Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
C osmo woke up in the tub.
It wasn’t the first time, but waking in such a state usually followed a night over indulging in wine, and Cosmo hadn’t had a drop the day before. Sunlight streamed in through the window of their room at the inn and he had a fearsome crick in his neck. Disoriented, he sat up, searching for Leofric, and found himself alone.
One of the beds had been fully stripped, and Cosmo felt a surge of guilt. He got up and padded across the room to make certain that his muddy things hadn’t damaged the stuffed mattress. They hadn’t, mercifully. He dressed, wondering where Leofric had gotten to. When he left the room, he clicked the door shut behind him, musing that Leofric should have given him a key. Down in the common room, the other guests at the inn were tucking in to morning meal, and the place already bustled with activity. Cosmo flagged down the inn-keep.
“Ah,” she said, a stern look on her face. “Your friend brought down the bed clothes earlier, muddy as if you’d slept outside in the pigsty.”
“Apologies,” said Cosmo.
She shrugged. “No need. He paid me an extra silver, and he’s helping my girl Dorna wash them now, outside.”
Cosmo wandered through the common room and out the side door to find that the inn keep had been, at least partially, correct. Leofric was washing the bed clothes and his own soiled uniform in a basin while a young girl—who Cosmo assumed was Dorna—sat in a chair watching him with an appraising eye.
“You are by far the ugliest washerwoman I’ve ever seen,” said Cosmo to Leofric as he approached.
Was he imagining things, or did the severe line of Leofric’s mouth soften, just for the span of half a heartbeat? “I felt it unfair to ask Dorna to scrub these,” said Leofric.
“Very unfair,” Dorna agreed. She reclined back in her seat, and reached to the ground where she’d set a clay cup of steaming tea. “And I certainly don’t find him hard to look upon.”
Leofric’s cheeks flamed and he busied himself with the mangle, squelching muddy water out of the bedclothes before dunking them back in the tub.
“Did you tell her why they were so muddied?”
“Aye,” said Leofric. He stood and turned to hang a sheet upon the line. The skies had cleared overnight and a pleasant breeze stirred the clothes already drying there. “I told Lady Dorna here that it was because my traveling companion was an insufferable nuisance.”
“That’s you, I expect,” said Dorna idly, examining her fingernails.
“I expect the same,” Cosmo admitted. “I am a nuisance.”
“An insufferable one,” confirmed Leofric, peering out from behind the sheet. “Though truth be told, my lady, I shoved him into the mud.”
“Well,” said Dorna, who must have been all but fourteen. “I’ve shoved a nuisance or two into the mud in my time.”
“We surely deserve it,” said Cosmo, grinning now. He couldn’t believe his luck. Perhaps sometime in the night, Leofric had gotten up to relieve himself and taken a nasty spill down the stairs. A head injury was the only explanation for his sudden levity, but Cosmo wasn’t about to let it pass by. The sun was shining, and despite the ache in his neck, he’d had an excellent night’s sleep. Not only that—he hadn’t even had to wash out his own laundry—a victory, if ever there was one.
When Leofric had hung all the linens to dry, he and Cosmo walked down the narrow dirt road that served as the town’s main street. “What name do they call this place?” Cosmo asked, curious.
“Westfold,” said Leofric. “I think it’s the last town we’ll find before we enter the border lands on the western road to Sokol.”
“We should refresh our rations, then,” said Cosmo. Some of his spices were running low, too, and if they were going to be eating on the road, he wasn’t about to suffer any more of Leofric’s cooking.
“Agreed,” said Leofric.
Another surprise. Cosmo suddenly began to worry that Leofric was making plans to murder him in his sleep.
“What?” Leofric asked him.
“What, what?” Asked Cosmo.
Leofric smirked. “I’ve never seen you speechless before,” he said. “I like it.”
Cosmo would have liked to spend the day wandering the town, learning of its people, perhaps finding a tavern or three, but Leofric was plainly antsy to be away. This fragile peace between them was so hard won that for once Cosmo did not wish to test it.
Unfortunately, someone was determined to.
They returned to the top of the stair to see the door to their room swinging open on its hinges. Leofric rounded on Cosmo. “You did not lock the fucking door?”
Cosmo startled at his sudden ire. “You didn’t give me a key!”
“No key is needed to lock it behind you,” snapped Leofric.
Cosmo flushed. Shit. “That’s so,” he allowed. “But?—”
Leofric snarled and shoved past him into the room. When Cosmo followed in his wake, he saw the place had been ransacked. Their bags had been shaken out all over the floor, clothing torn and tossed carelessly around. Curiously, Cosmo noted several piles of flour spilled all about the place like tiny piles of snow. Leofric fell to his knees, sifting through the flour with his fingers, searching. “ Fuck! ”
“What is it?” Cosmo asked him. “What is this, of the flour?”
Leofric stood, and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. “Gone,” he muttered. “All of it, gone.”
“ What’s gone?” said Cosmo, still bewildered.
Leofric turned toward him again, fury etched into every line of his face. With the absence of the robber in their midst, Cosmo was the only possible target. “My coin, ” he said. “I had hidden it amongst the flour.”
Cosmo knit his brows together, still several steps behind. “What coin?”
“The coin His Highness gave me,” he said. “Coin to convince me to spend any stretch of time with you. ”
It should not have hurt. It shouldn’t have. Cosmo had known from the beginning that Leofric detested him, looked down upon him. He had known Leofric would never have willingly left his precious charge behind. But something about the knowledge that he’d been bribed to accompany Cosmo was more than he could stand. Like any cornered animal, Cosmo lashed out. “This was not my doing,” he said.
“No, perhaps not,” said Leofric. “But it was your foolishness that caused it.”
“ How ?”
“How? How? ” Leofric was near purple with anger now. “Your storm, your asinine notion of staying here. Your bloody ridiculous quest. ”
“ My quest?” Cosmo laughed bitterly. “I was perfectly happy, living on my own till you literally dragged me off to begin this little errand.”
“Your brothers?—”
“My brothers would be happy to have let me rot. It is only because they need my part in this that they even included me at all.”
“That’s not?—”
“It’s not true? Did you not even say that we needn’t worry about keeping me awake? We needn’t worry about my part in this quest? Saving me is urgent to no one, least of all myself. This is not my fucking doing.”
Leofric took a few breaths, but the fire in his eyes did not dull. He paced back and forth, searching through the clothing and scraps of fabric that littered the floor. If anything, all he did was make the room even more messy.
“Let us confront the inn keep,” Cosmo tried. “Perhaps she saw the villain enter or leave the grounds.”
“Gave them our room number and told them to rob us blind, more like,” said Leofric.
“Regardless, she might know something.”
Cosmo did the talking when they approached her. “My lady,” he began politely. “A word?”
She leveled a look at Cosmo. “Just one?”
“ Many, in fact?—”
Cosmo held up a hand to silence Leofric before he could offend their only lead. “My lady, our rooms have been robbed.”
She squinted at them. “You lose your key?”
“No,” said Leofric, taking it from his belt.
“You forget to use your key?”
Cosmo and Leofric exchanged a glance. “I’m afraid so,” said Cosmo. “We simply felt so at home and safe in your establishment?—”
“Spare me,” she snapped. “You’re the third guest to complain of theft—I’ll be bankrupt by the time I’m done making amends. What would you have of me?”
“A name, a face, a cardinal direction,” said Cosmo. “Anything you could give us.”
She pondered for a moment. “A ragged group of men came in, inquiring after rooms. My first thought had been to refuse them. They had the look of outlaws, I thought, but they had the coin.”
“Coin stolen from other honest men, no doubt,” said Leofric under his breath.
“No doubt,” she agreed.
“Three ragged men robbed more than one room?”
“Aye,” said the inn-keep. “Unless there were more than one group of brigands.”
“We can take care of three broken men,” Cosmo assured her. “Did you know perchance where they headed next?”
“Home, was all they said,” the innkeeper told them. “Not much help, I know, but the men had something of your look, if you don’t mind my saying,” she said, with a gesture toward Leofric.
“They were Sokolian?” he asked, surprised.
“I thought so at first, but one had a mark, just here,” she touched the side of her neck. “Three?—”
“Feathers?”
“Yes, feathers they were,” she agreed. “Black ones. One had three, another had a whole collar of them, all the way ‘round his neck.”
Cosmo had no idea what that was about, but plainly it meant something to Leofric. He turned on his heel and stormed out of the common room. “My thanks!” Cosmo called over his shoulder to the innkeeper and hastened to follow Leofric’s angry stride.
“ órnians, ” he spat, almost to himself. “Fucking órnians.”
“How can you be certain?”
“The tattoos,” he said. “The feathers are their mark. Men in their legions get a feather tattooed after five years of service, and then a new one for every year thereafter. A man with an entire collar would have to be an officer.”
By then, they reached the stables. “They are far from home, no?”
Leofric nodded. “I mislike this. How did a band of órnian outlaws came to be this deep into Papian territory?”
“Well, it matters not how they got here. We know where they are headed. The two of us can handle three, easily.”
“Perhaps,” Leofric allowed, grudgingly. “If we find them.”
“Well,” said Cosmo, “Let us make haste, then.”
That proved easier said than done however. Cosmo’s horse was gone, though mercifully Lyra remained in her stall at the very end of the stables. Lyra was a fine horse, but by look not the equal of the dappled grey filly Cosmo had been riding. Leofric saddled her with haste, and offered Cosmo an arm to swing up into the saddle before him. “Come,” said Leofric, urging Lyra with his knees.
“Did the inn-keep not say there were but three brigands?” Cosmo sounded concerned. “There has to be a dozen of them.”
Leofric and Cosmo crouched in the shadows, a hundred yards from a crude campsite in the woods outside of town. The men had not been difficult to follow; Leofric had to admit Cosmo was of great use in that regard. His grace allowed him to ask questions of the earth, and the earth provided answer. “Whether it is a dozen or three it makes no matter,” said Leofric. “I must retrieve what they took. And we cannot ride double the entire way to Sokol.”
Cosmo’s horse was hobbled amongst the outlaws’ own mounts, distinguished even in the dark by her fine tack and bridle. Despite Leofric’s own words, he feared Cosmo would be right. Cosmo could fight, he’d proven that, but revealing his inner powers seemed most unwise. They had more than their own safety to consider. If but a single man escaped to bring word to órnio that Papia had a someone like a sorcerer in its employ, it could go very ill.
He had to think of a plan, something clever that would allow them to get inside the camp and retrieve their things and Cosmo’s horse, without drawing attention. And preferably without bloodshed. The more he stared the more it seemed impossible. And the longer he went without speaking, the more he could feel Cosmo’s own stare boring into the side of his head. “We could come back tomorrow,” Cosmo suggested. “The town must have a force of men charged with keeping the peace.”
“They could be long gone by tomorrow,” Leofric hissed back. “And besides, a small token force of lawmen wouldn’t leave the border of the town so far behind them. It would leave the people vulnerable.”
“Well, we could ask them,” said Cosmo, his voice rising a bit.
“Be quiet,” Leofric barked, and then he flushed. He didn’t need to turn his head to know Cosmo was grinning at that little irony. “Let me think.”
They crouched in the shadows for some time, and Leofric found his head utterly empty, completely devoid of any plan that would allow them to dance into the outlaws’ camp and out again with his gold and Cosmo’s mount. “ Well? ” Cosmo asked.
“Just shut up, ” Leofric hissed. “I cannot think with you chirping in my ear.”
“I don’t believe you can think much at all.”
Leofric turned. “What did you say?”
Cosmo backed away, and stood, moving deeper into the concealment of the trees. He ignored the question. “What do you want to do, then?” He asked.
Leofric stood and followed him. He was not asked such a question very often at all. “What do I want to do?”
“Yes,” said Cosmo, his tone mocking. “Unless you can’t even fathom an answer. Can you even think for yourself?”
If Leofric’s jaw clenched any harder, his teeth would shatter, exploding like pieces of pottery. “Say. That. Again.”
Cosmo scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “You probably can’t even have an original thought of your own. Without someone to give you orders, you’re nothing. A simple soldier, right? And that is all you are.”
Something switched off in Leofric’s brain, rage igniting every cell of his body. He advanced on Cosmo like a wolf stalking a deer, and what he wanted in that moment, was to tear out his throat. “You want to know what I want to do?”
“Yes.”
“What I want to do, more than anything?”
Cosmo’s breath hitched. “Yes.”
Leofric stalked closer to him. “I don’t care if you are a god,” he said. “I don’t care if your precious grace can scorch me where I stand.”
By now, he was right in Cosmo’s space. Cosmo swallowed, and Leofric tracked the bob of his throat. He backed away another step, but he did not avert his gaze.
Leofric pulled his lips back to snarl, “What I want, is to grab a fistful of that ridiculous hair and knock your head against that tree.”
Cosmo let out an audible gulp, his back colliding with said tree as he continued to step away.
“I want to sink my fist into your smirking face, ” Leofric gritted out through his bared teeth.
“Oh?”
“I want to wrap my hands around your throat and squeeze. ” Leofric said, close enough to Cosmo now that he could smell his skin, could feel the heat rolling off his body. Leofric lifted one hand to press against his neck, gently. A whisper, a promise. He could feel Cosmo’s pulse hammering under his thumb as he traced tiny circles with it over his windpipe. Their noses were less than an inch apart. “I want to…bite the taunting smile off your lips,” he whispered.
“I—wait, what?”
Their noses touched, and Leofric slid one of his thighs between Cosmo’s legs. He boxed him in against the tree with his arms, and he could feel Cosmo’s cock swelling against his leg, hot and hard. His pouty lips gaped open, wanting. Scarce the width of a finger separated his lips from Cosmo’s. All Leofric had to do was close the distance and take them.
That realization brought him back to himself, like a bucket of cold water dousing the fire burning in his chest. He stepped back, and Cosmo nearly slumped to the ground with Leofric no longer propping him up against the tree. “But I can’t.”
Cosmo took a step toward him, to close the distance once again. “Why not?”
Leofric opened his mouth to answer, but something at last clicked into place in his brain. “A dozen men, did you say?”
Cosmo frowned, the hazy look still clouding his eyes, but he tried to bring himself back to sense. “What?”
“A dozen,” said Leofric his heart beating even faster now. He dropped a hand to his sword hilt. Too late, far too late. “I only counted ten.”
“Your friend was right, I’m afraid,” came a voice from the shadows. “Good evening, gentlemen.”