Shut Up and Prompt - 2. 530 - Soldier Boys

“Pull over! I’m going to be sick.”

“You can’t ‘pull over’ on a horse!” I shouted back. I twisted my head over my shoulder, keeping as straight in the saddle as I could. Kameron looked awful, and even though ten minutes ago he’d joked about being right as rain and had given me a slightly sexy thumbs-up and wink, there was no way I should have let him ride. The problem was, I found it almost impossible to say ‘no’ to him. “Jesus!”

I twitched my reins and put my heels down in the stirrups. Two clicks later Tayberry was slowing into a trot, and I could feel Loganberry huffing behind me as he too transition down. Kameron wasn’t giving him any signals at all, and my friend simply held onto the saddle horn with both hands in a white knuckle grip. His face was ashen and green. It didn’t take too long for the horses to begin walking, but by the time I’d reached across to take Loganberry’s reins, Kameron was listing in the saddle like a drunken flag. As soon as I made contact with the horse, he fell sideways with a groan. The sound of his head and shoulder smacking into the hard earth made me wince.

It had been a rotten morning. The horses were tired, the road was in no better condition than it had been coming through the mountains, and Kameron’s shoulder wasn’t anything like as healed as I’d have hoped by now. We both carried fresh bandages in our packs, scalpels and medicinal whiskey, habits left over from serving in the war, but we’d burnt through the last of our clean cloths a day ago, and Kameron hadn’t stopped bleeding. The wound was still leaking fresh red blood along with a sticky noxious yellow pus, and the edges of the hole were swollen and angry.

We needed a doctor, but Kameron had woken with a start at the crack of dawn, convinced that we were still being chased. I hadn’t seen hide or hare of our pursuers for over a day, but I hadn’t been able to get him to wait, and we’d packed up camp in ten minutes and fled. Camp-fire legend said that if you made it across Tall Ford River, the Royal Blues would no longer chase you, and I knew it was true. The problem was, I was no longer sure Kameron was going to survive the journey.

“Kam?” I swung down from the saddle and without bothering to tie up the horses, fled to his side. Tay and Logan were well trained enough to stand and wait for us, though they drifted slightly off the road and dropped their heads to the short stubby grass. I couldn’t begrudge them their meagre food, it seemed a long time since any of us had eaten well. “Kam? Bud, wake up!”

“’M fine,” Kameron raised a hand to brush ineffectually at my jacket. “Five more minutes.”

It was a relief to find that he wasn’t unconscious, but the fact he thought himself tucked up in bed in some inn somewhere made me worry. I wished for a bed, a large clean room with thick curtains and a giant bed made up with white sheets, where we could recover. While I was dreaming I rolled my partner over and checked his pulse: it was steady, but slow, and very faint. With my ear to his chest, his breathing sounded rattly, like there was something in the lung which should be there, and I found myself fingering the bullet in my pocket which had cut through him. It was a big shell, had been fired from close range by the bastard who’d snuck up on us while we’d been hiding up the slope, ready to fire on the party following us. I hadn’t figured two deviant renegades were important enough for the Royal Blues to chase all the way out here, but apparently Her Highness was willing to sacrifice good men in order to make an example. For the millionth time in a week, I wished I’d not been transferred to Kameron’s unit, that I’d killed the pickpocket just as I’d been ordered to and not lost my own place with the Royal Blues. We weren’t just another pair of deviants, but a former Royal Blue guardsman and an officer of the City Watch who had been caught screwing, of all places, in the sacristy of a deserted chapel. It might not have been so bad if the person who’d done the walking in had been anyone other than a three-star General. We could not have been more vilified.

“C’mon bud. You’ve gotta get up.” I hauled Kameron up, one arm over my shoulder. He groaned like I was trying to murder him. “Shit.” My lover was not a small man, City Watch recruits didn’t tend to be, and Kameron hadn’t made it all the way to Lieutenant Colonel without utilising his presence as a towering, broad shouldered, athletic son-of-a-gun. Of course usually he was also beautiful, confident, and sexy-as-dammit-all.

I couldn’t sling Kameron onto the saddle, because all his weight would rest on his chest, and already his face was looking far more ashen than it had done this morning. Eventually I settled for hitching Logan to Tayberry’s saddle and then lead the horses back to the road. Moving quickly, to try and conserve energy, and to stop second guessing myself, I hauled Kameron upright and slapped him awake.

“Nnh!”

“Get on the horse solider!”

Something about the tone of my voice snapped past his pain and suffering and into the core of his memory where we had spent our basic training before the war. Before his body could process what he was doing, Kameron was up in the saddle, though both his hands were gripping the saddle horn desperately. Just as his was getting his boot in the other stirrup, I swung myself up behind him.

“Huh?”

“Lean back; I’m here.” I looped my arms under his and took the reins. I was lighter and slimmer, and Tayberry was a strong and well trained horse. I’d had him since he was a colt, and he’d probably have followed my voice to the ends of the earth. As it was, we only had half a day’s travel until we reached the supposed safety of the river. “We’ll get the river and go for a swim eh?”

“Mmm…” the idea seemed to give Kameron something to think about. “You remember that time we spent up in the high passes?”

“Hehe… oh yeah,” I purred to think about it. We’d ridden the horses up into the wilderness, our mission simple and boring: to find the highway man who’d robbed some rich citizen. It was widely known there was no such highway man, and the citizen in question was simply trying to squeeze more money from his wealthy parents.

Trudging through the snow we’d found, unexpectedly, a blissful looking pool of water, not ice, which had steamed gently. I hadn’t known there was hot spring in that part of the mountains, and since no one had expected us back for a few days, we’d stripped instantly, dived in, and fucked like rabbits. The sight of Kameron lazing around in the shingle beach with his arse half out of the water, grinning like the sun shone out of his side, was not one I was ever going to forget.

Now it was easy, with Kameron lying against my chest, to forget that his skin was too-warm because he was feverish, and imagine that the man I loved was simply leaning back against me, enjoying the warm breeze and the hazy sun above us. I wanted him to be well, to be happy. In my mind, I dropped the reins and ran my hands up his chest, under his jacket, tickling my fingertips over the beautifully defined musculature of his chest and abdomen. Kameron was very ticklish, and his laugh sent shivers down my spine. I would nuzzle his hair, whisper sweet nothings and dirty secrets in his ear, grind against him and relish in the knowledge that later on when the sky was full of stars we would lie down on our shared blankets and have excellent sex.

Then Kameron’s breath rattled, and the spell was broken.

The horses heard the river before I did, smelt it, and their pace quickened. Water would mean grass, a coolness none of us had felt since we’d left the city, maybe the opportunity to relax. But my lover was mumbling incoherently in my arms, something about a sword and a book which made no sense, and I held onto him all the tighter. Everywhere our skin touched, he was clammy. It was a long way from the young man I’d first fallen in love with back in basic training.

We’d been bunk mates, rivals from the get go, two young men full of hot blood and with chips on their shoulders which we needed to prove. No one had made us sign up, we were there by choice. We’d raced each other, sometimes good naturedly, sometimes not, and I’d not known about the swelling in my groin until the day we’d been handed our horses, mere colts both of them, and I’d looked across the yard to see him shining. It was on those long rides, those days spent drilling and training the horses until you could fire a rifle alongside Tayberry’s ear without him flinching, that we really found each other. I’d never had it better.

The river was in sight when I heard the shout behind us. I didn’t turn, didn’t look to see if it was the Royal Blues, though I was sure it would be, but spurred Tayberry on, gripping the reins hard in one hand, holding onto Kameron with the other. Every pace made him grunt in pain, and the we were cantering, splashing into the river.

I hadn’t expected the river to be so high with glacial run-off at that time of year, and Tall Ford was a river which had earned it’s name. The water swirled around our knees in a second, and three paces later I could no longer see the saddle horn or Kameron’s hands. Tayberry was a strong horse, and Loganberry too, and I was proud of the way they stepped side-by-side through the water, sharing their strength. I tried to give my strength to Kameron, too make it through the last few yard of the river, to hide in the tree cover I could already see. We would find help on this side of the river, people would come out of houses to meet us, there would be a doctor, and Kameron would be saved.

A bullet whizzed past my ear and vanished into the water. The horses were labouring for every breath, but I urged them faster. Whoever was shooting wasn’t aiming very well, and I could only hope distance would only hinder them further as we began to leave the water. The horses were a big target, and without them we’d be lost completely. I couldn’t even begin to think about how we would survive on foot.

“You never were good on the ground.”

I couldn’t tell, over the rushing of the river, the pounding of my blood in my ears, the smack of bullets on the water, if Kameron’s voice had been real, or just imagined. He was the man I loved, even though everything either of us had ever been told said our love was wrong. I clung tight to his body, my heart wrapped around the memory of us together, the soft glowing future of what might be when Kameron was better.

It was warm out of the river, my brain swirled with shouts and screams as we crossed the short cropped muddy turf towards the trees. The world lurched and everything came in flashes: Tayberry staggering, falling out from underneath us; lying in the dirt, Kameron half on top of me, watching the horses; Loganberry dead, a whole in his neck the size of my fist, his weight dragging Tay down too; my horse’s eyes, liquid and panicked; the usually unshakeable steed screaming in fear, his eyes rolling; the flash of a gun, Tayberry’s beautiful head slamming into the ground. Then there was Kameron filling my vision, his blue eyes warm and soft like the sky above the hot springs, his body covering mine, somehow finding strength.

A kiss. Our lips like a firebrand. A kiss to last me the rest of my life, a kiss in place of what might have been a future.

He grabbed my gun, turned and fired, again, again, again. Then there was nothing but the river, the quiet of the sky, the soft twittering of birdsong, no bullets left. Kameron’s voice sounded strong and bold in my ear, and his breath made me shiver.

“I always was a better shot than you.”

We were free, finally. And then the man I loved was gone.