Out of the Darkness

She raised an eyebrow at the state of the front room when he opened the door, but said only, “I expected worse.” And she did go into the bedchamber with him, and, he being hampered by the splint, she rode him as if he were a racing unicorn. But that was a race they both could win--and, by the way she threw back her head and cried out at the end, they both did.

Then she sprawled down onto him, her breasts soft and firm against his chest. “Ask you something?” he said, running his hand along the sweet curves of her back down toward her bottom.

One of Saffa’s eyebrows quirked upward. The smile she smiled down at him was lopsided, too. “It can’t be that one, and I didn’t know you knew any other questions.”

His hand paused on her backside and pinched, not too hard. She squeaked. Bembo said, “I didn’t even need to ask that one. You asked me instead, remember?”

“Well, maybe I did,” she said, and bent down to kiss the end of his nose. He’d wondered if she would bite instead, but she didn’t. “All right, Bembo-- what’s your other question?”

“I was just wondering why,” he answered. “Not that I’m not not happy you did”--he kissed her this time--”but how come? You’d been telling me no for so long, I’d kind of got used to it.”

“Maybe that’s why you hadn’t been pestering me so much lately,” Saffa said. But it was a serious question, and after a small pause she gave it a serious answer: “We’ve really lost. There’s nothing we can do about it. Seeing those cursed Jelgavans walking along like they owned the town gave me a kick in the teeth. Salamone isn’t coming home. I’ve got to start over somewhere.”

“And I’m it?” Bembo said. It might have been a serious answer, but it was a long way from flattering.

But Saffa nodded. “And you’re it.” This time, her smile held fewer barbs. “Better than I thought you’d be, too.”

“Thanks--I suppose,” he said. She laughed. He hadn’t slipped out of her, and felt himself growing hard once more. He began to move, slowly and carefully. “Shall we try again, then?”

“So soon?” Saffa sounded surprised.

“Why not?” Bembo answered grandly. The only reason why, of course, was that he’d been so very long without. He didn’t have to tell her that, though. And she didn’t seem displeased. After a while, she seemed very pleased indeed. Bembo knew he was.

Colonel Lurcanio sat beneath an oak tree just coming into full leaf and contemplated the death and ruination of his kingdom and its army. He didn’t think the Unkerlanters were in Trapani yet, but he didn’t know how much longer his countrymen could hold them away from the capital. The last few reports coming by crystal from Algarve’s greatest city had held a note of frantic desperation under their defiance. The past couple of days, no reports at all had come from Trapani: enemy mages were blocking the emanations. That didn’t strike him as a good omen.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” he muttered. Even if King Mezentio had personally appealed to him to come to the capital’s rescue, he couldn’t have obeyed his sovereign. A good-sized Algarvian army remained in the field here in the southeastern part of the kingdom, but it was cut off from the rest of Algarve by the Lagoans and Kuusamans. Having bypassed it, the islanders seemed content to leave it alone so long as it didn’t make a nuisance of itself.

Captain Santerno came up to Lurcanio. The combat veteran didn’t bother saluting. Lurcanio didn’t bother reproving him. Without preamble, the captain said, “Sir, how in blazes are we going to get out of this mess?”

“That’s a good question, Captain,” Lurcanio replied. “As best I can see, there’s no way. If you want to tell me I’m wrong, I’d be delighted to hear the whys and wherefores, believe me.”

Santerno cursed with soldierly fluency. When he ran out of curses--which took a while--he said, “I don’t see any way, either. I was hoping you did.”

“Me?” Lurcanio said. “What do I know? After all, I spent the war shuffling papers in Priekule and laying Valmieran women.” Santerno hadn’t thrown his previous duty in his face, but his scorn for Lurcanio because of it had never been far from the surface.

Now the captain had the grace to cough and shuffle his feet and show a certain amount of embarrassment. “Turned out you knew what you were doing in the field after all, sir,” he said. “I stopped doubting it after the way you led the brigade down toward the sea this past winter during our last big attack in Valmiera.”

“We might have gone farther if those Kuusamans holed up in that one town hadn’t cramped the whole attack.” Lurcanio sighed. “But it probably wouldn’t have made any difference in the long run.”

“Maybe not.” Santerno drew himself up with a certain melancholy pride. “We scared the buggers out of a year’s growth, though.”

“I suppose we did,” Lurcanio replied. “And how many men and behemoths and dragons did we throw away doing it? We could have used them against the Unkerlanters instead, don’t you think, and got more with them.”