Chapter#209

She tilted her chair back and forward on its legs, giving Clair and then Lord Esha a lazy sparkling grin. "Your alternative," she said with a snigger, as if what she were about to say were very funny. "You can completely strip the command and have Vaie as your one General to rebuild with but the two troops at his back. Then you may keep Darien and any others Anna chooses from whoever else in the troops which took arms against you. You may have yourself a peace corps to guard the borders and maintain order while refusing to take up arms in aggression."

Lord Esha burst out into loud laughter at this suggestion. Clair grinned too. "Yes, I am sure Anna would like that," he said. "And so would all the other regions! So I may do one of two things. I may rely on H'las troops to defend our borders," he tipped his head in a graceful courteous gesture of gratitude to Lord Esha, "or Tashka, you do think I could manage to restock the structure as it stands with only Vaie and Stariel as my Generals?" She nodded her head, still grinning about her idea of the peace corps.

"We will be at your back to support you, my brother," she said, letting her chair fall forward so it rested solidly on its four legs. "I will be at Major General-Sir Vaie's disposal, to support him from Port H'las."

Lord Esha leant over and clasped Clair's red felt clad shoulder, telling him: "You know you may rely on my General. She has said it, you may hold her to her word."

~#~*~#~

Vadya shared a final sniggering story with Fiotr and Basra in the corridor, grinned happily at them and followed Tashka into their room.

She was already undressed, her suit was neatly hung up on the back of a chair to the other side of the big bed in the room. He came round the bedside in the flickering firelight, pulling the double row of buttons of his tunic undone, and found her lying naked on her stomach over the bed.

His heart jumped and began beating soft and light with desire for her. She was thinner than when he had last made love with her but the firm muscular swell of her buttocks and her long pale scarred back were dearly familiar to him.

He walked quickly to the bed, sat down beside her and reached gentle hands out to rub her shoulders. He ran one hand lovingly down her back and then again more slowly, touching each of the old white scars that criss-crossed her spine. He spread his fingers over the firm flesh of her buttock and squeezed it affectionately. Gently he laid his hand on the barely healed purple hole in her thigh where she had been hit by an arrow. With his left hand he continued to stroke her back: long firm confident movements, rubbing down her spine and her sides.

Puzzled by the lack of response, he took his hands from her and bent anxiously down to peer into her face. Her blue eyes were half-hooded over and soft. She was not in the hard military frame of mind that prevented her acknowledging the sweetness of their affection. She just looked very tired.

"I like that," she murmured. He put his hand out to massage the nape of her neck and the corners of her mouth lifted sleepily in a smile.

"My sweetheart," he said softly to her.

"I like it," she said, "but I am so tired."

"We could lie together in the morning?" he suggested.

"I have to ride round the encampments at dawn," she said gloomily.

"Well then, the morrow night. Angels! we have waited eight months, we could wait one more day, is it not?"

"Oh no!" she mourned, "I have changed my mind." She surged suddenly up in his arms and turned. She put her hands to the collar of his black shirt and gripped it, her pale knuckles pressed against his lean brown neck, she stared into his eyes with glinting blue eyes. "Fuck me, el Gaiel," she said in a hoarse husky voice.

He stared back at her, suddenly uncertain. He did not want to give her the kind of fuck you bought off someone in a bar after the battle when you could not face the soft familiar caress of your lover. On the other hand he did not want her to go off buying a fuck off some stranger in a bar if that was what she needed.

Her face suddenly softened, she tilted it down and looked through her long lashes at him. His heart started bumping in his chest and the blood surging to his loins, to his cock at this. "All I want is to feel you inside me," she murmured. She put her head to his shoulder and snugged it into his neck. "We could manage that, is it not? I have been denied you so long, do not deny me longer."

He put his arms about her and kissed her softly, several times, under her ear where he had once sucked so hard in passion that he left a tell-tale mark.

"I can deny you nothing," he said. "You lie still then, darling lazy pig, and I will fuck you." She giggled sleepily, lying down on her front on the bed again.

He got up to pull off his boots, take off his weapons, hang them on the end of the bed with hers and strip off his clothes which he chucked on the floor. He sat down by her and began caressing and rubbing her shoulders and kissing down the line of her spine (the bones stuck up so hard out of her back). He gripped a hand on her buttock, she gave a snigger.

"Yum," he murmured in her ear, "fresh young officer's buttock!" She sniggered again at that. Then he sat up away from her with a laugh.

"What is it?" she asked, lifting her head and looking back round her bony shoulder at him.

"It is the first time I have lain with a General!" he said.

Her eyes sparkled in amusement. "Damn," she cursed. "We never got to lie together as equals."