Nor Iron Bars A Cage (20 page)

And that was all. I shoved the cloth into his hand and stepped back. He stood still and let me look at him. He was fully hard now, and larger than any of the boys I’d traded touches with, as a teenager in the streets of Riverrun. His wet chest rose and fell in short breaths. His thighs were strong. He was mine, and I couldn’t take him.

I turned away, toweling myself off roughly, and muttered, “If you wish to do something about that, or find someone else who will, I won’t mind.”

“Tell me that’s a lie.”

I jumped because he was suddenly close behind me. But when I turned his eyes held no apology.

“Tell me you’d care if I went and buggered some willing soldier.”

I took a breath. “All right, yes, of course I’d care. But how can I ask you not to, when I can’t even touch you below the waist.”

“You don’t have to ask. Just don’t push me at someone else unless you mean for me to go.”

I gritted my teeth. I’d been off balance since the moment he showed up on my doorstep. What was one more fall? “Don’t, then. Don’t go.”

“Thank you.” He took a step back. “As for the other. Would it please you to watch me get myself off, or bother you?”

I stared at him. “I really… don’t know.” But my body felt warm at the idea, and my own cock stirred.

“Get into the bed under the covers and keep warm,” Tobin said. “I’m going to finish washing up.” He waited until I was safely beneath the blankets and then picked up the cloth. Moving slowly, each action deliberate, he soaked it, wrung it out, and bent to wash his feet. The curve of his ass in the lamplight was a work of art. He cleaned himself slowly, washing up and around his legs, along his thighs, and higher. Then he looked at me, as he laid the wet cloth on his erect shaft.

I shuddered, but couldn’t look away. He wiped slowly, tip to root and back, and then into the nest of curls at its base. He spread his legs and washed over his sac, hanging low and full between his thighs. He turned, and squeezed out the rag on his spine, so trickles of water from the small of his back ran down into the hidden recesses of his ass-crack. I watched the shimmering stream disappear, and then fall below, drop by drop, to the towel at his feet.

He turned back, and fixed his eyes on mine, as he let the cloth drop to his feet. With one strong hand, he grasped his shaft and tugged, circling the tip with his palm. His breath quickened and he did it again, faster. Up and around. The head of his cock grew shiny and purple in his fist. He moaned softly and then quieted, making no sound but his ragged panting as he stroked himself off.

I was mesmerized, watching that hand. I could almost feel the firm, dry touch. Under the concealing blankets, I was getting fully hard. I shifted restlessly, feeling the fabric of the blanket rasp against my sensitive skin.

“Still all right?” Tobin asked calmly, only a hint of the effort it took in his tone.

“Yes.”

He worked himself faster, almost roughly. “Please say my name.”

“Tobin.”

He rubbed himself hard, pumping his fist in swirling strokes. He spread his legs slightly and cupped his sac with his other hand, squeezing its shape under the curls of his pubes. “Say it again.”

“Tobin,” I said. And added, “You’re beautiful.”

He came then, the cream spurting in small arcs and dripping on his fingers, as he grunted and shuddered. And laughed. “Ah, Lyon. Beautiful. Gods. Hardly.”

“You are,” I insisted.

He picked up a towel and wiped his hands and softening cock. Then he pulled on a clean shirt and trews.

“What? Are you going somewhere?”

“I’ll go see if I can find someone to come get the dirty towels. Including this one.” He picked up one from the clean pile and tossed it to me on the bed. “It’ll probably take me fifteen minutes or so.”

He slipped out the door, shutting it firmly behind him. I was left both grateful and bereft.
Why didn’t he stay?
Of course I knew why. I hated that I’d made him so careful of me. But as I slid a hand under the blanket and took hold of myself I knew I wouldn’t have done this with him in the room.

I stroked my length, feeling my cock harden more with each pass of my fingers. I slid the foreskin around, and that silken caress sent echoes through my groin. I closed my eyes and, for the first time in longer than I could remember, imagined not some nebulous sensation, but the touch of another real man.

Tobin’s hand would be rougher than mine, and warmer, as he always seemed to be. Like he carried the heat of sunshine inside him. He would smell of horses and dust and skin. He would breathe fast and hard, and get that rasp in his voice I’d only heard once, but now would never forget. He would touch me, oh gods, he would touch me and want this, want my pleasure, want the way I was whining in my throat as desire rose in waves, almost painful, until I crashed through to climax. It burned. All that heat leaving me felt like death. And like a beginning.

I mopped up as well as I could with the towel. Stupid of me not to have put it in place first, but the memory of Tobin had been too urgent for me to be rational. I wiped my fingers and pitched the thing back into the damp pile on the floor.

It was closer to half an hour before Tobin knocked, called my name and came back in. “Not asleep yet?”

“No.”

“Good. I bespoke supper. They’ll be up soon to clear the room and bring us a tray.”

A thousand things I wanted to say, but all I managed was, “Thank you.”

He grinned lasciviously, “Oh, my pleasure, definitely.”

“Not for that, you knobhead.”

“No?”

“Well, that too.” I grinned, still lightheaded with emotions.

“Anytime. Well, perhaps not
any
time.”

I threw the pillow at him and he ducked. Then he dug in my bag and passed me a shirt and trews. “Get dressed. The servant will be here soon. You need to eat and keep up your strength.”

The tray arrived shortly after, and we ate in companionable silence. The food was good, although simple. I said, “Do you think they gave the king this same bread and turnips and mutton?”

“Probably not. Although he’s eaten worse in the field. I’m just as glad to have this as my portion, and not to have to stay awake through five courses of dainties while making polite conversation. Poor Faro.”

I was replete and mostly relaxed and so was able to ask, with assumed calm, “Did you ever fancy him?”

“Faro? Gods, no. Well, maybe a bit right at first. He’s good looking and a good leader. But he
is
my king and he’s not fay. And he was already married. The old king made sure of that, and a babe in the cradle, before he let him command in the field. For all that it was a political marriage, Faro loves his queen.”

I relaxed all the way. “I’m stupid.”

“Were you jealous?” Tobin grinned. “That’s excellent. There were a few men I did have a thing for, over the years. Let me know if you want to hear about them.”

“No, thank you.”

He laughed, but then set his plate aside and asked quietly, “What about you? Were there other men? Besides…”

“The wraith?” That hadn’t been Meldov, it
had not been Meldov.
I swallowed and said lightly, “A few boys, when I was just an apprentice. None after that.”

“Did you…” Tobin rubbed his mouth. “I’m just going to ask straight out, because I want to know what you’ve done. Physically, that is, so I don’t scare you moving too fast.”

“It’s not the physical part that really bothers me,” I said, and it was only half a lie.

“Nonetheless. Boys in the streets, or an empty room. I did that too, once or twice, but it was no more than a quick hand job.”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever, um, use mouths?”

“No.”

“Anything but hands?”

I looked down. He leaned close, still careful to watch for my reaction as he kissed my temple. “You’re safe with me. I was already planning to go as slowly as you need. This is just one more piece of the puzzle.”

“Mostly we just stroked off together, side by side and watching,” I said. It was both intimate and uncomfortable to talk about this with Tobin. “Sometimes we did it for each other, with our hands. That was all I did, before.”

“Oh, lion-boy, do I have plans for you. Eventually.” He kissed my cheek, and then used the back of his fingers to turn my head for a real kiss. “Tonight, though, we should get some sleep. The king wants to head out at dawn. We have a day and a half yet to travel, and in two nights it’ll be darkmoon. We’re cutting it pretty fine.”

He stood and set the tray outside the door and then looked at me. “I either need to put smalls on under these trews, or strip naked to sleep. Your call.”

I said slowly, “It’s a small bed. We’ll have to sleep really close together.”

“And that’s easier for you if we’re dressed? Not a problem.” This time when he took off his trews to add smallclothes, he didn’t flaunt his taut ass or draw the process out. And I was grateful. We came together in the bed, and he put his arms around me without a word of complaint. I rolled over and pressed my back to his chest. I could at least give him this, that I trusted him behind me. Because I did.

He gathered me in close, and we quickly fell asleep.

****

CHAPTER SEVEN

A day later we began really getting into the foothills. The mountains seemed to suddenly grow, looming against the sky now in crisp, hard-edged shapes of purple-grey rock and white snow. The lower slopes were covered in the greenish haze of brush and shrubs, and the dark-green arrows of conifer trees marched in ranks toward us. The hills we climbed were still mainly grassland, but the rises were becoming steeper. Clumps of trees were more common and the air tasted clean and thin.

At noon, we halted beside a small river. I dismounted and we led the horses to drink downstream. I stood back, and let Tobin shoulder our mounts in with the rest, where they snorted and drank, cooling their hooves and muddying the bank. Then Tobin headed us back up the river and we found a place out of the way to tether them to a fallen log. I was hot and sweaty. I knelt by the water and loosened my shirt, wondering if there was time to wash a bit. Tobin smiled at me. “Taste it first.”

I scooped my canteen full and took a sip. It was good, but so cold that it froze my teeth.

“Snowmelt,” Tobin said. “Not that I’ve never swum in it, but it will send your balls screaming for cover.”

I poured water on a cloth and managed a wipe-up, and then refilled my canteen. “Do you know where we are?”

“We’re getting close to the end of the ride. This is the Snake River. Tallribbon Falls lead into it, about twenty miles south and east. If we cross the ford going northeast, we’ll come to one of the Mage’s Fingers, Gullywatch. That’s where the king plans to set up camp.”

The Fingers were even more ancient than Deepwell, a series of stone towers built a millenium ago to keep watch on the eastern border. “I thought they were just outlook towers, not true keeps.”

“That’s right. No hope of a real bath or even a well-cooked meal. There’s just a garrison there. But Gullywatch is as close to the area the ghost named as we can get. And it has a cellar.”

I forced my mind away from that. I’d been carefully not thinking about another session with the sorcerers and the ghost of an angry man, down in the dark.
Not now. Not yet.
“So we’ll set up camp there, and then what?”

“That’s for the king to say, but I imagine he’ll send out patrols. And then consult with the ghost tonight.”

“Right away?”

“If it’s going to be done at all. Tonight is darkmoon.”

I’d lost track somewhere. “This could all be a wild goose chase. The real invasion could be just the one on the coast.”

“It could. But the king trusts his intelligencers enough to come here, and he’s a good judge of men.”

“And if there is a tunnel and we find it, what then?”

Tobin flashed me his grin. “If we find it before they put an army through it, then we’ve won. We can blockade the end of it with little trouble. Like a cat keeping a mouse in its hole. Something like this tunnel is an advantage only as long as it’s secret.”

“And if we’re too late?”

“Well, that’s what the archers and cavalry are for. We’ll slow them down until the army behind us arrives.”

That sounded optimistic, but I didn’t say so.

The company ate quickly and we were soon on our way. By mid-afternoon I saw the stone tower of Gullywatch rising up on a hillside, and an hour later we reached its foot. The company set up camp on the hillside around the tower. Tobin found us a place apart, but before we could unload our saddlebags a man came over to us. “Voice Tobin and Translator Lyon? You’re summoned to a meeting in the tower. I’ll take care of your mounts.”

We left him to tether the horses and untack them, and made our way to the tower. Gullywatch was larger than it seemed from a distance. It was built of pinkish-grey stone rising a hundred feet above the top of the hill, with the same uncanny smoothness as the mage’s tower back home. At its crown was an open viewing deck. Below that windows studded its walls, many not much more than arrow-slits, particularly in the bottom floors. The door was reinforced with iron, and fronted by a portcullis, but both stood open now. We passed the King’s Own guard at the gate, walked under the ironwork and into the main hall.

The king looked up from where he stood peering at papers spread on a long table. “Oh, there you are. Good. Come on.”

He led the way out briskly, not pausing for courtesies, and everyone in the room followed along, with Tobin and me bringing up the rear. We went down two flights of narrow, curved stairs and ended up in what appeared to be a storage cellar. The walls were lined with casks and boxes. The King and his sorcerers prowled around the room while I stood bemused at the foot of the stairs. I wasn’t hiding behind Tobin’s shoulder. Much.

“We can clear all this out,” the king said, turning to Firstmage. “What do you think, will it do?”

“Well enough,” The old man said. I thought he looked drawn and ill. The trip had clearly been a strain on his endurance. Secondmage hovered nearby.

“And you still think it can be done the way you planned?”