Page 41 of Something Human

Rus moved his pillow and lay down beside Adares again. They were silent for a little while, and it was not awkward, but Rus was somewhat annoyed with himself. It should not be difficult to speak of such obvious, extravagant beauty. It should be like talking about the weather. But it wasn’t, not unless there was a kind of weather that was disgraceful for a man to notice and impossible to comment on.

By and by he looked into Adares’s face and saw that he too seemed lost in thought.

“What are you thinking about?” Rus asked.

“Oh.” Adares recalled himself with a start. He looked embarrassed. “Well, it’s not very … I was thinking about the Daine camped in the hills.”

CHAPTER XIV

IT WAS A good plan, daring and heroic, and Rus was proud of his lover (his lover!) for having come up with it. Adares cared for his people, clearly. He really was a leader of men, even if—maybe all the more because—he thought he was not worthy to be.

Rus was less happy about Adares’s reluctance to let him come along and help, but truthfully, he could understand it. Adares didn’t think that Rus knew who he was, and probably didn’t want him to find out. He didn’t realize how far Rus had compromised himself already, knowingly being here with the leader of the Phemians and making no effort to take him prisoner, as honour and loyalty to his own people demanded. And it was strange, but Rus was actually afraid that telling him would reveal the extent of his own treachery and destroy Adares’s good opinion, and he didn’t want to do it.

But he was going to ride with Adares into the forest. He was stronger than the Phemian, and would sleep wrapped around him tonight so that there would be no possibility of anyone waking early and sneaking away without the other’s knowledge.

He was used to sharing a bed, but how strange it was to be allowed to touch the person he shared with. At first he didn’t think he would fall asleep at all. Then he thought that he shouldn’t sleep; he should savour this, because he would never have it again. The next moment, it seemed, he was opening his eyes in the cold pre-dawn. Adares was sitting up already, on the edge of the bed. He had slipped out of Rus’s arms without waking him, after all, but Rus didn’t think he had intended to sneak away. He was looking down, as if waiting for his lover to wake, and he smiled.

I want to wake like this every morning, Rus thought, but this is the only time I ever will. Something of his thoughts must have shown in his face, because Adares’s smile faded.

Or perhaps Adares had been thinking the same thing—but no, that couldn’t be it. This wasn’t the first time he had woken beside a lover, and it wouldn’t be the last; it was just that the person beside him would never again be Rus.

Adares seemed withdrawn that morning as they breakfasted and dressed and readied themselves for the journey. He was preoccupied, Rus guessed, with his plans, thinking ahead to the difficulties of the return to Tios and what would happen after. It was not the time to speak of anything else, and after all, what was there really to say?

“You don’t mind if I keep your kilt pin—I mean your cloak pin, for my kilt—do you?” Rus asked.

“Of course not,” Adares said warmly, “but it might be better not to show it to anybody, once you get back to your camp.”

Rus was weighing the heavy gold pin in his hand. “Ah yes, because they’re going to find out you’re not dead, so I can’t claim to have taken it off your body on the battlefield.”

There was a moment’s pause. “Well, it doesn’t have my name on it.”

Rus looked up at him. The pin might as well have had his name on it; it had a device, an intertwined letter and numeral, that was surely an indication of his rank, and must have been unique, since there was only one archon of the colony. Rus wondered if he should mention that he’d worked this out. Now might be a good moment. But the truth was, he still didn’t want to bring it up.

“No,” he said. “I suppose not.”

They finished dressing and went out to choose horses. There were some fine animals; even the Phemian horses, which Rus made fun of, were impressive, beautiful in a lean, dark, aristocratic style that was not unlike Adares. Another time, Rus would have enjoyed finding out how they were to ride.

The horses had obviously been chosen and set aside by the hearth headman whose retainers had brought them here—probably to hide them and keep them to himself while some general distribution of spoils was going on. Rus paid little attention to such things, and didn’t know how it was done, but he did know good horses when he saw them. He searched for one that looked calm and rested and had the fearless temperament he needed in a mount with whom he would face a mad bull.

He found a mare he recognized and had ridden before. She had belonged to the son of a friend of his father. He wasn’t sure what her presence here meant about her old owner, whether he had been killed, or traded her, or what. Adares, meanwhile, had chosen the darkest, most aristocratic-looking horse, and came out of the stable carrying an armload of foolish-looking Phemian horse-trappings. Rus made a face at that, and Adares laughed.

Rus had time to ride several easy circuits of the courtyard while Adares was saddling his horse; probably the Phemian wasn’t used to doing such things for himself. He watched Adares mount, competently enough, and saw him squirm a little in the saddle, and realized with a start why he was uncomfortable.

If I don’t make a joke about that, he thought, I am shamed forever. But he couldn’t make a joke. It had really happened; he had really done that to Adares, and it had been glorious. Yet to think that Adares was suffering for it now was not funny.

Then of course the Phemian looked at him and raised an eyebrow—and poetry was poetry, after all, and Rus did not literally fall off his horse, or even come close, but he did feel a little breathless for a moment.

“Force of nature,” Adares mouthed, and grinned.

Force of unnature would be more accurate, Rus thought, but he did not say it.

And, as it seemed, Adares was not really in much discomfort, and it was Rus for whom the ride through the forest that morning was painful, because of the stupid wound in his thigh.

It annoyed him. He’d been injured more than a few times—sprained limbs, a dislocated shoulder, a broken nose, bruised ribs, and he’d been gored once, though not badly—but he was young and strong and healed quickly. And the Phemian arrow, poisonous though it may have been, had been such a small thing. He felt as though it should have been about as serious as a bug bite, but of course it wasn’t, it had gone right through the muscles of his thigh, and he’d had a fever after, and Adares was right to think he should still be resting instead of riding around in the forest.

Adares would have ridden out here whether Rus came with him or not—he had to remind himself of that. If they met the bull and Rus failed to take it down because his stupid leg gave out on him, Adares would still stand a better chance of getting away than if he had been on his own. And he would get away, Rus felt sure. He wouldn’t linger pointlessly trying to save Rus when it was too late; he would put his heels to his horse and take off for the Daine camp and Tios and his duty to his people. He was—there was no other way of putting it—a better man than Rus.

And then they met the bull, and Rus forgot all this. They met him in a clearing that might have been designed by the gods for this fight. Rus felt the familiar stirring of his blood as he heard the bull’s approach. Adares was well back by the trees, and a good enough rider—just—to keep his horse under control. There was nothing but Rus and the bull, and the old enmity between them.