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He had never meant for it to happen. Then again, neither could he fall any further. And he had, like all men had, needs.
Even if he was Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Even if the only thing he truly needed was cold steel in his hand.
After Rook’s Rest, he had felt a blackness creep over his soul like nothing he’d ever known. Good, he had thought. Let it harden to adamant. Let it kill what little still grows in me.
It was a despair he had always craved and never attained—not even when the whore had spurned him, and he had been ready to die for shame. Shame could not deaden like dragonflame could.
Resigning himself to annihilation had made him feel, perversely, strong. He had felt in control of himself and his desires for the first time since donning the white cloak, all those years ago.
But in his strength lay his pride, which had ever been his undoing. The old and endless wheel of self-denial turned and turned again, and at the very moment he had begun to feel sure of himself, he had fallen.
Now the boy beneath him moaned, loud enough to wake the neighbouring bannermen. Criston grabbed a fistful of his hair and forced his mouth down into the pillow.
He had needs. Queerly enough, this was the discreetest exercise of them. The boy was as sure not to tell as he was.
(He wasn’t a boy, of course; but he was lithe and hairless enough that, though Criston couldn’t ever convince himself it was a cunt he was fucking, it was possible to pretend that he’d found himself some wet Hightower squire.)
The boy turned his head to the side and moaned again, louder this time. He liked spiting Criston. Getting rough with him only made him more shameless, but Criston fucked him harder anyway.
Bestial noises tore themselves free of the boy’s throat. Criston’s own breath was growing ragged.
He squeezed his eyes shut, not thinking of the bannermen beyond the walls of the tent. Not thinking of Alicent.
Alicent. He had finally come to see her as he ought—not as a woman, but as an object of devotion. The Mother made flesh. To know, to feel, truly and at last, that his love was doomed: this was what made it pure.
And no sooner had he come to know that, and to cherish it, this ossified devotion inside him, than the gods had contrived his next great fall into dishonour.
It had been a little after dawn when they made camp in the forest north of Brindlewood. By midday the woods had been almost silent, but for the sounding of larks overhead, most men snatching what little sleep they could get.
He had wandered down to a stream they’d spotted at the edge of the encampment. Hightower had been the one to point it out to him.
“Looks like a good spot for a bath,” he’d said, and Criston had held up a hand to stop their march.
As he’d approached the stream’s bank he’d heard a clear, tuneless voice ringing out among the pines:
“‘Six maids there were in a spring-fed pool,
And nary a stitch did they wear,
When riding by there came a great fool,
With gillyflowers stuck in his hair…’”
He was bent double in the water, scrubbing his scalp. His back was to the stream bank. A pale, tight arse rose from two lily-white thighs.
Hightower lifted his head from the water, tossing his hair. He was clutching a hunk of soap, which he used to scrub down his chest and the small of his back, singing, “‘In motley of green he watched from the wood / As the sisters all lathered their curls…’”
Scrubbing higher on his back, he put his cheek to his shoulder, and spotted Criston.
His expression tightened, but he said, droll as ever, “Ah, Lord Commander. Care for a swim?”
“I thank you, no, Ser Gwayne.”
Hightower shrugged. He resumed his humming, but the effort was somewhat more studied now. He scooped water in his hands and poured it down his front, turning as he did. His eyes flicked up to Criston, who had not moved.
“Can I help you, ser?” Hightower called, but it wasn’t a question, not truly.
He planted his feet more firmly on the bank. He cleared his throat, looking away. He adjusted his gambeson around the junction of his legs and looked back. Hightower’s mouth had fallen open.
“Come here,” said Hightower quietly.
“No, ser. You come here.”
Hightower closed his mouth. Then, astonishingly, he climbed out of the stream.
When he was halfway up the bank Criston seized him by the arms and maneuvered him roughly up against the nearest pine. He unlaced his breeches with one hand and cupped the man’s—No, the boy’s—arse with the other.
“Wait,” said Hightower in a high-pitched voice, “I have an oil—it’s in my things—”
Criston found where he’d left his clothes neatly folded beside the stream bank and grabbed a small brown bottle. Uncorked, it reeked of concentrated perfume, ambergris and crushed violets—laughably effeminate.
He doused his manhood in it and tossed the bottle aside. He pressed the boy up against the pine and stuck a finger inside him. He yelped and then gave in, thrusting his hips back eagerly. Criston obliged him.
When it was done there were pink streaks on his cock, but if Hightower was in pain he made no show of it.
He walked, a little stiff-legged perhaps, to where Criston had discarded the perfume. He tipped the empty bottle upside down.
“That,” he said flatly, “was fucking expensive.”
“You’ll buy another,” said Criston.
Hightower looked at him in disbelief. He finished lacing his breeches and dragged a hand over his mouth.
Then he had walked away.
Now: eyes screwed shut, hands gripping the boy’s narrow waist, that look of incredulity in his mind, he came hard.
Hightower cried out as he filled him. He strained against Criston, who held him fast.
When the last of his seed was spent he relaxed his grip and began to move away.
“Wait,” said Hightower. He thrust his hips back against Criston’s, but he was already softening. After a moment Hightower slumped against the pillow and Criston withdrew himself, striding to the other side of the tent. He found a cloth by the washbasin and wiped off. He could hear the cot creaking, and a slick, slapping noise.
Hightower came with a whimper as Criston was pulling on his boots. He tossed the used cloth in the direction of the cot.
Hightower looked at where it landed on the earth. Wearily, he leaned over the side of the cot and picked it up.
“We’ll send scouts ahead in search of Vhagar,” Criston said as he drew his shift down over his head. “Your men have the faster horses, choose two of them.”
“As you command,” said Hightower. “I’m always happy to be of service, Lord Hand.”
It was no more sardonic than his usual jibes, but it made Criston pause. Hightower had curled up on the cot with his knees to his chest. His fair eyes were cool and unblinking. He looked like some slender, eastern breed of cat.
“I come to your tent,” Criston said warily.
“Indeed. All the way from the other side of camp. It must be quite a trek for you.”
He was suddenly aware of the shadows moving across the tent canvas—or was it his eyes playing tricks on him?
He said in a lower voice, “Don’t pretend you get no pleasure from it.”
“Oh, I like being used well enough,” said Hightower. “I know what I am. I’m not sure you can say the same.”
“If you want to stop—”
“No,” said Hightower, “no, I think not. I’d prefer to keep you where I can see you. Gods know what kind of example you’d set for the men.”
So he was still peevish about the raper—even though Criston had had him castrated and then hanged. The insinuation still made him bristle. “I am a knight of the realm, ser.”
Hightower burst out laughing. “Yes, and you’ve always taken such care of your oaths of chastity.” He laughed again, bitterly. “I suppose this is one way to resist temptation.”
“Why let me into your bed, then, if you so despise me?”
“Despise you?” Hightower stood. He crossed the tent and looked into Criston’s face. They were nearly of a height, a fact Criston did his best to forget when they were fucking.
“I don’t despise you, Ser Criston. I pity you.”
His eyes flitted to Criston’s mouth. Criston could smell the perfume wafting off his skin, and the spilled seed—Hightower’s and his own, both alien, in their way.
“Spare me your pity,” he said, and pushed past him.
The next several nights were spent with only his fist for comfort. (Buggered Hightower had corrupted him: it used to be that he could abstain when he was alone, at least.)
An unfamiliar and terrible heat spread through his belly when he did it, though. Before, he hadn’t thought about Hightower’s face—had done precisely the opposite. But he’d discovered that picturing that look of disbelief made him shoot onto his stomach with astonishing quickness.
And when he heard Hightower saying, “I’m always happy to be of service,” he came so hard he felt like he’d been knocked in the helm with a flail.
He was not ignorant of what it signified. Of course he’d had dreams of doing things to the whore that were not so different to these. The more they disdained him, these highborn, with their soft skin and wet mouths, the more he desired them.
And when he could get to them—needle them, as the scorpion did the ox—the effect was so intoxicating it made his head spin.
(It was different with Alicent. Alicent did not disdain him. She loved him. It was the chaste and distant love of the Mother, true, but she did not want to see him brought low. He must believe that.)
It made no matter that Hightower was a man, he reasoned. It was his arrogance, and his blood, that drew Criston to him.
And what did it matter if he was a man, while they were on campaign? He had needs, like all men had. He’d seen it as a foot soldier in the Marches. If he’d never tried it himself, well, he’d been young and green then, not a knight, and so not bound to honour maidenhood.
Hightower would not have approved. That raper, the one he’d hanged, he’d not been bound to honour maidenhood, either.
But what right had Hightower to warn against becoming beasts—he, who whined and rutted like a bitch in heat? All men had needs, true enough. But any many who needed that…
He shuddered to think what Alicent would say if she knew.
When there had been no enemy dragon sightings in half a fortnight they had given up their cover of darkness and resumed marching in daylight. Despite himself, Criston took pleasure in it: seeing the sun play in the pine needles overhead, and the wheat fields turning golden with the coming of dusk. They were taking the kingsroad to Harrenhal, and the way was easier than it had been.
Once he began to admire the way the light made Hightower’s fair hair glow, he turned his mind to Vhagar and Aemond.
But as though the prick could read his thoughts, Hightower trotted his palfrey up to Criston’s side. “A fine day, is it not, Ser Criston?” he said, loud enough for the officers around them to hear.
“Indeed, Ser Gwayne.”
“If the weather keeps fair, we may find ourselves in Harrenhal sooner than we expect.”
“Then we must pray that Aemond has secured its garrison to our cause.”
“I should like to see Harrenhal,” said Hightower, with a wistful note that Criston had come to recognize as facetiousness. “Or more precisely its feather beds.”
Criston shot a sideways glance at him. Hightower was regarding him slyly, with those unblinking cat’s eyes.
“I mislike quarreling, Ser Criston,” he said, more quietly than before. “That is, I enjoy it immensely, but only with a suitable interlocutor. One whom I respect.”
“So not an upjumped steward’s son.” Though he had intended to match Hightower’s ironic tone, as usual, it came out too bitterly.
Hightower tilted his head side to side. “I might be persuaded. We are at war, you know. One must make compromises.” His eyes sparkled.
Criston glanced around them. “I may have some… tactical qualms. To discuss. With you. Tonight.”
“I’d be pleased to do so, Lord Commander,” said Hightower, “over a flagon of Arbor gold.”
Before the wine was half-drunk they had fallen together, writhing and wrestling into place on Hightower’s cot. Criston tossed his gambeson and his shift onto the earth. Gwayne had hiked up his own gambeson over his hips and was working at his breeches. “Take it off,” Criston said roughly.
Gwayne pulled the doublet over his head and Criston ran his hand along the length of his spine. Gwayne shuddered and bucked at the touch.
His voice thick, he said, “I want to taste you.”
“No,” said Criston, reaching for the oil.
Gwayne groaned into the pillow.
He tried to go slower this time, for Hightower’s sake. If it was better for him he made it known by cursing every god of the Seven, and Criston as well.
“Fuck you, Cole—and fuck Arlan Dondarrion—and fuck his steward—”
When Gwayne finally clenched around him Criston burst, and this time he crumpled on top of him, his lips against the crest of Hightower’s shoulder blade.
“You see,” said Hightower as they lay together. “I know what I’m doing.”
Criston pushed himself up and extricated himself gently. “You’ve done this before.”
“Is it very obvious?”
“You’ve never been to war,” he said.
“I was a squire, though. And a knight after that. And Oldtown is said to have the best pleasure dens in the Seven Kingdoms.” Criston looked at him. “A jape, Lord Hand.”
“It’s strange,” said Criston, looking away, “to hear you call me that.”
“What, ‘lord’? I shouldn’t think it so unlikely. Yours could be a great House someday, after the war is won.”
“It may be. But I’ll see no part of it. We are sworn to hold no lands.”
Hightower’s eyes flashed with surprise. “Would you believe me, if I said I had forgotten?”
“Yes,” said Criston truthfully. “But rest assured, Ser Gwayne. I remember.”
The weather turned the next day, but there was as yet no rain, so they risked dragons flying above the cloud cover and marched on for Harrenhal.
Even from a distance, the castle made Criston feel uneasy. “I hope you aren’t afraid of ghosts, Lord Hand,” said Hightower.
Not ghosts, Criston thought, gods.
His dread turned once again to despair once they had taken the castle, and then, just as inevitably, that despair had hardened into the old familiar resolve. By the time the scouts had confirmed what they both already knew, a plan had formed in his mind.
He regretted that it dismayed Hightower, though. It was the same quarrel they’d had half a hundred times. Golden and good as he was, he did not see the value in fear. In despair. In hatred.
Criston could not wait for him to see any longer.
It had taken the better part of a day to reach the castle, so they resigned to spend the night, which he hoped would cheer Gwayne a little. The stewardess could not be procured, but they found rooms for the officers and enough wine in the cellars to keep the men from grumbling.
He’d supped in his chamber. Now in the dying light he went to the narrow window, which looked over the castle Godswood. The eyes of the heart tree seemed to be staring up at him.
Suddenly, he could not recall the last time he had prayed. He knelt at the window. His cheeks were wet.
“Mother,” he said into the gloom. His breath fogged the diamond panes of glass. “Bring comfort to our men. Give them rest. And let me… let us know peace, Mother. In the Stranger’s arms, if not in yours.”
“There is no peace for one like you.”
He turned. Queen Alicent was sitting in his bed.
Her legs were curled against her chest. She regarded him unblinkingly.
“Do you think the Mother loves one who would make a mother of no one?” she asked him. “You have sullied yourself, time and again, and now at last you try to cast off your dishonour by sinking even further.” She shifted amongst the bed furs, and he saw that she was wrapped in his white cloak. “You have broken your oaths, Ser Criston, it is true. But you have done worse than that.”
She stood. The white cloak fell to the floor.
White. The colour of mother’s milk; the colour of seed.
Alicent walked toward him, her nakedness on offer. She stood over him where he knelt and took his chin in her hand. “What you have done defies the laws of gods and men,” she said. “And those of men and beasts. The Mother will never bring you peace, Ser Criston. You have chosen the Stranger’s arms. I only pray you chose rightly.”
His chamber door burst open.
Hightower was there. Incredibly, his sword was drawn. When he saw Criston at the window he said, “Forgive me.”
His cheek was cold from the stone of the windowsill. Had he fallen asleep?
He rose to his feet, saying, “How can I be of service, Ser Gwayne?”
Hightower sheathed his sword, still looking baffled. “I knocked at the door,” he said. “There was no answer. I feared…” He looked around the room, at the pitiful light the few candles cast. “Forgive me,” he said again.
Criston rubbed a hand over his face. He was tired. That was all.
“I just came to say,” said Hightower, still a little backfooted, “that I sent a raven to Ormund. Not to undermine you. I told him Vhagar and Aemond have fled and we must hold the Riverlands alone.”
“That will not please him.”
“No,” Hightower agreed.
Criston looked around the chamber. His white cloak lay on the floor beside the bed.
“I interrupted you,” said Gwayne, and moved for the door.
“No, stay.”
Gwayne froze. Then, neatly, he latched the door shut, spun on his heel, and leaned against it, looking for all the world as though he had had no other intention.
“I had a strange dream,” said Criston.
“I well believe it. I confess I’m not as enthusiastic as I had been about the prospect of sleeping in a place like this.”
He nodded. He took a step closer.
“Even so,” he said. “There is the feather bed.”
“That?” Gwayne jutted his chin. “You’re lucky if that’s stuffed with straw and not stones.”
He took another step. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a ponce, Ser Gwayne?”
“No, Ser Criston. No one’s ever dared. If they had, I think I should have made them kiss my boots, don’t you?”
He took another step. Gwayne was within arms’ reach. “I’m sure you would enjoy that.”
“Giving or receiving?” said Gwayne.
Criston put a hand on his shoulder. Gwayne’s knees gave way easily.
He placed two fingers to his lips and kissed them. He put his fingers to the arch of Criston’s right foot. Then, slowly, he dragged his fingers up the leather, up his calf, and up his thigh. He met Criston’s gaze. His mouth was open.
Criston unlaced his breeches as Gwayne held his fingers there, patient, at the pulse point of his inner thigh. He was not fully hard, but Gwayne took him in his mouth and worked at him.
He grabbed the back of Gwayne’s neck and pressed into his throat. He felt himself harden, heard Gwayne sputter and gag. He drew back.
“Can you go more than once?” said Gwayne. His eyes were watery. “Because I… I need you to fuck me.”
“Get on the bed, then.”
Gwayne obeyed, discarding his shift and breeches. He’d tucked a flask of oil in his waistband, which he tossed on the bed. “Take off yours too,” he told Criston.
He lay on his back as Criston undressed. When he was naked Criston reached for his hip to roll him over, but Gwayne said, “No.”
“You’re not putting that in me,” said Criston.
Gwayne rolled his eyes. “Are you really as thick as you look, my Lord Hand?”
He spread his legs and bent his knees, arching his back slightly. His manhood bounced against his white stomach.
“I want to look at you,” he said.
“As you wish.” Criston grabbed the oil.
When he had rubbed himself and his hands in it, Gwayne, gazing up at him through half-lidded eyes, said, “And what do you wish, Lord Commander?”
“That you would stop fucking talking,” said Criston, sliding a finger inside him.
Gwayne’s mouth became a perfect o, and then he smiled. “Then I shall be as quiet as a sept-mouse.”
“I very much doubt that, Ser Gwayne.” He worked another finger inside, sliding and stretching until Gwayne’s hips bucked against him. The tightness around his fingers only made his manhood ache harder.
“What does it matter? Who’s to hear us, anyway? There’s nought in this castle but ghosts.”
Unbidden, Alicent came into his mind. Alicent, in chains. And Alicent, here, in this bed, wrapped in his white cloak…
“Get on your stomach,” he said. “I can’t do it like this.”
“Oh, I think you can,” said Gwayne, glancing between his legs.
Gods forgive me. “Fine, then.” He extracted his fingers and pressed himself against Gwayne.
Instantly, Gwayne’s expression changed. His brow cleared. He exhaled unsteadily, and Criston felt him open for him. His eyes took on a strange light, as if he were seeing something he’d missed for a long time.
Criston squeezed his eyes shut. He placed his hands on Gwayne’s shoulders.
“There,” said Gwayne, high and breathless. “Yes, like that—slower—oh, fuck, yes, please, keep doing that—”
Criston clapped a hand over his mouth. Gwayne pushed his tongue between his fingers. Then he bit him.
“Ah, fuck—” He snatched back his hand. Gwayne laughed, a marvellous sound, and moaned.
Criston slapped him.
He felt more than heard Gwayne’s gasp, clenching around him, drawing him deeper. He closed his eyes again. His own grunts sounded far away.
“You’re a brute,” Gwayne said. “And a craven. And—oh—you’re not fit to lick the shit from my boots—but—gods—”
“But what,” Criston gasped, feeling the gathering heat in his belly.
“—but I want you,” said Gwayne, “so badly—oh, fuck—Criston—”
He came, and Criston followed suit, and when Gwayne grabbed him by the hair and dragged their mouths together he was too dazed to protest.
When it was done, Gwayne kept kissing him. His kisses were chaste. Criston turned his face away. Gwayne kissed his hair.
They lay together for a long time. To keep from falling asleep again, Criston counted the freckles on Gwayne’s shoulder. If we but had a man for each one…
In the end it was Gwayne who drew away, moving gingerly across the furs. He dressed himself wearily and then came to stand at the foot of the bed.
“Never do that again,” he said.
“What part? Fucking you like a common whore?”
Another attempt to match Hightower’s wry humour, but he winced even as he said it.
Gwayne just laughed, a brittle noise. “You are irredeemable,” he said. “I’ll bid you good night, Ser Criston. Pleasant dreams.”
They were pleasant dreams, all things considered, he was pleased to report to Hightower on the morrow. He did not say, I prayed to the Stranger that they would be my last.
The hardest part of their commission lay ahead of them. They rounded the God’s Eye. They did not march so much as creep, at dawn and at dusk, from the tents they had concealed in the densest groves in the blackest woods.
They came upon the riverscum. They killed many, not all. Their numbers scattered, split. He gave Ser Edgar the command of the western flank—such as it was: a few hundred men striking out for glory. The scorpion splitting its tail.
By rights the command should have gone to Gwayne, but no one ever suggested that they part.
He did not go to Hightower’s tent now, but sometimes Gwayne came to him, chin high as ever, but hungry. He did not strike him again, and Gwayne did not call him names. They lay on Criston’s bedroll afterward, silent. Sometimes, Gwayne laced their fingers together.
They had to abandon the horses after the crow’s feet, and everyone grew sour then. Good. Let them see this is no game.
Criston had pitched their tent beneath a low shrub to keep off what he could of the rain. He was lying on his back on his bedroll, arms tucked beneath his soiled cloak, when Gwayne entered with the lantern.
He hung the lantern, then removed his gambeson, folded it into a pillow, and lay down on his side, his back to Criston. The scent of him filled the tent. He smelled of marsh, grassy and damp, but without the bite of skin and sweat that the rest of them reeked of.
“Did you bathe?” Criston asked.
“There was a pond half a league by.”
“It must have been freezing.”
Gwayne made a noise in his throat. “Mm. Don’t remind me. I’ve almost forgotten there’s such a thing as hot baths anywhere in the world.”
Criston rolled onto his side and placed a hand on Gwayne’s hip. The tent was small, but still large enough that the space between their bodies waited to be filled.
But Gwayne did not move. Criston ran his hand up from his hip to his waist. He reached around to his stomach and pulled Gwayne against him.
Gwayne rocked his hips against Criston’s appreciatively, but when he felt the hardness that was growing between his legs, he stilled. “Ah,” he said, in a measured tone, “I think… not tonight.”
“You’re clean, aren’t you?” The jug of oil lay in the corner of the tent, above their heads.
“My priorities lay elsewhere, I regret to say,” said Gwayne, rather sniffily. “You’ve had Mumfred’s salt beef stew.”
Criston sighed. But when he breathed in, there was Gwayne’s scent rising off the back of his neck where his damp hair was drying in cowlicks—so far from crushed violets and ambergris; yet he found, to his chagrin, that it did little to temper his arousal.
“As you wish,” he said.
His hand remained on Gwayne’s stomach. He traced the threads of fine-spun wool with his thumb. He drew Gwayne’s shift up a little higher and touched the fine white skin of his belly. Gwayne drew in a breath.
“I need sleep,” he said. “As do you.”
His hand stilled against Gwayne’s stomach. He could feel Gwayne’s pulse through his navel.
“Sleep, then.”
As if by accident, his hand brushed against the waistband of Gwayne’s breeches, and reflexively he pressed himself into his arse. Gwayne gripped his hand against his stomach.
“What will you do,” Gwayne said hoarsely, “if I fall asleep?”
“Nothing.” Gwayne’s neck was near enough to kiss, or to bite. He worked his hand over the stiff wool of his breeches. Gwayne let go of his hand and reached back to touch Criston’s hip, rocking into him.
“Like as not I wake to find you hilt-deep.”
Cupping the hard knot that had formed in Gwayne’s breeches, he rocked back, humming. He found a lace and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger.
“You’ve thought about it, haven’t you,” said Gwayne.
He began to work at the laces slowly. He untied them, and when he stuck his fingers between them, loosening them, Gwayne said, “Ah—you needn’t.”
His mouth was watering so badly that he dared not speak, so he just worked the laces further apart, spreading his fingers to open them. He felt his palm brush against skin and they both shuddered.
Carefully, he drew Gwayne out. For a moment he just held him, testing the weight in his hand. He swiped his thumb over the head. Hightower was leaking like a whore ripe for taking.
He let go and spat into his hand. Gwayne made a noise in his throat, needy.
He began to work at him. With his longest strokes Gwayne ground himself against Criston’s hips, so he went slowly, slower than he thought he could bear.
He propped himself up on his free arm and lowered Gwayne onto his back. Criston gripped the scruff of his neck. Gwayne was looking up into his face, his pink mouth open.
Criston looked down between his legs, at the wet, pink skin of his manhood, shining slick in the lantern light. His hand began to move faster. Gwayne stifled a moan. Criston straddled his leg, pressing into the bone of Gwayne’s hip. A dampness was already spreading through his hair.
Gwayne’s eyes were wide and fearful, his brow furrowed. When Criston knotted his fingers in the back of his hair he moaned again.
“Criston,” he said—a warning; a plea.
Criston pressed their brows together, so that all he could see was the lantern light flickering in Gwayne’s pale eye.
When Gwayne came into his hand a rush of pleasure flooded his whole body. He heard Gwayne’s gasps as though from far away.
Gwayne kissed him loosely on the side of the mouth. Criston drew back. Gwayne’s eyes were wide with wonder.
He said, “You…”
Criston ducked his head and shifted off Gwayne’s leg. He was cupping Gwayne’s spilled seed in his hand. He looked down at it and wet his lips. Then he smeared his hand across his bedroll.
Gwayne’s eyes travelled from Criston’s face, down to the stain between his legs, and back up again. “And you?” he asked. “Have you… have you done?”
“The hour is late.” His eye caught on Gwayne’s manhood, flopping between the laces of his breeches. A wave of revulsion surged over him.
“So it is.” Gwayne cast about him. After a moment he tucked himself away and scooted back onto his own bedroll.
Criston lay on his back upon his own. Beneath his cloak, his hands rested on his stomach. He fell asleep like that, listening to the hush of Hightower’s shallow breathing.
Ser Edgar’s command had rejoined them by then, but their numbers dwindled ever more. He pretended not to notice. Better to shed the deserters like dead skin than bring a sullied host to glory.
What men cared to fucked openly now. The woods rang with it at evenfall. They probably would have been fucking the horses, if they had still had them.
He and Gwayne coupled in the tent they shared, tumbling across their bedrolls, mouths at each other’s throats to stifle the noise—not that anyone noticed, or cared.
When the oil ran out they tried using spit, but Gwayne cried out, “Stop, you’re hurting me,” sounding so like a frightened boy that Criston recoiled instinctively. In the end they lay side by side, each to his own.
Mayhap here, he thought, was the end of need. No one could attend the need of another, not truly. Only the gods could grant such a release.
“Did you have dreams at Harrenhal?” he asked Gwayne afterward, surprising himself.
“I did,” said Gwayne, sounding as surprised. “I dreamt of my nephew.”
“Aemond?”
“No. Daeron.”
They fell silent once more. Gwayne said, “You had one, I think.”
“Yes. Only it didn’t feel like a dream.” He swallowed. “I saw Queen Alicent.”
He felt Gwayne tense on the bedroll beside him. “Oh?”
“I told you once that she is the beacon I follow, I think.”
“So you did. And pray tell, is it her guiding light that leads us now?”
“She told me that I had lost the Mother’s mercy. Her mercy.” His voice was thick; tears pooled in his eyes. “She said I had forsaken myself to the Stranger.”
“It isn’t true,” said Gwayne. He gripped Criston’s wrist. “You can still choose.”
“I have betrayed her,” he said. “I have… I have despoiled myself of all that was decent, all that remained to me.” Roiling tears fell now, leaving hot tracks in their wake. “She will never forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. You have not betrayed her. You’ve served her faithfully.”
“Served her?” He looked up at Gwayne, who had taken his hands. “It was not service when I took to her bed.”
To his credit, Gwayne did his best to hide his wince. “Even so,” he said, “she will forgive you.”
“I am her sworn shield. Yet how can I shield her, unless I have the utmost devotion in my heart?”
Gwayne scoffed. The noise of it rang out like the peal of a bell. “I find it hard to believe she ever requested utmost devotion from you.”
He wiped at his eyes roughly, pressed himself up with his hands. “And why is that, Ser Gwayne? Because I was a steward’s son? Is even my good service beneath your great House?”
“You know that’s not what I think.”
“Why, then? Why should she not ask it of me?”
“Because it should not interest her,” Gwayne snapped. “Because she did not return it. No one loves a dog any better if it presents itself to be kicked. You talk of devotion, and service, and you may think me a ponce and a preening, arrogant fool, but I too am a knight, ser, and I know what it is to serve. To be dutiful is honourable; to devote oneself to a valiant cause, that is honourable. But to prostrate yourself before an altar you yourself erected, and then to seek to die of shame upon it: that is not devotion. It is pathetic. It is self-serving.”
Gwayne wiped his mouth raggedly on the back of his hand. He was breathing hard.
“You’re wrong,” said Criston. “She loves me.”
“If she were truly your beacon, you should not need her to love you.”
“Get out.”
“Gladly,” said Gwayne, standing. His head hit the roof of the tent and knocked against the lantern there. The candle guttered out in its own wax. “I thank you, Ser Criston, for your illuminating insight. It inspires me, to be led into battle by one so clear-eyed.”
Shrugging into his gambeson, he stalked from the tent.
Criston lay on his bedroll, the rain coming in.
They reached the bridge at Stony Sept on the morrow. They made camp.
Gwayne was not angry now. He huddled into himself, shivering slightly. He saw it now, Criston was sure. The splendour of fear. Of despair. Of hatred.
He found himself humming a tune, for the first time he could recall. “Six Maids in a Pool.” But he could only recall the last verse:
But when the maids came to close the fool’s eyes,
They found that their sister had flown;
For Jonquil had gone where the Maidenpool lies,
And left her poor Florian alone.
They would have such a song someday, he realized. He would have it. The thought awed him.
But Gwayne had been right about some things. He would not die a servant, but a man. He had needs, as all men had; he could deny them no longer.
Glory was a need. Love was a need. The gods were just; they would attend to his needs.
And all would be well.