By the time Feilan had heard the first tale, another client, a young woman, had come up, and she sat to rest on the ledge to tell her own version. She was from a village on the other side of Seven Hills, not the town. The customer who’d come up behind the lean old woman, a middle-aged woman with a bad cough exacerbated by the climb, had yet a third version as she departed clutching medicine that smelled pale pink.
Once they’d all three gone, Feilan paced across bare ground in front of the wide mouth of the cave. One end of his circuit looked out over the joining of the two rivers and, if he craned, Seven Hill’s riverport; the other had a sightline the other way, past the skeps into the great bowl of open farmland that lay behind Seven Hills. At his arc’s very apogee, upwards and back, he could glimpse the hilltop arcade, its covered length straight as an arrow at a slope back towards Fourth Hill East.
As he paced, he looked out over the view, which he’d been assessing all morning with a creeping sense of his own presumption. The rolling hills, grazed by sheep, almost bare except for the occasional clump of trees at the crests. Narrow valleys dipping in every direction, the occasional glint of water at their bottoms flashing in the sunlight now that the mist had completely lifted.
A bear could survive here, Feilan thought, pacing. It might.
‘What are you doing?’ Remy asked from behind him.
Feilan glanced around. Though Remy had a stone mortar and pestle on the workbench, a faint haze still lingering from the initial pungent scent of crushing herbs into oil, he’d stopped work so he could stroke his cat. It bunted his chin, turning under his petting hands. Even apart from the absence of anyone on the paths now, Feilan took its reemergence as a sure sign that the clinic had closed for the days.
‘This is a barbarian thinking,’ he said. ‘I know you’re not familiar with the sight.’
Remy grimaced. ‘I’m sorry I kept calling you a barbarian.’
With a conciliatory shrug, Feilan admitted, ‘And I shouldn’t have kept insisting your brother was killed by a bear.’
‘You believe me about the monster?’
‘Yeah,’ Feilan said. ‘You said you saw the injuries. You want to tell me about them?’
‘Not particularly,’ Remy said, ‘but I will.’
His voice trembled with the effort to sound dispassionate as he outlined what he had seen when his other brothers and the Nivardus retainers had brought the fatally injured King Geroald to him. Another one he hadn’t saved, but it seemed in this case no one could blame him; no one could have saved the king.
He’d been torn open, three rents from collarbone to navel, and died screaming.
Between the stories and Remy’s account of the brutal wounds to his brother, Feilan had begun to build up quite a picture of this monster in his head. He was frowning over it, and pacing to his full extent before the cave, when movement snagged his attention. He glimpsed a figure traversing the arcade towards the pavilion, presumably intending to come down the informal path and around to Remy’s cave.
Here came the reaction to Torben’s incursion into First Hill, then.
Tsking disgustedly, he went back inside. ‘Lady Slaphappy’s coming.’
‘You have to at least try to learn their names,’ Remy said, rolling the pestle under one fidgeting hand, other hand still stroking behind the cat’s ears. He hadn’t fidgeted at all when he’d been helping his visitors. ‘I know this is a sham, but if you act like you know it’s over as soon as the monster hunt is, you’ll—’
Feilan broke in, ‘Eldest surviving brother, Hughard, married to Ida, three children all married off. Other brother, Lambert, married away to Irma, only one daughter, also already married and gone, first grandchild on the way. Eldest sister, free with her hands and almost here ready to use them, Odila, married to Ludolph, three surviving children. Middle sister, Hilda, Lambert’s twin, married away, to one Landric, four adolescent daughters left unmarried, very much trying to make them best friends with Adeline while the family’s in residence for the monster hunt. Adeline despises all but one. Third sister, Rosmunda, married away, now widowed and recently returned and remarried to Conrad, no children yet. Least objectionable of your siblings but unlikely to break ranks with your uncle’s plan.’
He'd been advancing on a gaping Remy through this recitation, and now settled his hand on his hips and gave him a small push back against the benchtop. The cat fled.
‘What?’ Remy said, watching his pet escape like he wanted to follow its lead.
‘Don’t make me repeat it, it was boring enough the first time.’ He nudged in between Remy’s legs, and burrowed his head down against Remy’s neck so he could run his mouth over the soft skin, taking in that herbal scent, fresh and strong now he’d been working again. ‘Hmm, that’s good.’
Instead of joining in the game, Remy made a confused noise. Feilan muttered, ‘Arms around me, jolterhead, your sister’s walking in, any moment now.’
Remy hesitantly put his arms around his back.
‘Tighter, make it convincing. No. You know what? I’m going to make your family far too appalled to ever try sneaking up on us again.’
Feilan went to his knees. He looked up at Remy, smiling as he reached for his laces. ‘At least try to look like you’re about to have the time of your life, Rufran,’ he said. ‘Take a double handful of my hair.’
Remy choked, but his fingers settled onto Feilan’s scalp, catching at his hair.
‘Grab hard,’ he ordered, and felt the clench of fists.
Those hands spent their days chopping herbs and grinding seeds and mixing pastes; they were strong, and when Remy committed to the game with a yank on Feilan’s hair, Feilan felt lust jolt not just from his head to his cock, but all the way to his toes.
He heard an accusing, ‘Renart—’ behind them, and shoved his face into Remy’s crotch.
Remy’s gasp was drowned out by Odila’s. From the noises of hasty retreat, she’d whirled on the spot and literally fled. Feilan chuckled, holding his position, face pressed into Remy’s breeches. Despite his hasty loosening of laces, Remy was still covered, but Feilan could feel the swelling under the linen in his way. It would take the work of a bare moment to free that responsive cock from the cloth and take it in his mouth in truth.
Remy let his hair go and let his own knees go at the same time, slithering to the ground in front of Feilan in a helpless heap.
‘Do the Vaer just immensely enjoy public sex?’ he asked weakly, his head falling back against the bench strut.
Feilan laughed, sitting back on his heels with only a momentary pang of regret. ‘We share our longhouses, from birth to death. We can’t have inhibitions. We get used to having sex with other people in the room, or hearing other people at it. That’s men and women. Two men have to find privacy, and that’s usually outdoors somewhere, and quick. Two women…’ He paused. He hadn’t thought about this before. ‘Women can cuddle together in a way men can’t. So they can possibly be a little more subtle, under a blanket, if they’re just using fingers.’ Remy’s eyes were widening; Feilan hid his smile. ‘Women don’t upset the honour of warriors like men acting like women do. Anyway, once we’ve left the heartland, and are in more accepting places… It’s not on purpose, really. It’s more of a reaction to having to keep things so secret for so long. And’ – he shrugged – ‘we really do not have inhibitions.’
Remy said, ‘And the Cursed? You said you’d explain it.’
‘Men who didn’t quite find enough privacy. Men taking the passive role, the female part.’ To Remy’s blank look, he said, ‘Taking cock, Remy. Cock-cravers.’
‘Oh! That’s…frowned on?’
‘It’s dishonourable. Immediate cursing and exile. There’s not,’ he added, ‘anything wrong with it in truth, just because my people take against it. They think of it as weak, and infectious, to act the woman. I’ve think we’ve both met enough women to know there’s nothing weak about them.’
‘Yes,’ Remy said softly, and Feilan wondered if he was thinking of the iron-cold strength of his sisters, the silky-soft strength of Queen Margalita who wouldn’t let him mope alone, or Adeline’s bright and underrated courage, clear and pure as diamond.
‘And,’ he went on, ‘should you wish to engage in a dramatic renegotiation of our agreement…’
Remy sucked in a breath. He obviously hadn’t expected Feilan to ask, but Feilan wasn’t going to ignore that blatant evidence of desire if it let him get his mouth around Remy’s cock, or his own cock buried deep in his husband again. Remy might not prefer men, or women, as a rule, but Feilan was evidently breaking the rule.
‘It’s… It would be my choice.’
‘Of course.’
‘No, I mean—’ Remy bit his lip, and then looked at Feilan, bleakness coming back to his earnest face. ‘I mean, I had to let you have me, before, for the marriage. But if I allow it now, it’s my choice. I’d be deliberately fucking a Vaeringan.’
‘A barbarian,’ Feilan said, unable to stop a roll of his eyes. ‘Would you—’
‘One of the people who sold my mother into slavery.’
Feilan shut his mouth. After an excruciating moment, he asked, ‘When?’
‘I was seven.’
He counted back; it was his father’s generation of raiders. Of course it was. That didn’t mean his father was involved. Until the raiders set up camp by Siftar seven summers ago, the bersverdar of his village and the surrounding regions had based themselves further south and east. Either way—
‘Would it help if I said it wouldn’t have been slavery?’
‘No.’
‘If she was taken by the mid-Vaer who traditionally raided this region, it would have been a kidnapping for ransom. And if she wasn’t safely returned, the ransoming went wrong. But she wouldn’t have been sold as a slave.’
Remy pushed himself to his feet. ‘I said it doesn’t help.’
Feilan rose, too. He couldn’t stop himself from saying, ‘Mid-Vaer don’t take people for the slavers. We had a queen who— It doesn’t matter now. They take prisoners, to tend the camps during the raids. But they let them go at the end, with a set of good clothes and a purse of silver.’ Remy directed a cold black-eyed look his way. ‘It’s not much better, I know, but it’s not the same as slavery. And your mother… They wouldn’t make a servant of a queen. They’d have wanted the ransom.’
‘Your people took her, she didn’t come back, it doesn’t make a difference why not,’ Remy said flatly. With jerky motions, he scraped the oily green paste from the mortar into a jar. ‘I’m riding down to take this to a sickbed in the town.’
Feilan, just as frustrated, let him change the subject. ‘Then I’ll come with you.’
‘You won’t.’
‘I have to,’ Feilan said, feeling as cruel as his father, but more wretched about it. ‘It gives me a chance to reconnoitre the hunting ground.’
‘I don’t—’
He sliced a hand through the air, chopping off the head of the argument. ‘Do you want Adeline to win or not? You put personal feelings aside to make it this far. Play your serthing game, Rufran.’
‘Fine.’ Remy swept up a satchel and a plain grey cloak and stalked out.
Feilan rubbed a hand over his eyes and followed.
At the stables, he received a clear indication that Remy’s uncle, or his personal cabal composed entirely of Remy’s siblings, was spying closely upon his newly-married nephew. He didn’t notice the retainer who must have watched them make their stiffly silent way down the path behind First Hill, but whoever it was must have scurried fast to report.
The jolly-faced uncle himself, Bertrand, arrived to spoke Feilan’s wheel. ‘Champions are not allowed to leave Seven Hills once arrived, or they forfeit their right to compete. You know this, Renart.’
‘He’s my husband,’ Remy said, eyes lowered. ‘We’re going on an outing together.’
‘You have plenty of time for him to be your husband,’ Bertrand said, smiling. ‘But for now, he is also your champion, and the rules apply to him. You’ve already spent your coin, wrangling Adeline’s champion his own quarters. Or will you trade one concession for the other?’
‘I’ll be right here, Rufran,’ Feilan said.
For the sake of the pretence, he pressed Remy’s hand, receiving a snapping look from those black eyes before Remy turned away to take the reins of his horse, the same small mare he’d ridden from Siftar.
‘Oh, Renart.’ Bertrand patted his shoulder, then left his hand, heavy with rings on every finger, firmly in place. ‘You don’t have to wear yourself out with these pointless rides about the place every afternoon.’
Remy had gone stiff and still under the touch. He kept his gaze lowered, but his voice was firm. ‘I go to those who are too sick to come to me.’
‘How long will you try to atone for losing Margalita and Geroald? There is no need.’
As far as Feilan could tell, the soft reassurance offered no comfort, but rather conveyed the opposite of his statement’s meaning. Since he knew his instinctive dislike was colouring his observations, he couldn’t, for now, decide if Bertrand intended that or not.
Bertrand gentled his voice even further into cloyingly cooing tones. ‘Adeline doesn’t blame you, you know.’
Ah. Now he’d decided. He said, ‘Ja, he knows. Queen Adeline is constant in her affections. She doesn’t blame him, because no blame is warranted.’
‘Of course, of course, as I said.’ Bertrand seemed about to say more, but Feilan’s expression must have dissuaded him. ‘Remember, stay on the grounds.’
Watching Bertrand’s back as he scuttled off, Feilan opened his mouth to voice some fairly strident opinions. Remy abruptly mounted and pulled his cloak’s hood up, before flashing another glare Feilan’s way and pushing it back to ride away with his bright hair catching sunlight.
It left Feilan at rather a loose end, and annoyingly disconsolate. He strolled the arcade past First Hill onto the western side of the hill ridge, putting his head into each of the three foyers that way. Their ceilings were of a red star, a flood, and a fierce but badly drawn beast he decided must be a lion, like the shape of the aquamanile.
He finally realised what he was seeing – all the ceilings were painted in honour of She Who Spins, who had to be one of those complicated agricultural deities incorporating both abundance and dearth, fecundity and barrenness, and thus, eventually, sex and death, and so love and war. The eastern halls were decorated with a peaceful night sky, clouds promising life-giving water, and whatever adorned Fourth Hill East – he’d bet on a lamb, seeing the lion. Those were the ancient motifs of Her first aspect; the west bore the ominous star, the destructive storm, the lion, the opposing motifs of Her second.
He followed the beaten paths beyond the highest curve of Seven Hills, coming across servants’ quarters and various outbuildings, and the new barracks, all tucked out of sight of the hilltop arcade. Seven Hills had much of its wealth from sheep – meat, wool, and cheese – and its tithe of the riverport, but the sheltered dip behind the hills was fenced off with stone, the bright green of new leaves showing on old, gnarled vines, and he thought he saw, in the distance, the bright white crust that indicated the low entrance to a salt mine. He didn’t go closer; now he had been warned, he did not want to accidentally step beyond the formal and invisible bounds of Seven Hills.
By the time he’d wandered his confines, it was late afternoon, and Remy could have ridden to the town and any of the smaller scatter of villages several times over. He came across Torben, still accompanying Adeline as she left First Hill after a long day of ruling as queen. She greeted him happily – she must not know what his people had done to her grandmother – and waved Torben off to leisure.
Feilan helped Torben shift himself from the still-empty old barracks – the warrior stables – to the room beside the one he shared with Remy. Since this involved a single leather bag, a couple of wicked seax, and the longsword, shield and spear, it didn’t take long.
‘Come in for a fuck?’ Torben invited him, looming in his doorway while Feilan dispiritedly walked the couple of steps to his own door.
‘I’m being watched,’ Feilan said.
‘Let them watch.’
‘So the uncle has an excuse to call the marriage invalid,’ Feilan elaborated. ‘Rescind his agreement to it.’
‘I can take it from here,’ Torben said. ‘Come on in, we’ll make it nice and loud, and then you can toddle on back home to Freyja. I’ll win Adeline her throne.’
‘Njorda grant me the confidence of a jolterheaded bear-warrior,’ Feilan said, though he couldn’t help smiling at his friend, who smiled his big, open grin right back.
Remy came in from the open passage from the foyer, then. He looked weary, grey smudges under his eyes, but the moment he saw them – Torben halfway into his room, Feilan only a few steps away – he drew himself up and snapped, ‘Fidelity.’
Feilan had been planning how to be nice to Remy all afternoon. ‘I serthing know,’ he snapped back. ‘Do I look like I’m sucking his cock?’
‘You look like you’re about to.’
‘Wonderful.’ Torben clapped his hands once with brisk good cheer. ‘Get about it, then.’
Feilan threw open the door to his own room, stormed in, and slammed it dramatically behind him. He wasn’t used to doors that could slam, and found it quite satisfying. By the time Remy followed, which took long enough that Feilan had to worry if Torben had intercepted him, he was calmer.
‘Let’s keep it civil,’ he reminded his husband.
‘I’m not the one who just slammed the door and told my servants and therefore my entire family we’re having a quarrel.’
‘Married people quarrel.’
He tried to sound indifferent, but he was annoyed at himself for the display. The Vaer temper, properly roused, was surely a sight to behold, but that was his father, not him.
Ulfr had tried to force it into him, turn echoes into a battle-roar. His mother had done better training it out of him, reminding him remorselessly that he was Cursed and so the bear-god would never bless him: any anger he felt was thus merely human and very, very controllable.
Deliberately slowing his breathing, he bent and began to get his boots off, to put them outside their door. Even emotionally heightened, Remy hadn’t forgotten to remove his own shoes.
‘Don’t bother,’ Remy said. ‘We have to go eat with my family now.’
Tension was thrumming through him. Feilan was moved to try to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Remy practically arched his back and hissed like an angry cat. ‘It doesn’t escape my attention you lost your temper the moment you realised you’re not getting sex from me.’
‘I said it already: sex isn’t part of the agreement.’
‘You thought it would be.’ Remy folded his arms, smiling thinly. ‘And as soon as you knew I’ll never ever let you fuck me again, you’re slamming doors and cavorting with your barbarian friend.’
Feilan’s jaw tightened. Despite his efforts, his breath was quickening. He had been smugly anticipating Remy’s capitulation to the desire he did seem to feel. He thought he’d been offended by the accusation he was about to suck Torben when he’d been virtuously refusing to betray his pact with his pretend husband. But perhaps he also did resent Remy’s rejection, simultaneously unjust and yet faultless.
He reminded himself he did not actually much like Remy, increasing attraction, slight sympathy, and mild admiration aside. It was no loss to him if he couldn’t have him again. In a moon-turn or so, he’d have Torben again.
And there was a gods-cursed reason he was stuck in a sexless arrangement with a man who despised him. That reason was standing in front of him being a good deal too self-righteous.
‘You trapped me here.’ He was trying not to shout. It made his voice come out in a low growl, menacing enough to make Remy retreat a step. ‘You tricked me, you’re using me, you don’t get to dictate the exact shape of my behaviour, not when I’m doing my thrice-cursed best by you, Rufran.’
He waited for a snide comment about the abject failure of his best. Remy, however, had taken the rebuke to heart. He’d gone still and lowered his eyes like he did when his uncle or siblings were telling him off, which Feilan was surprised to discover was utterly infuriating, much more so than the spiky obnoxiousness.
‘I didn’t take your mother,’ he growled. ‘It was nothing to do with me or mine, and I won’t be blamed for it. I’m not a serthing bersverdr, I’m not even a Vaer man, I won’t be judged as one.’ Silence from Remy, eyes submissively lowered, fingers curled into his palms, body unnaturally still. ‘Oh, you have a spine, you mouthy serthr, rediscover it!’
Remy’s temper bloomed in direct response to the challenge. ‘You don’t want to be judged for it, but you happily use it! You know people are wary of Vaer raiders, and that lets you frighten them or be nice to them as suits you.’
‘Draf! Hogshit! Do you know how many times I’ve been in a fight because other men thought it’d prove something to take down a lone Vaer? Do you know how many times me and Freyja were turned away from town gates because they took one look at me and refused to let us in? Do you know how it feels to let your own mother walk alone into a hostile town because that’s the only way we’ll trade enough to eat?’
‘Yes, I do!’ Remy shouted at him. He checked. In a smaller voice, he said, ‘I know what it is to not be allowed to be with my mother in case I endanger her.’
Feilan said, ‘Serth,’ with far more force than he’d intended.
He made himself take three slow breaths, counting. Then he was able to say, ‘Let’s just get this family meal done,’ without snarling or throwing things or, horrifying thought, acting like his father and using his fists.
This temper was not given unto him divinely. He would control it.
They walked to First Hill in silence, sat at the table full of siblings and marriage partners and children in silence, and endured jibes from Hughard and Odila in silence, while Uncle Bertrand kept Adeline occupied whenever she tried to turn the topic.
‘Everyone argues,’ the youngest of the sisters, Rosmunda, said at last, evidently taking pity. ‘But it’s such fun making it up, isn’t it?’
‘Sure is,’ Feilan said, slinging his arm over the back of Remy’s chair and managing a smirk. ‘Right, Rufran?’
‘Yes,’ Remy said dreamily, taking Feilan’s hand, his talisman brushing against Feilan’s own.
Feilan had the sinking feeling they would have to fake sex noises after all, for the benefit of the spies Remy was so very certain were hovering behind every corner.
Luckily, by the time they returned to their room, in silence, Torben was entertaining an evening guest loudly enough that they could wash and sink into bed in yet more, increasingly dismal, silence, trusting that the noise from next door would cover their own icy lack.