As we were riding through the dark under the trees toward the first of the fires, Aleksey murmured sadly, “If we were married, I would not have to fear that you would leave me when so disfigured, for you would be tethered in law.”
I glanced over at him. “Married men stray, Aleksey. They abandon families—wives and children.”
“Yes. But it would be nice to know that I would then have recourse to law to have you bound in chains and dragged naked to the stocks—or some such thing. I will improve on that punishment later. I like thinking about you being naked and punished and do so often when you are asleep alongside me.”
I snorted. “The Powponi—am I allowed to tell a…? Ow. ThePowponido not marry, as they are not Christian, but they do celebrate the joining of two people just the same.”
“How?”
“Well, feasting, music, dancing—much the same as Christian marriage, I suppose.” I took a breath and glanced over at him. “There is nothing to stop us having a feast when we return—if you would like….”
He turned to me with an expression on his face I had not seen before. I think I had genuinely surprised him beyond his expectation of me. I felt a surge of warmth but also a tingling of guilt at how easy it was to make him happy and how much I had not really taken the time or made the effort to before. It was not my way or my inclination. I batted away his attempt to kiss me across our horses’ backs and made some comment about the danger we were possibly facing or some other thing that sounded hollow even to my ears. He knew now. He was completely happy and could not keep the smile off his face as we approached the first of our fires. Given what happened later that night, I am glad now I did give him that fleeting span of happiness. It is a good lesson to learn: live more in the moment. It was hard for a man like me to do, though. My moments up to meeting Aleksey (and then much of my time with him when in Hesse-Davia) had been frightening and terrible. Aleksey had once likened me to a dog that has been kicked once too often. Does such a creature live in the moment, relishing it?
The lieutenant rose to greet us and reported he had seen and heard nothing. The only difficulty they had was not eating the bacon. This small joke was repeated at the next fire by the reverend. The trappers were not at their allotted place but appeared from the trees some time after we arrived. They claimed they had been relieving themselves before the long vigil.
I mentioned my concerns about them to Aleksey as we rode off, but he was too consumed by some private thoughts to bother much with another mystery. I discovered what he was planning when we reached the next post. He told the soldiers to return to the main camp and that we would relieve them for the rest of the night. They needed no further encouragement, so mounted their horses and faded into the darkness.
We were alone.
ALEKSEYSHEDall his clothing and stood entirely naked to my inspection in the firelight. I told him he should not—that we might be having a visitor. He said the man was raving already; what harm could possibly come from him witnessing anything? He was so beautiful that I could not resist him further. The flickering illumination played shadows upon his flawless skin. He had filled out since I had first met him at twenty-three, when he had still been more of a boy in many ways than a man. Since then he had not only been to war, but he had been living a life little better than a native in the New World, and his body was honed and hard, sinew and bone, and muscle where muscle should be. I loved the hollow of his shoulder joint, the strength of his arms, their steel-like hardness. His chest was broad now, like a man’s, not slim as it had once been, but it fell to a waist very lean and hips that cloth barely graced.
I knew every inch of this body, of course, inside and out, but there in the cold air in front of the fire after the words we had so recently spoken, this joining was a new commitment. I lay upon him, staring into his face, and recited once more my great love poem: adore. I told him that I worshiped him and that the only way he would ever find me missing was if I wandered into the forest and got lost one day. He laughed, as he knew this would never happen and understood what I was saying by this declaration.
When I entered him, it was as the first time all over again. Then I had been sick of body and heart, scared and ashamed, my manhood shattered along with a cabin door and some soldiers’ noses—and he had taken me and made me new in his body. He had the power to take me inside and make me a better man.
It was cold, but his body was warm. He lifted his legs and wrapped them around my back as I pressed into him. His hands cupped my face, and he pulled me down to kiss him, our tongues as eager to join and share as the rest of our bodies.
With great effort, I eased my face from his, took my mouth off his lips, and stilled my thrusting. Worried, he looked questioningly at me. I put my hand up and stroked his face, my thumb brushing over his cheekbone. “I can stop, if you want. I do notneedthis, Aleksey. I just needyou. I would be with you even if you never wanted to do this again. If you just wanted to be friends. If you were disfigured. If you were dead. Well, not that, obviously. You know what I mean.”
He turned his head and caught my thumb, drawing it into his mouth, then spat it out fairly quickly at the taste, wrinkling his nose. I snorted and brushed the wetness over his lips. He lowered his legs, and we lay joined, but content for a moment not to move more, to need more. I could feel him all the way along my body and encasing me where it counted.
He sighed. “But this is a big part of it, isn’t it? Men and women can have the world—friends, acceptance, an open life, children—weneed for this to be more for us to make up for that lack. I did not choose you and then save your life and bring you to my new kingdom to not have your body whenever I want. Icraveyou, Nikolai; you must know that.”
I began to move very slowly inside him once again, and he groaned with pleasure. “Then I will reward you for that saving and be to you in this all things I cannot be otherwise: acceptance, and life with family and children.” He had his eyes closed, long lashes fanned upon his cheeks, his mouth open a little as he breathed with pleasure: small groans in a dark night. When I came inside him, it was the celebration I had promised him, the commitment I wanted to give him, and the pleasure washed from me and into him and started his release, to which he arched and cried out as a creature being wounded, so indistinguishable from pain is this great delight we share as men. We came down together, our hearts beating as one, our breath warming the other’s face. I began to ease my body from his, but he was having none of this and held me clamped tight. I tossed some more wood onto the fire to try and warm us, and then, joined as we were, we drifted to sleep. I suppose if a man can truly die happy, then I would have chosen that night to have drifted away, joined to Aleksey, lying upon him, his arms around me, and secure in the knowledge that for that one night I did not need faith in a life after this one, for I had my heaven there on the cold ground in that vast, wild wilderness.
Things were not quite so romantic and heavenly when we awoke. Besides being extremely cold, we were particularly messy and stuck together, and things were fairly unpleasant for a while. But when Aleksey had dressed he just shrugged and handed me the cold bacon, and we ate it all, disheveled, starving, and then very, very pleased with ourselves. Seeing him there, wolfing the food, I would have taken him again, I confess, but just as I put my hand upon his leg to indicate that he had wasted his time dressing, Faelan rose from his place on the other side of the now dead fire and growled. If you have never heard a wolf growl, then you will miss the import of that sound, but it was extremely unnerving, despite the dawn’s light. His hackles had risen, and he was lowering his muzzle with a ferocious snarl when a shot rang out from the tree line.
Faelan staggered.
Aleksey howled and threw himself across the cold embers toward his friend, and I rose to stand between them and the trees. I saw movement and ran, my knife in my hand as if magicked there. I hurdled a low bush and flung myself upon the figure attempting to flee.
He swung a musket stock—why had it not occurred to me that he would have a gun?—and it thudded into my head, just where Xavier had kicked me a few days earlier. I felt my scalp split once more and then a warm wash upon my face. We wrestled, and I managed to wrench the weapon from him. He sprang to his feet—he had preternatural strength for a man who had survived without food for days in these cold temperatures—and snarled at me. I rose carefully into a crouch, my knife held ready but trying not to be too menacing. I wanted him to talk, not run or for me to have to kill him. I glanced behind me for one moment to try and see Aleksey and Faelan, and I think that when I did, the rising sun crested the tops of the trees around our tiny clearing at the same time. For as I turned back to the madman in this increased light, he let out a fearful howl, pointing at my face, tearing his hands over his own, and then he began to rant. It was meaningless: words about faces and the beast who had come from the water. But I caught his meaning nonetheless: they were all dead. The beast had consumed them all.
I tried to approach him, but he screamed again, his eyes wide at the sight of me. I had turned one more time to try and see what Aleksey was doing when I heard the rustle behind me. I spun back, but the man was quicker. He had run upon my knife. It took him in the belly, and its steel promise did not let me down, although I would in this instance not have wanted it so sharp. It gutted him. As he collapsed upon the cold ground, I knew he would not survive this wounding. I had not only pierced his skin but the bowels within.
Something happened to the man then that I cannot explain. I have seen it before with people, old, witless from that great confusion that can take people in their dotage, and I had not understood it then either. He calmed and became quite rational. It was as if at the end of his life, the tangled paths that had brought him there fell away and left him free of their confusion. He did not seem to be in pain either, for which I was grateful. He was only a young man, little more than a boy. What was left of his clothing showed him to be a colonist, not a soldier. He was staring at the weak winter sun when he said quite calmly, “He took us all.”
“Can you tell me what has happened? Who took you? Is anyone still alive?”
“He came from the water, and he carried the devil upon his back.”
“Who came?”
He turned his face to me. “The beast.” He coughed, which was not good, because his intestines, which I had been pressing back into his belly, swelled out and spilled between my fingers, uncoiling and steaming in the cold air.
“Aleksey!” But there was no reply. Dammit. I pressed harder, trying to keep the man’s life inside along with his belly. “Did anyone else survive?”
“They became as devils themselves and took communion upon the flesh of their fathers.”
