Archive of Our Own

It’s just begun to rain when Henry presents himself in Christian of Pisek’s office, blackmail in hand.

Out of habit, Henry makes no noise when he opens the door. It’s only the creak of a loose floorboard that starts Christian from his desk, sending sheets of vellum fluttering to the floor. Then he sees Henry.

“Good Lord. Is that you, Henry? It’s–well, I was just about to turn in, and…” In the light of the single candle sputtering on Christian’s desk, Henry sees the nobleman’s nostrils twitch. “You’re covered in blood.”

“Evening, Sir Christian.” Henry holds out the ledger for the secret mints in a gloved hand. “This should interest you.”

There’s a moment of hesitation before Christian takes the book. Henry crosses the room to the window and waits there, listening to the rustle of pages behind him. Rain falls in a steady whisper outside; the dim lights of the miners’ fires still burn for a little while, but as the rainfall grows heavier, the lights wink out one by one.

Henry watches the darkness fall. He waits.

It’s when he’s forced to wait that everything gets worse. The growing pit inside him resumes crumbling away, clods of dirt sliding free to disappear into the bottomless void for good. It becomes harder to draw a full breath; there’s too much emptiness to fill and too little air. The edges pull apart in an endless yawn, until Henry can’t see from one side to the other. He’ll never make it out.

There on the other side, though Henry can’t see him–can only sense him, like the pulsing of a heart in a dark room–crouches the man in black armor.

Watching. Laughing.

“It’s all here,” says a hushed voice from behind Henry. The edges of the pit snap together. Henry breathes in. “Everything we need to destroy Vavak. I can scarcely believe my eyes. But Henry… All that blood. What did it cost?”

Henry has the answer ready. He thought Christian might ask, so he counted.

“Six men.”

“Six men dead? How awful.” Christian gazes at the wall for a moment, eyes unfocused. Then he writes off six lives with a brief shudder and asks, “What about Buresh, the owner of the smelting works?”

Henry amends his answer. “Five men and Buresh.”

“Mother of God.” The nobleman crosses himself. His eyes narrow and he opens his mouth, visibly poised to speak in anger–but then he looks Henry over again and seemingly thinks better of it. “I certainly hope it was necessary to kill him.”

“I had to make sure he wasn’t holding anything back. As a matter of fact, he was. He had a letter.”

Henry hands over the letter, too. Christian peers at it, then turns to rummage through his desk until he finds a pair of spectacles. Mint Master Vavak’s slanted script wasn’t the easiest thing for Henry to decipher, either, and the bloodstains probably don’t help. But in the end, Christian is satisfied: with the letter and the ledgers, if not with Henry’s methods of obtaining them. He seems strangely deflated when he sees Henry to the door, as if he’s just spotted another nobleman cantering along on a horse he meant to buy.

“Wait, Henry. You aren’t going to ride back to Kuttenberg tonight? It’s pitch black and wet as a trough out there. I’m certain I heard thunder. You might bed down in the stables…”

“I don’t have time to lose, Sir Christian.” Henry lifts his hood over his ears. “Good night. Maybe we’ll meet again.”

“Lord Ruthard surely won’t receive you before morning. Come now, my good man, stay the night. Your mare will break a leg in the mud, or you’ll both be struck by lightning. Not to mention, the road from here to Kuttenberg is lousy with bandit traps. Think of your horse’s life if not your own–I beg.”

“Good night, Sir Christian.”

Pebbles nickers softly at Henry while he saddles her. Moths flutter around the oil lamp that lights Christian of Pisek’s two-stall barn; the only other horse lodged here is Christian’s own mount, a surly bay roan hunkered down in the neighboring stall with his tail facing outward. Henry pats Pebbles’s neck. Behind him, Mutt drips into the hay and shivers.

“It’s only a bit of rain, girl.”

The miner’s camps are dark; the road leading southeast toward Old Kutna is rapidly turning to slush. Henry is almost entirely blind. He tracks their progress in flashes of lightning that reveal the surrounding landscape for seconds at a time: wet hills, bowed trees, a church’s spire on the horizon. The sightless space between flashes is cold and deep. You’ve already failed, the man in black armor says. Why don’t you go home?

Oh. Silly me, I almost forgot. It burned down.

Henry hasn’t slept in–there’s no use thinking about how long. He doesn’t dare close his eyes now. Falling from the saddle hurts, and there’s no Katherine here to pull him upright and dust him off. He sleeps when he can, when there’s nothing else to do. Rest is like food; he can’t do without it. The weeks since Trosky have taught him that.

But he’s close now. He isn’t stumbling through the dark anymore, armed with only a name (John of Liechtenstein) and a faint, clutching hope. He has a fortress made of stone–Maleshov–and a man who knows the way in–Lord Ruthard.

With a fortress and a way inside, the rest of Henry’s obstacles can be cut through with steel. The only possible complication is that he may die in the attempt, but he’s read that part of the contract so many times his eyes glaze over it now: Pribyslavitz, Vranik, Talmberg. It’s almost a relief to sign his name at the bottom.

Yes, death will be the consequence of failure. So the world goes.

Henry’s eyelids are growing heavy enough to alarm him, so he touches Pebbles’s sides lightly with his spurs. The moment he does, the sky flares white. Pebbles pins her ears; the trot she breaks into is stiff, unsettled.

“Steady on, my girl,” Henry says, but thunder drowns his voice.

It happens quickly. The road ahead is nothing but shadow, dark and darker, and among the shadows Pebbles can sense and Henry can’t, one gives her pause. He feels the shock of tension in her muscles beneath him in the moment before she balks. But he’s too slow to react.

The reins jerk from his hand–and the world lurches like an upended vase. Pebbles grunts in surprise. Henry feels his weight leave the saddle.

Pain. Then nothing.

When Henry unglues his eyelids and returns to the world of the living, he finds himself in a troubling–but not unfamiliar–predicament. He’s face-down on a dirt floor with his hands tied behind his back, and he’s been divested of his plate and weapons. Dull pain pounds through his head, temple to temple.

Look at you, crows the man in black. No matter how many times you run, you always wind up right back here. Helpless. How does it feel?

“Good morning, my friend.” A familiar voice; Henry frowns, struggling to place it. “You looked so comfortable down there, I thought you’d sleep for longer.”

Grunting, Henry wriggles onto his side. The interior of a tent dimly lit by candleglow swims into view, along with the voice’s owner: a man in armor seated atop a trunk, legs spread. The man’s face is in shadow, but the light falls across a sword laid flat over his knees. He’s using a rag to polish the blade in small, careful strokes.

It’s Henry’s sword. And his not-father Martin’s sword, and Sir Radzig’s sword, and–

“Put that down,” Henry says.

“Almost done.” The voice; Henry knows the voice. “It’s a beautiful weapon. I would hate to see it rust. But it looks like someone hasn’t been taking care of it properly.”

Henry lies still and seethes. He tests the knots around his wrists; he can’t be certain without giving it a real go, but he doesn’t think he’ll break them with any sort of ease. Dizziness circles above, like a pair of vultures waiting to see if he’ll move. He thinks he might be hungry. It’s difficult to tell.

The longer Henry waits, the wider the emptiness grows. But the man cleaning his sword doesn’t make him wait long.

“There. I won’t say it’s as pretty as the day it was forged, but who is? As for you, Henry…”

The man sets Henry’s sword aside and squats in front of Henry, bringing his face into the candlelight.

“Gules of Semine,” Henry bites out. “You old whoreson. What do you have me tied up for?”

For a moment he thought… but no, it couldn’t have been Bartosch. There’s a surface resemblance between the two men, but Gules’s beard is thicker, his wrinkles are far deeper, and there’s a roving wariness in his flint-gray eyes utterly unlike Bartosch’s calm, curious stare. Gules always reminded Henry of a bear in winter: a big man reduced to lean times, hungry and tired and dangerous.

Henry liked him almost at once, but he never trusted him. Evidently the feeling is mutual.

“Can’t be too careful,” Gules says with a shrug, like stripping Henry of his weapons and roping his hands behind his back is run-of-the-mill caution akin to locking one’s door at night. “You might have woken up in a nasty mood. It was my trap that spooked your mare, after all.”

“Trap?”

“Aye, it’s the oldest trick in the book. Two pegs and a sturdy rope stretched between. Set it on a moonless night, and any hapless soul foolish enough to go riding in the dark will soon regret it–if he doesn’t break his neck when the horse throws him from the saddle.”

Henry looks at him coldly. “So you’re back to banditry.”

“I’ll tell you the whole sorry tale, but wouldn’t you rather hear it with your hands untied? I’ll happily turn you loose if you promise to behave yourself.”

“Treat me like a guest,” Henry says, “and I’ll act like one.”

Gules grins at that, as if he’s pleased with Henry’s wit. He motions for Henry to roll over. The rope chafes Henry’s wrists as Gules tugs the knots loose; then he’s free. Henry sits up, rubbing the welts.

Gules leans over him. “Better?”

Henry punches him in the mouth. Gules rears back with a grunt, a hand flying to his jaw. Blood seeps between his fingers.

“That’s for my horse, you cunt.”

But Henry doesn’t dive for his sword, even though every nerve in his body is screaming for it. The anger is in him again, cold as ice. He could kill Gules; he could kill every last one of Gules’s men, however many there are in the camp. Instead he waits while Gules wipes blood from his burst lip, cursing under his breath. If Gules’s fingers are itching for his own dagger, he doesn’t show it.

“Everything all right in there, Sir?” calls a husky, lisping voice from beyond the tent walls.

“Fine.” Gules spits red. “It’s well in hand.”

Footsteps trudge away through the hissing rain. Henry’s still sunk in a half-crouch, aware of every inch between his hand and the grip of his sword. He has a hunch that his plate is in the trunk. It might be locked, but Gules surely has the keys.

Gules wipes his hand on his chausses. “Your sodding horse is fine. Perfect health–fit as a bloody fiddle. My men treated her like the Queen of Sheba while they worked out the sum she’d fetch. Don’t believe me? Have a look outside.”

Henry twitches the tent flap aside. Through the gray drizzle, he sees the sweating, slanted sides of more tents; the rear end of a guard in rusted mail, whistling as he strolls away; a spent cookfire in an ash-black pit; and there, past the tents, Pebbles snout-deep in a pile of wet hay. Henry’s heart twinges.

Pebbles hates wet hay. Hasn’t he been feeding her enough?

“When my men found you facedown in the mud,” Gules says from behind him, slightly muffled, “they saw your plate and your fine sword and started celebrating that they’d found a genuine knight to ransom off. I had to break the news that you were nothing of the sort.”

Henry lets the tent flap drop and turns to face him. “Do they know who I am?”

“Just an old friend.”

“Do they know I killed all of your other old friends because you asked me nicely?”

“No, Henry,” Gules says. “They don’t. And I’d like to keep it that way.”

Gules motions toward the trunk, an invitation to sit. Henry’s insides curdle. Sitting is the same damned thing as waiting: anathema. The road to Kuttenberg calls him, though the pounding of his headache nearly drowns it out. 

It occurs to Henry now to touch his hair, looking for blood.

A knock to the head can be a slow killer, Klara tells him. Look for nausea, chills, confusion. If there’s bleeding inside, there’s nothing to do but wait. Moving will only make it worse.

Henry’s fingers come away tacky and brown. That’s the trouble with blood; it looks exactly like mud when it dries, especially by candlelight. And how would he know if he has chills, when he’s been cold since Trosky? But he isn’t confused. He’s well aware that getting back in the saddle right this minute would be a stupid thing to do. Besides, his horse needs to eat.

Henry sits on the trunk. He says a silent prayer for Klara, cold in her grave under a mountain of rubble at Nebakov, and trains his stare on Gules.

“You were going to tell me a story.”

“Such a tale calls for fine Italian wine and roasted songbirds,” Gules says, eyes crinkling at the corners, and he passes Henry a skin of sour beer and a heel of bread. “You had better fare in your saddlebags, but my men already divided the spoils. I have to keep the boys happy or it all falls apart. You understand.”

“Aye, when it falls apart it takes ages to clean up the mess. They scatter like rats.”

“And then you need a terrier to flush them out of their holes. A young dog with a bite worse than his bark.”

Gules laughs, even more amused by his own wit than Henry’s. It strikes Henry that he looks far more at home in a sagging roadside tent with mud caked into his couters than he ever did patrolling the walls of Semine Fortress. Of all the barons turned bandit that Henry’s met–and by now, it’s a fair few–Gules looks the least like a man brought up in castles, once a boy crawling after dogs beneath his noble father’s table. Hard living suits him.

“You left Semine with the old lord and his son,” Henry says. “And Agnes. Are they…?”

“Ah, pretty Agnes.” Gules raises his wineskin in a mock toast. “A sight for sore eyes. And anyone’s eyes would be sore after waking up to the sight of Captain Gnarly’s face every morning for a week’s travel. They’re all alive and well, as far as I know. I saw them to safe harbor in Kolin. That’s where Old Semine released me from his service.”

“He released you?” Henry doesn’t bother masking his skepticism. “You didn’t run off?”

“You think so little of me, Henry. I like that. Means I’ve nowhere to go but up.” Gules winks. “Yes, I stayed, until Old Semine admitted he couldn’t pay me for my service. And I was even willing to stay on credit after that. I liked the old man by then, you know? But he was firm. Grateful, but firm. I suspect he didn’t relish the idea of being in debt to a man like me.”

“A bandit?”

“A nobleman.”

Gules rolls up his sleeve to bare a forearm bisected by a thick, half-healed scar. Henry estimates the wound at three, maybe four weeks old; then he realizes he was likely there when Gules received it. Sakra, it could have been Henry’s blade that did the deed. The chances are about one in three.

“I keep spilling more blood just to see,” Gules says, “but it always runs blue. It’s a handy trick for keeping off the gallows. Doesn’t help with keeping friends.”

There’s a question there, Henry thinks, but he doesn’t care to answer it yet.

“So now you’re back to doing what you do best.”

“Robbing travelers and merchantmen, aye. I took a wagon of steel headed for Sigismund’s camp on the hill the other day. Lord, that was a good haul. And a good place to end my tale, I think. What about yours? Did you lose that ponce in yellow somewhere along the way, or were you late with his laundry when you fell off your horse?”

Henry shakes off the sting. “I’m still in service.”

Gules’s mouth thins; clearly he can tell that Henry doesn’t want to discuss it. “My story was better,” he mutters. But he doesn’t push. “I can offer you a bed for the night. Right here, the safest place in camp. On one condition.”

“Why so kind, Gules?”

“I could let you go now, but the boys would talk. Sparing an old friend is one thing, but a fellah who leaves in the middle of the night while it’s pissing down like this? That’s no friend. Not to mention, your mutt bit Adam Longlegs in the arse when he took a peek under your cuirass. I’d say Longlegs and his mates are the forgiving sort who won’t tail you to the road and shoot you in the back, but I’d be lying. At least stay until they drink themselves to sleep.”

“Is my dog–”

“Ran like a hare when Adam went for his club. That’s a clever beast. I don’t know if he’ll come back, though.”

Henry sighs. “He will. So, this condition of yours. What is it?”

Henry shifts in his borrowed bedroll, trying in vain to get comfortable. It isn’t the headache or the hard ground holding him back from sleep. He’s used to all those things and more. Nor is it Gules’s throaty snoring from the other side of the tent; that’s practically a lullaby. And it isn’t the fear of what he’ll see if he closes his eyes.

It’s Gules’s fucking condition.

Henry’s spent time unconscious with his hands bound behind his back, yes. Plenty of it. But those occasions were all preceded by having the stuffing beaten out of him, and Gules didn’t give him the courtesy of a beating. He tied Henry up and patted him on the shoulder like he was bedding down a horse for the night.

Henry, I think we’re mates, but when I look at you nowadays, a little voice in my head says you’re going to cut my throat. I always listen to that voice. It isn’t personal.

Paranoid old whoreson. Henry’s got half a mind to punch him in the gob again.

A white flash lights up the tent, followed by a low rumble. Henry stares at the silhouette of Gules in his bedroll long after he can’t see anymore.

For the first time all night, he thinks of Trosky Castle and the way it rained.

That’s all. Just the rain. The way it felt, wet and cold on Henry’s face when he leaned out the window atop the Crone. It ran down the back of his neck, over his weeping cuts and the kiss of the torturer’s brand under his ribs. It quenched the fire inside, and at the time Henry felt cleansed, purified. Free. But he’s been cold ever since.

Now, even when he gets angry, he doesn’t really feel it.

Dear boy, the man in black croons. What did I tell you about revenge?

The pit is crumbling again. It’ll swallow Henry, this yawning emptiness, and maybe it’s better at the bottom. What does he need air for? Why should he look for a way across?

There was someone on the other side. Someone he was looking for–someone who can save him.

Someone in a tower of stone.

The edges are collapsing, and the beam falls, falls, and there’s a voice screaming Henry’s name. He can’t breathe. Can’t answer.

Who is he looking for?

“Get a grip on yourself, you sot. Wake up. Wake up.”

Henry isn’t asleep. He’s somewhere worse. Trapped under a beam, strung up in a dungeon. Waiting to die. Well, he won’t wait any longer. He’ll take his death standing up, just like–

He’s making a sound. Some kind of wordless animal whine. It horrifies him to hear it, but he can’t stop. He’s thrashing like a deer in a snare.

Gules pins him. He drives an elbow into Henry’s gut, and all the air leaves Henry in a strangled grunt. All he can do afterwards is gasp. It’s soundless. Thank God.

“Let me go,” Henry grunts as soon as he has enough wind in his lungs. “Get off.”

But Gules doesn’t shift. He stays right where he is, a heavy, hot mass pressing Henry facedown into the dirt. He’s sweaty and panting; Henry wonders how long they fought before Gules got him to submit. He doesn’t remember a minute of it.

The tent’s in shambles, bedrolls flipped and clods of dirt scattered over everything, but it’s still standing. At least the candles were already out and nothing caught on fire. It occurs to Henry that he’s lucky Gules didn’t go for his knife.

“Get off me, Gules! Untie me!”

“Not a chance,” Gules rasps. “If you’d had your hands, you would’ve killed me. I’ve seen nightmares. That was no sodding nightmare. What happened to you?”

It’s already swelling in him again: the blind panic Henry just managed to quell. He can’t explain himself; he can’t even breathe. He twists again, trying to get his knees under him so he can buck Gules like a horse.

Gules curses. He thrusts his arm in between Henry’s chin and the floor, and Henry feels Gules’s muscles tighten against his throat. A distant, calm part of Henry’s mind remarks that it’s a good idea. Choke him out before he can do more damage, then secure him properly or put him down like a mad dog.

Darkness encroaches. Sparks pop in front of Henry’s eyes. His muscles slacken. Gules loosens his grip slightly–concerned for Henry’s life, maybe, or perhaps he just isn’t experienced with this kind of takedown. In either case, it’s too soon.

Henry bites him. He tastes salt, sweat, the copper burst of blood.

Gules wrenches his forearm free of Henry’s teeth with an inarticulate snarl, grabs Henry by the hair, and slams his face into the dirt hard enough to stun him. Still not hard enough to knock him out. He really is holding back.

“You bloody animal, what do you want? A sword in the gut?”

Henry lies still, gasping. The panic hasn’t gone anywhere, but it’s sealed off, separated from him by a solid white veil. Now he can think–and feel.

And he feels something surprising.

Gules is catching his breath, too. His muscles relax ever so slightly now that Henry’s stopped fighting; the fist in Henry’s hair slackens until it’s just a flat, heavy hand. Heavy like the rest of Gules: solid and warm.

Henry recalls watching out of the corner of his eye while Gules stripped down for bed. Not all the way to his braies, that would be stupid even for a bandit lord in his own camp: just down to quilted chausses and elbow-length gambeson.

Certainly no codpiece.

“Were you having a nice dream?” Henry wheezes into the dirt.

For a moment, there’s no reply but Gules’s panting. Then: “Ploughing your ma.”

“She’s dead.”

“Your pa, then.”

Henry’s heart pounds. He moves: just a tiny shift, nothing Gules could mistake for an attempt to break free. But it’s enough to confirm what he feels pressed against his arse below his bound hands, and Henry gets something more for his efforts: a tiny hitch of Gules’s breath. The moment stretches, taut as wire.

“He’s dead, too.” Henry swallows. “Sure you weren't dreaming about me?”

Any moment, he knows, Gules could go for a blade. But he hasn’t yet.

“Aye,” comes the slow reply, and Henry hears the hunger. He didn’t hear it before; he never so much as glimpsed a sign of it. He wouldn’t have suspected Gules of Semine. Not consciously. But now he thinks of the man whose life Gules pleaded for. Johnny never betrayed me. I beg you–don’t kill him.

Well, Gules isn’t Sir Bartosch, overflowing with charming smiles and wry implications. But maybe there were signs after all.

And Henry? When he last met Gules, the chest was locked fast. Now it's empty. He's still trying to figure out what that means–if it even matters, since he hardly has room in his life for carnal pursuits at the moment. He knows what he should feel with another man's arousal pressed against his body: disgust. But knowing a thing should be doesn’t make it true.

Henry’s still trying to grasp the words that’ll somehow capture what he feels–an unlikely quarry, he must admit–when Gules leans down and puts his mouth beside Henry’s ear. His beard scrapes along the side of Henry’s neck.

“You a sodomite, lad?”

Henry sputters. “You can–you can just ask?”

Gules laughs, the sound heavy and dark. He deliberately shifts his weight to press himself harder against Henry’s arse: a meaningful roll of the hips, like something Henry might do with a girl he’s spent the last half-hour kissing in a hayloft as a way of subtly inquiring if she might be after something more.

Not that Henry’s ever kissed a girl with her hands tied behind her back before. Not that he’d ever want to–he thinks. He’s almost sure.

“I wouldn’t always advise it,” Gules says. “But since I have you over a barrel, what’s the harm?”

“Well, are you?”

“One arse is much like another, I find. Some lads even have a fine set of tits. Somebody somewhere decided that being indiscriminate is a bloody sin, but if the Good Lord is the judge in the end, I suspect He’ll have a different sort of lecture waiting for me. So I don’t lose much sleep over it.”

Every word delivered in a low, rasping voice directly into Henry’s ear–and Henry feels shiver after shiver roll down his spine. There’s a familiar tightness in his gut; a clench in his throat. He’s surprised he can still feel like this, even through the cold. Men, women… he’s stirred for nothing and no one since Trosky. But he hasn't forgotten what it feels like, and he’s stirring now.

“And I have to admit,” Gules says, his breath coming shallower now as he rotates his hips, “that bite? New, even for an old dog like me. But it did something.”

For all Gules plays the crone, Henry doubts he’s pushing forty. He keeps that to himself. The way Gules is moving is having an effect on him, too: grinding his prick torturously into the dirt, sending little bolts of friction up his spine as he stiffens. It’s debasing. Humiliating. Henry bites down on a groan.

“Well?” Gules asks.

“Well what?”

“Want to get fucked, Henry?”

Don’t make me say it. Henry doesn’t know if he can. He doesn’t…

He just wants to feel something. Alive. Warm. Like a flesh-and-blood man, not a revenant risen from the Trosky dungeons to finish the task he left undone in life. He’d take a beating from Gules if offered… and Hell, Henry would fuck him, too. He already knows how it would feel, what it would sound like. And he supposes what Gules is offering him now is something in between the two.

Maybe it’ll hurt. When Henry thinks about it, he decides he doesn’t care.

Henry presses his forehead into the dirt. “Yeah.”

“Can’t hear you. Louder.”

Well, if Gules’s men didn’t come running when the two of them nearly tore down the tent wrestling and cursing at each other, Henry doesn’t think they’ll come running for this. The rain beating against the canvas makes it easy to dismiss any out-of-place sound as a trick of the imagination. Henry’s used foul weather to cover all kinds of dirty, noisy work before. Rain is practically his accomplice in sin.

“I said yes,” Henry hisses. “You can fuck me. Christ.”

“Jesus Christ be praised, forever and ever. Amen.”

“On one condition.”

Gules pauses. He’s already got one hand under Henry’s shirt, strong fingers digging into the flesh of Henry’s waist like warm pokers. “What’s that?”

Henry drags in an unsteady breath. “Don’t untie me.”

Will that be enough? It’s laughable to think it would be–that this is a flimsy barrier he can put between himself and God’s judgment, like a shield carved out of candlewax. As if there’s a priest Henry’s planning to confess to: someone who’ll hear the words I had my hands tied behind my back when he violated me and tell him all is forgiven. What a fool he is.

Why does he even still care?

“As you wish, milady,” Gules says, his voice dripping with amusement. Like he knows exactly what part Henry wants him to play–the depraved, despoiling bandit–and he doesn’t mind one bit. “Would milady care to get on her knees? It would make this easier.”

“Fuck you, Gules.”

Gules snaps at the bait without an ounce of shame. “You’d bloody well like that. But I don't bend over for boys like you.”

Gules’s weight lifts from Henry’s back, and Henry sucks in a greedy lungful of air. He could lunge to his feet and run for it, hands tied or not… but he has comically little inclination to try. Besides, he won’t leave his sword behind. It’s under Gules’s bedroll, where Gules tucked it earlier with a gallant promise that it’d be back in Henry’s hands by morning. Henry believed him. He still does.

Maybe he’s a fool for that, too.

Henry levers his knees up under himself, groaning in displeasure at the way this position arches his spine and forces his cheekbone against the ground. Without his hands, he has to take all his weight on his neck. His shoulder’s never been the same since Henry’s fall from the cliff, and recent tribulations haven’t been kind to the tender muscle as it heals; some days Henry feels far, far older than his twenty years. Maybe Gules feels it, too. Maybe they really aren’t so different. Maybe war ages a man like the sun’s heat ripens grapes on the vine, until they burst and rot.

Speaking of Gules, his hand is under Henry’s shirt again. Both hands now: rough, sword-callused, and unapologetically strong. He squeezes Henry’s waist and kneads at his hips like a cat, evidently enjoying the way Henry’s body feels in his grip. It’s a bizarre way to be touched; Henry squirms, impatient. He feels like an alehouse wench being pawed over by a drunk.

“Are you going to get on with it?”

In lieu of a reply, Gules slaps his arse. Henry bites back an unmanly sound. Jesus Christ, if this is how girls feel… But no, this can’t be how girls feel. Because Henry’s stiff as a rod, far more affected than he’d care to admit by Gules’s groping. He can’t even fathom why this arouses him. The last time someone treated his body like a slab of meat at the butcher’s, sex was the farthest thing from Henry’s mind.

And then Gules reaches between his legs from behind, casual as anything, and cups him through his braies. Henry’s entire body jerks, tensing up in a sudden shock the way Pebbles did when she spotted Gules’s trap.

“Relax.” Gules smooths his other hand over Henry’s flank. “I won’t hurt you.”

Henry snorts. It’s a ridiculous thing to hear from a man who almost choked him unconscious a minute ago. But it does make him feel better. He didn’t even realize he was afraid; he didn’t recognize it. Has some part of him been petrified all this time?

Gules squeezes, lightly this time. Henry shuts his eyes, his breathing coming faster as familiar pleasure radiates through him. He feels Gules lean his weight into him again, the firm ridge of his arousal seated against Henry’s clothed arse. For a minute or two, that’s all Gules does: grind himself slowly, shallowly against Henry from behind while he palms Henry’s cock.

And it works. Henry’s muscles slacken; he can’t help but relax, bit by bit. There’s nothing else to do. He’s on his knees, arse in the air, with his face pillowed in the dirt. There’s a hand massaging his prick through his clothes and it doesn’t feel half bad. He even hears a groan or two escape his open mouth.

He still doesn’t quite feel alive. But maybe he’ll get there.

Gules gives him another squeeze and lets go. Then he’s tugging down Henry’s hose and braies, exposing him to a shock of cold air, and Henry tenses right back up. It’s wrong. He’s bare-arsed, on his hands and knees; there’s no position more degrading, more vulnerable. He can’t do this after all.

He barely registers that he’s inching forward, away from Gules, until Gules hooks both hands into the divots of his hips and drags him back. Firm and purposeful, like a man getting ready to shear a sheep. Like Henry’s just a frightened animal to be guided into place.

And that thought lights a fuse in Henry’s core: some kind of contrarian stubbornness, a refusal to be just what everyone around him sees and no more. He summons every scrap of discipline he possesses and reminds himself that he wants this. He asked for it and he’s going to take it. That’s the difference.

After that, it’s easier.

His gut still pinches at the sound of Gules spitting into his own hand. But when the first finger breaches him slowly, twisting, Henry manages not to clench down. He breathes through his nose and mutters every curse he knows instead.

So it was like this for Bartosch. It was like this for every man who’s ever been fucked in the arse, and probably a fair few women, too. They survived it; so can Henry.

“Christ’s wounds,” Gules says. “Are you always this tight?”

Henry grits his teeth. “No one’s ever complained.”

It’s God’s honest truth.

“I’ll never get anywhere like this.” The finger retreats, and Henry sags as the wind rushes back into his lungs. “Well, I could. But it wouldn’t feel very nice for you.”

Henry’s shoulder feels like the Devil danced on it. He’s starting to go soft again. Nice is so distant he could laugh. It’s a pleasant surprise that Gules actually cares how he feels, though.

“Got any olive oil? Tallow?”

“Who’s been fucking you lately, the Pope? Olive oil. Ha.” Gules absently rubs Henry’s hips while he considers. “There’s tallow around here somewhere. For greasing mail.”

“Then what are you waiting for? Fetch it.”

Gules chuckles. He gives Henry’s bare arse an indulgent pat and leaves him there while he searches the tent. Henry listens to the clunk of the trunk unlatching and Gules rifling through its contents.

Yes–Henry’s plate is in there. He can hear the quiet ring of German steel.

“Right.” Gules settles behind Henry again. A jar pops open. “Haven’t used anything but spit in years. But if tallow is what milady requires, tallow is what she’ll get.”

“Stop callin’ me that.”

Henry was quiet under the executioner’s knife; he didn’t scream for ages, not until the man in black armor called for the tongs. He’s proud of that, in a hollow way.

It doesn’t matter who sang in the end–not to anyone but Henry. They’ve all made that clear: Zizka, Samuel, John of Liechtenstein. But Henry’s still proud.

It’s the same pride that keeps him quiet now when Gules slides a greased finger inside, pushing deeper than before. Then two.

The stretch isn’t even painful. It’s just goddamned strange. And Henry can’t shake the clinging humiliation; the conviction that this is far more wrong than what he did with Bartosch, or his long-ago sins with Matthew in Farmer Miroslav’s hayloft. Fucking a man or a woman–that’s just being indiscriminate, like Gules said. It’s barely even sodomy. But this–

“Oh God.” The words rip free of Henry’s mouth. He doesn’t know what Gules just did. Something with his fingers, inside, and there was a sharpness, a wave of pressure, and all the thoughts flew straight out of Henry’s ears. His legs feel heavy. Is he dying?

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Gules bends forward, caging Henry under the warm mass of his body while he opens him up with one hand. His voice is thicker now, husky. “Make a little noise, Henry, it helps. Trust me.”

Every time Gules’s fingers slide over that place inside, the jolt goes through Henry again: sharp, crushing. Like pleasure so distilled he can barely recognize the way it tastes. He went almost completely soft while he was waiting for Gules to find the tallow, but he’s quickly firming up again. More than that, he’s starting to feel desperate for a hand on his prick… or a mouth. Anything.

He has a hunch he’s going to get nothing.

“Fuck, ah, Christ–”

“Good, good.” Gules mouths at the back of his neck; it isn’t a kiss, nor quite a love bite, but something in between. Something wet and suckling that makes Henry’s skin crawl; he wants more. “Not too loud, or my boys will hear you. Breathe. I’d say you’re just about ready.”

Henry isn’t ready. He doesn’t even know what’s happening to him, why he feels like this. But then it dawns on him: he does feel it. It’s strange and it’s new and it might not be entirely pleasant, but it’s a genuine, real feeling.

It’s more than the cold.

Gules wrestles out of his belt and chausses and hose with a series of impatient noises. Another shock goes through Henry when he feels something slick and blunt nudging against him and he realizes it’s Gules’s prick. Then Gules’s hand clamps down on his hip hard enough to make Henry yelp. That hurts. He can feel a bruise forming in the shape of Gules’s fingers, heat pooling in the indents, and it’s almost enough to distract him from the gut-clenching pressure of penetration.

“Fuck, fuck, Gules–”

“Easy, Henry.” Gules sounds breathless, the words almost a groan. “Alright, yeah?”

I won’t hurt you, Gules said when they began. And Henry knows he wasn’t lying, even though it hurts now. There are different kinds of pain. The tender mercies of an executioner carving his way towards truth and viscera: that’s one sort. Calculated. A searing heat so white and blank that it becomes cold, like snow. Featureless and endless.

This is a warm pain, a stretching pain. The kind that leaves Henry black and blue and grinning, with dirt in his hair and another man’s thumbprints embedded in his skin. But on the other hand, it’s nothing like a headlock. Nothing Henry’s ever done in a wrestling ring has made him feel this full.

He’s head down in the dirt, gasping. There are tears in his eyes. He’s glad Gules can’t see.

Gules presses his lips to Henry’s back, right beside his screaming shoulder muscle. His beard is coarse enough to make Henry squirm, but he doesn’t mind the feeling of Gules’s mouth on his body otherwise. A thought flits through his head: kissing Gules. What would that be like?

It’d be strange, Henry thinks. Stranger than Gules’s cock in his arse.

“Sakra, you feel good,” Gules mutters. “This is not what I expected when I tied you up. Lord’s honest truth.”

He’s holding still, buried inside Henry as far as he can go. Henry knows this reprieve won’t last long; frankly, he’s surprised it isn’t over already. It seems unlikely that Gules is giving him time to adjust before he moves, but then again, the robber baron’s surprised Henry before.

Like the day Henry rode up to Semine and saw Gules standing watch above the gate in the lord’s colors, looking freshly scrubbed and almost respectable, as if Henry hadn’t found him barking orders at a band of filthy footpads in the woods a couple of days beforehand. For a moment or two, Henry thought Gules had singlehandedly conquered Semine from the inside and turned it into his personal fortress. He was already reaching for his crossbow when Gules grinned and waved at him.

“Still alive down there, Henry? Give us a shout.”

“Lying’s a sin,” Henry gasps.

Gules kisses him between the shoulder blades again. “What a God-fearing lad you are. Were you ever in a monastery?”

“As a matter of fact–I was.”

“Ah, so that’s where you learned how to fuck.”

Gules moves then, slow half-strokes at first. Then harder, deeper, yanking Henry’s hips into every thrust. Henry can’t keep up: not his mind, not his thoughts. There’s too much to process. He’s blank, but not empty.

The crushing, distilled pleasure is back: no longer sharp and bladed, but blunt like a mace. Repeated blows, over and over. He’s becoming a bruise.

God help him, Gules is hammering him flat, fucking him senseless–and Henry likes it. It leaves room for nothing else. It’s good.

He needs to come. The realization rushes down on him like a falcon’s death stoop. The pressure’s building inside him with nowhere to go. Henry needs to come, he’s absolutely bursting with the need for it, and his fucking hands are tied behind his back.

“Gules–” It’s hard to talk with his face crushed against the ground. Harder with Gules rutting into him from behind, rough and relentless. “Ah–kurva–I need–”

“A minute,” Gules growls. “In the middle of something, Henry.”

There’s a sound welling up in Henry’s throat and he doesn’t know if it’ll emerge as a sob or a scream. He doesn’t want it to be either. He needs to come. His heavy, swollen cock swings forward on every thrust from behind: desperate, entirely useless.

He’d fuck the air itself if he could, imagine himself a wet mouth or a cunt or Bartosch’s arse, but the way Gules is holding him makes it impossible. He’s going mad. This is the opposite of cold. The opposite of empty. It hurts the way only living can hurt.

And he can see–he can see his way across–

To the tower, to…

Gules wraps a thick arm around Henry’s middle and leans down into him. A new angle: deeper than before, every stroke a direct punishment to that profane, hidden source of pleasure. Henry can’t bear it.

If we had more time, Bartosch gasps in Henry’s head. I would show you. Just how good it can feel.

If we had more time…

Henry’s knees give out. He collapses forward and a sound tears itself from his throat: a whimper, a moan. Two kinds of relief. His shoulder was killing him and now there’s pressure directly on his cock.

Gules presses his face into Henry’s nape and clutches tighter, hips moving in short, erratic thrusts. His breath is hot as the forge. Henry can hear him coming undone; he can feel it.

And it strikes Henry that this is the moment when a man is most vulnerable: not blood-soaked on the forest floor with a blade to his neck, not strung up in a torture chamber waiting to die, but right here. Right now.

“Fuck, ah, Henry, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Henry grinds down into the dirt, mindless, chasing his own release. Gules’s stifling weight makes it easier; his pleasure feeds Henry too, intoxicates him. They’re rutting animals and Henry can finally–

“Fuck,” Gules says one last time, like punctuation, and he pulls out. His weight leaves Henry entirely; he braces himself on one elbow and Henry feels the seed hit his back in warm, soft pulses. Gules breathes like a spent horse. He groans once: a deep, satisfied sound, like he was in flames and he’s just been doused in water.

Henry’s still burning. All he knows, all he feels is the need to come. But he can’t beg for it anymore.

He’s felt like this once before: in the cell under Trosky. He didn’t want to die then, but he needed it. He needed death to come soon, now, before he opened his mouth and remembered how to make words.

He’s still there in the cell when Gules turns him on his side and nestles in behind him, chest to back and thigh to thigh, like they’re lovers. But he snaps back when Gules touches him. Then it’s the tent, and the rain pouring down outside, and Gules’s callused grip giving him exactly what he needs. So unexpected that for a moment Henry thinks this is the dream. Not Trosky.

“Come on, beautiful.” Gules’s breath steams against the underside of Henry’s jaw. “You did a fine job. Now finish for me.”

It only takes a few strokes. Henry arches, straining against the rope behind his back, bent like a longbow. The air leaves him in a desperate gasp and he feels himself begin to spill. Ecstasy takes him.

It takes him, takes him like a hand reaching down into the void to pluck him free and a voice in his ear saying You aren’t dead yet.

You are needed, Henry of Skalitz. You still have work to do.

Henry often wondered if he’d ever hear God speak to him. Never in a thousand years would he have imagined God would sound like Gules of Semine, a lying whoreson of a baron turned bandit lord.

But it does feel right that God would speak to Henry right after He finished fucking him in the arse.

He dreams of Capon playing chess.

Henry doesn’t know the names of the pieces; he doesn’t even know how many there are. The chessboard is a crosshatched blur of light and dark. Sunlight tumbles through the tower window and pools in Capon’s hair: gold upon gold, the way robins’ eggs are even bluer in threes. Capon’s lost in thought. There’s a chesspiece between his fingers.

The knight. Henry knows that one; it’s shaped like a horse.

Capon doesn’t look well. Beneath the gilt, he’s fading. Dark under the eyes, brittle in the fingers, a summer’s tan lost to the snow. When he spots Henry standing in the shadow beside the window, his mouth will pinch; he’ll have a spear ready to hurl. Henry’s failed him. He failed at Nebakov and he failed every minute he spent trying to find him after. He’ll always, always be a minute too late.

Then: the fall, the rocks below…

In the dream, Capon never turns his head, and Henry never falls. He just looks at his lord forever: a statue painted in sunlight, pondering his next move in a game Henry doesn’t even know how to play, let alone win.

You can save me, Henry wants to tell him. But you won’t.

You never will.

When Gules shakes him awake, a name falls from Henry’s lips.

“Hans.”

“Rain’s stopped, Henry. Now’s as good a time as ever to be off, unless you’d like to stay for breakfast.” Gules unfastens his hands. “I wouldn’t recommend it. Longlegs is cooking.”

Henry tests the range of motion in his shoulder: not good. He’ll have to stop by the apothecary when he reaches Kuttenberg. At least that soreness is one he doesn’t mind explaining; the rest of his bruises are between him and the Lord.

Or the Devil, more likely.

Gules hums something tuneless while he straps himself into his brigandine. It’s hard to believe the things that happened between them last night were anything more than a heated, confusing dream: something that was only real in Henry’s head. But he certainly isn’t imagining the way his arse aches.

And then Gules tightens his sword belt with a grunt, and when he glances at Henry afterward, something in Henry’s throat squeezes. Gules smirks, lazy and feline. He frames his prick with his hands and mimes a couple of thrusts.

“Go plough yourself,” Henry says, his face hot.

“You seem a touch slow this morning, lad. Need a hand?”

Henry considers his options. Fuck your hand is far too easy. So is I might be slow, but now we both know the only way you can take me is with my hands tied behind my back. That one’s a bit too wordy, as well.

“I could use one,” Henry admits finally. “Help me with my plate?”

He isn’t surprised when Gules nods and obliges him. Nor is he surprised when Gules passes over the arrow scar on his shoulder and the still-fresh marks of torture without so much as a comment. It must have been too dark to notice them last night, but in the daylight, Gules doesn’t seem overly interested in Henry’s body. Either that, or he’s good at pretending.

Just like he pretended not to hear the name Henry said when he woke.

Gules stops him on his way out of the tent, freshly strapped into his armor with his sword belted at his waist. “Wait.”

“What?”

“Don’t talk to anyone on your way out. Just get on your horse and ride.”

“Afraid of what I’ll tell your men?”

“Afraid I won’t have any left once you’re finished with them. They’re whoresons, make no mistake. But all the same, there are a few I’d miss.”

Henry looks at him, smiling humorlessly. “You shouldn’t get so attached. You know how it ends.”

“I know how you feel about bandits. And Henry, if you’ve got a problem, you know where to find me. I’d rather die at the hands of a friend than swing. Just do me a favor and don’t wake me up first.”

Henry feels his smile fade. “I have bigger problems than you, Gules.”

“Am I ever so glad to hear it.”

Gules pauses a moment; his gaze slides down Henry’s body. Henry feels abruptly short of breath, and very aware of the hidden finger-bruises on his hips. It’s unsettling to learn how easily Gules can slip off the mask and let his hunger show through. It’s even more unsettling to learn that Henry likes it.

“In that case,” Gules says. “You still know where to find me.”

It’s only when Henry swings into the saddle that he remembers the other part of the reason why he used to be so petrified of getting fucked. It wasn’t about sin; it wasn’t about God.

Dopredele, this ride is going to kill him.

At least he’ll remember Gules all the way to Kuttenberg. The memory will keep the cold at bay for a little while. Long enough to finish the work Henry has to do.

I’m still coming to save you.

Henry clicks his tongue, and Pebbles moves at an easy walk through the trees that skirt Gules’s camp, concealing the tents from the road. No voices call after Henry; Gules’s men are still in their bedrolls, and the single sentry on watch ignores him.

It’s only the man in black armor who follows Henry out of camp. He’s there when they reach the road and Pebbles breaks into a trot that makes Henry swear and clutch the reins in white-knuckled hands. He’s there when Mutt rejoins them, half a mile south of the camp, panting at Pebbles’s heels like he was never anywhere else.

The man in black armor was there, listening to Henry whimper and moan like a whore while Gules fucked him, but he didn’t have anything to say then. No quip about stronger dogs and bitches. It would be too easy, and Istvan Toth never makes it easy for Henry, not even in death.

He’s saying something now, but Henry pretends not to hear him.

One mile at a time; one step at a time. Stone by stone, he’ll bring the tower down.

Then maybe he’ll feel something again.