Please leave comments for me. Thank you! (Diolch.)
*****
"Come on!" Tashka yelled, leaning back in the saddle to grimace at Pava. Jewel leapt into the gallop down the winding road to the rambling old grey castle set like an untidy bird's nest above Sietter town in the hills. Pava grinned and nudged Star into a canter. His eyes were wary coming down the familiar road he had travelled often in the days when he and Clair el Maien were brother officers and best friends.
He felt sweaty and gritty, his green linen riding suit was grey with dirt and his boots were caked with mud. Tashka had forced a fast pace up the Maier Pass but when they came to cross the Arven they had had to lead the horses through the river because the bridge was down, to Tashka's disgust. After that, Tashka had refused to wait for the baggage to catch them up. They had spent the previous night in an inn where there was no one to clean Pava's boots and he had even had to borrow a nightshirt! He was longing for a good long soak in a bath and a decent shirt to put on his back.
Tashka slowed to a canter on the approach up to the castle, taking the opportunity to make a thorough reconnaiscance left and right, assessing the dispositions of two troop encampments either side. Pava frowned to see from the banners that not only was First Sietter encamped there but also First V'ta. A red and black banner with a silver emblem floated on the breeze away up to the East of the castle.
They were clattering past saluting guards at the gateway into the courtyard. Tashka pulled up Jewel exactly right and sprang out of the saddle. Pava was making a business out of pulling Star up. He noticed a new ramp built up the side of the broad castle steps. His mouth quirked in a bitter smile; he knew Clair would have made them do it for those soldiers he had brought home with him from the war who now used wheelchairs.
Tashka was running to the steps but stumbled to a sudden stop. Pava followed the line of Tashka's eyes and saw that there indeed was Fiotr el F'lara van V'ta standing to one side at the top of the steps in a long green and black robe, his slanted eyes staring down at Tashka. His two daughters were also there, though, one in blue and green and the other in pink, their Guards of Honour hovering at a suitable proximity. Tashka ran on up the steps, seized Clair about the waist and flung him round in the sunshine. Pava saw Clair el Maien's head flung back with laughter, his slanted grey eyes sparkled with happiness, his thin mouth was certain with joy.
A smiling groom was saying: "Welcome back, Lord Pava!" and offering a shoulder and arm to help him dismount. The man's happiness to see him brought the smile to his own face, he gripped the groom's shoulder affectionately.
Tashka had gone to throw muscular strong arms around Arianna.
Anna el Jien! So tall and plump and lovely in a white and green dress like she was wearing the green fields of Iarve. That must be her baby boy, the little dark-haired one with exquisite slanted eyes like Tashka's, although there was another blond boy hiding behind her skirts.
Tashka had gone back to cast an arm about Clair's shoulders. Standing so close together, the two of them looked startlingly alike, only Clair had a few inches height on Tashka and Tashka was slimmer. Tashka stared at van V'ta with curled lip and slanted eyes drawn out in a sneer.
"Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter," van V'ta said a formal greeting instead of the familiar one and without moving to offer Tashka a hand. Tashka only nodded curtly. Pava raised his eyebrows to hear van V'ta give the proper title, if he knew Tashka was a Captain, he must know of what troop.
"Commander-Lord Pava el Jien van Vail of Ninth Vail," van V'ta turned his gaze from the two el Maiens.
Pava started strolling up the steps flicking his gloves into the palm of his big hand. He inclined his blond head to van V'ta, saying casually: "el F'lara van V'ta. Lady Laienne, Lady Ilya." The young women, pretty dark-haired maidens with modest smiles, came forward. He took the left hand of each with two fingers and brought it momentarily to his lips.
"Pava," Clair attempted a smile but his eyes were anxious. He was trying to keep a watch on van V'ta and a restraining arm around Tashka's waist.
Imp came shooting out of the kennels, barking furiously and trailing a broken lead. Tashka went down on dusty leather-booted knees and began rolling the dog around, trying to get a hand on his wriggling body to tickle his tummy but Imp kept lying at Tashka's feet and jumping up and lying down and jumping up again. van V'ta, having ensured he showed sufficient courtesy to young van Vail, took the opportunity to go back into the castle, ushering his two daughters before him.
Clair had turned to Pava and was trying again to smile. "You have not greeted Arianna," he said, standing aside so that Pava had a clear path to her.
Pava looked into the round blue eyes of his cousin, his dearest love. He stepped hesitantly forward, she came to meet him holding both hands out and he took her long cool fingers in his own long fingers, leaning forward to give her cheeks a chaste kiss each.
Oh it was gone, his passion for her was gone. His life was easier without that flaming desire for her body but he felt a wild pang at his heart. She had meant so much to him once but he had not seen nor heard from her for years. She was a stranger again: graceful, cool, courteous.
He was remembering lifting his head as he came riding into the courtyard of his uncle's palace, to see Arianna. Her eyes had tilted at him, a faint blush coloured her cheek. Then her red mouth, sweet as a bowl of cherries, softened into a pure smile, as if she were thinking he was her little cousin and how they had been children together. The blood went rushing round his cheeks and his loins. It was like a glove in the face to a dashing young Lieutenant, newly commissioned as he was, to see a beauty like her smile as if he were still a child - and her so evidently a grown woman with her full bosom and the curve in to her small waist emphasised by those rounded hips. He had been boyishly happy up till then in his life of sports and the excitement of being commissioned in a field troop in Sietter. As he saw the head of that magnificent blonde beauty turn apparently careless of him to his sister, his heart seemed to clutch up in his chest, his cock stirred softly and filled against his thigh and he fell for the first time in love. He had never been comfortable without some ladybird on his arm since.
She was so hesitant, so shy of her kisses. Her skin, her arm, her breasts were so soft to his pressing hands. Her panting uncertain chastity both frustrated him and increased his desire to have more than a hand on one thigh quivering under the pressure of his fingers with her already rising out of his arms in the tall grass, in response to the other cousins calling them. He knew now that the kisses he gave her had been childish. His hands attempting to caress a hip, a breast had been clumsy and ignorant, but there was something sweetly sincere about those loutish attempts to raise the gleam in her veiled blue eyes. No experienced bird of paradise or laughing plump lovely since had made him feel as eager yet tender, so frustrated yet content. He was young and left it for months at a correspondence, dreaming only of her kisses. Then he realised with a shock that moves were being made to bestow her, so much older than him. He was confident his parents would agree to a match with so intelligent and honourable a fair Lady, when her brother and his own best friend stepped in to deny him. He had pretended that his rage at Clair was justified by his friend's treatment of her. In truth he knew he had never got over that first love, sudden and violent as a summer thunderstorm, for a woman who was so far above any man's touch that she hid more than half of who she was in a veiled coldness of eye.
She smiled at him, oh his heart, the same sweet open trusting smile she would always give to her little cousin. He had tried to break that famous chaste honour in two and persuade her to run away from her political marriage for the sake of his body. She, so pure of honour that she always believed the best of people, still relied on his goodness of heart. His affection for her seemed to come flooding back; quietly. Once his passion for her had been all-important, now he felt a gentler respect for her happiness. He gave her a deprecating smile, knowing that he had only added to her difficulties at a turbulent time of her life when she had had to make a decision not for herself alone and not for him, but for her family and all of the people of the region she had come from and the one she went to.
"My cousin," he said. His smile had a twist in the corner of a mouth that was exactly like her own.
"Pava," she answered, looking into his green eyes with her limpid gaze veiled in that way that meant you could not read her feelings or thoughts.
