Guarded (8 page)

Mato settled a hand on Volos’s uninjured shoulder. “Thank you for being honest. You know what? When I was a boy, after my brother and papa died, I was so angry. I hated Wedeyta. But Mama told me it’s not the color of a person’s uniform that makes him a good man or a bad one. It’s what’s in here.” He patted Volos’s chest, right over his heart. Then he smiled and left the house.

Volos was still standing there, clutching his things, when Berhanu made a small noise. “You’re fucking him,” Berhanu said.

“No, I’m not. And it wouldn’t be any of your business if I was, Your Highness.” Let the prince be angry with him. He always was anyway.

That night, Volos suggested to Berhanu that they go upstairs, where the bed would be more comfortable than a pallet on the floor. Berhanu agreed with a grunt. Volos had to bear most of Berhanu’s weight as they climbed— and good gods, that small gift of warmth and pressure felt so fucking good!

Berhanu lay down on the mattress with a relieved little moan. “Where are you going?” he asked when Volos started for the door. He sounded slightly panicked.

“I’m fetching my blankets from downstairs.”

“Why? It’s warm enough and there are plenty here.”

“Because I don’t much fancy sleeping on bare boards.” Volos stomped his foot for emphasis.

“Oh, for— We can share the fucking bed. It’s big enough for two and I don’t bite.”

The air was suddenly too thick for breathing. Volos wanted to share Berhanu’s bed more than he desired nearly anything else on earth. And he wanted to avoid it as fervently as if he had to face additional hordes of Juganin. He couldn’t think of a reasonable way to refuse. After several long moments of ridiculous dithering, he unlaced his boots, crossed the room, and got into bed. He was still fully dressed, and he hugged the edge of the mattress.

Berhanu doused the lantern.

Rain pelted the rooftop and pattered against the windows, but inside the attic room, the men’s breaths were very loud. Volos could feel Berhanu’s body heat pooling under the blankets, caressing him, making him hard and a little light-headed. He fisted his hands, squeezed his eyes closed, and prayed for sleep to overcome him.

“What reward did my father offer you?” Berhanu asked in a hoarse whisper.

“He didn’t specify.”

“Something grand?”

“I suppose.”

“You suppose.” Berhanu was silent a moment. “Isn’t that why you came here? Why you risked your life?”

Volos sighed. “Not really. I don’t… there’s nothing I really want.” Nothing he could ever have, anyway.

“Then you did it for glory? No. That doesn’t make sense. You’re a hero already.”

Volos’s stomach made a strange lurch and he didn’t reply.

“Why did you do it, Volos?”

It was the first time Berhanu had ever spoken Volos’s name. Although the room was too dark to see anything— and besides, Volos’s eyes were closed— he knew Berhanu had turned toward him. The prince waited for an answer.

Volos intended to say something about duty and respect for the crown. Instead, what came out of his mouth was “I didn’t want you to die.”

For a long time, Berhanu said nothing, which was a mercy. Volos was grateful he couldn’t see the prince’s face. But he could still
feel
, and when Berhanu reached over and placed his hand on Volos’s bicep, Volos very nearly wept.

“Thank you, Volos.”

The mattress shook as Berhanu turned to face the other direction.

****

Chapter Seven

It was a familiar dream.

Volos was deep within the prison run by Juganin. He was naked, beaten, and cold, and he was so starved that he couldn’t remember not being hungry. And he was running, his bare feet slipping on wet stone. He was lost, and he wasn’t sure whether he was running
from
something or running
to
it, but either way it didn’t matter because he was terrified. Each breath tore from his lungs painfully and his heart felt ready to burst.

He turned a corner and found a squalid room piled high with corpses. He recognized some of them— his parents, his sisters, the little boy who lived nearby and who’d been murdered in his stead. Although they were dead, they looked at him, held their hands out toward him. “Why did you let this happen?” wailed his sisters. “Why didn’t you join us?” his mother said. His father just looked at him and shook his head.

He backed away and ran, but his path dead-ended in another room, this one more enormous than the castle training hall. But it too was filled with corpses. Every Kozari soldier he’d slain, every Wedey soldier who’d died at his side was there. They screamed and moaned and blamed him for their deaths.

He wanted to apologize or explain, but his tongue filled his mouth and he couldn’t find words in either language. With that strange knowing that comes to one in dreams, he recognized that the ability to speak had been taken from him as punishment and he’d never be able to communicate with anyone again. Nobody would ever want him, neither Wedey nor Kozari.

The third room held Juganin. They drank from ale bottles but weren’t sleepy. They waved their curved swords at him. “You’re next,” sang one of them with a ghoulish grin. “See what we’ve planned for you!” The Juganin moved to the sides of the room so Volos could see what lay in the center. A naked body, hacked to pieces yet still bleeding. The severed head blinked up at him. “Did you get your reward?” it asked, and of course the body was Berhanu’s. “Did you get your glory?”

Volos began to scream.

“Volos! Volos! Wake up! Wake up, dammit!”

Someone was shaking him, and after a few moments Volos realized he was no longer in his dream. The room was still dark, but Berhanu was next to him, jerking Volos’s shoulders.

Volos took a steadying breath and willed his heart to slow to a normal tempo. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

Berhanu stopped shaking him but didn’t move away. His body remained pressed tight against Volos’s, his long hair hanging down to tickle Volos’s face. “You sounded like you were dying.”

“I’m sorry,” Volos repeated.

The prince fell to the side, making the mattress shake. “What the
fuck
, Volos?”

Last time he’d had a nightmare like this, someone had poured cold water on his head to wake him up. But he wasn’t the only guard to suffer from bad dreams, so nobody complained. “I… It’s all right. You can go back to sleep now. I never have them twice in one night.”

“But you have them often.”

“Not
too
often. Usually.”

“What haunts you so badly? What do you dream of?”

“The prison,” Volos whispered. He’d never spoken to anyone about this.

“How long were you there?”

Volos didn’t really want to answer, but he said, “Nearly a year.”

“A year. And those bastards— did they treat you like they did me?”

Worse, sometimes. But Volos didn’t say so. “Yes.” Nobody had ever asked him what happened during those long months, and he’d never before mentioned it.

“Fuck.” A long silence followed, then a tentative question. “How did you survive that, Volos?”

Although nothing was funny, Volos laughed. “I had no alternatives.”

Berhanu didn’t say anything else. But he shifted a little closer so his shoulder just barely touched Volos’s. And for some reason Volos couldn’t discern, that small contact was enough to calm him and send him into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

****

For two more days they healed. Berhanu spent a lot of time sleeping, curled up in bed with the blankets pulled nearly over his head, his breathing slow and steady. On Mato’s recommendation, Volos made sure Berhanu ate small but frequent meals. When he wasn’t eating or sleeping, Berhanu paced the upper floor cautiously, sometimes holding on to the walls for support. He spoke very little. But at night he always managed to position himself with some part of his body just barely touching Volos: foot against foot, shoulder to shoulder.

Volos paced too, although he kept himself outside of Berhanu’s orbit. His wounds were mending well— they itched like mad but no infection had set in, and he was regaining his full range of motion. Mato smiled and told him he’d collected some impressive new scars.

After dinner on the second day, Berhanu set down the bowl of stew he’d been eating. It was a little watery because he couldn’t yet handle rich foods, but it contained good meat and nice chunks of vegetables. “We have to go,” he said.

Volos would have preferred to wait a few more days, but he nodded. “All right. In the morning.”

“I can’t wait—”

“The road is too dark. I don’t want to trip over something and break my neck.” Didn’t want Berhanu to collapse in the night, far from help.

Berhanu bristled. “Since when do you give me orders?”

“My job is to get you safely to Queen Draga, Your Highness. I will fulfill that duty even if it means tying you up and carrying you over my shoulder.”

After staring incredulously at Volos for a moment, Berhanu barked a short laugh. “You’re a stubborn bastard, aren’t you?”

“If I wasn’t, we’d both be dead.”

They shared the bed in silence that night, Berhanu’s leg touching Volos’s.

Mato brought them food and waterskins in the morning, but as the three men stood downstairs in his grandparents’ house, he looked worried. “Are you sure you won’t stay a little longer?”

“He’s restless. He has a mission to fulfill.”

“And so do you.” Mato sighed. “Take care, Volos.”

“I will. And gods, I don’t have the words to thank you for what you’ve done. You’re a true hero, Mato.”

Mato blushed and ducked his head, but he was smiling widely. When he looked up again there was a gleam in his eyes. “Maybe someday you’ll return for a visit. You’re always welcome here.”

Well, that was an odd sort of thing— to know there was a little village in Kozar that Volos could call home, if he wanted. The knowledge glowed warmly in his chest. “Thank you.” He reached into the pocket of his cloak and pulled out a heavy purse, which he held to Mato.

Mato took the purse, weighed it in his hand. “This is far too much.”

“It’s not nearly enough. Besides, he can afford it.” He jerked his head in Berhanu’s direction.

Berhanu glared. “Stop gossiping with the innkeeper. It’s time to go.”

“What is he saying?” Mato asked.

Volos allowed a grin to tug at the corners of his mouth. “He’s saying he’s an impatient fool.”

Mato laughed as he tucked the purse into his clothing. And then he grabbed Volos’s head and tugged him down for a hard and passionate kiss. Volos was taken by surprise. For a moment or two, he permitted himself to be lost in the delicious sensation of another man’s lips against his, another man’s tongue entering his mouth. When he pulled away, he was slightly breathless and Mato’s lips were reddened.

“Safe journeys, Volos,” Mato said. Then he turned to Berhanu and executed a deep and graceful bow.

Berhanu looked as if he wanted to tear someone’s head off, yet he managed to bow back. “Thank you,” he said in heavily accented Kozari.

Clouds shrouded the sun as Volos and Berhanu began their walk, but the road remained dry. Volos’s sword felt comfortable and comforting around his hips, and the bag containing his and Berhanu’s few possessions hung on his back. Berhanu carried nothing— he could barely carry himself— but Volos had given him the knife, more to stop Berhanu from complaining than from any real hope that the prince could use it effectively.

And in the unforgiving daylight, the sight of Berhanu broke Volos’s heart. Where once the prince had been brawny with muscle, now he was little more than a skin-covered skeleton. Once he’d swaggered; now he stepped slowly, carefully, like an old man on the way to market. And he stopped often, his expression promising murder to anyone who said anything about it. He’d sit for a few minutes on a large stone or fallen tree before slowly levering himself upright and continuing their march.

Around midday, Berhanu stumbled. He would have fallen if Volos hadn’t caught his arm and grimly led him to the grassy roadside, where they both sat down. “Fucking weak,” Berhanu mumbled.

Volos opened his bag and took out some of the food they’d packed. He handed Berhanu a bread roll stuffed with minced meat and vegetables. “When I first became a soldier I was still a boy. I was gangly. Scrawny. I could barely hold a sword. My captain told me that the only true weakness is to give up.”

Berhanu snorted, but perhaps the tense lines of his body eased a bit.

****

Walking at a normal pace, Volos would have reached the nearest city before the evening meal. As it was, however, they didn’t get there until very late. Berhanu had spent the last several miles leaning on Volos, no doubt seething silently over the need for support. Eventually they shuffled into town, and Volos steered them to the first inn he saw. The proprietress— a young woman who wasn’t pleased to be roused at such a late hour— gave them a small private room, along with some cold meat and cheese and a couple pints of watery ale.

The room had only one bed, which was fine. There was also a washbasin and a pair of towels. While Volos finished eating, Berhanu wearily stripped off his clothing. Volos averted his eyes, which was silly. But he leapt to his feet when Berhanu collapsed onto his knees. “Get in bed!” Volos ordered, attempting to drag Berhanu there.

But Berhanu fought back weakly. “I’m filthy from travel. I hate sleeping in dirtied linens.” So Volos grabbed the towel and gave Berhanu a wipe-down. He wanted to linger over the task, but Berhanu could barely remain upright, and Volos didn’t quite trust himself to not get carried away with touching him. Besides, after what had happened with the Juganin, surely the last thing Berhanu wanted was another man pawing his body.

Tucked into bed, Berhanu apparently had no compunction about watching Volos undress and wash himself. Volos’s skin itched under the close scrutiny. He prayed for his cock to stay soft, and he cast about desperately for the most disgusting memories he could dredge up. Still, he was half erect when he doused the lantern and dove beneath the blankets.

“I didn’t realize you were wounded so badly,” said Berhanu, who seemed to find conversation easier in the dark.