Muffled Drum
Authors: Erastes
Muffled Drum
By Erastes
Bohemia, 1866
They met in a port-side tavern, their lust-filled moments stolen from days of marching and madness. After eighteen months, Captain Rudolph von Ratzlaff and First Lieutenant Mathias Hofmann have decided to run away from everything they hold dear. Resigning their commissions is social suicide, but there’s no other choice. Someone will eventually see Rudolph’s partiality toward Mathias.
Now their plans have gone horribly awry…When Mathias goes to Rudolph’s tent after their last battle, his lover looks at him without a hint of recognition. Mathias can hardly believe the man he knew is gone. He wants to fill in so many of Rudolph’s missing memories, but the doctor says a shock could result in permanent damage. The pain of seeing Rudolph on a daily basis, when Rudolph doesn’t remember their love, is excruciating. Now Mathias must decide whether he wants to fight for the man he loves or forget him completely…
43,000 words
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To Alex, for being such an inspiration.
Many thanks to Tracey for help and encouragement and to Maru for all the Prussian advice.
I have used the English names of ranks such as lieutenant and captain as well as the Prussian terms of leutnant and rittmeister for ease of comprehension. Also, as the characters are speaking German, Polish or French, some of the speech contains colloquial expressions that might not have been used in that country or at that time.
I’ve used the better-known league (three miles) in preference to the Prussian mile (which was around five English miles) to avoid confusion.
Ah me! how sorrowful and slow,
With arms revers’d, the soldiers come—
Dirge-sounding trumpets, full of woe,
And, sad to hear, the Muffled Drum!
John Mayne, 1805,
The Gentleman’s Magazine
Bohemia, 1866
“And no more of that disgusting pomade.” Rudolph’s mouth grazed Mathias’s ear. The curls artfully arranged beside it tickled his nose. He spoke quietly so only Mathias could hear, well aware that his batman and an entire army were on the other side of their canvas walls. “I promise I shall dispose of every jar you purchase. And no more early mornings—ever—I swear it. We shall pay someone to stand guard outside our door and not rise until we have to.”
Warmth generated between them everywhere they touched, skin and cloth. A moment stolen from days of marching and madness, a center of heat between them, in sharp contrast to the chill morning wind, which
whuffed
the canvas of the tent.
Mathias stirred, his arms locking more firmly behind Rudolph’s back. “Tomorrow. Even now I can’t quite believe it…”
“Believe it, and no more talk of it. Fate won’t be tempted.” Rudolph silenced any further discussion by kissing Mathias, deeply and thoroughly, rubbing his yet unshaven cheek against Mathias’s smooth, morning-ready skin. A man in full uniform was not an easy armful.
The scent of sweat and horse rose up in the heat they generated. Concentrating on the unique taste and feel of Mathias’s mouth, Rudolph swore to remember this moment throughout the day to come.
When I’m cold from the death around me, or blazing with the thunder of the charge, I will remember this—this moment. It is this that men fight for—Mathias is my reason to fight, my haven. My home.
Outside the tent, the sound of hooves and the jingle of harness could be heard. They froze, listening, as the horse’s feet stopped, and conversation, unable to be fully heard over the noise of the wind, ensued beyond the canvas.
“Sir?” Goertz’s voice sounded low and urgent from his guard post.
“I must go, anyway.” Mathias pulled away, straightened his dolman and picked up his shako. “But—”
Voices engaged in conversation outside the tent. Rudolph blocked them out, savoring these last moments. Moments which very well might be their last together.
“No.” Rudolph kissed him again, swiftly and quietly. “No buts. Just fight. Then we resign. Then meet here. Then leave. No matter what.” He watched Mathias pull the control over his features and take a deep breath. Fierce with pride at the deeply brave man his young friend had become, he smiled, catching Mathias’s eye. “Say ‘Yes, Rudolph.’”
Mathias looked down once then up, executing a knife-sharp salute with a click of his polished heels. “Yes, Rudolph!” Then he swung around and pushed his way through the tent flap.
It took Rudolph a moment or two to recover himself, then, suppressing his fond smile, he strode out into the misty dawn. “What is it, Goertz?”
As he surveyed the waking soldiers, sounds gathered strength. Sergeants shouted as sergeants were born to do, the ever-present jingle of harness sounded crisp and musical, and wheels of the carts and cannons gave an ominous backdrop to it all.
Goertz, his batman, jumped up from his chair, Rudolph’s
sabretache,
gleaming fresh and shiny with polish, in his hand.
“Sir!” Goertz’s moustache fairly bristled with pride. Rudolph himself was still half-dressed and unshaven, but Goertz could step onto any parade ground and do justice to his regiment. Rudolph wondered if the man ever slept. “Generalleutnant von Tümpling sent his equerry over, sir. I told him you was not to be disturbed. There’s a meeting at Rumpy Tumpy’s tent, sir. Big wigs only. You are required. His nibs didn’t much like being sent away like a beggar.” Goertz gave a private grin, obviously celebrating the enlisted man’s victory over a man he considered a jumped-up nothing who had landed in a fortunate—and safe—position as von Tümpling’s equerry.
“I’ll bet he didn’t,” Rudolph said, backing into the tent. “Come on, get me big-wigged up then.”
Goertz grabbed the pot of hot water from the fire and followed Rudolph into the tent. Rudolph sat and forced himself to concentrate on the day ahead as Goertz warmed cloths, whipped up foam and stropped the razor. However, by the time the shave began, Rudolph’s thoughts had slipped from his regiment and the battle to come, to the irrevocable damage he was planning to do to his own—and to Mathias’s—reputation. Resigning their commissions in the midst of an active campaign was social suicide. They both knew it, but the longer they remained in the Prussian army, the more they both knew there was no choice. Someone would eventually see Rudolph’s partiality. They would see something, say something—or resort to blackmail. Whichever way you looked at it, they’d be ruined. Cashiered, or worse. Shot in disgrace. Or blackmailed for the rest of their lives.
No. This was the only way—get away from this stupid muddle of a war and run as far away as possible. The Far East—plenty of opportunities there. Or America. Once Rudolph would have given everything to his country. Now, he’d give everything to Mathias.
Don’t think of that,
he mused, as the razor slid expertly over his face.
Think of last night.
Too much wine and not enough caution. But damn it, it was so hard to be cautious when the nights were dark, the air was warm, and Mathias was there, laughing beside him and bumping drunkenly against him as they staggered from inn to inn through the town. Plenty of dark alleys, and in one they had found a handy dog-leg shielding them from the street itself. There, hidden, they could kiss and dare to reach into each other’s trousers for swift, stolen moments, calloused skin rough against a burning-hard cock. With stifled gasps, Mathias’s body had arched back against the wall as he surrendered his most tender of possessions to Rudolph’s eager hands.
As Goertz moved away to wash the razor, Rudolph brought his hand up to his mouth, slyly licking his own palm, still imagining he could taste Mathias’s seed where it had spilled, warm and thick, onto his fingers. He often joked he could discern Mathias’s taste over a hundred men’s, and an amused Mathias had noted that he would fight each of those men to the death before allowing them to take part in such an experiment.
They’d first met in Danzig, in a port-side tavern, far away from the normal regimental haunts, and Rudolph had drunk enough to sink a battleship. He’d just been taught a drinking game he was enjoying hugely—a complicated card game with different instructions for each card. Obviously, the more one drank, the harder it became to remember the labyrinthine rules, and the more penalties were handed out. Rudolph treated drinking games as war, and one by one his adversaries slid from their chairs or turned away to vomit violently onto the sawdust-covered floor.
Finally there were just three of them left. Rudolph, for who true drunkenness consisted of
schnaps
home-brewed by his grandfather and downed at a dizzying speed with dance and song. A blond Swedish sailor, a giant whose cheeks were roundly red as apples. And an Oberleutnant Hofmann, who had walked into the disreputable place as neat as a parade monkey and behaved as formally as if he were in the officer’s mess. The sailors bet heavily on their blond titan, who seemed to have a head as inured to
schnaps
as Rudolph’s own.
Rudolph was winning. The sizeable pile of money on the table grew slowly with every drink, and the tension in the bar increased with every card played. The sailors seemed to gather around the table a little closer with every hand, and bets passed around from man to man. The big sailor squinted at his cards as if he could hardly see them, let alone work out which one to play. To help maintain a façade of sobriety, Rudolph concentrated on one thing, a mole on the back of the sailor’s hand; it helped him to focus.
Slowly, the sailor selected a card, gave Rudolph a smug smile and dropped it onto the table.
Five. Shit.
Five was the highest you could impose on another player—and it meant Rudolph had to drink five shots. The glasses were filled and the sailors began the chant of
“Dryck! Dryck! Dryck!”
Swallowing the first with no difficulty, Rudolph reached for the second and found his fellow hussar, Oberleutnant—
what’s his name?
—Hofmann looking at him, but not in a manner that gave the impression that he wanted his rival to fail. The young man’s face—handsome as hell, Rudolph noted, but then anyone would seem handsome as hell after the amount of
schnaps
he’d drunk—seemed to be marked with concern.
“Don’ worry,” Rudolph murmured, “I won’t let the Regiment down.” He grinned at the young man and threw down drinks two, three and four. He was just lifting five to his lips, the demanding cries of
“Dryck! Dryck! Dryck!”
becoming louder and louder, when the blond sailor muttered,
“Skall vi knulla?”
and slid effortlessly and spectacularly sideways, like a great pine felled for Christmas.
Rudolph stood, swallowed the fifth shot and slammed the glass onto the table in triumph.
Instead of playing on, Oberleutnant Hofmann threw his cards into the air with a whoop of delight and flung his arms around Rudolph, slapping him on the back with hearty congratulations. “Couldn’t play on, anyway,” he slurred. “Every card in my hand would’ve backfired at me. Fair n’ square.”
The young oberleutnant was warm and smelled delicious. Horse and sweat and alcohol, a heady mixture, and if Rudolph’s cock hadn’t been pickled in
schnaps,
he was quite sure that some interest would have been shown as the drunken embrace went on for longer than propriety expected.
“What did he say?” Rudolph scooped up his winnings and tucked them away. The sailors were exchanging money. It seemed that one or two had won big by betting against their compatriot.
“Who?”
“Him.” Rudolph indicated the blond giant, happily comatose on the floor and being ignored by his disgusted shipmates. “When he fell over. Scully nully or something…”
Hofmann laughed. “Oh. That’s one Swedish phrase I do know. You would too, if you came to these kinds of places more often. It means ‘Shall we fuck?’ Although that’s probably a more polite translation.”
Rudolph’s drunkenness slid away from him a little as he processed what Hofmann had said, although he’d already guessed that this was a known haunt for men seeking men, masquerading as a really rough bar. The absence of quayside tarts was a giveaway for anyone who was looking for that kind of clue.
“Really.” He looked down at the blond sailor. “That’s a shame. Although I’d have had to stand on a box.”
Hofmann roared with laughter, put his arm through Rudolph’s and they walked out together. “I’m more your height,” Hofmann said.
Rudolph reached down and grabbed a handful of firm arse before pulling the door open. The sailors were standing around their fallen comrade, singing what could only be a drinking song as they toasted his failure. The door closed and Rudolph and Hofmann wove down the dark street, with the song’s words drifting after them for a good quarter of a mile.
Later, in an inn that asked no questions, on a creaking wooden bed that had more of a promise of a mattress than anything else, they had fucked like dogs. Then, like friends, and the third time it was like men addicted to each other, men in love.
And it had remained that way ever since.