He was a tall boy, with sandy blonde hair and gray eyes…
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One of the soldiers finally approached me. It was weeks after we’d left Abdera, and we were driving across a wide, grassy steppe. He broke from the front of the caravan where the troops typically marched, and strolled at such a slow speed that the rest of the train overtook him, like a school of fish swimming past a little moat in a stream. The apothecary’s wagon preceded mine, and I could see the healer and him conversing a while, the healer gesturing wildly with his arms from the drivers box of his wagon, the soldier more reserved in his bearing where he walked next to the medical wagon. He kept turning round to glance back at me as the healer blathered.
My interactions with these troops were more frequent of late. They often retreated towards the end of the caravan one at a time, where the supply wagons lingered. At first I’d assumed this was simply to keep better guard over the rear carriages. Yet soon I realized the idleness that being out of sight of the Polemarch and the other infantry afforded a soldier. Their shoulders stooped more when they came back here. And the cold, iron discipline in their eyes gave way to the bemused expressions of boys far from home. As they took in the wilderness about us, their usual ramrod silence devolved into sighs, groans, even laughter at times. What a strange thing an army is! A band of young men, held together by the discipline and cruelty imposed by older men, who had themselves been young in their day.
Eventually the soldier waved to the healer and turned away from him, but instead of going forward to resume his position, he slowed down to a trot, falling behind the entire caravan, until he was parallel with the driving box of my wagon where I sat. He kept a wide distance for a while, looking over at me and smiling as he slowly closed the gap between us.
“Goodday sir, how fare you back here?”
“Well enough” I said curtly.
The Polemarch had warned me his men might try to beg food off of me, and that on no account should I indulge them. “Maintaining discipline is paramount, and I will tolerate no moral sloth on our mission” being how the man had put it to me. There was something dark in his tone when he’d told me that and it set my stomach to knots at the time; the hint of a threat. Would he beat me if I slipped this smiling boy some little morsel? What could he not do to me out here, if I provoked his displeasure?
“It’s a nice position you have here in the very back sir, peaceful-like. And you get to be up on a wagon all day. My feet are killin’ me just now” he said. Perhaps he simply wants someone to whine to, I thought. The sun was in my eyes and I could not quite make out his face.
“The Polemarch drives you men hard. It is a hard mission.” I said.
“Oh aye that he does sir. More than you know sir.” He said. A cloud passed over the sun just then, and I looked over at him properly for the first time. He was a tall boy, with sandy blonde hair and gray eyes. I could make out the powerful chest and arms beneath his tabard. My heart stirred, and I looked out at the wagon horses in a vain effort to calm myself.
“Forgive my boldness sir, but do you smoke much? I wanted to have a quick puff before goin’ back up to the front, but I didnt want t’ offend yer nose if yer not partial to it” he asked. I hated the smell of weed but I didn’t want to drive off this handsome boy so fast.
“My father was a smoker, but I never developed the habit for it.” I said.
“I’m a fiend for it miself” he said, pulling out a small clay pipe already stuffed for the occasion and lighting it. He took several deep puffs and indicated to me if I wanted some, which I refused. I watched as he pursed his lips and blew smoke out of them in great, forceful gouts, an expression which made him look especially handsome. I was not certain, but he may have been the same one who’d jested at me about returning from the brothel that bizarre night before we’d left Abdera. A shame I did not find this strapping boy working there. I thought.
“Your pa is why yer out here, aye? Your lookin for ‘im I heard.” he said.
“Yes I am. Did the Polemarch tell you that?” I asked, leaving out that Baldwin was in truth my step-father.
“Oh no sir, he don’t talk to us much like that. Heard it off one of them diplomats a ways back” he said, gesturing ahead to the wagon that carried the Imperial embassy itself.
“I thought you soldiers kept to yourselves, I hadn’t realize you gossiped with them” I said. I loathed the diplomats. They were lettered and educated men, like myself. But if the Polemarch called me a barbarian once a fortnight, the old procurate, who was their master, did so every day. Even out in this wasteland, they wanted nothing to do with me.
“Aint much out here to do sir ‘cept gossip and march, sir.” he said, and I smiled.
He is a bit clever. I thought
“Call me Alister, please” I said.
“I’m Thod” he said.
“I have never met a Thod before. Where do you hail from? ” I asked.
“In the south, little farming village. Thod’s just mi imperial name.”
“Your what?” I asked, puzzled.
“When we swear our oaths to the throne, we choose a formal name, s’what the officers call us.” he said.
“How did you come to choose Thod?” I asked. What an ugly name for someone so handsome.
“They give us a list an we’ sorta just pick one. I pointed mi finger at Thod. So Thod I am. He were one o’ them old emperors, someone told me once. S’easy to write out on parchment, I hear.” he said. Illiterate, alas. But Tall. And Handsome.
“And the name you were born with?” I asked.
The boy raised his eyebrows knowingly at me and laughed.
“Promise you won’t mock me if I tell ? We’re aint really ‘sposed to use ‘em when we’re on duty. But no one’s ‘ere he’ said, tossing his head to indicate the endless, empty grasslands around us as I nodded at him. Tell me something secret of yourself, sweet boy.
“It’s Razerial.” he said.
“What?” I said.
“RHU-ZEER-EE-AL. Bit much innit? I always gotta tell folks twice. Was mi fathers fathers fathers name. Call me Thod.” he said, looking almost apologetic.
“Do not be embarrassed, it is a beautiful name” I said, imagining how good it would taste to whisper it into his ear. To caress and whisper anything into his ears. Ah, perhaps I can offer him one thing.
I asked him if he wanted to join me on the driver’s box and he nodded and swiftly hopped up and sat next to me on the bench. Thod was a full head taller than me sitting down, and I could feel the heat radiating off of him. He had been marching for hours already and it wasn’t midday. As he took his boots off and rubbed his swollen feet, I saw a dense clot of wrinkles around his eyes, though he must have been ten years younger than I. I had not been with a man since that night in the brothel and now I was sitting alone with this big, affable one right next to me. Polemarch be damned, I will give this boy whatever he asks for…
“You must go through a good deal of tobacco if you smoke so much” I said, gesturing at the pipe he’d continued puffing at.
“Oh aye sir. We only get a small ration of it each week, and the commander doles it out to us himself.” he said.
“Yes I’ve observed this. Did you know he stores the tobacco in this very cart?” I asked, trying to sound as though I had just learned this information myself. The tobacco, I knew perfectly well, was always kept in my wagon, for I tallied its weight each night. He stared back at the wooden outer wall of the cart where it ran straight up from the rear of the drivers box behind us, and then he looked at me again, but said nothing. Ask it of me, you great hulking fool and I will give it to you. I will give all of me to you.
A silence sank over him for a while. He continued puffing away at his pipe a while, but he said nothing. The horses had slowed down suddenly, whinnying and flicking their heads in frustration. I stopped the cart and got down to feed them and pour some water from a skin into the hammered metal bowel that they drank from, for rivers and streams were scarce here. I had now fallen far behind the apothecaries wagon, and when I finally remarshalled the horses and got up on the box to mush us back forward, I realized that Thod had fallen asleep where he sat, his handsome curls blowing slightly in the breeze.
I waved my hand before his face, his eyes didn’t blink. I should never had allowed him up on the box with me. What if someone ahead of us sees him? What if word gets back to the Polemarch? There’s only one thing a solider would be doing back at the supply wagon in the afternoon, before the evening rations had been doled out: thieving or bribing. They will think I am his accomplice, how else would he have come to sit up here with me? Damn my lusts.
I was about to give him a kick in the shin to awaken him, when one of the carriage wheels passed over a dirt mound, rising and then crashing down with a great thump. Thod jolted awake next to me and without meaning to, and grabbed tightly onto my upper thigh to stabilize himself. “Just a clod of dirt” I said as the sudden touch made my blood and heart quicken. The iron grip of his hand on my thigh relaxed, but instead of letting go he began to slowly knead the meat of my leg with a slow, circular motion. “Beg yer pardon sir, I hope I didn’t startle you” he said. His perfect grey eyes now alert and clear, starred directly into the back of mine.
He leaned in closer to me so that his bulk was almost pressed up against my body, the jovial tone of his voice now deep and low. “Would you have any extra bit of tobacco I could trouble you for sir? I would be most obliged to ye” he said, as he pushed his hand up and squeezed the flesh at the root of my thigh. My field of view narrowed and shrank down to the depths of those perfect grey eyes that continued to bore into mine. Yes. His powerful body seemed to blot out all light, so that I was living purely in the shadow he cast. My eyes glanced once more over his figure, his great chest and arms. This must be a trick. I am imagining this.
“It…it is a crime to steal an imperial mission’s provisions.” I squeaked out, my eyes not daring to look away from him. He gave me an impish smile. “Aye, but it’s not stealing sir, if I’m offering something in exchange is it?” he whispered back, and how his hand moved, slowly and purposely up to grasp at my member under my trousers. Yes. I put my hand on top of his to better guide him to me. The need within me screamed as my entire body shuddered. And yet, I could not help but glance fearfully off into the distance for just a moment. Who else in the train might be watching? Could the apothecary observe us even now perhaps? Surely someone had noted Thod coming back here? It is midday. Too many bored men hungry for intrigue. But night could grant us more freedom from prying eyes. Yes, it needs to be at night.
I leaned in close, so that my hot breath blew into his ear. “Come to me when it is past dark, and we will both have what we want.” I said. I took a deep, shuddering breath and pushed his hand off of me, forcibly returning my attention to the horses and the barely worn wagon tracks in front of me.
I was not sure if he understood me at first, for he recoiled back from me, over to his side of the drivers box, and began pulling on and lacing his boots. As though nothing had passed between us at all. Had the heat simply gotten to me? Had I simply imagined all of that? Thod took several final puffs from his pipe, and checked his kit silently to make certain everything was in place. I sat there, blowing air in and out of my mouth as he prepared to depart, uncertain if I was not just in the throw of some fever.
He finally stood up on the box and looked over his shoulder at me. “Right you are sir, gimme a night or two.” he said casually. A moment later, he jumped down off the wagon box, and began swiftly trotting past my horses, reversing his course to go up past the medical and diplomatic wagons, to reunite with the other soldiers where they marched at the front of our formation. A cool breeze from the east blew the gold wisps of his hair back along his head as he walked away from me. My member pulsed of its own accord.
Our exchange, I realized later, had lasted no more than a minute or two. I’d expected only idle chatter, or even a bribe when he approached me. Thod had understood perfectly what my friendliness had meant, and what I wanted from him. And he had known the whole time what he wanted from me, of course. Is he truly a bugger, or just driven by his fiendish need for the pipe? I wondered. There is some cunning in him. I thought.
That night I relieved myself repeatedly in my tent, until I was spent and I had to air it out from the smell. My mind raced. A night or two from now…would he perhaps just bring me a sack of gold and offer me coin, after all that? Would he even show up? Perhaps he could haggle some weed from one of the other soldiers. Most of all, I found myself harkening back to the Polemarch’s implicit threat from weeks ago, that ominous phrase: moral sloth. What would the Polemarch do to him, or to me, if he found out we were buggering? I understood the threat of taking a bribe for extra supplies, or simply stealing them. But caught in love making with another man…how would I be punished for that?
It happened two nights hence. We were driving through an area dotted with towering mounds, remnants from some forgotten age, that bulged up like bumps on a basilisk’s armor. We encamped at the base of one that rose up like a grand hill, far higher than the others around it. The Polemarch and several of the soldiers hiked up to its crest before night fell to consult a map and take bearings with a small spyglass.
I had already measured out and tallied the amount of oats, salted pork and hardtack that was to be given out to the men and horses the next day. The Polemarch had instructed me to reduce rations by a decile since we left Abdera. “The discipline of it could soon prove to be life or death”, he’d warned.
I was nodding off by the small fire I had built next to my tent, when I heard a ‘ttscchk’ sound from somewhere in the darkness. I sat up and reached for my long knife, as I had oft been told to do when hearing queer sounds outside the limits of the empire at night. There it was again. Ttscchk Ttscchk.
I pulled the blade close, and braced against the ground in case whatever lurked out in the dark should rush at me. If I needed to, I’d have to flee to where the soldiers were bivouacked, on the other side of the great hill. I looked up at the mound itself. Would it be faster to try and run up and over its crown than to wind around the circumference? I tried to recall some old arithmetic principle, memorized long ago in my school days, about this. I was too jittery to remember it. Either way, I would have to run. In the pitch of night. Why had I chosen a spot so far from the other wagons? Men had met their doom from simpler mistakes than this in the frontiers.
“Oi, Oi, Isssme” Thod whispered. He wore nothing but a pair of cloth breaches as he stepped out of the inky night beyond the limits of my fire’s light. His breath showed in the frigid air. It was growing colder as we moved further east. I sat back with a great sigh, resheathed my knife and gestured for him to come sit in front of the fire.
“Aren’t you frozen?” I asked as he flopped down beside me.
“Frozen! this is nothin’ next to where we’re off to.” he said, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them. He would not have come here with half his clothes off in this cold, unless he planned on taking the other half off, I thought. The heat between my legs waxed. I leaned into him until his body supported my weight and whispered “Perhaps I can give you some extra warmth” into his great chest as I pushed my hand down to feel the girth in his loins.
“Where do you hail from? I never ‘eard of nobody named Alister before” he asked me afterwards in the tent, my head laying across his fluid–stained lap as he chewed on some weed leaf.
“I live… or did live, in the stevedores district of the capital, but I grew up in Grell”
“Somewhere up in the north is that?”
“Much further away. I was raised over the sea. In the free cities of the grey coast”
“Grey Coast…so… your… a barbarian?
“I’m a full citizen now,” I said defensively, “But… yes. I was raised across the great sea”.
“Shame more folk of yer talents don’t make it over” he said, reaching down and firmly squeezing my spent parts. “Ye’ must be used to long journeys such as these we’re on.”
“Hardly, I only came over the sea the one time” I said, whincing as he put a bit too much pressure on my bits.
“So you never go back home?” he asked.
“The Dogana is my home.” I said. Was.
“You still got kin back over the sea?” he asked.
“I…do not know, truly. Baldwin…my father, is my only family” I said, lying.
I had hardly left the Stevedores district in years, I told him. Only to petition to come on the mission to find Baldwin, and for a moment I thought back to that unspeakable day long ago when I had come face to face with the Margrave. Why had the great fishy man, or perhaps some even great fiend who commanded him, allowed me to join this mission? Did such monsters feel…pity for me? Or was there some other reason I had been granted an imperial commission, and allowed to join up?
“What was he like, yer pa?” Thod asked me.
I told him what I told everyone: he had been an envoy for the merchants guild, a position that sounded both important and dull. Most people didn’t bother asking more beyond that. Which is what I preferred.
“You must dote on him a great deal if you would come out here with us looking for him, after his being gone so long.” he said gently.
Looking for him. It was the first time I could recall mentioning Baldwin, and not being met with a funereal condolence, or just pity. People assumed he and all the others in the embassy were dead. The Empire would not say it. Not publicly. But the first thought on the mind of anyone familiar with ‘the embassy to the east’ could only be: doomed. Or dead. How could a mission the empire had sent out…how could a merchant they had handpicked for that mission…simply vanish into the air?
Now, amidst these strange mounds, and the eastern wind that grew colder day by day, what seemed so certain in the capital was thrown suddenly back into doubt. Perhaps somewhere in this endless wilderness, Baldwin and the others survived, somehow? The empire contained many strange things. Who could say what peculiar marvels attended the spaces beyond? The very spaces we were now intruding on. I glanced up at Thod. His eyes were bleary with sleep. He looked especially innocent now. I have shared enough with you, boy.
“I do love him, of course. But there is also a matter of… an inheritance” I said, speaking the last word quietly, as though I were ashamed of it.
“Ah! so that’s the rub o you bein out ‘ere, you need the family money” Thod whispered faintly.
“You are a clever one” I said, smirking as I sat up. I reached under my pillow and grabbed the small bag of tobacco I had carefully weighed out and prepared several days ago after our first meeting. Thod was instantly alert, jolting upright and taking it from my hand, as though it were full of rubies. He opened the drawstring and sniffed eagerly. Our tryst was over. Now we were just two men, transacting business. I almost asked him then if he was a true bugger, but I thought better of it. He had been too calm and assured in our embraces, I felt, for me to have been his very first. He need not know all of me. And I need not know all of him.
After a lengthy assay of the leaf, he nodded in satisfaction at his prize, cinched the pouch closed and put his breeches back on. I savored the image of his bare chest raising and falling several times as he crawled out of my tent, and stood up to leave. He turned around to look at me, but there was some odd look in his face.
“Well. I’m here cause soldiers go where we’re told. An’ yer here to get yer missin’ fief. But I wonder what that girl in the apothecary’s wagon is ‘ere for? Wonder what she’s lost?” he said, his face all confusion.
“Come again?” I asked as I followed him outside and began dousing my camp fire.
“There’s a girl in the apothecary’s wagon. I seen her peeking out at me from the back when I was walkin here.” he said.
“Don’t be daft. You probably just saw the healer. Maybe a dog he brought with him.”
“I might not have mi letters, but I knowd a dog’s face from a girl’s. T’was a girl I saw.” he said flatly.
“Nonsense. The apothecary asked for no extra rations, and nothing’s missing from my supplies. I do my tallies and check the weights every day. I’d have noticed if another mouth were being fed on the mission” I said. What fancies these unlettered folk get in their heads.
“I didn’t say she was thieven’ victuals, just that she were here with us. Maybe he splits his rations with her. Or maybe she brought her own.” he said.
The gentleness left my voice then. “You couldn’t carry enough supplies for an extra person from Abdera all this way. Not without it taking up some little space. I would have noticed a stowaway, or one of the other wagon drivers would have. It’s a simple question of weights and measures” I said as the final embers of the fire cracked in front of me.
“I know what I espied” Thod said firmly.
Why share this with me? I wondered.
“Shouldn’t you tell the Polemarch about it?” I asked.
“No more than I’ll tell him about this.” Thod smirked and wiggled his hand, indicating the tobacco pouch. “Maybe the apothecary will fill me with seed to keep his secrets too.” He laughed at the grimace I made.
“I’m just havin’ a joke o’ course. He probably don’t even know she’s there. Just some poor fool stowaway. Or he does know, and he’s a keen liar.” he said as he stepped away and began his silent trek back to the other side of the mound, where the soldiers had their camp.
As Thod’s figure vanished back into the night, I thought on what he’d said. A girl, hiding out here with no one noticing. After all these weeks? Impossible. A stowaway would have thrown off the balance of my figures. What could someone have been eating for weeks now that no one noticed going missing? These are just a bored soldier’s imaginings. The next morning, at first light, I pulled out my ledger book, and recalculated the values from the previous week three times. There was never a contradiction nor change from my original figures. There was no stowaway. The numbers proved it.
Alister’s journey continues here
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