A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 14

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"I met your future brother by marriage, Commander-Lord Clair el Maien van Sietter, early this Summer," Captain-Lord Stevan el T'fel van P'shan remarked, looking down at his cards with cool slanted black eyes. "Pair of hounds." He laid down two picture cards.

"Is he as lovely as they say?" drawled Captain-Sir Diodr Shanne, one of Stevan's fellow officers from First P'shan, in lazy tones. His green eyes flicked up from his hand of cards to Vadya's startled face. "Marriage."

el T'fel frowned. "He has an interesting new theory on Northern architecture," he said repressively. "He is a great friend of my grandmother's, that is, my grandmother in duty bound. She will be visiting Lord Clair and his Lady wife for the hunting." He laid emphasis on the words, his Lady wife.

"Have you heard lately from our grandmother?" Vadya said quickly, seeing Tashka's eyes glowering narrowly at Shanne. "I mean, our grandmother in duty bound. Pass." He kicked Tashka under the table and she looked away from Shanne.

"You have heard from her more recently than I, I think," el T'fel replied, still in his repressive tone of voice. He was private about family in the el T'fel way but Vadya knew that all the el T'fels dearly loved old Lady el Farin.

"Royal marriage," Tashka said. Shanne's eyes hardened as she laid the higher pair on top of his own marriage cards. "I met Lady van P'shan at court once."

Behind them, Madam Stanies was presiding over morning tea while young officers and Dames chattered, played games and flirted all around her. She called Pava away from the cosy fireside sofa where he was dallying too intimately with one young Dame and made him sit by her side and tell her funny stories.

It was pouring with rain. They had had to call off the deer hunt they had been planning for the day and were messing about in the sitting-room instead. Everyone was a bit too bright and the atmosphere was close, as if there was a lid pressing down on their bubbling young energy.

"I hear," Captain-Sir Shanne remarked, putting three castles on the table, "that Clair el Maien threw 's glove in el Parva's face for the sake of a poem el Parva wrote to his Lady wife. Do you not wonder if there was just a poem in it?"

Tashka's head shot back round to him.

"Shut it," Vadya said fiercely and hurriedly added, "her brother is there."

"He seems quite occupied," Captain-Sir Shanne said, surveying Hanya el Jien, who had come to the party with Pava and was sitting with Mada el Vaie, Hanya el Farin and Flava Trait, arguing about strategic manoeuvres.

"I am to marry el Maien's sister," Vadya said and blushed as Tashka nudged him under the table.

"Shanne," el T'fel's cold voice said, in warning.

The blond young Captain looked at Vadya's blushing face with an ironic sneer. Tashka, he noticed, was looking away from Vadya with a bright sparkle of laughter in her slanted blue eyes.

"el Parva's poem was ridiculous," Tashka said in a careless tone of voice, leaning back to the card table. "A lot of horse manure about how lovely it is to be in an home well-kept by a beautiful woman. Clair ... el Maien did mark his face for him but it was not for Lady el Jien's honour - I ask it of you, it is well known that she is as pure as the streams that come down from the snowfields of the H'velst mountains in spring into the River Arven."

"Since you know so much about it," Shanne said lazily, "what-for did el Maien give el Parva the glove then."

"el Maien was insulted because el Parva attributed his castle's cleanliness to Lady el Jien," Tashka replied. "He is the one who manages the castle and he felt slighted because the poem was not addressed to him." They all burst out laughing at her ridiculous story.

They played another round and Tashka said, "did you meet Clair ... Commander-Lord el Maien at court or at Castle Sietter? Did you meet Lady el Jien as well?"

"I regret," el T'fel remarked, "it was at court. I have long wanted to meet Lady el Jien. The scientist B'dar has spoken to me of her work."

"B'dar?" Tashka said curiously. "Is he interested in working with the merchants?"

el T'fel's dark-haired head lifted and he directed a haughty glare at Tashka. "What would B'dar have to say to merchants?" he said scornfully. "He has spoken to me of Lady el Jien's mathematical theorem."

"Ah," Tashka said, suppressing a smile of enlightenment. "Of course. Lady el Jien's mathematical theorem."

"On any road," el T'fel said. "I met Commander-Lord el Maien at court."

"At court with his many affairs ... of business," Captain-Sir Shanne joked, playing a royal family and winning the game with a satisfied air.

"Shut it about my brother!" Tashka snarled, slamming her hands on the cards. She and Shanne looked narrowly, angrily into each other's eyes.

'I must break this game up,' Vadya thought.

"You are Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter!" el T'fel exclaimed, his whole face lit up with a rare expression of pleasure. "It is you who helped our grandmother, that time in the tavern, er, that is to say, one time."

"In a tavern?" Vadya said, puzzled. "What was our grandmother doing in a tavern?"

"Yes, of course that is who I am," Tashka's eyes were still fixed on Shanne's green eyes, "and anyone who wishes to say any thing of my brother or my sister by marriage may have my glove for it! Deal the cards, Shanne." She lifted her hands from the pile of cards.

"Um, perhaps we could," Vadya started to say.

"And what about your sister?" enquired Shanne, drawing the cards towards him.

"What are you talking about, my sister?" Tashka demanded.

"I think the rain has stopped," Vadya lied, starting to stand up from the table.

"What if we say any thing of your sister," Captain-Sir Shanne answered, "or say any thing to her of yourself and her betrothed - your senior officer."

Vadya saw Tashka's eyes snap the unreasonable side of rage. He started to lean over but she had leapt up and snapped her glove into Captain-Sir Shanne's face before he could grab her arm.

She was already seated again. Her bowl of tea had gone over in a flood across the polished wood of the card-table, it soaked into the pile of cards. Captain-Sir Shanne's head had snapped back at the slap of the glove. Now he was sitting still, one hand to his cheek, grinning at Tashka in the most horrible satisfied way. Stevan el T'fel was frozen still, staring at Tashka with wide slanted dark eyes.

Behind them the chatter went on. No one had noticed Tashka's swift movement except Hanya el Jien, Mada el Vaie, Hanya el Farin and Flava Trait, who hurried over, effectively blocking off the card-table in the corner of the sitting-room from the rest of the crowd.

"Tashka!" Vadya's cry was hoarse with anguish.

"He called your honour into question too!" she said. Her eyes were bright and her breath coming quick and furious.

"Shanne!" el T'fel snapped, suddenly jerking his head round. "That was a disgusting insult you offered my cousin! Apologise!"

The blond Captain continued to rub at his cheek, Vadya could see the pulse beating in his temple through his fine blond hair. "No," he said in a cold and strangely pleased voice.

'Holy Hell, sweet Angels!' Vadya thought in despair. 'They have been at each other all week! over the stupidest things. Angels of light, how has it come to this? This is just a small hunting party, oh why did not Tashka and I come here alone, why did Stevan have to bring this man!'

"The armoury, then," Tashka said in a light voice.

"Maien," Vadya said sternly, pulling himself together and taking hold of her arm (too late!), "a word in the hall. el Jien, el Farin, el Vaie, Trait, come with us. Pava!"

Pava looked up from the sofa, where he was lounging by Madam Stanies, and excused himself in idle laughing tones but when he came up to them he said: "What is it?" in an anxious hiss.

"Tashka has thrown 's glove in Shanne's face," Vadya said, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice. "Shanne accused us of an affair. Pava, go get him to apologise! For the sake of the Angels, that man is a killer, he is always crossing swords with whoever at court."

"Yes, I know him," Pava said in a slow voice. "I will try, Vadya, but ... I do not think he will pass up the chance to fight Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter." He looked into Vadya's wide brown eyes, Vadya looked aside.

Vadya walked into the hall and pulled the door to behind him. Tashka was standing there with her head flung up and a frown on her face. Vadya looked at her tall lean strong body and at the graceful tilt of her proud head and could not bear it. She looked like the perfect young officer but he knew now with the intimate intelligence of his hands that she had the perfect curved body of a woman. He wished desperately that he had not been so rule-bound as to miss collecting the favours he could have had from her. So often as they stole a kiss, he lay panting in her arms and saw her eyes crease up in question and he had put up his hand and said, No. Only for the sake of her honour! but he longed now to have the memory of sinking his cock deep into her cunt, moving on her in passion and feeling her body rise to his in that ultimate fulfilment of intimate love.

Too late. He could not risk throwing the balance of her fighting mind by pressing a hurried favour out of her just before she went into the duel.

Hanya el Jien, Hanya el Farin, Mada and Flava had collected in a muttering knot further down the hall.

"Take it back," Vadya said softly. "I cannot risk the losing you! For my sake, take it back."

Tashka tipped her head down and looked at him. She had not even heard what he said. Her eyes were full of a pale intense joy and there was a queer pleased twist to her mouth. Her fingers were resting lightly in the elaborate handguard of her rapier. She had fought her first duel when she was fifteen years old, she had never backed out of a duel.

"Listen!" he said, flicking the side of her head to make her do so. "He is the best in the H'velst Mountains, he has killed so many times at court. Take it back, for me, for my sake, take it back!"

"el Jien!" she called out, catching Vadya's hand to stop him flicking her head. "Will you stand my second since el Gaiel's honour is also in question so he cannot."

"Gladly!" Hanya el Jien limped over to them, his eagerness to support Tashka evident in his blond scarred face. (Wardogs had torn his cheek open and shredded his leg years before when he had only just started training as a Lieutenant with First Iarve.)

Vadya looked into his fierce blue eyes in the mauled face and could have hit him. "Shut it, el Jien!" he hissed in a terrified whine. "Tashka, hear me! He is not an easy fight and with you and him it will be to the death, neither of you will cry on the Angel of Mercy ..."

"el Gaiel, I know it," she said irritably, turning her gleaming slanted blue eye on him. "I know it better than you do. You cannot stop me so at the least do not scare me! I will not back down. He questioned my honour and yours and I hate him. Get away if you can only stand there frightening me."

"He questioned our honour!" Vadya repeated in an agony. "What did he say? He accused us of an affair. It is the truth! I love you, although you are my Captain and junior officer. I will avow it to anyone, I will say it with pride, I will shout it if I may."

Tashka flicked a nervous glance at the three Lieutenants down the hall but even in his fear of losing her Vadya had not lost control so much that he shouted it to them.

"That is not the point," Hanya el Jien said patiently. "The point is that he and Tashka hate each other. If he had not found your love to accuse you of, Tashka would have found something to say about his lover, only he is such a piece of slime he cannot get one."

"What, are you ashamed of our love, too ashamed to stand and say to Shanne, it is the truth, I love my Commander, he is my betrothed?" Vadya demanded of Tashka.

She swung an amused blue eye on him. In her blue eye danced all the fun and mischief and daring courage that was Tashka. "I will tell it to any fool who asks me," she answered, "and then I will cut him apart for having the indecency to ask. Who I give my heart, or my body," she added thoughtfully, "to, is my business. It is not something for a piece of scum to gossip about. Besides, he tried to insult my sister."

"What sister?" Hanya said, the rough furrows of his scarred face folding up in a puzzled frown.

"Come with me," Vadya said in a choked voice. He drew her into the study opposite the sitting-room. Now it was full of books Tashka had chosen, books he had started to look at and enjoy or fail to understand but he knew Tashka would explain them as easily as she explained the reasons why she thought they should move a campsite that was too near a potentially hazardous wood.

He did not try to persuade her out of the duel any more. He knew she was going through with it and he did not want to do any thing that might affect her concentration. He pulled her close to him and she gave him fierce hard sexless kisses, already tensed up for the duel in his arms. He had got into the habit of pressing his hips into her legs when they were embracing but he felt no impulse to do so now. His penis was lying small and unroused.

In the past he had been excited by the prospect of seeing Tashka fight even while anxious about his beloved officer and friend but now he was terrified. He drew away and looked at her lean tanned face, blazing with pride and anger and with hard cold predatory joy. He felt the tears flood his eyes.

"Go," he muttered. "Go before I unsettle you!"

She leaned over and put her hand around the back of his neck. Her blue eyes looked gravely into his brown eyes swimming with tears.

"I love you, Vadya," she said, the corner of her mouth lifted in a teasing smile. "Maybe next year when we are married we can come back here alone and I will make a child with you? What say you?"

He could not say anything. He bent his head down and tried hard, hard not to cry. They had never spoken about it but she knew how much he wanted children and she was saying that although the idea of carrying a child disgusted her, she would go through it for him.

But before that, he was going to have to go through watching her put her life in the hazard.

"I'll do it," she said, as if trying to convince him. "Hear me, I have said it. You may hold me to my word. Let us go."

As they came out of the study, Diodr Shanne, Stevan el T'fel, Pava and the other First P'shan Captain who had come with Stevan came out of the sitting-room. Pava shook his head at Vadya, his face was pale but set. Shanne and the other Captain walked past without looking at them but Stevan came up to Vadya and took hold of his arm, looking deep into his eyes.

"Cousin, I swear," he said in an intense voice, "an' he kill Tashka, I will have him thrown out the troop. I'll go to the Generals myself and make the case." The cold el T'fel mask had slipped to reveal his affection for Tashka, his slanted eyes were wide. His lip quivered as he made the offer, to abuse his aristocratic influence and get his brother officer slung out even though he had behaved within the bounds of honour. "T-Tashka is my second cousin," he said in excuse. Vadya only felt more nauseous at this ridiculous manifestation of the twisted Northern code of honour. The el T'fels and Tashka's maternal family the el F'laras were on the brink of war, never mind the el F'laras' efforts to assassinate Tashka, but Stevan raised his dark eyes to Vadya and looked intently into Vadya's face, adding, "whatever there is between you and Tashka."

Vadya looked back into his pale face in silence, unable to return the pressure of his cousin's sword hand. 'What do I care?' he thought desolately as they went down the long corridor to the armoury. 'What use will any thing be, if I lose my Captain, my heart, my life.'

The armoury was cold and Vadya called for a servant to light the fires at either end of the huge wooden-floored space. Diodr Shanne and Tashka went to the weapons rack on the wall opposite the door and looked closely at the sets of rapiers and daggers, they tried them out and Vadya even saw them exchange a couple of words about the weaponry as if they were comrades in a piece of work together not deadly enemies about to kill each other. Their heads bent together over a rapier Tashka was holding, one blond, one dark-haired, lifted and they looked into each other's eyes. There was a pause then Tashka gave a wide wolfish grin. She had almost tricked Shanne into thinking she would show him what weapon she was about to use.

She strolled lazily across to Mada and asked him to fetch a particular pair of weapons from her room. Diodr Shanne drew the rapier he was wearing in his belt and tested the spring of the steel blade, watching Tashka's back in amused admiration of the way she had nearly taken him in.

The rain was beating on the unplastered roof arching above them with a hard drumming sound and when Mada came back, his face was running with tears and his chest heaving with sobs. Vadya met him at the door and took the weapons from him, saying:

"Get out of it, el Vaie!" in a fierce whisper.

"But sir ...!" Mada pleaded, trying to get by him, his soft wet brown face raised to his Commander.

"No," Vadya insisted. "You'll not upset the Captain with your tears." He turned round and jerked his head at Hanya el Farin who came walking rapidly over to them. "Angels' sake, take el Vaie to the study to sit it out." el Farin's dark face with the high cheek bones twitched but he took Mada's arm with a reasonable degree of sympathy in his eyes and pulled his fellow Lieutenant out of the armoury with him.

"Here, el Maien," Vadya said stiffly, going to Tashka and holding her weapons out to her. Tashka, who was stripping off her blue woollen doublet, looked up and smiled at him without really seeing him. She had already taken off her belt with the weapons she had been wearing and laid them on a table. She took hold of the sword and dagger she had chosen for the duel from Vadya and drew them from the sheaths, sprang a few steps across the room and stood with them loose in her hands. She looked like a painting by Stianne, the subject of a poem by V'lava. She looked like an Angel, standing lost in thought with the cold clear rainy light falling about her.

She shook her close-cropped dark-haired head and turned around, her quick blue eyes narrowed. She looked at Vadya then back at Shanne to make sure he was watching her. She turned round and blew Vadya a kiss and grinned at him. Shanne raised his eyebrows but she did not trouble herself over him again.

Vadya bit his lip to force back his tears and crossed to where Pava was sitting with his arms folded and Tashka's woollen doublet lying on his knee. Pava looked up, his green eyes expressionless.

"Do sit down, sweetness," he said in a careless tone of voice but he put a strong hand on Vadya's arm and gripped it so hard that Vadya sat up and opened his eyes wide and dry.

"We do not have a neutral to start us," Captain-Sir Shanne's cool collected tones drifted over to them.

"I will accept Captain-Lord el T'fel," Tashka replied. "You cannot wriggle out of it now, Shanne."

Her opponent gave a lazy grin at this insult and, as if some signal had been given, they crossed to the middle of the floor and raised their swords. Stevan el T'fel walked reluctantly up to them. He looked pleadingly into each of their faces. They both looked impatiently back at him.