A Match for the el Maiens Ch. 24

Tashka was laughing and pushing him back on the bedding, she had pinned his legs down with her booted legs and was holding his shoulders down. He grinned up into her face and she bent her head for his kiss. She let herself fall into his arms and his kiss, their mouths softly pressing and his tongue flicking over her rose-petal lip, his hand creeping to her leg to grip on her thigh inside the top of her leather boot.

As their mouths parted, he said: "You'll come dine with me the night?"

"We have just spent a whole month hunting together," Tashka pointed out, letting her legs fall in between his legs so that his hand slipped to press on her sex and putting her mouth in a kiss to his neck - a soft one, thank the Angels, not one that marked him in revenge for the mark he had impressed on her. "They will think I have seduced you!"

"Holy Angels!" Vadya groaned, "did you see Fiotr's face when you said that about 'without favour'? They have always known we are too close for decency. We must be careful, Tashka." He removed his hand reluctantly from between her legs in spite of her trying to clamp her thighs to keep it there.

"Exactly so," Tashka answered, caressing his ear with one tickling finger.

"Although," Vadya added with a laugh, "I have married your sister, we might be talking of her at dinner."

"Shut it," Tashka said grumpily. She stopped tickling his ear and started to get up out of his arms. "I do not like them to think you are married to my sister. I prefer them to think I have seduced you." She looked regretfully at the lean bare fingers of her left hand before pulling her tunic down and tucking her shirt back into her breeches. Her sex felt warm and wet and eager, she gave a wriggle of the hips in thigh-length black army boots that Vadya watched with a flick of his tongue around his generous mouth. She could feel the seam of her underpants up against her swollen juicy sex.

"Then dine with me," Vadya answered with a grin. "It is the truth. You have seduced me, my Captain, and I think we ought to discuss the matter."

"Invite them all to dine," Tashka said crossly. "It is what you would have done before you became such a fool for my body."

"Oh, I am a fool for your body, is it?" Vadya enquired, looking over her long booted legs, her lean muscular frame, his eyes lingering on her crotch and then lifting to her slanted blue eyes appreciatively.

"You are not a fool for my body?" Tashka responded, raising one mocking eyebrow at him. "Then we might have dinner alone some other night, is it not? You might be able to wait one whole day before dining alone with the Captain you have just spent the whole month with."

"And you?" Vadya countered. "You care nothing for my body?"

Tashka trailed her blue gaze lazily over his broad shoulders and narrow hips. She ran her red tongue slowly round her rose-petal lip. Her eyes came to rest thoughtfully on the long fat swelling in the crotch of his hose.

"I will consider it and make you a report," she said, grabbed her orders off his box-desk and ducked out of the tent before he could jump up and grab her.

As she walked back to her Quarter, glancing over the papers in her hand, she saw Dar Vaie coming up through the Sixth H'las encampment. The wind was flinging his red Sietter cloak and his strawberry blond hair about. It was getting so dark that it was obvious it was going to pour with rain any minute and Vaie's red felt uniform moved through the black and blue H'las troopers like a flame.

Dar walked nervously like a cat, flicking his eyes from side to side, his cheeks patchily flushed. The H'las soldiers peered up at him from their tasks with hostile glances.

Tashka saw Hanya talking to two of his cavalrymen beside the picket line of horses, his butter blond hair being flung about in the wind like Dar's strawberry blond hair. He pointed away down the hill then brought his hand back to shake it at the cavalrymen in emphasis of some point. He dismissed them, turned and saw Dar Vaie coming towards him.

His whole face lit up golden with love. He ran to the Sietter Commander, his long strong muscular legs stretching out over the grassy hillside. He cared nothing for the troopers staring at him go by, only for Dar, whose face broke into a smile so full of thrilled love and warm happiness that Tashka laughed and only wished the other Angels could see it.

Hanya flung himself into Dar's wide-flung arms, they stood in the middle of the camp, pressed hard in to each other. Dar took Hanya by the back of the head and forced him into his kiss, completely careless of Hanya's soldiers all around them. He pressed his red Sietter breast to the black felt breast of Hanya's H'las tunic. His red Sietter cloak, whipped up by the wind, wound around them where they were kissing with abandoned passion in the middle of the encampment, Hanya's head was going back with the pressure of Dar's kiss. A melting submissive demeanour was coming over his big hard-muscled body toughened by active battle experience and Tashka suspected that under the cloak Dar was fingering his lover's body in ways which it was probably not necessary for the troopers to know about.

Hanya's cavalrymen had stopped what they were doing and were standing looking open-mouthed at their Lieutenant. Tashka strode up to them saying fiercely: "Get on with it. What are you staring at?"

"He is Sietter!" one said.

"So am I," Tashka growled. "We were baby Lieutenants together, he is my brother officer. What business is it of yours where he is from? I suppose the Lieutenant may give a man the eye without your permission? What is your business is that water for the horses, now get on with it before ..."

"Sir, it is done!" they shouted hurriedly, running off so fast that one of them slopped half the contents of his bucket down his boot.

Dar was pulling Hanya off down the hillside towards Tenth Sietter now, doubtless with the intention of sneaking into his tent for half an hour, or however long it took for him to inveigle Hanya into fucking him senseless. Tashka shouted out at him: "Hey, Vaie, you dog! Where is it you are stealing my junior off to?"

They swung round, Hanya's face was already soft with yearning desire, his expression tightened up to look anxiously at her but Dar sniggered filthily as he let Hanya go, shouting back, "you were not wanting him for your sweet self were you, you sly fox! Your own junior!" Hanya looked in appalled astonishment at him and the troopers gasped to hear Captain Maien so addressed.

"Watch it, slut!" Tashka grinned, strolling lazily over to them. "It is not the junior I have got my eye on, you know."

Dar Vaie became convulsed with laughter, the troopers stared at Tashka and at him, then in mute horrified appeal at their Lieutenant. "You have got the morals of a virgin slut's cat, el Maien!" Dar shouted.

"At least I have got morals!" Tashka retorted, coming up and standing in front of Dar and Hanya with her hands on her hips, a huge grin on her face. "You priest's doxy," she added. Dar sniggered again.

"Er, Captain, I'll not be long," Hanya assured her, looking uncertainly from the one grinning officer to the other. "I know you only have Trait and myself to rely on, I will be back in ten minutes."

Tashka raised a mocking eyebrow at Dar. "Ten minutes!" she snorted. "Is that all you intend to give my Lieutenant, Vaie? I hope you are not going to treat him like your usual bits of trimming and oblige me to offer you a glove on his behalf. So Lein, you mean to just have a little ten minute chat about the disposition of the encampment, is it? You must make me a report on it, I am sure it would make fascinating reading. Why are you not asking for an afternoon's leave?"

Hanya gave her a suddenly huge smile. "May I?" he asked eagerly.

"Get on with it," Tashka laughed. "Tell Flava I'll be here all day to support him. You must be back the evening though," she looked meaningfully at him. "The Commander will have the other Captains to dinner the night so I will have to look to the whole troop and I will need your support with the Quarter. The evening, you must be back, mind."

Hanya grinned shyly, blushing, and pressed her left hand in gratitude. He did the ritual stamping steps of the H'las junior leaving a senior officer which Dar inspected with a gleam in his grey eye and ran off to make a few final arrangements in the two Units he was responsible for, shouting: "Wait on me, Dar! I will not be long!"

Dar was busy watching his big buttocks in black felt breeches flashing above the tops of his black thigh-length boots as he ran. Tashka gave him a buffet on the shoulder that caught him off-guard and rocked his lean rangy body back, he sniggered and made a mock punch at her jaw. She started to chat about the problems of the terrain they were encamped on and how soon she thought they ought to move on further into the Sietter Hills. Although she was still only a Captain, Dar listened deferentially to what she was saying, considering her points with the respect he bore her from long association with her military mind. He considerately turned his eyes away from the paperwork in her hand, noticing this, she waved it deliberately under his nose and drew several quite sensitive bits of information on it to his attention, making sure that any troopers around them could see and hear her doing so.

When Hanya came back and they were walking away through the camp together with arms casually about each other's shoulders, Dar overheard one of the troopers say to another: "He was the brother officer of the Captain's." He looked round and met smiles and deferential nods of the head in place of the hostile glares the H'las men had bent towards him earlier. He turned, still enjoying the warm presence of his lover against his body, the promise of the exquisite immersion in his lover's body which he was so rarely able to indulge in, to look back after Tashka but she was already too far away to see his smile. She was giving some troopers a word of praise for the way they had set out their tent.

'Sweet Hell, I have all my kit to unpack yet,' Tashka thought as she strolled through the encampment of Second Quarter, flicking her eye beadily over the dispositions of the troopers as she went. She arrived at her tent, lifted an eyebrow to see the entrance flaps were fully open and discovered Batren in the middle of unpacking her kit. Her mail and weaponry were on their stands, her boots set out under her clothes rail, her books already arranged in a shelf by her box-desk.

"Batren!" she gasped in horror. "What in Hell are you about here?" He turned and looked at her, bewildered by her outraged tone of voice. "Damn Heaven and Hell," Tashka groaned. She had a quick look round to see a number of troopers looking curiously at them and hurriedly dropped the tent flap. "What are they going to think of it, that you are laying out my kit?" she demanded of him. "You are Vadya's man-servant, not mine! They will know I am his lover!"

Batren's mouth dropped open in horror. He looked at the folded heap of shirts he was holding and hurriedly put them on her bedding.

"M-my Lord!" he moaned. "Your pardon!"

"Oh-h!" Tashka groaned, flinging herself onto the bedding and scattering the pile of shirts onto the rug he had arranged so carefully there. She stuffed her face in the cushions set out over the bedding. "Have you had the entrance flap open the whole time?"

"Well, I thought I should air the bedding," he said.

"Hell! Damn!"

"You ought not to be left to unpack your own ..." Batren began sulkily.

"Alright!" Tashka interrupted, sitting up. "I know you meant it in good heart. Go back to Vadya, take him his silly biscuits."

"Should I not finish ...?"

"No!"

"Your pardon," he said mournfully, backing out of the tent.

'Between those two,' Tashka thought crossly, going over to re-hang her weapons the way she liked them set out, 'what with Vadya wanting me to be alone with him all the time and Batren doing this stupid thing, I will be lucky if I am not court-martialled for seducing my own husband! Papa van H'las will love it when that case comes up before him.'

A thought crossed her mind and she froze where she stood, a look of absolute horror appearing on her face. She rushed over to one of her saddle-bags and burrowed frantically in it.

She sat back with a deep sigh of relief and a set of flimsy embroidered black and gold lingerie in her hands. Faffie had made them for her for a wedding gift.

'I will wear them next inspection parade,' Tashka thought cosily, a wicked glint flashing in her eye. 'And I will describe them minutely in the report on the Quarter's presentation details.' She sniggered softly to herself as she locked away the little bits of lace in the secret reports drawer of her box-desk, together with her wedding and betrothal rings, an elaborate gold earring with the el V'lair insignia imprinted in it and a miniature portrait of Clair.

There was a splat on the canvas as outside her tent a few huge raindrops came hurtling out of the black sky. Tashka went to lift the entrance flap and look out at the men running around her to cover, all dressed tidily in good felt winter uniforms. They were at war now, the casual light gear they had been permitted in their careless summer on the Vail plains was stowed away. There would be real trouble if any man's weapon had rust on it or his boots a hole. It might cost them a limb or their life in the field of battle but worse than that, Captain-Lord el Maien might spot it from the entrance of her tent and start shouting: "Mada Thuriel! What kind of rag is that around your shoulders? Is that supposed to be an H'las trooper's cloak?! What has happened to the hood? Ay, you may well look up to the sky and pray the rain will fall to one side especially for you, you'll not keep dry any other way!"

~#~*~#~

Vadya lay on his elbow in his bedding, staring at the brazier of red glowing coals by his box-desk in the shadows beyond his flickering candle. He had had a pleasant dinner with Petra, Basra and Fiotr. Whereas previously the four Captains might have left one of the more experienced Lieutenants in charge and enjoyed dinner together, in the field of war they could not afford to relax discipline. Halfway through their meal, Tashka had sent one of Basra's Lieutenants with a report of unusual movement to the East. They had all sat at the table tensely listening out until the Lieutenant came back to report it was just a flock of sheep moving through the evening shadows.

Vadya felt restless and strange, suddenly alone without Tashka. Sleeping with her at Castle Sietter, in inns and occasionally Dar Vaie's tent on the way back to Sixth H'las, he had so quickly become accustomed to the warmth of her lean body and the pleasures of her favours. She was not even far away, he thought mournfully. Yet he had only seen her briefly that night when she came and made a formal report to him at the end of the dinner, full of Hear me's and To the West; all quiet, sir. She had given him no opportunity to keep her back, stamping her feet in the sharpest of salutes as soon as she had made the report and turning to leave without even waiting for him to say: to Quarter. His cock was soft, not hard and pulsing, but he felt a queer yearning in his body; in his heart. He just wanted her warmth in the curve of his arm, up against his side, wrapped in the hook of his leg flung over her long legs.

After a while Vadya got up, pulled a pair of breeches and a jumper on over his nightshirt, pulled on his boots and buckled a sword and dagger into his belt. He wrapped himself in his H'las army issue cloak and went to see her.

'I could just spend an half hour, er, checking on her Quarter's dispositions,' he thought as he trudged through the camp past the silent tents of Fourth Quarter encamped around him. 'I did not quite understand what she said about where she put the provisions tent.' Only because you were too busy looking at her bottom to listen, an accusatory voice in his head said.

The rain had passed and the sky was bright with stars, an occasional cloud scudding across the white crescent moon. Up the hillside on the opposite side of the stream Vadya could see the flickering fires of Tenth Sietter. The ground was soaking wet and between the two troop encampments Vadya could hear the stream, which had indeed flooded, gurgling through the hills on its way to the Arven River. The Sixth H'las camp-fires flickered sullenly around him on the wet ground but there was cool starlight to allow him to pick his way through the troop.

He reached the Second Quarter and a rough voice suddenly demanded: "Give the word!"

"Huh?" Vadya stepped nervously backwards.

"Give the word, fool!" the voice repeated.

Vadya, who had set the troop's password for the night, gaped as a dark figure suddenly rose from a banked-up campfire and began levelling a spear at him.

"F-fellow!" he stuttered.

"Oh!" the voice exclaimed. "Commander! Sir, your pardon."

"What is this?" Vadya demanded.

"Captain Maien ... er Captain-Lord el Maien set an internal guard," the trooper said nervously. "It is normal procedure in times of war, sir. In case the enemy penetrate the camp."

"Yes, yes, I know that," Vadya snapped, vaguely remembering that Tashka had said something in her report about normal wartime procedures. "Er ... very good. Well done, er ... Iada. I was just ... taking the air."

"Yes sir," the trooper said in a colourless voice.

Vadya strode off into the tents of the Second Quarter. He felt mortified with embarrassment. 'What a stupid thing to say!' he cursed himself. 'Taking the air in this wet bog. Can Iada see as far as Tashka's tent? No. Damn the Angels, she is a fine military mind but sometimes her zeal annoys me.'

He identified Tashka's tent, looked nervously around him and started to pull open the entrance flaps, tugging awkwardly from the outside at the hooks on the inside through the gaps in the canvas flaps. It was dark and silent in the tent, a brazier of coals glowing by Tashka's box-desk made the rest of the tent less easy to make out. Vadya groped hesitantly forward towards where he thought the bedding might be. Tashka's voice hissed suddenly in his ear: "Surrender! My dagger is in your back."

"Ow!" he said, feeling the sharp point prick his spine.

"el Gaiel!" she exclaimed. There was a spurt and the sudden flare of a match and her startled eyes appeared in a face artificially hollowed by the shadows thrown by the match's flame. She lit the candle by her bedding and flicked the match out, chucking it into the candlestick's base.

"Sweet Hell!" he said angrily. "Who am I to come into your virgin presence? Oh no one but the man who loves you. What is this, setting an internal guard and then when I get here, you act as if I, your husband on whom your own brother bestowed you, am some scummy assassin!"

"Of course I set an internal guard," she whispered. "It is normal wartime procedure. Look what happened to Fifth and Eighth Sietter because they did not watch Tenth sufficiently closely. Oh! you mean the other Captains have not set an internal guard? Hmm, so if we spring a practice attack on Fourth ..."

"Tashka, hear me," he said. "I have to go back. Iada saw me come through here."

"Mmm," she said sleepily, climbing back into her bedding with a shiver. "Tell him what a good job he is doing."

Vadya's brown eyes narrowed up and he said in a cold hard voice: "So now we are nothing but a Commander and a Captain is it?"

"What?" she whispered indignantly, lifting her head to stare at him in the flickering shadows. "What are you saying? Are you crazy?"

"Obviously you have decided that is all we are to be to each other," he grumbled in a loud grumpy voice.