Sovereign's Gladiator (11 page)

“
Are
you promised?” Xan asked.

“No,” Devon said.

“Why do you have no consort?”

“I should think that would be obvious,” Devon said. “I will not pledge faith where I cannot give it.”

“There are to be no heirs?” Xan asked.

“I am not a Prince,” said Devon. “No one cares if I breed or not. My reign is not heritable.”

“Your station was won by worth?” Xan asked.

“Yes. Point of fact, it was.”

Devon the man may go down, but the Sovereign stayed aloof, apart. In sex, Xan sensed Devon kept something in reserve. He would give away his body and even his soul, but not his responsibility to his people.

Devon was more than a picturesque figurehead. He was vastly stronger than Xan ever imagined.

“You are not what I thought you were.” Xan hadn’t meant to speak that aloud.

“Neither are you,” Devon said. He sounded disappointed.

They lay together in silence for a while, Xan’s body spooned behind Devon’s. Xan nuzzled Devon’s hair. His fingertips grazed the length of Devon’s erection, teasing him.

Finally Devon’s hips bucked up. He shouldered, elbowed and pushed himself over in place so that he was facing Xan. His hands rested over Xan’s heart. They felt good there.

Xan traded breaths with him, their lips brushing with a feathery touch, almost a kiss.

Xan still had olives from the grove. He crushed some in his hand.

Devon got out of his clothes.

Xan cupped Devon’s balls, caressing them softly. When Devon squirmed, long past ready, Xan slowly reached farther to spread olive oil between Devon’s cheeks.

Devon’s body felt to be humming, expectant, under Xan’s touch. When Xan pressed a finger deep, Devon responded, uttering a moan of pleasure.

Xan rolled Devon over again and drew him in tight, both arms around his exquisite body—one arm wrapped around his shoulders, his other hand caging his groin.

Xan’s own cock nested firmly between Devon’s buttocks. He rocked, sliding his sex back and forth in that sweet cleft, wanting inside.

Xan murmured a warning at the back of Devon’s ear, “I hope you don’t imagine I will let you go free if you please me.”

“Never crossed my mind.” Devon ran his tongue across the arm that held him. “This has nothing at all to do with pleasing you. Just don’t talk. I want to pretend you are someone you are not.”

“Who would you pretend I am?”

Devon moved his ass against Xan’s erection. “My gladiator. Brave and true.”

“You think I am not brave or true to my people?”

“You are not. A brave man would not have given a false oath to me.”

“You would have executed me if I didn’t.”

“The brave are willing to take the fall,” Devon said. “Only one of us is a coward.”

Devon was right about one thing. They should not have talked. Now Xan was angry.

They were not lovers. But love was not needed for fucking. Devon’s words should not mean anything to him. Xan should just fuck him.

Xan wrested his arm out from under Devon and pushed away. His chest, abdomen, sex—his whole being—felt cold and vacant where Devon’s hot skin had pressed.

He got up and pulled his breeches closed, incensed, too angry even for sex. Angry at Devon. At himself. He stalked out into the night. “Go please yourself.”

The word of the Kiriciki Shepherdess held sway over a wide territory on the high hard steppe. Xan didn’t know the Kiriciki tongue all that well. But the name Xandaras was known here. He was a hero and everyone was willing to help him.

Xan asked for the village where the Shepherdess was in current residence and people pointed the way.

Devon walked easily toward his judgment without fear.

With days to live, Devon remained curious as a traveling scholar. He paused to look at a shrine covered with runes.

“That is a holy place,” Xan said. “We shouldn’t go in.”

“It’s a shrine for the god of travelers,” said Devon. “We are meant to go in.”

Sure enough, there was an olivewood statue of a walking man inside the stone building. The ancient figure was weathered black. There were gifts at his feet. A traveler gave or took one as he needed. Devon left a piece of flint behind at the Traveler’s feet before moving on.

Xan and Devon had both been noting a column of smoke in the south. They had been seeing it since they left the citadel. Something beyond the rise belched smoke day and night.

“What is that?” Devon asked.

Xan didn’t know. He had to ask other travelers. At last Xan got an answer. He translated for Devon, “That is the Belly of the Beast.”

“What Beast?” Devon asked.

“That,” said Xan, “is what the Kiriciki call your Raenthe Empire.”

* * * * *

When the sun went down, the thin air got quickly cold. The people of the steppe slept in packs like litters of puppies, so no one thought of giving Xan and Devon separate quarters or separate beds.

Xan and Devon spent the night in the loft of a barn under a thatched roof.

Devon came to Xan naked. He slipped under Xan’s cloak and lay against him. Devon’s skin was smooth and warm. Xan knew better than to talk this time. This would be the last time.

Devon was a solemn lover.

They moved together in silence. Xan could not deny he enjoyed the way Devon responded to his touch. Xan felt an impulse to reassure him, to tell him to relax.
I’ve got you.

But he didn’t.

Xan had to forcibly remind himself,
I am not your friend. I am not your lover. I do not, cannot, ever love you.

Xan’s mouth came down on Devon’s lips. They had never kissed.

Devon responded ardently, tongue stroking tongue. Xan’s arms surrounded him, pressing him to his broad chest. Devon felt as much as heard Xan’s heart thudding against his chest. Xan’s lips moved against Devon’s lips, his tongue filling Devon’s mouth.

Devon’s body worshipped his enemy.

Xan tore away from their kiss. His mouth roved lowered, kissing Devon’s throat, his chest, down his hard belly to his groin. Xan’s hair brushed across Devon’s skin like raw silk.

Xan drifted kisses over Devon’s balls and up his rigid sex. His mouth surrounded Devon’s cock with heated wetness. His tongue was maddening. Devon’s breath clogged in his throat, his body awash in fire.

Xan came up, leaving Devon gasping.

Devon inhaled the scent of olives. Xan was crushing them in his hands.

Xan made himself slick and entered Devon, facing him. Devon had a strong urge to cry. That urge burned away in a sexual blaze. His hips rocked up to meet the thrusts of Xan’s cock.

Devon kept his voice out of his labored breaths when he really wanted to bleat and moan out loud. The motion of Xan’s stout cock and Xan’s hard body sent him higher and higher. Devon was losing himself, flying, burning.

Xan’s wet heat released inside him. In answer, Devon’s own ejaculation painted thick white lines on Xan’s belly hair.

Devon clung to Xan like a lover.

He heard Xan murmur in his own tongue a word that sounded like
beautiful
.

Late in the night, resting in Xan’s arms, Devon said quietly, “When we get back to Calista City, I will have you executed.”

“You will not live to see Calista City again,” said Xan with what sounded like real regret.

When Devon got back to Calista City—and he
would
get back—would he be able to order Xan’s execution?

No. He couldn’t. He knew that.

But I can hand him over to Marcus, who will chop off his head, and I will cry but it will be done.

As Xan and Devon entered the village where the Shepherdess dwelled, Xan felt he was carrying a great weight. A slow poison worked in his gut. Devon was right. Loyalty demanded a heavy price. The price must be paid. But there was no way Xan could ever feel good about this. He must shut down his thoughts, his fear, his despair, and do it, like a charge into hopeless battle.

Devon had got to him. The Sovereign didn’t have Xan by the cock—well, maybe he did—but Devon had got into his head and his heart.

I don’t want him to die.

The Sovereign must die.

The Shepherdess would judge.

The village was old. The houses had stood there for ages, grown up around haphazard streets with uneven twisty steps and blind alleys.

One did not just walk up to a tribal leader’s house and demand to see her, and Xandaras was not of the Kiriciki people. Xan found a native
angelos
to submit his request for an audience with the Shepherdess. Getting an answer might take days. Not too much hurried here.

Regret ached like a slow wound. Xan wanted this over and done now.

He didn’t want it done ever.

Devon was serene. Xan left him napping in the sunshine at the edge of a field of stunted cornstalks at the outskirts of the village.

The
angelos
came back with a message sooner than Xan wanted. The Shepherdess would see Xan and his prisoner.

This was it. Judgment.

And Devon had come so willingly. He had insisted on coming here.

Xan walked back to the cornfield with tortured heart, only to find a flattened patch of grass and no one in sight.

Devon was gone.

Xan felt sick, double-crossed. It was only the same thing he’d done to Devon. He did not like the feel of it coming back at him at all. He felt stupid, enraged, betrayed. Devon had played so high and mighty, all wounded honor, courage and perfect bullshit!

That deceitful, two-faced son of a bitch dared call Xan a coward for lying.

Xan strung his bow and nocked an arrow. He scanned the open land for a fleeing man. Devon wouldn’t be hard to hunt down. Devon was not a figure that could ever escape notice.

A whispery voice sounded behind him. “Are you looking for the outland stranger?”

Xan turned, looked down. An aged man, bent over a knotty walking stick, stood there.

Xan answered him, “Yes.”

The old man lifted a wavering finger and pointed toward the center of town.

The main street was a pressed dirt path between close-built stone buildings. The cramped central meeting square was as wide a space as you could find in this village.

Xan stared at what he found there.

Anywhere you go throughout the wild lands, throughout the entire Raenthe Empire and probably beyond even that, you could find people playing a game of ball in some open space. Whether they threw it, hit it or kicked it, a game of ball was a universal language.

Here the ballplayers were in formed up in two teams, kicking around a stitched-up chaff-stuffed goatskin.

In the midst of the tribesfolk was the Sovereign, dressed in plain garb like the Kiriciki—a loose-fitting drab long-sleeved top, a hemp belt, and gray leggings. Heavy cloth rags bound with rope on his feet were what passed for boots here.

Some of the players were barefoot. The leathery soles of their feet were as thick as camels’ pads.

Devon moved among them, spry and agile as his black horse.

A red flush tinted his cheeks. He breathed deep and easy in the high thin air. His black eyes were bright and merry.

Nimble-footed, he made a quick turn, feinted and passed the chaff-stuffed goatskin to a big youth who booted it into a woven jute net for a score.

Smiles appeared from all the open windows of the buildings on the square. Their teeth were gapped, their eyes set in wreaths of wrinkles crinkled up laughing.

At the pause in the action, an old man beckoned Devon to him on the sideline. The man leaned a bony elbow on his cane and by motions, advised Devon to sweep his foot lower when stealing the ball.

Devon made the local hand gesture of thanks. A big youth was shouting to Devon, then threw him the ball.

Apparently Devon had made an instant connection with this big youth on his team, and the two were passing the ball to each other without needing to look at each other. They scored again and exchanged the local style of victory salutes, knocking their palm heels together.

Jealously rose up white hot in Xan’s chest, so sharp it was painful. It stayed, lodged under his heart.

Devon flashed a brilliant smile to his teammate with a dark-eyed wink. Xan suddenly could not catch in his breath. His chest tightened with a fierce need to possess that smile.

Xan wanted Devon—all of him—and could not share, not even a glance.

Xan forgot for instant that he’d come to take Devon to his death.

Devon and the youth were doing something physical together and doing it well, and Xan couldn’t stand it.

And now Devon was teaching the youth the backhanded wrist knock which was the Raenthe style of salute between comrades. Xan’s mind went blank with rage.

Xan may have dominated Devon in the dark, but who really had lost himself? Who owned whom after all?

Devon’s baritone laughter rang like bright water striking between the close stone buildings. Xan did not own his laughter.

Voice gone husky, Xan called Devon out of the ball court. “The Shepherdess waits.”

Devon gave up the goatskin and walked off the square. He bent over, patting his tunic, making dust roll off in clouds. He told Xan he wanted to bathe. “I won’t go to her dirty.”

“You’re not going to her bed,” Xan said, sour.

“It’s respect in my land. And that’s the only way I know.”

There was a bite in the breeze. The water in the streamlet was icy cold. Devon endured. He crouched in the freezing water under a pearl gray sky. Devon looked otherworldly up here in the high country, so city fine and sleek with his straight white teeth, his exotic obsidian eyes and his wavy black hair.

A rustling sounded in the high grass of something small coming over the stream’s bank.

It was a child, come to fetch water in his clay bucket. The boy saw Devon crouched naked in the stream. Devon bore a small tattoo in a particularly brilliant hue of blue low on his back. It was a stylized winged disk. It was the mark of the Raenthe Imperium.

The child gasped in horror at the sight of it, dropped his clay bucket and ran screaming.

Devon ignored him. He squeezed some olives and slathered the oil over his chin. He put a palm up to Xan waiting on the bank. “Give me your blade. The edged one. Not the dirk.”