THEY LAY QUIETLY under the stars on the grassy gravel of their little corner of the vineyard. Soon they would need to get up and return to the women’s camp. It was plain no one was coming after them from the villa; the students were probably still too busy fighting among themselves.
Varazda seemed in no hurry to get up and dress, which Damiskos had expected he might be, embarrassed after Damiskos’s confession.
“Do you ever think about going back to Zash?” Varazda asked presently. “It sounds as if you were happy there.”
“Yes, I was. But no, I don’t. Zash was done with me. I miss it, though. Do you?”
“Miss Zash? Of course.” He smiled faintly. “I miss the palace at Gudul. I miss my friends there, and riding in the mountains, and trivial things, food that you can’t get in Boukos, that kind of thing. And I miss my childhood home, which was burned to the ground, and my mother and brothers, who are long dead. Even if there were a way for me to go back to Zash without losing my freedom—and there isn’t—I wouldn’t want to. Boukos is home now.” After a moment he said, “I guess you could say Zash was done with me too, though in a different way.”
Damiskos felt he ought to explain. “What I meant by that … ”
“Oh, I know what you meant by it. That is—if you want to tell me about it, I will be happy to listen, but if you don’t … I was the son of a Deshan warlord. I know how you get a limp like that. I’ve seen it done.”
Damiskos absorbed that piece of information. Varazda knew, or at least had suspected. Whatever regard he had for Damiskos had included that truth already—for good or ill.
“And that first night, when you arrived here,” Varazda added gently, “one of the idiots was talking about Zashian punishments, and I thought I saw something in your face for a moment.”
Damiskos linked his fingers behind his head and looked up at the dark sky. “You probably did. But I don’t find it all that difficult to talk about. Sometimes I want to tell people, because they all assume it’s a battlefield injury and that it was all very heroic, and … it wasn’t.”
“Were you actually enslaved?”
“No. I can’t claim to understand what that’s like. What happened to me was … It was in the year ’93—you’d already have been in Boukos by then.”
“Yes.”
“That was when I made First Spear. I replaced a man who deserted. This was just after I broke off my engagement—it felt like a consolation prize from the gods, to be honest. But I inherited a mess. We were in the middle of the worst clan fighting the Deshan Coast had seen in decades.
“Most of my first year—my only year—in command we spent dealing with this one warlord, Abadoka. He gave us so much trouble. Burning farms, harassing our allies, breaking treaties for no reason. We had a couple of skirmishes with his men and finally hit him hard enough that he agreed to sit down for a parlay with me. At least … I thought we’d hit him hard enough. It turned out he was nursing a grudge—our former First Spear, the man I’d replaced, had been in Abadoka’s pay, and Abadoka didn’t understand why I hadn’t come to bend the knee to him yet. When I said I didn’t plan to, he violated the terms of our truce, slit the throats of the men who had come with me, and took me prisoner.
“He tried a bit of persuasion … You don’t need me to tell you about that. I’m reasonably stubborn, so that was a dead end. Then he decided to make an example of me, to show my commander that I’d been his creature and betrayed him. Breaking my legs like a runaway slave was meant as some sort of symbolism.”
“Angels of the Almighty. It didn’t work at all, did it? Nobody believed you’d been in his pay?”
“No. Everyone knew what kind of a vicious shit Abadoka was. It was a shameful failure on my part—my men were killed, and we lost any advantage we’d had with Abadoka—but I wasn’t turned off in disgrace. I was able to retire with honour. I felt it was more than I deserved. I felt … like a jilted lover. As if this country I’d come to love had rejected me. I’d no right to feel that way—it’s not my country, I was there as part of a barely-tolerated foreign army, but … ” He trailed off hopelessly.
“Oh, Dami. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m lucky I can still walk as well as I can. My left knee healed completely—it hardly ever hurts.”
Varazda turned on his side again, laying his hand lightly on Damiskos’s arm. He made no more contact than that, and Damiskos wondered if that was because he was wary now that he’d realized how attached this man had become who’d slept with him all of twice.
It was true that Damiskos didn’t find it difficult to speak about what had happened. In some ways it helped to rehearse it in clear, unemotional terms. The things that would plunge him back into the memories were different: sounds or smells or the feeling of having his hands tied behind his back.
He thought back on some of the things that didn’t bother him. He remembered Abadoka’s stronghold—the first one, the one they had taken, not the one where he had been held prisoner—with the dark forest of the Vanesh encroaching on two sides. Suddenly something slid into place in his mind.
He pushed himself up to a sitting position. Varazda came with him, startled, hand clasping his arm.
“I just had a thought,” Damiskos said. “Were you old enough to remember the capture of Sumuz?”
Varazda let go of his arm and gave him a mystified look. “Sort of. I remember riding past Sumuz with my brothers shortly after it changed hands and seeing red flags flying. But the details I didn’t hear about until years later. The subterfuge with the … ” He stopped, closed his mouth for a moment, then said, “Dami. You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking. Are you?”
“I don’t know. What do you think I think I’m thinking?”
“That we could pull off something like the capture of Sumuz at Nione’s villa. You are thinking that.”
“I’ve actually done something like it before. It was one of the first blows I struck against Abadoka—that’s what made me think of it. I took great pleasure in using one of his countrymen’s famous tricks against him. The terrain here is different, but that would actually make it easier—and we don’t have a legion, which would make it harder—but we’re not trying to take a stronghold garrisoned with trained men-at-arms, we’re trying to retake a country house from a bunch of fishermen and philosophers. I likely killed their best fighter, and their second-best has a broken arm. They’ve lost their two high-status hostages, and I’d bet they wouldn’t even think to use the slaves as leverage—they put too low a value on slaves’ lives themselves to think that they could make worthwhile hostages. I think we could do it.”
“Look at you. This is what the poets mean when they say someone has ‘a glint in his eye,’ isn’t it?”
“Probably.”
“I think if anyone could pull this off, Dami, it’s you.”
They dressed, Damiskos in a clean tunic from his luggage, and retraced their steps. When they finally came back, loaded with the items they had returned to pick up, they took the rest of the stairs down through the vineyard and the path to the beach at a leisurely pace. Damiskos felt easier now, almost content. He was glad he had told Varazda how he felt, even if in the long run it wouldn’t make any material difference.
Varazda was treating him a little differently—with a touch of a kind of careful affection—but it was a subtle thing.
“When I told Aradne that we are not a couple this morning,” Varazda said from behind Damiskos, as they neared the end of the path, “that must have hurt you. I am sorry.”
“Oh, that’s all right. It is true, after all.”
“Not because we want it to be true, though—and I needn’t have made it sound as if I did.”
The camp was still half-awake when they returned, the children and some of the women asleep inside the beach huts while others sat around a small fire they had built inside the fortifications. Aradne and one of the vineyard workers hurried to open the gate for Damiskos and Varazda to enter, and Nione got to her feet and came around the fire to embrace them both. They set down their bundles and returned her embrace.
“We were worried about you both when you were gone so long,” she said.
“We had some difficulty getting out,” said Damiskos. “And then we went back for some things.”
“We dawdled,” said Varazda at the same time. “I’m—we’re—sorry.”
He shot Damiskos a guilty look, and Damiskos felt like a bad influence.
“Damiskos has had an idea,” Varazda went on. “You’ve got to hear it. It’s utterly mad.”
“Here’s what it is,” said Damiskos, when they were all sitting around the fire. “We’ve set the signal for the postal ship from Boukos, so it should stop here some time tomorrow morning. They may well see that from the villa—it works to our advantage if they do, because I propose we go up and knock at the door and tell them that a band of crack Zashian mercenaries has arrived from Boukos on that ship, has the villa surrounded, and demands their immediate surrender.”
“And,” said Aradne into the stunned silence that followed, “they’ll believe this because … ”
“Because when they look out from the signal tower, they’ll catch glimpses through the trees of riders in Zashian clothes, they’ll see the glint of sun on weapons, they’ll hear strange, unintelligible shouts and signals, see foliage swaying as the Zashian forces marshal just out of sight.”
“Oh!” Aradne cried, all but bouncing up from the sand with a girlish delight that was equal parts endearing and alarming. “It’s a ruse! It’s like how they captured that place, Sou … Sou-something, in Sasia.”
“Sumuz,” Varazda supplied. “How do you know about that?”
“Someone told me the story. Oh, we must do it, Nione. It will be such fun.”
“Fun?” Nione repeated, giving Aradne an incredulous look.
“Fun,” Aradne repeated. “What did you bring back with you from the house?” she asked, turning back to Damiskos and Varazda.
“Mostly Varazda’s clothes,” said Damiskos with a grin. “Fortunately he doesn’t travel light. We’ve got some of the grooms on our side as well—we talked to them about the plan.”
They had gone back into the slave quarters, ransacked Varazda’s room for anything useable, and done some plotting with the four remaining slaves, who had been nearly beside themselves with eagerness to help.
“So do we have your permission, Nione?” Damiskos asked.
“Wait,” said Eurydemos, holding up a hand. “What are you proposing to do?”
“We’re going to pretend to be Zashian soldiers,” said Aradne, as if addressing a child she didn’t like very much.
“But surely,” said Eurydemos, “it is nothing more than a cowardly trick. Can such a thing be compatible with honour?”
“Is that really of primary importance, Eurydemos?” Nione cut in before either Aradne or Damiskos could answer.
“No, no,” the philosopher conceded easily, but with a kind of superior tone that Damiskos found grating. “I merely raise it as an interesting point.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Nione, “on some level. But as this isn’t a philosophical debate, I think we can set that aside.”
“Of course, of course,” said Eurydemos.
“Actually,” said Damiskos, “let’s not. Because I have an answer for that question. Honour is a matter of deeds in the world—it isn’t something you can make up in your own head. You can’t take away my honour by thinking I don’t deserve it—that’s not how it works.
“Now. I led a manoeuvre very like the capture of Sumuz, in the Zashian year 993, when I was First Spear. I had my company of a hundred, and I was waiting for my subordinates to arrive with their men, but there’d been a rockslide and they couldn’t get through the mountain pass to reach us. The stronghold we were intending to besiege was fully garrisoned, and it was only a matter of time before they realized our reinforcements weren’t coming and made a sally to attack us.
“I massed most of my men in front of the stronghold, sent a couple of parties through the woods surrounding the other sides, making a lot of noise and hanging helmets on trees and so on—exactly the same strategy as Sumuz. The defenders fell for it, we captured the stronghold with minimal bloodshed, and—” He held up his right wrist, indicating the bronze bracelet of the Second Koryphos. “My honour is intact. It’s no more a cowardly trick than feinting in a sword-fight, moving left when you’re going to cut right.”
“Ah-yah,” said Varazda under his breath. It was what Zashians sometimes shouted instead of clapping or whistling. Damiskos flashed him a smile.
Eurydemos nodded serenely, his superior look still in place. Damiskos didn’t care; he hadn’t really expected to convince the man. He just thought Nione and Aradne and the other women deserved to know that what they were proposing to do was something even the Phemian army wouldn’t have thought dishonourable.
“Very well,” said Nione. “What do we need to do first?”
“I seem to spend all my time these days listening to you strategize,” said Varazda drowsily.
He lay in the sand with his head in Damiskos’s lap. They were alone at the nearly extinct campfire now. It was extremely late.
“Getting tired of it, are you?”
“No,” said Varazda. “I love it.”
He settled himself more comfortably against Damiskos’s thigh and mumbled something about getting up. After a minute or two Damiskos could tell that he was asleep.
Eurydemos, who had gone around behind the beach huts earlier, returned to the fire at that point, hitching up his mantle, dashing Damiskos’s hope that he had intended to sleep somewhere else.
“We are exiled out here, I take it?” Eurydemos said as he sat in the sand beside Damiskos.
Damiskos smiled politely, looking down at Varazda in a pointed way that he hoped would cause Eurydemos to be quiet.
It didn’t. Eurydemos just looked at Varazda and sighed. “I do envy you, Damiskos. You have achieved what I so desire. But do not worry—I would not dream of asking if you would be willing to share.”
“Good,” said Damiskos stonily. “Because that would be up to him, really.”
Eurydemos looked at him as, Damiskos imagined, he might have looked at a student who had presented an interesting but rather outrageous argument in a debate. For all that his students had abandoned him, Damiskos thought, he really was almost as much of a swine as they were.
Damiskos opened his mouth to say something about letting Varazda sleep, but Eurydemos got in first.
“You know how much I have sacrificed to my desire. If I had been better able to conceal it, I might have kept the respect of my students longer.” He sighed. “And yet it is entirely unjust. You understand. Desiring a creature like him, neither woman nor man, that does not make either of us a degenerate. If anything, we have more refined tastes, able to appreciate such rare, fragile loveliness. While others see something contrary to nature, what I see is a product of civilization, a work of art almost. Cruelty is always inherent in the great work of art—the cruelty of deception, the statue that fools the eye into seeing a living form, the tale that beguiles us without being true. Just as he beguiles and deceives, blending the forms of male and female—without the frailties of womankind or the virtues of a man.”
“I think you should go sit somewhere else,” Damiskos cut him off finally. “If you keep talking, I’m going to punch you in the mouth.”
Eurydemos blinked at him, genuinely surprised, but he did get up, with a muttered apology, and took himself away as far as the other side of the fire pit, where he lay down with his back to Damiskos.
Varazda showed no sign of having woken to hear any of that. Damiskos was glad, though it wasn’t much of a comfort. Varazda had probably heard things like that before. He was probably used to Pseuchaian men rhapsodizing about his dual nature and how he lacked womanly this and manly that.
What bothered Damiskos was the thought that some of what Eurydemos had said might not be utter bullshit. He was right that Varazda wasn’t “contrary to nature.” And Varazda had been physically shaped for a particular civilization that had a use for people they could classify as not-quite-men. Of course there wasn’t anything wrong with finding him attractive; Damiskos didn’t think there was anything wrong with finding anyone attractive. But what about the rest of it?
Eurydemos was a bloviating asshole who thought Varazda especially desirable. Damiskos found Varazda desirable too. Did that make him an asshole? Was he doing without meaning to what Eurydemos was doing very consciously: thinking of Varazda as a beautiful thing?
It bothered him as he tried to fall asleep, and he slept badly, thinking of this every time he woke. Was this the real reason why Varazda couldn’t return his love? Because it wasn’t love at all, just fetish—a worship of his body as if he were a work of art? He didn’t think so, but would he know, if it were so? He wasn’t a philosopher.
Part of the reason he didn’t sleep well was because Varazda was a very restless sleeper. The position Damiskos had tried to adopt when he settled down to sleep himself, curled around Varazda, leaving Varazda’s head pillowed on his thigh, meant that every time Varazda flung out an arm or stretched or rolled over in his sleep, one or both of them would wake at the resulting collision. Eventually Varazda got up and went in to sleep with the women, leaving Damiskos with the blanket they had been awkwardly sharing.