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In the shelter of the tent, Aric lay me down on my pallet, pulling off my wet boots and trousers as Antisthenes rushed to gather extra blankets. The scents of dung fire, oakbark-tanned leather, and woolen carpets brought comfort, if not warmth, in the mellow glow of the fire.
“How bad?” Antisthenes whispered as he stood over me, scrunching his brows.
“I don’t know how long she was in the open,” Aric answered, “but in this cold, I fear frostbite; they’re not yet black, but she could lose fingers and toes. Maybe her ears. It’s too early to say.”
“But she’ll survive?” He raised his wide eyes to Aric.
Survive. What kind of survival was that? I’d never ride or draw a bow again if I lost my fingers and toes.
“I believe so,” Aric said, his voice full of doubt. “But we should cut them off,” he said, his finger pointed ominously toward me. Antisthenes nodded solemnly, and together they reached into their belts for their daggers.
Cut them off? I tried to open my throat and make words. But the cold water I’d swallowed, the frigid air I’d breathed, and the frantic screaming I’d done all conspired against my voice.
“No!” I wheezed uselessly. Quaking with the cold, I thrashed my arms and legs as I struggled to fend them off. But as I fumbled, Antisthenes rudely pulled off my tunic and pinned my feeble arms to the floor while Aric slid the blade of his dagger under the laces of my vest and sliced through them.
“Be still,” Aric whispered. “We must get all these wet clothes off!” He moved to cut away my other wet garments—my stockings, my breechcloth—slashing at the cloth as the weakness in my limbs left me helpless to fight and desperate to cover myself.
They quickly heaped a mound of blankets over me—every rug in the tent, including the reeking bearskin from the wall. It was the first thing Aric hung each time the tent was erected somewhere new, and if it cured me tonight, he’d probably never pack it away, despite how gamey it was. Antisthenes busied himself, setting a cauldron to boil and piling up more dried dung bricks until the fire roared. It helped little. The shivering had ceased, but my limbs remained contorted, my muscles rigid. Possessed by an inner chill like that from a terrible fever, I was both hot and cold at once. I closed my eyes and let myself drift.
“What do you think?” Aric whispered, uncertainty in his voice.
“How should I know? This is your miserable country.”
“Her skin is so cold.”
“We are doing all we can,” Antisthenes reassured. “It is for the gods now.”
More urgent words were exchanged, but I couldn’t make sense of them. They blurred in my ears like the lowing of anxious cattle.
“—another way to quickly warm a frozen form,” Aric said tentatively.
“I am listening…?”
“You must undress; lie flesh to flesh and warm her with the heat of your body.”
Silence. My eyes flickered open to see the two men across the fire, staring at each other. My thoughts roared like the winds, and I clamped my eyes shut, pretending to be unconscious.
“I must do this?” Antisthenes asked.
“It is so. I command it,” the tension strained Aric’s voice to a new pitch, and I peeked as he folded his arms across his chest.
“Command me? In all these years, you have never commanded me anything. You are her sworn protector. Do it yourself!”
Aric shook his head violently. “I cannot.”
A glaring silence stretched between them.
“Well, neither can I,” Antisthenes grew adamant, and I didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted.
“You don’t even like women,” Aric’s hushed voice hissed.
“I am still a man. And I have no kin, no clan. She is a king’s daughter and another king’s betrothed!” I’d never heard Antisthenes so excitable. “Both would make sport with my head. How would we explain this to your father—or hers—if she complains?”
“I swore to—it wouldn’t be… proper,” Aric stammered. “Besides, she’s delirious. What if she comes to her senses while I’m lying… naked upon her?”
“Well, she is a clever woman; if you do not have your cock in her, I think she will figure it out. But wait any longer, and you need not worry: she will never wake again.”
Aric groaned. “I don’t like it.”
“I do not see as you have much choice.”
A sudden, loud thump and a rattling through the poles and lattices of the tent made my eyes snap open. Aric had punched the wall.
“Fuck. You’ll pay me for this one day, brother.” He paced the carpets up and back, clenching and unclenching his fists until he seemed to calm himself. Then he stood, drew a deep breath, and let his hands go limp at his sides. “There’s no other way.” Aric said the words almost to himself. As a man waking from a daydream, he roused as he stood over me and began to undress. His steward moved to leave the tent. “No, stay,” Aric said, “nothing improper is going to take place.”
“I know, my lord,” Antisthenes replied with an abrupt formality. “So I need not remain; I will fetch some men to collect the horses and tend them. They will be frozen as well.”
Maybe it was a gesture of faith. More likely, it was a small mercy to spare us all the embarrassment of what was about to happen. And I had to admit my relief. But most of all, I was grateful to learn the horses had survived and would be cared for.
“If you can hear my voice,” Antisthenes said, “be well, my lady. I will return after with hot broth and more fuel for the fire.”
I tried to speak, but my voice was still raw and hoarse from the cold, so I only nodded as he turned to duck through the doorflap into the night.
Aric, his back to me, was nearly naked. I’d seen his bare form before, but only ever at some distance. Its approach now unnerved me. He wore only his linen tunic and a tattered, threadbare breechcloth, which, even in my sad state, amused me. The poor thing was worse off than I was and should have been put out of its misery long ago.
Pulling the tunic over his head revealed his tattoos of strange symbols and fearsome creatures. Across his whole body, they writhed furiously, animated by the stirring of hardened muscles beneath. Terrific battles and horrific contests played out forever between predators and prey. Until now, I had never allowed myself to really look. I’d only ever seen glimpses, like the images that flash through dreams, disjointed and strange. But the whole was a wild landscape of mythical beasts and mystical symbols, which in the flickering of the firelight now turned toward me and crouched to envelop my helpless form.
I’d seen travelers’ maps of the world painted on leather or carved in wood. But this was a map of a secret realm written in living flesh itself. Few but the gods themselves would ever see it entire.
Of course, Aric had just undressed me, but as he pulled back my blankets, my instinct was to cover myself. Mostly I tried to hide my right breast, hoping he’d have the decency to just look away.
He knelt above me, and my eyes fixed upon the hundreds of notches he’d nicked up and down his own arms each night, all in varying states of healing. Frowning, he asked nonsensically, “You all right?”
I shuddered violently and turned my face away. He brushed my cheek, where I could still feel the stinging print left by his palm, with gentle fingertips.
“Just try to be calm,” he whispered. It seemed he said the words for his own benefit as much as mine. But still, he hesitated, the bulk of his form hovering above me, glowing in the light of the fire.
I closed my eyes and tried to find the calm he spoke of. I thought of his words that day when we bathed in the cold river. I must not allow myself to dwell too much in—
“No, Anaiti, don’t leave me.”
All at once, he pressed himself close. His sudden heat was overwhelming, his trembling unnerving. I drew a deep breath to steady myself and tossed my limp arms around him. He smelled of leather and sweat, pine tar and campfire. My thoughts blurred.
All was somber and quiet except for the sound of our shallow breathing. It should not have been so discomforting. We often grappled in training and healed one another’s wounds. Now, there was no place to lay a sword between us. But as his warmth soaked into me, I could feel life and blood returning once more. He pulled the bearskin up over us.
How long we lay that way, I couldn’t say. Beneath the bearskin, my limbs slowly regained their strength. Borne on the hypnotic ebb and flow of his breathing, like the waves of the sea, I soon found my own breast rising and falling in time with his. In my chest, I could feel the potent drumming of his heart. He lay silently over me, his gentle weight like mooring in a storm. The cold faded, and with it came the excruciating tingle, which heat kindled in my fingertips and toes as the blood revived them and feeling slowly returned.
Beneath my hands, I could not help but feel the multitude of scars that etched his back. Absently, my fingers wandered along their course, and I struggled to imagine all he had suffered in acquiring—and surviving—them. I brushed across the wound that I watched nearly kill him. I touched the place in his side where he had used his own flesh to stop the arrow meant for me.
“I—I don’t know how you’ve endured so much,” I croaked, finally finding my voice.
I felt him shrug, his arms still wrapped around me. “It’s only flesh.” His resonant voice vibrated through my chest.
“But some wounds leave scars deep beyond the flesh.”
“And what of yours?” he said, pulling away and propping himself on his elbow.
I covered my scarred breast. Gently, he took hold of my hand and moved it aside. I did not stop him, but I had to turn my head away.
“Why so shy?”
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked, both fearing and craving the truth. When he didn’t answer, my heart caved. Then I felt his fingertips trace along the scars. Tears welled in my eyes.
“Do mine bother you?” he asked humbly.
“Of course not. They’re a map of your life. Where you’ve been… the man you are.”
“And yours are different?”
“Aren’t they?”
He scrunched his brows and scowled. “Fate has made these inscriptions. They tell of your strength to those who can read the signs.” He wiped away a tear from my cheek. “Why then do you weep?”
“Because I know men’s minds. What others see when they look at me,” my voice strangled in my throat.
“This world will put its marks on us. Proof of our resilience, our honor, our quality. Perhaps that’s all flesh is worth—proof that we fought and endured the torments of life—passed its harshest tests. An unmarked body is nothing to boast about. All flesh will succumb, but the spirit isn’t so bound. These bodies may bear us, but we are not our bodies.”
We are not our bodies. In another life and place, these words might have sounded like heresy. “I hope we are more,” I said with conviction, but I still looked away, unable to face him… and then his lips pressed warmly upon my scarred breast. All at once, the threatening storm clouds in my eyes flooded my cheeks.
“Oh, Ana, I am disgraced,” he gasped as he turned his face away from mine.
“No, not at all,” I reassured gently, combing his hair with my fingers.
He shook his head and refused to meet my eye. Suddenly, he’d become the shy one. With shock, I felt why. Confusion quickened my pulse and shortened my breath. My thoughts receded from me into a shimmering haze, like the distortion of the air over a flame. A searing heat flushed my skin.
My hand upon his bearded cheek, I turned his face toward mine and let my thumb graze his lower lip. He froze, wide-eyed. I took his lips in mine and kissed him slowly, the scruff of his beard pleasantly rough on my skin. In the red glow and faltering shadows of the fire, we caressed one another with rough hands and soft mouths, the weight of his body pressed perilously against mine.
Since the day I first met this ragged nomad, I’d done nothing but strain against some invisible tether I sensed bound me to tribe and duty. As I strained this time, I felt that tether snap. Unbound, I shook with silent sobbing and shuddered with furious longing, pounding in my head and quaking in my bones. The intensity in his eye unsettled me, yet I couldn’t look away. My fingers tore at the last shreds of linen cloth between us.
My pulse roared in my ears like the sea, like his harsh breaths, the stifled growls strangled in his throat. When I could no longer smother my own voice, he clasped his hand over my mouth to hush the sound. A rude reminder that there were others somewhere outside, and they must never know.
I’d known the taming of horses and the hunting of game. I’d known the camaraderie of arms and the chaos of war. I’d known both the embrace of hands and the bruise of fists. But I’d never known how pleasure and ache could coexist; never knew anything in this life to make me feel at once disarmed and invulnerable; at once feral and wise, as I did now. He the arrow and I the bow, drawn by some unseen archer, in perfect tension, waiting for release; left shuddering like a bowstring after the bolt has flown.
“Awake,” he whispered urgently in a singsong voice, “awake.”
“I’m here,” I sighed hoarsely, catching my breath and opening my eyes to find his.
“I thought you were possessed by one of your spells,” his frown softened to gently raised brows.
I brushed aside a strand of hair from his forehead and smiled at him. “Not this time.”
With his eye clamped shut, he held my face in his hands, pressed his brow to mine, and began to tremble. I wanted to hold onto him with all the force in my limbs, but my strength had ebbed. Instead, I wove my fingers through his damp, tangled hair and closed my eyes. The solemn peace of sleep was taking hold of me, lulled by the quiet ebb and flow of his breathing.
Then his breath came more rapid and shallow. Suddenly, he thrashed the floor beside my head; then, with a growl, he pushed himself away. Beside me on the blanketed floor, he sat with his back to me, drew up his knees, and covered his head with his hands. Frightened and dumbfounded, I clenched the edge of the bearskin in my fingers and stared at his tattooed back, my eye captured by a gryphon preying upon a deer.
Hidden from view, in a whisper, he asked of the flickering shadows, “What have I done?”
“What terrible thing do you imagine you’ve done?” I asked as I sat up beside him, bewildered.
There was silence as he slowly shook his head. “I am a thief.”
“You’ve taken nothing I didn’t give freely,” I whispered reassuringly. If anything, it was I who did the taking.
“You don’t belong to me.”
“I belong to no man,” I fired back. “Not yet. Perhaps not ever. If I’m lucky, I’ll die first.”
He turned to glare at me, “Don’t ever speak like that.”
“Like what? Of my dying? Or my being your father’s whore?” I taunted from behind my bearskin.
He clenched his fists beside his head and turned away. “He’s my king. And I’m oath-bound to protect you—even from myself.”
His words were more icy water. I reached for his shoulder, but he flinched away. “If you’re my enemy,” I said gently, “I surrender.” He may have sworn to the king, but we also swore in blood to one another. Or had he forgotten already?
“This was a crime,” he insisted. “A most serious one. We must forget it and never speak or think on it again.”
A crime? Could that even be true? “Loyalty to our comrades comes first even before king and kin. You told me this yourself—made me swear to it before the gods.”
“This isn’t what I meant.”
“No? Men have foresworn their kin and lords for you—to stand or fall beside you and their brothers. Is that also a crime?”
“Damn it, Ana! We can’t.”
A wave of nausea swept over me as it dawned on me how very foolish I’d just been. How naive, believing the honorable Aric could ever betray an oath, no matter how unjust. “I see,” I said sheepishly, pulling the blanket up to cover myself. “Then maybe it’s time I take my scalp and go away from here.”
With the palm of his hand, he smeared his tears across his face and turned to look back at me. He shook his head violently as his eye flooded anew. “No, Anaiti,” he implored, his voice quavering, “don’t leave me. Not now.”
He wasn’t making sense. What could he possibly still want from me? I was too tired to think. So was he. We’d figure it out in the morning.
Don’t leave me. Not now, he’d begged. I placed my hand on his damp cheek. “Not ever,” I whispered back, though it was a promise maybe I had no right to make.
We spoke no more that night. Weak and still trembling, we lay on my pallet, clinging to one another with our heads beneath the blankets.
Soon after, Antisthenes returned. We feigned sleep so he would not see the tears and confusion on our faces. I listened as he fed and stoked the fire and stirred the cauldron. I was finally warmed but wholly spent. Longing to savor this moment—the warmth of his skin against mine, his soft breath in my hair, the strength of his arms around me, and the secret knowledge we shared—I fought hard against my heavy lids. Still, I proved powerless against the insatiable sleep that quickly overtook me.
Under the now oppressive weight of many blankets, the previous night’s events slowly trickled into my groggy mind. An involuntary smile stretched my lips as I recalled Aric’s arms around me, pulling me close. The feel of his bare skin. My fingers in his hair. The scruff of his beard on my cheek. How strange it would be to face him now in the day. I was almost too shy to open my eyes and greet him in the morning light, the secret fire burning behind our eyes. But as the delirium of sleep wore off, and awareness dawned, I reached out my hand and felt about beneath the blankets to find only empty space where he had been. I had been tucked in snug and warm, but he was already gone, as was the bearskin.
“Are you well?” It was Antisthenes. I had only just opened my eyes. “Aric had to go, but he asked me to keep a close watch and tend to anything you needed. And to give his regrets.”
“Regrets for what?”
“That he could not be here himself. To ask after your wellbeing….”
Sure.
“You slept all morning,” he continued as he stirred something in the cauldron. “I will let you wash and dress. Then you should really eat something.”
“Thank you, I’m not hungry.” I just wanted to pull the blanket back over my head and be left alone. “How are the horses?”
“They are fine. Better than you, it seems,” he tried to smile, but he always looked uncomfortable feigning pleasantries. Soberness suited him far better. “Fortunately, it was not too deep downriver where the other horses broke through, and they were able to scramble back to shore. You need your strength. Put these on,” he deposited woolen trousers and a fresh tunic beside my pallet, “and I will return and fix you some food and drink.” He ceremoniously placed a basin for washing on the table behind the hearth and smiled kindly. “I am glad to see you looking so well. You gave us a good scare last night.”
“Thank you, Antisthenes. You’ve always been a good friend to me. If I may call you that?”
“And you to me. It is my honor.”
Too weary to resist, I gave my aching body a quick wash, lingering momentarily as my hands grazed over those places so recently stirred by another. Angered by this pathetic tenderness, I thought instead of my sore cheek. I was lucky to have escaped frostbite, and all my extremities had survived intact. With a clean linen, I scrubbed myself dry and struggled into some fresh, warm clothes, as even beside the fire, the chill from outside began to creep into my tired bones. I stared at the door and shivered. There were not enough clothes or coats to make the world beyond these walls bearable now.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Wish
The subtle eroticism of this chapter is so artfully executed. I love the dialogue between Aric and Antisthenes about the implications and potential blowback result from their going forward with that timeworn treatment for hypothermia and frostbite. It’s also interesting how Anaiti half-consciously is following what’s going on and noting Aric’s tattoo and deliriously laughing on the inside at the threadbare state of his undergarments.
So well done! I tear through your writing with eager anticipation for the following sentences. Great work!!