0 comments/ 5268 views/ 2 favorites The van Sietter Bride Pt. 01 of 03 By: NaokoSmith Captainofthepeace-Lord Arkyll el Maien van Sietter opened his slanted blue eyes and stared dreamily at the pattern of dancing animals on his curtains. Light shone vaguely through the threads of the curtains suggesting it was time he got up. He knew they were dancing animals although everyone-else said the curtains were so faded that you could no longer see the pattern. He had stayed on in the old nursery when his father gave his foster brother a separate room and his memory's eye lay under his eye so he could still make the animals out. Every so often his father said they must choose some new curtains and he would say, "Oh yes papa. I have some important work in hand with the peace corps but as soon as I have finished I will come with you to the furnishing warehouses." After a few days his father would forget about it. When he was married his father would give him a suite of his own rooms and he would finally leave the dancing animals to the sole view of his memory's eye. He held himself in patience about the marriage. Eventually his parents would come and say they had selected some suitable younger daughter of the high nobility to be bestowed on him. He had thought of going to court and having a surreptitious look around at free-hearted young Ladies, his parents would be happy to take his wishes into consideration. Then his sister, the famously beautiful young Lady Arianna, had overset them all, insisting on being inappropriately bestowed on his foster brother Hanya Vashin, so dear in their hearts but only a Knight in rank. By the time she had got her own way (as ever) they were on the brink of war and first Hanya and then Arrie rode off to the battle-front. None of them felt like organising splendid nuptials for the future sworn Lord while his foster brother and sister, Uncle Tashka the King's General, his two cousins and an host of friends were risking life and limb to defend the country. His door eased open and Lisette, his mother's personal maid-servant, came in with a tray on which she had his and his mother's bowls of hot chocolate. His father must be awake already and down in the kitchens breaking his fast. Arkyll sat up and took his chocolate with a smile that made his exquisite slanted blue eyes sparkle. Lisette looked at his smile, his big muscular shoulders coming up out of the bedclothes which slid down to his naked hips, with affectionate indifference. She reminded him that his mother had asked him to come and talk to her later in the morning. This meant he could have a lie-in instead of hurrying out to the offices of the peace corps in which he was commissioned Captain so he put his bowl of chocolate on the floor by his bed and snuggled his tanned muscular body with the three scars on his chest and sides back down into the covers. With a flick of the exquisite eyes which the gossip-sheets raved about, Arkyll made sure Lisette had latched his door behind her then he leaned over the side of his bed to pull a box out from under it. He took the lid off and lifted out a catalogue which he had picked up from a curious shop in the back streets of Sietter Town while supposedly on peace corps duty. He was a woman-lover himself but occasionally when he was out relaxing over three or four bowls of beer with a whisky to chase them, one of his Lieutenants who was a man-lover would swap interesting details of what he found pleasurable for information about what Arkyll liked to do with women. Arkyll found these drunken surreptitious accounts peculiarly exciting. He had considered whether he might also be a man-lover but although he loved his Lieutenant and other men friends he knew he did not want to be fucked in the arse by a man. He wanted a woman to do it. Arkyll inspected the catalogue of dildos and harnesses wistfully. He felt it was unlikely any of the elegant sophisticated daughters of the high nobility would be willing to fuck him in the arse. He leaned on his elbow, pursing up the full red mouth, sweet as a bowl of cherries, which the gossip sheets also drooled over. He only wanted to give it a try. Possibly if he got an el Wyming or an el Staten for a bride he could suggest it? but he would be sorry if he ended up having the honour of one of those notoriously slack-moralled families under his eye. He was a member of the peace corps but he was not a pacifist, not like his poor foster brother who had become an ardent pacifist after what he had to see in warfare and he remained in the bloody army because he could not bear in such a situation to let pass from under his eye his beloved junior officers and men. When Arkyll was off-duty he wore weapons and a pair of gloves in his belt. He was not keen to be forever threatening his glove to people over some slack-moral el Staten in his marriage bed. He lay back with his arms behind his head of short elegantly cut black curls, his broad muscular chest spreading comfortably, his powerful buttocks and thighs settling back into the bed. After a while he put an hand to a softly aroused cock and began fingering his penis to harden it up. He pictured some woman with sweet muscled thighs who wore a dildo in an harness which she put to his arsehole. She pushed it up into him. Mm-mmm! The blood was flooding down to his excited cock at the thought. He gripped his fingers gently on the head of his cock, easing it up and down inside the hood of the skin, focussing intently on the image of the woman pressing the dildo up into his hole. Some pre-cum slid on his fingers. Perhaps her breasts might bounce up and down on his back as she came in and out his hole? aa-ah! He loved breasts. Ooooh! the big squashy ones, the little ones like apples in his hands. His Lieutenant said he liked best to be fucked facing his lover -- mm-mm. They had double-ended dildos, you could both get pleasure, the woman would go over while she was fu-u-ucking you-oo-oo-oh! The sperm spurted in a sticky white mess in his fingers and he relaxed back into his pillows, reaching out for one of the pile of plain clean kerchiefs on his bedside table. His mother looked so disappointed when he asked awkwardly for a few plain kerchiefs but sweet Hell! to be cleaning your cock in something your mother or sister had lovingly embroidered for you, it was enough to make your poor penis shrink and flop completely. His father turned his head aside as his mother protested and Arkyll realised he was helpless with laughter and Arkyll was able to say, "how silly I am being, perhaps you might do me a whole set for my birthday, mama?" and that very night the pile of plain pieces of cloth had appeared by his bed while his wardrobe drawer remained full of the beautiful kerchiefs he carried about in his pocket and which young women stole off him if they got a chance, to his annoyance. He would really like to try being fucked in the arse just the once. Perhaps if he escorted his younger brother to court when Clair went to be a student at the King's University he could discreetly pay someone and give it a go? He did not want to buy a favour in Sietter Town because he was often working among the prostitutes and had become friends with most of them. It was weird to give a favour to a friend, he always felt embarrassed when he saw Dame Jayne Piria at the dances. He was sorry because he liked her and now he always blushed too much to chat with her. It was just a friendly fumble in the corridor one time he had a bowl too many and it ended up with them in that corner by the kitchens, Jayne with her back pressed to the wall holding her skirts up and him gripping her by the thighs and thrusting his cock up into her cunt urgently. He was just starting to get excited himself when she started going off and moaning in a manner he was petrified would be heard by someone so he pretended he had gone off too as soon as she had finished. He lay in the bed staring dreamily at his dancing animals, the big-boned muscular physique he had inherited from his el Jien mother relaxed and a contented smile lingering on the full red mouth that also came from her. He wondered idly what-all she wanted to talk to him about. --- I am not even asking you to offer her a formal betrothal," his mother said. Her voice was pitched to its most persuasive tones: cooing gentle and honey-warm, the voice she would put on if she had some particularly seditious scheme on the go which she knew his father would balk at. She sat straight-backed in her chair at her desk in the library, the mathematical papers scattered about her long pale hands resting on the desk. Around them were the double bank of bookshelves with the gallery round the top, filled with the soft leather-bound spines of books and the wooden boxes of scrolls she had bought. The other desks were empty. She had sent her students and the library clerk out while she talked with her son. Lady Arianna el Jien van Sietter, daughter of the el Jiens van Iarve. She had a magnificent figure: queenly, her head was held high under the weight of elaborately arranged curls of blonde hair with an occasional distinguished streak of white. Her round blue eyes looked directly into his slanted blue eyes with a limpid clear gaze. She was too clever to hide any part of this proposal in order to lure him in. Arkyll sat still in the chair by her desk: broad-shouldered and muscular in the leather jerkin of the peace corps. His exquisite blue eyes which were the same as those of his infamously beautiful uncle's, the King's General whose fingers the soldiers clung to in total devotion, looked back at her from his handsome tanned face with the full el Jien mouth: sweet as a bowl of cherries, and the broad serene brow under his elegantly cut short black curls. "I would never ask you to take such an one seriously," his mother assured him. "I tell it you plain: she is a bird-brain with no understanding of arts or literature, science or mathematics, politics or economics. Lord van Thiel has neglected the family shamefully, never taking them to court to get any appreciation of good music or fine foods, witty conversation or considered argument. She and the brothers have been brought up in the main by the mother who is but some Dame of the Thiel region who caught van Thiel's heart in her fingers when he was a young man. The brothers may be sent to some other region's army, they will have military prowess to make them appealing to daughters of the high nobility, but this young woman will never take the fancy of any oldest son as it stands." "The poor kid must have some qualities," Arkyll said with a curving smile of the full red mouth they shared that managed to be both rueful and amused. "el Shosta says she stitches," his mother was unable to refrain from curling her curved lip at this. Arkyll glanced at the cuff of his own shirt: only an everyday cotton one but beautifully embroidered in a complicated pattern of flowers. "She is a good seat on an horse, of course." "All the el Shostas can ride," Arkyll acknowledged. He waited but his mother appeared to have run out of appealing characteristics which might attract oldest sons of the high nobility like himself to the honourable daughter of the el Shostas van Thiel. After a while she sighed and said, "I tell it you straight. She is pretty but she is a rustic ignoramus from a back region. van Thiel will take her to court this Winter but she will not get herself bestowed without ... something to push her. van Thiel knows he cannot ask you to be taking her seriously, he only wants the help of someone ... high in honour to secure her happiness." When she lifted her eyes to him they gleamed softly with maternal pride. She put one long-fingered elegant hand out and rested it lightly on his strong arm above the beautiful intricate interlacing of flowers she herself had stitched on the cuff of his shirt-sleeve, sliding it down to give his big work-roughened gentle fingers an affectionate squeeze. She had always been determined that her children should not be treated with the flattery and favour normal to members of the high nobility. She had barred the King's University from offering his young brother the splendid suite of rooms they thought appropriate for the younger son of the el Maiens van Sietter, and of el Jien the great mathematician and economist. She made them give him instead a room he would have to share with some peasant from who knew where who had got on in his studies only through having a good intellect. But because of this lack of favouritism, she knew the quality of her own children. Arkyll was the catch of his generation in marriage: handsome and wealthy, strong of body and happy of heart, with the famous kind courtesy of the el Maiens. His involvement in the peace corps was looked at askance but he was not, like herself and his foster brother, a pacifist. He was like his father: a man of honour. "What does papa say?" he enquired, raising one dark eyebrow above his exquisite slanted blue eye. She laughed like a peal of golden bells. "My dear," she said, "your father is disgusted by the whole scheme. He says if ar't taken in by van Thiel's wiles and he has to have this young woman for a daughter by marriage he will never speak to me again. Bear it in mind, he has met her." Arkyll grinned at this. "Your father will be well content to give van Thiel the No," his mother said, a quiet resignation creeping into her voice. "Perhaps I can pretend I tried to sway his opinion but he has too firm an hand on my reins for me to influence him." They both sniggered at this, the round blue eyes and the slanted blue eyes flashing sideways so that for a few seconds they looked alike. "van Thiel might still give me his counter," she said wistfully. She had always been the more indulgent parent although she made other people treat them without favour. His father, the sworn Lord and battle-scarred former commanding officer of a field troop, had been the one who exercised a stern discipline over the children and the household. (Well, not over Arrie, of course.) But this was politics. His father kept the family and the management of their rambling castle home under a keen grey eye, sharing responsibilities for the region with his Lady wife. She went to sit on the King's councils at court and it was she -- together with her brother the King's Minister for Trade and Employment -- who would put together proposals for which she sought the voting counters of fellow members of the high nobility either through reasoned debate or by the manipulation of marital and blood kinship networks. Nearly the whole Eastern side of the country was in her pocket. Even that old reprobate van Athagine with his regional and family traditions of contorted and absolute tyranny was the formerly close pleasure-hunting friend of her husband's. If she flashed him her ankle he would often grin and finger the knotted old scar on his chin and lick his full lips regretfully and chuck her his counter. Lady Maive el Vaie van Soomara always threw her counter in with Lady van Sietter's, they were careful not to speculate whether this was in apology because Arkyll's father might have been a bit more than a friend to her once or twice. Lady van Soomara was a famous honourable slut and there was so much gossip about his scandalous father from the days before he settled into domestic happiness with his family and the Lady wife he had accepted as a political match that it was hard to know what to believe. The one region in the East which Lady van Sietter could not count on to support her work was Thiel, where the sworn Lord was that ignorant buffton Clair el Shosta, who would rather go fishing in his own region's lakes and rivers than debate the interests of his people at court. He would be delighted to have any excuse to entrust his counter to the handsome brood-mare who tossed el Maien van Sietter's counter about. He was too stupid to understand how seditious were the democratic politics of Lady Arianna el Jien van Sietter, that proud beauty who would sometimes smile and talk to you in a cooing warm honeyed voice about stuff that bored you but she rested her hand on your stubby rein-roughened hand and lowered her lashes over her lovely blue eyes in her smile and you gave her a besotted smile back and your counter. The virgin slut. She would wave her considerable charms in your face but she had no intention of giving you any favour so small as a kiss and a quick fumble in a corridor. You were extremely careful not to offer her more than a besotted smile. That bookhead el Parva van Selaine still had a thin white scar on one cheek he picked up off van Sietter only for writing a poem praising the lovely Lady van Sietter's domestic virtue. Although van Sietter's brother, General-Lord 'Tashka' el Maien van H'las, used to snigger and say van Sietter was not troubled for the famed chastity of his Lady wife: pure as the snow-fed streams flowing into the River Arven. He felt slighted because el Parva had failed to realise he was the one kept their castle home in such good order, not her. ("Ho ho ho! what a story, that jolly dog Tashka el Maien was a joker alright. That story about the farmer's daughter, eh, eh? Er um .... Did I ever tell you about that time Tashka el Maien and Commander-Lord el Gaiel van H'las took my encampment to save el Jien van Vail from a practice raid I had planned? Ho ho ho!") Lady el Jien had a raft of proposals coming through key to her principled plans of humanist reform and suddenly Commander-Lord Clair el Shosta van Thiel, formerly of Second Thiel, had appeared at the gates of Castle Sietter, reluctantly making his way to court when he would much rather stop on a two-three weeks in the famous hunting territory of the Sietter Hills and then just go home. He wandered into the library and sat down at Lady el Jien's desk, looking at her with an hangdog expression of anxiety in his brown eyes and twirling his precious voting counter in a fidgety careless manner among her mathematical papers. When she sent the students for some fresh air and the clerk to get them tea and biscuits, he blurted out an extraordinary appeal to her. Now here was her handsome bright-eyed laughing son lounging in the chair by her desk in the rough utilitarian peace corps jerkin which on his fit big body made the silly maidens sigh and throw themselves into languid attitudes as he walked by. He grinned and said, "so van Thiel wants me to ... sniff around the young Lady's skirts to get the other dogs coming sniffing." Her pale warm face twitched in distaste. She sighed and admitted it. "Perhaps you might consider it a day or two," she said in a forlorn voice. She lifted her proud head: fair daughter of the el Jiens who had not chosen what man would take her hand in marriage and her favours in his bed, whose marriage had brought great renown and prestige to her oldest brother the sworn Lord of Iarve and only incidentally happiness to herself. "The poor young woman," she said softly. "She is awkwardly situated." The kind-hearted Captainofthepeace-Lord Arkyll el Maien van Sietter of the peace corps gave an heavy sigh and turned his exquisite slanted blue eyes aside. --- As he strolled into the huge echoing stone entrance hall out of the corridor leading to the castle offices, the chapel and the library, the flash of a smile caught Arkyll's eye. He turned his head and gave her a surreptitious grin back. Tisha, the kitchen-maid. His first lover. She sauntered off into the kitchen corridors, he watched her through his lashes, the warm grin dancing in his eyes and on his sweet red mouth. When that little snake Arrie revealed to their mother that he was pinning Tisha's favours he had the most dreadful difficulty persuading her to allow Tisha to stay on in her job. That cat. She only told because he had refused to ford the Arven in flood with her so she could go riding in the hills beyond. Angels of Hell! the bloody river was nearly in full spate, his father would have nailed him if he had let her go in the spuming waters, Hanya had gone pale when he described it. And the little snake, she picked a moment when his father was away to let it slip that he was pinning the favours of one of the servants. The van Sietter Bride Pt. 01 of 03 His father, far more sophisticated in his sexual ethos, would have understood but his mother was appalled. There was an horrible inquisition even including his own mother desperately asking whether he had taken the proper precautions of using a condom to protect Tisha. It was agony. His mother was blushing like a basket of apples and crying with shame, saying, "How coulds't take advantage. Consider the power has't over her in her position". Tisha! the angelic slut of the kitchens who had such power over the men. He was bewildered at first until he realised that she thought he was the one who had seduced Tisha. She was probably the only person in the whole castle who thought Tisha might be in any way an innocent. And Tisha was so cross that she never let him fuck her again, although he begged and pleaded that he had persuaded his mother not to make his father send her home with a small fortune in her pocket. Tisha was outraged at the prospect of being sent away from the castle full of cosy corners where it was so easy to lure some panting footman or a gardener under the rose-bushes. Or the pretty young future sworn Lord (so sweet as a strawberry and just old enough for the picking of his favours) into a larder with a few old cushions carelessly slung on the floor. His cock stirred softly to remember how she flashed a look and said, "come yer, I'll give ya a special treat," in that warm sticky voice that was like the jam he used to sneak. What a treat! The gentle hands on his body, the caressing lips to his eager mouth. She was notoriously sweet to the kiss and her fingers played so tenderly on his buttons then in his underpants and around his suddenly thrilled cock. He started moaning anxiously, flicking his eyes back at the larder door. "Du not fret," she whispered with a warm wet caress of her tongue in his ear for good measure "I c'n lock it n' I 'ave dun." Her fingers came away from his cock, groping in his pocket, then she grumbled crossly: "What kinda young man are ya! Lord Arkyll, no condom for a poor maid. I s'pose I mus' give ya a kiss for now and ya must come back to take my favour." The selfish wench, she always expected the men to take the precautions for her. She flashed him such a warm laughing cross look then suddenly she was on her knees with his cock in her sweet soft mouth, he was leaning back on the door helplessly grunting with pleasure. The sucking on his now rigid hard shaft, the fingers caressing up and down a vein in it which was standing out and throbbing with the blood coming thundering to his loins, caressing his balls which were so tight, he was not going to be able to take it much longer, he longed to stay there but he was bursting to go and all too soon his hips were bucking and jerking, he was shooting off into her sweetly kissing expert mouth. He was so careful, only going down there to go down on her once a week. Well, possibly he had trotted into the kitchens twice in the week but surely no more often than he had always done. Ever since he was a little child he had been sneaking into the larders while the castle snoozed in a nap, after the jam. That little weasel, how did she come to realise that it was no longer raspberry jam he was enjoying in there, instead it was the creamy pink cunt of the generous kitchen-maid, so juicy to his excited tongue, so warm and welcoming to his happy thrusting cock. Arkyll's lips curled in rueful admiration of his sister's vengeance on him. He gave a last surreptitious sighing grin in the direction of Tisha's luscious backside (against which he had once or twice been allowed to bump his excited hips and press his stomach as he came into her warm tight cunt from behind) disappearing towards the kitchens as he walked on through the entrance hall. Mind, he had been a bit disgusted when Tisha suggested he get his foster brother Hanya to join the two of them in the larder. Poor old Han, he was so beautiful they used to say thirteen Angels danced on his broad shoulders. He had hair like the sun and beautiful round blue eyes, his cheek used to be so golden-brown with the tan in Summer, pale as milk in Winter. He was older than Arkyll and had just taken a commission as Lieutenant in their fathers' infamous old troop Fourth Sietter. His big muscular body looked so gorgeous in his red tunic with the gold-embroidered collar and the thigh-length brown boots, women and men, they were all swooning over him wherever he went. He loathed it. He used to have a glaring frown on his lovely face, looking like the Angel of the Sword striding down the castle corridors until Arrie came dancing down shouting, "C'mon Han! Are you coming for a ride? I'll race you," and he would run off with her to the hills to gallop laughing where nobody looked on him softly. That little snake never looked softly on a soul, until she grew up and one day for some wild reason of her own she looked on Hanya. Arrie was just a scruffy lanky brat then, terrifying them all by her failure to feel fear, whether at riding the wild war-horses or jumping her hunter over the high hedges or climbing the central tower, Angel of Hell! that time she climbed the bloody central tower, what a minx! Even when she fell in love with Hanya it was not his beauty she looked softly on, she was much too wild a proud creature to give a copper coin's curse for a smooth cheek or a lovely leg. Poor old Han. She knew him to the core. She had him twisted round her fingers all her life and when she decided she wanted his heart, she just pulled on the strings and he fell like an Angel out of the skies into her arms. That little brat. Even bloody Tisha blamed him instead of her. She caught Arkyll giving Arrie a few well-chosen words on the subject of being a sneaking spy and Arrie exclaimed, "oh Tisha! he is being so mean to me," and Tisha said, "What a man!" in biting tones of scorn. "Du not give him yer mind, Lady Arrie, come with me now n' I s'll get ya a bit of cake," and she put that lovely soft clinging arm around the wild cat's skinny shoulders and drew Arrie off, tossing back to Arkyll as scornful a look as any fine Lady whose toe he had trodden on in the dance. --- He strolled out of the castle and down the wide steps with the ramp on one side into the courtyard and there he met his father. Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter strode through the cobbled courtyard on long lean legs encased in an old pair of thigh-length brown army boots, soft now with the ceaseless polishing he still insisted on for his kit. He was wearing a faded old scarlet hacking jacket and had a black hard hat on his head of elegantly cut longish black curls in which threads of grey were apparent. He was snapping a riding crop irritably on the side of one boot, his thin firm mouth pursed, his slanted grey eye clouded. His chin was dark and bristly since he appeared to have gone out without letting the men-servants shave him. Probably he had woken up early and after lying fretting for a while had snatched up these garments to go riding hard out in the hills, pretending to assess the ground for some small hunting party they might undertake since el Shosta van Thiel had turned up to claim their hospitality for a few days. With his son in duty bound and his daughter on the battle front he had little heart for the hunting. He stopped as he saw Arkyll and regarded him with a narrow suspicious slantwise stare. Arkyll's slanted blue eyes dipped under the sideways glare of his slanted grey eyes. "Um halloo papa," Arkyll fluted, fidgeting his feet in the tough peace worker boots with the metal toecaps. "Just on my way to the offices after my chat with mama. Bit of paperwork to finish off." van Sietter's lean tanned face seemed to give a quiver, his lip curled in a look of disdain that glinted up into his clouded grey eye. "C'mon papa, gimme rein," Arkyll said with an appealing smile. "I am not even to offer her a ring, it's a matter of a trip down East for the fishing and a dance or two: an holiday. It is for mama and her proposals for the poor." van Sietter was a man of notoriously high honour who would never speak a slighting word of a young Lady of the high nobility, or even of his own Lady wife, so he said nothing to this but his sniff was eloquent. "I think it will rain the morrow," he said coldly. "That was an encouraging letter we had from cousin Vadya," Arkyll offered him. "Surely Uncle Tashka will prevail before Winter comes and they will come home for mid-winter Angels' day." His father's head of elegant black curls under the hard hat tipped mournfully down and he poked sulkily at the toe of his boot with his riding crop. Naturally he did not have favourites among his children: his son in duty bound, his two sons in blood, but he adored his wild daughter and broke his heart every day thinking about her away at war. She was not even by the side of the husband who had always managed to keep her safe from her own wild ways under his beautiful blue eye although at the least of it she was in the offices of his brother: General-Lord Tashka el Maien van H'las. Meanwhile, what of her husband, his dearly beloved son in duty bound, the child of the long-lost Captain of his heart. They had received a stilted letter from his daughter just after she rode off to the battlefront in his wake that mentioned as if it were an aside that when she went by his troop for the two nights and one day she was permitted with him on her way to the Generals' strategic staff offices, she found that the war-dogs had been let loose too early in a defence of his encampment and had attacked him and presumably had completely torn up what had been a famously angelic beauty. He had never supposed his daughter cared about the physical beauty of his son in duty bound but when he read the cold words pretending all was well in a situation he knew from his own traumatic experience must be Hell, he feared dreadfully for the young couple he had reluctantly permitted to marry on the eve of war. "How about a game of chess," Arkyll was saying in a coaxing voice but he shook his head mournfully, loosing Arkyll's hand from his arm and moving his long legs slowly up the steps into the castle. --- When Arkyll walked into the peace corps offices down in the town his sister officers Captainofthepeace-Dame Lisette Stariel and Captainofthepeace Mimi Jien were standing about in the reception hall by the duty officer's desk. Mimi was grumbling about some mission she had been on that morning and Lisette had a casual arm around Mimi's shoulders. The young Lieutenantofthepeace on duty was lifting shyly adoring eyes at the pair of them. They were both tall and the peace work training had encouraged their physical fitness so that they stood about easily with the strength evident in their long muscular limbs, their firm breasts and backs in the leather jerkins that could turn knives aside. Commanderofthepeace-Sir Lial Darien, who commanded not only this peace corps troop but had a directing eye over the others which Lady van Sietter was slowly managing to establish in the region, disliked it that they were married and had tried to persuade Lisette to go to the troop in the Maier Pass where she had family. But the two women argued that even in the army officers of the same rank were permitted to marry and promised laughingly that if they ever had a serious quarrel one of them would apply to transfer. They questioned whether the code of honour which army officers adhered to was relevant in the peace corps. At first Darien -- an ex-army officer with an horrendous duelling scar down his face -- argued fiercely that it was but then he became embarrassed and Arkyll had to join in on his side, his blue eyes sparkling in merriment because he knew Darien had suddenly remembered him that members of Arkyll's family had scandalously crossed their vows in the army. "'Loo Arkyll!" the two women said casually. "Been out on your mission?" "Had to go and see my mother," he answered. "Bit of family business to sort out," he pulled a face. "I shall have to ask the Commander for leave of absence." Mimi's dark eyes creased in a sympathetic scowl, she gave a toss of the head so that her curls of brown hair were chucked back behind her in the gesture that frequently caused villains to pause in admiration when she did it preparatory to going in to tackle them and she would disarm them and pin them down even more easily. "Sorry to hear it, chum," Lisette said. She had cropped her strawberry blonde hair at the back and sides like a soldier and stood rangy, lean and tall, a typical Sietter officer-aristocrat. Her keen grey eyes used to gleam fiercely on miscreants as she stood with hands on hips glaring at the trouble about her so that they quite often stopped their nonsense immediately, apologised to everyone and slunk quietly off home. Arkyll knew that like other military-minded members of the high nobility, van Thiel despised the peace corps. He had seen van Thiel's scornful look at his rough leather jerkin and tough peace worker boots, at the belt in which he carried only a wooden baton, no weaponry which might have been useful in defence but might also have provoked more aggression on the part of drunken fools looking for trouble. When they were children, he and Hanya of course wanted to be soldiers like their fathers and uncles. As they grew older they realised that his mother intended them for the peace corps. It would make such a statement for the future sworn Lord to go not into the smart parade silks of an army officer but into the hard work of the peace corps devoted to helping those who were poor and suffering in the region. Hanya had always had pacifist leanings and was temperamentally inclined to the peace corps but one day he suddenly said: "Major General-Sir Dar Vaie is fretting because Arkyllan is going to the peace corps and it is evident Clairan will not be a soldier. Arkyllan will need someone one day whose humanist principles he can rely on to be Major General of the army, in order to bring it in line with the peace corps. I have asked the Major General for a commission in Fourth Sietter, the troop where you, papa, and my father in blood and Uncle Tashka and Uncle Pava served so happily together." Major General-Sir Dar Vaie had been an officer of Fourth Sietter himself, their Uncle Tashka's companion in many scrapes and misdemeanours, a former junior of their father's and a brother officer of Hanya's father. He worshipped the memory of Hanya's father and venerated van Sietter and he was ecstatic when Hanya asked to go into their old troop. Their father was much less pleased than you would expect. He had commanded the troop during the first Sietter-H'las war, leading them in a brutally elegant victorious strategy designed by Hanya's father in which Hanya's father lost his own life. They would say of van Sietter that he broke his heart so badly over what he had to sacrifice for that victory that he went off to court afterwards and broke everyone-else's heart. Hanya liked the army in peace time (and he did look exceptionally tasty in the Sietter colours) but now they were at war and he was having such an horrific time that he no longer wrote even to Arkyll. The only news they got of him were the army despatches and an occasional cold note from Arrie, part of whose duties were to ride out and deliver the Generals' orders to the commanding officers of field troops, saying, 'I had the opportunity to see Hanya recently while delivering him his orders. We used his interesting adaptation of the Maien Tiger in aggressive defence of the encampment when we came under threat of attack but I may not write the detail of this. He asks it of you to bear him as ever in your hearts as your loving son and brother.' Arkyll had recently been entrusted with a difficult mission in which he had spent weeks patiently putting together slender threads of information collected by the peace workers in one of his Units. Mimi and Lisette knew that Darien would curse at having to get someone-else to take it over and Arkyll himself would miss the demanding and absorbing task which had been such a good means of distracting his thoughts from the sufferings of so many of his family and friends on the battle front. Every so often it would be necessary for Arkyll to go and spend time on extremely dull ceremonial duties and they would all say, "such bad luck, chum. Come out for a bowl when you get back." He loved the comradeship of these intelligent, gentle-hearted, fiercely committed workers so tenderly managed under the pale blue eye of the scarred Commanderofthepeace-Sir Darien. He had missed Hanya dreadfully when Han went into the army; he could ride down to visit him in Luthian in the Winter but most Summers Hanya went out on campaign. He could hardly wait to get involved in some work himself and have comrades like the jolly brother officers who came back with Han on leave sometimes. Then when he started under Darien's command, he came to appreciate the work they were involved in for its own importance. He loved it that he went out armed only with his hand-to-hand fighting skills and a wooden baton to break into horrible airless places where starving people, some of them children, were brutally exploited, to insist jovially that the rights of the prostitutes be respected, to argue patiently with drunkards, protect their frightened life partners and children and persuade them to consider how they might better manage their happiness. It was something like, to be the future sworn Lord not lapped in silks and satins, stamping around looking pretty on the parade ground for silly maidens to swoon over, but to be part of this magnificent project of his mother's. For a while, too, there was Daria. She was a Captain down in the Maier Pass peace corps troop: slighter of frame than Mimi and Lisette, a lean muscular athletic woman, fully fit and physically hard. Her black hair in the tight little coils was cut close about a warm brown face and a smile so sweet and wise. He was just a Lieutenant back then, she was several years older than him. He came down to liaise with them in the Maier Pass on a mission, under her orders. When the mission was nicely wrapped up with just the paperwork to relax over, they went for a casual bowl in the modest pleasant hotel where Arkyll was staying. Silly innocent! he was disappointed at first when she appeared alone, he thought the others did not want to come out drinking with the future sworn Lord. They were sitting on the veranda looking out into the sunlit vistas of the rolling green and brown hills with the River Arven running smooth and strong down to Port Paviat. Arkyll said something about a walking holiday he had once enjoyed with Han, when they went all the way down to Port H'las and there they went sailing with his uncles and cousins van H'las. Daria put her hand softly on the back of his neck. Her hand was warm and gentle, she brushed the fingers lightly on the nape of his neck where the hairs suddenly stood up in excitement. He turned his head and looked into her smiling brown eyes with a shy laugh in his slanted blue eyes. His cock had started lifting and filling already, she was so fit and muscular sitting smiling softly on him with that intelligence vivid in her lovely eyes. During the mission they had enjoyed discussions about the peace corps work and ways in which the chain of command was embedded in the country via the regional armies. It had been like being with his family who were all of them sharp keen minds he was so proud of, constantly flashing the debates around him about pacifism and humanism and whether some painting was the finest expression of beauty ever created or some stupid collection of squiggles not properly aligned to the appropriate angle (that was his mathematician mother). He had enjoyed Daria's friendly supervision in the work so much and now this too? He leaned eagerly over and pressed into her kiss. The van Sietter Bride Pt. 01 of 03 Her mouth pressed to his was soft and the lips were opening, her fingers tucking into the curls of his short hair to hold him in their kiss. She was pushing her tongue gently in his mouth, caressing his mouth with her strong soft tongue. She drew the tongue back, their lips parted, she said simply, "go to your room, shall we?" The pretty little brown breasts that emerged from her jerkin and shirt and bodice over which he could place his big hands. They were like a pair of small apples to his fingers. He pressed his lips to one as they sank naked into the bed, flicking at the nipple of the other one with his thumb, making her laugh softly in her throat and her muscular thighs open gently up around his hips. He lay sucking at her nipples, he could take the whole of her sweet little breast in his big el Jien mouth. He moved down over her body, kissing the strong ribcage and the hard flat muscles of her stomach. His fingers ran ahead of his mouth to tangle in the black bush of hair around her sex, slide through to her warm soft wet sex. She giggled when he gently tickled her clitoris -- that splendid Captain whom he had seen staring so sternly at the people they arrested! and sighed and gasped when he put his finger to her juicy vulva, throwing her hips wider still. He slid his finger to caress the excitable erogenous spot between her vulva and her anus while he stroked her clit with his tongue making her laugh so softly and start to make gentle noises in the back of her throat. He slid his tongue into the creaming soft muscles of her cunt to the ecstatic tune of her laughing noise. Her hands were still resting in the curls of his hair, starting to tighten on his head with exhilaration. Her cum was a little tart to the taste, he stuck his tongue around to savour it. By now his cock was rock hard with enjoyment, his balls tight to bursting. She was well on the way and he came surging up in her arms with his slanted blue eyes alight with love and laughter, reaching hurriedly to his discarded breeches to fish in the pocket for a condom. She put her hands round to hold his big buttocks, squeezing them while he put the condom on so that he sniggered and tossed his head about. He put the head of his cock to her sex and pressed in slowly, making her throw back her head of closely cut coiled black hair and gasp, her lovely brown eyes wide and sparkling. She gripped on his firm big buttocks and her muscular thighs tightened, her slender strong fit body started moving easily in time with his, they pressed close, kissing and gasping and laughing and loving. The coiled tight excitement was springing in their muscular loins and getting tighter, tighter. He was thrusting into her faster and she was rising up to meet him then she was chucking herself about in the bed under him with her gentle brown eyes wide and her arms clutching around his big muscular chest. He was jerking uncontrollably into her one last time and they lay laughing softly in each others' arms. It was the best and she was so much fun, lying with her brown skin lapped in the white cotton sheets arguing with him about pacifism and throwing her lean-muscled legs open for him to lie between and penetrate her gentle woman's sex. He did think it a bit unfair that she so much enjoyed his caressing tongue to her sex when she disliked to kiss cock although he never said so, he felt so honoured to have the favours of such a beautiful intelligent officer of the peace corps. But it was only six months before she gave him the go-by. His heart was so tangled in her fingers by then that he burst into tears, saying, "but my father likes you!" "Yes," she said, "but you have never introduced me to the notice of your mother." He wept with shame to admit it. His mother was oblivious to the small affairs of the body and heart which happened all around her and he had just quietly enjoyed the pleasure of Daria's favours, knowing that his mother would disapprove. "I am no maiden of the high nobility who could stand by you when you have to give a formal greeting to the Knights and Dames," Daria said in that warm wise gentle voice. "Nor do I wish to be giving up my work just yet for the sake of children, while you must look to secure the succession for the region. Let us part friends, my darling, and bear each other in affection, not quarrel while we fuck in dark corners under your mother's eyeline. You are very young, sweetheart. I am ... a mature woman. Should you not prefer someone with whom you might play?" His father came down to the peace corps offices and enquired if he might be due any leave, pressing a sympathetic hand on his shoulder and offering to take him to court for some concerts, art exhibitions and parties (and to look about at suitable maidens of the high nobility) but he felt revolted by the idea and sulkily said he had some important work in hand, I give you my thanks, papa. Mimi and Lisette invited him round to their home for dinner and listened patiently to his dreary moaning about how selfish Daria was being. Hanya was out on campaign but Arrie showed up in the offices, long-legged and slender in jodhpurs and a jumper with a patch on one elbow, saying, "Halloo Arkyllan. Are you coming for a ride?" with an unusually warm soft flash of her grey eyes and Darien said: "Leave that paperwork to Stariel, el Maien, and lend Lady Arianna countenance in her ride," although everyone knew the little wild cat was forever jauntering about the hillsides on her own in a most improper manner. He knew it well, this dreadful daughter of the el Shostas would be nothing like the gentle intelligent beautiful Captainofthepeace Daria Inien with the soft warm loving laugh and strong well-disciplined body. She would be some lazy pussy-cat, silly and low in opinions, yawning when people discussed the poor even of her own region and casting flirting eyes at the army officers. Well, he was not even being asked to offer her a ring. Poor kid, what a life stuck in the back region of Thiel. Let her go to court with a bit of gossip glittering around her silly head to make the men's eyes turn towards her. (Continued in Parts 2 and 3.)