by Alex Faure
The next several days unfolded in a similar manner. Darius was fed, watered, and exercised, and generally treated by the Celts like a valuable horse—specifically, like a horse whose high valuation puzzled its owners, but who had chosen to go along with it out of self-interest.
Kealan was even more unpleasant, but as he had been so unpleasant from the beginning, it was a matter of diminishing returns. Darius had given up on the idea of befriending him. Not because he didn’t think himself capable of winning Kealan over, nor because he no longer felt it would be helpful strategically to have the translator’s sympathy, but because he didn’t want to. The man was a boor.
Darius continued to help the villagers build their roundhouse, and after a few days he began to see tangible results from his efforts. Not only in the sense that the house was coming together, but in the attitudes of his captors. Other villagers came to watch him work, drawn no doubt by the spectacle of a Roman soldier aiding their peasants. Darius worked hard and did not complain, shrugging if anyone seemed to praise him and generally giving off the impression that he would rather labour than sit idly, even in captivity. His guards stopped treating him like an overpriced horse and carried on actual conversations with him through Kealan. The peasant family began greeting him each day with smiles and shoulder slaps. They even gave him gifts—strange fruits, roasted nuts, and sweet-smelling soaps.
It was what Darius had been aiming for—befriending one’s captors always paid off in ways large and small. But he found it difficult to appreciate his success.
Darius began to contemplate a long period of captivity in the Volundi village. If Fionn’s intention was, in fact, to ransom him to Agricola—and Darius could not think of anything else Fionn might do with him—then it could take weeks for those negotiations to play out, given the distances involved. If Agricola agreed to ransom him at all.
Agricola would ransom him. Increasingly, Darius found himself clinging to this. Agricola would ransom him and the other captives, wherever they had gone. He couldn’t allow himself to believe that he would never leave this savage island, which had only grown more baffling as he came to know it better. He thought of his fellow captives daily, praying to the gods—though he’d never been much of a religious man—that the Robogdi were planning to sell them back to Rome.
A week after Darius had been brought to the village, he started awake.
It was the middle of the night, and the roundhouse was pitch black. He could not see his own body when he looked down. What had woken him?
A finger touched his lips.
Darius stilled. He hadn’t sensed or heard anyone approach his bed, which made him wonder if his visitor had stood there for some time, watching him sleep. The finger withdrew and then, lightly, a cool, long-fingered hand came to rest against the side of his face.
“Fionn.”
It came out as a breath of air. Fionn touched his lips again, and Darius nodded. Fionn must have drawn away the guards somehow, but others still might overhear them. Darius’s entire body thrummed with Fionn’s nearness. Everything else faded away—there was only Fionn in the darkness. Fionn, who Darius had ached for since they parted, an ache he had buried beneath layers of duty and distrust and logic, but never cured.
Fionn brought their mouths together.
Darius made a muffled sound against his lips. He would have expected a deep, passionate kiss, like those they had shared in the forest, something that echoed the desire coursing through him. But Fionn kissed him with such sweetness, and so gently, that Darius almost didn’t recognize him. The kiss hovered in the darkness between them, and Darius felt himself matching it as strange feelings welled inside him. With that kiss, Fionn told him that he had missed him, that he had worried for his safety. Darius didn’t have to wonder why. Given the destruction the Celts had wrought on the Roman forts, Fionn would have known there was a good chance Darius had been killed.
He drew back and brushed his fingers through Fionn’s hair, traced his bottom lip with his thumb. Gods, he had missed him. Fionn let out a slow sigh that seemed to hold something deeper than relief. Then he wrapped his arms around Darius’s waist and leaned into him, resting his face against the curve of Darius’s neck.
Darius, bizarrely, felt tears well in his eyes. The intimacy of it dwarfed anything he and Fionn had done before, even when Darius had been inside him. He had never felt anything close to what he felt now.
He could feel Fionn’s breath against his neck, and the flutter of his eyelashes. His body was warm and smelled of leaves and sap, and it moulded itself perfectly to Darius’s. He kissed the top of Fionn’s head and then simply rested there, breathing in the scent of his hair.
Fionn slid his hand up Darius’s body and rested it on Darius’s chest. He began to kiss Darius’s neck—small, slow kisses, suckling gently. Darius shivered. He felt the brush of Fionn’s tongue. It was nothing any of Darius’s lovers had done before, a primal, Celtic gesture, and yet Darius didn’t ever want him to stop. Eventually, Fionn worked his way up to Darius’s mouth.
This kiss was deeper, but no less slow. Their tongues brushed together. Darius began to wonder seriously if he was going to come—he felt it building inside him simply from the feeling of Fionn’s tongue and the press of his clothed body.
Fionn drew back, and for a moment did nothing but breathe. Darius realized that Fionn could see him in the darkness, and was watching him. The thought wasn’t disconcerting, as it should have been. Darius’s own senses were so focused on Fionn that it was as if he could see him too. Then there came the rustle of clothing as Fionn began to undress.
Darius wanted to do it for him. He wanted the proprietary feeling that came with removing a lover’s clothes with his own hands. He found Fionn’s hands, stilled them, and began to tug at the clothing himself. There was some sort of fur cloak—he thought it might be the gold-edged thing he had worn before, the mark of his kingship. He managed it eventually, after some silent cursing—the ties were all in the wrong places. He would have thought the tunic beneath would be easy; after all, Darius had worn Celtic tunics. But it was more elaborate than anything he had dealt with, and fastened tight so that it couldn’t simply be drawn over Fionn’s head. But where were the fastenings? Darius couldn’t find them, even after he turned Fionn around to explore his back with his hands.
Fionn began to laugh—a smothered, breathy sound, his shoulders shaking. Darius began to laugh too. They leaned against each other as the bed shook.
Fionn playfully slapped Darius’s hands away and finished undressing himself. Then he slipped beneath the covers and simply waited.
Darius felt every beat of his heart. He stripped off his thin Celtic trousers, which was all he was wearing. Then he slipped beneath the blankets.
The bed was narrow, and Darius didn’t need to pull Fionn towards him. He felt Fionn’s hardness against him; it made him ridiculously grateful. Their cocks pressed together as they kissed, and Fionn, with that familiar, liquid grace, drew one leg up to wrap around Darius. He rolled, pulling Darius on top of him.
For a long, sweet moment, they stayed that way, their bodies pressed together, their kisses deep and slow. Fionn’s hands were tangled in Darius’s hair, both his legs wrapped around him. Darius savoured the feeling of Fionn’s warm body against his. He wanted them to melt together and never be parted. He was dimly aware that they were both trembling.
They began to move together, first a slow pulse, their hard cocks sliding against each other. At some point, Fionn’s legs moved higher, and Darius fitted himself between them. He let out a whispered curse—he had no oil, and the water jug was on the other side of the room. Then Fionn took Darius’s hand and placed it between his legs, and Darius felt the wetness there, how Fionn was much less tight than would be expected.
He let out a breath of air, feeling his body flush all over. Fionn had prepared himself before coming to Darius. That single thought was almost enough to send him over the edge.
“Clever,” he m
urmured into Fionn’s ear, quiet as a breath.
“And you thought I had no gift for strategy,” Fionn murmured back, just as quietly. He bit Darius’s lower lip as his hand clenched around Darius’s buttocks, hard enough for pain. Darius moaned softly. Fionn’s lovemaking had a primal quality that took his breath away, and the man was as flexible as a cat. He bit Fionn’s ear, hard, and Fionn arched his back.
“Darius,” he breathed.
Darius couldn’t stand it any longer. He moved his hips to where they needed to be and thrust into Fionn. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t slow. He could tell that Fionn wanted it that way, wanted this hard, animal fucking, and that knowledge almost made him lose control again. He mastered himself, and drove deeper into Fionn, a rhythm that built and built. The bed struck the wall over and over again, and if there had been a guard at the door, he would have heard it.
Fionn breathed in gasps timed to Darius’s thrusts, his arms wrapped around Darius, one hand cupping his head as if to press him as close as possible. Darius felt the hard brush of his nipples with every thrust. “Yes,” he murmured in their shared language, his heels digging harder into Darius’s back. “Yes. Yes. Oh, there. Yes.”
He came in a rush, biting his lip to stifle the cry. Darius felt the spasm of his body and the arch of his back from the intensity of the pleasure, and the knowledge that he had done that to Fionn sent him over the edge, exploding into Fionn’s body. It was pleasure like he had never known before, except with Fionn, rolling over him in waves and leaving him warm and boneless.
They lay together in a heap afterwards, Darius half on top of Fionn with his face pressed into the side of his head. He felt Fionn’s heart pounding against him, felt his ragged breathing. Both gradually slowed. The covers were gone; they were naked and sweating in the darkness.
“Fionn,” Darius murmured in his ear. “Fionnwyn. I love you. I love you so much.”
The admission laid him bare—to himself as well as Fionn. He could scarcely believe it, and yet he felt it with every beat of his heart, every stirring of desire. He loved Fionn—his enemy, his rescuer—with a love as deep and dark as a bottomless well.
Fionn’s laugh was a whisper in the darkness. He brushed Darius’s lips with a sweet, soft kiss. “I know you do, you idiot.”
“Do you love me?” Darius pushed himself up, wishing he could search Fionn’s eyes.
“You Romans are not very observant.” Fionn’s voice was warm with amusement. “I’ve always loved you, Darius Lucilius.”
Darius felt a thrill of dazed happiness. “Always?”
Fionn touched his face. He seemed oddly hesitant. “We have…a lot to talk about, you and I.”
Darius made a sound that was half amused and half frustrated. “And yet you’ve never seemed eager to talk.”
“I know. But we will.” Fionn said. “When you’re ready to hear it.”
“I’m ready now.”
Fionn said nothing, and Darius let out a long sigh. He kept stroking Fionn’s hair. It was so impossibly soft. He doubted he would ever tire of touching it.
“Just tell me one thing,” he said. “This man I remind you of. Did you love him as you love me?”
He felt Fionn smile. “I loved him…I loved him with every fibre of my soul, which I would have given to him dressed on a platter, had he asked.”
They were quiet for a long moment. “He was a fool to have left you,” Darius said. It just came out, an admission drawn from somewhere deep inside him. And yet he was going to leave Fionn, wasn’t he? How could he do anything else?
Darius felt that ache again, as if he had already left Fionn, as if he were not nestled into his arms. As if he lived both present and future at the same time.
Fionn didn’t seem to notice the turmoil inside him. “He didn’t have a choice,” he said softly.
There came the sound of footsteps outside, and the murmur of at least two voices, and Darius felt Fionn still. The footsteps passed by, but the voices didn’t fade completely; the pair had stopped nearby, conversing. The fort wasn’t empty, even at this time of night.
Fionn pulled Darius closer and murmured in his ear. “I’m working on a way for us to talk properly. Please be patient.”
Darius wondered if Fionn really meant that. They’d had many opportunities to talk in private in the forest, and Fionn hadn’t taken them. Was that because he had still viewed Darius as an enemy, and now no longer did?
Darius thought of how Fionn had prepared himself before coming to him—he had been aroused by it, but viewed in another light, it had been an arrogant presumption. Fionn’s people had killed hundreds of Darius’s soldiers. They were still enemies, even if they were other things alongside that. He felt a stab of anger at Fionn for so casually disregarding all that Darius had lost, all that he had taken from him. And yet, the Romans had taken things from Fionn, too. His father. Perhaps other family members and friends.
Darius made a sound into Fionn’s hair that was almost a groan. Trying to reconcile what Fionn meant to him—his enemy and his lover; the man to whom he had given his heart even after he murdered Darius’s men—made him feel as if he were slipping from a precipice. He would shatter, somehow, if he focused too closely on the paradox of his feelings.
“I’ve never loved anyone this way,” he whispered. The words came out sounding the way he felt—lost and baffled.
Fionn touched his lips with one cool fingertip. It felt like a promise. Then he was rising, pulling his clothes back on. He went to the window, and Darius glimpsed a hint of him against the starlight—he was not wearing the cloak of kingship after all, but a plain, dark one. He hovered at the window for a long moment, head cocked, listening to something Darius couldn’t hear. The pose, and the stillness that went along with it, were not at all human. Then he drew up his hood and slipped outside, swift and soundless as an owl.
Chapter Five
That night, Darius’s dreams were strange.
He was back in Sicily, where his olive trees were being crowded by unlikely invaders: leafy oaks and ashes of the species that grew in Hibernia. They spread their boughs among the smaller olive trees, blocking out their light. Darius laboured for what felt like days, hacking at the invaders with an axe, felling them one by one. Yet as fast as he worked, the olive trees died. And everywhere he went, he was haunted by the sound of rustling feathers overhead. But the bird responsible darted through the leaves before he could identify it.
He awoke to a vague sense of fear and frustration. He rose and bathed himself with the water that had been left for him by a soft-footed servant. But he found he could only nibble at the porridge and berries provided, though he did down the mug of tea. He wondered briefly if the stuff had some addictive property, given how he had grown to like it.
The guards had been repositioned outside his door. They nodded to Darius with their usual temperate friendliness, as if nothing had changed, as if he had not made passionate love to their king only hours ago. Which, of course, they knew nothing about.
Darius traversed the village, meeting the villagers’ curious stares. He found himself surprised, as he had been before, by how little hostility he encountered. The Volundi, he’d come to understand, were possessed of a pragmatism verging on the uncanny that would be catnip to every philosopher and ethnographer back in Rome. Several villagers—peasants, for the most part—even smiled at him, and Darius found himself gratified that his efforts at the peasant hut had paid off, even in this slight thawing of tension. His guards followed at a discreet distance, occasionally stopping to exchange words with the villagers.
Darius paused at the southern edge of the village, where a field strewn with bluebells separated the last roundhouses from the stables. Assembled there were a dozen Volundi warriors, all men, engaged in some sort of war game with wooden sticks. The Celts were tall, though many had the beanpole look characteristic of men in their late teens. At first, Darius could make little sense of what they were doing. The Celts ran helter-skelter around
the field, a chaotic swirl of skirmishes and retreats and ear-splitting battle cries. Gradually, he came to understand that there were two sides: a side of four and a side of eight. Time and again, the four were corralled by the eight at the bole of an enormous oak, their sticks batted aside and their feet knocked out from under them. There was no pattern to it that Darius could discern. In that sense, it called to mind many battles he had engaged in with poorly organized Celtic forces.
Kealan, slightly out of breath, found him there several minutes later. “What is this? You think to catalogue our battle tactics, Roman?”
Darius was tempted to point out that there wasn’t much to catalogue, and that the ‘tactics’ Kealan referenced barely deserved the name. “I’m a one-man army, Kealan,” he said mildly. “Any knowledge I gain here can be put to little use.”
The four Volundi had been cornered again—or rather three, for one had been driven into a thorn bush by two of the eight, an easy feat given that he had stupidly ceded the higher ground. The soldier in Darius cringed. He realized that he’d had enough.
“Come,” he said to Kealan, approaching the knot of Volundi warriors just as the tribe of three threw down their practice swords. Kealan made an inarticulate sound, and called after him, but Darius didn’t turn.
He called out a greeting in the Hibernian tongue, and the men turned to stare at him. He had been correct in his assessment—the oldest among them was in his early twenties, the youngest about fifteen. Old enough to be sent into battle in these lands.
The oldest warrior said something in response to Darius’s greeting that made the others chuckle. “What was that?” Darius said to Kealan, who was just catching up.
Kealan said something in a sharp voice to the warriors. The oldest—who seemed to be the leader, whether by rank or disposition—shrugged and said something in reply. His blonde hair was almost as pale as Fionn’s, though his skin was tanned. The others seemed to be attempting to conceal their smirks.