Page 25 of Something Human

“Then Gunthanaruth will be expecting it, you think?”

“Yes. He thinks that he has enough men to beat the Daine off and still hold Tios. Some of the hearth headmen don’t agree.”

“He may be right, all the same,” said Adares thoughtfully. “The Daine have more experience defending than attacking, as I understand it. I know that they’ve fought off sieges of their stronghold several times before. But Hesteios used to say they were weak in a pitched battle. Gunthanaruth would know that.”

“He would. He does.”

“Well. Anyway. They’re there, for what it’s worth. I’ll go wash the mushrooms.”

He took his jar of gleanings and an empty dish from the storeroom and went out to the fountain.

So they would have to leave their hiding place soon—but before then? In several ways he was in uncharted territory here. He had never been with a man who was exclusively attracted to men—or at least not with one who would admit it. He found the idea strangely exciting. He’d never been with an inexperienced man, either, aside from his first forays as a boy with equally unpracticed friends. He wouldn’t have called himself inexperienced, by any stretch, but he was certainly out of practice with men. He realized he really didn’t know what Rus wanted, how he might want this to go. Except that so far it apparently wasn’t going the way he wanted.

Adares piled the washed mushrooms in the dish and rinsed off the berries and leaves that had been underneath them in the jar and got dirty. He spent a moment arranging everything attractively. It looked very nice, like a still life.

It struck him suddenly just how his position with Rus had shifted. There had always been something holding them back before, or at least he’d thought there was, and now there was nothing—nothing except his own potential unworthiness. He knew Rus wanted him, but Rus was very used to denying himself. And he had—as he’d let Adares know—some impressive prohibitions and taboos to overcome. He was quite capable of shutting the whole thing down if he decided it wasn’t worth it.

When Adares came back into the temple storeroom, Rus was reclining on his side on the bed, Pseuchaian-style. He had brought out the bundle of food left for him by the Luth warriors and unwrapped it on the bed in front of him. He was in the process of arranging it, much the way Adares had arranged the berries and mushrooms, though the effect was less artistic because what he had to work with were some strips of smoked meat, shrivelled dried apples, and a couple of charred pieces of bread.

He doesn’t want frantic kissing in a doorway, Adares thought. He wants it to be romantic. And that, actually, was surprisingly endearing—and what was more, it put Adares back on more familiar ground. It was something he could deal with.

He considered reclining on the bed with Rus, which was perhaps what Rus had in mind—but the way the food was spread out, there wasn’t really room. He sat down on the floor instead, setting the dish of forest gleanings on the bed with the other things. He tugged off his boots to sit cross-legged.

“This looks like a feast,” he said, smiling up at Rus.

Rus smiled back. He pointed to the food. “This is preserved meat that we bring on campaigns. But the bread is fresh. They bake it on a pan over the fire.” He coloured slightly, as if embarrassed not to have something more significant to say.

“We should save some for later,” said Adares.

“I did. I set some aside.”

“You think of everything.”

The bread was surprisingly good: soft flat rounds made from some kind of nutty-tasting grain that the Luth did not grow themselves but traded for. Rus quite genuinely did not know any more about it than that—thought such information beneath him, both as a kahar and as the son of a great skar family—and was amused that Adares was interested in it and then adorably embarrassed by his own ignorance. Adares let his fingers brush against Rus’s at every opportunity as they shared the food.

The meat was tough and strongly flavoured, but, as Rus pointed out, tasted good with the woodland mushrooms and greens and one kind of berry, which was mouth-puckeringly tart. Others were delicately sweet, and they ate them with the dried apples by way of dessert. By this time Adares had taken one of Rus’s hands and was holding it, gently tracing his thumb over the inked swirl on the back. His tattoos were symmetrical for the most part, but there were little variations, one of which was an extra tendril on the back of his left hand, curling down onto his fourth finger.

“We can get milk now, if you want,” Rus said. “I mean, not now, but later. If you wanted milk.” He looked embarrassed again.

“Did those men bring a goat as well as the horses?”

“No, I meant milk from the horses. Well, one of them. They said there’s a milk-mare among them.”

“Horse milk. Hmm.”

“I’ll have some, then, and you can sit and watch and wish for a goat.”

They finished the berries except for one spray of rust-coloured fruit which Adares had picked by mistake, and which Rus said was not fit to eat.

“If you did eat it, your mouth would be stained brown for a month. We use them for dye.”

Adares waggled the sprig of berries gently between his fingers. “Pity. They looked so tasty.” He dropped them back into the dish and took it off the bed to set it on the floor.

“Can I come up there with you?”

Rus gathered up the cloth with the crumbs of bread and dropped that onto the floor too. “Of course.”

Adares moved to sit on the edge of the bed. He looked down at Rus. “Can I do the obvious thing?”