Gareth was gone from the bed before dawn.

Emlhi woke alone. She rose, breakfasted and washed, then donned her underkirtle. There she stopped. There seemed no point in dressing further; she had nowhere to go and nothing to do. She’d been cast adrift from her life. There were no animals to be fed now or vegetables to be weeded. She sat back up on the big bed where no pleasure had been taken, her arms around her knees, and waited. She remembered the obdurate line of Gareth’s back turned against her, and the wasteland of mattress that had stretched between them. She let the tears leak out, tears she’d refused to shed in front of him, and wiped the damp away on her skirt. 

She remembered.

She remembered the arrival of the knights. Warning had been passed down by the beacon on the hill. Every inhabitant of the village was barricaded into one of the houses about the square, the stone houses that they hoped would not burn. Emlhi was crouched beneath a shuttered window, a reaping hook clenched in her hands. The room stank of the sour breath of terrified people. 

‘A priest!’ roared the voice from outside, audible over the clatter of many iron-shod hooves. ‘Where’s the bloody priest?’

Turo, Emlhi’s cousin on her dead mother’s side, peered through a crack in the shutter. ‘They look human,’ he said. ‘Lots of armour. There’s something on their shields…’

‘Damn your craven arses!’

‘Yellow sun on a blue field,’ Turo muttered. ‘That means…’

Where’s your priest when a man lies at death’s door!’

‘Helion?’ Emlhi finished for Turo. ‘They’re Knights of Helion?’ She sprang up and heaved back the doorbolt. Voices were raised all around her in protest, but she took no notice and threw open the door before anyone had the presence of mind to stop her. Blinking, she stepped out into the square. There was a group of horsemen gathered toward the seaward end and one circling his mount in the centre. She cast an anxious eye over them as he completed one last turn and glared at her. They did look human – as much as they could under layers of plate and scale armour, even their horses rendered unfamiliar by their heavy barding. 

‘You’re Knights of Helion?’ she called.

‘You’re the priest?’ the foremost horseman responded doubtfully. His voice was hoarse from shouting, far more shouting than he’d done in their little coastal village, and his surcoat was rusty with blood. She couldn’t see his face because of his heavy helm. The other knights, equally faceless, sat at slumped, painful angles in armour that was dinted and filthy.

‘His daughter,’ Emlhi replied. ‘Does that mean-?’

His voice cut across hers. ‘I need the priest, girl.’

She took a deep breath, the pain still raw enough to make her voice tremble. ‘There’s no priest in Yeldersholme. My father was taken by the Raptors last year and staked upon the-’

‘Spare me. Have you any herblore from him, girl? Any healing?’

Emlhi was too stunned to protest. ‘Some.’

‘You’ll do then.’ He swung his horse side-on to her and for the first time Emlhi registered that there was a second knight behind him on the saddle, leaning so hard on his back that their two sets of armour seemed one mass of steel plates. ‘Come here. Take him down.’

Emlhi took one automatic step, then halted. 

'Blast you girl!’ he barked, but there was exhaustion in his voice now. ‘We routed the Raptors at the Stone Gate. This man was wounded. We have to take ship across the sound, but he’s taken an infection from the injury and there’s little chance for him unless he’s tended. Do you understand? Gareth, we’re leaving you here. These villagers will look after you. Take him down, girl!’

Gareth was by all appearances a full-grown man in heavy armour and showed no sign of consciousness; Emlhi had about as much chance of holding his weight up as she would have the horse’s. When the soldier loosed the belt tying his wounded companion to him, all Emlhi could do was help him slither in a controlled rush to the hard-packed earth. He didn’t fall flat though; he ended up on his spread knees, resting against her legs. Under all the plating there must be some spark of life. She braced her feet so that he wouldn’t push her over.

‘Does that mean the Raptors are gone?’ Turo asked. He’d come out with some of the other villagers, though they were hanging back at a cautious distance. ‘Are we free?’

‘For the moment,’ said the knight grimly. ‘Or at least, you’re on your own. The Raptors are regrouping on Far Vinchor and we go to face them. Our vessel will be here with the high tide.’ 

‘That’s this hour, my lord knight.’

‘Then we’re just in time.’

Emlhi was appalled that these battered men should be about to do battle again. The one at her feet stank of old blood and she could see where the steel scales of his hauberk had been ripped from their settings.

‘Girl,’ snapped the knight, wheeling his horse around her: ‘If he lives you’ll be well rewarded by the Knights of the Helionic Order. Tell him where we went, and that it will be too late to follow. Gareth!’  He bent from the saddle. ‘Gareth, the gods go with you.’ 

The man at her feet raised one hand in feeble imitation of his salute.

At the knight’s signal the riders gathered themselves into motion and poured away down the street toward the harbour. The rest of the villagers came streaming out of the houses to follow them, their eyes wide with excitement, the first grins of elation showing. The Raptors were gone, and for the first time in years the spectre of their terror was lifted.

When the square had emptied, Emlhi crouched down to her knight and pulled the helmet off his head. His neck sagged. Emlhi drew in her breath, grimacing. He was grey as a corpse already. His hair was an unruly black mop and the beard that outlined his mouth and jaw was no longer neat, but what caught her eye were the veins on his neck; they were slate-blue and clearly visible against his skin. Blood-poisoning, she thought: he’ll be dead within the day. ‘You. Sir knight. Where does it hurt?’ she asked, without real hope of a reply.

‘My shoulder.’ He waved a mailed fist at his left side. ‘One of their lizard-mounts got over the top of my shield. Their teeth are poisonous.’ She was surprised how lucid he was, but she could clearly hear the pain in his voice. His teeth were clenched and the muscles in his jaw knotted. There was a staining of blood around his shoulder certainly, but it was impossible to see any wound under the complex welter of stiffened leather and beaten steel plates.

‘Right, then,’ she said, starting to uncinch his breastplate. It was a fancy piece of work, all inlaid with brass. ‘Let’s get this off.’

For a moment he did not react. Then as she pulled the breastplate from him he groaned and swung his head up to look at her. His eyes were grey, but so bloodshot it made her own water to look at him. ‘My armour,’ he protested through bared teeth.

‘If you live,’ she said curtly, dumping the sun-etched masterpiece on the ground, ‘you’ll get it back.’ She found the strapping for a shoulder-piece and worked it loose.

‘No,’ he muttered.

‘You can’t even stand up in this lot,’ she snapped. ‘Do you think I’m going to carry you to my house? You’re going to have to walk for me. And it’s uphill.’

The breath hissed between his teeth. It took a moment for her to realise he was laughing. He made no further protest as she managed to strip him, piece by piece, down to the padded leather of his under-armour. On his shoulder several punctures in the leather described a wide semi-circle. Emlhi flinched as she realised that whatever had bitten him must have had jaws quite capable of taking in a whole human head.

‘I might take you on as my next squire,’ the knight muttered as she unbuckled a greave.

‘What happened to the last one?’

His lopsided, rictus grin dropped away. ‘Got his throat cut … there was a Raptor raid on the camp.’ He groaned. ‘Shit.’

She shook her head, trying not to shudder. ‘Can you stand?’

With her help he managed, though he moaned under his breath with pain. She had to get under his good arm to brace him, and he swayed against her like a tree in a gale. She grabbed his wrist and found his skin was hot – really hot – and when she looked back up at his face she could see sweat starting to run down his temple. The fever was already on him, she thought.

‘Come on, sir knight. This way.’

They staggered across the square, watched from the doorways by a few villagers too infirm to have run down to the harbour. He should be carried, Emlhi thought. As they passed the plane tree at the first junction he reeled sideways and she helped him turn and rest against a wall while she got her breath back.

Gareth looked down at her in surprise. ‘Perlanna?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’ Then he pulled her against him with a sweep of his arm and kissed her. Emlhi was so shocked that she did not resist. His lips were burning hot. He kissed hungrily, without restraint, and his mouth tasted metallic. ‘Gods,’ he groaned, catching her lower lip in his teeth and biting softly. When he let her go she was gasping. Then the fire in his eyes guttered. ‘You’re not Perlanna,’ he said, clearly troubled. ‘She’s dead.’ His eyes rolled up behind their lids until only the sclera showed, and he slipped slowly down the wall, unconscious at last.

She remembered how she had misused him.

It was an unending struggle to keep him alive. Whatever it was in his blood – infection or lizard toxin – seemed to have destroyed his body’s sense of equilibrium: it threw him from post to post between burning fever and icy tremors until Emlhi could hardly believe that he had survived the battering this long. In the course of a couple of hours he could go from fire to freezing, and there was no regularity to the pattern. She’d cleaned and packed the deep puncture wounds in his shoulder, but after that it was simply about trying to keep his temperature on an even keel, bringing his fever down enough to stop it boiling his brains at one moment and piling the blankets over him to maintain some vestiges of warmth the next. The fever was by far the more dangerous of the two extremes. It was a battle to get enough fluid into him to replace his loses; he would sweat so profusely that her thin mattress would be soaked through and she had to spend hours cutting fresh bracken to stuff it. She boiled gallons of soup to feed him, laboured with the laundry and when she was not watching over him tried to keep up the work of her smallholding. She snatched her sleep during his chills, dozing in her father’s old room. She wouldn't let anyone else take that bed.

In between fire and ice the knight would have passages where he seemed to be lucid, but he was so weak he did little more than open his eyes. Then as the fever flared up afresh he would begin to talk, and sometimes tried to rise up from his bed. He stared at the ceiling and spoke to people who were not there; he raved about battles and campaigns and horrors he had witnessed until Emlhi wanted to stop her ears for sorrow. Sometimes his hallucinations grew worse and in terror or fury he would lash out or try to run from her. If he hadn’t been so weakened by his fever that she could push him off he might have been really dangerous.

It went on for days, and there were times she could not understand why he did not die. He clung to life with a warrior’s determination. She might have called in an older female relative to share the labour of care, but she guarded her sole right to Gareth possessively. Exhausted, she took strength from his stubbornness. And she took more than strength.

The first time, it was not her doing. She’d been sat on the edge of the bed, tending him as he burned. She’d been wiping his face and chest with a damp cloth, every few minutes dipping it in fresh water and waving it about to cool it. He was twisting in discomfort, tossing in a delirious dream, his hands scrabbling convulsively across his belly. When she touched him with the cool cloth he quietened, and would turn his face toward it like a baby blindly seeking the teat. She ran it down the midline of his torso and he grabbed her hand, knotting his fingers around hers. Gently she freed the cloth with her other hand and continued to bathe him. He kept his grip on her. His head was thrown back, his adam’s apple working. Then he pushed her hand into his crotch.

Until now she’d kept his hose on, unwilling to steal from him the last shreds of his dignity. It was a mistake, she realised; the fabric was wringing wet - and beneath it his cock was turgid and filled with blood, as hot and solid as the rest of his flesh. He wrapped her hand around the thick length and squeezed hard. Emlhi felt a blush explode in her face and neck. A great sigh of relief escaped from his taut throat and the suggestion of a smile flickered across his face. Then he began to rub her hand up and down, and she squirmed with shame but she did not pull away. His cock grew harder beneath her imprisoned grasp, straightening as it filled. She was clumsy, passive, too inexperienced to know what to do. He masturbated with her hand until he spasmed and then he relaxed, falling almost instantly into a dreamless sleep.

Emlhi, trembling, pulled her cramped fingers away and plunged them into the bowl of water.

That was the first time; it was not the last. She acquired a habit of coming to him when he raved or when he writhed in fevered nightmares, the sheets thrown aside and his body – fully naked now and cleaner and cooler for it - sprawled out across her bed. And then she would take his prick in her hand and stroke his velvet length, squeezing him at first gently and then with more firmness but always slowly, her face rapt, her breath shallow in her throat, her pulse pounding in her breast and her groin. She delighted to see him stretch and shudder at her touch. She would work him until his balls tightened and jettisoned their burden of semen in spurts across his belly. She loved to see his spend fall upon his flushed skin. She loved the noises of his pleasure, the catch in his breathing that meant he was hooked, and the wet kisses of his foreskin. She loved the peace that came across his features when it was done. She would sit and watch him even when he simply slept, enchanted by the angle of a shoulder blade, the rise and fall of his chest, the arch of an eyebrow.

Because, once she grew used to the smell of his sweat and if she could make herself overlook the suffering he was undergoing, he was beautiful. The heat had melted any fat from his body, stripping him down to bone and skin and muscle. His shoulders were broad, his hips tight, his thighs long and slab-hard. His nipples responded to the cold cloth by turning into little brown sweets. Emlhi loved to touch him.

She knew what she did was shameful, but she could not stop herself.

She was only seventeen, and she ached with loneliness.

All her life her father had guarded her jealously; a widower with no other children, he had no desire to lose his housekeeper to a younger man. When he, an irascible and courageous elder, had been the only one in the village to speak out against the occupying Raptors, they had come for him and no one, not even the other members of his family, had dared take up arms in his defence. Emlhi had been the only one to try, and she’d been held back, weeping and raging, by Turo. She’d never forgiven their pragmatism. Since that day she’d turned away from the village and her relatives, turned in on herself, and refused to look fondly upon any other human being. Her natural instinct for love had curdled and set like mortar.

Gareth - deaf and dumb and blind, the knightly embodiment of courage, handsome, and completely at her mercy - was the man that, entirely without his knowing, opened her up anew.

She remembered the night she’d checked on him and found him curled in a foetal ball on the bed while the blankets lay like the corpses of fallen enemies on the floorboards. She put the lamp down carefully and touched his shoulder. His skin, which an hour ago had been burning, was like ice to the touch and he shook incessantly under her hand. 

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she gasped and grabbed up the blankets. He didn’t seem to notice them settling over him; he was whimpering very softly under his breath like a dog in pain. Quickly Emlhi slid into the bed at his back. She was wearing only her underkirtle because she’d been ready for bed herself; the fine linen was little barrier between them. She pressed her warm belly to his spine and cupped his backside with her thighs. The cold of his flesh soaked into her own like river-water into laundry. She ran her warm hands down his ribs and hips and rubbed his thighs. The hair under her hands felt rough. She slipped them round his waist – the skin there much smoother – and found a faint warmth over his navel.

‘Hush,’ she whispered, kneading the knotted muscles of his neck with her other hand, pressing her face to his shoulder blade; ‘You’re alright. You’re alright.’ The shivering seemed to emerge from his bones. She rubbed her thighs against his softly, rhythmically, willing the warmth into him. The blankets were heavy. By tiny increments he relaxed, the shuddering soothed away as the covers trapped the heat. His limbs unknotted enough to allow her to slip her hand lower, right into the pit of his belly where his pubic hair tickled her fingers. It took a long time though, and she was tired by the day’s work. Gradually she fell into a doze.

 Emlhi awoke when Gareth pulled the blanket aside. Sleepily she protested at the draught, then realised that the man in her bed was no longer a block of ice; he’d stretched out and turned to press against her and he was hot, his skin burning on hers. The fever had returned. He put his hand on her thigh and even through the rucked linen of her shift it felt like he was branding her. Emlhi surged into wakefulness. He wasn’t just uncoiled; he boasted an erection that was pressed into her hip.

He’s sick, she thought, and weakened by the fever. Weak as a kitten. If I want to stop him I can, at any moment. Moonlight through the window revealed little; only his lower leg and his bare foot, his knee pushing between hers. Higher up their bodies were drowned in shadow and she could feel but not see his hand. The guttering stub of the candle outlined only the peak of his shoulder. His head was on her shoulder and he was panting, his breath coming in rapid gusts. Emlhi put her hand up and felt his face; the rasp of stubble, the smear of sweat from his temple, the loose locks of his hair. His breathing was far faster than any healthy man’s and he was leaving a wet patch on her throat.

‘My lord knight,’ she whispered. The pulse in her belly began to beat. He can’t make me, she told herself. He can only do what I let him.

Pulling up the last span of her skirt, he ran his hand up the inside of her thigh and pressed it into her delta. ‘Hsgood,’ he slurred. Emlhi juddered beneath him. His fingers probed deep into her slit, seeking her moisture. She whimpered, feeling his heat catch in her sex, flaring up thorough her belly. He parted her labia and dabbled his fingertips within, while his palm and thumb stirred the fleshy mound and caressed the rough hair. Her wetness was growing more marked by the heartbeat. She felt completely helpless, suffused by the ancient imperative to yield, to melt, to submit to him. She parted her thighs and he slid his hand up and down the length of her slot, drawing the lubricating effluvia down to the tight iris of her anus and up to the bud of her clit. His whole hand was slippery. She moved under him, pushing up to meet him, her shallow little gasps drowned by his fevered panting. The shadows shook against the wall. His thigh was heavier and heavier on hers. She slid her own hand across her belly, under his arm, and took hold of his shaft. It throbbed under her fingers.  

Then without warning, just as she was rising to her crisis, he pulled from her grasp and shifted his weight, heaving on top of her. The black silhouette of his head and shoulders loomed over her. Bereaved, she caught her breath but spread her thighs willingly, thinking that she knew what must happen next. She was completely unprepared. Pressure and friction and slippery motion suddenly became a stabbing pain, an unbearable rending. She arched under him, expecting it to be over in a flash. It grew worse.

‘No!’ she cried. ‘You’re too big!’

He swooped to mash his face into her throat. His entire weight was on her now, pressing her flat, grinding into her belly, crushing her ribs. She could hardly breathe. At that moment she realised with a sick jolt that she no longer had any power to deny him what he wanted. She had far underestimated his strength. And still the pain grew.

‘Please, no!’ she cried. ‘Stop!’

He took no notice. The burning heat in his flesh erupted into an agonising fire as he thrust into her. She bucked beneath him and he grabbed her wrists and pinned her effortlessly. Then suddenly, miraculously, the pain slackened and she was through to the other side, blinded by tears, pummelled beneath his thrusts, the breath forced up her throat with every surge of his hips. He was groaning, too feverish to censor himself, his aching muscles driven deep into the territory of pain. His deep cries mingled with her sharper ones, and she felt like she was drowning in his sweat and his strength and his mindless need as their cries and their bodies fused.

She remembered the day he’d finally come out into the spring sunshine, wearing the clothes she’d had to beat so hard on the river boulders to clean of his blood that the fabric was worn thin. He looked almost translucent himself, his eyes dark hollows, and the clothes hung loose upon him. Above the neck of his shirt his collarbones stood out sharply. He had a blanket wrapped about his shoulders.

‘Hey,’ she said, motioning him to a place upon the porch. He sat slowly, like an old man, but when he smiled at her the sunshine seemed to grow warmer. ‘You look so much better.’

‘I feel like a flag worn ragged by the wind.’ His voice was softer and deeper than his frame would predict; dark like his hair. He looked around at the little yard in front of her house, and at the trees beyond their fence. Chickens were scratting in the dirt. ‘It’s a beautiful day. How are you, Emlhi?’

‘I’m just sorting out the last of the winter apples.’ She indicated the flat baskets around her feet. ‘Would you like a cup of small beer, sir knight?’

‘Gareth,’ he reminded her gently. ‘Beer would be good.’

She fetched him a horn mugful from the crock behind the front door and he took it from her hand carefully, using both of his. She sat herself nearby, but he took her by surprise when he stretched forward and brushed the corner of her mouth with his fingertip. ‘What happened there?’

She touched the deep bloody scab and blushed. ‘You were … When you had the fever you used to think you were fighting your enemies. You managed to smack me one with your elbow. It’s nothing.’ It was kinder to say that, she thought, than tell him the truth: you punched me, sir knight, thinking I was a Raptor sorcerer. He looked upset enough by the bowdlerised version.

‘I’m sorry!’

‘It’s fine. You didn’t mean to hurt me.’

‘Nevertheless.’ His brows were knitted. ‘I will make reparation.’

‘It’s no problem,’ said Emlhi, laughing. ‘You weren’t to know.’

‘I’m a Knight of Helion,’ he corrected her gently. ‘We must take responsibility for what we do.’

It was hard not to mock him. ‘Even in your dreams? You must be forever doing penance.’

He smiled wryly, then his gaze slipped away and a shadow came over his expression. ‘I had such terrible dreams.’  He looked into his beer as if scrying through the dark surface. ‘About the battle of the Stone Gate, the lizard-riders there, the dragons…’ He shivered.

Emlhi patted his foot, though she thought maybe she shouldn’t do that, not to a knight. 

Gareth didn’t seem to notice. ‘And there were dreams that weren’t dreams; I saw things. They seemed so real at the time. I remember snakes crawling out of the walls, and terrible faces leering at me from the angles of the roof, and something pressing in at the window at night, all burnt and bloody bones…’

‘It was only the fever, giving you visions. You shouldn’t worry now. It’s all over.’

His face, pale to start with, was ashy now. His scrubby beard, which she’d patiently clipped with her needlework shears back to a stubble, stood out black like it had been drawn on his face with charcoal. She bit her lip, wondering if he was going to faint.  It could take a long time to recover from an infection of the blood.

‘There were things too that seemed like dreams at the time, but now…’ He lifted his gaze to meet hers, his eyes dark and filled with dread. ‘I hope that they were dreams.’

She could feel the blood running out of her own face and she looked away across the yard in despair, at the tossing canopies of the hawthorns.

‘Emlhi…’

‘The fever makes you see all sorts of rubbish.’

‘Emlhi… Did I …?’ He struggled for the words, and when they came out he spoke so softly she could barely hear. ‘Did I despoil you?’

The colour seemed to drain from the bright day. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said creakily.

She felt his gaze on the nape of her neck. ‘Oh gods. Look at me, Emlhi.’

She obeyed. She felt dizzy. There were two burning patches on her pallid cheeks. ‘It was nothing,’ she said, her gaze sliding off his.

‘Really? That’s not how it looks.’

She had no reply. It was everything, she thought. It was the moment I will carry with me all my life.

Slowly, Gareth put down his beer, pulled himself up against the nearest pillar, and walked away back into the house.

She remembered the day of their wedding.  How the sail of the small boat waiting to take them on board had snapped impatiently behind them in the breeze. How Gareth had held her hand on the quayside as he spoke his vows, with the whole of the village as witnesses. How he had never touched her again, not once, since that day.

Gareth returned to their chamber in the Citadel of the Knights, in High Eleron, while the morning was still early. He’d clearly been out in the practice yard; he laid his scabbarded sword across the settle and stripped off his damp shirt to reveal muscles standing proud from exertion. He’d started putting more bulk on, Emlhi thought; the gauntness was lifting from his face. But he did not turn that face toward her, and he didn’t speak a word.

‘Are you feeling stronger?’ she asked huskily, not moving from her seat on the bed.

‘A little better every day.’  He tipped water from a bucket into the wooden tub and unlaced his hose, deliberately turning his back on her.

‘That water will be cold. It’s from last night.’

‘It’s fine.’

He washed standing up in the tub and she watched him as he poured water from a silver ewer over his hair and shoulders, scrubbed his neck and underarms and crotch, then knelt to scour his feet. She wanted to ask if she could help wash his back, but she did not dare face his chill rebuff. When he’d finished he wiped himself off cursorily and then took an apple up from the platter and went out into the veranda into the sun. He ate while he waited to dry, the light picking out his well-defined musculature and the contrasting black sheen of his hair. Damp locks loosed stray droplets of water to trickle down his back. Emlhi felt her stomach clench with a sick yearning. She imagined how those long, strong legs and those hard forearms and that taut belly would feel under her hands. Gareth paced back and forth across the paved stones, his eyes roving the cityscape far below. She wondered what he was looking for. There were few knights or men left in the city; war still raged across the islands.

When he’d devoured the apple, core and all, Gareth came back in from the veranda and busied himself pouring a cup of wine. He’d seemed unselfconscious of his nakedness, but he drank with his back to her, looking at a blank patch of wall. His bare arse was as hard and discouraging as two clenched fists. Emlhi shuffled to the edge of the bed.

‘My good lord,’ she said humbly. ‘May I ask you a question?’

‘Of course.’

She slipped down to the floor, feeling the sheepskins beneath her bare soles. ‘Which of us is it that you are punishing?’

The flagon clinked on the edge of his metal winecup. He took a moment before replying. ‘Why should I be punishing you?’

She could think of far too many answers to that question. ‘For being of common stock from an island backwater, not fit for a Knight of Helion?’ she suggested. ‘For being merely the daughter of a village priest? For bringing you neither dowry nor title nor renown?’

He looked over his shoulder at her, his black brows drawn together, anger snapping from his eyes. ‘Is that what they are saying in the Citadel? Don’t listen to them. You’re my wife and that’s all the status you require.’

‘Then, my lord,’ she asked, her heart in her mouth, ‘why is it that you don’t treat me like your wife? You married me to make everything all right; this is not all right. Why won’t you even look at me?’

His mouth tightened. Then, as if in acknowledgement of her words, he turned away again. His fingertips rested on the table and she read the anger in the set of his shoulders. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I can’t look at you without shame.’

‘Shame?’

‘Not you. Me.’

‘But why?’

He pressed his clenched knuckles to the wood. ‘I’m a knight of Helion. The order was set up to bring light and order and hope to the world. I have made my vows. I have always tried to be true to the standards set for us. To have fallen so low – to have taken a woman by force – do you think that is what I intended when I received my sword?’ He snatched up his cup and smacked it at the wall; it rebounded across the room, but left an indelible red smear across the plaster. Gareth rubbed his hands across his face. ‘How am I supposed to live with myself?’ he demanded.

‘You were ill,’ Emlhi reminded him, the breath fluttering high in her throat. ‘You had a fever.’

Gareth laughed harshly. ‘A knight is judged by his deeds, not his excuses.’

She took a pace across the sheepskins, her heart pounding. ‘Please look at me. Please.’

He shook his head, dismissive.

‘Look at me!’ she commanded, her voice cracking, and he swung round to face her. He was a knight, not used to peremptory orders from civilians and certainly not to taking them from a slip of a girl; barely-curbed ire was visible in his expression. ‘I looked after you when you were ill,’ she said: ‘I gave you my own bed and fed you and tended your wounds and cleaned you and helped you make water.’ She ploughed on, ignoring the pain she knew she was causing his battered pride. ‘Do you think I did all that from my pure compassion? Do you think that when I washed the sweat off your naked body that I didn’t see what was under my hands? Do you think I am some sort of … saint?’ Her face was burning. ‘In your fever you caught me and put my hand upon your pizzle. Do you remember that?’

‘Oh please gods, no more,’ he groaned.

She pressed on. ‘Do you know how much I liked it; to feel your heat, to know the release you felt, to know that I was giving it to you? I took such pleasure from your helplessness. Oh, I was a maiden and I didn’t know how to get what I wanted, but I was no child. When you sweated I laid you bare and when you shivered I would get into bed with you and wrap my arms around your naked flesh and soothe your shaking. It was not pity that moved me to that.’ She was trembling herself with the strain of confession. ‘When you … when you lay upon me … when I felt you … I did not try to escape you.’

‘You begged me to stop,’ he whispered. ‘I remember that much. And I did not stop.’

‘I was frightened. And it hurt; it was my first time with a man. You were … too rough, for a maiden. But I wanted you. I wanted you so much. You did not force me. Believe me in that, my lord.’

‘Then,’ he said, and his low voice was terrible, ‘you surely misled me afterward.’

‘No. Please don’t. Why do you have to do this?’ Emlhi’s voice shook. ‘Why do you have to find someone to blame? I desired you and I thought that you desired me. Isn’t that enough? I would have yielded to you a hundred times in my own bed – or once, if that was all that you wanted. You could have left me there. I am sorry that your marriage is no joy to you, but I told you over and over that it wasn’t necessary to redeem my good name.’

‘You let me wed you out of shame.’

‘I was blind with love.’

‘Love?’ He breathed the word incredulously.

‘And I thought that you did desire me, at least. It would have been enough for me.’ She was trying desperately hard to keep her voice under control but it was wobbling now and tears were welling in her eyes. ‘Of your pity, my lord, if you cannot desire me then repudiate me and send me home. I cannot bear this.’ There was a great hollow pain in her breast. ‘I am burning, and you will not touch me.’

She shut her eyes tight, trying to hold back the tears. So loud was the blood in her ears that she did not hear his bare feet on the sheepskins, did not know he had crossed to her until she heard his voice and felt his hand on her face. 

‘I never meant to hurt you.’ His voice was ragged. The touch of his fingertips made her heart leap painfully. She opened her eyes and the tears spilled out down her cheeks, and then he stooped to kiss them away. His body brushed up against her. His mouth was gentle, but it did not stray near hers. ‘Don’t weep, Emlhi.’

 It was an easy role for him to play, she thought with tormented joy: he the rescuer, the comforter of her weakness. It was how he wanted to see himself. Elation and outrage crashed in her breast; stronger still was the terror that he might stop, that he might be knight enough to resist even the overwhelming tyranny of desire - to which she herself was enslaved. She took his hand from her cheek and laid it softly on her right breast. Gareth the man responded at once; she could feel the electric flicker of arousal as he stiffened. Gareth the knight was another thing entirely, and looking up into his eyes she saw the conflict raging there. In his knight’s mind there were only three kinds of people: victims, their oppressors and the heroes who saved them.  He could not envisage a world in which these roles were confused. He could not imagine how it would be possible to have a foot in more than one camp. He could not understand how such categories were meaningless to her.

She touched his lips, her fingers trembling. Let me show you, she begged silently.

‘You burn?’ he whispered.

How could he not see it? She nodded and without a word stretched up to kiss his lips. He responded cautiously, almost fearfully – but he did respond. His hand closed upon her breast, kneading the soft orb, finding lone resistance in the puckering tightness of her nipple. Emlhi let slip a helpless noise of nervous pleasure but his mouth was on hers and he swallowed it. Then he released her just far enough to draw out the short lace at her kirtle neckline, looking all the time searchingly into her eyes, the disbelief and mistrust warring there with his growing urgency. With two hands he smoothed the underdress over her shoulders and drew it down to her hips. It fell to the floor and Emlhi, completely confused as to why she should react that way, blushed beneath his gaze.

Gently Gareth slid to his knees, naked before her nakedness. He kissed her breasts, then her navel, then knelt even lower to press his lips to the crease veiled by her pubic fleece. His beard was soft on her skin. Emlhi wound her hands in his unruly hair and surrendered to the bliss of his embrace. His tongue swept her clit, describing exquisite circles until the wetness blossomed like a flower between her legs. She nearly lost her balance and he had to support her with hands strong on thighs which suddenly felt shaky as a new-born filly’s.

‘Forgive me,’ he whispered, pressing his temple and cheek to her belly.

What is there to forgive? she wanted to ask. But the words that came out of her mouth were, ‘I did. I did it the first time you opened your eyes and asked my name.’ And suddenly her own tears were falling on her breasts and on his face.

He rose to his feet before her, slipping his hands about her waist. Her spine flexed beneath his strong fingers, but he didn’t pull her against him as she hoped; instead, subtly, he held the distance between them. His eyes bored into hers, his expression so intense that it was almost grim. Suddenly Emlhi was seized with terror; he had after all got what he wanted from her: forgiveness. 

She started to shake. He was going to set her aside.

She put her hand to his groin. His cock, erect and burgeoning, nuzzled her palm. Gareth conscious was a far different prospect to the passive invalid he’d been in her bed. She pressed the shaft to her belly and he closed his eyes momentarily as a surge of pleasure swept over him.

‘Let me try again,’ he whispered. His lips brushed hers. ‘Please. I want to get it right this time.’

‘Yes,’ she breathed, opening to his lips and his tongue.

The gap between them closed.

© Janine Ashbless 2008