Page 82 of Sword Dance

Eurydemos, who had gone around behind the beach huts earlier, returned to the fire at that point, hitching up his mantle, dashing Damiskos’s hope that he had intended to sleep somewhere else.

“We are exiled out here, I take it?” Eurydemos said as he sat in the sand beside Damiskos.

Damiskos smiled politely, looking down at Varazda in a pointed way that he hoped would cause Eurydemos to be quiet.

It didn’t. Eurydemos just looked at Varazda and sighed. “I do envy you, Damiskos. You have achieved what I so desire. But do not worry—I would not dream of asking if you would be willing to share.”

“Good,” said Damiskos stonily. “Because that would be up to him, really.”

Eurydemos looked at him as, Damiskos imagined, he might have looked at a student who had presented an interesting but rather outrageous argument in a debate. For all that his students had abandoned him, Damiskos thought, he really was almost as much of a swine as they were.

Damiskos opened his mouth to say something about letting Varazda sleep, but Eurydemos got in first.

“You know how much I have sacrificed to my desire. If I had been better able to conceal it, I might have kept the respect of my students longer.” He sighed. “And yet it is entirely unjust. You understand. Desiring a creature like him, neither woman nor man, that does not make either of us a degenerate. If anything, we have more refined tastes, able to appreciate such rare, fragile loveliness. While others see something contrary to nature, what I see is a product of civilization, a work of art almost. Cruelty is always inherent in the great work of art—the cruelty of deception, the statue that fools the eye into seeing a living form, the tale that beguiles us without being true. Just as he beguiles and deceives, blending the forms of male and female—without the frailties of womankind or the virtues of a man.”

“I think you should go sit somewhere else,” Damiskos cut him off finally. “If you keep talking, I’m going to punch you in the mouth.”

Eurydemos blinked at him, genuinely surprised, but he did get up, with a muttered apology, and took himself away as far as the other side of the fire pit, where he lay down with his back to Damiskos.

Varazda showed no sign of having woken to hear any of that. Damiskos was glad, though it wasn’t much of a comfort. Varazda had probably heard things like that before. He was probably used to Pseuchaian men rhapsodizing about his dual nature and how he lacked womanly this and manly that.

What bothered Damiskos was the thought that some of what Eurydemos had said might not be utter bullshit. He was right that Varazda wasn’t “contrary to nature.” And Varazda had been physically shaped for a particular civilization that had a use for people they could classify as not-quite-men. Of course there wasn’t anything wrong with finding him attractive; Damiskos didn’t think there was anything wrong with finding anyone attractive. But what about the rest of it?

Eurydemos was a bloviating asshole who thought Varazda especially desirable. Damiskos found Varazda desirable too. Did that make him an asshole? Was he doing without meaning to what Eurydemos was doing very consciously: thinking of Varazda as a beautiful thing?

It bothered him as he tried to fall asleep, and he slept badly, thinking of this every time he woke. Was this the real reason why Varazda couldn’t return his love? Because it wasn’t love at all, just fetish—a worship of his body as if he were a work of art? He didn’t think so, but would he know, if it were so? He wasn’t a philosopher.

Part of the reason he didn’t sleep well was because Varazda was a very restless sleeper. The position Damiskos had tried to adopt when he settled down to sleep himself, curled around Varazda, leaving Varazda’s head pillowed on his thigh, meant that every time Varazda flung out an arm or stretched or rolled over in his sleep, one or both of them would wake at the resulting collision. Eventually Varazda got up and went in to sleep with the women, leaving Damiskos with the blanket they had been awkwardly sharing.

Chapter 21

Damiskos was woken by a shriek. He bolted upright in the sand to find that it was fully light, and their stronghold was under siege again.

“Don’t you tell me what to do, you—you—you harpy!” one of the women wailed behind him.

Another gave an outraged gasp. “What did you just call me?”

“Girls, girls!” Nione cried, literally wringing her hands. “Please, you mustn’t fight like this.”

Damiskos suppressed a grin as he realized what was going on. They were putting into practice his strategy to make the enemy think they were on the verge of mutiny. They were doing it beautifully.

He got to his feet, looking out at the besieging force, which consisted of most of the fishermen, some of the porters, and the broken-nosed student. They were armed with clubs and kitchen knives, but they didn’t look particularly eager to approach.

“Silence!” Aradne roared from the doorway of the nearest beach hut. “Inside, all of you! Now! You, soldier, make yourself useful, can’t you?”

The women scurried meekly into the huts, stones in their hands and bundled into their skirts. Damiskos joined Aradne in the doorway.

“Sorry about that,” she murmured. She had Damiskos’s hunting bow in her hand and its quiver slung across her back. “Wanted to make it look good.”

“No, not all. I’m impressed.”

Varazda stood inside the hut, his swords under one arm. “Morning,” he said brightly.

They stepped out of the doorway together, once all the women were inside. Damiskos drew his sword and rolled his shoulders. Varazda swung one of his swords in a couple of lazy arcs, the bronze catching the early-morning sunlight. Aradne lifted the bow and nocked an arrow with convincing form.

“Something you men want?” Damiskos called out.

Two of the fishermen were backing away already.