dagger sparkled light, Darien's dagger was up to meet hers. Two-handed, they pressed each other. They glared into each other's face then Darien's horse, jostled by Challenger, fidgeted. He could not stop pressing. A look of terror crossed his face and then his foot was out the stirrup and he had leapt out the saddle and down the other side of his horse. Tashka's sword bounced off his empty saddle. 

He looked hurriedly round, meaning to try and mount and come at Tashka again but she too was dismounting and she came striding, limping at him; a tall terrible figure with wide intense eyes. He saw her limp and his eyes were startled then they narrowed as he brought his sword up again to meet hers. 

He had thought that the limp would affect her fighting but the blow with which she struck at him was so perfectly balanced that even while he met it, he marvelled at the beauty of her movement. He was too good to be confused by having misjudged her ability and he struck quickly at her in return. Their swords crashed, skidded apart. She jumped to one side and struck at him. He swung round and met her blow. She stepped back and he followed her, then savagely she stabbed and stepped forward but he had seen it coming, he was back again. 

They closed in another close press, pushing weapon to weapon, glaring in each other's face, their daggers darting at each other. 

Behind him, Darien became aware of a great confusion and wailing. He sensed something had gone badly wrong, he did not know what. There were cries on the Angel of Mercy but he was determined not to give her that satisfaction again himself. Then he heard what else they were shrieking: "van Sietter is dead! van Sietter is dead!" 

He saw Tashka's eyes flick sideways and quickly back to him. The two of them stood still, pressing their weapons with hard strength each to the other. He had lost, the battle was over but he could not bear to give up again to her. She had stood over him so often in triumph. 

Tashka's slanted dark blue eyes stared unwinking into his round pale blue eyes. She was breathing heavy and fast, her nostrils were flared and there was a barely healed thin cut across her nose. 

"Darien," she said. 

He glared at her. His eyes were wide, he panted in her face, she could smell his warm breath, there was the long scar cutting down across his face. 

"My father is dead," she spoke in a colourless voice, panting with the effort of their struggle but with no emotion in her voice. 

His eyes flickered quickly from side to side, always coming back across her eyes. They were in the middle of a huge ring of H'las soldiers now, who did not dare to come and try to break up the fight in case they tipped the balance against Tashka. 

"I have not often had the honour to fight with one as able as I am," she said. It would have been arrogance in anyone-else but his blue eyes dipped in acknowledgement of the compliment. 

"Darien," she said. 

"Commander-Lord el Maien," he answered. 

"Let us part friends then," she said. 

He looked up into her eyes. "I'll not swear to Lord Clair," he said. She sighed. Her warm breath blew into his face, her blue eyes looked regretfully into his, "but I will swear to Lady el Jien's fingers," he said. 

The slanted blue eyes widened. 

"Will you not strip the lands from the other officers?" he asked. "You may take mine," he added, "but we have had to be true to our vow. Will you recognise that?" 

"It is not for me to say," she answered. "I am van H'las. But you know that Clair is a man who not only lives by the code of honour, he will exercise duty of care to the utmost limit of his heart, and you know that Lady el Jien will never countenance an injustice to you nor any other." 

He eased the pressure of his weapons against hers. She slackened her muscles, stepped back and let her sword and dagger hang loose in her hands, watching him but not insisting that he call on the Angel of Mercy. He looked round at the H'las soldiers all around them. He let his weapons fall to the ground and stood staring desolate at the torn muddy grass below his feet. It was over. They had lost. 

"Darien." 

He looked up at her. Now that he could pay attention, he could see how she was changed by the war. She was so thin that her determination and courage seemed to shine through her pale skin. She slung her own weapons to one side and stepped forward offering him her scarred right hand. He hesitated, took it and clasped her arm about the elbow with his left hand. 

"Victory is yours," he said huskily. 

She stared into his face. He let her hand go and stepped back. Hanya Lein had come to her side, he too was saying: "Victory is yours." 

She looked up at the sky. It was a clear soft blue spring sky. There was a chill in the air, a breeze on her sweat-beaded brow made her shiver but she could smell moist good earth and young plants growing. 

"Victory is yours!" it was Commander-Sir Pava Talien of Seventh H'las. 

She fell to her knees and put her face in her hands. What a hollow shell was victory to her. Her victory was Flava Trait and Petra Jien, Lial Iada and the hundreds of men who had saluted her and passed into their graves. 

The soldiers around her were uneasily silent but Pava Talien put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder and gripped her shoulder. 

She raised her head and got slowly to her feet. She saw Darien standing by with his hands loose and his scarred face stricken and went to take his arm. "Go with this man," she said gently. "There will be a panic among your troop. Go with this man and collect them into their barracks. Basra! Take Commander-Sir Darien about the field to collect his men. Hanya, collect the other Commanders for me here." 

She stood in the middle of the victorious field of battle and dealt them out their duties as if they were her Captains: Give me some paper and a pen. You will arrange to take these messages to the troops we left to engage the second line of defence. You will collect the wounded and organise the medical units to assist them. You will be in charge of the Sietter wounded, treat them like our own or I will have your ears. You will collect the weaponry from the fallen and from the enemy. You will go into the town to establish the lines of supply for the troops, and for the troops which have engaged in the second line of defence which will be coming back here soon, you must ensure the line of supply to the enemy Sietter troops as well or I will have your ears. Sixth H'las Captains, Inien will be the acting Commander, Lein you are with me. I will see you Commanders in the Palladia in four hours and you will make your verbal reports. Bring a trusted Lieutenant to clerk for you so we may send the written reports straight out of the meeting back to the Lord General in Port H'las. 

Basra was by her side, he had brought Challenger back to her. She took a moment to pat and praise her horse then she was in the saddle and off to the Palladia. 

It was a big glittering toy set in formal gardens like a jewel. The building was an expression of glass, whole rooms and corridors were walled only in glass so that light flooded them. Hanya Lein gaped at it but Tashka dismounted in the courtyard and strode into it with a careless familiarity. 

She nodded curtly to the frightened servants who scurried to meet her. They were doubtful at first of who it might be; she had been sixteen years old when her father first threw her out of his palace, saying he never wanted to see her unnatural face again. She was not old enough to be a proper officer but because of her great strategic skills they let her go to the troop with her brother. She came with the brother here on leave, both of them smartly turned out in red Sietter uniform. The father threw them out and here she was now in full mail with a H'las surcoat over it and a hard set in the slanted eyes that were so heartbreakingly like her mother's. 

A man came running to meet her with bunches of keys in his hands. He went on his knees in front of her, offering them up. She looked into the man's face and gave him a curt nod, took the keys and moved away with her junior officer at her back. 

She strode confidently down a corridor. On her left the formal gardens stretched down to a low hedge. Trees cast shadows through the glass onto her thin fine face over the recently healed cut across her nose. She got to a set of doors, turned and said to Hanya: "Go and find the steward. Make him give you whatsoever accomodation takes your fancy. I will have the blue room in the centre of the first floor landing. Tell him to make provision for all of the Commanders and any Captains they want to house here. Come back here in two hours, with the Commanders, for our meeting." 

When he had gone she unlocked the doors and walked warily into her father's study. 

It was lined with shelves and those shelves were stacked high with boxes. The back wall of the room was made entirely out of small panes of glass which must show onto an inner courtyard. The glass was opaque. It could not be looked through but even so there were huge wooden shutters which could be rolled across to stop prying eyes seeing what Lord van Sietter did not wish even to be guessed at. 

There was a splendid soft pink carpet spread across the whole floor. Three luxurious comfortable armchairs and a sofa stood with a cabinet of drinks by the fireplace. In the middle of the room was a massive heavily carved desk with red leather chairs attendant before it. 

By the side of the desk lay the body. Blood spilled from the dagger in his side. It did not show on the dark red robe but it had vilely stained the pink carpet. 

Tashka walked slowly over to the body. She sat down in one of the red leather chairs and looked coldly at him: her father. 

For months she had struggled through bitter winter warfare. She had lost so many friends. She had seen so many valiant generous noble-hearted laughing men fall at his behest. Friends of hers had died on both sides in this war. Their bodies lay in her memory, blood-stained as his was, their faces set in grotesque grimaces as they were flung out on the dirt. Already perhaps plants were growing from their flesh and bones, that was something at least. Whereas she supposed his body would be entombed with the other sworn Lords in a marble crypt to crumble into infertile dust. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 29



He had never offered her any support or love such as a child needs to grow happy and confident into the world. Instead he had tried to use her, to bend her to his own purposes. For years she had lived in a half-terror of the secrets of his that she just knew, in case she let one slip by mistake and was sent to die in V'ta. But for months now she had been free of that restraint. She had been at war but in her heart she had felt securely held in the affection and respect of her marital relations: the el Gaiels van H'las. She had been campaigning with the strategic support of her husband and of her brother. She had been fighting alongside that laughing loving silly old Captain: el Jien van Vail, and two of her brother officers: the Angels of the Sietter army. Her sister by marriage had been willing to throw as much money as she wanted at her war coffers even though Lady el Jien was a renowned pacifist. Friends as different as her scandalous former lover el V'lair van Athagine and her sister by marriage's brother el Jien van Iarve had offered her any assistance she wished to call on them for. Against such a group of friends, close as the fingers of a hand, what influence could one old man hope to maintain. 

She stood up and heaved off her silk surcoat, mailcoat and leather undercoat, chucking them onto the floor by the body. She stretched out her exhausted muscles with a yawn then bent and scrabbled in the pocket of her surcoat, fished out some scrappy stained paper from it with lines of extravagant handwriting and also some scribbled pencil diagrams on its pages. Without troubling to look at her husband's carefully penned letter or the victorious strategy she had scrawled, she tucked the paper securely into the pocket of her leather breeches where she would be able to reach it if she wanted it. She sat down again in the red leather chair, set her ankle on one knee and leant back exhausted in the chair, looking dimly away past the body to where the opaque windows let in a little of the bright spring sunlight pouring down outside. 

~#~*~#~

Dar Vaie stopped surreptitiously squeezing Hanya's buttock under the back of that fetching black felt double-breasted H'las tunic and walked to the middle of the corridor, looking irritably at the closed door of the study. The other officers carried on chatting to each other but they all looked at him as he went to the doors. He stooped near but he could hear nothing. The doors were clearly built very heavy, he did not think any sound would come through them. 

"It is not like him to keep us waiting," Commander Fiotr Araine of Ninth H'las said with a frown. 

"Call on him again," Commander Pava Talien suggested nervously. 

Dar took a deep breath and raised his fist. He hammered on the door and shouted: "Thy time for my allegiance!" 

He stepped quickly back, leaving Fiotr standing nearest the door so it would look as if it had been Fiotr who had knocked and called. Fiotr gave him a mute indignant glare. 

There was no reply. 

"Sweet Angels!" Dar said crossly, running nervous fingers through his hair and going patchily pink with anxiety. "He is only a Commander, the same as we are. Why are we trembling out here like schoolgirls? He is not even of my army the more. I am going in!" He looked round at the other Commanders. They all fell nervously back, apart from his brother officer Loisir Stariel who said: "I am with you," but as anxiously as if they were going out on a dangerous raid into the enemy at night. 

The two Sietter Commanders each seized a handle of the doors to the study, twisted them, expecting them to be locked, and were flung forwards into the room. They stumbled in and came to an abrupt halt, looking over at Tashka's lifted dim blue gaze where she sat in her leather breeches and sweaty muslin undershirt. Underneath the thin shirt Dar blushed to see the outlines of her bodice. Loisir turned his head away. 

They caught sight of the body at her feet. The H'las officers behind saw them both quiver, to have to confront the slain body of the sworn Lord whom they had betrayed, breaking their vow to him to follow their hearts and souls. They looked at each other with the same expression in their eyes: better that than in the end have to use the very blade he had bestowed on you to finally be rid of the vile old snake. 

Loisir Stariel lifted his blond head and said: "We ... have been waiting on you," to his brother officer, successfully looking into her slanted blue eyes and not at the small breasts vaguely visible under the thin muslin of her shirt. 

She turned her head back to look at the body one last time, rose and came towards them. Her dim blue gaze focussed onto Loisir's face, unexpectedly she smiled very sweetly and clasped his arm. "My dear," she said huskily. "Your father may rest peacefully now." He smiled back at her through tears in his blue eyes. 

"Vaie," she said, turning a suddenly piercing stare at him. "I had rather it were Sietter soldiers took him up and put him in the chapel. The papers here must not be touched, they are for Lord Clair and his Lady wife to see only. Here are the keys, guard them well and only give them to the Commander ... I mean, to Lord van Sietter." She detached a set of jingling keys from the many rings she held: big ones for the door, little ones for the many boxes of papers and the drawers in the desk. She pressed them into his hand. 

"Um, you have not washed yet," Dar Vaie said gently as his fingers closed over the bunch of keys. 

"There is no time, let us go," she started forward and he took her arm and then took off his own tunic and gave it to her. 

She looked down at the thin muslin undershirt through which could be seen her bodice and the low swell of her breasts. She took the red felt tunic he was offering, looked dimly at it, then pulled it on and flicked the gold buttons expertly into the single-breasting. H'las tunics were double-breasted but the Sietter buttoning was very familiar to her fingers. 

"I suppose you'll not come back to restructure the command," Dar could not forbear saying. 

She looked into his eyes and smiled that very sweet smile. "I regret," she said. "My loyalties have been divided and I have chosen to follow my heart." 

"Not just the heart, considering how poor the structure was even before this," he muttered grumpily as he and Loisir followed her out. 

She led them into a massive dining room nearby, with a wall of glass like the study's only made of clear glass. The officers looked nervously at the huge dark wood table, the polished sideboards laden with crystal glasses and silverware, the rich paintings on the dark green walls. Tashka walked casually to the head of the table and sat there in her leather breeches and a borrowed Sietter tunic, buttoned neatly right up the high gold-embroidered collar. She said: "Lein, sit here by me and take notes." 

Dar hurried to get the seat next to Hanya's, beckoning his Lieutenant to sit by him and pushing Hanya's Lieutenant inappropriately out to sit next to his own with a fierce glare. Loisir rushed to sit on Tashka's other side and the other H'las officers came up to take their places. Fiotr Araine sat considerately next to Hanya's Lieutenant to give him guidance, with a teasing grin at Hanya Lein who blushed. Then the heads turned above the rank of black and blue double-breasted chests to the red jacketed group at the head of the table, with the one H'las Captain sitting in it. 

"Set down," Tashka said in her husky cool tones, "that Lord Pava el Maien van Sietter is dead. Put the names of those Commanders here who are Sietter and who now offer their vow to Lord Clair. Set it down that v-v-victory ... that the strategy as communicated in our reports from the field was successful. I will hear you." She stared intently into their eyes while they spoke. She listened patiently to the Commanders' verbal reports while the Lieutenants hurriedly wrote out rough notes, crossing words out occasionally and pulling faces when the Commanders went too fast for their skidding pencils. She cut Fiotr Araine short when he rambled but she listened in a gentle silence when Pava Talien stuttered as he recounted a difficult engagement with heavy losses. At the end she made a precise history of the battle they had just fought. The Lieutenants and Hanya Lein wrote furiously as she talked then they sat writing out fair copies of their work in pen while the Commanders and she heard from the officers who had been designated that work the lists of the dead and wounded. They sat quietly with their eyes turned to the table while the names were read out although once Loisir Stariel could not restrain a heart-wrenching sob and she leant sideways to grip a hand on his arm on the table. 

When the Lieutenants and Hanya had finished, she took Hanya's copy and folded it into a packet, directing it herself to: General-Lord E. el Gaiel van H'las of the strategic staff offices in Port H'las. She looked about her for a seal to press into the red wax that Hanya's Lieutenant came quickly to drip onto the packet for her then she took Hanya's arm and pressed his cuff button into the warm wax: the two towers and the wavy lines with a sword across the top meaning Captain. She scrawled AeM van H'las under the seal and drew a sun in the corner of the front of the packet, handing it to Hanya and saying: "To be sent with despatch." He stood up, saluted and turned with the ritual H'las stamp of heels which Dar Vaie watched surreptitiously with a titillated glint in his eye. 

Tashka turned back to the table, kicking Dar under it so he said: "Ow!" in an obvious way, drawing even more attention to his misdemeanour. The other Commanders saw her suppress a smile in the corner of her rose-petal mouth then the pretty mouth opened and orders started pouring out in detail: disposition of the troops; who would be in control of the defensive position she expected them to strike about the Palladia, lines of supply, supplies of food, rations of drink; how the enemy were to be held on station in their barracks. Dar Vaie would be in control of them until Lord Clair could come to decide if he were willing to accept the vow of those who would slip to his fingers. Loisir Stariel must look to the care of those Sietter who were wounded. They stared at her open-mouthed, luckily their Lieutenants had been quicker-witted and were already scribbling busily by their sides. 

"Sir, it is done," the Commanders said automatically every so often. 

Finally she said: "I have spoken," and they got up to go, casting quick looks at the piles of papers their Lieutenants were shuffling hastily together. Tashka stood up too but suddenly gripped the edge of the table, leaning on it, shaking with fatigue. They turned to her, falling quiet. 

"To quarter!" she barked. They looked at each other then hesitantly stamped out the ritual steps of junior officers in H'las leaving a senior before hurrying away. Like a bunch of scared rabbits was how Dar and Loisir hilariously described it later to Pava el Jien. Loisir went to look to the Sietter wounded but Dar remained sitting in his chair in the red cotton shirt he had been wearing under his tunic, not of her army. 

Batren came bustling in and glared at Tashka, who swung an angry blue gaze at him. "Your bath has been waiting for you these three hours!" he said, reminding Dar irresistibly of a fussy old nursery-maid. 

"We are having a dinner here the night, the officers and I," Tashka said, still leaning trembling on the table. 

"Oh yes," Batren's voice was hot with annoyance, we will see about that implied in it. 

Dar got up and offered Tashka his arm. She looked at him with a mute glare but he shook his head with a smile so she took it and leant heavily on it. She walked out leaning on his arm, dragging her leg on the carpets, shaking and white with exhaustion. He and Batren got her up the stairs without having to carry her and into the big square guest room which the steward had set aside for her. It had a glass wall looking out to the courtyard, beautiful no doubt but not very comfortable for a bedroom. Tashka staggered across the rich blue carpet and sat heavily on the bed. Batren moved over to start undressing her and Dar started to leave - rather hurriedly and without bothering to wait for his tunic. Tashka suddenly fell backwards in the soft quilts of the bed, her muscles as limp as dirty washing. 

"Get out!" Batren cried indignantly to Dar and some servants who were still in the room. He bustled them out and shut the door on them. He came and took hold of Tashka, pulled off her boots and her weaponry - in spite of her feeble protest. He stripped off her clothes, even unhooking her bodice, seized her long thin white body and hauled her to dump her in the bath full of hot water. Tashka gave a long luxurious groan, relaxing her strained muscles in the heat of the bath. Her eyes started to drift shut but Batren was soaping up her arm, now he was washing her chest, which was embarrassing, and even between her toes, which tickled. He washed her hair and poured hot water over her head. He pulled her out of the bath into a huge towel he wrapped about her and vigorously rubbed her dry until her limbs were tingling and her cropped hair stood up over her head. He put ointment on her wounds, rubbed cream into her shoulders, back and legs where she had most used her muscles in combat, pulled a nightshirt over her head and finally put some scented oil in her hair. She lifted her head, grabbed his hand and sniffed at the oil on it, Vadya's scented oil. Her eyes went soft, her mouth went down at the corners. He rolled her into the bed. She was asleep before the covers had settled down over her.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 30



Thank you so much for the continuing feedback. :) 

*****

"Disobeyed expressed orders as to number of drinks ... insulted an officer in uniform and on duty ... damage to the tavern ..." 

Tashka sat on one side of the dining room table, leaning her chin in her hand, one elbow on the table beside several huge piles of paper, staring expressionless at three men in front of her. A trooper with a poorly faked expression of penitence, his Captain and the officer of the night watch who had caught him out on a spree, stood before her. Beside her sat two Lieutenants acting as clerks and an intensely bored Pava el Jien, whose fidgeting and yawning fully justified the frequently expressed opinion of the Vail Generals' strategic staff that he was too fluff-brained to be allowed to take up a position with them. 

"I have heard," Tashka said quietly as the officer of the watch came to the end of his peroration. 

The trooper's Captain had just started an eloquent defence of his man when the doors of the dining room opened and the two guards at the door stamped in. 

"The officers of the Generals' strategic staff!" one of them shouted in a voice that was too loud for the dining room. He blushed. 

Clair, Vadya, Lord Esha and some other strategic staff officers came loping into the room. Tashka got quickly to her feet, staring at them. Pava started up with an expression of great relief shining in his laughing green eyes. 

Lord Esha came striding ahead of the others round the table, Tashka came towards him, saying: "I ... I should perhaps have waited for your order, sir. I took a risk ...," she was starting to go on her knee, reaching for his hand, he grasped her by the arms and pressed her tall thin body close in to his barrel of a chest, kissing each of her cheeks and saying: "My General, we owe everything to you!" 

It was too much for her, she burst suddenly into tears. He looked into her thin worn face. His face contracted with pity as her head swung aside, hanging loose on her thin neck, her shoulders convulsing with sobs and the tears falling from her slanted blue eyes. 

Clair was suddenly there, she was in his arms. He folded her black-clad frame in the warm embrace of his red Sietter tunic, letting her press her head to his shoulder and sob. He was holding her close to him, her brother, the only other man who could make her cry - bar one. 

"Well, I think we can call that excused on all counts," Pava said hurriedly, to the great glee of the trooper and his Captain and the indignation of the officer of the watch. "To quarter, gentle men. I thank you for your sweet time. Vadya, how lovely to see you. It has just struck me what a pretty tunic the H'las uniform is; double-breasted, mm, I must look into it for the Vail army." He hurried forwards with a merry smile on his mouth and his sword arm held out. The H'las strategic staff officers looked aghast but Vadya came to him with a warm grin and folded him in his arms, considerately turning his eyes from his Captain, his fellow Commander, now his General and Lady wife. She was still sobbing in the arms of her brother. The Lord General her father by marriage was anxiously patting her shoulders. 

She suddenly lifted her head, the blue eyes flashing with tears. She shoved Clair aside and came walking round the table to him. He let Pava go, watching her come, not moving to meet her. He did not know if she still needed the rigid discipline of the army to bear her up. He held everything in check while he waited for her to show him what she wanted. 

She walked towards him with her quick light limp, the black felt tunic loose on her tall thin frame. He was glad to see the sexy roll was starting to come back into her stride although she would always limp a little. She was glaring at him with an intent stare, her cheeks still wet with tears. She was standing in front of him. She glared into his brown face, the tears wet on her thin pale face, her blue eyes sparkling, her rose-petal mouth bunched up. She turned her head and looked around the room. She was the most senior officer in there now, aside from Lord Esha himself. They were all waiting on her although they pretended to be talking to each other. Clair watched her with a warm encouraging smile on his thin mouth. 

Vadya looked round the room too and smiled at her, a smile to say: No matter, we will be together all our lives now, whether as General and junior officer or as wife and husband. 

"My heart," she said in a husky trembling voice. Her mouth went suddenly soft. 

He looked into the blue eyes flashing with tears that he could deny nothing to, even when she was not crying. He took her by the arms and pulled her close to him. Tashka wrapped her arms about his neck and put her mouth to his, he took her by the back of the head and pressed her into his kiss. His tongue pressed on her rose-petal mouth, forcing her lips open, he nudged her head against his shoulder, his other arm scooped her hard in on him with a pull around her waist. Her head went back, she let herself go limp and hung completely relaxed and heavy in his arms and his kiss. 

She parted from his kiss with a sigh, stood for a minute in his embrace: her knees still weak and her weight hanging from his arms, her body held hard in to his big strong muscular chest. Then she straightened up and put him gently from her. 

"I have this case to hear out," she said, looked round and saw that the trooper had gone (at great speed). "Oh, did we make a decision? I have a few more cases to hear just now. Come, come sit with me," she grasped his hand and pulled at it, like a child asking another child to join its game. He smiled and followed her, ignoring the open mouths of the strategic staff officers and the Lieutenants who were clerking, their embarrassed stares at Lord Esha, his father looking out of the window and humming loudly, Clair and Pava laughing at the two of them. 

"What?" Tashka said crossly to Pava. "You are excused. Conduct the Lord General and the other strategic staff officers to their rooms so they can take a bath. The Commander will take your place. He will be willing to wait for 's bath." 

"Too kind, my sweet General!" Pava murmured (but softly so only Clair would hear). He gave her a reasonably smart salute. 

As she sat down, Tashka looked up and said: "Clair ... Lord van Sietter." He swung round, startled, and looked back at her. "You will be thinking of stripping and restructuring the Sietter army," she said, looking with a concentrated expression of intelligence into his slanted grey eyes, "but at this time you are vulnerable. The Lord General and I will meet with you this afternoon to discuss the matter." 

Clair gave a hesitant smile, looking uncertainly at Lord Esha, who could be said to currently hold all of his lands in victorious conquest. Lord Esha looked shrewdly at Tashka. She stared intently into his brown eyes, he laughed and gave a nod. 

"After the victory you have brought to me, I will deny you nothing," he said. "My daughter and my General." 

~#~*~#~

She sat with General-Lord van H'las and Commander-Lord van Sietter in the study. She was behind the desk, they sat in the red leather chairs in front of it. There was still a dreadful stain in the carpet to their side. As she had walked past it, limping assertively round to sit at the desk, she had said casually to Clair: "You will have to refurbish the room." He looked in puzzlement at the brown marks and then went pale and averted his eyes. 

Tashka had changed from her H'las uniform into a dove-grey velvet suit. She wore a shirt with a lot of lace falling over her collar and cuffs, some additional rings on her fingers and a sparkling pearl and diamond earring, as if to console herself for what she had been through with as much frippery and finery as she could put on. Clair sat before her in his red felt single-breasted tunic with the stiff gold-embroidered collar and cuffs, Lord Esha wore his black felt double-breasted tunic with the blue details. Tashka sat lazily tilting the chair behind the desk back onto its two back legs, her slanted blue eyes surveying the two men in front of her. 

"What will you do?" Lord Esha was asking Clair, "with only two loyal troops. Do you think you can trust the allegiance of the other Sietter officers, currently held in their barracks? What of those who took weapons up against Lord Pava? He was their sworn Lord. You cannot trust them near you now, even if it was in your name they did it. If they will do it across their vow to the Lord of their region, there could be a cause one day why they might do it to you." 

Clair's face twisted with sorrow to think of his former brother officers who had known they would lose their commissions, also their lands if he or Lord Esha were disposed to be vengeful. They might even be hung for doing something they had finally come to believe was the only right thing even though it was dishonourable. "I ... I cannot keep the borders safe with only two troops," he pointed out. 

"I will put my troops to protect your borders," Lord Esha offered. 

"It will be regarded as an occupation," Tashka said. The two men turned to look at her. She tilted her chair back on its legs casually but her blue eyes were sharply focussed, looking into their eyes. 

She said to Clair: "Commander-Sir Darien says he will not swear to your fingers." 

"It needed not a genius to tell me that," he said crossly. 

"He says he will swear to Anna," Tashka said. Clair looked at her with one eyebrow raised in question. 

Tashka said: "You would always have had to restructure the command some day. You can do one of two things. 

"If you intend to keep any kind of army, you cannot strip the command now, immediately after so many losses in a civil war which your army has lost. The structure of the command in Sietter is focussed on victory; they have suffered defeat. It would take twenty years to embed a new structure in such a situation. You must take what you have, van Sietter. 

"The officers who have fought against you have remained true to their vow; they are honourable. The ones who have taken arms against Lord Pava ... well, if you ever give them cause to take arms against you I will join them myself, my brother officers, to bring you down. (Bear it in mind now that I will hold the Maier Pass as my marriage settlement for the whole of my life.) As for the Generals, you will have to send them home but be merciful, do not strip them of their lands and give them cause to foment rebellion against you. 

"Darien is the only Commander who will not swear to your fingers. Take their vows in person, do not allow them to swear through the hoop of the Generals' rings. You should keep no one in the strategic staff above the rank of Captain. The Commanders you will demote to the field again but make it clear they may rise again if they prove themselves. You will not wish to be Lord General yourself so Vaie will of course be your Major General, Stariel has the lesser strategic mind. Vaie and I have discussed the structure of the command in Sietter often enough, he knows what needs doing. You should bring Nain and four others up from the ranks which fought against you into the strategic staff, only retaining their banners, not being promoted as yet. 

"I have been to visit Nain in the hospital. It is as we thought, his heart was always true to his vow to you but he had also made a vow to his own father, General Nain, and the General pressured him to consider his men. If Nain had deserted, van Sietter would have hung the General, who would never have come with him, in the name of wiping out the stain on the family's honour. Nain will attempt to resign but you must go in person and make him the offer of the strategic staff post, Pava will persuade him for you." 

She tilted her chair back and forward on its legs, giving Clair and then Lord Esha a lazy sparkling grin. "Your alternative," she said with a snigger, as if what she were about to say were very funny. "You can completely strip the command and have Vaie as your one General to rebuild with but the two troops at his back. Then you may keep Darien and any others Anna chooses from whoever else in the troops which took arms against you. You may have yourself a peace corps to guard the borders and maintain order while refusing to take up arms in aggression." 

Lord Esha burst out into loud laughter at this suggestion. Clair grinned too. "Yes, I am sure Anna would like that," he said. "And so would all the other regions! So I may do one of two things. I may rely on H'las troops to defend our borders," he tipped his head in a graceful courteous gesture of gratitude to Lord Esha, "or Tashka, you do think I could manage to restock the structure as it stands with only Vaie and Stariel as my Generals?" She nodded her head, still grinning about her idea of the peace corps. 

"We will be at your back to support you, my brother," she said, letting her chair fall forward so it rested solidly on its four legs. "I will be at Major General-Sir Vaie's disposal, to support him from Port H'las." 

Lord Esha leant over and clasped Clair's red felt clad shoulder, telling him: "You know you may rely on my General. She has said it, you may hold her to her word." 

~#~*~#~

Vadya shared a final sniggering story with Fiotr and Basra in the corridor, grinned happily at them and followed Tashka into their room. 

She was already undressed, her suit was neatly hung up on the back of a chair to the other side of the big bed in the room. He came round the bedside in the flickering firelight, pulling the double row of buttons of his tunic undone, and found her lying naked on her stomach over the bed. 

His heart jumped and began beating soft and light with desire for her. She was thinner than when he had last made love with her but the firm muscular swell of her buttocks and her long pale scarred back were dearly familiar to him. 

He walked quickly to the bed, sat down beside her and reached gentle hands out to rub her shoulders. He ran one hand lovingly down her back and then again more slowly, touching each of the old white scars that criss-crossed her spine. He spread his fingers over the firm flesh of her buttock and squeezed it affectionately. Gently he laid his hand on the barely healed purple hole in her thigh where she had been hit by an arrow. With his left hand he continued to stroke her back: long firm confident movements, rubbing down her spine and her sides. 

Puzzled by the lack of response, he took his hands from her and bent anxiously down to peer into her face. Her blue eyes were half-hooded over and soft. She was not in the hard military frame of mind that prevented her acknowledging the sweetness of their affection. She just looked very tired. 

"I like that," she murmured. He put his hand out to massage the nape of her neck and the corners of her mouth lifted sleepily in a smile. 

"My sweetheart," he said softly to her. 

"I like it," she said, "but I am so tired."

"We could lie together in the morning?" he suggested. 

"I have to ride round the encampments at dawn," she said gloomily. 

"Well then, the morrow night. Angels! we have waited eight months, we could wait one more day, is it not?" 

"Oh no!" she mourned, "I have changed my mind." She surged suddenly up in his arms and turned. She put her hands to the collar of his black shirt and gripped it, her pale knuckles pressed against his lean brown neck, she stared into his eyes with glinting blue eyes. "Fuck me, el Gaiel," she said in a hoarse husky voice. 

He stared back at her, suddenly uncertain. He did not want to give her the kind of fuck you bought off someone in a bar after the battle when you could not face the soft familiar caress of your lover. On the other hand he did not want her to go off buying a fuck off some stranger in a bar if that was what she needed. 

Her face suddenly softened, she tilted it down and looked through her long lashes at him. His heart started bumping in his chest and the blood surging to his loins, to his cock at this. "All I want is to feel you inside me," she murmured. She put her head to his shoulder and snugged it into his neck. "We could manage that, is it not? I have been denied you so long, do not deny me longer." 

He put his arms about her and kissed her softly, several times, under her ear where he had once sucked so hard in passion that he left a tell-tale mark. 

"I can deny you nothing," he said. "You lie still then, darling lazy pig, and I will fuck you." She giggled sleepily, lying down on her front on the bed again. 

He got up to pull off his boots, take off his weapons, hang them on the end of the bed with hers and strip off his clothes which he chucked on the floor. He sat down by her and began caressing and rubbing her shoulders and kissing down the line of her spine (the bones stuck up so hard out of her back). He gripped a hand on her buttock, she gave a snigger. 

"Yum," he murmured in her ear, "fresh young officer's buttock!" She sniggered again at that. Then he sat up away from her with a laugh. 

"What is it?" she asked, lifting her head and looking back round her bony shoulder at him. 

"It is the first time I have lain with a General!" he said. 

Her eyes sparkled in amusement. "Damn," she cursed. "We never got to lie together as equals." 

He remembered going out to see her on his assessment tour of the troops. A shiver went over him, he put his arms around her hips, gathering them close to his breast. He kissed her scarred back in the dim flickering firelight. "Oh my own heart," he murmured. 

She lay completely relaxed in his arms. When he looked up, her eyes were drifting shut. He lay still, watching her drift to sleep. 

After a moment, she opened her eyes, snorted herself awake and said: "Come on!" 

"You are so tired," he said gently. 

"el Gaiel, of your courtesy!" she pleaded. "Just to lie in me a little short while, is it so much to ask?" 

"My darling, surely it would be better to wait till the morrow." 

"Sweet Hell!" she moaned. "I have said it! I want you now! You can be quick, you need not lie there all night, we can do that the morrow. Hear me - you can take me from behind." 

"Um oh alright!" he said. This was a fuck she was asking for then, the first time he would enter her in months and to do it with her face turned from his loving gaze but the cheeky dog, she knew this would be irresistible to him. His cock was already swollen and the blood had started pumping into his loins in excitement. 

There were a number of reasons why he found it so exhilarating to go into her from behind. In his ignorance he had always imagined this was how man-lovers did it so it was how he thought fellow officers did it - until he was enlightened by a sniggering conversation Tashka was having with some of the others round the fire on night-sentry duty. It still felt like some naughty forbidden activity, as if he were illicitly fucking his junior officer. (He remembered with a shy grin that he was fucking his senior officer now!) The angle at which he went in meant that he got pressure on the tip of his cock, sending his senses reeling, and hit on Tashka's sweet spot in a manner that made her scream so excitedly that Dar had forbidden them to do it again in his encampment. Tashka rarely let him do it unless he had managed to bring her to orgasm two or three times first without coming himself, which was never, because it meant she had to be submissive and he loved that too. It was difficult to beat her at wrestling so it was lovely fun to pin her down with your cock sunk deep into her in the bed. 

Tashka was still lying unusually passive over the bed, her long thin body completely relaxed in exhaustion. "Come on then," she said impatiently. "Get on with it, do I have to give you an order expressed in writing?" Her blue eyes sparkled round her shoulder at him. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 30



"No sir!" he said in excitement. "You shall have me then, my General." He put his head down and kissed her buttocks, his lips caressing the hard muscular curve of them. 

He slipped an arm under her hips and pulled them up. She was so tired that she could barely move to raise herself to him. He knelt back and caught his breath up in a gasp. He knew she was desperate to get him into her before she succumbed to the extremes of exhaustion and fell asleep but the view he was getting was too wonderful for him not to pause to admire it. 

Her strong small buttocks rose up above the crack in which lurked her arsehole and below it the bush of dark hair through which he could see glistening the rose-petal lips of her cunt. He started whimpering with anticipation of pleasure as he looked around for a condom - he found one in her breeches' pocket and hurried to get it on but his fingers were shaking with excitement so much now that he was fumbling it. He began to fear she might actually have fallen asleep. She was so still, there with her arse raised up for him. He began to think he might not care if she fell asleep, he might go into her all the same but he caught the flash of a stern blue eye, the military glare steadied his nerves and he managed to get the condom on. 

Remembering that it had been some time and she would be unaccustomed, he put a finger to her wet cunt and eased it in. She was too tight to comfortably take his cannon of an organ so he eased the finger about to get her looser. She started to moan and spread her hips for him - now he was fearing she would go off into orgasm just for his finger and without him. Ordinarily this would just have been more exciting but he knew that if she went over, she would drop like a stone into sleep and he felt he could not bear not to go off inside her. 

He leaned over her back, reaching round to grasp one small breast in his hand. His lip was caught up in his teeth in anxiety as he tried to judge it right, to get her excited enough for him to slide into her but not so much that she went over. He decided not to flick at her nipple. He grasped the small breast with a grunt of pleasure at the feel of the soft little mound of flesh in his hand, his finger pushing softly gently about in the sticky wet hole of her cunt. 

"Tell it me," he gasped, "if it hurts!" but she only moaned as he drew out his finger. He knelt up, grasped his turgid rigid hard cock and lifted it to her, pressed the head hesitantly at her vulva. She gave a long groan, her hips spreading to him, he pushed and thrust deep in. 

He gripped her at the hips as he thrust down but she was rising, her shoulders were rising up. He leaned over her back and pressed an arm on her shoulders, pushing her down into the bed as he was rarely able to do on the wrestling mats, pinning her down easily because she was so exhausted and he was above her and so much stronger than her after what she had been through. 

Her head was twisted sideways, he saw she had her lip caught up in her teeth in a kind of snarl. He thrust deep down into her and her eyes screwed shut. He was worried he was hurting her but she had not said and he was desperate for her now. He pulled back and thrust again as gently as he could. She gave a long familiar husky groan. He relaxed into the rhythmic thrusts down into her unusually passive body. 

He leaned over her, one arm pinning her to the bed, the other hand gripped on her thin bony hip. The feelings were buzzing about his loins. He was starting to grunt and groan with excitement, waiting for Tashka's scream. He could feel the orgasm coiling up in his buttocks and thighs. He thrust as gently as he could into her, trying to hold back the exquisite release. 

Tashka felt the strength of his arm down across her shoulders and his hand gripping on her hip bone. She moaned as the ecstatic thrills rippled out through her body from his thrusting cock. As he shoved down into her she could feel his balls bouncing on her. It was hurting - a little, and his grip on her hip was too hard but in the mood she was in now she wanted that and most of all it was coming, the exhilarating rush of energy and dark life surging up in her. She could not control or resist it now, with his powerful arm pinning her into the softness of the bed, his strong muscular officer's body thrusting his big cock down into her thin exhausted body and hitting on the spot from which the feelings rippled out. 

She bit her lip and closed her eyes against the tears. Her left hand gripped in a fist so hard that the short fingernails cut into her palm. Helpless to resist, she heard herself moaning then she heard him gasping and grunting. She knew he was cumming. The quicker uncontrolled thrusts he made tipped her over. She went herself. She started screaming under him with the sensations exploding in her muscles and the emotions rolling all through her body. She burst into tears, there was blood in her mouth where she had bitten her own lip. She lay sobbing in the bed under him. 

He knew though. He was no soft sweetie who would lie there uselessly saying, What is it? and imagining it was anything to do with him. He too was a battle-hardened veteran of war. He was pulling himself hurriedly from her, coming to take her in his strong scarred arms. He was pulling her close to him and saying, "I am so sorry, so sorry. I miss them too: Flava and Petra, Iada who stood the internal guard to challenge me coming to seek your favour. I went to see their families, as you will have to do. I too wake sometimes in the night stricken with the memory of taking lives from young men and old men who will never smile again but in the memories of those who loved them." He was crying himself, pressing her head into his shoulder, pulling her naked body in against his naked body: her sworn Lord, her Commander, her husband. 

~#~*~#~

There was a voice in the dim firelight saying timidly: "Sir! Sir! Thy time for my allegiance, sir!" 

Vadya, still pressed close against Tashka's body, struggled up from the dark world of sleep into fury. He was about to open his mouth and pour a stream of invective on whoever this could be when Tashka's husky voice said by his ear: "I will hear you, Clathan." 

"The defeated Sietter troops from the second line are arrived in the town, sir," the young voice said. "You asked us to be sure to tell you when they came." 

"So I did," Tashka said in a dry tone of voice. 

There was a long pause and then the Lieutenant whispered: "Tashka, will you come to see them?" 

"No," Tashka said. "Go and tell Clair. I was going to talk to them ..." she paused. 

"Sir?" the Lieutenant whispered. 

"Dio, I have changed my mind," she said. Her fingers came creeping round to caress Vadya's ear. "It is for van Sietter to talk to them now. Go tell it him they have arrived." 

"Sir," whispered the Lieutenant. "It is done." 

~#~*~#~

Tashka was to hand the command of Sixth H'las back to Vadya and had taken a day out from her work as General in charge of their occupation of Arventa to do so. Hanya, who had been acting Commander in her absence, offered to take on the organisation of the troop for their inspection parade and the writing up of the presentation details but Tashka smiled innocently and said that she thought she could manage it. 

She strode down among Sixth H'las, immaculate in her beautifully pressed black and blue parade silks and gleaming black boots. A torrent of foul language poured about their ears, she was scathing about the state of their shining arms and mail, their polished harnesses, their curried and brushed horses. She burrowed in their packs and disclosed torn undergarments. She poked in corners of their bedding rolls and unearthed caches of drink and smut that her Captains looked at in astonishment and annoyance. 

Finally they were drawn up before their tents for the parade. The spring sunshine danced on gleaming weapons, on stirrups and bridle irons. Every horse's coat shone with a gloss as bright as the shine on the infantry's boots. The soldiers were neatly lined up. Off to the side, those who were still too badly injured to take part sat in wheelchairs and on benches, leaning round to each other and gossiping, laughing at their comrades - a bit enviously, also smartly dressed with their weaponry gleaming. 

Vadya stood a step behind Tashka as the junior officer does and listened to her husky familiar voice cry out the commands. What was left of each Quarter's cavalry mounted in its turn, the soldiers of each Unit all together swinging into the saddle. The infantry made a complicated step which took them to the back of the cavalry. The cavalry jingled forward, the sun glancing off their helmets, a breeze fluttering up their black and blue surcoats so that sunshine sparkled off their mailcoats. 

Tashka's husky words were echoed in ringing tones by the Captains, the Lieutenants. The hundreds of cavalry horses were wheeling around them, lances were raised high in the warm spring sunshine, the tense faces of the soldiers concentrated. The infantry moved in amongst them at a rapid march, stepping, stopping, their boots clicking and turning. 

They were all ranged to one side of Vadya, Tashka and their wounded comrades and now they were stepping forwards. The horses' hooves lifted high, the feathers on their fetlocks freshly washed and fluffy in the spring air. Each soldier swung to face his Commander and his General as he passed, his fighting hand raised to his helmet. Vadya and Tashka stood with their fighting hands raised in salute. The sun danced on the General's ring on Tashka's right hand. The wounded raised a ragged cheer. 

The officers were dismounting and handing their reins to a trooper each. They came marching forward and went on one knee to Vadya, pressing his left hand to their foreheads and swearing their vows. The sun shone off his wedding ring as they did so. 

Vadya and Tashka strolled at leisure up the rank and file, Vadya one step behind Tashka and the Captains one step behind him. They threaded through the neatly ordered tents. Tashka's slanted blue eyes smiled at the soldiers with pride, Vadya could not find a fault anywhere, even when he looked for faults. 

They came back round in front of the troop and Tashka handed Vadya the presentation report. He went on one knee and pressed her thin fingers with his rings on them to his forehead, swearing she would be his days and his life and his fight. She took him as her honour and her care but she stuttered to call him her victory, looking at the empty places in the line with her eyes suddenly hard. Vadya pressed her fingers as he stood up and saluted her. As he did the ritual formal dance of steps that brought him about and one step behind her, he managed to flick her buttock and make her snort with that filthy give-away laugh. 

The banner-bearer stepped forward with her banner folded in his hands. His face was twisted between smiles and tears. He did not want to see Tashka go but he had carried Vadya's banner for years too. Tashka smiled, saying to him: "We never lost it." It was a great source of pride to both of them that she had never suffered a defeat, even in Finia Woods when they had to retreat they had not been defeated so she had never had to give her banner to the enemy and have it replaced. The banner-bearer brightened up and she watched him march back into line with Vadya's banner draped around his shoulder, her face regretful. Her mind had always yearned towards the Generals' strategic staff but she had not expected to have to give up action in the field so young. 'Still, I might get to sneak out on manoeuvres now and then with my junior if I pretend I am only doing it to secure the succession,' she thought with a snigger. 

Vadya led the troop in three long loud huzzas. They broke up and the four Captains came over, breathing sighs of relief that it had passed off so well. 

"Will you read my report?" Tashka enquired. 

"Of course," Vadya answered but he did not break the seal as yet. "Let us all have a drink," he suggested, moving off towards his tent where the banner-bearer was setting his banner up in the sunshine. 

"Mm, I will buy you all drinks later," Tashka said evasively. "I am going back to the Palladia. For a rest." 

"I thought you had taken the whole afternoon," he said in surprise. 

"Yes I have," she answered, looking direct into his eyes with those clear slanted dark blue eyes. "I am a bit tired. I want to ... lie down." 

He shrugged with a smile. He knew it was not easy to give up your troop, perhaps she wanted time alone. He watched her strolling off up the hillside with the light limp in that sexy el Maien roll to her black silk and leather clad hips. He turned and casually cracked the seal on her presentation report. 

Tashka limped lazily towards the Palladia, her hands stuck in her swordbelt, grinning to herself. Presently she heard Vadya shouting her name and running after her. She swung round to face him, raising one arrogant enquiring eyebrow at him. 

His face was lit with laughter and desire. He ran up and shook the report at her in an agony of embarrassment and hilarity. "I cannot file this!" he cried. 

She grinned and pretended to examine it, and in particular the careful description of what the commanding officers would be wearing: formal parade silks, and for the officer handing over the Command: black and gold lace camisole and knickers embroidered with hearts and flowers.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 31



 A comment was asking how Clair and Arianna would manage the new responsibilities of the region. Well... that's another story - literally. There are two novels which follow this one, and which have their own story arcs. Arianna's work with the wider politics she is interested in is further developed as background in those stories. 

I can't believe this is the penultimate chapter. I am going to be so emotional when I go to post the last one! 

*****

Clair came into the sitting-room, walked to the fireplace and pulled a series of horrible faces, writhing his thin mouth about and screwing up his slanted eyes. He jumped up and down on the hearthrug a few times. Arianna, who had come straight through after dinner, rolled around in her armchair with laughter. 

"What is it now?" she asked. 

"Those bloody First Sietter officers," he complained, going to sit in his chair. He put a hand down to caress his old hunting hound's ears then he looked sad. She had gone during the winter, poor old thing. Not before her time but he missed her. 

Now that he was Lord van Sietter he was obliged to have the ceremonial troop trailing about with him. He refused to move into Palladia Arventa, instead he sold it to his brother by marriage el Jien van Iarve, to use for merchants' conferences. This annoyed the King and the Privy Council very much since it was better situated than the court for meetings with those involved in trade. In their pique they offered much more to Arianna, Hanya and the merchants than they had intended. Clair tried hard to give Hanya the Palladia but Arianna insisted he accept a price that reflected its full monetary worth and made him send all the money to Lord Pava's young widow in Vilandia, in addition to the jewels and monies as laid out in her marriage papers. 

Clair refurbished the old troop barracks at Castle Sietter for First Sietter. They were a great nuisance. It was their duty to follow Clair and Arianna and ensure their safety at all times but Clair felt it was ridiculous for them to insist on accompanying him to inspect the pigs and cows on the farm or the airing of the bedding in the kitchen gardens and to stand in a massed rank about him while he collected the boys from school. 

Besides her philosophical objections to them as a pacifist, Arianna complained that the officers gossiped and giggled outside the library and that their weapons were hung in a way that made them jingle at the slightest movement, making it difficult for her and her students to concentrate. 

The officers were always wanting to come and sit at high table for dinner, too, instead of in their mess. They had fomented an absurd rivalry with the Castle Guard so that the guards tried to make Captain Jien go and sit on high table with them when all he wanted at the end of a long working day was to sit with his husband the kennelmaster in the main dining hall. Clair completely banned them from coming into the family quarters, he said they could waste their time securing them from the passages by the dining hall. 

"What now?" Arianna asked Clair, the laughter still lurking in the dimple in her chin. 

"Such nonsense, forget it," he grumbled. "Come and play chess." 

"Yes, alright," she said. She got up and reached up to the mantelpiece, to re-arrange yet again the gold-edged pink card inviting them to witness the bestowal of Dame Anastelle Yrai on Lieutenant-Lord Hanya el Jien van Iarve, formerly of First Iarve. This time she placed it carefully to the side of the mantelpiece, leaning it on a star-engraved glass full of coloured marbles, alongside the gold-flecked pink invitation to witness the bestowal of Lady Sevianne el Jien van Iarve on Lieutenant-Lord Volka el Darien van Trattai of First Trattai and the very elegant pink invitation with an abstract gold spray across one corner inviting them to witness the bestowal of Captain Hanya Lein of Sixth H'las on Major General-Sir Dar Vaie of the offices of the strategic staff in Arventa. Beside the wedding invitation cards stood a sketch of Hanyan's father, her husband's lover, which she had suggested they should frame and put up there. 

Clair crossed the room in the sunny summer evening light falling through the long windows. He fetched the chess set and began putting out the board and pieces on the table by the windows. 

It was a set Arianna had bought him for his birthday, made by one of the Namoon School. All the pawns on one side were broken bits of an ordinary peasant's eating bowl. On the other side, the pawns were small pebbles of the kind poor children collect in Soomara to play a local game. Most of the other pieces were also rubbish from a trash heap (carefully cleaned) except the Kings and Queens which were angular figurines of gold and silver with three or four jewelled eyes each. It was a symbolic representation of the extremes of poverty and wealth. Arianna said that at the least of it the price she had to pay for such a pile of garbage had meant that one Namoon School artist and her family would never live in poverty again. Clair adored it. 

The windows were open, a soft breeze drifted in past the pink curtains with the scent of roses and lilies on it. It crossed Clair's mind that the curtains were faded and he should think about replacing them, maybe the carpet too. That would no doubt be high entertainment for the First Sietter officers, to go round the furnishing warehouse down in the town choosing matching fabrics. He went to fetch himself a bowl of brandy and Arianna a bowl of Graiel. 

The sitting-room door opened and Petra the footman wheeled himself in and put two small plates piled with tiny pasties on the table. "Dar has made these snacks for the Guard who are having a card party," he said. "He thought you would like some too." 

"Prithou thank him," Arianna said, resting her hand momentarily on his shoulder. He smiled a shy acknowledgement up at her before he wheeled himself out of the room. She was so elegant and charming in a blue silk dress that flattered the curves of her beautiful body and picked up the colour of her eyes. 

As she went to sit down in the sunshine, round the corner of the table from Clair, Arianna tucked a curl of his beautifully cut longish hair around his ear and felt the tickle of an earring on her hand. She looked and laughed to see that he had pinched one of her sapphire betrothal set to wear in his ear. She sat down where she could lift her head and see the flowers nodding in the warm evening air outside. Clair let her take the 'white' pieces. (After some argument and a protracted correspondence with the artist who returned irritating enigmatic answers to their question, they came to an agreement that the pawns made from a broken bowl were 'white'.) 

"So you will allow Hanya to be Minister for Trade and Employment?" Clair asked Arianna, watching her position a 'knight' on the board. (The broken neck of a bottle. Sithou, it suggests that the Knights waste their money on fine wines instead of succouring the poor. / Mm? oh yes my dear how interesting.) She nodded, considering the pebble he put out with thoughtful blue eyes. "You would have been the better Minister," he said, "but it would have eaten into your time on your theorem." 

"Oh no," she answered, looking into his eyes and surreptitiously moving her pawn out while his attention was on her, "knowest it well, I am not a diplomat. I say whatever I want straight out. That is a disadvantage in working with the King and the Privy Council because they expect you to go roundabout in your own interest, not straight to it in everyone's. Besides, I have another important project to develop." 

"Oh yes?" he said, contemplating her bit of broken bowl with a light frown of concentration. He moved out another pebble. 

"Yes," she said. "I want to set up a peace corps as Tashka suggested." 

"What?!" he lifted his eyes in horror from the board. "But my dear, what will a peace corps do?" 

"They could guard the borders or police the internal problems of the region," Arianna argued. "That is not important, there is plenty of work a peace corps could do. What is important is that we would be saying: We are not interested in war and maintaining heavily armed troops. We want to maintain peace across the country as a whole. Our officers could be trained not in fighting but in skills of negotiation for peace." 

"Oh yes!" Clair exclaimed. "I can just hear the thundering hooves of every other region's cavalry coming to over-run us if we do such a thing." 

"No indeed," Arianna's face flushed with indignation. "Pava says he will set up a peace corps and Maive el Vaie says she will look into it." 

Clair burst out laughing. "Tell me what they said truly," he suggested, his slanted eyes glinting sidelong at her in his good humour. 

Her wide red mouth bunched up and she scowled. Finally she admitted: "Pava said if he has a peace corps it will annoy the Generals' strategic staff in Turaine who refuse to give him a position in their offices even though he worked to support Tashka in the occupation of Arventa and that he can design a new double-breasted uniform for them to wear. And Maive said if Pava is going to have a peace corps she is going to have a much better one and they will have a triple-breasted uniform!" she burst out laughing herself at that. "But Clair, it is Tashka's idea. If Tashka starts a peace corps in H'las..." 

"My dear," he replied in a voice dripping with scorn, "the day that General-Lord Tashka el Maien van H'las of the offices of the strategic staff in Port H'las starts a peace corps, I will hang up my weaponry and go to the back hills of Sietter in a carriage to scrub kitchen tables. I have said it and you may hold me to my word." 

"You are being unreasonable," she complained. "What of the officers we have in the region currently without employment? Think of Commander-Sir Darien, we are wasting his potential..."

"La la la, I am not listening!" he sang. "I refuse to have a peace corps in Sietter. Make your move, my dear." 

"It is your move," she replied. 

He looked blankly at the board, trying to figure out what she had moved where. After a while he tentatively sidled a priest across the board. (A tinny broken earring. You understand, my dear, the earring means the priest's doxy! is that not splendid? / Oh yes, very entertaining, my dear, I do prithou not mention it to the children.) 

"Hanya makes excellent progress with his drawing," Arianna said. 

He looked suspiciously at her. This change of subject could not possibly mean she was going to give her peace corps idea the go-by. She looked innocently back at him, her blue eyes limpid in her virtuous biddable face. 

He knew then that she was definitely going ahead with it. She would pick a time when he was not thinking about it and slide some innocuous looking scheme in. Before he knew it he would be getting cross letters from Major General-Sir Dar Vaie to enquire what his thoughts might be on this project my Lady van Sietter was promoting. And Darien, a man of such great honour. He had courteously picked a time when Clair happened to be away with the boys - teaching them to pitch a tent and camp in the hills - to come and swear allegiance so that he could swear to Arianna's fingers without embarrassing Clair. Poor Darien would be obliged to become an officer in a peace corps! Clair sighed heavily. 

"Yes," he said. "I have suggested that Vidor Hyaline should bring his own children to the castle school and give all the children art lessons." 

"Mm," she said, moving another bit of broken bowl out. 

As they played the late summer light became blue and crept magically around the flowers in the courtyard. They became nodding white and pale angelic shapes breathing perfume out in the soft warm air. A servant came to light the candles but they lifted their heads, the dark-haired and the blonde in the soft blue twilight, and they said there was sufficient light still. 

As usual Arianna won and Clair sulked about it. He turned his head pettishly aside. She looked at his lean tanned neck with a sinew standing out in it and her own blue and gold jewel swinging gently in his ear in the dim blue light from the windows. His dark-haired head and tanned lean neck rose gracefully from the white lace collar of his blue shirt. 

He was such a lovely. She stood suddenly up and came round the corner of the table and pressed her mouth softly under his ear. Clair sat quite still, staring away into the twilit courtyard, feeling the soft wet pressure of her sweet wide mouth on his neck. 

She stood up away from him and began putting the chess pieces away, he reached out to help her. 

They walked up the stairs by the sitting-room to her door and he turned to give her the usual quick chaste kiss. She stooped her head away from his kiss, taking hold of the lace edge to his shirt, her fingers fiddling in between the lace stars and suns and moons. He looked at her with one eyebrow raised in query. 

"H-Hanyan does not have nightmares so much the more?" she asked him. 

"No, it is some weeks now he has slept through the night," he answered. 

"So... mights't come... and sleep in my room?" She was so shy about asking it, she could not even bear to lift her eyes to him: her husband. She looked down at her long lightly tanned fingers fiddling in the white lace edge of his shirt. 

"My dear," he said in a suddenly joyous husky voice. He put his arm around her shoulders, stooping his head to look into her bowed blushing face and seek her kiss. 

The touch of his thin firm mouth sent a pulse tingling all down her veins, making her knees feel weak. His arms were firm in affection around her back, she knew his strength. He could catch and hold her weight. She pressed into his kiss, her mouth joining his, her body moving closer to lean against him, her knees trembling. 

Clair pushed into her mouth with his tongue. Her lips parted to him, his tongue came curling in her mouth. She caressed his tongue with hers, thrilling to the soft joining of their flesh in their mouths before he parted from her kiss. 

He looked into her warm face, the blue eyes in the dim blue twilight looked into his unveiled, thawed, soft as the Summer. He pressed the latch of her door and she turned and went before him into her room. 

Lisette had left the heavy curtains open because she knew Arianna loved to enjoy the summer twilight through her light muslin curtains. Clair latched the door and reached immediately for Arianna in the soft blue light, pulling her towards him and caressing her head, cuddling her close to him and whispering something in her ear, she could not hear, it was just a warm buzz that made her wide mouth curve up in a tickled smile, she leaned into his embrace. 

She put her hands on his hips and pulled the shirt from the waistband of the old jodhpurs he was wearing, slid her long fingers up his back, feeling the hard bones of his ribs and also the scars there, ridges of skin to her fingers ends' touch. She started to think about how he had duelled, he had duelled her friends over her honour but then Clair pinched her buttock and she sniggered and her head went back, his mouth was on her throat, kissing her throat and the hollow at the base of her neck and her breast in the open neck of her cotton dress. He was putting a finger up to pull at the buttons of her dress. She put her hands up to help him, pulling the buttons out the button-holes. 

He moved away from her, went to sit in one of the armchairs and hurriedly to unbuckle his sword-belt, pull off his boots, strip off his jodhpurs and underpants, unbutton his shirt. Arianna had gone to put her dress tidily over the stool by her dressing-table. She lifted her head, shy again now that she had reached her white cotton petticoat, unsure about revealing so flagrantly the glorious plump beauty of her body. 

Clair came quickly over, wrapped an arm about her and pulled her over towards her bed. He hung his weapons over the end of the bed then turned to draw her into the covers with him. 

They lay in the dim blue twilight, staring across the pillows into each other's faces. Clair pulled the cover back again and started to get out of the bed. She was stricken with panic, she reached across to him with an anxious hand. Why was he leaving her? He turned his head and said in affectionate reassurance: "I'll get a condom to protect your honour. So you will not risk being with child." 

Her face in the twilight suddenly became soft and golden-warm in the blue light. "Woulds't not like to have another child?" she asked. "Perhaps we might have a girl this time?" Her blue eyes lifted shyly, hopefully to him. 

He stared at her soft face gleaming with hope in the dim blue light. He gave a gasp of excitement and pleasure and turned hurriedly back to her, came hunting her kiss across the pillows, thrilling to this appeal to make theirs a marital bed. She lifted her head to meet his and he sank into the white sheets in the blue twilight against her big soft body. 

Arianna reached out to grip his shoulders, pressing into his kiss, into his embrace. He held himself hard against her, half-drowned in the softness of her body. Her lips came away from his and her head went back. He looked at her lightly tanned neck and kissed it down to where at the edge of her lacy petticoat, her skin became milky white. There was a blue vein running just under her skin to her right breast. He kissed along it, his fingers pulling the laces of her petticoat undone and uncovering her bodice. She herself was hastily unhooking her bodice to expose her breasts to his kiss. He kissed tenderly along the vein down her breast and at last opened his mouth around the pink areola of her breast. 

Arianna's fingers tangled in his hair, crooked and shaky. She was moaning softly, tossing her head in the pillows. He licked around her nipple, feeling it harden and sit up erect under his tongue. He closed his teeth a little way on her breast, he moved his mouth down to kiss it on the soft underside. 

He pulled more of her laces undone and started pushing the petticoat and bodice off her shoulders, she started pulling at his shirt. He sat up and flung the shirt off to the side of the bed with her petticoat and bodice. He looked into her face in the dim light, her eyes were passionate blue in the blue twilight, her golden hair tossed and tumbling in curls down her head. 

"My beauty," he said huskily. "My storming beauty!" 

She laughed, rolling her shoulders in the pillows so that her big breasts rolled too. He bent his head to her breast again, kissed it, began to kiss down her soft belly, gentle pinches of kisses that made her stomach muscles clench up and she laughed above him. His fingers trailed down to rest on her creamy thigh. Her thighs were opening to his touch, his kisses were following his fingers, his fingers were tangling in her lacy cotton knickers and pulling them away, she was gasping above him among the pillows. 

He put his fine experienced fingers to the downy fair curls of her pubic hair, looking up into her eyes with a wicked grin. Arianna stared down at him, her eyes bewildered but also lost in desire. He could do what he would with her now, she was gone over to him. 

Gently he brushed his fingers in between the lips of her labia, so gently but what a huge force of feeling came flooding through her from his touch. He bent his head to her sex, she thought: 'Oh! he is going to kiss me... there! How strange!' He parted her labia with those delicate certain fingers and his mouth was laid softly to her sex. 

Perfect. 

His tongue was perfect to caress her sensitive sex. She smiled her slow sexy smile into the slanted grey eyes which were still lifted to look into her eyes. She began to breathe sweet noises. Odd feelings came wriggling up through her hips and her belly, it was so much fun! Clair's tongue was flicking at the little bump of flesh, her clitoris. She giggled, her shoulders and arms flung about in the pillows. Delicious! 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 31



His tongue was poking at her vulva, she could not believe how pleasurable it was, she gave a series of soft moans as he pushed the soft strong muscle of his tongue into her sex. Her head was flicking about but if she dared look down she saw his slanted grey eyes laughing up to her between her big creamy thighs while his tongue sank deep into the warm wet muscles of her sex. 

Then he pulled his tongue suddenly out of her and stopped. 

"Clair, Clair!" she called pleadingly. He was laughing! the teasing scum. He was laughing to her as he crawled up to lie in her arms, his lean tanned face alive and lovely with laughter. 

He pressed into all the softness of her big body, she held him close. His hands were on her breasts, the eager little nipples standing out from the pink areolae for his touch. Her waist, her thighs, his fingers were brushing around her sex again. 

She tangled her long fingers in his elegantly cut black hair. She ran one hand down his back over the ribs and the scars to his buttock and squeezed his buttock. Clair lifted his head and grinned, his body tensed against hers. 

He had lean hard thighs, she loved their long elegance. She loved his knees, pressing between hers and pushing them apart. She loved his head stooping to her kiss, his slanted grey eyes suddenly piercing and intense, her eyes softened the more as his perfect mouth came down for her kiss. 

His fingers explored her sex, the lips of the labia, the soft opening of the vulva. She felt him set himself against her sex and the head of his cock press to her. She started panting with excitement. She was living only in her body, in the warmth and softness that came up in waves through her, only in the awareness of the hard lean body pressing to her body. 

He made a sudden thrust and was down into her, sinking his cock into her sex. She gave a thrilled gasp of pleasure and threw her thighs wider, he thrust the shaft of his cock deeper down, his thin strong hands were spread on her hips to pull her tighter to him. His grey eyes were piercing into her wide blue eyes as he sank down thrusting and pushing his cock down into her flesh. 

She held him close in her arms. The softness and warmth in her all began to tense up, her muscles all tensed about his cock deep inside her. Clair was gasping now. His head had swung to her shoulder, his breath was panting on her neck. His head lifted again. He looked intently into her eyes, his eyes narrowed up and suddenly he cried: "Anna!", pushing quicker and thrusting even deeper and she was gone in a tumble of passion falling through her, crying out back to his moans in orgasm. Her awareness of the world was scattered, shafts of life came shattering through her soft cloudy senses. 

Slowly she relaxed into the bed and his arms. Dimly she became aware of the darkening twilight, the shadowed magical blue light falling through the muslin curtains. Clair lay still in her arms, his head pressed hard into her neck, his cock still sunk inside her. Her fingers were still gripped in his hair. She slackened the grip but left her fingers curled in his hair. Her lids were closing over the soft blue pools of summer skies that were her eyes. 

Clair lay staring at the soft downy hairs on her neck now he could not really see them any more as the light became more blue than light. His eyelashes fluttered. 

They lay in the blue twilight, the white sheets and each other's arms. A gold and sapphire earing lay against Clair's neck. They slept deeply, close against each other, their breathing the only movement in the dim summer night's light in the room.



A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 32



Wow, this is it! I have managed to post the whole novel up here. It has been so great, and I have had wonderful encouraging feedback and support. I'm equally flattered by the comments which helpfully told me what I need to do to improve my writing, as well as kind comments telling me how much you enjoy it. I know people wouldn't take the trouble unless they thought I was doing something right. 

I will miss all you readers, whether you posted, voted or just came on to find out how the story is unfolding. It's been the best thing - to share this world I invented, and find out there are people who enjoy reading about it. Thank you all so much. :heart:

*****

Vadya woke to find Tashka's intense blue stare looking across the pillows at him. He reached out to put a sleepy hand round the back of her head and they smiled. Batren coughed behind Vadya. He rolled over to take Tashka's coffee and pass it to her. He put his on the floor by the bed and snuggled back down into the crisp cotton sheets. Five more minutes and then he would drink it. 

When he woke up again Tashka was gone. Batren was still moving about their huge square room. The long blue velvet curtains were pulled back, sunshine poured over the comfortable armchairs by the fire, the glass-fronted bookcases by the door, the stands of their weapons and mail. Vadya watched Batren picking up the clothes he had thrown on the floor the previous night and laying out their uniforms and the towels for their morning baths. He looked at his coffee. It was cold and there was a skin on it. 

"Batren," he moaned feebly. 

"Certainly my Lord," Batren said crossly, limping off to call for more coffee for him. 

Vadya lay staring at the paintings on the walls, waiting for his coffee. 

Tashka commissioned the huge sunny painting of sailing boats along the coast from someone she found in Port Ithilien, whom she recommended to Vadya to take under his patronage. She let Vadya choose the colours for the walls and curtains to set off the painting. She never complained, even when he had the room painted three times and they had to sleep in his Commander's tent while it dried. (Batren complained a lot about it.) 

Vadya had begun to look round the other rooms in the wing they lived in with his father and consider whether he might commission some more enjoyable paintings to replace the large and imposing portraits of previous van H'lases which currently dominated the reception and sitting rooms. Perhaps he would replace all the furniture too. And have some sort of veranda so they could go outside and feel whatever it was the weather was like and experience the world each day. 

Angels! he could probably afford to rebuild the whole castle. The Lord General had once said that his Lady wife could have double pay if she came up to the strategic staff out of the field and she held him to his word. That was an enormous sum of money when you had a General's salary. She also received a vast income from duties levied for passage through the lands she had as a marriage settlement: the Maier Pass. And if he took his eye off her for ten minutes she would sneak off down to the scummy taverns near the port, dragging along some poor junior to watch her back while she won additional eye-watering sums of money in card-playing hells. 

When Vadya reached the armoury, Tashka was finishing off her morning exercises, lifting weights with a sickening bright-eyed air of concentration and sharing jokes with a Captain from First H'las who had been training alongside her. Vadya looked grumpily around the armoury. It was empty apart from them - it was still horribly early. He rubbed his stubbly chin with one slow hand. 

Tashka came loping over to him, dragging her right leg, her hips rolling sexily in her loose cotton training trousers. She grinned at him, jogging on the spot in front of him. He grunted, beginning to jog round the room. She jogged on beside him, cooling down while he warmed up. She did not speak to him, he was always grumpy in the morning. They did some stretches together and she went off to have her bath. 

By the time he got back to have his bath she had eaten a large breakfast and gone off to her offices where she and her strategic staff would be working on the troops' dispositions for autumn: reading and assessing reports, requests for arms, men, supplies; designing the strategies that would organise the movement of troops across the land in perfect distribution. His father had persuaded her to write a book collecting some of her battle strategies together, she might work on that but she hated it. 

Most of her work was too secret for her to discuss with Vadya but he had seen her working on her book. She sat at her desk with the draped red silk banners of defeated Sietter troops and one Vilandian banner behind her, staring out of the window. She picked her nose, flicked a screwed up ball of paper at Imp or at an officer passing in the corridor and said: "so the right wing goes to the left and becomes the foot of the tiger." The Lieutenant set to clerk for her that day would solemnly write this nonsense down and Vadya, who had seen the Maien tiger in action and knew what she meant, laughed till she threw him out. 

Tashka kept Imp in her offices. She banned him from their bedroom because early in their marriage he bit Vadya in the leg. Tashka had been trying to wrestle Vadya's uniform off him and get him to come to bed with her instead of going to take an inspection parade. He was on the verge of giving in when Imp bit him and after that he sulked and insisted on taking the parade so she said Imp must stand on station for the rest of his life. Imp liked her offices. The staff officers spoiled him with chocolates and bones, junior officers were very willing to trot around the gardens or the port town walking General-Lord el Maien's special pet dog and there was always the chance that a raw baby Lieutenant would be sent to Tashka with some message, who could be teased with a pretend growl. 

Vadya went down to the Sixth H'las encampment and dealt with all the disasters that had happened in the night, wrote up some paperwork and dreamt up a practice attack on First H'las. 

This summer Sixth H'las had not been sent out on manoeuvres. In a rare personal appeal, his father asked the strategic staff to keep Sixth in the port area because he said he wanted some family time with his son and daughter by marriage after the war. Vadya was glad. It was fun being home for the summer. There were the sailing races to take part in and Vadya had not been contemplating with any pleasure a long traipse without Tashka off to Soomara or the H'velst mountains. 

The Sixth H'las soldiers had a standing invitation to the First H'las and strategic staff dining hall. Vadya went up there at lunchtime with his officers and met his father and had lunch with him. He saw Tashka but she was sitting at a table some way away with Commander Stanies. Vadya grinned when he saw Stanies, thinking about the practice attack he and his officers were planning. 

"I have been to a very boring council meeting," his father was grumbling, shovelling forkfuls of choice pork cutlet through his neat beard into his mouth. 

"Oh yes," Vadya was not really listening, he was thinking about the practice attack but he kept a bit of attention on his father in case it had actually been an important meeting which his father would dismiss as 'that political rubbish'. 

"They had the cheek to put the question of the succession on the agenda," his father said. 

Vadya choked on a potato, lifting brown eyes to glare at his father in mute indignation. His father looked hopefully back at him. 

"Papa!" Vadya looked nervously round but his Captains had gone off to sit with some other Captains, there was nobody near them. He said: "We have told you! I would like to have children but Tashka says I should stay with my career a bit longer. Give me one more summer in the troop, Angels' sake! Next year Tashka and I will think seriously about it, I have given my word and you may hold me to it." 

His father grunted and looked back at his cutlet in a disappointed way. Commander Stanies' daughters had given him three bouncing grandchildren, Lord Esha was envious and the regional council were starting to annoy him about the matter, pointing out that having all three members of the family in the military put the succession at considerable risk. They had become additionally anxious because Tashka had gone and thrown her glove at some idiot who made a drunken comment about how they missed Clair's lovely eyes in the staff officers' mess nearly as much as they missed his management of the lines of supply, although he had of course immediately offered her an abject apology. This was the real reason his father asked for Vadya to be kept home that summer. He was hoping Tashka would be negligent for once, although considering how well he knew and admired the absolute precision with which she managed his army, he must be getting desperate to rely on such a vain hope. 

After lunch Vadya's Captains wanted him to come and sort out disciplines for the soldiers who had committed silly faults but he made an evasive excuse, pushing it off on Basra, and sneaked off to have a nap with Tashka. 

She was sitting on their bed, Batren tugging off her boots, and complaining about how she had taken Batren's advice and bet on a dog in a race that morning which had come last. "I saw it all," she grumbled. By some unspecified underhand means (probably involving high play at cards), she had secured an office which overlooked the dog tracks. "The bitch clearly had some foul disease, it ran like a three-legged toad." 

"I cannot understand," Batren said apologetically. "Her parentage and previous record are immaculate." 

Tashka unbuttoned her double-breasted heavy cotton summer tunic and handed it to Batren to hang up over a chair. Vadya sat down by her to drag off his boots and tunic, he chucked them on the floor, took his lucky filigree button out of his pocket and put it carefully on his bedside table beside a watercolour sketch of himself and Tashka and his father fishing in the harbour, a picture of his mother and a group of small cheap gold-sequined ornaments she had bought for him years ago in P'shan. 

On Tashka's table there was a Hyaline sketch of Clair, Arianna, Hanyan and Arkyllan enjoying a picnic in their orchard, a set of Sietter Lieutenants' buttons in a glass case and Vadya pretended he did not know of it that in her drawer she kept an elaborate gold earring with the el V'lair insignia in it - together with some bloodstained bits of paper that had a letter and some scribbles outlining a battle strategy. He understood that the earring was not in fond memory of el V'lair but a sort of trophy. 

He climbed between the sheets in his shirt and breeches. Tashka climbed in beside him, pulled the sheet over them, put her head on his shoulder and was asleep as if she had been dropped like a stone in a well. Vadya sighed. He had wanted to tell her about the practice attack he was planning and his father going on about the succession - again. Alternatively they might have made love, that would have been better fun. 

He looked affectionately at her tanned face on his shoulder, putting one hand up to cradle her head in his big fingers. Her long black lashes lay on her lean cheeks, her rose-petal lips were parted a crack. She breathed lightly in the enclosing circle of his arm, lying with her arm flung across his chest and one knee between his knees. 

Vadya looked drowsily round as Batren picked up his tunic, hung it in the wardrobe, drew the curtains and left the room. 

When he woke up, he pulled her closer without thinking about it and so she woke up too, looking at him hazily at first and then with a focussed grin. He put his head out for her kiss and she licked his lip, making him giggle. 

"What is it you are about this afternoon?" she asked, stretching her muscular long body out beside him. 

"I ought to get the Lieutenants together for a lesson on manoeuvres I suppose," he said. "I have made Basra do all the disciplines, tee hee! Oh! I have this excellent idea for a practice attack on First." 

When he had explained it to her, she laughed and said: "Stanies will be furious." 

"Will you not come and help me with the Lieutenants' lesson?" he asked. "They are always on at me to use my influence with General-Lord el Maien to explain the Maien star to them." 

"What?! You are jesting with me! Come and teach your scummy Lieutenants," she said in disgust. "What a cheek, too, do you tell me they are hoping you will seduce your senior officer into showing them preference?" She bent her head to his with a snigger and they had a long and giggly kiss. "If you want to seduce me, you had better do it for something much more fun than giving your Lieutenants a lesson in strategy. Tell them to come to the lectures like all the other Lieutenants. I am going to practice my rapier-work!" Her eyes gleamed in the dim light of their room. 

"You are already renowned as the finest rapier-swordsman in Trossia," he protested. "You do not need the practice and surely they do need the lesson." 

"Yes but I enjoy it," she said. "Come and practice with me, forget the baby Lieutenants." 

"This is no way to encourage your junior officers!" he teased. 

She turned her head and grinned at him. "I am the General," she said, puffing her cheeks out and pretending to be very fat. "I can do as I like!" 

"Yes sir!" he said. 

"And what I like," she added, "is kissing!" She seized his chin and pushed his head back, pressing kisses into his neck and chin and all over his face while he laughed and tried to catch her head and pull her in to his mouth. 

They heard the door opening and Batren coming in and they pulled apart, out of mercy for him. He was always deeply embarrassed if he caught them kissing and cuddling. Batren went over to the wardrobe. Tashka sprang out of bed to continue an argument she was having with him about a suit she wanted made. "Cloth all of silver!" Batren said indignantly. "That is a girl's cloth!" 

He and Tashka got down to the serious business of what she might wear that afternoon. While they were deciding on green hose and a white shirt (but not one with lace, the day I think I will be quite plain, with an high collar, and I will wear that earring which is just a plain gold rod hanging from my ear), Vadya managed to sneak on a tatty pair of breeches and his buckskin jacket. He had already managed to get one boot on by the time Batren had found the exact earring Tashka wanted so he got away with the breeches but Tashka said she wanted the jacket. They had a wrestling match over it and Tashka won, to Batren's great disgust. He hated the buckskin jacket, he thought they both looked vile in it. Vadya thought it made him look raffish and handsome, it made him feel like a lone forester striding in the woods. He thought Tashka looked adorable in it. It was too big so it made her look as if she were playing at dressing up. She would have been revolted if he had told her so, he let her think she looked like a lone forester too. 

He walked down to the armoury with her and watched her start her practice duel. She was fighting with a visiting officer on leave from Seventh Soomara. He had a reputation and she was looking forward to it. Vadya was glad to see Captain-Sir Levair give her a challenging fight. She rarely got an opportunity to properly test her skills and this would put her in a good mood. Since she had to take it off for the duel, she let him have the jacket back so he was pleased too. 

In the evening they went to the First H'las party but they left it early. They liked to get to bed early then Tashka could wake up early and Vadya could have a good lie in. When they got to their room it was all laid ready but Batren never hung round in the evenings. 

Vadya was humming to himself but Tashka was grumpy. She strolled about in front of the cold fireplace, undoing her shirt buttons. Then she stood over the hearth, glaring into the room, her hands on her hips and her soft heavy silk shirt hanging open so her bodice showed underneath it. She had got on a black bodice embroidered with hunting scenes in red thread, Vadya cast it an appreciative glance as he went to put his lucky filigree button on the mantelpiece beside a clutch of pink and gold cards inviting them to go all over Trossia witnessing the bestowal of friends on other friends by their families. 

Anata Yrai's bestowal on Hanya el Jien had been nicely timed for the winter sports in the H'velst mountains. They would be able to take a holiday there with his cousins and then come back down to Port Ithilien to see Hanya Lein bestowed on Dar Vaie. Tashka had invited her old friends the Angels - and of course Pava el Jien and Clair - to come and stay in Castle H'las for a few days beforehand. They were planning to have a splendid officers' party on board his caravel sailing down to Port Ithilien although Tashka said Vadya would still have to pay for the provisions even if he did not manage to win the caravel back from her before the party. 

Vadya pulled his purple velvet jacket off and his grey silk shirt over his head, letting them drop on the floor. "I had a nice chat with Dame Lisette Piria," he said. 

"Yes, I noticed," Tashka said coldly. "You danced three dances with her." 

"We were talking about Hyaline's pottery," Vadya said, sitting down to tug his boots off. "She said ..." suddenly he lifted his head and looked up at Tashka. 

She pouted grumpily at him, her rose-petal lip pushed out and her slanted blue eyes narrowed up in that killing glare. Vadya sniggered. 

"You are jealous!" he exclaimed gleefully. 

"No, I am not!" she protested. 

"Angel of Charity!" he said joyfully. "You are jealous of me! Sweet Heaven! Look at you: the prettiest officer in the whole H'las army, the youngest General ever to be made, the best rapier-swordsman in Trossia and you are jealous of me! I never thought to see it." 

"I am not jealous of you," she scoffed. 

"And you are the one who danced with Levair's chicken!" he laughed. "His reputation as a rapier-swordsman is not more notorious than hers for a pink-fingered flirt! I am the one who should be jealous." 

Tashka looked sideways at him in a flash of amused blue. "She asked me," she said. 

"You might have refused. Levair was fish-eyed when he saw her dancing with you!" 

"I may be a woman," she responded haughtily, "but I can still be a man of honour, is it not? You would not refuse a lady who asked you to dance with her." 

He grinned but she was still sulky. She flicked her mouth with one scarred finger and said: "Why should you dance three whole dances with one skinny cow?" 

"We were talking," he said patiently. "Darling, you are truly jealous? Surely you do not doubt me!" 

"No-o," she said, "but I should like to dance with you." 

"Neither of us can dance the woman's steps," he pointed out. 

She pouted again and walked off round the room, her hands linked behind her back, her right leg trailing behind her. When she came back to the hearth, he got up and put his arms around her, taking one of her hands up in his. 

"So dance with me," he said. "I will sing and you may dance with me. You can teach me the men's dances you do with Clair." 

She took her hand out of his and grasped him round the chest, pulling him against her body. "Dancing is boring," she said and tucked her hands into the waistband of his unbuttoned hose, pushing them down to squeeze his buttocks. 

Vadya grunted and grinned, his hands clasped loosely on her round shoulder-bones under her soft silk shirt. She looked at him sidelong out of those gorgeous slanted dark blue eyes, through her long lashes. As it had always been, since the first day she appeared before him to give him that lingering look, he felt a warm thrill in his loins. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 32



He stooped to her kiss, sliding the soft heavy silk shirt off her shoulders, running his hands down the back of the firm embroidered bodice to where her weapons still hung in her swordbelt and her buttocks were still buttoned into her finely stitched breeches. "My heart," he whispered, "my Lady." 

She lifted her head from his kiss and looked at him from an amused blue eye, one eyebrow raised. He kissed her neck where it became her shoulder. "My love," he said softly. He fingered her sword-belt. She let him unbuckle it and lay it to the side of them, he knelt and she leaned on his shoulders while he pulled her knee high boots off, un-buttoned her breeches and found, with a pleased grunt, a pair of embroidered lacy black knickers to entangle his fingers in. 

It made him laugh to see Batren solemnly laying out embroidered and lacy bodices and camisoles and knickers for her but now if she undressed and he found she was wearing underpants it made him feel strange, as if they were man-lovers. He quite liked it but he preferred knickers. 

He started to pull her knickers down over her buttocks. Tashka slid down in his arms so she was fronting up to him, her exquisite slanted blue eyes gazing into his round brown eyes. His fingers were still twisted in the light lace of her knickers. 

"Kiss me," she said. "Kiss me everywhere." She grinned at him. 

He grinned back, giving the knickers a firm pull so they came off her legs. 

He put his mouth to the fine brittle bone of her jaw, caressed it with his lips and tongue. While he licked and kissed at her jaw, he unhooked her bodice so that her breasts fell free to his hands. Slowly he pushed her over on the hearth-rug, letting his tongue flick at her ear, caressing her breasts with his big gentle weapons-hardened hands until she was murmuring with pleasure. His left hand went down to knead her buttock (he avoided the big hole in her thigh where that damned arrow struck her), his right hand trailing over her ribcage around her breast. He kissed down her neck, licked her collar-bone, pressed his lips over her left breast. 

Tashka felt the delicious sparkles begin jumping in her muscles as his kisses teased at her nipple. She began rolling her head, lying back onto the hearth-rug and grinning with pleasure. It was fun to be submit to him! and just let herself go in Vadya's arms. 'We must do this more often,' she thought. 

Vadya was leaning over her, his fingers skated over the lean muscle of her thigh, she forgot to think any more. His kisses were on her ribs, her belly. He was teasing her by kissing her waist as if he would go round to her back instead of down where he knew she would most be wanting him. 

"There! Kiss me there!" she moaned. She tried to push his head down, he just seized her hand and licked around his rings on her finger. 

"Everywhere," he teased her. "You said everywhere. I have not kissed your feet." 

"Forget my feet!" 

"Forget your beloved feet?" his firm big hands ran down her thighs and knees and calves and he seized her left foot and knelt up to kiss it in the arch. He kissed the shapely muscle of her calf, licked the delicate skin in the crook of her knee. Tashka grabbed his hand and pulled on it. 

He sat up and grinned at her as she pulled on his arm. He saw how tense with longing her face was and could not tease her any more. 

He gathered her hips in his arms, gently he parted the curls of her pubic hair and he kissed the shining rose-petal softness of her sex. He flicked a quick look up to her face. She had let her head and shoulders fall back on the hearth-rug, all he could see was the quick panting rise and fall of her small white breasts. 

She felt his tongue curl round her clitoris, the great sea of her love rose up in her and began lapping out from his caress. His fingers and tongue were gentle on her delicate sensitive clitoris, on her vulva. The waves of feeling washed up through her muscles. Vadya began sucking her clitoris, she gave a low sigh and fell into orgasm, her body like flowers open to him, she was only just aware of him there, like perhaps flowers are aware of the summer breezes, who can tell. 

Vadya kissed her sex as gently as he could and crawled up to look into her face. She stared on him with an expression so soft and warm and beautiful that it made him tremble. He tucked his arms around her, snuggled up to her lean warm body. He was wondering if she might fall asleep now, disappointed at the thought of having to jerk himself off instead of fucking Tashka but it was so exciting to feel her go over under his kiss to her sex that he was not that troubled. There was always the morning to look forward to. 

There was a knock on the door and a voice cried: "Thy time for my allegiance!" 

They looked at each other with resigned irritation. Tashka pulled a horrible face, writhing her rose-petal mouth about and screwing up her slanted eyes. Vadya took his arms from around her and rolled away from her muscular body with a groan. 

She picked up her weapons and buckled the belt around her lean hips, pulled her knickers on, threw her shirt back on and hooked up her bodice as she crossed to the door, pulling the shirt scantily to over her bodice. 

"Oh!" said the voice as she opened the door. "My General! Er ... your pardon. Is ... is the Commander there?" 

Vadya got off the floor and went to the door wearing nothing but his hose. Lieutenant-Lord Mada el Vaie van Soomara was standing in the corridor, blushing duskily scarlet. "S-sir," he stammered, casting agonised glances to where Tashka had strolled off across to the drinks cabinet and was pouring herself a bowl of whisky, her long shapely legs completely naked. "Hear me." 

"I will hear you," Vadya said coolly, moving into his junior officer's eyeline so that his own half-naked body blocked off his Lady wife's from Mada's sight. 

"Captain Lein sent me to say that First H'las sprang a practice attack on us after their party and have prevailed." 

Tashka burst out laughing over by the drinks cabinet. Vadya swore. 

"What damned dogs!" he cursed. "I had our practice attack all planned for the morrow, too. Alright, el Vaie. Go and ask Lein and the other Captains to let me have written reports the morrow. Tell Lein to send to Commander Stanies to say I will give him some Athagine." 

"Sir, it is done," Mada said. To Vadya's annoyance, he peered round his Commander at the General over by the drinks cabinet. Tashka came walking suddenly over to them, leant on Vadya's shoulder and looked narrowly into Mada's round brown puppyish eyes, her shirt only half-buttoned up and hanging open at the top to show quite a lot of black embroidered bodice. She tilted her whisky in her bowl and stared with that look that meant: Do you want my glove or what? 

el Vaie stared at her like a nervous rabbit and blurted out: "General-Lord el Maien! Hear me. The Commander said he would ask you to come give us a lesson on strategy. Sir, will you come, sir? If the Commander asks it of you as a favour?" 

Tashka raised one eyebrow, looking sideways at Vadya. He looked crossly at Mada and said: "el Vaie! Go to quarter! And come and see me the morrow. " 

"Let him be," Tashka said with a laugh. "What, may a General not be spoke to like a man?" 

"He knows it well that is no way to address the most senior rank in the army," Vadya said crossly. 

"Go to, Mada," Tashka said lazily, giving him that charming smile that made the juniors hang on her fingers forever. "You were my baby Lieutenant. Not for his sake but for yours, I will come give you your little lesson, there." 

The young officer-aristocrat's face lit up, he saluted his crispest flicking salute, turned with the ritual stamping H'las steps and marched cheerfully off. 

"You still have to come and see me the morrow!" Vadya shouted grumpily after him, shutting the door. 

He walked grumbling over to sit in one of the armchairs by the fireplace. Tashka followed him, grinning and tilting her whisky about in its bowl. 

"That pig Stanies," Vadya grumbled. "What a mean trick, to invite us to their party and get us all merry and then attack us." Tashka sniffed her whisky appreciatively, still grinning. He looked up at her suddenly suspicious and said: "You knew about it!" She laughed and did not deny it. "You could have said something to me," he complained. 

"No no," she answered with a glinting smile. "What the General hears privily from a Commander must be held privy. I did not tell him about your plan, either." 

"Now I must give Stanies some of our Athagine," Vadya grumbled. 

"Oh our Athagine," Tashka repeated. "You want to give him our Athagine, do you?" 

Vadya looked guiltily at her and she grinned that wolfish smile that meant: Over your dead body, my darling! 

"I promised Stanies Athagine," he pleaded. "We have a pact because he likes Athagine best so we said we would always pay in Athagine for practice attacks." 

"Buy some for him then," she said callously. "My Athagine was a present." 

"I want to buy a new rapier," Vadya grumbled, "and Batren says I need some new suits." 

"I will buy you your rapier," she answered carelessly. "There, now you may buy Stanies his Athagine." 

"You will not like the one I want," he complained. "It is too plain for your taste, you'll say I have to have a more decorated one and I like it because the balance is good." 

"A man must choose his own rapier," she said gravely, looking down into his eyes as she tilted her whisky about and sniffed at it. "Nobody may choose weapons for a man." 

"Yes my General," he said mockingly. 

She grinned lazily and said: "Call me your Lady." He was surprised at that, he twisted his mouth up in question. "Nobody else calls me a Lady," she said, her blue eyes looking into his brown eyes in the candlelight with a laugh in them. 

"My Lady wife," he said with a curling smile, reaching out to put an arm around her lean hips. "That is a fine Athagine for a present, who was it gave you ten cases of such a supreme vintage Athagine, then? Did Clair do so?" 

Tashka's face went blank and she hesitated then she gave him a guilty grin and said: "Tarra. el V'lair, I mean." 

He snorted. "That lady-hunting former lover of yours has given you ten cases of best vintage Athagine and you are jealous because I danced three dances with some little chicken?!" he exclaimed. 

Tashka grinned sheepishly. "Tarra gave it just in friendship," she said, pouting her rose-petal mouth at him in her most kissable way. 

"Hmm," he said grumpily. 

"Does it feel strange to call your General your Lady wife?" she asked him, pressing closer to him in the circle of his arm. 

He looked up at her lean warm laughing face in the candlelight, the beautiful intelligent slanted blue eyes and the rose-petal mouth. Her hair was shorter than his but the poise of her head had a feminine grace to it. Her left hand had a marriage ring and a ruby and gold woman's betrothal ring on it. Her right hand was scarred from smashing into the face of the man who stained her honour and bore a heavy gold seal ring with two towers, the wavy lines, her initials and a sun, meaning: the letter sealed with this seal comes from your General and must be treated with the utmost despatch and privily. He kissed her scarred right hand and then the fingers of her left hand. 

"No," he said. "Sometimes it feels strange to call someone who was my Captain my General. Only on formal parade. We were near equals for so long, is it not? And I always hoped you would be the Major General to me as sworn Lord." She smiled, caressing his ear. "As for being my Lady," he paused and tilted his head to look up at her standing lean, tall and muscular beside him. "Everyone else calls you a Lord," he said, "but I have lain in you and been warm in your love and I know that you are my Lady." 

"Why is that?" she said curiously, "because it is you who enters me and so I am a woman and so I am your Lady?" 

"Oh no," he answered, "you have shown me often enough that you can enter me too! because when we are naked alone together; when there is no troop nor duelling nor dancing nor all of that stuff, you are my Lady. For the rest of it, I like us to be officers together, to be the same and to be equals. Only when you are in my arms, I like it that you are different, and equal, and so you are my Lady." 

She looked softly into his brown eyes, trailed her fingers over his brown cheek. There was a little scar on his left cheek, a cut he got falling off that pale Angel Midnight some three months after she had joined his troop and she had flung herself across the courtyard to drag him from under Midnight's hooves. Midnight kicked her in the leg, she had a bruise there for six weeks but at the time she was only concerned to press her cuff to his face and stem the blood trickling down his cheek. All he cared about was Midnight! until she tried to stand and folded up with a laughing groan, clutching her bruised leg. 

They sat laughing together in trembling relief that the other one was alright, unable to admit how they felt, joking with each other in an overly hearty way, while the medical staff stitched his cut and pressed an iced compress to her leg. She could still remember the shy happiness of sitting with her shoulder pressed against his shoulder, knowing but not admitting how she had felt to see how concerned he was about her, her heart trembling more than her hands as she glanced sidelong at the cut on his cheek while they stitched it. 

Tashka unbuckled her weaponry and laid it to one side of the armchair, she climbed to kneel either side of Vadya's legs in the chair facing him. She put her hands to the long hard collar-bones and strong muscles of his shoulders, stooped her head forward and her mouth met his. She opened her mouth, pressing against his lips to force them open, turning in his embrace so that her body pressed to his. Vadya's tongue came curling into her mouth, caressing her tongue. 

Tashka pushed her hand between Vadya's knees and pressed it against his big cock swelling against the tight cloth of his hose. He gave a convulsive wriggle and breathed an exclamation into her mouth. They slid half out of the chair but kept a tight grip on each other, muscles standing out on their backs and chests and arms. 

Vadya pushed his hand down the back of Tashka's flimsy knickers to grasp her firm round buttock. Her nerves tingled from his touch, she felt the little shocks tingle out in her sex and let her mouth slip from Vadya's kiss, she gave him a tug so that they slid down the armchair to lie on the floor. 

Pleasure was travelling in sparkling sensations all over her body. Vadya was lying on top of her, between her legs, his big cock in the hose pressing against her cunt in her knickers. His head was pushed into her neck, he was mouthing at her shoulder under her soft silk shirt. Tashka wriggled and made a snort of laughter as he gripped his big blunt fingers on her buttock. 

Eventually, though, the thought rose dimly in her brain that they might do better without Vadya's hose and her clothes. She rolled his heavy muscular body easily over and got up, despite his arms clinging to her and trying to hold her against him still. She seized the waistband of his hose and pulled his hose and his underpants off, unhooked the front of her black red-embroidered bodice and looked down to see him lolling at her feet on the carpet: big-shouldered, narrow-hipped, brown and muscular, with black hairs on his scarred chest and his hard firm thighs. His eyes were wide and dark with passion. 

He knelt suddenly up, tangled his fingers in her knickers and drew her close so his smooth-shaven cheek was against her smooth lean muscular thigh and his face pressed to the hollow between her legs. She looked down at his curly head pressed in between her legs. A quiver went through her lean body like a flame. 

Vadya gave her knickers a pull, pressed his face to her, against the dark wiry hair around her sex, his fingers still caught up against her firm small buttocks in the lace of her knickers. Tashka put out one hand and leaned heavily on his shoulder, her legs were starting to go from under her. 

Vadya was pulling her knickers down and pressing his face to her, she stepped out of the knickers and he was kissing her sex, pushing his tongue through to lick her clitoris again. Tashka rolled her head on her shoulders, making ecstatic noises, her legs giving way. She slid down to the floor and lay softly back, quivering in his arms. Vadya continued to lick at her, his firm soft tongue running around the firm soft flesh which it had already pleasured so thoroughly. Tashka tossed her head and shoulders about, biting her lower lip and laughing. 

When she was nearly helpless with pleasure, she reached down, caught hold of his big hands and pulled at them. Vadya slid up level with her and she grinned at him, her eyes alight with dreams. She could not be troubled now to take off her shirt and bodice, he must have her in them. He had taken a condom out of her pocket and was hurriedly shaking it out the wrapper and putting it on. 

Vadya took her behind the neck, leaned up on his elbows and lifted his cock into her, the head nudged to her cunt, he pushed in and pressed deep into her. Tashka gave a satisfied groan, spread her hips and clasped him about the waist. He was thrusting down into her, she was lifting up to him, his big cock sinking down through the slick muscles of her vagina to hit her sweet spot and send the thrills rippling up her body. 

The big warm tension was growing in them. Vadya had his lip between his teeth, his eyes were fixed on Tashka's eyes as he pressed his cock to and from the sweet spot in her cunt. Tashka was twisting her head about and making a lot of noise, gripping her arms about his waist, the muscles of her vagina clutching the shaft of his cock. (Hopefully his father would hear and know they were doing their best at least to practice securing the succession.) 

They felt as if energy went dancing along their nerves, as if light flashed through and back and round their muscles, as if joy could be a physical feeling. They rocked close in together, tossing a hard kiss or a squeeze into their love-making. 

They began to lose the ability to think of giving a kiss or a squeeze, the clear consciousness of the world and their two selves in it disappeared. They knew there was warmth and grip and the tense thrilling mounting feeling. "Tashka!" Vadya yelled. Tashka felt sparkles off sunlit waves glancing through them, deep strong waves rolling out, hot laughter and Vadya el Gaiel was there with her. 

Her face was pressed into the tense muscles of his neck. They gripped each other for a quivering moment then slid to the floor. Vadya's head fell to Tashka's shoulder, she slackened her hold around his waist. He lifted himself carefully out while keeping his body pressed to her body. 

Tashka lay, drenched in sweat, in her unhooked bodice and unbuttoned silk shirt. Vadya's scarred brown back was slippery under her hands. He said again, softly: "Tashka." She trailed one slack hand up his slippery back and tucked it around the back of his head. 

They fell into a deep dark sleep. They lay motionless on the floor, the candles flickered by their bed with the covers on both sides turned neatly back for them. Vadya's head was turned into Tashka's shoulder. Hers was turned so that her cheek lay against his forehead. 

After half an hour, Tashka's senses dragged her out of sleep to the awareness that she was painfully uncomfortable. The floor was hard under her back and Vadya was extremely heavy on top of her. She groaned and pushed at his shoulder. He mumbled grumpily and rolled off her, blinked in the candlelight, and looked around him in a puzzled annoyed way. Tashka groaned again, sitting up and rubbing at her sore back where the embroidery of her bodice had been pressed so hard into her that it had left hunting scenes all over her scarred ribs. 




A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 32



"Angels!" Vadya said with a sleepy laugh. "What fools we are! Why are we lying here when we have a big bed to sleep in." 

"Ay," Tashka said, rolling her shoulders out. "I am a fool for your body!" She got slowly to her feet, rubbing her naked buttocks. "Come to bed," she said, holding her hand out to help him up off the floor, "and let us do all that, all over again." 

Vadya grinned and grasped her hand, hauling himself to his feet. He looked softly on her, standing before him: one foot back, the other forward, her head flung back. She was dressed only in a silk shirt and a red embroidered black bodice which hung open around her tall muscular body. A flicker of desire ran like a flame through the muscles and nerves of his groin. 

"Sir," he said, "it is done."