by Shannon West
The Lycan ambassador nodded politely.
“Like that young man over there. Magnificent, isn’t he?”
The young Tygerian had been standing behind a large pillar near the gates or else Rasc thought the Lycans would have noticed him right away. He was actually hard to miss, in that he stood out from the others like a bird of prey in a barnyard. He had grown larger since the last time Rasc had seen him. The Tygerian wore the same uniform as the rest of the soldiers, but stood a full head and shoulders above the tallest of them. His long, red-gold hair streamed in a swirling cascade across his back and glinted in the sun. His movements when he parried and thrust against the attacks of the other soldiers were swift and sure. It was easy to see he’d either had extensive training at some point in the past before he came to Laltana, or he had a natural affinity for it. Maybe both. His training, coupled with his physical strength and size, had made him a formidable opponent.
Kelan had mentioned some kind of “Games” on his home planet, and those games must have been intense to say the least. Because despite his youth and lack of battle experience, the boy seemed to be not only holding his own, but vanquishing all comers. He reminded Rasc of Prince Mikos, his brother, whom Rasc had seen from a distance in battle once before. No one ever actually got close to the Bloody Prince. He remembered him well, though, standing tall and proud on a rise above the battlefield, along with a few of his generals. Rasc and his unit had fought valiantly, but had been utterly defeated and routed from the field. Prince Mikos’s maneuvers against them had been both brilliant and devastating.
The teruga the young prince was wearing now was an arrangement of cloth straps, set with large metal discs. They fastened around the soldiers’ waists, leaving the back bare, with only a thin strap going over the crease of the ass and up to attach at the waistband in the back. The teruga’s metal-reinforced strips of cloth, however, provided a useful degree of protection to the soldiers’ family jewels from slashing attacks, and they had the added advantage of not being heavy or impeding movement the way a more rigid armor might have done. Rasc watched the prince’s muscles bunch and stretch as he wrestled with his opponents and felt his own trousers grow tight in the crotch.
The Lycans had gone speechless as they saw him and turned toward Rasc with surprise and ill-disguised curiosity. “But-but he’s Tygerian, isn’t he?” one of them asked.
“Hmm? Oh yes, I suppose he is. He belongs to King Janos. He’s his personal bed slave and has been for some time now. Gorgeous, isn’t he?”
It was a complete lie, of course. The king was too proper. Almost prim, really. Rasc would have liked to take him to bed himself, just to see just how prim, proper and celibate the gorgeous man really was. It was really such a waste. Amazingly, in the years since the king had returned from the Tygerian prison camps, however, Rasc knew he had taken no one to his bed, so far as anyone knew. He refused any form of self-indulgence, in fact, and denied himself all pleasures of the flesh. He lived more like a monk than a king. At first, there had been rumors that he’d maybe been physically damaged during his long prison stay—a term that lasted long after the regular soldiers came home, to make sure none of the royals and other leaders of the Alliance forces who hadn’t signed the treaty started hostilities up again once they got back to their followers.
Janos’s personal slaves attested to the fact that he had taken no lovers, though, and that absolutely nothing was physically wrong with him either.
The Lycans murmured among themselves and Rasc noticed one of them capturing the Tygerian’s image on his communicator. Rasc smiled, gave them plenty of time to do what they needed to do and led the Lycans off the balcony and back down the stairs to the courtyard. Mission accomplished. All he had to do now was sit back and wait for the Lycans to relay the news to the Tygerians that King Janos had their missing prince.
****
It had been a year since the armies had last deployed, and now negotiations had broken down entirely. Janos had just had to make the announcement that the Athelonian army had infiltrated the Herkon borders yet again, but this time, they had crushed all resistance, and they were making steady progress toward Wirlo itself.
If they kept to their current pace, they’d reach the city in less than three weeks, and Janos had vowed to ride out and meet them in a battle to save the city and repel their advance. He had promised his people he would stop the invasion force entirely and for good this time, and send them back to Athelon with their tails between their legs.
Not in so many words, of course. He prided himself on never using any Alliance expressions or slang of any kind. He hated how the words and the slang had been infiltrating his country since the Surrender and even his own courtiers had started using some of the Alliance phrases. It was Janos’s job, he believed, to keep those influences away from his people. He sighed as he stood on the balcony outside the throne room where he’d been meeting with his advisors. It overlooked the courtyard, and from there he could not only see the men training but he could see his brother’s human aide, Rasc Centarlo, standing on a nearby balcony watching his guard with the Lycan delegation, whom he’d apparently agreed to take around the palace grounds. Janos frowned at sight of him. He didn’t like the brash and irreverent human, nor did he trust him, but he allowed his brother to choose his own servants.
As for the Lycans, he knew he was being rude, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to meet with them at all.
He forced his attention back to his soldiers, and one soldier in particular. The young Tygerian who called himself Bastion, and who was magnificent as he wrestled with the others and thrust and parried with his sword. His other weapons—daggers, short utility knives even a broad sword—were plain and unadorned, strapped to his strong, tanned body and jammed down into the tight waistband of his short teruga. He wore thick animal skin boots that laced up to his knees, and Janos saw a knife handle sticking up out of the top of one of them. He was fierce and strong and altogether gorgeous. The memory of being held in those strong arms came back to him as he watched, and he shivered, despite the heat of the day.
The training the men were engaged in at the moment involved close hand to hand combat. He watched as Bastion easily unarmed an older, more experienced soldier and threw him down on his back. The man sprang back to his feet and continued wrestling for another few minutes, until Bastion locked his muscular arm around the other man’s neck, took him to the ground and held him there, absorbing the impact of the various surges, struggles and efforts of the man to break free. Finally, the other soldier slammed his hand down on the ground and Bastion jumped back to his feet, giving the man on the ground a good-natured grin and extending a hand down to him to help him rise. He slung the sweat from his hair by giving his head a shake and then moved on to the next opponent.
Was Bastion as good against the other soldiers as he looked? He angled a look over at his uncle Losef, who had just arrived on the balcony beside him and had been watching Bastion along with Janos. The boy’s fighting skills actually seemed to demand attention.
“He’s something really special, isn’t he?” Losef asked, nodding down at the field. “I knew you’d recognize his skill. The young man would have made sergeant by now if not for his unfortunate background, but he’s still well treated by the other men and his captains alike. Never backs down from a challenge, no matter how large.”
“His…‘unfortunate background?’”
“The fact that he’s a Tygerian and a slave.”
“Oh.”
The soldiers were sparring together on the practice fields below, stretched out in long rows that extended past the palace gates and into the fields beyond, their tanned, sweating bodies on full display. They all seemed to be in good fighting form.
These soldiers were Janos’s personal guard, so they wore his red and white colors and Janos himself, and he alone, deployed them when they were needed and rode out at their head. The soldiers were Herkos’s best fighters and in perfect physic
al condition from their near constant training. Since the weather was as hot as it usually was on Laltana, Bastion was almost naked, and the sight of him was doing strange things to Janos’s insides.
Kings and princes had to be careful not to scatter their seed with female slaves or servants. They had to be especially careful to take no women from the court, unless they were prepared to make the union official. It was far too important to make political marriages and there could never be any question about succession. So males lying with other males, or two females lying together had never been an issue on Laltana. No one would have thought twice if he had summoned the young Tygerian to his bed. Yet Janos knew it was wrong. The young man was a prince and of royal blood. He should be home with his family, not practicing on the field with a group of common soldiers. What was Janos doing? Why was he hesitating so?
“He’s rather impressive,” he told his uncle, carefully keeping his tone bland and disinterested. “The Tygerians always were beasts when it came to fighting. You know what some of the Earthan soldiers used to say about the Bloody Prince of Tygeria? They said he was actually killed five years before the war ended, but Death couldn’t work up the courage to tell him to lie down.”
Losef snorted. “So, you’re saying you think all Tygerians fight like this one?”
“No,” he said softly, looking back down at Bastion. From here, he looked exactly like his brother, Mikos. “Not all of them. I have to admit he’s something special. Have they been informed of when they’re leaving to intercept the Athelonian army?” Janos asked.
Losef shook his head. “Not yet. The captains will make the announcement at their evening meal tonight.”
“Have them ready to leave early. Be sure they know.”
“You’re still planning on riding with the men?”
“Of course.”
“Then make sure you take all necessary precautions, since you insist. After all, we wouldn’t want anything to happen to you now, would we?”
Chapter Nine
It was said that a true soldier didn’t fight because he hated what was in front of him, but because he loved what was behind him. That wasn’t, of course, true for Larz. He didn’t have any feelings of either love or hatred for Herkos or Athelon—in fact, he supposed he had less reason to love the Herkons than he did the Athelonians. He was a slave in Herkos, after all, and the only person in Herkos, besides perhaps Kelan, that he cared about at all, was his friend Luc. No, that wasn’t exactly correct. He looked over his shoulder to see if King Janos’s transport was coming around from behind them. Maybe it was time to admit he had feelings for the beautiful young king, who was traveling along with the army that morning, and he’d had them since that night by the creek, when they’d kissed in the moonlight. Maybe even before that.
He had come close to imprinting on him, and that was serious for a Tygerian. It was a good thing the king had called a halt to things or Larz might have been lost. And he saw no future for a king and a slave. Still, he had to be careful when he was around him again, especially if they became intimate. Tygerians fell in love quickly and Larz knew he was already halfway there.
The army had left to intercept the Athelonian troops before first light. The three hundred men of the king’s guard had been joined by the rest of the Herkon Army, so the line of soldiers was long indeed, with over a thousand men stretched out behind them. The plan, as it had been passed on to him and the other members of the guard by their sergeants and captains, was to make a stand to halt the advance of the Athelonian troops at a hill called Lityba, where they would have the distinct advantage of being on higher ground.
As he and Luc walked along the dusty road, they discussed the advantages they knew about occupying high ground. Larz remembered being told by one of his tutors about how General Ji Ming of the planet Javon used this principle to his advantage by sending lookouts to positions of higher-ground to scout for and provide early warning about enemy troops as early as a thousand years ago. He’d been excited by the concept and talked to his father about it, who had told him that it had been employed for far longer than that.
Soldiers fighting uphill were assumed to tire more quickly and move more slowly, when compared to soldiers fighting downhill, who wouldn’t have to struggle against the forces of gravity alongside natural obstacles in the terrain. Furthermore, considering the fact that modern weapons wouldn’t be in use, they would be elevated above the Athelonians and be able to get greater range out of low-speed projectiles, like rocks, spears, and arrows, all of which could be used to demoralize and harass the approaching enemy. It sounded like a good plan. But Larz listened to soldiers talking about war every chance he could get since he was a young boy, and his own brother and father were two of the best warriors that Tygeria had ever produced. He knew from listening to their conversations that even the best plans could fail.
By midday the Herkon army had reached Lityba and all the various adjuncts to the army, the supply wagons, the livestock, the medics, the messengers and the king’s entourage began preparations to camp at the rear, while the soldiers and their captains prepared for the fight ahead. Luc pulled a small jar from his argyss, a small fur purse most of the soldiers wore tied around their waists, since they didn’t have pockets. He opened it up and motioned for Larz to come closer.
“I’ll put on your battle paint and then you can do the same for me.”
“Battle paint? On my face?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding solemnly. “It’s a Herkon tradition and makes us look more fierce to the enemy. Just before they go into battle, the Herkons paint their faces. It’s also the same pattern the Herkon priests put on a body to prepare it for burial, so if something happens, the body is already prepared.”
“All right, that’s not morbid at all.”
Luc grinned and shrugged. “It’s kind of like whistling in the dark. You know—trying to remain brave and defiant to convince yourself the situation is not as bad as it seems.”
Larz smiled. “Go ahead then. Tell me what you’re doing so I can do it for you after you put mine on.”
“I’ll keep it simple. Just a line straight down the middle of your face, on down to the chin. Then two lines around your face, along your jaws and up to your temples. They’ll blend into the stripes you already have.”
His fingers dipped into the paint and he began to draw his lines with the tip of his fingers—one straight line down his face. Then a line around each side of his face from his chin up to his forehead to meet in the middle. Luc sat back to admire his handiwork and handed the pot over to Larz. “Your turn. Make me pretty.”
“I’m not a magician,” he said, laughing as he smoothed the same kind of lines around and across his friend’s face.
Elsewhere around the camp, other soldiers were painting their own faces and preparing for the battle ahead. From this vantage point, they could all see for a good distance down into the valley below, which meant they could also be seen by the approaching Athelonian army. The king’s banners, red on a field of white, stretched out as far as the eye could see along and behind the hillside, so the spectacle they made would be formidable. There was tension in the air as they waited for their first glimpse of the enemy.
They didn’t have long to wait. Dispatches began to arrive and be taken to the commanders by frantic looking messengers, their faces dusty and desperate as they raced into camp. In the valley below, Larz could see thick columns of smoke billowing up toward the sky, and knew the approaching army was burning houses and fields as it advanced, following a scorched ground policy, thereby destroying anything that might be useful to the Herkons if they were able to continue their advance toward Athelon. They could also see signs of the first Athelonian army outliers coming toward them, and the lieutenants and sergeants began to shout orders at the men, walking up and down the line and moving groups of them from place to place on the hill to gain a more strategic advantage.
From his position midway up the first rise, Larz glanced over hi
s shoulder and up to where the generals were standing beneath their banners. The king was with them. His chest was bare, like his soldiers, and he wore his hair in long, braided locks. Around his neck was an elaborate breastplate necklace of some kind of precious metal that shone like a beacon in the bright Laltana sun and hung down to the midpoint of his chest. On his face, he wore war paint, like the other soldiers. He was magnificent and Larz thought he’d never seen anyone so beautiful.
Still, he cursed softly under his breath—Janos made far too good a target with his bright necklace and his white skin. He needed to move farther back in Larz’s opinion—like all the way back to Wirlo. This was a foolhardy display and risked him needlessly. If he belonged to Larz, this wouldn’t happen.
What was the point of having a personal guard, when you deployed them elsewhere? He wanted badly to march up the hill and take his place at the king’s side, but he knew it was impossible, and some captain would only rage at him to get back in line if he tried it. A shout from a formation farther down the hill made Larz turn.
From a distance of perhaps a half-mile, the main body of the enemy army came into view. The line, broken into moving fragments by the ground, came toward them through the smoky fields and woods. They came steadily on, and Larz could see an Athelonian flag tossing angrily in the wind. Larz and Luc watched their approach with fascination. He had always, or for as long as he could remember anyway, longed for the romance and thrill of battle. His omak had told him there was nothing romantic about it, but he hadn’t believed him—until maybe now. The waiting, the unbearable tension, the hot sun beating down on his head, the rivulets of sweat, and not all of it from the heat, were miserable in the extreme.
Larz looked at the men nearest him, and saw, for the most part, expressions of deep concentration on their faces as they watched the Athelonians quickly advancing toward the hill, as if they were studying something that fascinated them. Luc fidgeted restlessly beside him and a few others took a step or two forward and then back, as if unable to stand still. It was difficult to stand still, and the officers kept yelling hoarsely at them and exhorting them to “Keep steady, men. Hold the line.”