Chapter Text
“Yeah, get ‘im-“
Hans leans against the wooden fence, elbow to elbow with one of the residents of Horschan. Thomlin- Thomas? Hans can’t remember if he’d caught his name at all- cheers as Henry’s fist connects with his opponent’s cheek. The slap of flesh meeting flesh rings out across the fighting ring and Hans watches the man stumble, dazed, before pulling back his own fist. He bites his lip when the blow catches Henry on the chin.
Thomlin takes a swig of ale from a jug. “What abouts you, sir? Fancy a go?” he asks, and holds out the jug in offering.
Hans shakes his head. “No, not today. I took an arrow to shoulder not a fortnight ago and I don’t dare throw a punch,” he says, then adds, “not that I can’t defend myself if called to. I just-“
“Wouldn’t want to impede the healing process. Smart man. Smarter than most of the fellas around here. If old Sigismund’s army comes knocking these boys will all be too banged up to pick up a pitchfork with the way you can’t keep them out of the ring.” Thomlin spits into the dirt at his feet. “Though I reckon the war is what has most of them itching for a fight anyhow.”
Henry’s knee comes up to slam into the man’s stomach. He dodges, throws another blow at Henry’s chin. Before it can connect Henry ducks, quick as a cat. A woman on the other end of the fence whistles and claps.
Mutt whines near his knee. Hans scratches behind his ears until he settles.
“If it’s training to defend this place that they’re hoping to do they’d all be better off picking up a bow and going to the target range,” Hans says.
Thomlin grunts. “It’s not that. The fellas that came up from Suchdol and Raborsch, it’s like they can’t rest. We got prize fights here twice a week now thanks to them. It’s like they think taking a punch will pound the ache of the loss of their homes out of them. But what can you do?” he asks. “Heard it was nightmarish, what happened in those places.”
Hans touches the wound on his shoulder. He can feel the raised scab through the thin wool of Henry’s cote. It’s getting smaller every day, though if he presses at it wrong it still sends a spark of pain shooting across his chest.
The ache is like to drive him mad. He can’t shoot a bow, can’t lie on his right side in their ratty little bed. Hans scratches at the skin where it’s pulled taut around the scab and thinks of the smell of decay in Suchdol. Dried blood and the unkempt midden heap. The bodies bloating in the sun.
His stomach roils. He gestures for the jug. The ale is watered down but the faint sting of booze steadies him all the same.
“I can only imagine what it was like,” he lies and passes back the jug.
“Terrible stuff. I pray to God it doesn’t happen here in our little town,” Thomlin mutters. “Anyways, you look like a strong lad. Once you’re all healed up I bet you’ll get the itch and hop in, give ‘em the what for.”
Hardly likely. Hans pulls up his hood to get the sun off the back of his neck, turns his attention back to the fight. A faint purple bloom creeps it way across Henry’s cheek, a bruise that’s liable to be a black eye come nightfall. He doesn’t know how Henry can stand the endless pain. He can’t imagine it ever becomes a familiar thing.
But then he was raised soft, wasn’t he? Held back from the tourney field at Rattay, cloistered away more like a nun than a young noble man lest injury befall him. He’s trained up with a sword but what good was training when all the guards who ever fought him surely went easy on him. No one relishes the idea of getting the stocks for hurting the little lordling.
Blood slings through the air when Henry draws back his fist. The sound it makes when it connects with the man’s mouth ought to send Hans shrinking into his hood.
His mind flickers like a candle in the dark. A brief image flashes up, and for a second he’s the man in the ring, with Henry’s hands leaving bruises trailing over his skin.
Henry’s shoulders gleam with sweat. He brings his fist down again and the man spits a tooth into the dirt. Hans watches it leave his mouth but his eyes catch on Henry’s bloody knuckles, and heat twists deep in the pit of his stomach.
Something has gone truly wrong in him.
The wood rail creaks as Thomlin hops over the fence. He calls the fight, taking Henry by the wrist and tugging his fist up into the air. The cheer of the villagers roars in his ears.
From the corner of his eye Hans sees a familiar green cote, a glittering enameled belt. His father leaning against the fence beside him, as though he were still alive and truly there.
His father shakes his head, the gold embroidery on his chaperon flashing in his sun. “My son the brawler, dressed in rags, too much of a coward now to fight a few filthy peasants.”
Hans’ cheeks burn. He casts his eyes down to the mud on his boots.
Scuffed, old things, not befitting of a lord, but then he didn’t plan to be a lord for this little trip. He sneaks out to Horschan incognito with Henry sometimes, or to Bohunowitz. Backwater towns where no one need know they have a wealthy man in their presence, lest his personage tempt the less scrupulous among them. Hans picks at a loose thread on the cuff of Henry’s old cote and suddenly he feels small beside his father in his finery, as though he’s a boy again.
“It’s not cowardice. I was wounded,“ Hans begins. His voice is small, childlike. “I can’t fight in this state-“
“And when did being wounded ever stop you before, eh? If I recall you shattered your nose once on that horse of yours and were back at it again the next day, racing him up and down the streets of Rattay,” his father says. “Perhaps it is my fault. I left you to your books and your mother and your ponies while you were small. I neglected to instill in you the virtues needed to be anything but soft.”
“I’m hardly soft. I fought at Talmberg and Suchdol, same as any other man,” Hans scoffs. “I was a commander, in fact. I sent men into the field-“
“Oh? Is that so? And did you not spew your guts the first time you took a blade to a man? Did you not weep upon the battlements before you chose those soldiers who would go out to their deaths? To be a noble man is to be a killer, for that is how we protect the land which God has given us by rights.” His father’s eyes are cold as steel when he looks at him. “You are not a killer.”
Hans swallows. His tongue presses at the backs of his teeth as he fights for words to defend himself with. “I don’t see how one has to be a killer to be a just lord,” is all he can come up with.
His father barks a laugh. “No, you wouldn’t. You’re too busy dodging your duties, degrading yourself with that blacksmith’s boy. You realize you’ll never get a son on him, do you not? Or are you so addled by your sins you’ve forgotten how an heir is made? A coward for a son is one thing, but a sodomite-”
“Stop it. Leave Henry out of this,” Hans hisses.
“If I were you I’d be in that ring now, beating that blacksmith’s boy black and blue,” his father continues. “He’s a terrible upstart. Bad enough to sin with him, but the liberties you allow him to take with you- it’s unconscionable, letting a peasant treat you in such ways. It upsets the states of man.”
Across the ring Henry laughs with Thomlin as he wipes the sweat from his brow. Some maid has lent him her apron to tidy up with. Hans burns with the thought that after this she’ll go home with his smell on her clothing. A thing that should only be his to keep.
“He’s no peasant,” Hans says. “His father is a noble man, and he won’t elevate him in some way then I intend to.”
His father cocks his head. “But only his father, which makes him a bastard- a shame, really. He has more of the courage required of a lord than you. If he realized that about himself I wonder if he’d respect you the way he does? I doubt he would,” he says. “Keep behaving in this manner and I’m certain he’ll see things for what they are sooner rather than later.”
Hans squeezes his eyes shut against his judgment. “You’re dead. You’ve no right to say these things.”
“And one day that boy will either comes to his senses or meet his death, and then he won’t be around to protect you. Then you, coward that you are, will end up dead too.”
Hans pushes his palms against his eyes until he sees stars. He wishes away this visage of his father. He is dead, he is dead and he is wrong, he repeats in his mind like a chanting monk. He is dead-
“Hans?”
He blinks and his father is gone. Henry stands before him, blood trickling from a split in his lip, brow furrowed. A bag of coin jingles from where it’s clenched between his fingers, dangling awkwardly as he tries to do up the last buttons on his cote.
Hans bats Henry’s hands aside. He finishes buttoning his cote up for him, pushes each little cloth ball through worn button holes until Henry is put back together again. Hans can smell the sweat on him and he wants nothing more than to get out of here so he can bury his face in the hidden parts of Henry; suffocate in the warmth of him and forget this whole encounter.
“Who were you talking to?” Henry asks.
Hans picks Henry’s hood up where it’s draped over the fence. “No one. What’d you win?”
Henry hands over the coin purse so that he can tug his hood over his head. Hans tugs at the strings to take a look inside. Some fifty groschen at least. The coins glimmer up at him, each one paid for by a drop of blood or sweat. Hans ties the purse shut and hands it back.
“What’ll you do with it?” he asks.
Henry shrugs. “Figured a handful will go to Treadlight for wine later tonight. I’ll probably save the rest.”
“Later tonight? Thought you’d want a drink right away with how beat to hell you are. I certainly would, if I were you.”
They set off together toward the trough where Pebbles and Caballus are tied, dust clouding their feet with every step. Hans bumps Henry’s shoulder with his as they walk. Henry elbows his ribs in return and sends him stumbling.
Henry swings himself up into the saddle, nimble as can be. He’s running on adrenaline. Hans can see it in how his breath still comes quick, chest heaving with it, in the gleam in his eye. His joints haven’t locked up and gone stiff with injury just yet. So long as his blood is up he hasn’t a care in the world, even though he’ll regret it come morning.
Or perhaps not. Henry’s strong. He’s no stranger to hurt. In fact he seems to welcome it more and more now, and Hans can’t help how he envies him for it.
Hans pulls the girth tight on Caballus before he grabs a fistful of mane and drags himself onto his horse’s back. His shoulder complains at him as he finds his stirrups.
“Reckon I owe you a thank you for riding down with me,” Henry says. “A noble man once told me of the importance of paying your debts to folks who do you a favor. Said it’s the mark of a true bellator.”
The split in Henry’s lip opens back up with his grin. He licks the blood from his lip and sets something ravenous ablaze deep in Hans’ gut.
“Sounds like a wise man,” Hans says.
“He’s a right pain in the arse most of the time, but every now and then he comes up with some good advice,” Henry jokes. “You ready?”
“Lead on.”
He puts his heels to Caballus’ ribs, points his horse towards Devil’s Den. His heart pounds in his ears in time with their hoof beats as he chases Henry down the lane, Mutt snapping at their heels.
—
They make it to a disused hunting path just south of the inn. Henry drags Pebbles to a walk, leads her off to the side of the road and he doesn’t have to say what comes next. It’s become routine for them, tying up their horses and taking off into the brush. Henry pushes aside a low tree limb, holds it there so it doesn’t snap back into Hans’ face before he can get past. Twigs snap beneath their feet as they make their way into the woods in search of a clearing.
A grassy patch looms ahead. Marks in the dirt hint of a camp made there long ago; scattered objects and the remnants of a fire pit burnt into the earth. Hans nudges an old jewelry cask with the toe of his boot and insects scatter from beneath it when it tips over.
Henry snaps his fingers. Mutt charges ahead, on the hunt for any trace of life around them. He comes bounding back, barking happily. All clear.
They’re on each other in an instant.
Henry kisses like he means to devour him, licks into Hans’ mouth as he backs him up toward a tree. He bites down hard on Hans’ lower lip. Pain blooms beneath the sharp edges of Henry’s teeth and it’s such a fucking relief, the way it gets his blood up. Henry’s had the pleasure of brutality all afternoon and this- rough hands yanking at his cote as Henry leaves suck marks down his throat- it’s all Hans has got. One of the few shreds of physicality that he can allow himself to indulge in and when Henry bites the tendon that runs from his shoulder to his throat he groans.
Cool air hits his chest as Henry pops open one button after the next. Hans fumbles to help him, knuckles bumping against Henry’s as he struggles to free himself from his cote. He gets to his waist and gives up when Henry’s mouth licks a hot stripe from his clavicle to the base of his sternum.
His head spins with how quickly everything is moving. But then that’s nothing unusual for them.
In the days since Suchdol he’s learned so many things about Henry. That Henry’s got a terrible habit of sleeping with his mouth open and leaving Hans to wake up with a puddle of drool on his chest. That no matter what he has for supper he still likes to bring a bit of bread and cheese upstairs to eat in bed before turning in. Henry’s got more clothes tucked into his chest than most proper lords and he leaves half of them draped across the foot board of their bed after he’s worn them. That all of his appetites are insatiable, including his appetite for getting his hands on Hans.
Henry’s on him every time they get up to their room and shut the door. They still haven’t even done much more than they’d managed at Suchdol- kissing and rubbing against each other, hands shoved down each other’s braies- and Hans supposes that would be boring by now, were it with anyone else.
But it’s Henry licking the sweat off his sternum like an animal. Henry massaging at his cock through his hose until Hans’ toes curl inside the soft leather of his boots. He had no idea a person could be desired like this.
Fuck going back before nightfall. He’ll stay against this tree until the stars are out so long as Henry’s thumb keeps rubbing circles on the tip of his cock like it is. He’s probably leaked a dark spot into his hose already. Thank Christ the cote is long enough to cover it for the trip back.
“Christ, Hal-“
Hans tips his head back, eyes screwed shut. The bark of the tree he’s pressed up against digs into his back through his cote. He’s a consummate huntsman but in these woods he’s become the prey, wedged here between Henry’s body and an old oak, cote unbuttoned to his waist so that Henry can suck at his nipples until he’s out of his mind.
He twists his fingers in hair at the back of Henry’s head but it’s too short to properly grasp. It slips from his grip as Henry catches his nipple between his teeth, bites down. Hans curls forward, chokes down the whine threatening to claw its way up from his chest.
Hans ruts up into Henry’s palm. He cracks one eye open at the rustle of brush, thinking an animal might have crept up on them, but no, it’s just Henry getting to his knees and oh, shit-
“What are you doing?” Hans asks.
It’s a stupid question. He knows it as soon as the words fly from his mouth. Henry barks a laugh that sends him blushing right up to the roots of his hair.
“Just checking the integrity of the points on your hose, m’lord. I wouldn’t want you waddling into the Devil’s Den with your hose around your knees because the laces failed you,” Henry says. The smirk on his face makes Hans feel as if he’s been punched. “You gonna behave for me?”
Hans swallows thickly. “Behave?”
The flap on his hose falls open easy. Henry’s eyes are so big and blue, full of lust when he frees Hans’ cock from his braies. He’s so hard already he’s dripping with it.
Henry strokes him slow, swipes his thumb through the wetness leaking from the tip of his cock. Presses that same thumb to his lower lip and sucks it clean. Hans scrambles for something to grip and the bark of the tree scrapes his fingertips raw.
“You’re always bucking your hips when I get my hand on you. I can’t have you splitting my lip back open, rutting into my mouth like an animal,” Henry says. “I bet you can be good if you try.”
“Hal-“
Henry glides his hand down to the root of him. He leans in, gazing up at Hans with wide eyes, and drags his cheek against his cock, nuzzles at it like he’s been aching to do this. The sight of it is obscene. On anyone else it would cheap, like whore’s tricks, but Henry’s never anything but genuine. He brushes his lips against his shaft and Hans feels it right down in the base of his spine.
“Will you be good for me?” Henry asks again.
“I should have you pilloried when we get back to Rattay for how you think you can push me around,” Hans says. He’s got a terrible habit of running his mouth when he’s lost control of a situation, as if filling the air with empty words will somehow give him the upper hand.
But he’s never had the upper hand with Henry. Not really. Henry’s always known how to pull the rug right out from under him.
His chest heaves with the effort not to thrust out and rub himself against Henry’s lips. He fists his hands tight enough his nails dig into his palms.
“I’ll- I can be good. I can try,” Hans says.
Henry pets his hip as though he’s a dog. “There we go.”
Right there in the middle of the woods outside Horschan Henry wraps his fingers around Hans’ cock, parts his lips and takes him in his mouth. Swallows him down until his lips brush against his hand. Henry lingers there. Just presses his tongue up against the underside of Hans’ cock, lashes fluttering as his eyes close, and lets out a groan that makes Hans think this is it. This is how he’ll die.
And the thing is, he’s had girls do this. An extra coin at the bath house and the women there are happy to get on their knees, they’re experts at it.
What Henry lacks in technique he makes up for in raw enthusiasm. His mouth is hot, so tight that Hans’ knees are unsteady with the effort to keep from bucking his hips. Henry’s hand on his waist is featherlight. He strokes up and down Hans’ side as if he’s a nervous animal, doesn’t bother to hold him there and that- it’s torture. Bleak reminder that Henry trusts him to be good, even though Hans has never been good in his life.
He’s a wretch. He doesn’t have a clue why Henry trusts him to behave.
Worse, there’s a half formed thought in Hans mind about what it would be like if Henry’s forearm laid heavy across his hips and trapped him there. Whether it would remind him of Nebakov and send him panicking or just send the little blood left in his brain rushing to his dick.
He could ask for it. Could just grasp Henry by the wrist and shove his arm around right where he wants it, but Hans doesn’t know if that falls into the realm of behaving. Whether it’s being good if he makes demands, if he’s only meant to take what Henry’s giving.
“Henry, Hal-“ he begins.
Henry twists his wrist. He groans around Hans and the vibrations travel from his throat right down his shaft. It knocks the words from his mouth before he can even get them out.
He keeps doing this thing with his tongue, licking at the sensitive spot right below the tip of his cock every time he pulls back, and if Hans were in his right mind he’d ask where the hell he learned that. Hans can’t think of anything except the tightening sensation at the base of his spine. How Henry looks with his lips spit slick and flushed pink around him. He’s got a bruise beneath his eye, knuckles that are still bloody where they’re wrapped around Hans’ cock.
Hans’ brain skips, flashes up a split second image of what it would look like if Henry’s lip did split back open, the way blood would trickle down his chin. Henry wouldn’t stop, probably. Once he’s taken to a task he pushes through right to the very end, he’d suck Hans right through the pain and the mess.
It’s a lucky thing that they’re out in the woods and not at Devil’s Den with how Hans moans at the thought. He can’t stop babbling; little gasps of Henry’s name and oh shit, don’t stop, just like that-
Hans wants this to last forever. He doesn’t even make it long enough for Henry to swallow him down entirely. His cock nudges at the back of Henry’s mouth and Henry digs his thumb hard into his hip and that’s it.
He comes with a choked off moan just when Henry is drawing his head back. The hot rush of humiliation he feels for not being able to last is washed away by the sight of his come spilling across Henry’s surprised mouth.
Henry works him through it, strokes his cock he pulses. His tongue darts out to lick Hans’ spend from his lower lip and Hans’ thighs tremble. He doubles over, clutches at he back of Henry’s head to keep himself standing.
His legs are boneless, after. A stick cracks when he collapses to his knees in the dirt and snags a hole in his hose, and he doesn’t even care. He’s too busy yanking at Henry’s braies to worry about it.
Hans kisses Henry hard, licks into his mouth and licks the taste of himself from his tongue as he works him with his hand. It would be politer, maybe, to return the favor and suck Henry off too, but he’s not certain that he can. He’s too wrung out, too unable to acknowledge his own anxieties about whether he’d be good enough at it because Christ, Henry got him off in an instant.
By the time Henry comes, shooting hard onto his cote and down the backs of Hans’ knuckles they’re both a sweating, panting mess. Hans kisses him until he can’t take any more, he has to catch his breath, and then collapses back against the tree. He wipes the wetness off his fingers in the grass.
“Enneleyn was right,” Henry says as he leans back on his palms.
Hans tears his gaze from the tree limbs above them to look at Henry. His grin is unbearable. “What? Who the hell are you talking about?”
“Enneleyn. From the wedding,” Henry says. “She said a young jack rabbit like you only needs a few moments to get off. Turns out she was telling the truth.”
Heat floods Hans’ chest, creeps right up to his hairline. He fumbles with the buttons on his cote, as though doing them back up will make Henry forget the way he’s made him blush from ears to sternum. Something twists in his gut, a feeling he can’t put a name to, even though he wants to call it shame.
Because he ought to be ashamed. He ought to hate Henry mocking him like that, and yet-
He swallows thickly. “Well. It’s not as if you did anything to draw out the process.”
He can hear the rustle of the grass, of old dried leaves as Henry crawls over to close the gap between them. Hans refuses to look at him even as he presses little kisses to his jaw that send goosebumps racing down the backs of his arms.
“I apologize, m’lord. Next time I’ll make an effort to not be so good at sucking your cock,” Henry says. “Your lack of stamina is entirely my fault, and none of your own.”
“Good. I’m glad you see the error of your ways,” Hans huffs.
Henry kisses at the corner of his mouth, soft and sweet. “Mm. I’m only teasing,” he murmurs, breath hot on Hans’ chin. “You were so very good for me.”
The words rattle in his brain. It’s as if Henry’s slapped him and then kissed the bruise.
Hans turns his head, gives in. Kisses him back and tries not to dwell upon the thought that this has sparked something in him. In both of them, maybe. He doesn’t know that they’ll be able to snuff it out.
—
They go back the long way around, taking the westward road to draw out the day. At the crossroads they encounter a pile of bodies. Two men in tattered red and white, a third in a fine purple gambeson stained with blood. A rumpled peacock feathered hat lies in the mud, crushed by a boot before its owner fell.
“Praguers. Looks like they attacked some country lord,” Henry mutters.
The corpses are at least two days old by the smell of them. Their bloated bellies push their cuirasses out toward the sun. Hans pulls his hood up to cover his nose.
“Poor bastard,” Hans says. “Least it looks like he gave them the what for before he met his end. Surprised no one’s stripped and robbed them yet.”
“Not worth the effort now, what with the state they’re in. Even a knacker would want a week’s pay for handling them while they’re all puffed up.”
The dead noble man’s eyes stare up at the sky, vacant and glossy. Hans thinks of Suchdol. Bodies wrapped in shrouds and left to swell in the courtyard. No one had the strength to dig another hole, and then the Praguers took the outer bailey. The smell of them wafting through the tower windows on the final day of the siege still sticks in his nose.
The dispersal of the army has become like a disease, which was once contained to a sick bed and then let out to spread across the land. All of those men lost at Suchdol and for nothing. The people suffer all the same.
A good man would pray for these dead strangers, Hans supposes. Even Praguers deserve the mercy of God, for they’ve only done what they’ve been paid to do, just like their own men. A good man would build a cross of sticks and brave the stench to mark their earthly grave.
“Hans?” Henry glances back over his shoulder. Pebbles swishes her tail to bat away a fly. “You coming?”
Hans looks upon the grey faces of the dead. He presses the wool of his hood hard against his nose and spurs Caballus on.
—
Devil’s Den appears from between the trees like a specter stepping out of a mist. Henry whistles for a man to come up from the baths and remove the saddles from their horses. He flips him a groschen for both Caballus and Pebbles, though he hardly need do so.
Hans is the one between them who can’t raise a saddle to his horse’s back without becoming nauseous, though he supposes out of all of the options available this one is the least terrible. There would be something more humiliating about Henry doing this for him, as though he were an invalid. Paying the man to only care for Caballus would be even worse, for that would make his shame public. Henry is considerate to a fault.
Staying here is meant to be a stop gap. A safe house for rest and recovery, that’s all. Hans will do his time in this prison until his shoulder is healed and he’s put back the weight he’s lost to starvation, and then they’ll be off. To where, he doesn’t know.
Over supper Henry regales the table with tales of his fight. Dry Devil buys him a round of ale, claps him hard on the shoulder. “You’re doing well for yourself, lad, getting back out there,” he says.
Henry glances up at him, mouth full of stew. “What d’you mean?” he asks, words mumbled around carrots and venison.
“Some men go through the things you’ve been through and they don’t come out the same. Knew a fella, a brilliant commander, talented with sword and dagger alike- one day after a battle it was as if he’d lost his will completely, ” Dry Devil says. “Locked himself up in his castle and lived like a nun the rest of his life, all cloistered away. A waste of a man, I’d say. Fall off the horse and you’ve gotta get back on before you wind up gutless. Injuries not withstanding, of course.”
Hans pushes his stew around in its bowl with his bread. “Don’t censure yourself for my benefit. I hardly intend to let myself be rendered fallow here. Once I’ve got my strength up you’ll be seeing the back of us.”
Kubyenka nods. “Aye, got to outrun those wedding bells, don’t you?”
The chatter at the table turns to the virtues of women, marriage. The bread is too thick in Hans’ mouth. His belly growls but he has no appetite at all, and so he excuses himself. Makes a complaint about his shoulder and heads upstairs where Henry’s got bottles of pain remedies tucked away for him.
Hans uncorks a vial. He swallows down wine steeped in bitter herbs. Horrible stuff but hits instantly, warmth seeping into his bones like slipping into a fresh bath.
Time loses its meaning. Could be moments or hours before Henry comes up to bed. Hans watches him, arms folded around their pillow, as he paces the room and cleans his teeth. Henry rubs his linen cloth soaked in salt and cloves around in his mouth, then goes to the window to spit the mess out.
“You think we’ll be here long?” Hans asks.
Henry shrugs. “Don’t much like the idea of riding off with you hurt and all those Praguers on the roads. We don’t know where von Bergow is, or Erik-“ He kicks off his boots, abandoning them in the middle of the room where, later, when he gets up for a piss, he’ll trip over them in the dark. “I’d feel better about going off alone together if you felt more like yourself.”
“I do feel like myself,” Hans protests.
Henry casts him a dry look. “Hans. You're fucking irritable-“
“Henry,” Hans shoots back. “I’ve always been irritable, doesn’t every yokel in Rattay talk behind my back about it? ‘Lord Capon, nasty as a badger, that one’. You can’t act as if you’re surprised, or you didn’t know what you’re getting into-“
“Yeah, but it’s worse and- look, it’s not even the irritableness that worries me. You’re-“ Henry casts his eyes about the room as though he’s forgotten what object it is he’s looking for in favor of searching for a word instead. “You’re still, I suppose. I’m not used to you not going around looking for trouble. It’s odd.”
Hans curls his fingers in the pillowcase. He licks the dregs of the brew from his lips and his tongue comes away numb with the herbs. It’s as if Henry has put him beneath the curved piece of glass his near-sighted school master used to drag over the minuscule letters of his psalter.
Hard to know what’s worse, being made to feel small or to be stretched out for inspection in this way.
“You’ve moaned at me as much as Hanush to stop putting myself in stupid situations, and now you’ve gone and gotten upset that I’ve changed and done just that. I don’t know what you want of me,” he mutters.
“I don’t mean it like that. More that I just don’t understand where that change came from, is all.”
Henry’s body is a web of bruises when he takes his cote off. One purple mark bleeds into another and paints his stomach the wine dark colors of the night sky. When he climbs into bed Hans struggles to find a safe place to lay his head, now that the familiar curve of his chest is marked by the fight.
“C’mere.” Henry pats just beneath his clavicle. “Your chin’s not so pointy it’ll do any further damage.”
Hans kicks at his ankle beneath the blankets, even as he settles his head on Henry’s chest. Sometimes it feels as though he has never slept alone before. Henry’s body tucks against his the way a lance tucks beneath his arm in the tilt yard, one great extension of his own being. Hans curls his arm across his broad waist, slips his leg between Henry’s thighs. Pressed together as they are, even their breathing begins to align.
“I guess I just lost my taste for it all, after Suchdol,” Hans says.
“How so?”
“I’m just sick it of it all. Sick of everything hurting, and seeing people hurting. Sick of fucking castles and their noblemen and their walls. It’s like all I ever wanted to do was get out and see more of the world and now that I’ve seen it- I don’t know,” Hans mutters. “It’s this damned shoulder’s fault, really.”
“It’ll get better,” Henry says. “Once you can draw a bow and we’ve put some meat back on your bones you’ll be up to your old tricks.”
Henry squeezes his side, fingers slotted into the spaces between his ribs. Bones that had once been covered with muscle but now stick out, leave him sharp all over from starvation, but Henry strokes up and down the length of his torso all the same. He’s not bothered in the slightest and Hans doesn’t understand how he does it, the way Henry absorbs all of this change.
Henry puts one foot in front of the other every day, as though nothing terrible has ever happened to him. He is a survivor in ways Hans cannot fathom. If Hans had his life turned so very upside down in such a short time he’d have gone mad, he thinks.
Might still, if Dry Devil’s tale of the mad man in his castle is anything to go by.
“Will it?” Hans lifts his head, looks Henry in the eye. “And what if it doesn’t? What if I get back to Rattay and I can’t stand being in a castle because all I can think about is being trapped inside its walls, and I have to rule my lands from a tent out in the forest like some sort of hermit?”
Henry cocks his head to consider the idea. “Well, then I reckon I’d have to live in forest with you. Though I dunno that I’d be as good at as you- I never much liked sleeping out and hunting down my own dinner the way you seem to.”
“You’ll have to get used to it. I won’t be your wife out there, every man must contribute when it comes to camp chores. In fact, you’d best contribute more so seeing as I’m the lord and will have my duties to attend to.”
“Oh, is that so?”
Hans settles again, cheek to Henry’s shoulder. The dark hair that covers his chest tickles Hans’ nose when he nods.
“Yes. If I do all the hunting on top of whatever political nonsense is sent my way then you’d better be doing the washing and keeping things tidy. I can’t be a lord in a messy tent.”
Henry’s fingertips dance over the edge of his ear and leave him shivering. Hans jerks his chin up until Henry scratches along his scalp instead, where his hair is beginning to grow long and unruly.
It’s not been a long day at all and yet he’s exhausted, and he doesn’t understand why it’s been that way every day since Suchdol. Once he’d been a man who could rise at dawn, hunt until dusk, and then still ride to the baths and drink well into the night.
Now he finds himself craving his bed by mid-day. Hans hasn’t napped so much since he’d been small enough to be tugging at his mother’s skirts. Hasn’t been so easy to lull off with a gentle touch since then either. Every stroke of Henry’s fingers along his hairline has him closer and closer to drifting off.
“Were you like this as a boy?” Henry asks.
“What d’you mean?” Hans asks, words slurred.
“Full of ‘what ifs’ and imaginary situations, talking about them as if they’re already real.”
Hans seeks out a bump on Henry’s chest. He picks at it absently to keep himself awake as he swims through his memories. Images come up smudged and he can’t seem to tell if that’s because of the painkiller, or because he simply doesn’t remember much of his youth at all. It’s as if there’s a wall in his mind, one that only comes down in dreams, or to let scattered memories surface when he least expects them.
His nail catches on Henry’s chest. Henry rests his palm atop his hand to settle his restless fingers, and so he wiggles his toes beneath the sheets instead. He’s never been able to settle for long.
“I don’t know. No one spent much time talking with me like this after my parents died- though in truth my father never really spoke with me like this. He was busy, you see. Lords don’t have much time for their children.” Hans blinks up at him in the dark. “Why?”
“It’s endearing, is all. Not many men keep their imagination once they’ve grown. I like that you’ve still got yours.”
Henry kisses his hair just before sleep takes him. The sensation blurs with the memory of being a child, wrapped in his mother’s arms.
Her moods had the tendency to change like the weather, blowing frigid and then tempestuous. Hans had only ever known her love when he curled up in her lap, head pressed to her breast, as she took his shoes from his feet so that he wouldn’t track mud on her dress. She would sit there for hours, staring at out the window. It’d been as if he were held by a living statue. His little mind would picture the two of them becoming wooden, like the carved figures of saints in their chapel, so that they’d be frozen there for eternity.
The idea of that had brought him comfort, then. His mother would never again weep if she were made from wood. They would never know the pain of dying.
He dreams of himself and Henry, locked together in time at Devil’s Den. The image of them as statues twists, morphs itself into a pair of corpses gone stiff. The narrow bed is their pauper’s coffin lowered into an open grave.
Above them Von Bergow and Von Aulitz argue with Hanush and Zizka about whose turn it is to throw a pile of dirt atop them next. His father murmurs their last rites as dirt rains down. Soil drops into his yawning mouth and he chokes, the last gasp of life rattling from his lungs.
When Hans wakes his throat is sore.