“That’s why I’m taking you with me,” Cyrus said with an easy smile that he felt not at all. He was getting better at it, he realized with only a slight discomfort. “This way, you’ll be there to watch my back. If you’re not too busy with my front, that is …” He leaned toward her, let his armor rest against her, and then took a long, slow kiss, right there in front of the entire camp.
She pulled away from him leisurely, opening her eyes slowly after the kiss. “You realize you just did that in front of …”
“Everyone, yes,” Cyrus said and kissed her again. “I don’t care who knows, who sees. I’ve seen some of them do it as well, the soldiers. They crawl into their bedrolls together at night and everyone pretends to give them the illusion of privacy, like a silent law we all follow. Well, I want it too, to stop hiding, to stop worrying about it, to have you when I want you instead of always worrying I’ll be found out.” His hand slipped around her hip and pulled her waist close to him. “I don’t want to hide anymore. I just want to have you whenever I want.”
She watched him cannily, with a slight smile. “That might prove awkward in the midst of a battle.”
“Try to pretend you wouldn’t find it incredibly arousing.”
She took a moment of slow inhale to pretend as though she were thinking about it. “Perhaps. But as we are not presently in a battle, there’s no need to consider it. If you want to have me as a soldier has his lover, you need only lay out a bedroll and crawl in it with me and let the rest take its course. There’s no danger but the idea that others will see their General having an immensely good time.”
He let himself smile again, fake but with a foundation in the grim reality that he wanted to unburden himself, to claim that relief she gave him. “Well, there is another danger,” he said, as he slid a hand around her waist to lead her off to where his pack lay, near his saddle, across the camp, “… after all, you do tend to bite when you’re overly excited …”
She slapped him in mock offense as he led her away, and they put down the bedroll on the ground and climbed into it. Everyone saw, but no one watched, and they remained beneath it until they were both well and truly sated.
Chapter 69
Vara
Day 47 of the Siege of Sanctuary
The dark elven army held its distance, she knew, though she rarely went to the wall to see for herself. It was a quiet night, all things considered, after another long day of riding the Plains of Perdamun looking for caravans to raid. This morning they had caught a fat one, killing almost two hundred dark elven soldiers in the process. In the afternoon they’d managed to spring a trap on another, sending some hundred and fifty more soldiers to their deaths and securing almost twenty wagons laden with goods and riches. Vara stared at her hand, which clutched an inlaid silver bracelet with a soft clasp that snapped gently when she pushed it closed. There was a light circle of the precious metal that parted, a decent-sized ruby encrusted within. Not the possession of a noble, she knew, not locked up as it was in one of the caravans. It was something owned by a farmer, given to his wife after a particularly good harvest. It lacked polish, but the ruby still shone, and she wondered which poor sod had lost his valuables in addition to his crop. And likely his life as well and the life of his family, knowing how these dark elves operate.
The lounge was muted around her. Ever since the guard had taken up in the foyer every hour of every day, fewer and fewer people seemed to enjoy conversations, exchanges, and ale within the bounds of the lounge. I suppose it’s rather difficult to make merry when there’s a visible reminder that we’re under siege only a few feet away. Perhaps I’d be happier in my room as well, were I one of them. She had a book across her lap, but it lay unopened. The Champion and the Crusader, something she’d read dozens of times, the words as familiar to her now as any expression her mother had ever used. It was usually a good distraction. Usually.
Without warning, or even a clear idea of what she was doing, she stood and let her feet carry her. In times of peace I’d wear cloth and leather. Now we live in times of war, and I go nowhere without my armor and my sword. She let her fingers touch the hilt and guard and then mentally slapped herself for again acting like Cyrus.
The front doors of Sanctuary swung wide from her effort; they were not nearly as heavy as they appeared, which prompted her to wonder for the thousandth time if they had an enchantment on them. She had always meant to ask Alaric, but whenever she came into his presence there were always more consequential matters to discuss. The crickets were chirping in the warm night air, and she took each step slowly, drawing her pace so slow that she could feel the resonance of her every step clacking on the stone of the Sanctuary steps, each sound ringing out like the noise of the catapult’s firing through the glass window atop the foyer. She glanced back; it had been repaired, oddly enough, and quickly.
When she reached the dirt path, she stepped off it, letting her feet sink into the soft grass. Even though she couldn’t feel it, she drew some odd reassurance from the green, springy vegetation. It was the nearest sort of affirmation she could find, something that harkened her back to her childhood lessons in the Temple of Life, where the Priestesses of Vidara spoke to her for hours about the Goddess and all Her wonders. She chooses the lengths of all the grasses, they said, and the seasons of their growth, and all that they become. She chooses the ones that live, and the ones that die as seedlings, and all the trees of the forest. She took one step after another, letting her feet settle in the grass, while overhead the stars gleamed down at her, an endless field of them.
Does he see them, where he is? Is he under the stars tonight? Or staying in some great castle, or a quiet wayside inn? Is he at peace or war right now? Did he find a way to best this scourge that plagues those lands or … She left that thought unfinished by the words in her mind; the unspoken unease that it reflected was not similarly dismissed so easily.
“What does an Ice Princess care for stars?” The quiet rumbling of the rock giant did not cause her to turn, even when she heard and felt his heavy footsteps behind her. “Do they remind her of the glisten of the light on the snow, where each bit shines as though it were fallen from the heavens?”
“As far as poets go,” Vara said, stifling much of her annoyance, “you leave much to be desired, Fortin.”
“I am not a poet,” Fortin said, stepping into place beside her and looking up, his towering frame almost double her height, “merely an observer. Here, I observe an Ice Princess, one who doesn’t care for such things, and she’s seemingly transfixed. An odd occurrence, surely worthy of some note.”
“Hardly worthy of any note, I would think.” She gave him the barest turn. “You are standing watch?”
“Between the wall and the foyer,” the rock giant said. “Though I am not of much use in a melee where others might be harmed by being in close combat around me, I do function well as a line of defense against any dark elves who decide to try and run for the wall, as though they could overwhelm our forces there and open the gates and portcullis in a hurry.”
“Seems a foolish notion,” she said, “with you between them.”
“I agree,” Fortin said in his hearty rumble. “But what brings the Ice Princess out here on such a night, I wonder? And she’s trying to distract me from that question.”
She rolled her eyes. “I hardly need to distract you from the simple fact that I decided to take a stroll under the summer sky.”
“It is almost autumn now,” Fortin said, “or so I’m told by those who keep track of such things.”