‘That isn’t what I meant.’
‘It might not be what you meant, but it’s what you want.’ Laurent said, ‘You want to fuck me.’
Anyone else would have been drunk. Laurent was dangerously sober. Damen remembered the feel of a palm against his chest, pushing him back on the bed.
‘You’ve been thinking about it since Ravenel. Since Nesson.’
He knew this mood. He should have expected it. He made himself say the words. ‘I came because I thought you might want to talk.’
‘Not particularly.’
He said, ‘About your brother.’
‘I never fucked my brother,’ said Laurent, with a strange edge to the words. ‘That is incest.’
They were standing in the place where his brother had died. With a disorientating sensation Damen realised they weren’t going to talk about that. They were going to talk about this.
‘You’re right,’ said Damen. ‘I’ve been thinking about it since Ravenel. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.’
‘Why?’ said Laurent. ‘Was I that good?’
‘No. You fucked like a virgin,’ said Damen, ‘half the time. The rest of the time—’
‘Like I knew what to do?’
‘Like you knew what you were used to.’
He saw the words impact. Laurent swayed, like he’d been dealt a blow.
Laurent said, ‘I’m not certain I can take your particular brand of honesty just at the moment.’
Damen said, ‘I don’t prefer sophistication in bed, if you were wondering.’
‘That’s right,’ said Laurent. ‘You like it simple.’
All the breath left his throat. He stood, stripped, unready for it. Will you use even that against me? he wanted to say, and didn’t. Laurent’s breathing was shallow too, holding his ground.
‘He died well,’ Damen made himself say. ‘He fought better than any man I’ve known. It was a fair fight, and he felt no pain. The end was quick.’
‘Like gutting a pig?’
Damen felt like he was reeling. He barely heard the rumbling of sound. Laurent jerked around to look into the dark, where the sound was growing louder—hoof beats, thundering closer.
‘You sent your men out to look for me too?’ said Laurent, his mouth twisting.
‘No,’ said Damen, and pushed Laurent hard out of sight, into the shelter of one of the huge, crumbling blocks of stone.
In the next second, the troop was on them, at least two hundred men, so that the air was thick with the passage of horses. Damen pressed Laurent firmly into the rock, and held him in place with his body. The riders didn’t slow, even on this uncertain ground in the dark, and any man in their path would be trampled, tumbled, kicked from hoof to hoof. Discovery was a real threat, the rock cool under his palms, the dark shuddering with the pounding of hooves and heavy lethal horseflesh.
He could feel Laurent against him, the barely contained tension, adrenalin mixed with his dislike of the proximity, the urge in him to prise himself out and away, stifled by necessity.
He had a sudden thought for Laurent’s jacket, lying exposed on the outcrop, and for their horses, tied up a little way off. If they were discovered, it might mean capture or worse. They couldn’t know who these men were. His fingers bit into the stone, feeling the moss and the crumbled pieces beneath. Horses plunged all around them like the rushing of a stream.
And then they were gone, passing them as quickly as they had arrived, disappearing across the fields towards a destination in the west. The hoof beats receded. Damen didn’t move, their chests pressed to each other, Laurent’s shallow breath against his shoulder.
He felt himself shoved back as Laurent pushed himself out to stand with his back to him, breathing hard.
Damen stood with his hand against the stone, and looked after him across the landscape of strange shapes. Laurent didn’t turn back to him, just stood holding himself still. Damen could see him once again as a pale outline in a thin shirt.