Master was lost to us, or so I thought. I'd had a split-second to make a decision and I'd acted. Knocking Tam out had been a kindness; even if the men intended to kill us, at least he wouldn't see the final blow coming. I'd dropped my weapon and sank to my knees, throwing myself on the mercy of my countrymen.
That's how I found myself bound and shackled, chained to the cart in which Tam's senseless body had been thrown. In that moment I almost regretted leaving him alive. Then they had carried Master out of the wreckage of his home, placing him more carefully beside Tam. I reached through the bars, felt the weak pulse fluttering in his wrist, and my legs all but gave out under me. Against all the odds, he was alive.
The soldiers-mercenaries-whatever they were, led us from the burning compound as the first sun reached its zenith. The compound was on the outskirts of Otiz, a small outpost crouched on inhospitable ground between the desert and the mountains at the extremity of the Thirskan lands, and I looked hopefully in the direction of the marketplace, where the army had recently erected a temporary base. If I'd expected help from the outpost, I was sorely disappointed. The base had been obliterated, bodies strewn in the streets, and smoke rose in black curls from buildings in every direction. If any of the residents remained, they huddled in the ruins of their houses, hiding.
How had the mercenaries accomplished such a thing without rousing the compound guards? The attack had been calculated and decisive, but I didn't understand why it had happened. Otiz was an outpost of no political significance, the army presence there small, even given the increase in troops stationed in the centre since an apparent suicide bombing a few weeks earlier, and Master was nobody in the grand scheme of things. One of a hundred other minor underlords controlling the outlier regions of the Thirskan Empire. It didn't make sense.
We marched into the desert, the men around me moving without hesitation. Granthia lay to the west, many days' journey through the sands. Surely they didn't expect to make the other side alive? Both factions considered the desert a barrier, protecting Otiz from involvement in the conflict which had waged for generations. If the Granthians had found a way to cross it, the Thirskans were in danger of a second front line opening up behind their existing defences. They would be overwhelmed.
The realisation left me with mixed emotions. My first reaction was horror, my second, following almost immediately on its heels, shame. Had I been so indoctrinated by a few months' kindness that I was prepared to forsake my people for their enemy? Until recently, I had been a soldier in the Granthian corps. Victory in this endless war had been all I-or any of us-wanted.
As a soldier, I'd seen men die, watched them torn limb from bloody limb, and I'd hated the Thirskans for fighting back. I'd seen the man I thought the love of my life murdered before my eyes, but I hadn't thought of Maal in weeks. Was I so fickle in my affections?
Maal's death had killed something inside me. I'd lost hope, lay down on the battlefield with his ruined corpse, and waited to be found and dispatched alongside him. I had been found, but not killed. They'd sold me instead, a play toy for the wealthy underlords of Thirsk. Nobody expected me to survive above a few weeks, but then they hadn't reckoned on Tam being the one to purchase me.
The hot sand blistered my bare feet as we trudged through the endless desert. The suns heated the metal shackles around my wrists, burning red rings onto my flesh. Every step I took was agony, the sharp, searing pain of the surface sinking into the cooler, soothing layer beneath. A false relief, for each step required extra effort to dig my foot out from the greedy earth. I wished it would swallow me, wished I could disappear completely beneath the surface and sleep the eternal dreamless sleep.
A warm wind blew from the west, casting sand into my face. The suns scorched my bare shoulders, my head ached, and my mouth was cracked and dry from thirst. The muscles in my calves and thighs screamed from strain and, to compound my misery, when the mercenaries attacked, I had thrown on the nearest clothing I could find to cover my nakedness, and Master's trousers slid down my hips, requiring me to hold them up by the waist or risk losing them.
By contrast, the mercenaries seemed prepared for our journey. Leather boots saved their feet from the worst of the sand, and as the wind picked up, they wrapped scarves about their heads, protecting their faces from the stinging blast. Each carried a bladder filled with water, from which he regularly sipped. I looked longingly at the one the man nearest me carried but received only a swift kick in the back of the knee for my trouble.
I fell with a startled cry, and the men laughed as I was jerked along behind the carriage before I could find my feet again. I scrambled to standing, spitting sand out of my mouth as best I could, the grains sticking in the gum collecting at the corners of my lips. My eyes stung, but I refused to let them see me cry.
At least the top of the cage was covered by a dark cloth, which prevented the worst of the sunlight from landing on Master and Tam. Flies swarmed around them, settling along the bloody wounds on Tam's forehead and Master's torso. I prayed they wouldn't lay eggs, that somebody would clean the wounds before they festered and began to rot. I'd do it myself, if they would allow me.
I doubted they would. Men in Granthia were not permitted intimacies with one another. They wouldn't understand the relationship the three of us shared, how we tended and bathed and, yes, loved one another. Tam had been Master's personal pleasureslave for fifteen years, and he had slowly initiated me into the intimacies two men could share. Intimacies of which I hadn't dare dream on so many cold nights with the Granthian army.
In those dreams, on the rare occasion I permitted them, it had been Maal's hands on my body, and mine on his. Even had we lived in Thirsk, however, I don't know that he would have ever allowed such a thing. Instead, it had been Tam who seduced me.
I glanced into the cage. Neither man had stirred, and I was beginning to fret that the blow I delivered to knock Tam out had done more lasting harm. His long blond hair was tangled and matted, rusty orange with dried blood. His skin had darkened from mornings spent outdoors while I taught him to swim in Master's pool, but he still looked impossibly pale and innocent lying slumped on the wooden floor of the cage. His tattoos, a swirl of inky dots and stripes which adorned his limbs and torso, made him look foreign and exotic in this land, surrounded by so much dark, unmarked flesh.
Master was lying beside Tam, his face obscured by his hair, too dark to show stains but crusty with blood. His skin was splattered with the stuff, although most of it wasn't his own. He had fought well before being overpowered; he had looked magnificent, whirling his scimitar over his head, bold and fearless and resolute. Now he lay broken, his brilliant robes tattered and torn, fallen open to expose his legs. Something about his bare thighs made him seem startlingly vulnerable, and I longed to cover him up.
The suns set in a bloody blaze as we trudged on through the desert. I welcomed the respite from the blinding light and blistering heat, my temples pounding and my skin rough and sore. The planetary rings glowed in the sky like pale ghosts, silver rainbows which lit the desert in stark monochrome. The sky was full of stars, winking coldly at us through space, as empty and lifeless as the desert itself. The horizon in every direction showed nothing but black mounds of great dunes. And still we marched on into the unforgiving landscape, as harsh and silent as the grave.