Crusader

Chapter 56

The river was not fast moving, nor was it much of a river at all. It was somewhere between a creek and a river, a halfway between thing, not deep enough for Cyrus to worry much about wading across if he so desired, but deep enough for him to stick to the riverbank. He undressed himself and then sat upon the bank and let go of his sword. There was no one around, though he could see Martaina in the distance, between him and the encampment. A split from the river was visible, something that wended much closer to the camp, indeed almost through it, and he wondered why she had suggested this place for him before the reason of privacy dawned upon him.

He sat upon the bank and let the sun crawl lower in the sky, unconcerned. His head no longer swam, and his breathing was deep and steady, taking in the plains air. The grasses here were different than those around Sanctuary, fuller-more oats, he thought, less tamed. The Plains of Perdamun were broken and dotted with farms; these grounds were spotted only occasionally with settlement. He dipped his feet in the water and felt the coolness run over his toes. He looked to the direction of the light current and realized it came from the north, from the mountains in the far distance, where the enemy lay.

He stood and slid into the water, wading in on his knees, as it covered him to the waist. His knees touched the thousand pebbles on the bottom of the stream, and he let the current run over him, let himself fall back, let his hair submerge, long black locks clinging to his head as they dampened. He kept his face above the water then dipped it under for a moment, felt it run into his nose and he broke the surface sputtering, snorting it out.

“Finally reached the point of trying to drown yourself?” There was a quiet voice nearby, and he looked up to see her watching him, squatting near his armor.

“No,” he said, ignoring the levity in her voice. “Just trying to remove the accumulation of weeks of sweat and sick smell.”

“Not a bad plan, as such plans go.” Her clothing hung loose, no cloak or armor visible from where he sat. She was down to the barest essentials, the daggers on her hips staring at him like they had eyes of their own. Her curves were smooth, and the shirt she wore had enough of a gap at the top that he was left not needing to imagine the breasts he had seen so many times of late. “Did you have any reason for it besides just the feeling of uncleanliness?”

“Yes.” He nodded slowly.

“Must I inquire why?”

He stared back at her, waiting, with her head cocked, her slightly pointed incisors hanging out of her deep blue lips. “Must I say it?”

She squatted there, and he wondered if she was visible to Martaina, as low as her profile was, with the grass swaying and almost touching her cheeks. “Before, I’ve been content to let it pass. But now, yes. I want to hear you say it.”

“Because I want you,” Cyrus said. “Because I crave you and the relief you bring.”

“Relief?” She unknotted the strings at the front of her shirt and shrugged out of it there in front of him, let her dark blue skin show to the world. She stepped out of a boot with a half-step, not ever leaving the ground but coming to her hands and knees. The other boot came off with ease, as she crawled toward the bank of the stream on all fours, naked to the waist. Her cloth breeches came unlaced with only a minimal effort from her, and slid off just as her hand reached the rocky edge of the water.

He waited for her, felt the rising tide within him, and when he felt her first kiss, it was as though the call within him were answered, the raging tide rising was dismissed. They were there for quite some time, the splashing of the water around them the evidence of a particularly noisy bath. Cyrus neither knew nor cared whether Martaina saw; she doubtless knew anyway. It matters not, he thought in the midst of it. But in truth, he knew otherwise.

They lay on the grassy bank for a while afterward, her head on his shoulder, not speaking. “Why?” Cyrus asked, into the silence of the setting sun.

“Why what?” Aisling’s voice came back to him, jaded, wary.

“Why do you think I’m doing this?” he asked, spent, not even close to sure about what answer he would get. “Do you think it’s because I-”

“I try not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Aisling said, and she rolled over, grasping at her shirt and pulling it on. “Though, I do occasionally put a gift in my-”

“There’s the Aisling of old,” Cyrus said, not moving, feeling the hard dirt against his back. “I had thought that perhaps finally getting what you wanted would rid you of your desire to be crass.”

He saw the subtle shrug of her shoulders as she knotted the strings that knit up her shirt. “Have I gotten what I wanted?” She didn’t look back at him. “I did get you, I suppose, and I did always say I wanted this, so I suppose in that way I got what I wanted.”

“You were perhaps expecting me to be more … enthusiastic?” He rolled onto his side to watch her as she dressed, still squatting low and keeping her body down, out of sight of camp.

“I could hardly ask for a more enthusiastic partner, at least on a purely physical level.” Her legs folded around in front of her like a gymnast and she slid into her pants, taking care to knot them back up. “Especially so soon after being an invalid.”

“I’m not the same, am I?” He didn’t watch her now, he let himself lean back to the ground, felt his wet hair slop into the dirt.

“No,” she said, but her voice seemed cavalier and uncaring about the whole thing. “But who of us stays the same for our whole lives?”

“What would you have of me, then?” Cyrus looked up at the sky, the deepening shades of evening coming out now.

“Nothing that I think you would be capable of giving at present,” she said, and he watched her put her boots on, one at a time, her white hair bound over her shoulder and leaving water marks on her tan shirt. “Which is why I don’t ask.”

“Do you think me fragile?” He couldn’t seem to muster any umbrage for his question.

“I think you’re already broken,” she said, and stood, looking down at him. “But that’s all right. We all break some time; and I’m here, willing to take what you’re willing to give and willing to give what you need right now. Your spirals don’t concern me; you’re a big boy, and you’ll work it out in time.”

“Will I now?” He let a faint amusement creep into his voice, and he saw a whirl of white clouds tinged orange by the coming sunset. “That’s reassuring.”

“Be reassured, then,” she straddled him, her cloth pants against his abdomen, and she leaned over to kiss him, deep and full on the mouth. He felt her passion behind it, the force, but he had none of his own to match it with, just the slight stir of something detached, and far away, a physical reaction that told him that if she stayed where she was, her clothing would need to be removed again …

As if she could sense his line of thought, she broke from him. “See?” She gave him a faint smile, and the long incisors poked out of her lips again. Time was he would have thought them predatory, but now he saw the hurt, the edge behind her eyes, the strain that she didn’t intend to loose. She stood, and with a whirring of the grass, she took the first steps away.

He lay there by the stream, trying to gather enough energy to bring himself back to the water the clean off the grit accumulated during his and Aisling’s lovemaking. He couldn’t find it, though, and remained there, staring at the sky, until the first body came drifting down the current only a few minutes later.