Seget

 

Author: NA12

Fandom: Buffy

Pairing(s): Liam/Spike

Warnings: Non con slavery, some torture, non con sex, dark setting.

Spoilers: N/A - AU

Summary: Spike conquers Liam's small village, Seget, and claims Liam as his spoils, forcing him into slavery. He wants to own Liam completely, but Liam yearns to be free again, even as he finds his owner more and more captivating.

Nominated Category:

Most Angst: TV & Movies

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Chapter 1 - The Union. Chapter Two - Prize Chapter Three – Enslaved. Chapter Four – Bathhouse Flowers. Chapter Five – Cae. Chapter Six – Sweet Meat Pastry. Chapter Seven – The River Manna. Chapter Eight – Greater Good. Chapter Ten – Beguiling. Chapter Eleven – Red Band.

Chapter 1 - The Union.

 

 

*

 

 

 

The Great War had been fought for years, in towns and cities over the entire country. The Union Regiment had been created in Alla City, one of the largest coastal cities, a fat greedy docking metropolis that had been thriving on crime and luxury under rule of Governor Nest. The Union was an army. It employed the men of Alla City, from the smartest businessmen, to the lowest delinquents and it paid them well. Nearly everyone in Alla City had joined at its inception.

 

The regiment had taken the cities closest to Alla and then the smaller towns in between, it had recruited more men for the cause and it had spread. Sacking cities from coast to coast, offering the resident’s recruitment or death, the Union Regiment was a fire. Nest grew more powerful, and the Regiment marched on.

 

The first wave of opposition came from the higher cities, furthest away from Alla City, up in the mountains. They gathered their own troops from the mountain villages, and made a stand. The Union was fought back in the battle, but soon it conquered, wounded but living strong.

The second wave was stronger than the first, lower down, below Alla City, in the cold climates of the Unchartered. It was said that the Regiment had been driven back and had suffered a loss so great they hadn’t tried to take the Unchartered lands again.

 

But the Union lived on, spreading its reign across the country.

 

 

*

 

 

The morning sun was rising behind the forest that surrounded most of the small mountain township of Seget, bright rays of yellow light seeping through the thick foliage to lighten yet another day in a countless string of days. It rose and lit the world, oblivious to the hardships of its peoples, or what was happening on the green surface, it rose and sank every day and would continue to do so until the end of time.

 

Liam sat barefoot on the thick wooden fence he and his father had built almost twelve years before, and swept the water stone along the ugly length of heavy steel that rested across his thighs. Seget was his home. It was his home before he had memories, he grew up in the forests that bound it and he had lived in the villagers homes just as the other towns children had always come to his own. Everyone knew everybody else. It was a family, more than a town. No last names. Not big enough for last names. No need for them in Seget.

He loved it. He was a much a part of Seget as the many fields, the mountains or the River Menna that ran through the middle of the land, ending in a humble lake at the foot of the highlands. The heavy wooden bridge lead the way to town, it had been rebuilt by the townsfolk when Liam was twelve years, he’d watched them labour for days, horses pulling the weight of the larger logs that tied together over River Menna to create a way in. Not that foreigners often came to Seget. It was owned and run by the villagers. But sometimes new people settled, come from the larger cities for safety in the mountains. More lately.

 

He could smell the dew in the forest from where he perched, the damp bark and pine needles filled his nose familiarly as he watched his sheep in his paddocks, little puffs of white already up and meandering along in the enclosures. They baaed minutely and Liam smiled, comforted by them, watching them with the same adoring eye that he’d always watched them, since they became his own. He knew them, knew where they would be when he had to go searching for them in the bigger outer paddocks and he knew they’d be ambling about in their quiet slow way, thinking of nothing but grass and food and sleep.

 

Normally it comforted him in the face of anything but today Liam itched. He’d worn the same sort of simple cotton pants for years now, but today they scratched him like they were filled with nettle barbs. The long rough cotton tunic over top made him sweat in the early morning briskness. He wasn’t a fighter.

 

His troubled thoughts were interrupted by the soft quick padding of small feet across wet crunchy grass and he sighed, resigned to the conversation he knew was about to happen. He slipped off the fence, his pants catching a little on the weather worn wood and faced the girl running up behind him.

 

His sister pulled up short when she saw him turn, her coltish fawn legs poking from the knee length hem of her dyed blue shapeless tunic. Her hair was not done, messy and fluffy, awry from bed. She’d just woken, she had sleep in her eyes but they were bright anyway. He guessed she had heard him sharpening the sword.

 

“Don and Mara are gone,” Kat said, naming their closest neighbours, watching him closely with hard eyes, “They left during the night, I know, because they’re paddocks are open. To let the horses run free.”

 

Liam closed his eyes. Seget was a part of him, but Don and Mara had simply come for shelter. They hadn’t breathed Seget every day of their lives, or drunk and eaten it since they were born. It was a shelter, and shelters could be abandoned.

 

His silence set her ablaze. “You knew?” She cried indignantly.

 

“I had a feeling that they might,” Liam answered.

 

“Why are we staying?!” Kat cried, running up to the fence between them and looking at him with big hurt dark eyes. “We should go!”

 

“You aren’t staying,” Liam said firmly.

 

Her dark eyes narrowed. “If you’re staying, I am.”

 

“Kat-“

 

“No!” She said, stomping her bare foot against the dewed grass, “Liam!”

 

“I have to do what I think is right,” he said gently.

 

Kat’s face screwed up in anger. “Mother and Father went to do the right thing, and they never came back,” her face softened as soon as she said it. “Are you going to disappear too? And leave me only a sword to remember you by?”

 

Liam averted his eyes, looking down at the sword resting strangely in his hand. His father’s sword. Years ago their parents had travelled down to Palso City, to fight in the first wave of the Union interference. Palso City had been swamped easily, and his father’s sword was all that had returned to Seget. His father had believed in standing up to the Union Regiment, he’d died trying to protect them fully from it. But Seget hadn’t been taken in the first wave. Or the second. Seget was a tiny mountain town of no use to anybody. They thought they’d been safe. But the Union was greedy. They wanted it all and now they were planning to take it.

 

Liam didn’t answer his sister’s question, couldn’t give voice to the lie she wanted him to say to keep her innocent in the darkest times she’d ever seen. He pressed his lips together and she cried out, tears springing to her eyes as she leapt over the fence, balling her sixteen year old fists up and slamming them uselessly against his chest, over and over, cursing him with words he hadn’t known she’d learnt, screaming and crying against him until he could smell the salt on her cheeks. Her loud shouts disturbed their sheep, making them baa in wary confusion at the noise and wander over the large paddock to find a quieter eating place.

 

“Don’t…” She cried brokenly, clasping her hands around him, “please! I know what the Union does to people who… please don’t.”

 

“Seget is my home.”

 

“It’s my home too,” she cried, rearing back to stare into his eyes, “I understand why you want to stand.”

 

“I can’t let them take it. Not without a sound.”

 

“You’re stupid!” she spat, tears streaming down her cheeks and dripping off her pointed chin, “They’ll … they’ll…”

 

“I have to stand against them,” he said, in the same gentle tone he’d said everything else.

 

Kat flew at him again, her fingers in claws that scraped at anything they could reach as they dragged him into her sobbing arms. Her fingers curled into his loose shoulder length hair, tightly and tugging, hurting his scalp like she almost wanted to inflict pain on him as she cried against his chest, wetting the cotton with her tears. He held on as the storm of emotions battered through her.

She whimpered cries against his chest, the wailing wrecking her body was more passionate and painful than any tears she’d shed since he’d set her on his lap as a little girl and explained to her their parents weren’t returning. He knew how to handle her. He’d practically raised her. Kat was a tempest, her emotions ruled her; they batted her to and fro like pollen on the breeze and he could only hold her until the emotion passed.

 

Quick heavy footsteps across the grass behind them both made Liam raise his head in a frown. There shouldn’t be any callers today. Everyone in town should be locked away, preparing, saying goodbye to children. They shouldn’t be here.

 

He turned around to see Miko and Sar, vegetable farmers from the next cottage beyond Don and Mara’s, riding up beside his and Kat’s small home on their horses. His stomach turned to cold frigid lake water as he realised they were dressed in their leather armours. He looked at Miko; her long dark hair hung down around her pale face as she stared wide eyed at him from behind her husband’s shoulder. Her dark unseeing eyes bored into him and left imprints behind his eyelids.

 

He knew what Sar would say before he even opened his mouth. He imagined he could hear the sound of a hundred horses hoof beats marching in time. The trees whispered it to him.

 

“They’re here,” Sar said, his usually happy face leaked of all it’s emotion.

 

Liam shook his head furiously as Kat started shivering with fear next to him, her hand clawing around his waist to hold him tighter. “No! No, they were heading to Vara Town first!” he said, vainly trying to make it true, “We heard that only three days ago!”

 

Sar looked back at him, resignation on his face. “Everyone is meeting in the village square. Now.”

 

Miko slapped her horse’s haunches and rode out onto the dirt road that connected the left side of the town to the inner centre. Liam watched them go, blankly for a second, before resting a hand on the rough fence he remembered building and leaping over it.

 

“Liam!” Kat cried.

 

“Open the paddocks, Kat, let the sheep out!” he ordered, running back to the small cottage as Kat nodded fearfully and run down the hill, her hair flowing insanely behind her.

 

He slammed into the hut, ducking down under the bundled stick roof, his bare feet heavy on the hard packed earth floor. He grabbed his leather armours off the small eating table, tying the strings up with shock clumsy fingers, around his biceps and thighs and chest, feeling the still damp wetness of Kat’s tears on his skin. He quickly tied his hair, itching all over now, as he slammed his feet into his thick sandals. With one last look at the house he took his sword in hand and ran out the back again, seeing Kat running up the hill in front of him and awkwardly stepping over the fence, the open paddocks behind her.

 

He knew he wouldn’t be coming back today, not without a miracle. He didn’t want his sheep dying, not after he’d cared for them for so many years, didn’t want them trapped and waiting for him to tend and feed them. Now they’d find their own way out for food, when they needed it. They grazed, little white puffs on his fields. He spared them a glance as he grabbed Kat’s hand and pulled her around the front of the house.

 

He picked her thin body up and pushed her onto her horse, Milly before slipping up on top of Hoof, the dark confection he’d bought from Mara only a year ago. They rode away from their home at the edge of Seget and along the dusty dirt road that served the farms, galloping past Don’s and Miko’s cottages, dead and empty as they sat skeletal on the side of the trail. There was no life in them now, they were ghostly. Kat’s tears dried on her cheeks in the cool morning breeze.

They galloped as the cottages started to draw closer together, the plots of land getting smaller as they got closer to the village centre. Finally they arrived, the entire town turned out and waiting uncertainly clumped around the old town well that marked the beginnings of Seget. The inn was closed up tight and the few bartering stores were empty and unlit.

 

Del, an old friend of Liam’s, turned to see him dismounting Hoof and smiled weakly. “You decided to come?”

 

A few people around Del twittered with nervous laughter. “Last one here,” Liam said with a tense lipped smile, grabbing Del in a quick embrace before being startled by the sudden booming voice of Bem, the holy man.

 

“We are all here!” he cried, standing up on the side of the well. “We stand together to protect our right to live and our right of choice! We will triumph this day, with the mountains to watch over us, because we are the heart of Seget, and we have righteousness on our side!”

 

Liam swallowed, ignoring the preacher’s words of false comfort to those that needed to hear them. He searched the crowd, looking for his last salvation and grinned widely when he saw her, edging through the crowd with her pregnant belly.

 

Cordy, his oldest friend, friends before there was a mental idea of friendship, hurried up to him in the peculiar waddling way she had begun to use with her body being so ready for her baby. She hugged him awkwardly around her tummy, holding him tightly around his waist and the back of his head. “Make your stand, Liam, then run. There’s no shame in running, okay?” She pulled away, eyes watering as she took Kat’s hand. “Meet us in Southbrook,” she smiled tensely, “you meet us there, alright?”

 

He kissed her cheek without answering and then bent to hug Kat as tightly as he could, whispering frenzied ‘I love you’s and ‘take care’s and every little shred of wisdom he’d tried to pick up during his years so he could pass them to her in a few moments. Cordy took her away, her lips trembling with emotion as her husband, Doyle, helped her up onto her horse. Kat jumped up on Milly, looking back at him with her face set and hard as Cordy led her and the children of Seget away, heading towards the mountains, taking the hidden back way out through a tiny cut in the woods. Liam watched them leave, kept his eyes glued unblinking to Kat and Cordy until they disappeared round the side of some cottages before he turned back, his body resigned and fearful of what was to come.

 

There was silence for a time, as they all stood gathered around the heart of the town, fidgeting, rocking on their heels as they waited for them. A deathly hush fell over the simple people as they heard a military horn not too far away. Then the sound of them. The sound of a hundred horses, and hundreds of feet, marching in time, clanking in rhythm, all part of one big terrifying mass of Union. Liam swallowed as the sound grew louder.

 

Townspeople activated, spreading out a little, not too much, only enough to let everyone’s axe or sword able to make a play. They stayed huddled together though. They couldn’t be more than a breath away from each other. He realised with delay that he was standing between Del and Miko. Del fidgeted as he waited, swinging his axe nervously from hand to hand, his face taut as it seemed everything connected to him stayed in constant movement. His skin seemed to be wriggling in his nervous waiting. Miko was still by contrast, apart from her fluttering eyelashes. Her long dark hair didn’t even move, stayed dispirited, hanging in hunks by her cheeks. She looked fearful, almost deathly fearful, her face white and her lips tense. He didn’t recognise her at first, she looked so different. It wasn’t Miko, not the Miko he knew, who had grown up from him two cottages over.

 

His brain suddenly pushed forward a memory, an old one, of he and Miko running around his father’s property when they were younger, when Kat was only a baby in a cradle. They’d been giggling about something, and she was resting her head against the fence, and when she’d gone to stand up, she’d cried out as her long dark hair became caught around the splintery nailed fence post. With a few tugs and some screeching from Miko, Liam had managed to pull her free, but he’d seen a hunk of that dark straight hair wound around the broken old fence, swaying in the breeze, as Miko had pouted and rubbed the back of her head.

 

She looked at him and he managed a smile, but she couldn’t even bring herself back for that, so distant and gone from her body that her eyelashes just fluttered nervously, frown deep in her forehead as she turned back to the entry to town.

 

The sound grew louder. Thump thump thump of metal feet, clip clop of hoofs all in a mangled rush of noise that violated Seget in its morning peace. And then suddenly, a row of silver suddenly shone above the hill into town and he heard a frightened whispered murmur run through his family in a gallop. Soldiers. Dressed head to toe in thick silver plates of armour that shone the glare of the bright sun back into their eyes like bright daggers. It made them squint as more and more soldiers appeared over the rise, flowing down in a metal river. The horses came, the men atop flying the flags of the Union high above their heads. Men’s voices carried on the breeze, laughter and joking as they marched towards the townspeople making their final stand.

Liam’s throat was dry. When he swallowed, the flesh inside caught against flesh, dry and scratchy and his tongue was stuck to the sides of his teeth.

 

Still more soldiers poured into the green lands of Seget, their silver bodies at odds with the quiet trees and grass. Their helmets were pointed over their mouths, and some of the marching men held up steel shields embedded with sharp looking metal spikes that jagged out from the surface. The men walked in formation and the absolute precision of it chilled Liam’s bones. Silver and swords and intimidating, they calmly marched towards them.

 

The Union suddenly halted, almost mid step, and it stopped all at once somehow, everything ceasing, the chatter and the footsteps and even the horses. They all obeyed the small signal Liam had missed and stopped only a few yards away.

 

A steel-armoured man on horseback rode forward from the line and halted halfway between Seget and the Union.

 

“People of Seget!” he cried through the silver beak of his helmet in his gruff Union accent, “Governor Nest, Lord of Union and the Union Regiment, has claimed this land as his own.”

 

This set up a quiet murmur from the braver townspeople.

 

“He invites you to live under Union law, and become one of the populace,” the man yelled into the still morning. “Do you accept?”

 

Del fidgeted beside Liam with barely contained rage. He twirled his axe in his rough hands.

 

“Never,” breathed Liam.

 

His mumble was taken by Del and passed along the line of Seget until one man, maybe Bem, yelled it out accusingly at the soldiers standing ready.

 

“If you do not accept the brotherhood offered by the Union Regiment, then you will be identified by Governor Nest as opposition and will be treated as such.”

 

Sar’s voice and words carried loudly in the quiet town, his voice an embodiment of the beliefs of Liam’s family, the reason they all stood opposing an army more than tripling their size: “Fuck Nest and fuck all of you!”

 

“Yeah!” Cried a woman’s voice behind Liam’s left somewhere.

 

Silence battered them for a moment, and Liam held his breath.

 

“So be it,” the announcing man said, almost bored.

 

It all happened so instantly that Liam was already a few steps behind. The Union soldiers caught another hidden cue and suddenly roared out, a noise so loud and deafening it paused the people of Seget for an instant, before they cried their own battle cry loudly into the sky and ran forward. Liam was swept up and he ran with them. He was crossing the empty grassy space between them and the soldiers and suddenly, he was there, his sword outstretched.

 

He slammed away the sword of the silver man in front of him and easily slipped his sword up his covered chest and under the pointed garish helmet, slamming the blade under the faceless man’s chin. Blood poured down and it shocked Liam still for an instant, the way it flowed so freely down his armoured chest, almost like it wanted to leave the man dead and hanging on the end of Liam’s sword, like it wanted to escape. Liam pushed him away, horrified by what he’d done, staring in wonder at the sword in his hand, what it could do, before he had to push aside his careening thoughts and stop a Union sword from slicing him in two. He was caught in swordplay for a moment with a new man, as Del whirled his axe beside him in a roar, slashing and matching the man’s thrusts. Liam was better than the soldier gave him credit for, and he caught him on the back of the neck, slicing him through, moving on to the next as his sword dripped red. He was jostled forward and suddenly in a new match with a different soldier, all alike, all trained the same way, all faceless and nameless and insanely symmetrical. He grabbed the beak of the man’s helmet, dotted with holes so the men could see through, and wrenched it aside, pulling the man off balance and baring his neck for the quick slice of Liam’s blade, his father’s teachings of defence a deep part of him, so simply he took to war and fighting.

 

He took another soldier down, turning just in time to catch the one about to slice his back and meeting his sword with a reverberating clang. He slipped his sword underneath the plated armour, sliding his blade into the softness beneath. A man on horseback suddenly appeared next to him and he cut at his knees, drawing him off the horse and pulling his helmet back to bare his throat. His knuckles were wet with blood now, but he couldn’t think about it, couldn’t stop, not with the roaring and the shriek of metal on metal and the stink of blood making it hard to breath.

He took another Unioner down and turned, seeing Miko, slashing down at the soldier on the ground, her teeth bared, her back to the silver ghost with a raised sword behind her. Liam opened his mouth to yell but it was too late, the soldier swung and his blade sunk through Miko’s neck as easily as if his friend were made of butter. Her long dark hair was hacked in two as her head suddenly wasn’t on top of her neck anymore. Liam froze, heart cold. Her body fell.

 

Liam roared, his vision clouded with tears as he swung and kicked his way through the fighting bleeding throng to the soldier, grabbing him and sliding his sword through his neck, leaving him to bleed next to the fallen body of his Miko. He turned, taking out a few more soldiers before he could even think, turning back to the bulk of the battle, seeing how few his Seget family was, how quickly they fell under the crushing force of trained steel. Every time a soldier fell another would take his place in an endless procession.

Liam swung wildly, losing focus in the unjustness of it all, roaring and water stinging in his eyes. He shoved at one man, his sweaty hair coming loose from its tie and hanging over his face as he engaged another soldier, this one more talented then the first wave, taking a lot longer than any of them had, catching Liam on the thigh with a tiny scratch that stung like a bee sting. He looked to see Del, hunched over, blood pouring from his mouth as his axe fell from stupid fingers, a Union soldier standing in front of him shoving his sword deeper into his gut, laughing with victory as Del cried out in bloodied pain. Liam hissed like a mountain cat and lost himself in his fury, tackling the man to the ground, his own body scraping up on sharp metal but he didn’t care. He roared and clambered on top of him, yanking his helmet off and punching him with as much power as he could muster, square on his nose. The soldier flailed beneath him as his nose burst into a bloody fountain and Liam raised his sword.

 

The battle around him faded in and out as he looked down at Del’s murderer. It was a man, a normal dark haired man, fairer skinned than anyone from Seget, but not by so much. He was only a few years younger than Liam and when he looked up he truly had fear in his light brown eyes, human fear, blood streaking his face from his ruined nose. Liam froze. It was human. He’d known it, but to actually see it. To think this man could…

 

“Please, no!” the soldier cried, demasked, and humanised and Liam couldn’t move. Couldn’t lower his sword, staring into the horribly normal eyes.

 

He’d have a mother, and a father. He would have played games when he was younger, with friends and who was –

 

Liam cried out in pain at the sudden violent burning in his shoulder. He looked up, the battle sounds swamping around him again, to see a soldier. Sword in his shoulder and it was running blood and the pain made him garble useless words as he broke into sweat. Soldier, covered head to toe in silver with a bright blue band around the forearm holding the sword that connected them both. It was all he could see in the pain.

The blue banded soldier suddenly kicked him brutally hard in the chest, dislodging him from the man’s chest and propelling him to the ground. The blue banded man held out a hand to help Del’s killer up. Liam fell back to the dirt, stunned and winded, staring up at the sunny blue sky for a moment before he rolled his head to the side, taking in the battle, or what was left of it.

 

The soldiers were pushing his few remaining people further back, and they were doing it easily. He wanted to scream but his voice wouldn’t work. Liam rolled to his belly and tried to stand, to join them, but a heavy steel booted foot pressed between his shoulder blades and pinned him to the ground like a fly in a spider’s web. He struggled but the blood he was losing to the ground was making him weak.

 

The foot stayed there, keeping him down and he closed his eyes as the last man from Seget, the inn keeper, fell, resulting in a high spirit cheer that rolled through the silver demons standing on the battlefield.

 

And that was it. It was done.

Seget had fallen within minutes.

 

Liam’s face was in the dirt but he didn’t care.

 

“Sack it,” the man pinning him down roared, his foot pressing into Liam’s back a little firmer as he leant forward.

 

A flurry of activity followed the order, the soldiers kicking open the door to the inn and disappearing inside, only to slip back out in a procession, their arms filled with kegs and hard breads and cheeses. They stormed through the small town, breaking into the barter stores, stealing anything of use from within, cheering and hooting as they went.

 

Liam watched them with blurry eyes as they ransacked his town, throwing trophies of wine to each other as they walked over the blood strewn dirt. One soldier tore his helmet off and grabbed the bucket in the well, hauling it up and drinking the water from the wood.

 

Liam heard the crackle of fire and couldn’t bear to see what he knew would happen next. He closed his eyes and pressed his face to the ground as the soldiers laughed tiredly and passed torches along. It was what the Union did. They burned the smaller townships to the ground, preferring to build over the ashes, than keep the heart of what they had taken.

 

The soldiers cheered suddenly and Liam closed his eyes even tighter, blood and dirt in his nostrils. His stomach ached from where the blue banded man had kicked him and his shoulder was hot with pain. A few silent tears were all he allowed himself.

 

Armoured feet ran up clanking. “General,” a Union soldier said, “We have finished.”

 

“Survivors?” The man who held him pinned down asked.

 

“A few can be mended, but ain’t in no condition to cause a problem on the way back.”

 

“Well that’s just... great,” the man pinning him down said, amused. “Put them away, don’t take anyone who’s going to cause any noise.”

 

The foot suddenly lifted and Liam rolled over onto his arse, blood sticking his cotton pants to him, preferring to face his death with a level eye. He glared through his emotionless mask up at the blue banded man, the General. The pointed helmet looked down at him impassively. The General suddenly knelt beside him and Liam jerked away in surprise, his shoulder flaring up with bites of pain. The General’s hand grabbed his shoulder firmly, and Liam saw that each of his fingers were covered with plates of tied on steel as well, flecked with blood, looking so much like claws that Liam’s stomach rolled.

 

“It’s clean,” he told Liam in his rough amused Union accent, “it’ll heal.”

 

Liam stared back at him, emotionless apart from a detached anger. He could see a glimpse of the man’s blue eyes through the sight punctures in his helmet. The General held on to his shoulder with a firm hand and Liam jerked himself away from the touch. The General laughed, entertained by him.

 

“Feisty, are we?”

 

“Kill me then,” Liam challenged, hot from the fight, “I’m not afraid of you.”

 

The General’s guise gazed at him. “No, I won’t be killing you,” he said in the same annoyingly amused voice.

 

Liam paused and watched the General make a strange hand gesture, confused for a moment before he was suddenly hauled up, two soldiers gripping him by his upper arms. He yelled, mostly in pain as his wound was stretched, but also in anger, mindlessly kicking out at the General as he was hauled away.

 

He kicked the soldiers as they dragged him, fighting the entire way, not knowing what was happening, refusing to give them an inch. They hauled him out of Seget and he fisted his hands and jabbed them angrily into the men’s steel plated sides.

 

“Awright,” said the soldier on his left, a little exasperated at the constant flurry of kicks and hits, “Just calm down now.”

 

Liam twisted and turned like a snake, slippery in their grasp, actually getting his arm away from one for a moment and trying to run, causing them both to tackle him to the ground in agitation, crushing him under steel.

 

“Now, we told you,” a cruel kick in his belly made him groan out in gurgling pain, “Calm down.”

 

They picked him up and he struggled weakly, feeling like he was going to vomit, his stomach sore. They hauled him over the town bridge and towards a fleet of horses and carriages and carts that had stayed behind the battle. Liam struggled to get away from the men again, howling and cursing and wriggling as they fought to keep him contained. Another soldier came over and picked up his legs, catching a heel on the chin that knocked him backwards onto his arse on the thick grass. Liam tried to shake the hard grips on his arms.

 

More soldiers came over, standing around them to watch the spectacle, laughing a little at the two men that were trying to take him along. Liam managed to throw one to the ground, kicking the other in the stomach, running from them only to be caught again by more laughing soldiers.

 

“Can’t even keep a wounded pig farmer under control ?” One of the soldiers that caught him said, taunting the others. “What kind of Union is this?”

 

“You take him then!” One of the first soldiers yelled, hauling himself up off the ground, and tearing his helmet off in embarrassed anger, “He’s like a fucking spitfire!”

 

The soldier holding his arm, ripped off his own helmet. He was light eyed and sallow, a smirk on thin red lips.

 

“You gotta learn to put them in their place,” he said calmly. He slammed his helmet across Liam’s face, knocking him to the ground in a whirl of stars.

 

A roar of laughter encircled him as his vision split multiplied blurrily. He could smell the smoke of Seget burning as he lay stunned on the ground.

 

“We should just kill him,” another soldier said, taking his helmet off too, revealing sandy coloured curls and freckles over a stub nose, “he’s just gonna cause trouble. I know his type.”

 

“Nah,” the original man called, “General Spike wanted this one.”

 

The group of soldiers all looked at him. “Oh,” said one with a smirk. “He’s not a prisoner. He’s spoils.”

 

“Don’t you think General Spike has earned his pick of the spoils?” a smooth voice at odds with the rest of the rough accents asked.

 

All the men suddenly stood up straighter, turning towards the voice respectfully and lowering their heads. A thin soldier stood there, helmet under his red banded arm, watching the rest with a cool expression.

 

“Yessir Commander.”

 

The red banded commander walked over to him and peered down at his face. Liam met his gaze evenly, not scared of him at all. There was nothing left to be scared of.

 

The man smirked and looked at the other soldiers. “Put him in the cart. Get some cuffs on him too, then at least he’ll stop hitting all of you.”

 

Men grabbed his arms again and Liam started cursing, already trying to pull away as the men forced his wrists together and slapped long steel cuffs around them, both wrists connected with a short fat chain. About six of them lifted him bodily up and carried him as he twisted in their grasps, finally pushing him into a steel meshed cart, already loaded up with people. They slammed the door closed behind him, locking it up and laughing as they walked away. Liam rattled the door obstinately. He could see clouds of thick black smoke clouding the sky and rested limply against the steel skeleton bars as Seget burned.

 

The acrid smell of it burned his nostrils, and the cheers from outside made him limp with failure. He slumped to the floor of the large cart, on his knees, shoulder burning; stomach aching and his heart a pile of dried ash in his chest. It had all gone so fast. He wanted to scream but he didn’t have the energy.

 

A hand on his shoulder made him turn in alarm, ready to fight as he whirled, stopping when he saw the elderly man rear back in fear. The man smiled at him, blinking sadly, his blue-coloured tunic and pants covered in dried blood and dirt.

 

“You put up a good fight son, no one can take that from you,” he croaked as the other members of the cart, men and women equally dirty and morose watched him warily with big dark scared sheep eyes.

 

Liam couldn’t answer, his throat was filled with hard smoke and he turned to watch the remains of Seget billow into the sky. He rested his head against the bars again, unaware of the scared murmuring behind him or the soldiers milling around in front of him. He couldn’t even feel the pain in his shoulder.

 

 

*

 

 

Spike slipped up into the saddle, watching the tiny village of Seget burn. His soldiers ran to and fro, collecting things in a rush, looking for survivors amongst their own men, tending to them as they lay on the battlefield. Spike never understood why the farmers didn’t just accept the rule. It was inevitable; it was what was going to happen. Why would sixty filthy farmers waving pitchforks think they could take on an entire fleet of the Union’s trained armoured soldiers? They knew they were going to get thrashed, they had to know.

 

They were stupid bloody creatures. Stupid as the animals they farmed.

 

Take that dark haired one. He’d taken down a dozen soldiers in the few minutes the battle raged. They could use someone with that kind of talent in the regiment, but no, he had to go on stubbornly defending a lost cause.

Spike snorted.

Pretty though. Too pretty to be on a farm in the middle of a village. Pretty as he’d glared up through his dirt streaked sharp face. They were all the same, though, standing against them with righteous fury one day, but you show the dirty faced boor’s some shiny trinkets or some finely tailored clothes and they were wet thighed and ready for bed. People were greedy, that’s all there was to it.

 

Lieutenant Jec came marching up, a huge bruise on his chin, looking up at Spike on the horse as he stood at attention, looking rather flustered. “Sir, do you really think it’s wise to keep prisoners that … you know will become a problem?”

 

“Jec, I’m a higher rank than you, aren’t I?” Spike sighed, turning his horse, Cab, around with a flick of his wrists.

 

“Yes sir.”

 

“Then shut up and do as I say.”

 

Jec’s lips tightened. “Yes sir.”

 

“Good soldier. Now go on, march away.”

 

Jec nodded jerkily and, indeed, marched away. Spike, with nothing left to do, trotted his horse through the men getting ready to roll and wandered over to the cart full of human takings from the various cities. Once the people had identified themselves as enemies of the Union, the regiments were free to do with them as they wished. The Commander had decided to take the surviving enemies back to Alla City for redistribution around the surrounding towns, for use in farming or as servants to the Union. The other Generals liked to use the carts as sorts of brothels on wheels as they made their way through the country.

Spike made a mental note to take his own spoils out of the cart before any of the other Generals got horny and saw the dark haired stallion he’d managed to protect in the battle.

 

The man in question was sitting on his knees against the bars, his face slack of expression, the fire in his eyes extinguished as he slumped on the bars. He was covered in dirt and blood and his long dark hair was half tied back, half crazily awry. He was staring at nothing.

 

Spike trotted Cab slowly past him, and he didn’t notice, unseeing. Lightly kicking Cab’s haunch he galloped over to the Commander who was sitting on a stool next to his carriage, his light haired head bowed over the map of Unionised towns on his lap.

 

“We moving out?” Spike said, yanking Cab to a stop.

 

The Commander didn’t look up. “Always so impatient, General. I wonder why that is.”

 

“There’s no need to be here. Let’s move on to the next one.”

 

“We’ll move, when I see the time is fit.” He paused in his ministrations and looked up at Spike, “Be patient,” he smiled, “we’ll leave soon. As it is… enjoy the sights and smells of the mountains.”

 

“We’ve been in the mountains for weeks. I want to enjoy the sights of Alla City sometime soon.”

 

“And we will. Just be patient.”

 

Spike tensed his lips and, eyes on the Commander in snarling fake happiness; he galloped off, hoping to find something to interest him, to quench the thick boredom that pressurised his mind. Cab galloped, his hoofs thudding against the grassy ground in a wonderful mind numbing rhythm, it sang, as he headed along the trees that seemed to run around the entire large town. There were animals spreading out across the large number of paddocks and further up the mountainside, horses and sheep and chickens, all wandering around as he rode, pushing Cab faster and faster, the wind whipping past and cooling his hot body underneath his heavy armour, battering his face as he raced it, the swirls of air sliding up into his short hair and making it slip from the wax he’d put in to make it lie flat. He smiled at the jolting speeding feeling and yelled out in pleasure as Cab thundered along the tall forest, his black coat gleaming in the sun. He guided him along the outskirts of the mountain village, coming across a lake at the base of the valley and dismounting. It was silent out here, apart from the sounds of Cab’s heavy horse breathing and the slight swish swish of the water lapping along in the breeze. The smell of smoke was distant here; the wind was blowing from the lake back along the town, sweeping the smoke away from him.

Out into the lake there was an old finger dock made of dark wood. Spike tied Cab to a small errant tree near the water’s edge, leaving him to drink as he wandered around to the dock. He jumped up in a clatter of steel and heard the boards squeak and tremble underneath his weight. He smiled, striding slowly out on top of the water, his footsteps echoing under the wood. There was a small rough seat at the end of the dock, wide enough for two and he rested on it, gazing down into the slowly moving water at his own reflection. He couldn’t make out his features but his white blond shock of hair was vibrant in the mirror image, the white trimmed Union short. He ran his fingers through the errant strands, his hair catching on the plates of the hand armour he still had tied around his palms and fingers.

 

Gazing back at Cab as he sat on the edge of the dock, feeling like he was sitting on nothing but the water itself, he slowly untied his armour, letting it clunk to the weary boards underneath his feet. It was heavy, and he’d sweated against the cloth interior. He slid the chest plate off, groaning loudly as the weight of it finally slid from his body, and leaned back against the hard chair.

 

The water lapped. Spike mused, toying with the blue band of his General’s position wound tightly around his forearm plates with his freed fingers. The trees bordered the lake, the River Manna flowed into the lake and it was peaceful here, in it’s nothingness. It was nowhere and it was tranquil because of it, if you discounted the burning smell.

He grudgingly admitted he didn’t mind it here, out in the sun. He slipped off the metal covered boots and wriggled his bare toes in the crisp air. But he’d get bored. How did villagers put up with the dreary repose every day? There were no flippant stores to look in, only one inn to drown yourself at, no plays to see, no bustling hawking noise to close you in.

 

Spike had grown up in Alla City, a stinking, busy and noisy docking merchant city. The streets were paved and the stores all showed the latest fashions and somebody was trying to sell you something every five paces. Did they even have money up here? Was it a foreign concept to them? Did they understand that the world, the real world, ran on money?

Spike was the son of a sly tailor who’d taught Spike at five years how to pick the pockets of their customers when they took off their jackets for measurements. His father had joined up with the Union Regiment at its first conception when Spike was young, and when Spike had grown to fourteen, he’d urged his son to do the same, to join the ones who had the power. Power and money.

And because of his father’s wise advice he had progressed through the ranks in his years of service, gained status and now had a large enough estate on one of the taken towns outside Alla City, not too far away from the paved heart of it, he had to be near it, it was his lifeblood, but far enough away for the homes not to be cramped together in struggling confinement. One of the outer farming towns they’d taken. He even had horses on his grounds that were bred for Union use, and paid for with good money.

 

He’d been placed on the mountain town campaign along with six other generals’, twenty lieutenants and around two hundred foot soldiers. Not to mention the rest of the keepers and horses, and back up men. They made an impressive entourage. The were taking the border towns now, just little towns on the outskirts of life that had no impression on anything, just taking them so the Union could own it all. There were a few well-equipped coastal towns, across the country from Alla City that still held resistance, but Spike didn’t care, he hadn’t been assigned to them.

 

He stood; gathering up his armours and walking back along the dock boards, letting the steel fall in a mangled heap at Cab’s hoofs. He slipped out of the remains of his armour, and then unbuttoned the thick pants he wore, letting them slip along his thighs and calves and pool to the ground. He stripped, sliding the leather jerkin and shirt off over his head and stretching, free of cumbersome skirmish clothes, reaching his pale arms up to the smoky sky and rolling his back to make his spine pop into place. He sighed, and patted Cab’s snout before running into the freezing lake water, cursing himself blue as the clean crisp water shrunk his balls and turned his teeth to ice in his mouth, laughing and ducking under the frigid water only to emerge in a splash of more colourful curses. It was freezing but he loved it, ducking under again.

 

Couldn’t swim in Alla, all the waterways were grimy and stagnant and filled with rubbish, apart from the main river that emptied to the ocean, but Lord Nest had long been guarding that heavily, keeping it clean for his people. He slid under, feeling the cleanliness of the water as he scrubbed himself, his toes scraping along the gravelly soil base. His nipples were constricted tight and pebbled, almost painfully hardened on his chest and he rubbed them absently as he rolled under the water again, like a sprite, smooth and languid motions. He ducked under the dark water and scrubbed his oily hair, sluicing the dirt and sweat and ash from it. He hadn’t had time for a proper bath for a little while, so he welcomed the respite. He splashed through the water, spooking Cab a little as he drew near, reluctantly tumbling out of the water as the tips of his fingers turned blue. Water sloshed down his body and the wind chilled him cruelly, making him shiver naked on the shores of the little lake, shaking with loss of body heat as he pulled his clothes back on with frozen hands.

 

“Let’s go back, yeah?” he whispered to Cab, stroking a gentle hand down the horse’s wide silky cheek. He piled his armour back on and climbed up on the broad saddled back.

 

They galloped back, Spike’s armour clinking with every dull pound of hoof on ground. His skin was chilled as the wind whipped past him, his face feeling blue with cold, his lips chafed.

 

When he arrived back he saw the men almost finished pacing up. It was getting past noon and they weren’t staying here for the night, obviously. The blaze of the village was hot on his face and cold skin and ash was falling from the sky as he returned. A group of soldiers he trotted past were drunk off the inn’s spoils as they dragged the bodies of the townspeople into the flames. Helped prevent disease, burning them before they could rot. It smelled something hideous though, made Spike’s stomach revolt for days after he’d smelt burning flesh. Sickly rancid smell as the skin of the bubbled and popped, drawing back to leave the flesh underneath to cook in the flames.

 

A young village boy of maybe fifteen years, neck slashed, leather armour too wide for his thin frame, was carried past him in the arms of his soldiers towards the heat of the fire. His head dropped back and flopped like a dead fish, the death wound in his neck gaping open, as his dark eyes were glassy and wide staring ahead. Spike looked away from him, hearing the men grunt as they tossed him into the fire.

 

He eased Cab’s pace up a little and left the town, riding towards his own covered carriage and dropping from Cab’s back onto the grass.

 

A soldier hurried past him, holding a heavy hessian bag of supplies and Spike grabbed his arm, halting him. The nameless soldier looked up at him with wide blue eyes. “Where we off to then?” Spike grunted.

 

“Commander says we’re heading to Vara Town, making camp along the way.”

 

Spike let him go and curled his hand around Cab’s reigns, leading him along. Spike looked disinterestedly around at the action, the packing and yelling, things being thrown to other men as the soldiers obeyed orders. Three armoured men were hitching horses to the prisoner carts, tying each creature to its partner so they’d stay in a tight line. A few of the horses were skittish with the noise; some never got used to it, swishing their manes as they were tied in.

 

Cab snorted impatiently, bored with the sounds, wanting to move. Spike absently stroked his neck, “I hear you,” he murmured.

 

The prisoner carts rolled out and the sudden rush of people mounting horses followed. Spike stayed still for a moment, eyes half seeing the steel carts roll out in front, slowly, as mounted soldiers cantered past them. Spike’s eyes honed in on the dark haired townsman, his feisty one, sitting slumped against the front of the cart, strong broad face closed off and without light, his cuffed hand wound loosely around one of the steel struts. His wide shoulder was red with blood and his fallen gaze didn’t move from the floor as the cart trundled past, hauled by neighing horses.

 

“General,” one of the Lieutenants called to him.

 

Spike jerked his gaze away from the man suddenly, brows drawing together in a frown as his hand tightened on Cab’s reigns. “What?” he snapped at the sandy haired man.

 

“We’re on the move.”

 

Spike stared at him and then obviously around at the regiment moving it’s noisy mass around him. “Thank you,” he said with wide-eyed sarcasm, sneering as he set one foot in a stirrup and swung his leg over Cab’s back.

 

He slapped Cab’s black haunch and galloped through the marching men and supplies carriages, turning his head only as he passed the prisoner carts. The dark haired man looked up as he raced past and Spike caught a glimpse of his dark burning eyes before he turned back, resting his cheek against the steel side on his enclosure looking limp again. Spike could sense the fire burning inside him.

 

Spike shook his head, and galloped past, to the front of the lines, as the Union moved away from the decimated village of Seget.

 

---

 

Chapter Two - Prize

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

 

Chatter buzzed around, filling the air like a swarm of flies on a rotting animal carcass. The words and language faded into a vibration of noise, in Liam’s eardrums, whirring in his nasal passages with the hum of it. The steel ribcaged cart he was in swayed slowly from side to side as it rolled behind the chain of tightly harnessed horses. Liam watched limply as they moved across the ground, tracing the steps he’d stepped so many times, when he’d had to get more back up feed for his sheep from Vara Town when Seget’s barter shops were out. It took about a little over a day for Liam to get there, but the pace the clanking mass travelled at seemed to be slower.

 

His cheek was starting to hurt from resting it against the jolting steel so he turned, facing the other sitting men and women in the cart behind him. He rested his spine against the steel, feeling it dig into the soft flesh beside his bones and not really caring. He cast flittering glances at the other fifteen or so inhabitants of the cattle cart. They all mimicked his pose, resting against the steel, forcing it to hold them up, the energy evaporated from their limpet bones. They wore thick rings of steel around each of their necks, a band that rested around their throats and brushed their collarbones, the diameter not big enough to get around their heads and the steel not thin enough to break or snap.

A fluffy haired girl sat with her thin freckled face on her scrunched up knees; a man’s scratched up arm around her shoulders. The elderly man who had talked to him tapped his bony fingers against the creaking floorboards, eyes staring sightlessly out of the steel bones. Another woman with long straight dark hair gave Liam’ mind flickers of Miko when his eyes blurred, startling him every time into focus and resignation when her features became a stranger’s face.

 

Liam closed his eyes. His mind felt swamped. He couldn’t accept what had happened.

 

They’d been travelling for hours, so long that the sun was setting, oblivious to the years that had passed in one simple day. So much had happened, Liam’s whole life had changed, yet the sun set as normal, and would rise again in the next day’s morning. Everything was different now, Miko and Del and the rest of the villagers were dead. His last shred of family was gone. Seget had been burned and left as ash, his tiny heart-filled town was gone. Like when the first leaves turn brown from cold and drop to the ground and you knew that the cold seasons are coming, unstoppable, all you could do was gather wood for the stoves and wrap yourself in furs and wait.

The smell of smoke and the rough foul stink of burning flesh had long since faded and Liam’s heart felt unbearably wet and heavy in his chest. He’d removed his leather armours; they lay beside his knees discarded. Tense worry filled his lungs and made them hot stones in his chest next to his sodden heart. He didn’t know what was going to happen to him. Everything wasn’t how it was supposed to be. And Kat. Kat. Where was she? Was she alright? Was Cordy alright? Did the Union find them? Would they make it?

 

He stared at the cart inhabitants blankly. He had no way of knowing. He’d never know. He’d thought he would die, and now he wasn’t dead. And his shoulders were heavy with everything he was carrying in his mind. What would happen? Why had they kept him? It set his bones grinding against each other painfully; he was filled with apprehension. He’d heard the stories of what the Union did to people. But even though his worry was pumping instead of blood in his veins, everything seemed half-real. Like it couldn’t be real. Like he was dreaming, maybe, or maybe he was dead. Real or not he felt fairly dead anyhow.

 

They trundled on. Soldiers wandered past them, peering at them like they were displays at a fair. A few of the silver men slammed their shields or swords against the bars as they walked past, to shock them with the loud screech of metal on metal, never letting them drift away from themselves for too long. And the soldiers would laugh with each other as the prisoners jerked and looked up with wary wide eyes, before wandering on, losing interest in the little cruelty.

 

No one in the cart tried to talk. There were soft murmurs every now and then, but even they were soon silenced. Just quick little spatters of whisper. Every person had a look of quiet fearful anxiety plastered across their features. Eyes were shiny in the dimness. The woman with the man’s wounded arm protectively around her shoulders was the only one that let tears come, she cried a few times during the journey. Gentle heartbreaking trickles of tears that spilled down her freckled cheeks as she tried to stifle the noise of sobs that crackled in her chest. The man who held onto her shoulders clutched her closely until she stopped and settled and stared blankly again.

Liam wondered what they were to each other. A couple? Maybe friends… maybe even related. Cousins or siblings even. She looked quite young. Maybe around sixteen or seventeen. Old as Kat. He looked a little older. Still young though, pink lips and rounded child cheeks.

 

The coach rocked over a particularly large bump, knocking the contents about, and her big dark eyes flicked up, catching Liam staring at her. He averted his gaze like he’d been burnt, and felt awkward as she pressed further into her companion’s grasp.

With a start he realised the elderly man had moved next to him. He hadn’t noticed until the man’s voice spoke quietly in his ear, and he wondered how he could have missed it.

 

“What’s your name, son?”

 

The man’s skin was blue in the evening light, his eyes black in the dim. His hair was a white canvas for the coloured light and he had a soft grandfatherly look about him. His frail body shivered a little after the question. It was starting to cool, and Liam’s arms prickled in sympathy.

 

“Liam,” he answered in a whisper, uncertainly, like he wasn’t sure.

 

“Liam. My name’s Sid,” he said, the collar of metal resting against the top of his blue coloured tunic.

 

Liam nodded.

 

Sid smiled. “Seget’s lovely,” he continued, “My wife’s family came from there, back when I was younger. It’s a good town.”

 

“It was,” Liam whispered bitterly, hot tears suddenly rising in his throat.

 

“I come from Rollet.”

 

Liam nodded, forcing the emotion down, edging himself back into half real territory. He knew of Rollet. “Just below Palso City,” he said croakily.

 

“Uh huh. In the mountains there,” Sid smiled almost cheerily. “Lovely place that. Originally came from Palso City actually, but my family moved for the work.”

 

Liam gazed at him, mouth stuck shut.

 

“I’m a tailor,” Sid persisted. “Same as my father and my aunt. What about you?”

 

Liam looked down at the discarded armour on the floor of the prisoner cart. He almost didn’t answer, but after a long moment his voice unstuck and whispered through his lips. “I raised sheep.”

 

“Ah, a herder were you?”

 

Liam nodded, his throat tight.

 

“My uncle was Rollet’s wiseman,” Sid said, using the old term for a holy man, “herder’s just agreed with him. Said they were good people. Had to be, otherwise the animals would run, or starve themselves or just plain die early and taste bad.”

 

Liam watched the old man’s contemplative face. A small smile curved his wizened lips. “Your father a herder?”

 

Liam nodded. “I took over his lands when he went down to Palso City.”

 

Sid understood the meaning behind that comment, knew that his father had been one of the first to fight. He nodded again and breathed out heavily through his nose.

 

The cart suddenly halted, rolling Liam into Sid’s shoulder as his body carried the momentum. He made sure he hadn’t hurt the man before looking about warily. “We stopped.”

 

“Camping for the night,” Sid supplied.

 

The soldiers armour gleamed brightly in the birth of the evening as they started hurrying about and dismounting. Liam’s fellow prisoners watched with absent interest, obviously having seen al this before. Their unmoved expressions calmed him a little, even though the young woman buried her face in her companion’s chest.

 

“Is everyone from Rollet?” Liam asked Sid after a moment of watching the soldiers unpacking long tents.

 

Sid snorted. “Naw, not everyone. Quite a few are from the Grey Mountains, the towns up there. From what I can figure, the Union came up through the Grey Mountains and sacked the towns along the ranges, coming up near the Palso Mountains to take our villages.” He sighed. “We’re headed to Vara Town next, I heard some of those motherless son’s talking about it. I wish we could tell them.”

 

“They know,” Liam said quietly. “We knew.”

 

Sid didn’t comment on that.

 

Liam watched the soldiers setting up the beige hessian tents. He could see a large fire being fed in the middle of the clearing they were stopped in, metal clad men standing around, hauling meat joints out of bags, joking and laughing with each other. The sight of the food made his stomach roil violently. Sid took his expression the wrong way.

 

“Don’t worry son, we get fed. Not a lot, but enough.”

 

Liam slammed his eyes shut. He sook his head a little, feeling like he was going to vomit up the thin substance of his stomach. He never wanted to eat again.

He sat in silence as the shiny beasts ate; almost thankful Sid sat next to him silently, feeling a thin thread of control he was sure was linked to the calm old man who breathed heavily beside him. Sid was accepting the change like a leaf accepting the whirling breeze; not minding as it was battered in updrafts. How could he talk so easily? How could… Liam’s mind was dead. But he liked Sid there. He wondered sadly how the battle in Rollet had gone.

 

The soldiers ate noisily, sprawling around the grass and flames like fat shiny spiders as they toasted their beer and milled wine and heartily devoured their food. Liam’s insides broiled with anger as he watched the many men eat breads and cheeses and wondered if that food had been stolen from Seget. Some of it must. How could they?

 

The soldiers finished quickly and some set about unrolling bedrolls next to the large fire, undoing their armours before sliding into the blankets. Others wandered in milling packs, talking to more, walking past the caged prisoners without batting an eye, savages in human skins.

Liam looked around the cart and realised with some confusion that the people had now edged off the sides and had all crowded around the centre, resting languidly against each others shoulders in a frayed circle, others lying in the centre.

 

“Come on Liam,” Sid whispered, jerking his head as he stood up, stretched and popped for a moment before settling back down in the circle, on the outside.

 

Liam followed, confused, and sat down next to Sid and some other dark haired man who looked at him with empty eyes.

 

“What are we doing?” Liam asked in a hushed voice.

 

Sid wrinkled his nose. “The Union like to use the carts as amusement for the nights,” he whispered. “Some of the soldiers wander past and take their pickings. We found if we sort of… shelter the ladies from their sight, they can’t find something they like here. As often, at least.”

 

Sid suddenly narrowed his eyes at Liam, his gaze sliding up his face. “Actually, maybe it’s best you sit back a touch, let my old face be the one they see.” He smiled a little, trying to ease him. “Been a long time since anyone’s picked me out of a crowd.”

 

Liam’s brows drew together in confusion and he shook his head slightly. “What do you mean?”

 

Sid’s lips twisted with an emotion Liam couldn’t read and the man stood up, making Liam shift back from the bars that faced the bulk of the soldiers so Sid’s skinny backside could sit back down. “Keep your head down,” Sid smiled. “Go to sleep.”

 

Sleep? How could he sleep? He looked at Sid like he was touched in the head.

 

Sid’s smile grew, softer and gentler. “Tomorrow will come. Days will come, and that’s what it amounts to. Just days and living. Have to look at it that way or you won’t keep your mind.”

 

The entire cage suddenly hushed as three steel plated men wandered over, helmets off their light coloured haired heads, bright small eyes peering through the bars. Liam noted the yellow bands on their forearms as they searched the place with their raking gaze. They were pale, like their skins weren’t used to the sun, they looked sickly.

 

They talked about something in their rough accents before one wandered away, walking off to the other carts that sat around clearing. The two remaining, a tall one with round puffy features and one who was thin looking headed to the door of the cart. Sid tensed beside him.

 

Liam started suddenly as he heard a woman yelp in fear, her voice coming from the belly of one of the other cages. Liam moved to get up instinctually, to see if he could help, but Sid grabbed his knee in bony fingers and pulled him back down, affecting a sleepy pose and leaning back against the girls who were curled on the floor behind them.

 

The two men entered the metal-ribbed gut of the carrier and looked around. The taller ones gaze rested on Liam like a rag on a hook and didn’t look away, his green eyed gaze on his face while the shorter one swept into the carriage like a shadow, coming closer to the huddle of humans in the middle of it.

 

The tall one wandered closer and toed Liam’s leg roughly. “You’re new.”

 

Liam glared up at him. The man’s thick lips twisted and he didn’t take his strangely predatory gaze off Liam. He looked like the wolves that sometimes prowled around his sheep, hungrily watching for a stray.

The other soldier grabbed one of the prisoner’s shirts and hauled him away from the group. Sid sagged beside him but stayed silent. Liam looked behind him to see what was happening.

 

“I knew you were here,” the shorter man said gleefully, and his hand snapped out, grabbing the young freckled girl’s fluffy brown hair in his fist and hauling her up with a high pig pitched squeal. She grabbed at his large hand, her feet pedalling along the floor, her young face squinched up in pain.

 

Liam’s mouth fell open in fury and he stood at the same time as the girl’s companion, and rushed the soldier, pushing him with his cuffed hands against the bars, making him lose his grip on the girl’s hair as he slammed against the steel. She fell in a heap, her simple long tunic flipping high on her thighs as her bones cluttered against the hard floor. The girl’s companion shouted a string of curses at the outraged soldier and fell to his knees beside the young girl, hauling her into his arms.

 

Liam’s hair was suddenly grabbed in a handful and jerked, making his neck whip painfully backwards. He fell to his arse on the floor, the air huffing out of his lungs, his shoulder burning with pain again. A kick in his side winded him.

The other soldier hauled himself from the bars; his face red and embarrassed and he slammed a flurry of kicks into Liam’s vulnerable belly, making him grunt out in raspy pain. The taller one suddenly yanked him standing by his hair, and hauled him, hunched over and aching, to the door.

 

The flurry of activity stopped and Liam peered up, chest heaving with panting. Two more soldiers stood in front of him. “Oi,” one said, gesturing at Liam, “Where you taking that one?”

 

The man’s hold tightened in his hair, plucking a few too taunt strands from his skull painfully. “I thought I’d enjoy the spoils,” the man said, trying for calm.

 

“Thought wrong,” the soldier in front of them said, smirking at the one holding his hair tightly in his fist and refusing to let go, “that one’s been earmarked by General Spike.”

 

Liam’s mind raced as his chest heaved in and out of his lungs, past the swollen ache in his stomach. The name sounded familiar.

 

“Hand him over,” the other man blocking the way said, “We gotta wash him.”

 

The hand held tight in his hair, making Liam wince, twitches of pain running through his fingers. It let go. “Here,” the tall soldier said airily.

 

His arms were suddenly taken by the two other men and he was dragged out into the clearing, yelling out in sharp pain as they pulled at his cuffed arms, stretching his wound.

 

“Hey!” he heard Sid call from behind him; “he’s hurt! Show some respect!”

 

They dragged him through the camp and towards a strip of the River Manna, just out of the large clearing the Union was set up in. Soldiers were already washing themselves in and beside the freezing river, and they watched him with curious eyes as he was dragged bodily to the water, stripped of his grimy clothes, and pushed under with four hands. He yelped at the icy rush, feeling it slide up and sting his unprepared sinuses, floundering against the hands as he wiggled like a caught fish, his hands tied together making him feel like he couldn’t right himself ever again, scared under the black water, feeling with certainty that he was going to drown. They pulled him up and he gasped, his shoulder burning as the water rushed the wound. A wet rag was scrubbed across his face, his lips, burningly hard. The washer scrubbed his shoulders, and his lungs were weak with relief when they didn’t scrape the washer along his open wound, then the rough cleaning reddened his belly. He was pushed under again and one grabbed his ankle as he thrashed about, feeling like he couldn’t breath, his forehead down against the rocky riverbed for a moment before being hauled up. The washer slid between his thighs and he yelled out indignantly as it washed roughly across his balls and arse, and he reacted by furiously flailing and crazily slamming the top of his foot into someone’s neck.

 

He was hauled out of the water and slapped viciously, across his scrunched up wet face.

 

“Fucking animal,” the soldier muttered.

 

Liam felt tears sting threateningly at his eyes again, his thin wall between sanity and derangement almost completely torn. He stood naked on the banks of the river and shivered, shocked silent and glaring at everyone with wet eyes. A thin dry rag was shoved into his hands and he quickly tied it around himself, covering his modesty from hip to knee.

 

He was led, shuddering and wet and half-naked back through the swarm of soldiers and pushed into a wooden travelling carriage. His hair was cold, hanging in limp wet waves down to his shoulders and dripping icy river water on his chest and back. The soldiers who’d washed him quickly forced him down on his knees in the corner of the lit room and linked his wrist cuffs to a connection in the steel frame of the carriage.

 

“Have a good night,” one of the soldiers purred, his eyes narrowed into slits of cold flint, before slipping out and closing the door behind him and his friend.

 

Liam tugged furiously on the chains and when they didn’t budge let out a furious strangled roar that ripped his vocal cords and vibrated his chest. It felt good, a hoarse growl of hate in this hateful place but when it was gone it had sapped him of all the indignant fury that had been bubbling inside, leaving him limp and useless, chained on his knees in the corner of a carriage.

He tugged again, heart sinking when nothing happened. He tugged again and again, his lips quivering when his brain figured out he was stuck long before his heart did. He crouched awkwardly and kicked the wall, wanting to break it, wanting to lash out with all the fury and pain inside and just break something, anything, a wall, those soldier’s faces, wanted to light to whole thing on fire. And the fact that he couldn’t, that his useless body was chained to a wall, made his brain bubble in impotence. The world was upside down.

 

A burning tear slid down his cheek and he cried out angrily, scrubbing his hot face against his bicep to rid himself of the traitor.

 

He sat down and closed his eyes. He counted, gathering himself, making his racing heart slow down, making his lungs breathe normally as he quivered with chained power. He was too angry. He had to calm down. His skin was twitching and his eyes were trying to wet. He forced it back, the emotion, the fearful ripping emotion, feeling the tears he refused to cry swell up in his head and behind his eyes, making him bloated and puffy, a sharp headache thudding in his brain. He sniffled like a scolded child and the energy left him, leaving him an empty aching shell that lay limply against the wall, hand held awkwardly up by the cuffs around them.

The feeling of half real swept back, he almost felt asleep, when he realised he was truly a prisoner here.

 

He rested his head against the carriage and finally looked around exhausted, taking in his surroundings with weary eyes now that he wasn’t acting in a black rage.

 

Liam blinked.

 

He was chained in the corner next to a bed. A huge bed, not a thin solid bed like Liam was used to but a thick thing, feather filled, dipped a little in the middle, with thick furry blood red blankets pulled neatly over it and five pillows at the head of it. It was a Lord’s bed, that luxurious thing, the size of three of Liam’s bed across. Liam peered over the breadth of it to see a freestanding cupboard, and an oil lamp hung from the roof, burning sweetly and lighting up the cart. In the far corner near the door sat an open lacquered trunk with a pile of books inside it. Books.

 

He tried to stand up to look at them but the chain pulled taut halfway, so he could only manage to rise to a crouch.

 

He hadn’t seen that many books since he’d learned to read at Gee’s cottage, a wealthy woman who’d left work in Palso City to live out the rest of her days in Seget’s peace. She had books in her living room, storybooks, and she took it upon herself to teach the children to read. Books weren’t sold in Seget, or Vara Town. There used to be a small bookseller in Palso City, before the Union takeover at least, and his parents had bought back a new book each time they went there, but even then, Liam only had eleven all up.

 

He heard creaking footsteps climbing the steps to the door and slammed himself down on the floor, realising his skin was cold with damp and that the thin rough rag was sticking to him as it sucked the moisture from his hips and thighs. He felt bare and exposed, vulnerable with his wrists lashed to the wall, and he found himself hunching over, shoulders curling forward as the door opened like a scared dog.

 

He looked back over his shoulder warily as the man came through. It was a soldier, and he was young looking, but his short hair was almost white and it was slicked back against his scalp. Bright blue eyes under dark brows and his skin was practically as light as his hair, apart from his pink lips. His cheeks were hollows under his high cheekbones and the tip of his nose was slightly rounded, not sharp like Liam was used to, like his own, like the higher village people who were sharp all over and had thinner lips. He was softer and lighter, and his lips were fuller. Liam knew he wasn’t just taken from one of the villages, he was from Alla City. He didn’t look like a herder, didn’t look like he lived in a cottage. His pale skin reminded Liam of Bem’s spirit paintings on the walls of the temple, gentler looking with sharp vicious power coiling beneath ready to smite and create trouble. His pale skin didn’t look sickly like the other soldiers had, his skin seemed to breathe power, it fairly glowed with it.

 

Liam was instantly curling around himself more, frowning. His breath was heavy with worry.

 

The man closed the door behind himself, cocking his head and smiling a smirk at Liam. “Hello,” he said, and his voice was the blue banded soldier’s voice, the rough amused flowing sounding voice of the General who’d kicked him and held him down as Seget was defeated.

 

Fear forgotten for the moment at the sound of the voice, Liam shivered with anger, his body twisting with it as he glared at the General’s vivid blue eyes. The General moved closer, sitting easily on the end of the bed, a slight undercurrent of smart caution in his movements. He started to untie the steel armours from his body, letting them clunk to the floor in a metal clatter, his eyes fastened tight to Liam’s eyes the entire time. Strange energy fizzled between them and there was something darkened in the General’s blue gaze. Like fire, inside. Something concentrated and fierce.

 

“Are you hungry?” The Union man asked, his gaze slipping along Liam’s bare back. He slipped the leather under armour off, and Liam saw he wore a long sleeved black shirt underneath, but it was cut close to his body, made for his build. He had rough black pants on underneath that buttoned closed and held snug to his thighs.

 

Liam glared sullenly at the General, hating him with his entire being. The General’s dark eyebrow raised, and Liam could see a thin scar through it. He still looked amused, by Liam, like he was enjoying his glare.

 

“Do you understand me?” he smiled.

 

Liam’s eyes narrowed. He nodded his head jerkily.

 

“Then answer me. Are you hungry?”

 

“No,” Liam snarled through his teeth.

 

The General smiled sweetly. “What’s your name?”

 

Liam turned away and stared resolutely at the wall, baring his back to the General, which unnerved him, but disrespecting him was more important. A sharp steel-toed boot kick to his backside made him yelp and look around wild-eyed.

 

The General stood impassively behind him. “Answer me. Always answer me. Now, do you want me to kick you again or are you going to give me your name?”

 

Liam’s lips tightened as he furiously contemplated. “Liam,” he finally spat out.

 

“Liam? Well Liam, you’ll call me Spike. Don’t really bother with the General noise when I’m not doing General business.”

 

Spike.

 

Liam continued to glare unflinchingly at him over his shoulder. “Why am I here?” he asked.

 

Spike blinked his bright blue eyes for a second before sitting back down on the bed. “How’s your shoulder?”

 

Liam spared at glance at the wound. It was a thin clean gash in his shoulder, trying to knit itself closed, but still sticky with fresh blood. It stung like there was a huge irritating thorn in his flesh. “It’s fine,” he said shortly.

 

Spike sighed. “Lemme have a look.”

 

“I’m fine,” Liam reiterated, teeth clenched.

 

Spike stood and crossed the room, grabbing a small flat box from the floor beside the chest of books. He carried it over to the bed and tossed it down, flicking it open. Liam watched cagily, sparing a glance at the finely lacquered dark wood, laced with weaving curling cut patterns that showed the heart of the timber under the stain. He hadn’t seen something like that, nothing with that much work in it. It distracted him for a moment, and he wondered what was in it.

 

He was surprised when Spike pulled out simple cloth bandages and some healing supplies. He kept his curative stuffs in a box like that? Spike saw him looking.

 

“Have a friend in Alla City who makes them. Nice?”

 

The mention of Alla City made Liam turn his head away. He heard Spike moving behind him and tensed up, casting a cautious side eyed look at the man.

 

“S’alright. Just turn,” Spike said gently, bandages and a small bottle of some fierce smelling oil in his hands. His cool fingertips swept Liam’s wet hair back over his shoulder, his fingers brushing against the nape of Liam’s neck intimately.

 

Liam jerked away from his touch, huddling into the corner standoffishly, seething angry glares back at him.

 

“Come on, it’ll only hurt a little.”

 

“I don’t want anything from you,” Liam said calmly, levelling Spike’s amused glare, “You’re the one who wounded me.”

 

Spike laughed in his throat. He crouched down beside Liam’s body, still amused. “If that gets infected, your arm will have to be taken off,” Liam’s eyes flared a little at that, and he could smell Spike, smell his skin fresh and scented with sweet wood charcoal, “Now I respect you’re a man that likes his integrity, and that you think I’m your enemy… but is that worth losing your arm over?”

 

Liam knew nothing of sword wounds.

 

Spike’s voice was soft and luring as it continued. “I’ll just patch it up so nothing gets inside. It’s not that bad.”

 

Liam snorted derisively at his words, untrusting, “How do you know?”

 

“’Cause I didn’t want to hurt you too much,” he grabbed Liam’s thighs and pulled him away from the wall. Liam was about to spit out something about the indecent treatment, but the hands were already gone from his legs by the time he parted his lips to speak.

 

Liam’s hands were still chained together so Spike worked around them, cleaning the wound and lacing it with the strong oil, and then quickly darning the skin with a needle and thick black thread, crossing his skin in two short stinging lines. He was close, his pale head bent in front of Liam’s gaze, intense eyes on his work. He was quiet as he snipped the thread and tied it off, his eyes narrowed in concentration, face bowed, consumed by his work. His breath puffed out against Liam’s cool bare chest in hot exhales. The scent of the sweet charcoal scent Spike wore was stronger, tickling up Liam’s nose as sure fingertips pressed lightly against his skin, dancing around to hold the wound still and firm as he cleaned it with the efficiency and skill of a medic. He set bandages over it, smoothing his hand down Liam’s chest to make it lay flat, his palm brushing Liam’s nipple a few times as he did. Liam fidgeted at the touch and Spike smiled.

 

“There,” he said, making sure the bandage was taut with lingering fingers, “feel better?”

 

With dismay, Liam realised it did feel better, so he didn’t answer, staring at his chained hands instead. He felt Spike’s gaze on his face like a warm blanket. Pale fingers rose and reached out to his lips and Liam jerked back so fast the back of his head slammed against the wall with a heavy thunk.

 

Spike snorted. “You’ve got cuts on your face,” he sneered, grabbing a cloth and stroking along his chin, making Liam hiss as the cleansing oil cut a fiery line up past his mouth. He didn’t realise he’d been cut there. Spike’s cupped palm held his jaw in place, barely, Liam tensed with the position, wanting to be anywhere but inches away from this man that had burnt his home and acted like he was doing Liam favours.

 

The same intense concentrating look smothered his face as Spike was all-surrounded by his meditations. He rose up on his knees and cleansed another lightly stinging line above Liam’s eyebrow, near the hairline, a tiny thing that didn’t really need to be tended at all, his darkly lashed eyes unwavering as he breathed against Liam’s lips. Liam froze under the movement, not wanting to touch him, sliding out of his head for a moment and just concentrating on the fact all the dirty feeling pain was starting to slide away.

 

“Done,” Spike said after too long a while, pulling away from Liam, looking pleased, his face flushed lightly.

 

Liam sat smelling the cleansing oil on his face, watching Spike’s booted feet as he stood and closed up the fine medical case, setting it down on the floor. He peered at Liam speculatively.

 

“Bandage isn’t too tight?”

 

Liam frowned down at the floor in his coarse pile of limbs and shook his head, some wet locks of hair sliding in front of his shoulders again, tickling his dried skin with their coolness. The chains tying his hands to the wall clattered a little as he shifted himself, trying not to jostle his wound or the thin rag he had dashed across his hips.

 

Spike sat down on the bed again, this time toeing his heavy boots off and kicking them into the corner. He watched Liam watch the ground for a moment before rolling over the bed and grabbing something from underneath it. Liam refused to look up, already ashamed that he’d let this Spike, a Union General, make him feel better. He should have refused.

 

He heard Spike stand up on the bed, hearing the covers swish and condense as he walked and couldn’t help looking up, confused by what he was doing.

With one pale hand splayed across the wooden roof, he was sticking a tiny white paper roll into the oil lamp, setting it alight. He thumped back down onto his arse on the feather mattress and blew the tiny flame out so the stick smouldered red at the end. He stuck the unlit end between his lips and breathed the smoke in, making the tip glow.

 

Liam’s face twisted in confusion. “What are you doing?” he blurted.

 

Spike’s eyes slid to his. A dark eyebrow lifted sardonically. “Smoking.”

 

Liam blinked. “Smoking what?”

 

“Tobacco.”

 

Liam was even more confused. Tobacco water was used to keep insects off crops. “Why are you smoking tobacco?”

 

“Because I like it,” he said, running a palm over his chest like he was rubbing the smoke within, a strange happy smile on his face, “It’s mixed, makes me feel all peachy.”

 

Not for the first time, Liam wondered if the Union was made up of crazy men. He watched Spike warily. His fingers clamped around the stick of tobacco as it burnt and he bought it to his mouth, pinching it between his lips to inhale and then drawing the stick away to exhale a cloud of smoke in a long stream. Liam watched the strange performance, grossly curious.

 

“You do live the simplistic life,” Spike said, amused again for some reason, his voice almost edging into the tone which someone would use to talk to an animal, “don’t you?”

 

It was almost like he was poking him for amusement. Liam frowned and turned his back, wriggling closer to the wall. His chest and legs were starting to get tough with the remaining cold damp from the river. The hard wood floor and walls offered no warmth and his skin rose into hard little bumps. He could hear Spike breathing in his strange stick of tobacco behind him, but he wasn’t wary, not right now. He assumed if Spike was going to hurt him, he wouldn’t have bothered patching him up first. He wouldn’t have taken off all his armour… no, hurting Liam right now wasn’t part of his immediate plan. Although, the man was a soldier in the Union and he smoked something that even insects shied away from, he obviously wasn’t completely alright in the head.

Liam didn’t know why he was sitting in the carriage. Spike’s carriage, he assumed. It made his lungs tight, not being sure of what was next, being surrounded by these… swarming shiny locust-people that had desiccated his town.

Anger flared hotly in his chest and he tugged at the chains, grim determination setting his lips thin. He should never have talked to this one, this General. He yanked again.

 

“Oi,” Spike…The General, said grumpily, “don’t.”

 

Liam ignored him, tugging again, roughly, setting his feet against the wall, hauling himself off the ground and using his entire weight.

 

“Bloody hell,” the soldier sighed. “Don’t, you’ll hurt yourself. The entire frame of the coach is steel, and you’re strong, but you’re not that strong.”

 

Liam’s lips became white lines as he pressed them together in stubborn defiance, yanking and tugging at the chains, feeling his wrists slice against the unyielding cuff, ignoring the deterrence and presence of the sleek headed creature behind.

 

Another sigh and suddenly a thin wiry strong arm wrapped around his vulnerable chest, firmly pressing a strong smelling cloth over his mouth and nose. Liam yelled out in shock, breathing the fumes and instantly feeling light headed and weak. His struggling stopped and he fell limp, his back falling against Spike’s warm chest no matter how hard he tried to stay upright, furiously scared. His hand tried to pull Spike’s away, but the muscles wouldn’t work in his fingers, just resting numbly on Spike’s ridged knuckles for a second before falling uselessly away.

Spike’s arms curled around him smoothly, tightly, hand still pressing the cloth over his mouth as he feebly thrashed against the closeness. His head fell back on Spike’s shoulder. He looked up with blurry eyes to see Spike’s pale cruelly fine face gazing down at him with an unreadable expression.

A thin smirk curled his lips and Liam’s eyes fluttered closed as the irrepressible darkness swamped him.

 

 

*

 

 

Spike coiled himself around Liam’s cool fleshed body as he slipped under, his cock hard against the small of the herder’s broad back. He’d been swollen since he’d tended to the wounds on his chest and pretty face, seeing the look of barely constrained fear and fury that stayed in Liam’s eyes. Seeing the flare of nostrils as his hand had accidentally touched and palmed his taut dark nipples. Smelling him subtly as he’d leaned close to his face to clean the slight cuts, wanting to press a kiss to his mouth and fuck his tongue inside and only barely keeping his base urges constrained.

 

His body was flushed, and the ciggie hadn’t calmed him any. He was boiling inside and his skin felt hot against Liam’s bare coolness.

 

Spike drew the soaked rag away, the sleeping anointment greasy on his fingers. Feeling a bit lightheaded from the weakened fumes, he dropped it back into the small compartment in the medical supplies box. He shut it up cleanly and pushed it to the side, returning to his fallen herder where he rested, arms ungracefully tethered to the wall keeping him upright, dark head back at an uncomfortable angle and thighs yielding sweetly open. Spike’s mouth bled saliva.

 

He unfastened the strangely elegant wrists from the cuffs and his body collapsed to the floor, replete in his maleness, looking very attractive with his face lax and sleepy, eyes shut, lashes resting on the soft skin beneath.

Spike swept the drips of blood away from his wrists where the stubborn creature had cut his skin on the cuffs.

His skin was honeyed in the oil lamplight, and Spike could feel his belly tightening, innate responses firing his heart up, making his mouth wet as his cock made a tent from the heavy material of his pants.

 

He knelt down next to the sleeping idol and pressed his fingertips against the cool firmness of his belly, trailing them down past the thin rag he had tied around his slim hips, biting his lip in a wicked grin as he ran his petting along the inside of his thighs.

He stood.

Enough for now. Spike breathed heavily. It all smelled so sweet in here, heady, like a hot opium den and it was making his balls tight. But there was no sport in taking someone unconscious. Liam slept on, unaware of how fine he looked, or how generous his position, taunting Spike with his welcoming spread thighs, like his unprotected body wanted Spike to crawl between them.

 

Spike grinned; remembering the hateful glares Liam’s dark animal eyes had been burning. Spike wanted this fiery spitting creature all to his own, and needy, to lose all the heated uncouth stubbornness in the sensuous lines of his face. Spike wanted Liam to come to him. To need him. Wanted him to cry with desire when he wasn’t there.

Seeing Liam coiled with power and righteous anger made Spike want to harness the strength, like seeing a beautiful wild horse and wanting to ride it, to own the force. To bend it to his will.

He pushed Liam’s herder-long wet hair back from the sharp bones of his cheeks and jaw and ran his thumb along his dry lips. To have. To own it. He smiled widely. What a wonderful prize.

 

---

 

Chapter Three – Enslaved.

 

 

 

Spike awoke, his eyes opening slowly, and stared up at the wooden roof, the iron oil lap swaying a little from the centre of it. The realisation that he hadn’t had a good sleep immediately started wearing him down, a tired cliff face worn down by super hard fast waters. He hated not getting good sleep. It put him off for the remainder of the day, making the hours drudging and difficult until he fell into bed again. Spike was a creature that thrived on good rest.

 

He sat up grumpily and scrubbed at his whiskery face with his knuckles, yawning feebly. He turned his head, casting a fatigued glance at his captive sharing the bed, seeing he was still how Spike had tied him last night. Liam lay on his belly, long arms stretched over his head in the in the morning light slipping through the slitted high windows, his cuffed wrists tightly chained to the wall. His long fingers were curled gently around the chains in his repose, his dark head turned away from Spike, cheek on his bicep, looking uncomfortable. His body had subconsciously kicked the blankets down to his feet during the night and only a thin cotton sheet remained, draping across most of his back. He probably wasn’t used to so many blankets in the warm months, Spike thought belatedly, living up in the mountains as he did.

Wet black hair had dried into a somewhat messy mane, the ends of the locks curling sightly against his wide smooth shoulders. Spike reached out in his sleepiness and curled one dark lock around his index finger; his hair was nice, smooth and thick. He finger combed it, petting it out of its thrashed mess, trying to make it lie elegantly flat. It didn’t, ignoring Spike’s untangling, catching on other strands and trying to knot. Spike abandoned his attempts when he realised Liam’s hair was as stubborn as the actual man was.

He’d wash his hair with some hair cream, make it even smoother, and then he’d be able to comb through it with his fingers.

 

Liam slept on; oblivious in his drug induced sleep. Spike grudgingly realised that Liam would have had a wonderful sleep. He pouted a little.

Spike reached over Liam’s deeply slumbering body and grabbed the timepiece on the bedside, glancing at the time before groaning softly and sitting up. He pulled his clothes back on and then his chest armours, leaving his helmet discarded on the floor under his bed. He slapped the swell of Liam’s impudent arse through the cotton sheet and stood, stretching and pushing away the remnants of sleep and walking out through the carriage’s door, closing it firmly behind him and clambering happily down the stairs into the awoken camp.

 

The smell of eggs and bacon and meats sizzling on pans in the fire made his stomach swell with hunger. He walked past the large blaze, the soldiers cooking eggs after eggs and passing them along with hunks of hot bread and butter. Spike ignored the fire for a moment and sauntered through the carousing men, smelling the stink of some of them, body odour and sweaty hair. Some nodded to him in respect, all looked at him as he passed, quieting in case he had a job for them do, or an order to perform. He walked through them, hearing the noise pick up behind him like a ripple effect. He slipped along; finding the Commander seated in front of his large travelling carriage with a few scattered Generals.

A map splayed out in between them all and some were eating as they gazed down on it.

 

The Commander looked up, “General. Join us.”

 

Spike leaned against the carriage wall to listen.

 

“Vara Town is only an hour or so from here,” A general, General Markson said. He smiled at Spike in greeting, bright blue eyes flicking up. “As we know, the town sits in a line along the main street. The original plan was to cover both ends of the town… like bookends… to take the ones that flee. However, seeing as we now have word that Commander Heas is coming West with his company, they should be able to catch most of them, if they’re fleeing to the East. If they flee North, we can’t really track them into the higher mountains anyway. They’ll freeze and die.”

 

“Wonderful,” the Commander said.

 

“Sounds good to me,” Spike intoned, bored, “Sounds quick.”

 

General Skips looked up at him wryly. “Got something you’d rather be doing?”

 

The Commander looked at him, amused. Spike kept himself neutral. “Yeah, I want to be getting back to my home before the cold months hit these bloody mountains and freeze my bits off.”

 

A few of the generals snickered at that.

 

Spike waited until they all gathered their things and started to rise, before turning away and heading back to the smell of sizzling bacon. Footsteps hurried behind him and he looked over his shoulder to see Penn Markson, helmet under his arm, scurrying after him.

 

“Penn,” Spike sighed. The man acted like a shadow. Spike knew Penn was a bit wet thighed for him, with his big eyes and his mousy long hair. It was a well-known fact Penn enjoyed men more than women. Spike could go either way, really. It was all just different parts to play with, but Penn didn’t interest him. No fire. He was a rabbit birth; and he was the archetype of all people born in the months under the rabbit. The weakest and least interesting to Spike, of all the fourteen signs. Soft and agreeable. He’d prefer something with fangs any day.

 

Penn frowned a little, smiling. “You should call me General Markson in the vicinity of the troops,” he half admonished, half implored.

 

Penn had only been made General before this assignment, he was new to it, was enjoying the perks. Spike had known him since he was a First Lieutenant, but he had to say Penn had risen fast, playing the politics game.

 

Spike smiled patronisingly back at him. “Penn,” he said deliberately, “the troops don’t care.” He turned and headed towards the fire again.

 

Penn’s feet continued after him, in the silent bubble of quiet soldiers that they moved in. “I heard you got something.”

 

Spike grinned as he walked, toeing a sleeping pack out of his way. “And if I did?”

 

He slipped past the lined up men and grabbed two tin plates, shoving hot thick bread, eggs and bacon onto them with a nod to the cook.

 

“Who is he?” Penn needled, scurrying after him like a lap dog.

 

Spike shrugged, mouth wet from the smell of the food as he headed back towards his carriage. “Some herder from Seget village. No-one special.”

 

“Then why are you keeping him?” Penn pestered.

 

Spike set the plates on the steps to his travelling carriage and turned around. He gave Penn his full attention, raising his eyebrows and crossing his arms. Penn fidgeted under the close scrutiny. He was itching for some answers, itching with interest.

 

“Is…” Penn hesitated blinking big eyes, “is he an attractive one then?”

 

Spike smirked, amused. “What makes you think he’s anything exceptional?”

 

Penn stared at him, disappointment almost buried behind the curiosity. Almost. “Cause you’re bringing him breakfast.”

 

Spike looked back at the breakfast plates. He stepped forward, chuckling, guiding Penn away from the carriage. “I do that. I like to charm; I’m good at it. I like them falling to me.”

 

Penn frowned. “But why? If you want someone, just take them. Especially some uncivilised prisoner.”

 

Spike rolled his eyes, bored. “Any man can force themselves on someone. Power doesn’t come through cuffs and bars. It comes through submission,” he saw Penn’s eyes flare for a split instant and changed his smile to something teasing. He leant closer, leaning to his ear, toying with him; “Willing submission is what I like. It takes time. It’s the only thing I’m a patient man for.”

 

Penn chuckled nervously, his eyes flicking up to Spike’s, filled with longing. “Didn’t think you were patient for anything.” His face tipped up to Spike’s entreatingly.

 

“Rough and quick can be good too, but I find slow…” he breathed the words, rolling them over his tongue and enjoying the hopeful furtive look Penn gave him, “slow is better. For some things.”

 

“Is it?” Penn asked breathlessly, his hand unconsciously arcing forward, his fingers bumping against Spike’s own.

 

Spike grinned and pulled away, turning to grab the plates. “For some things.” He nodded goodbye and turned into his carriage, leaving Penn stranded outside, closing the door on his confused dashed look.

 

Liam was still a boneless lump in the covers. Spike moved over to him, setting the plates on a small clothes chest and sitting next to him on the bed. He poked his finger against Liam’s hip, moving his bulk but not waking him from the deep sleep, his breath was heavy and constant. Spike pouted, grabbing the medical chest and pulling a bottle of smelling salts from one of the small compartments.

 

Liam tried to wrench away from the strong smell when Spike shoved the bottled under his nose, jerking his arms against the chains, his face covered with beautiful confusion and alarm, hair unkempt. He couldn’t sit up, not with the chains over his head, so he lay on the bed on his belly, back arching lithely. Spike watched him as he remembered where he was, his strong arms pulling at the chains, trying to free himself Spike smiled, amused. It was interesting, watching the emotions dash across Liam’s features, watching him realise reality. People were always interesting to watch. Especially people like Liam. Intense people.

 

“Good Morning,” Spike said cheerily, watching him take in his surroundings with sleepy eyes, trying to thrust his body into alertness.

 

Liam looked at him almost dazedly, dry lips parted, devoid of strong expressions, his face a lot prettier when it wasn’t twisted with a scowl. He had sleep in his eyes and a trail of dried saliva on his cheek and he was lovely to Spike, in his own tumultuous way. He blinked rapidly.

 

“Like eggs?” Spike asked, capping the smelling salts and putting them away.

 

Liam dumbly looked around the cabin again. Spike leant forward, noting Liam’s quick jerk away when his hands reached for the chains. Dark eyes watched drowsily as Spike loosened the chains so he could turn over and sit up. He did, his movements clumsy because of the restraints, wincing in pain as feeling and blood ran back into his arms. He grunted out, looking sick, sitting with his hands in his lap and his head bowed as he tried to get fully awake in the midst of the pan and weariness. Spike enjoyed the show as Liam rubbed his face and eyes, stifling his yawns.

He looked into the corner where he’d been the previous night and then at the bed, slowly taking it in. His cuffed hands clutched coyly at the sheet, slowly, trying not to be discreet, pulling it further up his body and wrapping it around himself. He finally looked up at Spike’s face with sad, put upon eyes. Spike met his gaze serenely.

 

“Hungry?”

 

Liam looked at the plates stacked high with food. He slowly shook his head, looking down into his lap. Spike leant across to the plates, grabbing one and starting to eat, crunching on the bacon, feeling the taste explode saltily on his tongue, mopping some egg up with a hunk of bread. “You haven’t eaten since maybe… yesterday morning?” Spike said, his mouth full of hot food.

 

Liam stared at his hands and shook his head. “I’m not hungry,” he said firmly.

 

Spike swallowed, picking up a strip of salted bacon and chewing on it. “You gonna starve yourself?” he asked, amused. “Is that what you’re doing, luv?”

 

Liam’s eyes slowly met his again and Spike was delighted to see the burn within the brown. Like fire. “I don’t want to eat,” he said slowly, “anything… from you.” His eyes flicked away, his way of ending the conversation.

 

Spike squinted at him, not done yet with the enjoyable toe to toe, pushing the strip of bacon into his mouth as he scrutinised his stubborn treasure. Bull-headed little herder thought he could tell Spike what was going to happen? “Well… when you get so weak from hunger that you can’t move, I’ll just mush up lots of protein stuffs into a runny paste and pour it down your throat. Keep you alive that way.”

 

Liam’s eyes flicked back to his, almost disgusted by Spike’s words. Disgusted and a little fearful, his pink lips parting in surprise.

 

“Like what the medics give to people who can’t chew and swallow,” Spike shrugged, tearing a hunk of bread apart in his fingers, “I’m just saying. You’re not going to die that way, so why not eat? Being hungry’s a right nasty feeling.”

 

Liam looked at him, almost trying to discern if Spike was joking or not, his dark eyes narrowed.

 

Spike climbed on the foot of the bed in his armour, crossing his legs and placing his plate on his calves to pick from it. “Anyway, I thought it was a sin for you mountain people to kill yourselves. Isn’t it against your gods?”

 

Liam frowned, uncomfortable. “Yes.”

 

“So? Not eating is offing yourself isn’t it?”

 

“I’m not hungry,” Liam repeated firmly. “I don’t want food.”

 

Spike didn’t push it. He didn’t really think Liam could kill himself that way, so I wasn’t really a problem. The defiance was, but Spike could let it slide. Liam would settle in a few days. They always did.

Spike snagged the other plate once he’d finished his own.

 

“Last chance…” he said temptingly.

 

Liam stared at his hands, unresponsive. Spike shrugged and started devouring the pile of eggs and bread, amused by his obstinate pretty little herder. He was good fun. Better than his books.

 

“So Liam,” he said conversationally, swallowing the food in his mouth, “you were born in the months under the Bull, weren’t you?”

 

Dark eyes flicked up warily. “What makes you say that?”

 

Spike shrugged, smiling, proud of himself. “Bulls are always stubborn. I’m good at picking which animals people were born under.”

 

“I wasn’t born under the Bull,” Liam said.

 

Spike scratched his head. “Really?” he asked, surprised.

 

Liam blinked, keeping his face neutral.

 

“Bear, then.”

 

Liam shook his head.

 

“What animal are you under then?”

 

“The Jackal.”

 

Spike cocked an eyebrow. He wouldn’t have guessed that. He reassessed Liam, studying him with interest as he sat sleep-dopey on the bed. Jackal’s were quick, lusty creatures, and Liam’s soul followed that. But they were also sly and cunning, and Liam’s baring naivety didn’t fit. “How old are you?” Spike asked.

 

“Six on twenty.”

 

Six on twenty. “Born in the cooler months,” Spike frowned, working out the quick calculations.

 

“I’m on the junction.”

 

Spike grinned, figuring out the puzzle. “Edging into a Lion’s month then?”

 

Liam nodded. Spike looked at him appreciatively. Lion as well. Makes him loyal and prideful. Good birth. Strong animals.

 

“I’m under the Jackal too,” Spike said after a moment.

 

“Are you my age?”

 

Spike shook his head. “I’m in the next cycle. I’m eight on twenty.”

 

Liam looked at him and then down at his hands. “I don’t really know that much. We find out what animal we’re under so we can pray to the right idol in the temple, but it’s not really… important.”

 

Spike was a little surprised. His experience seemed to show that the villages were more religious than anyone from Alla City was. They followed a few different guidelines, especially about self harm which was basically forbidden, and seemed stricter with most beliefs, but here this herder was saying… not important? “What’s not important? Your religion?”

 

“No… that’s important,” Liam said hurriedly, “but we don’t have almanacs like the cities. I couldn’t figure out what anyone else was born under. It’s not important for me to know how.”

 

Spike cocked an eyebrow. He reached under the bed and pulled out his year’s almanac, a leather bound Jackal centric one, offering wisdom, and matches between him and the animals. It offered advice to which days certain things should be performed, with star and planet maps to guide him more easily. “You don’t have one of these?”

 

Liam shook his head.

 

“What guides you?”

 

“Myself. When I need another’s view, I ask the Holy man who runs…” he suddenly shut down, his face closing up like a barrier. His lips closed and he looked haunted. His breath huffed heavily through his nose as his face slowly slid into a doleful expression.

 

He looked up at Spike and the already familiar glare was in place. And that was that. He wouldn’t speak. Spike had been quite interested in their talk but Liam had too much stubborn Jackal in him to budge. Spike wondered if he was that stubborn. It was doubly worse for Liam, though, the Lion was a stubborn animal too.

 

A sudden jerking rolling of the carriage almost tossed Spike off the bed and he stood, confused and shaky legged on the moving floor. He opened the door and looked out, seeing the marching motion in the clearing. The procession was moving, carriages and horses and carts, all of them, noisy and clattering heading towards Vara Town, and the last of the village conquests for Spike’s posts. Relief was almost palpable. It made his muscles weak with dull joy. He closed the door and rejoined Liam, still glaring with all his chained power on the bed.

 

“Vara Town next?” he asked with a hiss of anger between his teeth.

 

Spike blinked, surprised for the second time in a few minutes. “Yes. How did you know?”

 

“We knew,” Liam said obscurely, his dark flaming eyes setting on the covers over his thighs.

 

Spike cocked his head, interest intrigued by Liam’s meaning, sidling a little closer to the shackled strength, feeling like he was reaching forward to pet a snarling dog. He watched his sharp face, alive and flush with anger. “How long? How early did you hear?”

 

Liam’s face remained set. “Early.”

 

Spike considered that in the time that spun out before them, quiet for a while as he contemplated that and what it meant. Of course the people of Seget had known they were coming, but he hadn’t thought they’d actually … known… far in advance. He ‘sposed the Union didn’t really keep it secret. Only had to be secretive, only had to be snaky, when you were up against an opponent that was stronger than you. The herders, Liam and his like, they were no match for the Union.

 

“Vara Town knows as well, then?”

 

Liam’s face suddenly flickered from its anger and he looked scared, like he’d let something drop he wasn’t meant to. Angry slitted eyes grew wide with apprehension and Spike wanted to calm the fierce emotions that rattled through him, wanting to stroke them away, fuck them away maybe, barely keeping his touch away from the body.

 

“Will they stay, like you did?”

 

Liam looked down at his chained hands, face taut. “If they have heart.”

 

“Is that what you call it?” Spike sneered.

 

Liam’s glowing ember gaze burnt his face when he looked back up. “What would call it?” He asked accusingly, smooth whisky voice raising in strength and octaves. “Stupidity? Foolishness?”

 

“Yes,” Spike said plainly, amused by Liam’s righteous fury, wanting to ignite him, to see what would happen if Liam were consumed by the fire inside him, “I would call it that. I’d call it a group of bloody stupid farmers who don’t know when to quit.”

 

He was unprepared for the speed and strength of the bare foot that struck him painfully across the jaw, clacking his teeth closed against his cheek, didn’t realise he’d moved so close to Liam as he was slammed on his back on the bed, stunned for a moment. The heel drove like a horse kick into his hip and he roared out in pain as he rolled away from the weapons. Liam was cursing him as Spike stood up, working his jaw, tasting the blood in his mouth from his bitten inner cheek. His head rolled and pan blew out from his jaw like a hot desert wind, a sandstorm of pain and he scrunched his face up in hurt.

 

“Bloody fuck!” he yelled, opening his eyes and glaring at the creature in his bed, incensed and eyes dilated, ready to fight. He rubbed his hand against his jaw. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

 

“I guess I don’t know when to quit,” Liam hissed, getting up onto his haunches, coiled muscles taut and ready to spring, fast and strong, ethereally beautiful in the storm of his emotion.

 

Teeth gritted together he strode over to Liam, avoiding the swiping kicks from the powerful legs, kicking out from underneath the cloth tied raggedly around his hips, Spike grabbed the chain that held his fisted hands cuffed together and shoved it aside, bringing his hand down across Liam’s cheek in a slap. A light slap, strong enough to sting and redden his face, but too light really, he was still a little stunned that Liam had kicked him in the face. Spike drew his hand back to administer another but wisely yanked his hand back at the last moment, seeing Liam’s teeth bared as the prisoner made an insane lurch forward, clacking his square white teeth together as he tried to bite Spike’s oncoming fingers. Spike quickly flicked him on the forehead and admonished him like he would a bad puppy.

 

“No!” he said, keeping his amusement down, a little angry that Liam had shown such disrespect, as he pointed a finger at him, “No biting, bad Liam.”

 

Liam practically vibrated with anger, on his haunches like a gorgeous feral thing. His lips were white with tension. The energy buzzed between them.

 

“I’ll tan your arse like a schoolboy if you keep acting up,” Spike said calmly, his hand falling onto Liam’s hot long thigh.

 

Liam yanked his leg away. “Don’t touch me!” he snarled, “Want me to kick your face again?”

 

Spike laughed. “You’re so proud. But you haven’t quite got it yet. You’re a prisoner, Liam. I’ve been very nice to you, I’m a nice man, but I don’t have to be. We aren’t equal.”

 

“No, we’re not! You’re lower than me!” Liam half growled half yelled, trembling with fury, trying to pull against his chains, his fingers clawed and trying to get to him, “You’re lower than dirt! You’re a stupid disgusting Union maggot and you need to chain me up to keep me down. Weak little boy, playing games he doesn’t understand!”

 

His muscles clenched and worked, trying to release himself so he could tear Spike to shreds, his emotion choking his words.

 

Liam’s hate finally passed Spike’s amusement and jerked into irritation. Spike narrowed his eyes and stepped forward to the twisting beast. He grabbed Liam’s ankles, tugging him down to a laying position on the bed, the cloth hiking up, baring the lowest curves of his arse where it met the backs of his thighs. Hands cuffed, Liam thrashed and Spike slammed his open palm down against the flesh, haring the smack, revelling in the vulnerable jiggle of Liam’s cheeks under his hand. He yanked the rough cloth off his firm flesh and slapped again, sliding his hand along the sun healthy skin.

 

Liam cursed and yelled and resumed his efforts doubly, trying to kick and pull out of the thick chains at once, getting himself breathless as Spike slammed heavy handed slap after slap, raining them down on his clenched buttocks, making it a rosy blood flushed hue, feeling the heat of the degraded slapped skin against his palm.

 

“Bad Liam,” Spike grunted patronisingly as Liam twisted in his chains under the force of another spank.

 

He toyed with him, slapping across the cheeks, whipping his hand down for a long time, over and over, mindlessly, until he felt Liam wear himself out with the struggling, his cock so very interested in Liam’s sweet as honey arse it was becoming unbearable in his pants. Holding him down, the prettiness of his body and his protestations made Spike’s mouth wet and he and he wanted to kiss and bite the heated rounded cheeks, lick the red from them. The lust creature inside him unfurled with interest, licking along his thighs with a slippery tongue, encouraging flames of excitement that burnt his stomach and bowels and sizzled in his balls as he brought his hand down again. Again. Again. Beautiful flesh. Again, another harsh slap that echoed off the wooden walls. Blushed red flesh that he could have, wanted to have. He imagined Liam, over his knees in his bedroom back near Alla City, lit by oil lamps and candles, with his head bowed, naked and long limbed, moaning roughly, his hands tightening around Spike’s legs as he brought the pink flush up in his cheeks, making them a beacon, a target for his cock which pressed up against hard flat belly.

 

Liam was quiet and Spike’s hand was numb. He must have been going for a long time, lost in his fantasies. Liam’s dark head was buried in the pillows and stayed there even when Spike stood up, stifling the groan as his sensitised penis ground roughly against his pants. His long sunned body lay still, like he was sleeping, tied arms above his mane of hair, and the rounded perky cheeks of his backside were red, like they’d been rouged. So exquisite. Took Spike’s breath from his lungs. Definitely have to do this again. Spike unconsciously took a step forward, wanting to smooth a gentle hand over the red, maybe feel the heat against his cheek and lips but he halted. Chances were Liam would snap, bite anything that came near with his teeth bared like a mad thing. Liam kept his thighs and arse clenched tightly together, covering himself as best he could. His body exuded trapped anger; the set of his muscles screamed it.

 

Spike looked at his reddened palm and the down at the uncomfortable swollen bulge in his pants. Now what was he going to do about that? He tried to adjust himself.

 

“Told you I’d tan you like a schoolboy,” Spike scolded after a still moment, deciding to keep quiet when his voice came out in a very unsubtle lust cracked growl. It was almost like he was speaking sex.

 

Liam said nothing.

 

Spike’s hand was really sore. Maybe he could use a paddle or a belt next time. And there would be a next time. The feel of Liam jerking with his slaps, his pink arse rocking forward with them was something that made Spike leak in excitement.

 

He heard a yell from outside and the carriage rolled to a stop. Vara Town already? He went to the door, opening it and peeking out. The soldiers were dismounted from their horses, the men gathering instructions from their assigned lieutenants. They were here. Spike must have been spanking Liam longer than he thought. A squiggle of excitement twitched in his groin, flickering like a snake’s tongue.

 

He hauled the rest of his armours on, tying them around his thighs and calves, quickly pulling the steel on over his arms and fingers. He pressed his helmet on and heard the familiar sound of his breath echoing around the metal space as Liam did his best impression of a blanket.

 

“No time to move you now,” Spike said to him anyway, his voice tinny from the helmet. “Won’t take long though.”

 

Liam didn’t move a single muscle. He might’ve been asleep for all he recognition he gave Spike, so he ignored the sullen beast tied to his bed and turned, slipping out the door and seating himself firmly on Cab before galloping fiercely to the fore of the advancing troops.

 

 

*

 

 

Liam waited for a long time, holding his breath in his throat, waiting for any sound that Spike might be coming back, smelling the scent of himself, his hair, his breath, in the thick pillows into which his face was pressed. Sounds outside, Unioners talking, horse neighs, dull clanking of pots and pans and wood. Strange how he hadn’t heard it before. The camp was a burr of noise, even with most of it gone. But he waited a long time, tensed and bare, before his resolve crumbled and he let out a few soft hiccupping sobs, face pressed so deeply into the pillows that the sound was muffled and lost. He cried a few tears of pity for himself and Seget and Vara, fingers grasping at the chains that held him prisoner.

 

Spike had treated him like a disobedient child. That didn’t bother him so much as the sudden shocking realisation that Spike could. Spike could do whatever he wanted. What could Liam do to stop him? Nothing. He couldn’t see anyone, he couldn’t get help, he couldn’t even get away. He was a prisoner, and if Spike wanted to spank him red, he could. The thought that his freedom was gone filled his heart with black smoke. He’d lost it all. Seget had died, and Liam was lost. At the whim of some spoilt Alla City bastard. Was he… a slave? Was that what he’d become?

 

What would happen? A few more tears slipped into the soft pillows. What was going to happen?

 

He was afraid. More afraid then when he’d stood in Seget’s square and watched the ocean of shiny steel course towards him like a wave. He was facing death then, now… he didn’t know what he was facing. He felt selfish for fearing for himself. But he didn’t want to live in service to someone else. He wanted to go back to Seget, wanted to raise his sheep and know what would happen the next week or the next month. Not … this.

 

His chained wrists were really starting to ache, along with his shoulders. He wanted to stretch but he couldn’t even do that. He was reliant on Spike, had to wait for him to decide when he could get up. If he’d let him. A swamp of sadness threatened to pull him under.

He shook his head viciously, wiping his hot face on the covers. No. He would not let this, the Union or Spike, beat him into something weak. Steeling his nerves he forced himself to breathe slower. He wasn’t a weak man. He could do this. Spike thought the villages were filled with stupid herder’s that weren’t worth his Alla City spit. Well fuck him. He was the weak one. Liam’s lip trembled as he pushed the sadness and pity away. No.

 

He’d get away. Cool determination settled over his stomach like river water. He’d run, get down to SouthBrook like Cordy had wanted him to, where she’d gone with Kat and Doyle and the rest of Seget. He still had family left. A flutter of hope flapped like wings in his chest. Cordy, Kat… He could see them again.

 

Suddenly it seemed very important that he see them again, see his Kat, his baby sister and protect her from this… this Union, and the way they could just decide people were cattle. He thought he wouldn’t see her, but he was alive still. And his place was with her.

He grinned into the pillows maniacally and let out a high pitched giggle. His family. She probably thought he was dead. Bled and burnt to the ground with Seget’s houses.

He didn’t feel so sorry for himself anymore. He had a purpose. He still feared what was to come for him, and hated the Union more fiercely than he’d hated anything in his entire life and loathed being chained to a soldier, but he had a higher purpose than himself. He had to make sure this never happened to Kat. Or Cordy. Had to go find them, protect them even though he couldn’t protect Seget.

 

He smelt fire and his stomach twisted. Vara Town had fallen, no different than Seget. It made him sad, and he closed his eyes, praying for the men and women whose bodies would burn away into the ground. The Union was unstoppable. They could only run. He didn’t regret not running from Seget; he could no more run from her than he could Cordy, if she were in danger, or from his sister. But now… he had to keep going. If he let himself slip into sadness it would be emotion grave so deep he’d never claw his way out. He didn’t want to live feeling sorry for himself, or mourning. He had to look ahead.

 

He twisted himself around on the bed, managing with some wriggling to cover his nakedness with the sheet, kneeing it up over his lap awkwardly, his wrists yanking against his cuffs, but he did it.

He instantly felt stronger, more alive. Triumphant, that he could do that. He may be a prisoner, but now he wasn’t an animal. He wished he had something more substantial than a sheet though.

 

The burning smell got stronger, something rancid and sweet carrying on it, making Liam’s nostrils flare and twitch, trying to get clear of it, that horrid clenching smell. He wondered distractedly if Seget still smouldered. He supposed it did, it had only been burnt yesterday.

Seemed like a very long time ago now.

Seemed like a long time since he’d seen Kat and Cordy ride to the back way. Time was playing tricks. Making it seem longer than it should in places, making it seem instantaneous in others, twisting it in his head. When Spike had… hit him, it had only seemed like minutes, he’d slipped into himself to get away from the humiliation of being treated like a boy by a spoilt man who actually was a little boy.

 

The camp outside the carriage started getting louder, noisier, with the sounds of soldiers returning from the fight, rowdy and laughing. He hated their laughter, hated it. The mean spiteful children that they were, finding something to enjoy in burning people’s homes to the dirt. The Union… he wished so fervently for something to take them down, take them away. Something must happen, the gods wouldn’t let this happen without a reason, the evil of them couldn’t triumph. It just couldn’t.

 

More laughter. Liam’s hands fisted tensely in their bonds.

 

The door suddenly slammed open, making Liam kick out under the sheets in surprise, a shining silver figure in the rectangle of bright midday light, like a demon, a dark hulking outline in the sun. It stepped in silently, sword raised and Liam felt a gurgle of fear in his stomach.

The door closed behind it and was just a soldier, a blue banded soldier and Liam sighed quietly, eyelashes fluttering as he looked away. The helmet was pulled off, revealing a pale sly face with white hair that sicked back from his forehead. Spike was flushed, smirking as he lazily dropped the decapitated helmet on the ground in a noisy thud. He stabbed his sword into the floor of the cabin, making it sway when he let it go, from side to side like a snake. His armour clanked, but the man inside was menacingly silent. He was suddenly breathing power again, the spoilt little boy Liam was so sure he’d been, gone, replaced by a quick man that watched him keenly. He sat down on the bed, his breath heavy, forehead shined with sweat.

 

Liam’s eyes glanced down and realised there was a slash of bright red blood on the chest armour. He uttered a low gasp of horror and physically pulled his legs away from the man, and the blood, the symbol of what had happened, and what it meant.

 

Spike chuckled at his actions. “Don’t be coy, Liam,” he said in a raspy voice, “I saw you slice the heads off men back in Seget.”

 

Liam remembered. “They were attacking my town,” he said grimly, “I defended it, and myself.” He stared at the blood and Spike slowly bent his head to look at it too. Splatters of it.

 

“Who did you kill?” Liam demanded.

 

Spike looked at him without expression. “A man.”

 

“A man? A herder? A father?”

 

“Maybe,” Spike answered his jabs, “Probably.”

 

Liam’s skin itched. Spike made it itch. Got underneath it in an instant and laughed as Liam tried to furiously scratch him out, like a dog with fleas. “And how many men did you kill in Seget? People I knew.”

 

“I didn’t kill anyone in Seget.”

 

Liam laughed humourlessly. “I don’t believe you.”

 

Spike shrugged, looking bored. “Believe what you want, pretty pet. I don’t like killing. The fighting I like, sure, but I’d be just as happy if the men turned themselves over.”

 

Liam snorted. “And became members of the Union? Brain deadened minions?” He leant forward, hissing, engaging Spike in argument and taunting even though he didn’t want to, “I’d rather die.”

 

Spike smiled at him and stood up, a strange gleam in his eyes. Liam flinched when pale armour-clawed hands moved suddenly, curling in on himself in preparation for the blows he was sure would come, but Spike merely snorted scornfully at him and shucked off his bloodied armour.

 

“You should learn your place. It ain’t changing anytime soon.” He fell even further into the deep rough blur of Union speak. “Got surprises up my sleeve, and you’re gonna hate them, little pet. But that’s just the way things go. Best to accept it.”

 

“Never.”

 

Spike shrugged, smiling down at him almost proudly, standing over him with eyes bright like an animal’s. He’d come alive, he was glowing with victory and it needled Liam in his bones, in his teeth. Spike was a savage. He loved the fight. Liam’s lips became thin white lines as he glared sullenly at him.

 

“It’s the bloody finish you love,” Liam hissed.

 

Spike cocked his head. “No. I told you, don’t like killing. When it’s down to him or me, I choose me every time, but there’s things that can happen before it comes to that dance.”

 

Liam smiled cruelly, knowingly. “Is that what you tell the gods?”

 

Spike seemed unimpressed. “It’s what I’m telling you, a man I’m pretty sure I didn’t kill on the battlefield even when I had all the chances in the world,” He smiled. “I’ve been wrong before, though.”

 

Spike bent down on the floor and pulled out a cotton beige bundle from underneath the bed, tossing it on Liam’s bare stomach. It unfurled a little, showing it was clothes. Liam looked at it suspiciously as Spike got up again.

 

“Now,” Spike said, reaching for sword and tugging it from the floor. Liam’s heart rate picked up, making him feel like he was running, the confusion of it all making him sweat. “Can I trust you to put those clothes on without attacking me? Or am I going to have to dress you myself?”

 

Liam’s eyes were glued to the sword, feeling so vulnerable naked in the sheets with his hands made useless.

 

“If you attack me, I’ll slice you down,” Spike continued, “And that’s not fun for you or me. Especially you. So, can I trust you?”

 

Liam’s eyes left the long sharp sword for a moment, flicking up to Spike’s eyes. His face was set and serious.

 

“Can I trust you?” he repeated, “or do I have to dress you like a baby?”

 

Liam eyelashes fluttered as Spike watched him intensely, waiting. “Yes,” he muttered after a moment.

 

“Yes what?”

 

“Yes, you can trust me.”

 

“Are you a man of your word, Liam?”

 

Liam nodded, still wary of the sword that seemed ten-foot long in his scared mind. “Can I trust you?” Liam asked.

 

Spike blanched. “Huh?”

 

“Can I trust you not to run me through with that sword you’re holding?”

 

Spike looked down at the sword like he’d never seen it before, his pale pretty features frowning in confusion. He stabbed the sword back into the wood slowly.

 

“You have my word,” he said, smirking again.

 

Liam tensed as the pale man leaned over him, his skin hot with the fight, unhooking his cuffs from the wall and then undoing them. Liam winced with pain as he rubbed his raw wrists, drips of blood crumbling under his massaging fingertips. He gathered up the clothes covetously, drawing them to his bare chest like his was a child with a rag toy, looking up at Spike watching him, toying with the cuffs in his fingers. He stared back. Spike raised a dark eyebrow.

 

“Get dressed,” he prodded after a moment.

 

Liam looked at him. “Are you planning on watching?”

 

“Actually I was,” he said, a small smile curving pink, “I don’t believe you’re gonna attack me… but I’m not stupid enough to lay my life on the line for that belief.”

 

Liam rolled his eyes and tugged the pants on under the covers with a bit of clever manoeuvring. He slipped the simple loose shirt on over his head, feeling it catch him across the shoulders and collarbones, too small for his wide frame. He wriggled a bit in them, hearing a few stitches pop.

 

“Big shoulders,” Spike noted, his voice quick and deep. “Still looks alright.”

 

Liam frowned. “Yes.”

 

“Hands out.”

 

Liam looked at Spike advancing with the cuffs again. “You don’t have to put them back on me,” he tried.

 

Spike smiled lightly. “Hands. Out.”

 

Liam resignedly raised his wrists and let Spike lock the cuffs around them. They were heavy, unforgiving and the cut into his skin. He sighed. Spike went to a trunk in the corner of the room and yanked out another set of cuffs.

 

“Don’t kick,” Spike said, jumping on the bed with a little boy’s enthusiasm, his eyes on Liam’s legs.

 

A hand curled around Liam’s calf and he tugged it away in reaction, before seeing the inert expression on Spike’s face. “Got an appointment you won’t like,” he said, latching the cuff around his ankle. It rubbed against the protruding anklebone insufferably already hurting. Spike latched the other cuff and locked a short chain connecting the two.

 

“What’s happening?” Liam said.

 

“Stand up.”

 

Liam sat for a moment longer before standing up, watching Spike’s fingers curl around the connection between his wrist cuffs. He led him out into the sunlight and it burnt his eyes with its brightness, after the gloom of the cabin. The day was hot, hot enough to make an instant sheen of heat on the skin, insects clicking in the surrounding forests. He heard clanging, metal against metal, and wondered madly if the Union was being attacked. Spike seemed calm as they walked over the grass, between soldiers that watched them with diluted interest, so he guessed it wasn’t so. Birds tweeted in trees overhead, little birds, high pitched birds that sat watching the entire procession.

 

“When we get there… Don’t fight it, Liam,” Spike said in a low voice, leading him over to a crowd of soldiers, their very presence making Liam’s skin twitch, “this is what happens. Doesn’t matter if you act up with me, I’ll punish you proper in my own way, but in front of the rest… don’t. For your own good, yeah?”

 

He pushed through to the front and Liam saw a hugely muscled blacksmith working with hot steel, a leather apron on over his dwarfing bulk as he slammed his hammer against the metal on his anvil. That was the clanging. There were a few men sitting around, prisoners, Liam could tell immediately by their clothes.

 

A woman was led towards the sweating blacksmith; her sharp face set with cold fury, as the bellows worked next to the blacksmith’s forge, making it hotter with the hot air. The blacksmith grabbed a circlet of metal from the concentrated hot coals, almost a circle, a little cut missing from the round, the ends of the metal glowing red. He set the steel collar around the woman’s thin neck and she cried out, as the heated metal burnt her skin clumsily. The blacksmith grabbed the ends of the metal and forced them together, grabbing a poker from the centre of the heat and pushing the woman’s head down with a hand fisted around the metal ring, pressed the tip against the collar joins melting it closed. He grabbed a bucket of water and tipped it over the back of her neck, saturating her hair as he held the steaming metal off her skin. He graciously wrapped a cloth around the hot metal so it wouldn’t burn her anymore before he grabbed the next heavy circlet.

 

Liam stood deathly still. “No.”

 

Spike rolled his eyes. “This isn’t a debate.”

 

“I’m not-“

 

“You are,” Spike cut in viciously, “You are because you don’t get a say and this is what happens to the people who oppose us.”

 

“How can a person suddenly become a dog in your eyes, just because they don’t want to be taken over by you?” Liam asked, almost hysterical in the face of the Union’s heartless insanity.

 

A few soldiers looked around at the hushed commotion.

 

“Don’t fight here,” Spike said, low and calm, “They won’t give you the respect I do.”

 

“What respect? You’re insane! You all are!” He yelled at the soldiers watching him. They started standing up, cold looks of anger on their faces.

 

Spike hissed a swear and closed his eyes. He grabbed Liam’s arm tightly and forced him towards the blacksmith as he struggled. Liam used his weight against the smaller man and halted their progress, right in the centre of the circle of soldiers. A few laughed as Liam slid Spike back a few steps with sheer strength, pushing him his feet along the dirt. Spike looked up with blue fire, teeth bared.

 

“I told you not to fight here,” he hissed angrily, low enough so only Liam could hear.

 

A sudden jab of sharp fingers in the wound in his shoulder made him gasp in heart stopping pain, his legs not working in the shock of hurt that blared through him, Spike pushing him to the ground. He was suddenly hauled up by hands as big as pig sides, thick fingers that wrapped around his arms and tugged him easily towards the blisteringly hot fire. He watched Spike, somewhat betrayed, watching the man who stood with no expression and blazing blue eyes, his hands fisted in tight white balls by his thighs. The blacksmith held him down over the anvil and collared him, and Liam watched Spike’s eyes the entire time, even when the hot metal burnt his skin for an instant and he yelped out, he refused to look away. An icy slush of water tipped over him and chilled him instantly, his skull and spine chattering with it as the dirty cold water dripped over his lips and into his eyes and nostrils. Wrapping a heavy cloth around the metal, resting it against Liam’ skin, the blacksmith hauled him up, choking him, and pushed him to the ground out of the way. A few soldiers watching the procession laughed and clapped as he stood up, wet with greasy water and collared and so angry he was ready to kill them, moving towards the laughing men, seeing their faces as insect faces with no skin or proper eyes, with mandibles for lips. Spike caught him, by the collar no less, and yanked him back. Liam’s anger was already dissipating as he felt the knuckles pressing against his skin, Spike leading him away by the cuff around his neck.

 

He guided him away, Liam didn’t know to where; he kept his eyes on the littered ground. His cheeks were burning red. He hardly felt human himself anymore. A solid heat verging on uncomfortable sat on the nape of his neck and the collar was stiff and inflexible and it sat with unforgettable presence on his collarbones. His hair was wet with the dirty water and it felt gritty on his face. Spike led him somewhere quieter, then into some heavier thicket as Liam pressed his lips together and refused to look up. Soon enough, he heard the trickle of river, could smell the familiar dampness of it, wetting the soil and the trees along it.

 

He was guided down to a rock next to the river and he sat clumsily.

 

Spike sighed, standing in front of him. “I told you not to fight there, didn’t I?”

 

“Leave me alone.”

 

“They wouldn’t have even cared to watch if you hadn’t made such a fuss.” Spike fidgeted in front of him for a moment. “He burnt you.”

 

Liam didn’t answer. He lifted his eyes as far as the river.

 

“Wash yourself,” Spike said, “the water was dirty.”

 

“I can’t get this off,” Liam said, ignoring him, “Can I?”

 

“No. That’s the point.”

 

“What is?” he looked up. “Why does your Union love humiliation?”

 

“You’re collared because you opposed us,” Spike said, steely expression unchanging.

 

“Is that such a crime?”

 

“You tried to fight the victors,” he said, impatient and frustrated, “we are what will happen. The Union will rule.”

 

“Only because people think like that, and obey mindlessly out of fear! The Union started as something small but fear and small weak men helped it thrive,” Liam spat, feeling tears again at the back of his eyes.

 

“Weak is wanting to live?”

 

“Wanting to live under Union command, yes. Weak is wanting to live by any means necessary, not even caring if what you live in, isn’t worth living in anyhow!”

 

“You live in it anyway! You live under Union control now.” Spike said, verging on exasperated. “Can’t you see that?”

 

“I don’t live in it willingly, and that means I kept my soul and my mind.”

 

“It’s not a matter of soul or mind or whatever ancient ideals of integrity you herder’s discuss while you feed your bloody sheep, its about life and existing. It’s about being smart enough to accept what you can’t change and not throwing yourselves on swords when you could find another way.”

 

Liam laughed bitterly. “Integrity isn’t an ancient ideal. Life and existing? I couldn’t kill entire towns and live.”

 

Spike threw his hands into the air, veneer cracking. “You could have avoided all that! You would have been taken under, given rights, given grants to start again in one of the towns! It’s your own stupid stubborn fault! Why didn’t you just accept the rule?”

 

“Because I don’t want to be ruled by soldiers who collar other people, good people! Who kill without care and burn people’s homes! I don’t want to answer to them!”

 

Spike’s face twitched and his eyes widened for a moment, a little moment, and Liam saw a glimmer of something… human. Something behind it, deep inside. Something Liam had said had flicked a human response, in this creature he was sure was soulless. Liam erred.

 

“But you do now, anyway.” Spike calmed himself, sliding the contemptuous sneer back on his face as the argument circled. “There’s no choice. Even less for you now. You’re fucked. That collar means you’re less than dirt and I don’t think you’ve even got it through your thick righteous skull yet.”

 

Liam snorted, too weary to try to convince him anymore, he was past convincing, he was set in his ways, stubborn and inflexible. “What do you care?”

 

Spike blinked. “I don’t,” he said harshly, walking away from Liam and sitting on a rock. “Wash yourself, you stink.”

 

Liam sat despondently. “I could run…” he said softly, his eyes on the sparkle of the river. “What would you do if I ran?”

 

“Where would you run Liam? In your chains and collar? Every town within a week on horse of here is either a shell or Union occupied. Now get in that bloody river and wash like I told you to.”

 

“No.” Liam hissed at his feet.

 

Silence for a moment. “Do you want me to tan your arse again? Cause I’ll do it. Hell, I’ll drag your bloody stubborn arse right out into camp and do it.”

 

Liam’s eyes flicked up to him, searching the pale face for something. Nothing. Just sneering and angry. Sometimes he seemed almost human, like just before, or when they’d talked about birth animals, but other times he was just a monster, without heart. Liam weighed up present humiliation of obeying Spike to a possible worse one later on. He resignedly stood and trailed down to his familiar River Manna slowly. His patience with everything almost tore when he realised he was still cuffed and couldn’t get the simple clothes off.

 

He rolled his eyes, peering up at the hot blue sky. “I can’t get the clothes off.”

 

“Just go in like that, I’ll get you new ones anyway.”

 

Pausing for only a second longer, he jumped into the water, somehow feeling better as he writhed and bathed in the warm river even though swimming was impossible in the chains. Manna kissed him, smothering him as it always had. He curled under the water with his eyes open, looking up at the sky through the distorting clear ripples. The chains were close to nothing. It felt almost like home.

 

---

 

Chapter Four – Bathhouse Flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

“The collar makes things different for you,” Spike said coolly as they walked back, Liam’s chains swung over his shoulder like a satchel strap.

 

Liam sullenly followed his lean pale body back through the camp, hands clamping each other over his belly. He was cool skinned from the river and the collar was an oppressive weight, feeling so much heavier than Liam was sure it actually was. Spike was stilted with him, not angry… but annoyed.

 

“It shows what you did. It’s a brand that everyone can see. Don’t try to escape with that on,” he continued, not looking back over his shoulder to see if Liam was listening. “Don’t be out without a reason, don’t speak unless someone asks you a question.”

 

Liam rolled his eyes. Don’t be human.

 

Spike guided him into the carriage again and Liam ignored him as he walked past, walking over and settling himself in the corner without an order. Spike watched him for a second, ad Liam again had the overwhelming feeling that he was a fly stuck on a sticky bit of web as the spider watched him. He cricked his neck, eyes on the colourful covers on the bed. Spike’s boots stepped closer and locked his chains into the steel wall strut again.

 

He crouched down oppressively in front on Liam’s eye line, a hulking powerful predatory bird, forcing him to look at his face. “Listen to me pet, I know what’s best.”

 

Liam didn’t say a word, just raised his brows and watched him.

 

“Don’t ever disrespect an officer. You do that, you may as well volunteer for the medical research trials.”

 

Liam frowned at that, not understanding.

 

“Just trust me, little herder,” he smirked at his expression, “you don’t want to end up there.” Spike’s eyes slid down his body, resting on cuffed hands. “Rules. You’ve got new rules to live by and you gotta make them your entire world.”

 

Liam snorted bitterly; looking at the oil lamp that burnt near the ceiling, throwing light over them. “See, I was never good with rules.”

 

“You better get good with them,” Spike advised, standing up and grabbing a long soft pillow from the bed. “Self sacrifice is great and all, but there are some things that are worse than just dying.”

 

He tossed the pillow at Liam’s belly fiercely and Liam could feel Spike watching him. Liam slowly curled his fingers around it, holding it to him as he felt his lips pouting sullenly. He hated this. All of it. Being told what to do, being watched all the time. The not knowing.

 

“What’s going to happen to me?” he’d asked in a stiff voice before he’d even realised he was talking.

 

His eyes glanced up to take in Spike’s reaction. He was still eyeing him, aggravatingly cool, the same sliver of amusement in his eyes, like Liam was entertainment.

He was silent for a moment, the full lips were stone, and Liam was about to demand an answer when he finally spoke: “Don’t know. Probably put you to work on a farm, maybe… something else.”

 

Liam closed his eyes. His head resonated with empty sound. “I was already working on a farm,” he said, bringing his fingers up to pinch the bridge of his nose, trying to ease the phantom headache from the stupidity and callousness of everything.

 

Spike sighed. “Someone else’s farm,” he intoned.

 

Liam looked up at him. He pushed the dark wet hair out of his eyes. “So I’m… to be a slave then.”

 

Spike’s sharp blue eyes glanced away. Liam noted that he didn’t say anything.

 

“I’m going to be someone’s slave,” Liam said, voice scratchy, his jaw tightening. He felt like he was having nightmares, that this all wasn’t real, he was just too hot in his bed. Liam snuffed a small bitter laugh. “You make slaves of good people, and you think you’re on the right side of this battle?”

 

Spike’s eyes sought him again, watching him, the brightness sapped, replaced with dull cunning. “I didn’t refuse the Union.”

 

“Well…” Liam said icily, holding the bright blue, “I guess that gives you the right to kill and loot and make slaves of people.”

 

Spike shrugged, a tight smile on his face. “Gives me the right to be free.”

 

Liam rolled his eyes. “You’re not free.” He turned to the corner, showing his back to Spike, and refused to say anymore.

 

 

*

 

 

Spike sat on a rock outside Palso City and smoked slowly, thoughtful eyes on the timberland that surrounded the high gates, as his ears filled with the sounds of erratic shouts and yells of the soldiers making use of the stores and inns behind him. Hoots and cheers rumbled behind him as the troops walked the streets, bought food and wines with their earnings, headed to the heated bathhouses. Palso City was filled with silver. Many men were making camp beside the walls, either because the inns were filled to capacity or because they wanted to save some gold, it didn’t really matter.

Spike smoked, his roll of tobacco smouldering in the cool day. Clouds covered the sky, teasing them with a downpour. The wind had an angry chill; the air rolling down off the mountains they’d travelled beneath.

 

Liam was… interesting. Interesting to watch. Graceful and confident in his movements, from stretching to walking, he was like the dancing boys and girls that performed in Alla City, smoky and mysterious and dark. He’d been quiet for the last few days of travel, between Vara Town and Palso City. He’d sat in the corner on the pillow Spike had given him and he’d brooded, hours on end. After sitting curled up soundless and motionless for acres of time, he’d change his position with a rattle of chains, work the kinks out of his legs, stretching like a cat, his long toes splaying and cording the muscles that ran up from his curiously down slanted short toenails.

Spike had finally made him eat something when he’d seen the brooding creature eyeing the cheese and breads he’d been devouring. Liam ate by pulling apart the bread and cheese with slow sure fingers, before tucking the torn shreds between his lips and chewing leisurely, jaw working in a mesmerising clench of muscle.

Since then he’d been eating, off his long graceful fingers, meats and sweet sticky rice and Spike took pleasure in watching him licking food off his fingers with a curl of dark pink tongue, watching the shredded food disappear between demure lips, watching him thoroughly enjoy the food even though he tried to hide it. He ate with peculiar elegance as Spike shoved the food between his own teeth, getting it into his gullet with savage speed. Liam did everything peculiarly. A step to the side of how Spike did it, but it was interesting to watch. He seemed to move casually, but he could be so quick when he wanted, like when he’d kicked Spike in the jaw a few days ago. He was a lightning flash of limbs when he wanted to be.

 

He only spoke to ask for something, water, or food, or to relieve himself. The rest of the time he sat down in the corner of Spike’s travelling carriage and watched the wall, doing nothing, although his face was filled with furiously quick thought.

He stayed in his clothes, they hadn’t been near enough to a river to bathe since Liam’s collaring. Spike could tell it made Liam irritated, being unclean, as each day passed overhead he’d hunch more and more, scratch his scalp through his long hair and basically look uncomfortable.

When he thought Spike wasn’t looking, he compulsively played with the collar, tugging it, resettling it around his long solid neck; continually conscious of the steel ring he wore as his status. He hated it. But he looked so beautiful in it, Spike thought. It made the fire inside him so much more intense. It was like putting a lion in a collar, cruelly magnificent, feeling somewhat fiendish to keep it in a cage, but loving to look at it as it roared and prowled anyhow.

 

Spike had spent the days reading, only going out to get food for he and his pet, sardonically sure he was starting rumours and gossip by holing up with a prisoner for so long, spending his time with a slave.

Liam answered every question he asked with halting resignation, fiery eyed and snorting steam, but obeying. Just. It was thrilling. Liam was thrilling. Spike wondered what would happen if he ever snapped and broke free. He’d probably kill Spike, in his mental state.

He thought Spike was evil, he thought the Union was. But he was wrong; of course, he had a silly farmer’s view on something that was just change. Of course a herder would be scared of change, those mountain villages had done things the same way for hundreds of years.

But even in the same stillborn mindset they had, he was different to the rest of them. The others, that would rattle and fight until the first slap and then curl up and obey straight away, no, he wasn’t like them. He was this wolfish headstrong thing living amongst sheep. Men like Liam were the reason the Union’s ideals hadn’t been taken to smoothly, stubborn wildcats that lead brainless charges into death for a cause.

 

When they spoke it was humorously civil, they hadn’t fought since the river, they hadn’t talked enough to fight even though they lived in such close quarters, close enough to smell each others skin. Close enough to hear breathing and movement. Enough to know Liam was awake sometimes, when he pretended to sleep, like Spike could hear the thoughts cluttering in his brain.

 

Spike was hungry. He left his thoughts, flicking his smoke to the ground and stamping it out as he walked back through Palso City’s gates. The insane noise became doubly loud once he stepped into the middle of it, soldiers running around, laughing, bartering with the stores, drunk men, clanking armour. He edged past a crowd of men outside a stall selling sweet cakes and moved down the cobbled main street towards the four stories of the Palso Golden Inn. Stepping in, he was smothered with drunken murmur and the smell of wine and hot steaks and chops, the dining area of the Inn crammed with soldiers seated along the long tables, shoulder to shoulder. The barmaids were practically running to keep up with the demand, their pockets filled with tips, hair frazzled around their faces. The heat of it all was stifling with the strong food scents, and so many stinking men breathing and yelling. He moved past the tables, up the stairs to the small rooms. He kept climbing the staircase to the fourth floor, and then walking out to his room. He got to the door, imagining he could almost feel the heat of Liam inside for a moment, before unlocking it with his key and walking inside.

 

Liam was at the window when he opened the door, but he thumped himself down on his arse, embarrassed when Spike entered to see him there.

 

“Enjoying the view?” Spike asked.

 

Liam looked up, looking ashamed for some reason. He shifted over to the corner where his wrist cuffs were long chained to the strut in the wall. Dark eyes flicked away to the dusty inn floor, studying it and trying to ignore Spike’s question. The collar rested around his smooth neck, glinting a little from the outside light and his chained clinked as he settled. His hair was dirty, hanging in twined limp locks.

 

“Do you want a bath?”

 

Liam looked up sharply, scrutinising Spike for a moment. “Yes,” he said with dignity, unfurling from the wall in a lissome curl.

 

Spike walked to him, unlocking the chains from the wall. He smelled strong, he smelled like flesh, not pungent like the oily men downstairs. Spike supposed he smelled the same. But he and Liam hadn’t done all that much in the past few days to work up a sweat, just sat in a carriage and slowly came to tolerate each other’s presence. He led Liam to the stairs and the wood beneath their feet creaked as they walked down it. He realised Liam didn’t have any shoes, he walked barefoot behind him, and tried to put a flag in his mind to remind him to get Liam something for his feet. They walked out the back doors, instead of heading through the thicket of rowdy men again, out through the stables and down to the small bathhouse that was the Golden Inn’s own. It sat in a small garden, walled from the much busier than usual streets, up against Palso’s expansive high city walls. He opened the sliding wooden door and ushered Liam in.

It was steamy inside, the wooden enclosure smelling slightly damp. The bath was wide; the length of the house, and it was in motion, like a tiny river, the water slowly moving along, uninterrupted, pushed by a small pump system to keep the water fresh. Coals underneath the bath made it warm, a small bellows breathing off the side. Carts and tables of towels and soaps and hair creams were scattered about, ready for use. Hot bathhouse plants were thriving along the blue stained walls, bright flowers of orange and pink with large petals. The area around the wide trickling bath was paved with stone and oil lamps hung from the roof to light up the space, scented oils, making the air sweet to cover the smell of its patrons just in case. It was a usual bathhouse, not too good- a bit dingy actually, but not by any means the worst Spike had ever seen. He closed the door behind them and shut out most of the murmur from the streets.

 

Liam was looking around the hot house. He let out a small huff of air between his lips, raising his straight dark eyebrows.

 

“What?” Spike asked softly, unlatching Liam’s oblivious arms so he could wash himself.

 

Liam rubbed his wrists distantly. “It’s really … beautiful.”

 

Spike looked around the small bathhouse. “…Yeah, I guess,” he said doubtfully.

 

He watched as Liam slowly moved over to the side of the house, kneeling down in front of the bright bath flowers dug haphazardly into the bare ground next to the tiles. “I’ve never seen flowers like these.”

 

“They’re bathhouse flowers,” Spike said, watching him with a small smile. Liam was so fascinated by something like that? Common bathhouse flowers? “They like wet heat.”

 

He nodded slowly.

 

“You’ve never seen bathhouse flowers?”

 

Liam looked up at him from his knees and shook his head. Spike raised his eyebrows. “There was an inn in Seget, never been to that bathhouse?”

 

He turned back to the flowers. “Yes, but it was tiny compared to this, and it was just a heated bath, with no roof.”

 

Spike watched him silently; his long body crouched on the dirty bath floor, looking at the ornaments. He snorted and shook his head. Liam brushed his fingers over the blue wall and turned slowly, eyes up on the decorative oil lamps, cut outs in the metal, making light shapes on the floor.

 

“My mother told me about this,” Liam said, watching the lamp in the moist heat, his voice low, “Maybe she came here.”

 

“Every inn has a bathhouse.”

 

Liam didn’t even acknowledge he had spoken. His face was intensely distant; he was in his head somewhere, between his righteous anger and his stubbornness. “She said it was pretty. She said it made her feel… elegant.”

 

Spike looked around again at the dowdiness. It was alright. It was just usual, a little bit worse than usual. He supposed for a herder… this would seem elegant. He didn’t want to snap Liam out of his talking, thought that laughing at the ridiculous idea that this was elegant could hurt him, so he kept his mouth shut. Herders. He shook his head a little, amused. Liam was amazed by it though, and it was… interesting to watch him. His dark eyes filled with something other than pissiness. It was nice. He was struck by how darkly pretty the man was, gentle eyes that softened his sharp face, the long litheness of his big body, elegance and warrior and fire. The fire. He was set on smoulder at the moment; the blaze that turned his gentle eyes demonic and stiffened his fine features into a human snarl wasn’t burning; only hot coals left.

 

Spike coughed at the arousal that simmered in his loins and slipped his clothes off quickly, sliding under the water in the dimness and washing himself with the soaps that lay on the side. Liam turned around and saw him in the water. He blinked slowly.

 

“Wash,” Spike instructed.

 

Liam looked at the soap in Spike’s hand and then back at his face. He sat on the edge of the bath and slid off the ill fitting cotton shirt, folding it and placing it away from the wet, on a small towel bench.

 

He looked at Spike.

Spike looked at him.

 

“What?” Spike finally asked.

 

“Are you going to watch?”

 

Spike sighed, put upon, and turned away, showing his back. Liam wasn’t going to attack him. He’d had plenty of chances in the small confines of the carriage. No, he’d fight Spike every step, but he wouldn’t attack him. It was suicide and Liam… Liam didn’t want to die.

 

Silence and then a quick few small splashes as Liam slipped under the water; a dark seraph cloud beneath the ripples as Spike turned to watch. He was rolling under the water, playing in it coarsely, like a little child, his hair splaying from his head like a dark lake frond, like the hair of the sprites in water worshipping temples. Spike sat on the lower step in the bath sedately and watched him, as feet or hands or dark head slipped above the surface occasionally. He was acting like it was lake washing; he obviously had no idea how civilised people bathed. It amused Spike to no end. Liam finally popped up and pushed black wet hair back and noticed that Spike was just sitting on the side of the bath. Spike smiled, entertained, scrubbing his hands neatly.

Liam looked abashed for a second before slipping back over to him and sitting down a fair bit away.

 

His shoulders and sternum were above the warm water, his skin shiny and wet, gleaming gold in the caressing oil lamplight. Spike side eyed his powerful body, sneaking a few lusty glances at him, wondering how Liam would feel under his hands. Hot slick firm skin and gentle curves of close bone. Liam quickly grabbed a mottled bar of soap from the side and mimicked Spike’s movements.

 

“You don’t have any bathhouses in Seget at all?” Spike asked after a moment, conversationally, trying not to laugh.

 

“No,” Liam said, trying to sink further into the water, “we wash in Manna. Or… at home.”

 

“So you don’t wash together.”

 

“Friends do.”

 

Spike raised an eyebrow. “Then why do you get so shy when you’re naked, if you’re used to it?”

 

Liam looked at him with blank dark eyes. “Because,” he said slowly, “I like my friends.” Spike blinked as Liam’s face suddenly clouded. The man twitched a little, like a swatted fly and Spike looked down at the soap in his hands. He scrubbed it along his thigh.

 

“I mean … I … did,” Liam babbled after a moment of lapping water quiet, and then quickly fell silent again. When Spike spared a glance, Liam’s mouth was thin and twisted with sadness, aching from what he’d said. Spike felt a glimmer of pity for him, pale and deep down in his guts.

 

Spike curved around and grabbed a jar of hair cream from the side of the warm bath. “Here,” he said, shifting over to Liam’s side and handing him the jar, trying to tear his mind away from its path, “use that.”

 

Liam’s nose was reddening and he turned away, slouched, under the guise of reaching for more soap. He kept his long smooth wet back to Spike, oblivious to the saliva that was pooling in the man’s jaws at the sight, like a hungry wolf licking its wet maw as it came across prey. When Spike looked down he could just see Liam’s arse, sweet cheeks resting on the bath step, distorted by the ripples of the water. Liam sniffed, hunched over and started putting the hair cream on his arm like soap.

 

Spike looked up and snorted in laughter, snapping out of his examination, sliding a little closer and grabbing the jar away.

 

“Not like that,” Spike said smiling, wolf contained for the moment, “Like this.”

 

He tipped the cold cream contents on Liam’s head, making the man hunch over even more in surprise, his shoulder blades pressing up against his skin in bone wings, dips and rises of his spine so beguiling that Spike couldn’t do anything but reach out with and brush down the bone with his fingertips. Liam fidgeted but didn’t pull away. He wrapped his arms around himself and drew his knees up, silently letting Spike’s fingers creep into his hair and start to scrub the sweat and dirt from the dark strands and scalp, cleaning it with the hair cream. Liam sniffed a little, trying to be soundless but not quite managing in the dull quiet of the bathhouse. He accepted the bareness of the contact without resistance, trying to comfort himself with the touch of someone else, Spike could tell. He understood that urge, to be close to someone, to be touched with hands that weren’t your own.

 

His cock swelled as he massaged his fingers against Liam’s skull, in his long slippery hot hair, his head bowed and trusting as he sniffed and panted in the sadness he was trying hard to hide. It was a weakness, something very unprotected, it was that heart Liam was talking about. Something inside him, something fragile. It simply didn’t happen in the Union. Vulnerability wasn’t bred into them, death was a part of life and they knew that. When Union soldiers were killed they were mourned, but not like this. Not in crying that everyone could see, it was foolish and it didn’t help anything. Pity slid hotly through his stomach as Liam angrily swiped some tears away, sighing furiously at himself.

 

Liam pressed his face hard into his hands and held his breath, his ribs expanding to contain it. His steel collar swung from his neck. Spike slid comforting fingers through his hair, making a frothy mess of the cream.

 

“S’alright,” Spike murmured.

 

Liam breathed out slowly, little ragged sniffs still tremoring through him. Spike’s hands grew bold and slid down the flat planes of his big shoulders and then around his slippery hot waist, drawing him in his emotion-weakened state closer, easing him along the slippery bath step towards his more than hospitable body. Liam looked over his shoulder, almost pleading to be comforted, still boundlessly gorgeous with his sharp dark eyes swollen and his nose red. He was bigger than Spike, seemed bigger when they were so close together, naked like this, his broadness and muscle shiny to Spike’s eyes. His short brush eyelashes were in little wet clumps and he watched piercingly as Spike braved running his fingertips up the slippery hot smoothness of his arms, feeling the hard muscle underneath his touch. He could smell him, the spice of the soap on his skin, the sweet cream that had turned to clear slickness in his hair.

Spike didn’t take his eyes off the dampened heat in Liam’s unflinching eyes. He was entranced, he was a snake rising to a flute as Liam watched him over his shoulder, his tear reddened lips parted. Spike’s hand cautiously slipped up his back, resting heavily against the nape of his neck. Liam’s eyes closed, his brows drawn, lips set unhappily.

Spike leaned closer, so slowly, afraid of scaring him away, approaching a hurt animal as the water lapped around them both. His fingers hesitantly brushed along Liam’s cheek and chin, watching the eyes flick open, looking worried now, meddling with the dark brown sadness. He ran the backs of his nails down Liam’s neck, teasing the delicate skin with softness around the cold ring of steel. “S’alright… shhh,” he whispered softly, getting closer to the heat of him, easing him with a sibilant hiss. Warmth rose from his tan skin, baked from the fire inside him, it made Spike’s stomach clench with shuddery lust. Fingers curling around his strong jaw, he softly guided Liam closer, leaning forward, pressing his chest against Liam’s slick shoulder as he arched to slip his lips down against Liam’s waiting mouth.

 

Their lips met and Spike’s eyes slammed shut as the sweetness of his prize sizzled through him in hot bursts. His lips were soft, they tasted like sweet cake to Spike, and hot, so fiery hot, oven hot inside, slipping through his fingertips and up his nose and bubbling his mouth and Spike’s heart was thudding like a drum in his ears as he claimed the victory over the weakness in his beautiful strong herder-beast. The surrender. Surrendering his heat and lips and soon his body to everything that Spike was, bowing his righteous head to feather light lust kisses. Wanting to be covered with Spike.

 

When his other hand rose to feel the slope of his flat cheek, Liam stood abruptly, water raining down from his long body and splashing Spike’s chest and face as he sat dumbstruck, his hands falling from the too-large sprite into the water. Liam hurriedly went to the exit, long wet body cruelly teasing Spike for a moment as it retreated, slick lean thighs and arse shiny in the oil lap light, before he wrapped a long thick towel around his shoulders, covering himself chest to knees. He stood at the doorway, tense; his back turned to Spike, hair dripping creamy water in small rivers down his skin.

Spike didn’t move, utterly confused. Liam shot a furtive glance over his shoulder, quickly hunching back into himself when he saw Spike watching him.

Spike stood up, feeling the water slide down his body and off his swollen prick, the thudding of his heart beating a heavy tattoo in his eardrums. He strode to Liam, grabbing his arm and turning him, following his wilting motion and pressing him against the damp wood wall, rising against him, naked and lusty with his hands splayed out on the wall either side of Liam’s hot body, trying to kiss his passion, kiss back inside the tantalising heat even as Liam turned his red-blushed face away like a frigid boy. A free forearm suddenly slammed against his chest and shoved him back, arms cartwheeling as he fell ungracefully to the floor. He stood up in an instant, grabbing a towel and winding it around his naked waist quickly.

 

“Stop,” Liam said, looking nothing more than irritated, his cheeks flushed deeply, eyes jumping around the room, refusing to rest on Spike.

 

Spike felt his own face reddening, his stomach and lust liquefying in embarrassment. What had just happened? Liam… Liam had rejected him? He shivered, suddenly cold in the hot room. They stood stiltedly, in an awkward bubble, not meeting each other’s eyes. Spike snorted a sound out. How could Liam…? His resolve hardened. Liam didn’t want him? Well too bad, Liam had no say.

He could feel himself going icy inside, the hurt from the rejection slowly dimming as plans of revenge filled with cold mud in its stead. Liam didn’t want things the easy way, that was fine, he’d do like every other Union man and he’d show him who was in charge here. He’d been too lenient. He was a herder- a pretty herder, but a dumb bloody wanking farmer from the arsehole of the country and he’d beat him into line, prepare him for his life now.

He glanced at Liam with steel eyes, seeing him fidgeting a little, his big, long fingered hand up playing furiously along the edge of the collar, the fire inside him burning something different.

He’d just take him, Spike decided maniacally. Who was he to turn down Spike? Gotta teach them how to be, teach him what comes of the choices he’d made. There was no place in the new world for stubborn farmers who thought they were equal.

 

Liam’s eyes suddenly glanced up quickly, eyes filled with kindness as they danced across Spike’s tense face.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, soothingly, as gentle and sweet as Spike’s touches had been, his words ghosting across Spike’s skin with warmth and sparking it alive.

 

His tone was nothing Spike had heard before. The idea that he’d apologise for that, and mean it, was so foreign to Spike he couldn’t act. Liam’s dark gaze melted the ice so easily inside him before settling back down on the bathhouse ground.

 

Spike blinked, stuck in the moment like he was glued, the ground seeming to lift up and turn ninety degrees before settling under him again, making his brain clogged up and foggy and facing the wrong way. His thoughts left his head. He couldn’t remember a single one.

He felt cold and hot at the same time. Spinning and still.

 

“Don’t worry about it,” he managed in a garbled mumble.

 

Liam watched the ground and nodded. His wet skin drew Spike’s eyes. There was nothing but the drip drip of the water. Liam looked at him, saw him staring and met his gaze almost challengingly, the softness gone from his demeanour, or hiding deep down.

 

“Stay,” Spike said, surprising himself. “Wash your hair.”

 

Liam watched him warily before nodding, face unreadable.

 

“A servant will come for you,” he continued, no longer looking at his dark eyes, his eyes on the door, wanting to leave the hot bathhouse and all the strangeness in it.

 

Liam stood still for a thoughtful moment before stepping past Spike, unafraid. Spike watched the door, hearing the quiet splush of water as Liam slid his long body back into its welcoming embrace. Spike turned, seeing him under the water again, the same alluring frond of dark hair spreading like silk under the surface. Spike dropped the towel and hurriedly pulled on his pants and boots, heading out the door as he grabbed Liam’s chains, feeling like he was walking backwards. He shoved his shirt on over his head in the cool afternoon air. What had happened? What had just passed? Why was he leaving his toy unguarded again? It made no sense but he continued anyway, feeling unsettled, his feet leading him away from the slippery hot beast cavorting under the water like nothing had happened, forgetting for the moment that it wasn’t free.

 

Spike blinked, walking through the small clean garden. He wasn’t chained… Completely against Union-

 

“You,” he said roughly to the man brushing one of the horses in the stable.

 

The man looked at him, a large circlet of collar around his thick neck. He was dark eyed and olive skinned, he came from mountains before that collar was put on him, his nose was a sharp beak on his face, his hair was coils of black. “Yes, m’lord?” he said meekly, eyes averted.

 

Spike thrust Liam’s chains into his hands. “Give him ten minutes,” Spike said, indicating the bathhouse, “then bring him back to the fourth floor, third room. Got it?”

 

“Yes,” the man said, ducking his head respectfully.

 

Spike pushed past his bulk, catching the confused look etched into the lines of his face. He shook his head, entering the inn once more and stomping upstairs, shoving past the soldiers that were descending the steps, glaring at them for daring to get in his way. His mind felt popcorned and swollen. He needed –

 

“Spike?”

 

Spike swung around, coming face to face with Penn, the man smiling at him with his small lips. Spike frowned, feeling back to front in his skin. “What is it?”

 

Penn’s eyes widened. “Oh nothing. It’s good that we’re headed back now, isn’t it?”

 

Spike blinked at him, unimpressed, before raising a prodding eyebrow.

 

Penn’s eyes quivered around him, searching for some conversation. “You’ve… been … quiet, around camp.”

 

“Have I? Maybe I’m just bored of all of it.”

 

“You want to get home.”

 

“Yeah, who doesn’t?” he asked in a snarl, all his confusion from Liam and the bathhouse was just turning into irritable anger.

 

Penn nodded. “Oh true, true.” His fingers came up to scratch at the stubble on his chin. “Want to step in for a drink?” he asked indicating a door across from Spike’s, smiling, buddying up to him, “got some spiced wine from Vara Town.”

 

Spike’s eyes narrowed. Spiced wine sounded good. Something hot, something to soothe the twisted ache in his gut. He nodded and Penn grinned, turning around and unlocking the room. Spike followed him inside, eyes immediately snagged by the figure inside, slumped and broken and bloodied, a bony heap in the corner. It was a man, a thin man, with long dark hair, longer than Liam’s was, straighter than Liam’s was too. He was a prisoner, he wore a thick collar around his lean neck, chains around his thin wrists and ankles, locked to the wall and when he looked up as the Union men entered the room, Spike caught sight of burning black eyes above a broken red slash of mouth, before the prisoner looked back to the floor. The eyes… that fire, Spike could see Liam burning in the man’s pained gaze. What should have happened to him, for his wilful nature. Broken and bloodied…

 

Spike blinked.

 

Penn’s boots echoed over the cheap wooden floor as he went to the small cupboard of personal effects and pulled out the wine, uncorking the bottle and taking a deep whiff, sighing out through his teeth. “So good, spiced wine,” he said inanely, “it’s one of my favourite drinks.”

 

Spike grunted in acknowledgment, eyes still on the dark haired prisoner. His shirt was stained in blood, his ragged fingernails crusted with it.

 

Penn turned around, two thick glasses of wine in hand and saw Spike eyeing the crumpled pitiful animal in the corner of the room. Penn turned to the man as well, sipping his wine as he handed a glass to Spike’s oblivious fingers.

 

“You like?” Penn said, as if they were admiring some fine art. “One of the other prisoners from Seget Town.”

 

Spike sipped his wine and cast a scrutinising look at Penn’s face. “Did you break him up like that?”

 

Penn laughed, snorting into his spiced wine. “He’s defiant. Not an attractive quality for anyone,” he confessed gleefully, “he can’t cast slander on the Union now, not with a broken jaw.”

 

Spike sipped the wine, feeling it burn down his throat and in his chest, sparking his heart. “You should wrap his jaw,” he said smoothly.

 

“Why?”

 

Spike couldn’t take his eyes from the dark head. “He’ll work better when he’s transferred.”

 

“Oh, I’ve already asked for the transfer. Cut out the work, he’ll just stay with me. Commander says it’ll be fine.”

 

A little seed of heat settled in Spike’s brain.

 

“I’ve grown quite fond of him, actually. Specially now that he does what he’s told.” There was a certain appetite in Penn’s tone that Spike’s trained ears picked up on. Lecherously, Penn licked his lips at the prisoner who refused to look up.

 

“What’s his name?”

 

Penn looked at Spike blankly for a second before he squinched his face up in thought. “Uh… Sar or something. I’m gonna change it.”

 

Sar looked up slowly, catching Spike’s gaze before looking away. He was obviously in pain, trying to hide it, broken mouth swollen with it. Penn wandered over to him, sitting down on the bed and reaching out with one hand to pet along the straight dark hair, carding it away from his battered face almost lovingly. Sar put up with it, closing his eyes.

 

“I’ve seen yours,” Penn mused, smiling at Spike, “He must’ve been more cooperative.”

 

Sar looked up at Spike with thinly veiled hate. His dark eyes were distant and almost crazy with disgust. The look prickled under Spike’s skin, itching, so much so that Spike had to crack his neck to keep the twitches creeping up his spine at bay. He could see Liam there, so easily. He smiled wanly at Sar, narrowing his eyes. “Must’ve been.”

 

Penn laughed and Spike joined in, watching the dark eyes flutter shut. He sipped his wine but he couldn’t taste it, almost sputtered on it, like his mouth was numb in sympathy for Sar’s bruised and swollen jaws. He abruptly set the half-finished wine onto a sideboard with a clatter, the liquid sloshing around inside.

 

“Thanks for the drink,” Spike said, brows drawing together.

 

Penn looked disappointed as Spike turned to leave. “Join me for a dinner downstairs tonight? The inn is doing a specialty roast, for the victory over the upper mountain towns.”

 

Spike caught the clenching of bruised lips from the quiet prisoner.

 

“Come on,” Penn said, grinning widely, “you enjoy a good leg of lamb, I know that.”

 

“Maybe,” Spike said, opening the door and stepping into the hallway, jerking the door shut behind himself.

 

He stayed, leaning against the door for a moment, hearing Penn murmur to his chained guest through the thin wood. He felt strange, all over again and he rubbed at his eyes in vain. He’d seen prisoners beaten before, of course, worse than the prisoner in Penn’s room… but for some reason, the dark eyes, the knowing dark eyes were burned behind his eyelids.

 

He walked across to his own rooms, stepping inside to see Liam, bath fresh, his wet black hair pulled back into a tie. He was standing, his wrists chained right up against the strut in the wall so he couldn’t move around or even sit down. He looked over his shoulder when Spike entered with his big dark eyes and then quickly looked back at the wall. Spike felt only a slight flame of embarrassment as he remembered the rejection in the bathhouse but it soon extinguished. He walked over to Liam, dressed again in his ill fitting clothes, released and locked his chain to the strut again with much more slack, giving him enough to walk around if he wished.

Spike was quiet as he did it, not making eye contact; dark eyes were filling his mind at the moment and he didn’t want more looking at him. Spike rubbed fingers across his brow and turned away, walking to the small washbasin in the room and slapping some cool water on his face.

 

The air was heavy. Liam wanted to say something; he could feel his presence itching to talk. Spike looked over his shoulder to see Liam hurriedly flicking his glance away, so obviously watching him. He wiped his face with the dry towel.

 

“Thank you,” Liam said suddenly, in a burble of noise. Spike looked at him, in the corner. The shirt was straining over his wide shoulders. “For letting me wash… alone.”

 

Spike raised a dark eyebrow. “You should be thankful,” he said strangely.

 

Liam’s brow crinkled in confusion and he looked away. He stayed quiet for a little while, and sat down on the floor. “It was decent of you,” he added quietly, looking at the dusty floor.

 

Decent of him. Spike watched him, his eyes refusing to leave his sitting body until Liam started to twitch and grow uncomfortable with the silent scrutiny. “I should have beaten you,” Spike said lowly, feeling alien, acting like he shouldn’t.

 

Liam looked up in surprise. “What?”

 

“You should be bleeding now.”

 

Liam’s eyes widened a little as he almost imperceptibly drew his large frame back into the corner. “What?” he parroted.

 

Spike frowned, looking out the window at the blackening clouds drawing together in the sky. “But I didn’t.”

 

He suddenly strode across the floor, boots thumping towards Liam’s curled up body. He closed his fingers around the joined cuffs on Liam’s wrists, pulling the startled man forward, their noses brushing in the eerie calm, staring into his wide eyes, seeing the dark brown iris contract around his dilating pupil, so close, so close he could see his eyelashes and the pores dotting over the bridge of his nose. He smelled like sweet soap.

Spike’s mouth grew wet with excitement. His belly started to tighten and swell with lust. He smelled fresh, hot, his pupils were kitten wide and he was breathing against Spike’s lips. Spike’s mind suddenly vomited up the image of Penn lecherously licking his wet lips at his bloodied prisoner and he pulled away, dropping Liam’s hands, swallowing. He turned to the door, standing still, trying to process. It was getting all mixed up. He wasn’t like that. Penn was a rabbit, he was probably trying to impress somebody by torturing the prisoner, or maybe it made him feel like a big swinging general to do it. He wasn’t like Penn. Liam didn’t have a scratch on him. He didn’t need to. But then … shouldn’t he? For … having a will? For being difficult? For disobeying like a stupid dog?

 

He could hear Liam breathing behind him.

 

This was bothering him. He couldn’t think, all his ideas were jumbled up inside his head, pushing at each other and letting nothing through. He scrubbed his hands along his scalp and turned around, wild-eyed.

 

Liam frowned up at him. “Are you alright?” he asked, actually concerned.

 

Spike’s mind took another free fall. Why was he… Liam… he was a prisoner! And why did he care - this was all so-

 

“Spike? You don’t look so well…” Liam said, standing up and slowly edging towards him, big gentle hands cuffed together and still outstretched to offer solace. Why was he doing this? He didn’t understand Liam a single bit. “Maybe you should lie down for a second, you’re probably just light headed and-“

 

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” Spike yelled, pushing the hands away.

 

Liam looked wounded for a second before his face hardened into sharp lines. “Fine!” he huffed, rolling his eyes. “Be a little idiot then.”

 

He went back to his corner and sat down, setting his back childishly to Spike’s form. Spike stood in the middle of the room and slowly got the jumbled yarn threads of his mind back under something resembling control. He felt shaky. Inside. He wasn’t doing what he was supposed to. He was letting Liam do whatever he wanted, pretty much, and he wasn’t correcting his behaviour. He’d been taught to do that. He understood it all, he knew why it wasn’t a good thing to let a slave do whatever he wanted. He was a slave. A prisoner. He wasn’t supposed to do these things Spike kept letting him do. Letting him bathe alone. Letting him push him down after refusing Spike’s advances. Letting him show disrespect over and over. Penn’s slave… Penn was doing it right. The prisoner was obeying him now.

 

Penn could do it right and Spike couldn’t? What was happening?

 

He cast a glance at the stubborn herder beast sitting cross-legged in the corner, smelling sweet, his hair tied loosely behind his neck. Spike could see a pale soft sole of long foot peeking out from under his thigh; long toes curled over and tense. He wanted to apologise, wanted to slap him and feel the stinging of his cheek against his palm, wanted to taste the soft lips he’d tasted only a second of in the bathhouse and wanted to throttle him with the collar he hated all at once. The thoughts tried to crowd a little but Spike turned them away.

 

“I’m leaving,” he said in a deathly cold rasp, “Don’t move from that spot or there will be pain.”

 

Liam looked over his shoulder, unimpressed. Spike scowled at him, walking over, grabbing a fistful of his wet hair and pulling his head back, forcing him to look up. Liam’s chains cluttered as he moved. Spike felt a little better, a little stronger, when he saw the flicker of uncertainty in Liam’s eyes.

 

“I mean it.”

 

He let the hair go. The world wasn’t so out of step anymore, the confusion that had swamped him was receding. He smirked. He felt a little better.

 

He breathed out steadily.

 

He needed wine. And beer. A lot of it, to drown out the dregs of chaos still lingering. It was just Liam’s influence; he was a strange thing. He made things difficult, made them twisted with his twisted stubborn logic.

 

Maybe he should get rid of him for a while, he pondered as he left the room and the breathing hot thing inside. Maybe he should put him back in the carts for a while, instead of keeping him. That would probably be the best idea. He nodded sternly as he slipped down the stairs, ignoring the little voice inside that was pointing out Liam would get hurt in the prisoner carts, too attractive to not get snapped up by the other generals or lieutenants who wouldn’t take his disobedience on an amusement level like Spike did. He’d get beaten. Probably raped, probably roughly. Maybe even get his tongue cut out of his skull for the things he said. He couldn’t imagine his darkly pretty creature without a tongue. Couldn’t hiss and spit his fired up arguments in that smooth deep voice. Couldn’t amuse Spike by licking food from his fingers. Couldn’t kiss…

 

“That’s not your problem,” he hissed to himself, glad no one was around to hear him talking to himself. “Stop being a tosser and get a bloody drink.”

 

---

 

Chapter Five – Cae.

 

 

 

 

Spike downed another huge mug of weak beer, chugging it into his belly as the sound clamoured around his ears. Some men next to him cheered him but Spike wasn’t even listening. His thoughts were occupied, no matter how he tried to twist them away.

 

He caught one of the barmaids around the waist, a girl with light blue eyes and red hair pinned neatly back under her barmaid hat, smiling at him with reddened lips. Her dress was down off her shoulders and the ties were loose and inviting up the front of her heavy breasts. She was plenty drunk herself in the celebrations and she was light on his knee as he downed another mug.

 

“You’re a gen’ral,” she said grinning drunkenly, “And you’re bit of alright.”

 

“Am I?” He asked, leaning his heavy head against her cool bare shoulder.

 

“Did you kill lots of the uncivilised up in the mountains?”

 

His eyes closed against her sweet skin. He shook his head a little. “Don’t like killing… really. Like to fight. To win.”

 

“I’ll bet you do,” she laughed, “And you won!”

 

“I did…” he said thoughtfully, bringing his face up from her back and resting his chin on the wing of her shoulder, the drink clogging up his mind. “I won.”

 

Her tapered slim fingers slid up his cheek, creating a little lull in his mind in the din of the tavern. The trail lightly slid along his nose to between his eyes, softly sweeping along his brows. “And what type of Union girl would I be, not to congratulate you?”

 

His eyes opened and he looked into heated smirking eyes. She was so pale. When he raised his hand to sweep it across her creamy shoulder their skins were almost the same colour. She raised her eyebrows at him. “What do you say? Or do you have a little woman back home?”

 

He shrugged, and giggled as the sweet feeling of drunkenness rushed through him. “I doubt I could please you now, my little beer bird,” he confided, laughing as if it were the funniest thing in the world, “I’m too drunk.”

 

She snorted loudly. “What kind of words are they, then? Are you not a man?”

 

Liam’s dark eyed fire filled his head, the way he’d looked as he’d turned away from Spike’s advances and pushed him to the floor in the bathhouse.

 

“Not tonight.”

 

She looked at him strangely, then laughed and stood up, flouncing off to find some other soldier to congratulate for their crushing of the mountain towns. He suspected she’d be lucky.

 

He stood, his bladder twitching and full, urging him to find somewhere to piss. Sooner rather than later. He stumbled through the drunken rowdy crowd; blinking rapidly to try to clear the fuzz from his vision, not realising he was quite as drunk as he was until he toppled a few steps on the swaying floor. His head was filled with beer and foam. He giggled and fell against somebody, who helped him stand again in the ruckus, sending him on his way.

 

He held onto the wall for support as he tottered down the hall, heading in the direction of the johns, or at least he hoped he was. He pushed open one door and saw the stables and turned back to his quest. He moved down the hall a little more and saw the open door to the toilets, cheering himself for his victory as he stumbled in and leant his shoulder against the wall.

 

There were already a few men lined up at the wooden bench along the far wall, and he lurched up, flipping his cock out and aiming for one of the cut out holes in the bench as best he could, one hand bracing himself against the wall so he wouldn’t fall in.

 

“You’re celebrating hard, General,” one of the men next to him said, smiling.

 

Spike grinned back at them. “Beer tastes good, though.”

 

The men laughed. Spike tried to clear his mind as he finished, wandering over to the basins on the floor, almost sliding over in the water mess on the floor as he dunked his hands into the bowl and cleaned, wiping his hands on the towel and knocking it off its hook clumsily as he moved away.

 

He ran into Penn in the hall, who smiled at him with small teeth, “Spike!”

 

“Penn,” he said, going to step past.

 

“Have a drink with me.”

 

Spike shook his head a little. He pointed in the way of the toilet, almost stumbling over as he did. “I just pissed out all my drinks.”

 

“All the reason to have more!” Penn curled his arm around Spike’s waist and led him back to a small table next to the wall, seating him down in a chair and pouring him some stronger wine.

 

“How much have you drunk?”

 

“A lot,” Spike grunted, downing the wine.

 

Penn filled his glass again for him.

 

A woman shrieked suddenly and Spike looked around. “What was that?”

 

“Just a prisoner,” Penn said, downing a glass of his own wine, “a few soldiers are fooling around in the stables. So, what are your plans once you get back to Alla City? You have lands near there, don’t you?”

 

Spike nodded distractedly. The noise of the tavern was starting to irritate him, make his head bubble, from the inside. He scrunched his eyes shut.

 

“So near Totten then? Or closer to Hinder City?”

 

“Closer to –“ he frowned, the noise needling the backs of his eyes, so different to the quiet of the mountains, or the thump of horse hooves, “to Totten.”

 

Men’s voices, yelling and hooting, a din only broken by the few female barmaids. They all sounded like rabble, like a chatter of beasts, snarling insanity, bouncing off the low ceiling and into Spike’s head.

 

He stood up, knocking his knees on the table. Penn said something but he didn’t catch it, instead walking outside, filling his lungs with air that didn’t smell like beer breath. He breathed deeply; swallowing gulps of it as he stood on the inn’s steps, out in the cold night.

 

There was hardly anyone out on Palso’s streets now, except the rattle of the wind. The bar across the road seemed to be trading as noisily as Palso’s Golden, and the inn down the street looked just as noisy, a soldier and a maid slamming out of the place, kissing furiously as they walked around to the outside steps leading up to the inn’s higher levels.

 

Spike blinked, feeling fresher in the open air, less caged. He breathed and decided to take a walk, stumbling up the steps to the streets, almost falling but catching himself at the last minute. He could taste the beer on his breath and he laughed. He was drunk. So drunk. He knew it.

 

He wandered around the side of the Golden Inn, glancing up for a moment at the top floor. He smiled, remembering what the top floor held. Smooth skin, heat so hot the long body couldn’t contain it properly, let it out in glares and hisses. “Herder beast,” he murmured lowly, “I’m coming for you, pet. You’ll be all mine…” he looked around dopily. “As soon as I remember how to get up there.”

 

He squinted at the building. There were stairs somewhere, he was sure of it. He laughed at himself. “Drunken tosser.”

 

He stumbled a bit longer, smelling the smell of horses, strong smell, of horsehair and horse shit and the sweaty tack that went over their backs and in their mouths. He heard a horse’s hooves and then the strange, out of place whimper of a girl. He blinked, wandering over to the connected coop.

 

Entering the gloom of the stables, his nose twitched with the scent of the big animals and he paused to pet a grey one on its large snout. “Good horsie…” he whispered, giggling as it snorted at him, big nostrils flaring.

 

“Who’s there?” A male voice grunted from somewhere behind him.

 

Spike squinted, turning away from the horse, wandering over to the noise. It was coming from the stable office. He walked along the night stables, past all the restless horses that neighed and whinnied at him, and he entered the office, pausing in the dark doorway. It was lit by a single weak oil lamp and in the gloom he managed to make out four men, in various states of undress, standing around the table. The keys and tack on the walls glinted in the dim light, as did the wet dark eyes of the naked girl on the table. Everything stopped as he entered, halted, even the dust threads in the air, all stopped and waiting, like the instant before a powder keg blew.

 

He wavered drunkenly in the doorframe for a second, trying to put everything together in his head. The girl watched him inertly, like a doll, her long black hair hanging off the table like rippled flowing water.

 

A man, who had one big hand around the neck of the girl and his other on her fleshy bare tit, spoke first, breaking the frozen state with rough challenging words.

 

“Sod off.”

 

Spike frowned at him slowly, the words sinking into his mulled brain and settling for a moment before he answered. “You sod off.”

 

The girl watched him, her eyes as big as the horses in the stables, the white of them shown all around her iris, her mouth red and trembling. She looked so scared, even Spike could see that in his advanced drunken state. Her body quivered, sunned and smooth and something inside him, something hot, flared in the back of his throat and he frowned, unable to move away from her when her eyes were so scared. It was too cold to leave her like this.

 

“Nally,” the man said as he jerked the girl’s face back to look at his own, “take him outside.”

 

Spike’s eyes stayed on the girl. She whimpered again as another man moved over, stroking her dark hair back into his fist to hold her head in place.

 

Nally, Spike guessed, slipped his serpentine cock back into his pants and moved over to him. “Let’s go outside,” he said, grinning wolfishly, curling an unwanted hand around Spike’s arm.

 

Spike stabbed a thumb into his eye and he fell down screaming. Spike stepped in further, feeling the light of the lamp spill over him. The first man who’d spoken gazed at him in shock, before registering the blue band around his arm. His mouth fell open in fear.

All three remaining men suddenly dressed, shoving themselves away and buttoning up amidst rushed murmured apologies.

 

Spike walked up to the table, his clumsy feet tripping over themselves only once as he approached the girl laid out like a food offering in a temple. She didn’t sit up, only looked at Spike with fear in her big brown eyes before she started crying.

 

Spike frowned, that strange back-to-front feeling coming again, swelling up in his chest. “Sit up,” he ordered as the men stayed silent.

 

The girl paused, sucking her quivering lip in between her teeth as she slowly rolled to sitting on the table, hunched over, eyes on the floor.

 

“Where are you from?” he asked, his voice slurred.

 

She started crying again, but managed to speak in a high pitched cracking voice through shivering lips. “Rollet.”

 

Spike scrunched his face up, trying to remember when the regiment went to Rollet. It was a while ago. “What’s your name?”

 

Her big eyes flicked up nervously, her nose and forehead flushed red with tears. “Sea.”

 

“Sea? Like water-sea?”

 

She closed her eyes, completely still for a moment before shaking her head minutely. “No, it’s spelt c-a-e,” she said, her voice in the same slightly rolling tongue as Liam used, a lulling accent, each tone slipping easily into the next. Alluring, it made him think of the herder beast upstairs and he smiled.

 

“Lieutenant Kay gave us this one in celebration,” one of the men said.

 

“Tell Lieutenant Kay,” he said, garbling the words like he had food in his mouth, “not to give the prisoners to foot soldiers.”

 

Cae slipped off the desk warily, bending down with all the speed of an elderly man to grab the red tattered linen dress from the floor, shoving it over her head and pulling it down before warily looking at Spike again. Spike’s head bubbled and he felt sick, wincing as he forced the feeling back down. He left the men and heard Cae following him quickly, on light feet.

 

He turned, almost falling over a stray bucket, but she caught his arm and pulled him straight again. They stood staring at each other for a moment. “Thank you,” she said in a voice that was broken and dead.

 

Her accent sounded like Liam, but Liam would never speak like that. He had that fire. This girl didn’t have that.

 

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

 

Spike frowned. “… you looked scared,” he said, surprising himself at the same time as the girl.

 

She took than in, her red lips tightly together, dark eyes scanning up the side of the stables. She looked at him bleakly. “Am I to stay with you tonight?”

 

He grinned. “I already have someone, although he won’t warm my body at night, but he will soon.” Did that make sense? He tried to explain. “He’s up there.”

 

She looked confused. Her hair was a black mess on top of her head, knotted and wild and flicking up with the slight trapped wind that blew through the stables. She blinked rapidly, “Can you take me back to the prisoner carts then?” she asked in a soft voice that Spike almost didn’t hear.

 

He looked at her. “I don’t know where they are.”

 

“I do.”

 

She held him up as they walked along the streets, to a large inn at the front gates of Palso City, one of the men watching the carts jumping up when he saw Spike enter the stables where they were kept.

 

“Did she get away?” the man asked, confused.

 

“No,” Spike said, feeling a little less drunk now, a little more sick.

 

Cae turned to him as the man quickly moved off to open the prisoner carts; her red wet mouth pursed with emotion. “You’re not like the rest,” she said urgently, before a cart guard grabbed her by the collar and hauled her away, her light feet pedalling against the ground.

 

“The rest of what?” he mumbled after her.

 

One of the guards came over to him, peering at his face and filling his vision with pale skin. “Where are you staying, General?” he asked.

 

“Golden… Something. Top floor. I forget what it’s called…” he thought furiously. “Golden Inn?”

 

The man nodded, “I’ll walk you back sir.”

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Time was strange. Liam had sat on the hard floor of the inn room and done nothing, hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken, hadn’t really thought anything for hours, and the time still passed. Keeping up with people who were actual beings instead of just unthinking fluff.

And then, after a void, he was suddenly aware. His eyes saw, even though they’d been opened the whole time, that the dusk was settling in the unlit room, becoming a darkness shroud around him. A blanket covering the window and not swaying for anything. The light was purply blue, a calm soft colour and his skin looked very pink beneath it, and softer, almost unreal. His heels were pressed into the floor, his feet felt rough and callused and achey, even though he hadn’t been walking around so much for the past days. Stomach gurgles suddenly bubbled his belly and he winced as his gut tried to eat itself. He was so hungry he couldn’t remember not being hungry, what it felt like, or the days soon after Seget’s falling, when he hadn’t thought he could ever eat again. Now he wanted it, he was salivating just thinking of food, meat and bread and cheese…

 

He let the back of his head rest against the wall.

 

His hands had been in chains for days, cuffed together, and it was so frustrating that he couldn’t move his limbs properly. He’d go to do something as mundane as brushing his hair back and realise how bulky and unwieldy his arms were when he couldn’t move them separately. His wrists felt restless in the thick cuffs, like they needed to move, to work, and stretching his fingers just wasn’t helping. He wanted to stretch his hands to either side of himself as far as they could go and actually work the muscle but he couldn’t.

When Spike had taken the chains off in the bathhouse, it had been bliss; he’d felt more himself and more free than he had since it had all started. He was starting to take a long-term view of things, there was before Seget fell, and after Seget fell, and everything about him was in those two sections. He felt so different to the person he’d been before. It had only been … maybe a week? Liam didn’t even know. Felt like an age.

 

He was tired. Couldn’t sleep too well all chained up in knots.

 

The sky darkened even more, thicker, heavy, teasing rain but never letting it fall, a sort of limbo state between day and night and dry and wet and that suited Liam fine. It matched his mood. Unknowing. Indecisive and doubtful. Not really feeling like any evening Liam had felt before, what with the not quite impending rain hanging thick in the air. By all means it should have been pouring, but the weather didn’t match the sky.

 

Liam twisted his neck and looked behind himself, out the window. The sky was the colour of sucked, blue-dyed, boiled candy. The wind was chilly but the day wasn’t. Liam squinted at the ambivalent sky. The clouds were almost purple themselves, and low to the ground, heavy, in long puffy wind-raked lines. He couldn’t really hear much noise anymore. He was in a dark, purple tinged bubble in this room. Maybe he was dreaming this, all this. With no noise and purple strange sky it suddenly seemed very possible. Some sort of outlandish nightmare. Had he thought that before? He had sudden brain fogging memories of thinking that he was living out a nightmare.

 

A sharp sounding sparrow suddenly shot past the window, tweeting loudly, catching Liam’s attention instantly, making his body tense from fingers to toes in shock. It flapped down and sat on the windowsill, looking at Liam with bright bead eyes, moving its small head in jerky motions as it watched him. A flap of brown and white feathered wings and it hopped into the room.

 

Liam’s body relaxed. “Hello…” he said softly, “lost your way?”

 

The tiny bird watched him intently and then hopped a few steps, pecking at some lint on the dusty wooden floorboards. Liam watched it as it did its little hopping steps, working its way over to the small washbasin in the room, where Spike had scrubbed his face. It jumped up on the rim of the small tin basin and stuck its tiny pointed beak in the water remaining, drinking it with twitches of its head.

 

Liam chuckled lightly, not wanting to scare it away, “have you done this before, have you?”

 

The bird continued to drink. Liam watched it with glazed eyes, surprised that such a little thing could adapt like this. It was probably a lot easier to drink from that basin than the River Manna, all sorts of animals went there, all sorts of predators for a small fluffy headed sparrow. It sipped rapidly, ruffling it’s feathers up so it was a little ball of soft fluff on two stick legs perched on the washbasin until it had it’s fill. The small bird hopped down, pecking about hopefully on the floor for a moment, looking for crumbs before rising up in a quick flash of feathers and speeding out the window, leaving Liam alone again.

 

He watched the window where it had exited for a little while, almost envying the small creatures its freedom, freedom to come and go as it pleased, to take to the sky as it wanted while he sat chained to the wall, his wrists and arms itching to move as normal, his neck chafed a little from the metal collar around it. He sighed, feeling the nibbling sadness eating at his fingers and toes like guppy fishmouths, trying to get into him, trying to pull him down into the slump. He sat up straighter to fend it off, hearing the chains clinking along the wood floor in little heavy tinking noises. He could hear his breath passing through his nose in the room’s emptiness. He felt so alone.

 

Spike would be back soon, he thought suddenly.

He would, and hopefully he wouldn’t be in the strange mood in which he’d left. Liam had simply decided the odd Spike that had been talking about beating him was simply Spike not liking the fact Liam had … well. Not kissed back, Liam supposed. The kiss had been stagnant in the back of his mind, what it meant. Spike obviously… wanted him. Was that why Spike… is that why he was with Spike? In his carriage and in his room? It made him a little nervous, thinking along those lines.

 

Is that what the man, Sid, had been talking about when he’d sat with the other prisoners? Is that what the tension had been with the girl and the soldiers? Is that what the girl had been crying about? He didn’t really want to think about all this. Spike couldn’t want him to do anything like what he was thinking. They were enemies. Liam was kept in chains and collar on the hard floor like an animal and that didn’t really make him swell.

 

But that whole scene in the bathroom had been so strange.

 

Every time Liam had been kissed in his life, he’d always had some sort of idea that it was about to happen. With Cordy quite a few times, before she coupled off with Doyle. With Del, when the two boys had been out in Seget’s forests in the late night.

Liam had only ever played around, he’d never actually found a partner. Probably because he was busy raising Kat and expanding their fields. Cordy had moved on to Doyle after their heated kisses and meetings in his home when Kat was gone hadn’t progressed anywhere. He loved Cordy, but he didn’t need her that way and was glad for her when she’d met Doyle one day in Vara Town and proceeded to meet up with him.

Del had waited for him for a while; almost a year after their last mulled wine fuelled grunting tryst in the soft grass near Seget’s lake, before he too had found someone, a man from one of the mountain towns he saw often when he travelled, finally realising Liam loved him as a friend and nothing more. The two were set to become partners in the cooler months, Liam had never actually met him, but from Del’s proud joking, he was meant to be quite -

 

Liam suddenly closed his eyes, heart thudding painfully. No ceremony. No Del. Not anymore. He cried out like he’d been slapped, tears springing to his eyes as the realisation settled heavy in his stomach. He remembered how Del had looked that last time near Seget’s lake, skin chilled by wind and hard and tan, flesh smooth, whispering something in Liam’s ear as they’d lain down, a farm roughened hand curling around Liam’s slowly. He had big eyes and a thin nose that was always reddened and peeling from too much sun. He was always so cautious when they took pleasures from each other, ignoring Liam’s laughed begging and moving so gently that Liam had always thought his body would burst with lust from cock to chest before they even got started.

 

Liam jerked in almost physical pain as the earnest thrusting he remembered suddenly gave way to the last time he’d seen Del, the soldier pushing the sword into his belly, blood coming out his friend’s mouth. It all mixed together, blood and kisses and screams and his lazy broad smile as they lay side by side, all of it mushed into one idea, just Del, a whirlwind, and Liam was struck dumb with it, how his body could torture him like this, putting his most precious memories in together with things that made his heart gulp in sorrow. He cried out again, a little whisper of a cry coughed up from his lungs as he buried his face in his knees and tried to keep it all inside. He didn’t want to let it out, even though he thought it may well tear him apart, he had to hold onto it. It was his life. His eyes watered threateningly as he pushed his face deeper into his curled up knees.

 

He started as a boot toed roughly into his thigh, a surprised gasp filling his lungs.

 

He looked up, seeing white blond hair and shiny light eyes in the suddenly dark room. The purple dream state of evening had fallen quickly towards night while Liam was lost in his thoughts.

 

Spike watched him with all the cold impassivity his Union species could muster; his full lips tightly pressed together, bright eyes shiny and iris-less in the dark. A shadow passed over the room and his captor looked out the window, his face suddenly illuminated into a pale glow when the clouds passed, leaving the moon to shine across him. He was always so pale. Something so different to the warm smiles and sun coloured hands of Liam’s life, he was something unreachable. Liam blinked up at him.

 

“What?” Spike grunted. His lips were dry and his breath smelled of heavy beer and meat.

 

Liam frowned. “What?”

 

“What?” Spike asked, his face scrunching in annoyed confusion.

 

“Never mind.”

 

Spike slumped on the bed clumsily, peering at him. Liam ignored him, turning his face to the wall, uncomfortable, pushing thoughts of Del out of his mind. He just wanted to be left alone for a while. Just a little while.

 

“What?” Spike suddenly grunted again.

 

Liam shook his head, fed up; “You’re drunk. I don’t know what you’re asking.”

 

“What’s wrong?” Spike finally elaborated.

 

Liam glanced at him, raising a sceptical eyebrow. Spike was impossible to read; he was just watching Liam. “My cuffs-“ Liam lied, “I need to stretch my arms.”

 

“You can.”

 

“Not properly,” he said.

 

Spike watched him for a little longer before rolling off the bed, drunkenly, and kneeling before him, next to Liam’s feet, his eyes not leaving his captive’s face. A loose smile curved his lips almost tiredly. It wasn’t forced, or a smirk, it was something more human than that. It was a drink-silly smile. Liam was stuck on that. For some reason it seemed strange that Spike could fall to something as human as drink, that he could get drunk. He was always so… sure in his power. How could the man that had held him down on the main street of Seget, a general of the Union, get pissed? It seemed like such a human, normal, thing to do.

 

“You want me to loosen them?” he asked, and even though his eyes were unfocused, that same harsh cunning animal look remained in the blue.

 

Liam felt wary. He nodded though, keeping his eye on the drink bleary predator in front of him. His gaze was shiny and glazed, he had a foolish smile that kept tipping his lips and Liam would have smiled at the sight if he weren’t so tense.

 

“I want to kiss you,” Spike said blurrily as Liam nervously sucked a lungful of air in, “I want to kiss you because you have dark eyes.”

 

“No.”

 

“No what?”

 

“No, you can’t kiss me.”

 

“A little one?” he asked, the same drunk foolish smile taking the edge off his usually cutting demeanour. “I’ve been so good to you.”

 

“Really,” Liam said, unbelieving.

 

Spike nodded. “I haven’t fucked you or nothing,” he smiled again, his eyes closing for a little longer than they should, “Haven’t slapped you around.”

 

“You spanked my arse,” Liam said, his voice hardening.

 

Spike laughed in a cloud of ale smelling breath, his heavy hand coming down to rest on Liam’s thigh. “Bloody good that was.”

 

Liam shook the hand off. “You keep me in chains.”

 

“Gotta learn your place.”

 

“At your feet?”

 

Spike’s eyebrows raised and he closed his eyes again, dreamy smile on his face. “I’d like that.”

 

Liam turned away from him, eyes on the wall, smelling the sweet beer in a fog around him. “You’re just like the rest of them.”

 

“Not what Sea said,” he retorted snottily.

 

Liam frowned at the wall. “And who’s sea?”

 

“The girl,” Spike sighed, flopping onto the bed again, closing his eyes. “I took her away from the soldiers cause she was scared.”

 

Liam snorted. “Well, where is she?”

 

“She wanted to go back to the carts,” Spike yawned sleepily. “So I walked her… to wherever they were. The carts. Maybe she walked me.” He giggled.

 

Liam sat up a little straighter, turning to look at Spike suspiciously. “You helped her?”

 

“Yeah…” he mumbled.

 

“Why?”

 

“Told you, tosser, she was scared. You mountain people really can’t understand the simplest things, can you?” He rolled his eyes exaggeratedly before smiling again. A brilliant smile this time, his teeth glinting, skin near his eyes crinkling easily.

 

He shuffled closer to Liam, ignoring or not noticing the way Liam shrank away from him into the comfort of the corner. Long fingered hands suddenly curled around his waist and Liam cried out indignantly, trying to push the sticky things off with his elbows, his cuffed hands of no use. One of Spike’s hands worked its way under his shirt and splayed flat against his belly, sucking the heat from him with his wind cold fingers, running light nails across the trail of hair that snuck down Liam’s belly to under his waistband. Spike sighed happily, feeling his flesh and Liam grunted in anger.

 

“Don’t.” he warned, suddenly going still, glaring at the wall across from them.

 

Spike giggled and squeezed the small round of softness over his belly, his thumb sliding over Liam’s belly button. Liam cried out, irritated, and slid his elbow down against the limpet hand, trying to knock it off, eyes widening in embarrassment when all he succeeding in doing was sliding it further down into areas he did not want the hand going. Fingers were pushed under the waistband of his loose pants, brushing along the dense curls beneath and Liam jerked, curling around himself tightly, his face in his knees again in sudden reaction. Spike snorted, leaning close and kissing his jaw, lips tickling him under his ear.

 

“Hey!”

 

Liam snapped. He leaned back and head butted down against Spike’s face, slamming his forehead against Spike’s cheekbone with a clunk, feeling the hands around him go limp and slip away as Spike fell back. Liam’s head throbbed over his left eye, aching at the point of contact and he tried to shake it away, bracing himself for repercussion.

 

Spike fell back onto the floor beside the bed in a huddle. “Ow!” he suddenly yelled out, holding his palm up to his cheek, pressing hard against it. Liam could see him just, in the shadows, squirming about.

 

“That fucking hurt!” he roared.

 

Liam smiled smugly.

 

Spike’s fist lashed out and drove into Liam’s hipbone, making him cry out and take a swipe at the thing lying next to him, instantly incensed when his punch was felled by the chain lashing him to the wall. He grunted in frustration, getting up on his knees and trying to jerk the chain away from the wall, again, some more.

 

Spike hauled himself up to a sitting position once Liam was occupied, wincing in the low lit room, pressing his fingers against his cheek and then drawing them away to look to try and see if he was bleeding. “Cor,” he hissed, pressing his hand against his cheek again, “is your head made entirely of bloody stone?”

 

Liam watched him closely, eyes narrowed. Spike hauled himself up onto the bed, still pressing against the pain in his cheek. He suddenly chuckled tiredly.

 

“More bloody trouble than you’re worth,” he grumbled, laying down on the bed, “should just put you back in the carts.”

 

“Good!” Liam said calmly, adrenaline still thumping through him, making his body shaky; “I want to go back there. I want to be anywhere you’re not.”

 

“Really,” Spike said, unimpressed. “Want to be starved, do you? Want to be available to anyone? Want to be killed for all the bloody sass you give?”

 

“I should have died in Seget.”

 

Spike suddenly stood up, striding over to the chest and grabbing his sword in a smooth motion, turning back as Liam’s heart rate became scared-mouse quick. He shrank into the corner as Spike approached, slamming his eyes shut as the sword flashed out to his neck, almost pissing himself as he felt the blade against his neck.

 

Then nothing.

 

He couldn’t breathe properly; his mouth was all dry, sucking all the air from his lungs into his swollen tongue and gums. He opened his eyes, looking up the length of the silver sword to see Spike’s impassive face above him, like a malevolent spirit looking back down at something small and mortal beneath it. The point of the blade barely brushed his neck, stopped just before it slid into his vulnerable flesh.

 

His heart was a fluttering bird.

 

“Do you want to die, Liam?” Spike asked softly, face unreadable stone, “because I’ll do it for you.”

 

Liam’s skin was openly sweating. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

 

“Do you?” Spike demanded, still a little drunk but sober enough to know what was happening, and how close Liam’s life was to the point of the sword.

 

Liam’s eyes watered.

 

Spike’s lips tensed. “Do you?” he yelled.

 

“No,” Liam hissed, unable to meet the gaze anymore, his eyes rolling to the floor in shame.

 

The sword slid away from his neck and he heard Spike slide the steel across the floor away from him as he knelt down at his feet. His chin was suddenly grabbed in icy fingers and yanked forward, eye to eye, breathing Spike’s breath.

 

“If you don’t want to be put down like a dog, if you want to live, you have to start obeying the rules.”

 

Liam pushed all the emotion from his face, leaving it an expressionless mask. His heart was slowing down but still fast under Spike’s grip.

 

“I know how things work,” Spike said, “and if you keep acting up,” his fingers tightened, “if you ever, ever, slam that big fucking noggin of yours against me again, I will shove you back in the carts and leave you for dead. And you don’t want to die that way, tongue and eyes cut out and body left for whatever those soldiers can think of to do to you, right?”

 

A cold chill ran through him from the fingers as the images played darkly in his mind. Tongue cut out …?

 

“No…” he shook his head lightly in Spike’s hold, his resolve swaying.

 

The fingers loosened their grip, lingering against his skin before slipping away. “Good pet.” Spike stood up, slumping onto the bed and rolling away from Liam. His body was still although it emanated energy in throbbing waves. “Now sleep.”

 

Liam sat against the wall, staring into space, his mind a whirlwind of eyeless, tongueless bodies. He shivered, colder in the already cool room. His mind was filled with bloody mouthed corpses and it made his stomach flip.

 

“Spike?” he asked after a little while.

 

“What is it?” Spike answered.

 

“Do … does the Union really cut people’s tongues out?” he asked, a hushed whisper in the room, almost too fearful to ask.

 

“Yeah,” Spike said after a thoughtful pause. “That and worse. That and much worse.”

 

Worse. His spine felt frigid, like the wall was made out of snow and Liam fidgeted a little, trying to settle, feeling a little sick, still hungry, still not rested.

 

His mind fretted. “Have you ever done th-“

 

Spike cut in before the sentence had even fully formed. “No. Go to sleep.”

 

Liam sat in the dark quiet a little longer, lost in it all, a new layer of unease and anxiety suddenly sitting on his shoulders.

 

“Spike?” he asked the darkness as the wind started to whistle outside, “Do you actually like the Union?”

 

“I like being a general,” he said stiffly, “in an army. I like to fight, and I’m good at it.”

 

Liam took that in and then frowned. “That’s not what I asked, though. I asked-“

 

Spike cut in with a razor cold voice. “Sleep, Liam.”

 

---

 

Chapter Six – Sweet Meat Pastry.

 

 

 

 

 

Spike made his way into the dining area, the wide sunken room still stinking of booze and smoke from the previous night. Or maybe the early morning. A few soldiers were sitting around enjoying breakfast, but Spike didn’t acknowledge the ones that saluted him, just continued over to the counter through the dull noise and chatter.

His head was throbbing. Shards of early morning light abused his eyes with daggers and his squinting helped but the effort to keep his eyes half closed was wearing him out in his limited energy. He wanted water. And some food, eggs, eggs and bacon, and a lot of it, thick greasy buttery food to line his stomach. His stomach growled appreciatively.

He rested against the counter heavily, his elbows on the wood, and waited for the serving maid to come over. She smiled at him brightly, eyes pale blue and almost bleeding into the whites around her irises. Spike’s mind was making all the images blur around the edges, and he shook his head, hissing as he instantly regretted the action.

 

“What would you like this’morning, Gen’ral?” she perked.

 

“Eggs, bacon, sausage,” he grunted, “tomato, everything.”

 

She penned it down on a messily inked parchment, “I’ll bring it to your room when it’s ready,” she grinned.

 

“Make enough for two,” he added as an afterthought.

 

Her light full lips twisted as she tried to hide her smile. She averted her eyes. “Yes sir.”

 

He turned back, hobbling weakly under the weight of his head, making him way to the stairs and starting the arduous burden of climbing them.

 

“General Spike,” a man’s voice called up agfter him.

 

He stopped, the tone of the voice striking familiar chords in his brain and turned around on the landing, his face set in a frown. One of the other generals, a small man called Dalton came rushing up the stairs after him. He never fought in the battles, he was more behind the fights, planning and buying supplies and following the real generals like a dog. Spike watched him with distaste.

 

“What?” he grunted, stomach rolling a little with last night’s rancid liquor.

 

“We’ll be leaving today, at two,” he said looking up at Spike through his glasses, his small chest puffed up with importance, “Commander asked me to tell you.”

 

“Well done,” he said with false sincerity.

 

“So…” Dalton said.

 

“What?” Spike said roughly.

 

“The prisoner you’ve got…” he said leadingly.

 

Spike bristled immediately, the back of his neck prickling. “What about him?” he asked dangerously.

 

“We’re leaving the bulk of the prisoners here,” Dalton said quickly, “Commander said if you’re not keeping him then you should leave him here for reassignment. Commander Heas is coming to Palso City next week sometime, and then going south-east to Mount Webster to the new slave camps there with their own takings.”

 

“And who decided that?”

 

“Commander got a message from Commander Heas last night. So we gotta get all the … spoils… back in the carts for him.”

 

Spike thought furiously. He was too hung over to think about things like this. Did he really want to take Liam back? He had planned to amuse himself with the herder on the way back to Alla City…

 

“So… are you keeping him?” Dalton prodded.

 

Ah, hell with it. “Yep.”

 

“I’ll tell Commander,” Dalton smiled, “We’ve actually had a few generals take new servants.”

 

Spike turned, heading back up the stairs. “It’s the last tour for a while,” he said back over his shoulder to the man watching him rise.

 

“People are stocking up,” he added quietly.

 

Keeping his eyes on the ground he ascended to the fourth floor, panting a little with the throbbing pain in his head, under his eyelids, deep in the canals of his ears. It hurt. He wished he was back home, mornings after drinking seemed so much more bearable when he had his servant Gunn’s Unchartered lands hangover remedy sitting heavy and thick in glass on the bedside table, stinking of raw egg and chilli when he woke.

Gunn never told him how to make it, smugly smiling at Spike with his luminescent white teeth in his big brown smile as his owner downed the chunky red mixture quickly, trying not to gag on it.

 

“Damn him,” Spike mumbled, making his weak thighs work up the stairs. He could really use some of that foul magic cure.

 

Something in it made Spike’s eyes pop open, made his stomach calm and slowly eased the pain from his head, every time. Maybe it was magic. Gunn was caught in the Unchartered lands after all. Thinking of that started him thinking on Gunn.

He wondered what Gunn was up to, without Spike to pretend to serve.

 

He already had two servants back at his home, he didn’t really need a third. Gunn was a hugely tall dark skinned man that Spike’s regiment had managed to seize in the second battle down in the Unchartered lands almost five years ago. He looked after the grounds of Spike’s lands, at first refusing every single order and spitting at Spike, laughing at any punishment with a deep challenging chuckle. But his view of Spike had apparently changed. Gunn had fallen ill one winter and against doctor’s orders to just put him down, Spike had paid the hefty medical fees to heal him. Gunn had got better and suddenly started working, and talking, and had thanked Spike for saving his life. They were different around each other after that. Technically Gunn was Spike’s slave, but in reality, Spike knew Gunn was no man’s slave. And Spike admired that, to a degree. He’d never tamed him, Gunn had just decided he wanted to work.

His other servant was Wesley, a tall thin man from who’d refused the Union’s occupation of his land outside Alla City. He was older than Spike, probably almost five on thirty, and he was smart enough to obey orders as soon as he was registered with Spike. Maybe it was because he’d originally been placed with another General who obviously took great pride in disciplining his slaves. Wesley had a latticework of scars up his thin back, and never spoke to Spike with anything other than utterly polite submission. He obeyed Spike but he still held his decision to defy the Union in quiet regard, at least from what Gunn had told him. Blue eyed and pale with big thin hands, he mainly worked in the house, looking after any paperwork or contracts Spike had and overseeing his stables.

 

Though he hadn’t expected it, Gunn and Wesley became friends after an initial dislike and he often heard them laughing and talking together in their quarters, in hushed happy voices.

 

In his mind he compared Wesley and Gunn’s civil compliance to Liam’s brattish prideful rebellion and sighed. He supposed Gunn had been like that when he’d first been assigned. Probably even worse. Spike had to keep him in chains for months on end, he’d ripped out the leading chain from the ring that was pierced through his septum three separate times, had spat and bit and punched and kicked at every opportunity and hadn’t bowed down until he’d been shown some respect. And then he was fine. It was a little strange, but then, Gunn came from the Unchartered.

Liam was better than that, at least, he could talk to Spike even though it was a tone of misplaced disdain, and Spike could actually scare Liam, like he had the previous night. Spike sighed. He guessed it would be interesting, and it would give him something to do. He lived off Union pay when he wasn’t in service, and the pay was quite good so he didn’t actually work too hard.

 

Spike stepped through the door, seeing Liam’s long body scrunched up on its side asleep on the hard floor, his chained hands around the pillow his face was buried in. His shirt was twisted up over his almost flat belly and his pants had climbed up one slim brown calf. Spike stepped over silently and sat on the bed, watching him as he slept on obliviously. His feet were bare; his toes white and wrinkled with cold. Spike felt a little uneasy that he hadn’t given Liam a blanket on such a harsh night. Too drunk to think of it. Hopefully his herder was used to the cold enough not to get sick from it.

 

Liam mumbled a sleepy sweet noise into the pillow.

 

Remembering he’d been drunk last night suddenly brought back a slew of memories. He remembered the stables, the girl, the one he’d dragged away from the soldiers. He winced as if the memory caused him physical pain. What was he thinking? Of course those soldiers were going to go straight to their commanding officers, the snowball would roll along the lines and up the ranks to the Commander… and he’d ask Spike what the hell he was thinking. And Spike would have no answer. What could he say? He’d taken her away because she’d looked scared? Of course she’d looked scared, she was about to get her tail knocked by four drunken soldiers. That’s how it worked for prisoners, there was no pity, she should have accepted Union rule.

He rested his face in his hands. Bloody hell. He shook his head slowly. He’d have to blame it on the celebration.

Her big dark eyes flashed up in his mind, the way she’d been so small on the table, a smooth and trembling thing. Spike frowned. He shouldn’t have helped her. What was wrong with him? Chances were, those soldiers would go after the girl again, just cause they’d been denied. If anything, he’d made things worse for the silly bint. And himself. Fuck.

 

Spike stood and wandered over to the refreshed washbasin, grabbing the pot of powdered dentrifice and using a scrape to clean his teeth with the sharp paste it became in his mouth. He worked his teeth over with a toothpick before he spat the stickiness out and washed his mouth out with some flavoured wash.

 

Teeth cleaned he instantly felt better, wandering over to the sleeping pile of limbs on the floor and toeing it awake with his boot. Liam grunted and coughed a little as he woke, as usual, and Spike watched as awareness crept into his face and arms and legs, slowly growing more solid from their boneless sleep state. His toes wriggled. His head lifted from the inn pillow, sleepily slow, dark brush eyelashes blinking rapidly. “Hmmph?”

 

“Morning,” Spike said quietly, not wanting to disturb his sedate dull headache.

 

Liam sat up, deep brown hair in straggled waves down over one eye; half of it flat to his head. His lips were dry and the tip of the pink tongue that came out instinctively to lick them snagged Spike’s attention. Spike was horny. He hadn’t had taken pleasures for a while and it was doing funny things to his head. Just wasn’t right, had to have some sorta release just to keep everything working. Now his head was getting all back to front, and having Liam’s long hot limbs around him made his belly ache with temptation. He wished Liam were a little easier to get into.

 

But then, Spike thought wryly, he wouldn’t want him. Spike liked the challenge, he knew that.

 

Liam sat, rubbing the sleep from his eyes slowly, yawning and waking up, cracking the cricks from his neck and back from laying on the cold floor. He adjusted his collar, still half asleep, and pulled his errant pant leg back down to his ankle.

 

Spike watched him, half-dreaming.

 

Liam looked at him and Spike shook himself back to the room. “What?” Spike asked.

 

“Did you wake me?” Liam asked in his scratchy morning voice, blinking dopily.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Liam looked at him. Spike smirked.

 

“What for?” he frowned.

 

“Do you wanna clean your teeth before we go?”

 

Liam frowned, trying to get his mind to decipher the too hard words in his morning brain. He nodded, standing up accompanied by a few more creaks of bone. He rolled his large shoulders, letting his head fall back, showing off his tasty long neck with its sharp bump of larynx and Spike stood up, stepping closer under the pretence of fiddling with Liam’s chains, letting the smell of Liam’s warm skin wash over him as he unlocked him from the wall.

 

“Can I have the cuffs off?” Liam asked, dark eyes skating around the doorframe, not looking at Spike’s face. “Just to clean my teeth?”

 

Spike cocked his head, scrutinising Liam’s profile. Dark eyes flicked to him and held his gaze.

 

“Alright,” Spike said, “Seeing as you asked.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

He unlocked the cuffs and tensed for a moment, ready to thrust his elbow up into Liam’s jaw in case he tried anything, but Liam just yawned up to the ceiling and stumbled over to the washbasin, stretching his hands as far apart from each other as he could.

Spike sat down on the bed, feeling like he’d been up for hours, watching Liam from the corner of his headachy vision.

Liam cleaned his teeth, scraping them vigorously, completing the act twice before washing his mouth out with the flavoured wash. When he turned around, Spike could see him running the tip of his tongue over his freshly cleaned teeth.

 

“Come ‘ere,” Spike said tiredly, too tired to stand up, jerking his head a little to indicate for Liam to stand in front of him.

 

Liam slowly returned to him, obeying him with sleepy eyes, and Spike felt a sudden little thrill of power that tickled up from his balls and into his chest as Liam held his hands out, big pale palms upturned and gentle, for Spike to cuff him back up. The locks chinked into place and Spike felt the happy buzzing twitching at the sound, all furry in his lower belly. He wanted to pull Liam into his lap and pet his messy haired herder for being so well behaved but thought it might be a little too early for that.

Liam’s stomach grumbled, the sound easily heard in the room and Spike looked up at Liam’s face. Liam raised his dark straight eyebrows.

 

“Hungry?” Spike asked.

 

Liam paused, his eyes showing the furious thinking running behind them, and then he nodded.

 

Just then there was a knock on the door and Spike smiled up at Liam’s pretty face. “Good thing I got breakfast then. Open the door.”

 

Spike almost grinned when Liam turned and opened the door as he was told. Those stories must have really shaped up his attitude, Spike mused. That, or he was just grateful Spike took off his cuffs to let him clean his teeth. A maid stood behind the door, her face strained a little with the weight of her delivery, hands holding a huge tray with plates laden with hot food.

 

Liam saw the strain on her pale face and reached out and took it from her, juggling it carefully on his cuffed hands. “Thank you,” he said.

 

The maid sneered at him; her blue eyes haughtily amused that he had dared to speak to her. She raised her eyebrow and leaned past him as if he weren’t there. “Two serves of everything, Gen’ral?”

 

“That’s fine,” Spike said, standing up to relieve Liam of the tray before he dropped it from his unsteady hands. Spike set it on the side table and pulled out a coin, tossing it to the girl before closing the door in her face.

 

Spike turned back to the food greedily, grabbing a glass of orange squeeze and downing it quickly, the acidic burst helping him keep his headache dull and his mind more clear. He looked at the plates. Fire cooked sausage and fried potato, a mound of scrambled eggs, tomato, bacon, he licked his lips, picking up the overlarge tray once more and setting it on the bed, sitting down next to it and grabbing some bread. Liam hadn’t joined him. He looked up and saw the hurt on his face.

 

“Eat,” Spike said not unkindly, his mouth filled with buttered bread.

 

Liam slowly came over, sitting down next to the bed and grabbing a hot roll of bread and shoving some fried tomato and bacon onto it.

 

Spike chewed, watching him. He swallowed. “She knew you were a prisoner. Collar and chains are a big clue.”

 

Liam looked at him and raised his eyebrows. “I know.”

 

“Then what’s the hang dog look for?”

 

Liam frowned, biting into his roll before snagging a sausage and shoving it in the bread too. “I’m not hang dog.”

 

Spike grabbed another roll and forked a heap of steaming egg onto it, along with some tomato and fried mushrooms, sliced and black with cooked butter. If he ever came up to Palso City again, he was staying here. Good bloody breakfast after all that travel. The fresh taste of everything was almost good enough to get him stiff.

 

Liam looked mopey. Spike rolled his eyes. Liam really had to catch up. “She’s a Union girl. Can’t talk to them.”

 

Dark eyes flicked up under the sleep-messed hair, gaze sharp and heated. Spike smiled. Burning already. It’s a surprise he doesn’t burn himself to ash with all that righteous fire.

 

“She’s told not to talk to prisoners?”

 

Spike grabbed a bit of bacon, “You’re not an equal to her,” he said gesturing at the door with the slice of fried pig, “you gotta learn that.”

 

“I’m not equal? She’s not equal to me if she can just –“

 

“Look, there you go again. Stop it.”

 

“Stop what?”

 

“Stop that bloody whining.”

 

Liam looked offended, his lips drawing together and his eyebrows raising in surprise. “I’m not whining.”

 

“Live with the choices you made,” Spike said, crunching the bacon between his teeth in a salted burst. “What you just did to her, treating her like an equal? That’s enough to get you beaten.”

 

The sullen withdrawn look started to slip over Liam’s fine features.

 

“You didn’t know, but you do now. Do it again, you’re gonna get a smack,” Spike said conversationally.

 

Liam’s body tensed. He looked up, face set in rigid lines. When Spike met his gaze he looked away, out the window, barely reigning in his anger. He stopped eating.

 

“Eat,” Spike said.

 

“I’m not hungry,” he said, sounding like a child in a pout.

 

Spike’s teeth gritted together. That was bullshite of course, Liam just didn’t want it because Spike was giving it to him. Well too bad. Spike knelt up and leant over the tray, grabbing Liam’s wrist in his hand and yanking it, causing Liam’s eyes to look to him. “I didn’t ask if you were hungry that time,” Spike said, “I was telling you to eat.”

 

Liam smirked and it slipped claws of anger into Spike’s veins. “You can’t make me eat.”

 

They glared at each other in a silent, unmoving battle for dominance, Liam tense under Spike’s grip and Spikes fingers too tight around the wrist. “Can’t I?” Spike whispered coldly, eyes piercing Liam’s.

 

He let the wrist go and held his gaze, watching him even as he saw the slight flutter of confused wariness in the dark brown, even when Liam glanced down at the trays heaped with food. Liam closed his eyes and hissed something under his breath before grabbing more bread and egg from the tray.

 

Spike sat back triumphant. He’d keep this one alive yet.

 

 

*

 

 

After being stuffed with breakfast, Spike had disappeared for a short time leaving him alone. Liam wasn’t sure how long he’d sat there, but Spike had left him tied loose enough so he could sit on the bed with reasonable ease. He was so full, his belly distended a little and the room was smelling so warmly of bacon that he was about to drift of unwittingly back to sleep when Spike suddenly came back through the door, face impassive, the drinks from last night still obviously bothering him.

 

He moved around the room in his heavy leather boots, fiddling with the blue band around his mostly bare arm as he packed a few things away. Without looking at him or saying a word, Spike walked over and busied himself unhooking Liam’s chains before guiding him off the bed and out of the room. Liam followed Spike with his belly tight against his waistband, gurgling a little to make room for all the food. He hadn’t felt so full in a while and it felt good, sleepy good, but he refused to enjoy the warm comforting feeling of a laden stomach because Spike was the one that had made him eat.

It was all so silly really, he wanted to eat, he was hungry, but he didn’t want to at the same time because Spike was the provider and he didn’t want anything from him.

 

He’d think he’d only eat the bare minimum, just enough to keep himself alive, just enough so that he didn’t really enjoy the food Spike was giving him and then he’d smell the smell of it, and taste the taste of it, so fresh and spiced and seasoned, like Union soldiers couldn’t eat anything plain, and it would make his belly bubble with wanting and his mouth wet for it. And he’d eat the food, Union food, stuff himself with it and then he’d feel guilty for it.

 

Not so much this time, though, because he hadn’t wanted to eat it but Spike had made him. The food sat satisfying in his stomach and he could still taste bacon and sweet spicy sausage on his tongue, even then, as they walked out in the morning air.

 

They walked through the building lined, paved streets of Palso City, Spike’s pale fingers wrapped around his cuffs, and Liam knew he was seeing wealth. He’d never been to Palso City, he’d never been down the country further than Vara Town, but his parents had. They were always amazed by it and Liam understood why.

It was still early in the morning and there were people setting up tables of goods right there next to the many inns and bars. There were clothing stores, so many food stores, even one just for sweets, which Liam eyed carefully as Spike led him past the colour filled buckets behind the glass windows. So much glass everywhere. Not in the inns or the bars, drunks and glass didn’t go together, but in every store. And no matter where they walked they could see the huge walls all around Palso City, completely encasing the large city to protect it.

 

Spike led him off the main street and down another, and they stepped through a door into a clothing store, as a little bell jangled overhead. It was a big store, with a huge rug on the wood floor and a man with a thinly styled beard already hurrying over to them.

 

“General,” he said bowing, not looking at Liam at all, “May I once again say just how proud we are to-“

 

“My order,” Spike said roughly, his eyes blue ice.

 

The man’s eyes widened a little and he ran into the back room, through a swinging slatted door.

 

Liam paused for a moment and then turned to Spike. “He’s scared of you.”

 

Spike’s eyes stayed on the door as a strange grin curved his lips. “I’m a very bad man,” he said lowly, the first words he’d spoken to Liam since he’d left the room after breakfast.

 

Liam frowned. Spike wasn’t scary, well, maybe a little when he had blood on him or when he’d held the sword to Liam’s neck last night. Liam suddenly remembered that and glared at Spike’s ear.

 

The shop owner rushed out from the back room holding a neatly folded pile of cloth in his outstretched hands. Spike took them; setting them on the counter and holding each piece up to look at it. The first was a pair of black long pants, too long for Spike’s legs, which buttoned closed. The second was a sleeveless white shirt made of cotton, and the last was a thick, heavy looking long sleeved coat. Spike nodded, tossing some gold coins on the table and pushing the coat into a hessian bag that the man gave him. He gave the other things to Liam before unlocking the cuffs from his wrists.

 

He inclined his head to a small curtained corner. “Put them on,” he said, already losing interest and pulling one of his little tobacco sticks out, lighting the end. The shopkeeper watched him smoke with a hesitant expression but didn’t say anything.

 

Liam stepped into the curtained off room and slid out of the clothes Spike had given him before, glad to be out of them. They didn’t fit him properly and they were uncomfortable to wear. He warily put the new things on, reluctantly happy that these fit him perfectly. More perfectly than any of his clothes he’d ever bought from the travelling clothes seller that visited the towns every now and then.

 

There was a mirror in the room and he looked at himself. The shirt was tight, like the ones Spike wore, across his chest and stomach, clinging to him but not uncomfortably. Just different. He wasn’t used to that. Seeing his arms bare and the shape of himself easily through his clothes. His collar made a little curved bump under the fabric and he pulled it up and over the top, settling it back down.

The pants were loose, which Liam was grateful for, but they rested low on him and they went all the way to ground, just touching the floor around the sides and backs of his bare feet. Impractical, Liam thought, they were going to get dirty.

 

“You done?” Came Spike’s voice, floating through the curtains.

 

He opened the curtains and stepped out, watching Spike closely. His eyes widened a little, blue eyes bright. Smoke furled from his nostrils as he breathed out.

 

“That’ll do nicely,” Spike murmured. “I’ll take the other set too then.”

 

He set more money on the counter and the man rushed into the back rooms again. Spike’s eyes were on him, on his arms and chest and Liam frowned at him.

 

“What?”

 

“You should thank me for the present,” Spike said, surprising him.

 

Liam sighed. “Thank you,” he said insincerely.

 

The man came back out, holding grey pants and a black shirt, copies of the ones Liam was wearing. Spike took them; set them in the bag he was carrying and cuffed Liam again, leading him outside with a little dingle from the bell above.

 

They continued down the streets in a seemingly designless weave, the streets gradually getting noisier as more people filled them, as more stalls set up for the day. They walked past a procession of horses being led to the markets and headed into a smaller street, shops only on one side, pavers dotted along the dirt alley, shingles hanging down over doors set into the brickwork. Spike edged down and slid through a small doorway, leading Liam along behind him.

 

They entered the store, at least Liam thought it was a store, it didn’t seem to be selling anything, except something in a glass-covered table up the front. The store smelled strange, like musty herbs and it made Liam’s nostrils prickle. Spike stood Liam in the corner and walked over the echoing unpolished floorboards to the table, peering into it. A small man with short tufts of eyebrows came out from the backroom smiling with broken teeth.

 

“And what can I do for you General?”

 

“Bag of that,” Spike said pointing to something in the table.

 

Liam tried to peer at what Spike was buying but he couldn’t see. The shopkeeper disappeared out the back and returned soon enough with a tiny cloth bag of something. He passed it to Spike and Spike opened it, sniffed it, and then dropped a mess of coins on the glass-topped table.

 

“Thank you,” Spike nodded, smiling, tucking the pouch away into his pocket and taking Liam’s cuffs again.

 

“What did you buy?” Liam asked curiously as they stepped into the main streets again.

 

Spike grinned, leading him across the street. “Never mind.”

 

“What was it?”

 

Spike looked back at him, smiling, watching him with the same amused look he always wore. “You’re a curious pet.”

 

Liam narrowed his eyes. “Fine, I don’t care.”

 

“Good.”

 

He tugged him into a bigger store on the main street, a cobbler, shoes lining the walls and dotted around on tables. There were actually already a few men, and not just soldiers, in the store, trying shoes on. Spike pulled Liam over to the wall and peered at the shoes in their little holes and on the shelves. One of the few shop men came over to them, smiling. “Help you?”

 

“Yeah,” Spike said slowly, not taking his eyes off a pair of sandals with thick black leather straps, “That one in…” he looked down at Liam’s bare feet. The shop man followed Spike’s gaze and looked down at them too. Liam’s city-dirty toes fidgeted under the sudden scrutiny.

 

“A large?” The shop man said.

 

Spike nodded and the man scurried off. Liam turned to Spike. “You’re buying me shoes?”

 

“Yes. Can’t have you cutting your foot open,” he said, not looking at him, watching the people pass by the store’s large glass windows with little interest.

 

“I had shoes,” Liam pointed out, “I just don’t know where they went.”

 

“You didn’t have shoes that were as good as these,” Spike said.

 

Liam glanced at the pair.

 

That was true.

 

“My shoes were perfectly fine,” he grumped.

 

A soldier trying on boots glanced up at them at the words and Spike tugged on the cuff abruptly, jarring Liam’s arms with the rough jerk. Liam glared at him. The assistant came back out and showed Spike the shoes.

 

“Try them,” he ordered in a grunt, sitting down on a bar seat and closing his eyes.

 

Liam slowly slid his feet into the sandals, and tried to figure out what to do with the extra long straps. The assistant batted his hands away, shoving his pant leg up to his knee and weaving the thick black leather straps around his leg, stopping and tying them off halfway up his calf. “There,” he said to Spike.

 

Spike opened his eyes, looked, and nodded. “They fit?”

 

“Yeah, that’s a good size,” the assistant said.

 

Spike looked to Liam and raised his eyebrows. Liam glanced at the assistant and nodded.

 

“Great, those,” Spike said, standing. “Put the other one on,” he said to Liam as he pulled yet more gold coins out and gave them to the man.

 

“Thank you General,” the man smiled.

 

Liam had trouble tying up the shoes with his hands cuffed together and the assistant knelt and did it for him before Spike pulled him up.

 

They left the store, Liam’s feet cushioned by the leather as they walked down the hard paved streets. They were good.

 

“They good?”

 

“They’re shoes,” Liam said, all too aware he sounded like a petulant boy.

 

Spike snorted.

 

They walked in silence, the streets getting even noisier, even louder. A street stall selling clucking flapping chickens was noisy and smelling of chicken shit and bird feathers, a few Palso City women, light blonde hair and thin eyebrows were gathered round the window of a women’s clothing store, bags for market shopping around their crooked elbows. Spike led him along, the bag of clothing in his hand, swinging as he walked, his other hand occupied with Liam’s cuffs. Occasionally Spike’s fingers would flex and he’d stroke the soft underside of Liam’s wrist by accident. Liam’s shoulders felt tight from walking with his arms outstretched and his cheek had an itch he couldn’t scratch.

More stalls, more people. Pale relocated people, not real mountain Palso Citydwellers, fair people from Alla City who had moved in after Palso had been swamped and taken. He wondered if they all moved into people’s homes, into their stores. It made him sad.

 

“Spike?” he asked abruptly.

 

Spike, leading him, simply made a noise of acknowledgment, not turning around.

 

“What’s going to happen to Seget?”

 

Liam kept his eyes on the back of Spike’s neck, the pale skin there, under the slick white hair. He had a tiny white healed scar running up behind his ear, a thin spider web of an injury. Spike kept walking him, moving forward through the crowding streets. “People will move there and bring it back to life.”

 

Liam’s brows drew close together. “Will they move into the people’s houses? The ones that didn’t burn?”

 

Spike stopped and turned around. His eyes tracked across Liam’s face, up from his lips to his eyes. “I don’t know.”

 

Liam glared. “You know.”

 

Spike sighed again, a full body sigh as he looked up to the clouds. “Maybe. Maybe they’ll tear them down.”

 

Liam closed his eyes for a second, feeling them hot and wetting for a second. He regained composure. “Does that bother you?”

 

“It’s what will happen, you should have accepted the-“

 

Liam cut off his diatribe with harsh words. “I’ve lived in my house my entire life. My sister slept in the room across from me, I built the dining table, I buried our dog Dee out under the flame tree when he died of old age and I helped my father fix the fences. And someone, who doesn’t own it, or care for it, or even know what that means, is going to move in to my home and live there. Or tear it down.” He paused. “And if that doesn’t bother you, you have to be made of stone.”

 

Spike didn’t say anything. His pink lips tightened momentarily but otherwise his face didn’t shift at all. He stood blankly and his eyes stared at Liam, or through Liam, and he looked like a statue for a moment, just standing beautifully rendered on the stolen streets, before he turned without a word, fingers tightening around Liam’s cuffs, and resumed leading him down the street.

 

Liam’s lips trembled for a second and the food he’d eaten felt rancid in his stomach as it rolled unpleasantly. But it settled and felt good again as Liam’s lungs expanded in the hollowness he felt inside. He felt alone in this, no matter how many people were on the streets. Spike’s fingers flexed and brushed against the soft skin of his wrist again and he gazed down at the long pale fingers between his hands. His nails were flat and glossy when they moved into sight, pink, with a rim of curved white, longer than Liam’s were, Liam’s were chopped and broken down to the quick with ragged edges.

Liam’s own fingers brushed against Spike’s wrist and forearm as they walked, when he forgot to keep his fingers splayed away from skin. His skin was soft and smooth and warm. Moreso than Liam had expected. He’d expected it to be tough like scales, or stone, something different to what his own skin felt like, expected his pale, sunless Union skin to be rough animal hide. Instead it was soft and finer than his own, delicate enough to be able to see faint tracks of blue through it, like Kat’s skin when she’d been younger.

 

Spike turned down another street and Liam stumbled over a loose paver, grabbing onto Spike’s forearm reflexively to steady himself. Gathering himself he let the grip go like Spike was made of hot metal, pulling back dumbly, his cuffs sliding out of Spike’s loose grip. Spike turned, rolling his eyes, and grabbed him again, pulling him along in his wake.

 

“Why do you have to hold my cuffs anyhow?” Liam said grumpily.

 

“It’s what we do.”

 

“It’s stupid.”

 

“Because you’d never try and run, would you?”

 

Liam raised his eyebrows at the back of Spike’s head. “If I wanted to, run, right now… would you be able to stop me anyway?”

 

Spike stopped and turned around, “Yes. I would.”

 

Liam looked away, covering a smirk, nodding. “Okay.”

 

Spike watched him. “Why don’t you try running?” he said coldly, “and you’ll see what I do.”

 

“That wasn’t the point anyway, I just mean, if I was going to run, a loose hand around my cuff isn’t going to stop me.”

 

“That’s not the point either. The point is you’re mine, and I’ll walk you how I want.”

 

Liam bristled, stopping deathly still. “I’m not yours.”

 

Spike rolled his eyes and turned with a sigh, grabbing Liam’s cuffs again and tugging him forward. Liam held his ground with his heels in the ground. Spike turned around with cold blue eyes and tugged him again. Liam leant back against his leading like a balking horse.

Spike’s lips narrowed and he snapped his hand forward, quick, quicker than Liam could process what was happening, and held Liam’s wounded shoulder, pressing against it with enough pressure to twinge the healing site.

Spike had taken the stitches out, but it was still tender, would be for a long time and it twanged under the touch.

 

Liam tried to keep his face steady, even as the pressure increased. Spike pressed harder and he winced.

 

“Follow me,” Spike said, “Or I’m gonna pop my thumb right back through your skin like it was rotten peach.”

 

“Alright,” Liam said grumpily, jerking his shoulder away with a twinge of pain. “If you keep doing that it won’t heal.”

 

Spike stared at him for a moment and shook his head with a snort. He grabbed Liam’s cuffs again and pulled experimentally, smiling when Liam followed him. “Good.”

 

Liam’s shoulder was aching a little. He tried not to move it.

 

Suddenly a man was thrown from a shop door, practically flying through the air before he crashed and rolled to a stop in the street. Spike halted, his hand instantly dropping Liam’s cuff and grabbing his wrist instead, a firm warm grip of fingers surrounding it. The man was dressed in tattered smudged grey as he lay still, face on the ground, a prisoner wearing herder’s clothes, loose pants above his feet and a tunic over-shirt. His hands were cuffed together like Liam’s.

 

A large man stepped slowly out of the store behind him smugly, a soldier wearing most of his armour with a yellow band around his arm, his booted feet thumping in the sudden silence as he stepped to the man. A small crowd of Palso people halted in their buying and selling to watch, while others just kept walking, albeit silently.

The prisoner rolled over and looked up, scared, eyes wide. His mouth was leaking blood; it dribbled down his chin and dripped onto his over shirt, adding to the dark stains already there. His hair was wild over his face, but Liam could still see the bruises on his cheeks and forehead.

 

The soldier walked to him and stood above, looking down at him as the prisoner practically shook on the ground. The soldier suddenly let loose with a vicious kick to his side and the man fell to the floor, coughing blood. “Defy me?” the soldier roared.

 

He kicked again and Liam’s insides flamed with anger.

 

The soldier slammed his boot down on the man’s stomach, making him cry out like a wounded dog. “I should cut out your tongue for that,” the soldier hissed, obviously playing to the crowd, enjoying himself. He spat down onto the man’s face, grinding his heel into the prisoner’s stomach.

 

Liam stepped forward, face set grimly, ready to push the bastard aside, not thinking of anything, his mind was a blank. So numb from the display he didn’t realise Spike was pushing him swiftly into a side alley; his hand over Liam’s mouth as everyone watched the soldier beat his boots and fists down onto the man curled up on the street.

 

Liam was shoved up against a wall, his shoulder jarring. Spike’s face was pissed, set in harsh lines as it filled his vision. “What did you think you were doing?” he hissed.

 

Liam blinked, still shocked. “That man needed hel–“

 

Spike yanked him off the wall and shoved him back against it roughly. “He was a prisoner,” Spike hissed, strangely hysterical, “and he has to learn his place! If you had stepped forward, if you had breathed a word of objection, do you have any idea what would have happened? You big fucking moron? Forget being beaten on the street! They would have ripped you apart!”

 

Spike slapped him, not a hard slap, not aimed properly and half hitting his jaw in his sudden flaming fury. “Do you want me to hurt you? Cause that’s what it seems like!”

 

Another slap. “You ignore what I’m telling you, over and over! Prisoners have no rights. They can kill you, they don’t need a reason, and the only way you can live is by obeying every word.”

 

Liam couldn’t look at him, all the frustration and pity for the prisoner was building up behind his eyes and he thought he might lose it if he saw Spike’s incensed blue eyes again. Liam watched the alley floor. “Don’t slap me,” he said, his voice more sorrowful than he was hoping for.

 

“It’s the only way I can get things through your thick skull!” Spike said, grabbing Liam’s shirt in his fist, his voice sliding into higher tones, "I have to slap the sense into you.”

 

Liam stared at the floor.

 

“Are you listening?”

 

“Yes,” Liam said, his voice rough and ready to crack.

 

Spike was breathing heavily. “You could have died. Are you hearing me? They would have killed you. Or worse.”

 

Liam watched the floor, feeling his nose heat up, his eyes watering. His throat was tight. “Why are you telling me this? If you’re meant to kill me for things like that why don’t you just kill me then?”

 

Spike sighed. “I should,” he said.

 

Liam raised his eyes, watching Spike’s with all the heat burning inside him, knowing Spike could see it. He wanted to take every Union bastard down, and he couldn’t and it filled him with dust. “Why don’t you?” he challenged, sniffing. “You’ve killed people. I know it. And I’m just a prisoner; I’m nothing to you, right? I’m shit on your shoe, so just kill me.”

 

He didn’t know what he was saying, it was just growling out recklessly. He couldn’t even understand the words.

 

Spike’s fingers closed around Liam’s cuffs again, blue eyes searing Liam’s face. “I don’t want to kill you,” he said in a whisper, leaning close to Liam, “I don’t like killing. But I will if I have to.”

 

“Of course you will,” Liam hissed in the quiet alley, his heart beating rapidly, “my life depends on your mood, and you can do away with it as you wish.”

 

Spike eyebrows raised. “That’s right.”

 

“And if we were reversed? What if people had taken Alla City, your home, and made you a prisoner. How would you feel?”

 

“Pretty shitty,” Spike grinned, “but I wouldn’t make it worse for myself.”

 

“Wouldn’t you?” Liam asked him plainly, trying to find that human bit still inside him. “If everything you had was stolen from you?”

 

Spike didn’t answer, just watched him, so close to him. Liam’s heart was in his throat, and his breath was heavy and quick with emotion. He tried to calm; he didn’t want Spike to see it like he had in the bathhouse, see him weak and actually… try to be nice to him. It confused him more than anything did, and it mixed up his mind.

 

Spike was so close his knee brushed against Liam’s. Spike looked away. “Let’s go.”

 

Hand around his cuffs he guided Liam off the wall and out into the street. The crowd was gone, as was the soldier and his prisoner. But there was a puddle of blood on the street that Liam didn’t miss. He looked at Spike and saw him seeing the sad little puddle too, but couldn’t understand the man’s expression.

 

They walked; Liam kept up with Spike, walking close to him. He looked around, trying to see what became of the soldier and the prisoner, but they were gone. He noticed a few other soldiers walking with prisoners, male and female. Some were on leashes, connected to the hateful collars; being tugged around like animals with their hands pinned behind their backs. Most had blackened eyes or swollen mouths. Liam couldn’t look at them. It made him feel like he was falling.

 

He wondered why he didn’t look like that.

 

Spike led him around, looking at stalls, buying a few things but Liam didn’t notice, wasn’t paying any attention, walking around without his mind. It was off somewhere. Out of his head. And when he looked up again, he and Spike were walking out the enormous front gates of Palso City and over the grass.

 

Liam looked up and then back at the city encased in its huge walls. There were soldiers milling around out here, and some camps over near the edge of a small wood, along with the carriages and horses. But they weren’t heading to that. Spike led him over to a cluster of large slate grey rocks in the warm sun and sat them down, letting his few packages fall to the grass.

 

“What’s happening?” Liam asked dully.

 

“Too noisy,” Spike said, ratting around in one of the bags and pulling out some small boxes. “And you’re dead weight when you’re thinking. My arm was getting sore.”

 

He handed one of the smallish blue boxes to Liam and Liam frowned. He opened it and inside was sweet basted chicken with sesame seeds and clumped rice. His mouth watered and his stomach twisted with glee. He’d had this once, his parents had taken him to a fair at Vara Town and they’d had this. It smelled so good.

 

Spike was already eating his with a fork, gazing out at the woods in front of them with a distant expression. Liam watched him for a little while before turning back to the box. A little wouldn’t hurt. He pinched a bit of chicken and tucked it into his mouth, the sweet moist chicken tang exploding on his tastebuds and waking him up. He ate, licking his fingers of sauce and seeds and pretty soon had finished the entire box, not meaning to. He looked forlornly at it, wishing there were more.

He sipped the water Spike gave him and watched him finish his own meal. Spike put his hand back inside the bag and pulled out two round cartons, handing one to Liam before opening his own. Liam slowly opened the prize, refusing to get interested by it and failing when he saw the two sweet meat treats inside, covered in thick flaky pastry and dusted with black seeds. He loved sweet meat pastry. He’d loved it since he was a little boy. His stomach clawed at him to eat them and he dutifully bowed down and tore one apart, smelling the sweet pork inside and shoving it into his mouth. Sweet meat. And it was good, better than his usual ones, so much tastier, it grabbed his tongue with the flavour of it, so delicious he squashed the feeling of guilt he had and actually enjoyed it.

 

“You like sweet meat pastry.” Spike observed after a moment, amused, his eyes still on the woods.

 

Liam looked down at his decimated box. His stomach gurgled pleasantly. “A little.”

 

Spike glanced at him.

 

“It’s my favourite,” he admitted quietly.

 

Spike nodded. “I like it too.”

 

---

 

Chapter Seven – The River Manna.

 

 

 

Liam’s eyes blinked open stickily, sore and dry as he looked up at the swaying oil lamp on the dark ceiling. The oil had bled almost dry, and the flame was weak, swaying dim light over the carriage as they rocked along through the night. Spike snored softly in the bed, his breathing sounds floating down to Liam’s ears as he lay sweating on the floor, curled up and messy in his too hot nest of blankets and pillows.

 

He could hear the horses moving outside, the other carriages, the soldiers murmuring things in the late night as he tried to calm his breathing. His stomach was in knots. His fingers were gripped into fists.

 

Seget’s last stand filled his mind with vivid colours against the blackscreen of the dark carriage. The clang of swords, the smell of the blood thick in the raised dust and grit from the main street of the village. The feel of his heart pounding in his chest, wet and hard and insistently fast, thinking his body was in its death throes, in its last fiery moments of life. The cries of the killings, the cheers, the grunts and the weight of the armour tied around his body.

And then the smell of the burning wood as he lay pinned to the ground. The sound of the men gasping out their last mumbled words as they bled into the dirt.

 

In the dream they were mumbling to him, trying to call out for help, for him to help them but he couldn’t move. His friends, broken and wounded, reached out with bloody fingers and their gaping too-red mouths were sticky and wide for him.

 

His stomach flipped as the carriage lurched over a rocky patch of earth and he was brought back to reality, jostled, his chains clinking as he rocked in the covers.

 

He closed his eyes, black in black, and told himself it was just a dream. He felt sweaty and hot from the nightmare, and his forehead was crinkled with frown lines. Just a dream, remember, his mind hissed. Like when you were a little boy, and had nightmares about the evil spirits in the woods and the lake, just a dream, not real.

He kicked the heavy blankets off his body, offering his damp flesh up to the cool night air, closing his eyes wearily, a sigh hushing from his lips as the air caressed him cool again, drying the damp on his skin and turning it frigid. The sticky cotton shirt and pants clinging to him slowly started to unstick as he lay, still a little stunned from the bloodied nightmare.

 

Spike rolled over in his covers, the blankets whispering against each other as they settled back around his body. A few moments later a little snore rose up and quickly faded.

 

Liam lay uncovered, his throat rasping for water after his body had sweated all his moisture out. He blindly reached out under the bed; his seeking fingers brushing against the rough floppy bag that held his clothes and his water carafe. He shifted on the cushioning covers that Spike had covered his patch of floor with, and stuck his hand further into the bag, his wrists straining the links of the chain connecting him to the wall, the cuffs digging into his flesh. His fingers grazed the stoppered neck of the bottle and he yanked the bag closer to himself, reaching and grasping the prize in his cradling fingers, unplugging it and bringing it to him mouth greedily. The water slid coolly down his throat, replenishing the tissue with moisture and stealing away the rasp, some dribbled down his chin in his fervour, dripping onto his chest. He could feel the cold liquid travel all the way down his throat; down through his chest and into his stomach, an icy burst in his hot-tempered body.

 

He lay back in his cover-nest before the water had really gone down, aching a little as it bubbled and gurgled in his belly, but his body was tired from the restless sleep and he wanted to lie down. He pulled the comforting blankets back up around him and wriggled a little on the cushions and quilts his bed was made from, making a cosy Liam shaped dent in them so he would be surrounded by warmth. He wanted that, was still rattled from the nightmare, and the small comfort he got from being warm would have to do. He couldn’t see his loved ones, couldn’t distract himself with them or find solace in them, he was alone.

He frowned and pulled the covers up to his chin, the chain links chiming against one another dully.

 

“Liam,” Spike suddenly grunted from the bed, startling Liam, his voice sleep bubbled, “stop moving around.”

 

Liam lay still, listening to any sounds he could to see if Spike was getting up. He wasn’t, and soon the deeper breathing started again, deep peaceful restful puffs of breathing.

 

The blanket bed was comfortable, more comfortable than Liam’s bed at home, and pretty soon the slow rocking carriage made him sleepy in his quilt cocoon again. Liam watched the swaying lamp, its light even dimmer now, as it moved to and fro with the rock of the carriage, casting its fading light against the walls and ceiling in rising and falling waves.

 

 

*

 

 

When the carriage suddenly halted, Spike’s eyes blinked open immediately, like he’d been waiting for that moment so he could get up. He hadn’t, he’d been in a deep thick sleep actually, but when he swung his legs out to the cold outside his blankets, he was awake, suddenly and completely, even though it usually took him a while to slip his brain into function. He’d slept brilliantly, his dreams filled with the sight of Liam’s body in soft tight clothes, loose on his legs and low on his hips. In his dream he was watching Liam move around his home, stretch out on his bed or in his bathhouse in those clothes, showing Spike his lean long body from every angle, inviting and alluring, a welcome incubus as he reached out with big warm hands and slid Spike’s pants down his thighs…

 

He yawned, stretching his arms out and smiling as the muscles stretched soothingly, firing up for the day ahead. It would be a good day; he could already sense it. There were birds tweeting softly, overhead, as Spike scratched his stomach absently. It was cool, he was wearing a buttonless shirt and a pair of soft long housepants and they weren’t doing much now to keep the heat in his bones.

 

He hoped they were stopped near a river, he felt himself wanting to wash even though it had only really been a full days travel from Palso City and the bathhouses. Commander had wanted to travel through the night as well as the day, some sort of showboating of the troops in case Commander Heas sent a scout for their location.

 

The oil lamp on the ceiling was still swaying slightly, drunkenly. He’d forgotten to snuff it out before he’d fallen to sleep and it had run dry. He gazed at it stupidly for a moment before walking around the end of the messy covered bed.

 

Liam lay on the floor, on blankets and surrounded by blankets, curled up in the thick covers with his face buried into them. He was sleeping in a tight foetal curl and even though Spike could only see his messy dark hair splayed across the cushions, he looked very inviting. Spike sat on the edge of the bed, watching him as he pulled his thick socks and boots on over his freezing numb feet. He was unmoving, he was a painting of limbs under thick blankets, a human pet burying into warmth. The chain from the wall snaked down under the covers to wind around smooth wrists Spike couldn’t see.

 

Spike knelt down on the floor, crouching, hovering over the supine body and reaching up with one cold hand to brush the dark hair back from the face. Heat was baking up from him and it melted the chill in Spike’s bones as he pushed the hair back, seeing one high cheekbone and a closed eye with short eyelashes, and half a mouth, lips peacefully set together. He was breathing, his breath light and in the blankets, through his nose in little puffs. His collar arched up over his bowed neck. Spike leant closer to the heat, hearing the birds singing outside, and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, darting the point of his tongue out to taste the crease of lip and skin as he rose back. Liam didn’t move, didn’t murmur, just lay prostrate on Spike’s floor, unknowing. A little thrill flamed through Spike’s veins and he brushed his fingers back through Liam’s unruly hair.

 

It would be a good day today. He was glad he’d decided to keep him, and he’d find something for him to do at his home.

 

Liam made a little noise in his throat, flinching a little, waking up under Spike’s attentions. He blearily opened his eyes and raised his head, taking in Spike’s closeness, and the fact he was waking up, with rapid blinking. He coughed a little, as he always did, sitting up to finish the daily ritual, his blanket cocoon sliding down into his lap, showing the tight shirt was twisted up his stomach a little. Spike crouched; smiling at his peeking belly as it tensed as Liam cleared his throat with some grunts. He looked back up to his face and instantly noticed the heavy black circles under his eyes.

 

“Didn’t get a good sleep?” he asked.

 

Liam sniffed and looked at him blankly. He shook his head faintly, gazing distractedly down at the blankets over him. He cleared his throat again, like a singer preparing to perform, his fingers rising up to brush absently against the base of his neck, catching on the circlet of steel around him.

 

“Got circles under your eyes.”

 

Liam looked at him, blinking rapidly, all fluttering eyelashes. “Bad dreams,” he finally sacrificed, his lower lip being nibbled between his teeth. His eyes went a little distant, glassily gazing at nothing.

 

Spike watched him closely, his eyes narrowing a little.

 

“Dreams are just dreams,” Spike offered.

 

Dark eyes flashed up. “I know that,” he said in a hard voice. He faltered a little, “Must have been too hot or something.”

 

Spike stayed watching him. His lips were slightly down-turned at the corners. As he was watching his mouth, he was graced with a tiny show of pink tongue, coming out to wet his lips and making Spike smile like a wolf inside when the tip of his tongue slid over the corner of his mouth Spike has kissed.

 

“Should clean your wound,” Spike said suddenly.

 

Spike stood up, dragging out his medical case, watching Liam subtly gaze at the lacquered box from the corner of his eye. Liam liked it, liked the work in it. Probably hadn’t seen anything like that in his life. Spike smirked a little as he pulled out the small bottle of wash and some wipes.

He stepped back to Liam and knelt down on the blankets, reaching up and lightly pulling the thick strap of his shirt off his wide shoulder, hot skin against the tips of his fingers. He liked doing this, Liam innocently letting fingers run over him, never knowing that Spike’s insides were snorting and tearing for him to bend and maybe lick his skin, or brush a thumb over his nipple. So much more fun than forcing him, these sly little touches that Liam allowed. Liam gazed at the wall as Spike took his time cleaning the wound in his shoulder.

The wound was red, a little puffed but not infected; the stitches had held it together well. He stuck a small bandage over it, changing the wraps and cleaning it every so often. It wasn’t a big wound, only the very tip of his sword had really penetrated, but it was still long. About the length of Spike’s finger.

Spike gently curled his hand around Liam’s arm and guided it back, his other hand pressed lightly against Liam’s side, slyly feeling the bumps of his ribcage as he held him still. Liam moved his arm back, suddenly stopping as the almost knitted wound stretched.

 

“There,” he said, face pained.

 

“Bit further along,” Spike noted. “got more arm movement now.”

 

Liam nodded, flicking a glance to him. Spike stood and tossed the cleaning pads in the waste, closing up his case and sliding it under the bed.

 

“Right, I’m hungry,” Spike announced, slipping his coat on and leaving the carriage.

 

The procession had stopped in a big grassy clearing off the main passage. One of Manna’s offthreads ran along next to them, but was slowly starting to head away, towards the East Coast and the Low Sea. Means that they were coming out of the mountain areas and heading more into the Flat Plains. Alla City was on the West Coast, so they had to cross a little of the flats, although if they’d followed closely enough, they should have come out of Palso City already heading West, and Palso City was a day and a little away from the centre of the top of the Flat Plains.

 

Spike’s brain laboured as he stepped down onto the grass, walking to the head of his carriage and patting down Cab’s nose.

 

They’d probably head down into the flats more, to trade off some footmen to the big regiment settlement in Delph Crossing, so… by Spike’s quick calculations, they were probably about a month and a half off Alla City. And that’s if they moved like the wind and kept going. Which they wouldn’t.

 

He sighed. Bloody Hell. He felt weary just thinking about it.

 

He wandered deeper into the camp, past the few carriages and supply carts. He could smell food, and hear noise. A burble of it. He followed it, getting past the carriages to see a big markets set up near the edge of a small village at the end of the clearing. Lots of people, lots of coloured stalls and bright fabrics. He made his way across the long grass towards it.

 

The markets were stuffed with tired soldiers, bartering for food and live chickens. It was a big markets, maybe anticipating the return of the soldiers, but there were more civilians there than would fit in the small town. Maybe the markets serviced a few of the towns above the flats.

 

“Buy a clucker, gen’ral?” an old woman asked him in a loud voice, startling him. He turned to her, seeing her holding up a flapping white chicken.

 

“A clucker?” he asked, frowning, “no.”

 

She wandered away and he headed towards the food stalls. Only thing worth his money here. He didn’t want rough made dolls and fraying clothes.

There was a food stall selling cheap wine and he bought a few bottles, just because he thought he might need some drink. There was store selling flamed chicken skewers and they smelled good. He bought a few sticks and the young straw haired girl serving beside her father put his orders neatly in a couple of lined boxes and basted them with extra sauce.

 

He wandered around a little more, buying a few steamed sauced green vegetable boxes along with some rice and pork lunches. He was about to go back when he stepped past a small sweet stall. Sweet meat pastries and steamed cake with honeyed bean paste filling, cookies with nuts and dried fruit pressed into the top of them, normal easy treats. He bought a few of each, the sweet meat pastries just for his herder and then his eye caught sight of a few biscuit rolls in a tight jar behind the older man serving him. Thin plain biscuit cooked and wrapped up in a scroll shape, with pictures drawn on the side in cooking dye. He’d had them in Alla City when he was a boy, they were popular. You were meant to give them to your childhood intendeds as a gift, and if they accepted the treat they owed you a kiss. It was a game for children, one that created gossip and rumours and giggles. They were expensive because of the work that went into them, they were fragile and they had a line of tangy tart spread inside.

He hadn’t seen them in the village towns before; they were too expensive for farmers and barefoot children.

 

“Sweetheart scrolls,” the stall owner said with a smile. “Are you from Alla City?”

 

“Yeah,” he nodded, “Are they still good?”

 

The stall owner nodded, grabbing the jar from the back and showing it to Spike. “I get them from the flats, in Delph Crossing.”

 

“I’ll take them too.”

 

“Got an intended?” the man grinned.

 

“Yep,” Spike said airily, “pack it all up.”

 

“You like sweet things,” the stall owner laughed, bagging the food he’d bought.

 

Spike smirked. “Got a sweet tooth.”

 

He walked back along the field, away from the stalls and the chickens and headed to his carriage, jumping up the stairs and throwing the door open suddenly, rewarded with Liam’s startled eyes looking up at him from the corner. He was sitting up, his back propped against the wall on a pillow and his bare toes still tucked under the warmth of the covers.

 

“Chicken for breakfast,” Spike said, throwing the parcels down on the bed and handing Liam a box of basted chicken skewers.

 

Liam took the box carefully and opened it, gazing at the food for a moment. He methodically pulled a piece of chicken from the skewer, shredded it in half and ate it. He repeated the procedure; his fingers covered in dark sticky juice as Spike tore the chicken off his own skewer with his teeth and finished quickly. Liam didn’t look up, his eyes on his work as he tore the chicken, exposing the soft white inside and then putting it in his mouth, lips grazing his fingers.

Spike’s belly twinged.

When Liam finished, he carefully licked each finger, sucking each gently between his lips before wiping them carefully on the paper lining the box. He looked up when he was done, dark eyes on Spike on the bed, like a puppy hoping for more food. He licked his lips absently, eyes on Spike; tongue searching out any more strong sauce that might be on his mouth.

 

“What?” Spike asked, his voice a little raspy.

 

Liam reached down and pulled up an empty bottle. Spike frowned.

 

“My water ran out,” Liam said.

 

“Oh,” Spike shook his head. He stood up, taking the bottle from his fingers and moving across the small space to the chest in the corner. He opened it and pulled out another bottle from the few inside, amongst all the odds and ends.

 

He turned to see Liam leaning, trying to subtly see into the parcels and bags Spike had dumped on the bed.

 

“Oi!” Spike barked, faking anger, revelling inside as Liam’s eyes snapped away from the bags and he unconsciously hunched into himself. “Get your nose out of there!” he said with sharp indignance.

 

“… I … wasn’t,” he lied, his cheeks starting to redden.

 

Spike stared at him blankly, watching his eyes widen a little. Unsure. And pretty. Spike grinned and sat on the bed, enjoying the wary look in Liam’s eyes. He pulled out the jar of scrolls and Liam looked confused.

 

“You ever seen these before?”

 

Liam looked from the jar to Spike’s eyes, and back again, frowning. He shook his head and took the jar when Spike handed it to him.

 

“Open it,” Spike said.

 

Liam looked up at him, still wary, hand resting on the top but not opening it up. Spike rolled his eyes and motioned for him to open it, smiling when he did.

 

“Have one.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“Just a treat,” he said, leaning over and snagging one out of the long jar, bringing it to his lips and biting down on it. Crunchy and sweet and tart just like he’d remembered. He used to get given lots of scrolls when he was a kid, and he gave a lot out. Kisses and sweets, it was win-win.

 

Liam took one and bit into it, bring his fingers up to his mouth to catch the crumbles he didn’t expect from the fragile biscuit. His eyelashes fluttered. He crunched it; Spike could hear it in his mouth, between his teeth as he watched his jaw work. Liam ate it and then looked up at Spike.

 

“They’re really nice,” he said, looking longingly at the few remaining ones in the jar. “I’ve never had that before.”

 

Spike wanted to swoop down and take the kiss Liam owed him, smiling about it, smiling widely at winning the game he was playing, even though Liam didn’t know the rules.

 

“Do you want another one?” Spike asked.

 

Liam looked at his face and his eyebrows drew together in concern. “Why?”

 

“What do you mean why?” Spike asked smoothly.

 

Liam’s dark eyes narrowed. He looked at the jar of scrolls in his hands and then back up. “What did you do to them?”

 

“Nothing!”

 

His eyes narrowed into slits. “I know that look, alright?”

 

Spike snorted. “You’re a nonce. They’re perfectly fine, I try to be nice and get you something rare in the villages,” he reached forward, pretending to be hurt and slowly taking them out of Liam’s hands, “and you get suspicious.”

 

Liam made a grab for them, catching the end of the jar. “I’m sorry,” he said, not letting go of the treats, holding on with steely fingers, “I didn’t mean it.”

 

Spike held on, pulling slightly, enough to make Liam’s fingers tense to keep a hold on the jar.

 

“Can I have these back?” Liam said, looking at the treats.

 

Spike let go and the jar fell back into Liam’s lap. He nodded. “I got them for you anyway.”

 

“Why?” Liam’s hands popped the jar open again, his fingers snaking inside.

 

“Just because,” Spike said airily.

 

Liam looked up at him, scroll poised to be bitten between straight white teeth. Confusion and appreciation in his eyes before they flicked back down to his lap under a frown, too quick to see the smirk that curled Spike’s lips. Spike slid down off the bed and onto the floor, a little closer than he would try to sit next to Liam usually, but the man didn’t flinch. He ate another scroll, and Spike knew Liam knew he was being watched. Liam’s lips curved up in embarrassment and he eventually looked to Spike.

 

“What?” he asked.

 

“What what?”

 

He paused, brows drawing together. “Don’t stare at me.”

 

Spike smiled condescendingly and stood up, grabbing one of the bottle of wine off the table and uncorking it. He swigged from it, and the taste was sharp, cheap, but still hot in his belly. He sat down on the bed, back to Liam, and let it flow down his throat and warm him from the inside, until his skin started to heat.

He could hear his herder crunching on the treats, and waited until the noise disappeared before turning around.

The jar sat on Liam’s lap, one lone scroll inside.

 

“Full then?” Spike smiled.

 

Liam mumbled something, looking down at the scroll in its prison.

 

“What?”

 

Liam looked up at him. “I’m saving it.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For later.”

 

Spike cocked his head, amused by the thinking. “They don’t keep that long.”

 

“Have you had them before?”

 

“Yes, plenty of times. They’re good.”

 

Liam looked down at it again, wriggling his nose a little before scratching the tip of it with his finger. His tongue slipped over his lips again, wetting them avidly. Liam bowed his head for a second, before turning to the wall, like his neck was itching.

 

He suddenly spoke, soft words threading from him in his lyrical accent: “You’re staring at me again. Don’t.”

 

Spike looked away, feeling hot for a second before frowning. He looked back on him again, challengingly. Why was he obeying Liam?

 

“I’ll look all I want,” Spike assured him, half wanting to stick his tongue out at him like a child.

 

Liam looked up at him, dark eyes pinning him suddenly, heated and burning, and Spike wasn’t expecting it. The goodwill from the scroll present wavered in the heat, Spike could see it. The heat was there still, but the hate wasn’t, from when Liam had first looked at him, that hatred was gone now. He’d grown accustomed to Spike and Spike could see it all in his eyes, right then. The carriage was silent apart from the dull sound of the markets across the way.

 

“You’re so beautiful,” Spike said, cock twitching at the way Liam’s gaze snapped down, wonderfully innocent, as soon as the word left Spike’s lips, “You’re so beautiful that I have to look at you.”

 

Liam coughed a laugh into his chest, prettily shy. It made Spike’s cock tighten with excitement “You can’t be serious.”

 

Spike stepped forward, smirking. “You don’t think you’re beautiful?” he asked silkily, slipping back into his dance. Liam had been tough, but he fell under sweet words and presents just like every other prisoner Spike had amused himself with.

 

He was unprepared for the fire that glared up at him. “You can’t seriously think you can say things like that to me when you treat me like a prisoner.”

 

Spike groaned internally and the happy tense feeling vanished from his prick.

 

It had all been going so well.

 

“I don’t treat you like a prisoner,” Spike said.

 

Liam’s eyes widened comically and he yanked roughly on the chain connecting his wrists to the wall, gaze on Spike.

 

“’Cept for that,” Spike admitted. “But I don’t beat you, don’t force myself on you.”

 

Liam closed his eyes as if Spike were a lost cause. “You say that as if it were gallantry and not the absolute base of civility that one human should show to another.”

 

Spike rolled his eyes as Liam did the same. There was silence for a moment as both men stewed.

 

Spike lit up. “I gave you that present didn’t I?”

 

Liam looked at him, shaking his head faintly. “Only because you wanted something! A gift doesn’t mean anything when it’s only to use someone, but of course you wouldn’t know that. Give me something when you don’t want something in return.”

 

Spike, lips tense, stood there motionlessly for a second, anger in his throat, disappointment in his belly and a echo of hurt in his chest. He narrowed his eyes.

 

“Fine,” he snapped, turning and grabbing the bag off the bed, pulling out a box of sweet meat pastries and tossing it at Liam’s feet. “There. Don’t want anything from you, it’s a gift, princess, pure and bloody simple.”

 

He stormed out of the carriage, slamming the door shut behind him.

 

 

*

 

 

He stayed away from Liam for the rest of the day, revelling in his black anger, being sharp and vicious to anyone in the way of his thundercloud. Penn received the brunt of it, when he was still hot headed after walking out on Liam. Penn had stayed around him and laughed off the sniping verbal bites for a while, trying to get on his good side for whatever reason Penn had to brownnose as he did. Maybe he wanted Spike’s appeal, or his power, or his cock or maybe even his arse. Didn’t matter. Spike wasn’t going to give Penn anything.

 

Penn had eventually stopped trying to ply him and left him, almost regretfully.

 

A lieutenant had accidentally bumped into him and Spike had sent him flailing over a rickety card table.

 

He’d listened to Commander’s orders with a sullen smirk.

 

A soldier who had been walking to slow, holding up Spike’s quick manic strides, had been pushed to the grass and kicked.

 

People fled from the storm of him, leaving him alone in his pissiness. He had somehow ended up at Manna, standing on the long banks watching the turbulent water cascade over the rocks and stones beneath bubbling up white snowy froth in spots. He remembered Manna up in the mountains, up near Liam’s Seget, how calm it had been there, serene as the mountains. The lake he’d swum in had been Mann’s and it had been so smooth its surface was like glass, reflecting his face back to himself as he leaned over the dock. This was something else entirely, something troubled and irate, the water spirits inside it enraged. By what? Him? He looked at the river uneasily; the change in it unnerved him.

 

He wandered down Manna’s side, through the ribcage trees, coming across some soldiers bathing out of buckets by the side of it, a few scattered campfires heating pots of water so they could wash comfortably.

The evening was drawing close, the sun settling under the horizon, the night falling. The sky was pink, sweet rice ball clouds dotted through it. When he looked back, the soldiers were watching him carefully, obviously having heard the gossip that blew through the camp like a draught about his bad temper.

 

“General,” one said warily, respectfully dipping his head.

 

A few soldiers came through the woods surrounding Manna there, bickering playfully as they came to use the heated water, pulling up short when they saw Spike standing by their bath water. They looked alarmed. Spike felt cold, inside, and it made him frown, an almost sickness rising up in him.

 

Spike turned and followed the path the soldiers had just walked, finding his way back to camp in a dizzied state, having that back to front feeling again. He stumbled through the door of his carriage, finding Liam standing and trying to pull his chains out from the wall again.

 

The buzzing dizzied feeling settled for a moment, becoming complacent at the familiar sight. “They won’t come loose, how many times do I have to tell you that before you start listening?”

 

Liam turned around quickly, his face pinched with anxiety. “I need to piss. Now. It is urgent that we go. Right now.”

 

Spike blinked.

 

Liam’s thighs were pressed together and he was jiggling. “Now, please, anything, I’m begging,” he babbled in a high panicked voice, shaking up and down, pressing his fisted hands against his hips futilely, “please, fucking please, I’m about to piss myself!”

 

Spike stepped to him and grabbed his hands bringing them up and trying to unlock them as Liam shifted around continually. “Hurryhurryhurry!”

 

The second Liam was freed he bolted out the door, leaving Spike standing there dumbly, his brain in his feet, swamped with the feeling that he’d just been played for a fool. His head span emptily, his heart was molten steel. He ran after him, dumb and wide panicked eyed, seeing Liam hurrying into the woods. He was hardly covered from the camp before he stopped and pulled himself out as he stood against a tree.

 

Spike stopped, his legs almost collapsing under the weight of his relief, lungs burning as his frozen blood suddenly rushed around his body. Liam was leaning against the tree on one forearm; his head thrown back in ecstasy as Spike arrived behind him. Liam’s groan more matched a man balls deep in an Alla City whore than someone pissing against a tree.

 

Spike waited for him, leaning against another tree, eyes on the back of Liam’s shoulders. Liam finished and turned around.

 

“Where were you?” he asked grumpily.

 

Spike raised an eyebrow playfully. He suddenly remembered how angry he’d been at Liam that morning, and everyone else in his path. He didn’t feel angry now, it had stopped. Just as suddenly as it had sprung.

 

“I could have wet myself,” Liam said, reverting to courteous language now that he wasn’t teetering on the edge. “Next time I’ll just relieve myself on your bed.”

 

“I’ll rub your nose in it, if you do,” Spike said calmly, admiring Liam at his irritable best, lips pouted and brows low over his eyes. His bare arms were crossed over the tight shirt, and the pants were lower than they should be, teasing him with the trail of hair leading from his navel to what Spike had glimpsed to be a very nice cock. When he walked, the soft pants clung devotedly to his arse. Spike loved the clothes. He didn’t think Liam knew quite what they showed, or that he was dressed like a brothel boy in the soft to touch thin materials that were easy to remove. He was too naïve to know, or to notice the way the soldiers looked at him when he passed them.

 

Spike noticed. And he was looking at Liam more and more himself. The glowing burst of the last light of day was playing across the muscles in Liam’s arms.

 

“Come on,” he said, taking hold of Liam’s cuffs, breaking his thoughts up before he was reduced to staring stupidly at him again. He’d have to do something soon, about the staring and wanting. His cock was starting to get stubbornly excited by anything.

 

He headed deeper into the woods, hearing Liam’s footsteps behind him, his hand gripping tight around Liam’s restraints. Liam couldn’t run, he knew that, had nowhere to go, but still. He gripped tighter. He wasn’t running. Not after all this effort.

 

“Where are we going?” Liam asked from behind him.

 

“To wash. We won’t get a chance for a while.”

 

Liam was quiet apart from his feet, steps crunching along the twigs and dead leaves in the wake of Spike’s thick boots.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“To wash,” Spike said, frowning, “I just said that.”

 

“No, I meant after that. The whole lot of you. Where are you headed?”

 

Spike was sure he’d told him before. “Alla City. We’re making stops along the way though, the first one in Delph Crossing a couple of days from now. Maybe a week. I’ve never been to Delph from the West before.”

 

Spike ducked under a tree branch, feeling a little tug on his guiding arm as Liam slowed to duck under as well.

 

“A week? Is it far?”

 

The campfire dotted small clearing came into view. There were towels hanging on branches, and some thin bars of soap, and water tins resting next to the flames. A few soldiers were standing around the far fire laughing and washing; some stripped down to their waists, some nude, their clothes hanging over bushes and flat rocks on the ground. Most of the men had washed during the warmest part of the day, but a freezing western chill was whipping at them, a bite in the wind.

 

Spike led Liam to a fire that still burnt cheerily, separated from the others by a bit of loose scrub. He shoved the water tin over the fire to let it warm before turning to Liam and unlocking his wrists from the cuffs.

 

“Don’t wander off,” he warned, “there are soldiers everywhere.”

 

Liam rubbed his wrists and nodded. He stretched his arms out in the golden bright setting sun, his skin brown, the wind starting to pick up and stroke at his hair and clothes.

 

Spike slipped his shirt off, taking the warm water off the fire and shoving another one on. Liam slipped out of the moment, dreamily watching the angry river slosh and hiss over its rocky bed, his lips parted in thought.

 

“Liam,” Spike said, handing him soap, “wash.”

 

Liam turned to him and took the proffered bar, before casting a glance at Spike. He arched his neck, stretching it, before setting his lips together and slipping his shirt off. He crouched, the pants low, resting under the points of his hipbones, his back a boned curve as he rinsed the washer out and then quickly washed over his chest and arms with it.

 

The cold air stuck to the wet and Spike turned away, heated, grabbing his water from the fire as Liam’s dark nipples constricted in an instant, hard buds on his chest as his responsive skin bumped with chill. He heard a little shivery noise and then the washer being dunked in the bucket of warm water again. Spike followed suit, washing himself, edging closer to the fire to ward off the cold as he saw Liam doing the same thing.

 

Spike risked a glance up at him, seeing his skin damp and shimmering as twilight painted the sky dark purple a moment before Liam’s eyes flicked up and burnt his own. Liam turned away, showing his back to Spike, the ends of his hair wet and stuck to his shoulders in sweeps, smooth skinned and Spike was feeling like a wolf stalking prey, mouth watering for his taste, hands prickling to slide up his spine and feel the bumps of bone.

A big palmed hand slid over the shoulder, holding a sponge, squeezing it to let the water run down his back. Spike’s eyes were wide, watching the water slide down, wanting to follow the trail with his tongue, drips sliding to the waistband of Liam’s low pants wetting underneath.

 

Spike’s cock was trying to tent his pants. His cheeks were hot, even in the cold air, and he was so horny he was practically biting through his lip. His prick felt huge in his pants, swollen and ready and Spike had to turn away, breath out into the sky and pull the waistband out so he could squeeze cold water on himself.

 

“How far is Alla City then?” Liam suddenly said, smooth voice slipping smoky tendrils into Spike’s ears. Spike looked over his shoulder.

 

“Huh?”

 

“How far is Alla City?”

 

“Probably about a month and a half.”

 

Liam turned, accidentally kicking over his bucket of water. “What?” he said, face scrunched up.

 

“Probably a bit longer than that,” Spike said without turning, his erection still insistent and obvious. He sat down on a flat rock, curving his legs up to give himself time. He usually wasn’t ashamed of it, especially when he was after someone, it didn’t seem to matter if they saw he was hard, but he didn’t want Liam knowing he was excited.

 

“We have to travel for that long?”

 

Spike looked over at him. “Yeah…” he said slowly, “how else are we going to get there?”

 

Liam sat down on the dirt next to the fire, the flames flickering over his sick looking face.

 

“What’s wrong?” Spike asked, “You don’t like to travel?”

 

“I’ve never… travelled that far away before.” He looked nervous. And ill. He hunched over himself.

 

Spike smiled faintly at him. “What’s the furthest you’ve travelled then?”

 

“Before this?” he said looking up, “Renne Town.”

 

Spike raised his eyebrows. “That’s only two days from your village.”

 

“I know.”

 

“You haven’t been anywhere, have you?” Spike said, gazing at him.

 

Liam closed his eyes, breathing deep. He seemed to be calming down, calming himself down. His forehead was creased with worry. He looked up at Spike. “What’s going to happen to me?”

 

Spike paused before answering, not sure what would happen. “You’ll be coming to work on my lands.”

 

Liam frowned. “With you?”

 

Spike nodded stiffly. Liam squinted in confusion, flames playing shadow and light across his features, turning him to an ethereal spirit. “Do you have a farm?”

 

“Uh… no. I have horses.”

 

“I herd sheep.”

 

Spike shrugged. “They’re alike. Both have four legs. Both … can eat grass.”

 

“Why am I going with you?” he looked torn, “you said before, that I’d probably be working on a farm.”

 

“I decided to keep you,” Spike said, watching his face.

 

“Keep me.” Liam said blankly, looking down. He was silent for a moment. “I don’t want to live in Alla City.”

 

“Well I actually live near Totten.”

 

Liam threw his hands up in fit of exasperation. “I don’t even know where that is.”

 

“Near Alla City.”

 

Liam rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. A few steady breaths passed before he spoke again. “Could I ever live in Seget again?”

 

Spike’s lips tensed a little. “No.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Could you handle new settlers living in the town?” Liam’s face scrunched up like he was in pain, before he ducked his head. “We never assign people anywhere near their home towns.”

 

Spike watched him closely. He didn’t know what Liam was feeling, anger or sadness, it was a mystery. His head was bowed; his wet tipped hair hanging down. His legs were crossed laxly.

 

Spike pulled his shirt back on over his head. Liam looked up. “What if I refuse,” he said with an icy glint in his eye, “what happens then?”

 

“They send you to medical research,” Spike said without emotion, “or maybe a prisoner brothel, and they’ll leave you tied to a bed all day and night, or maybe they’ll just throw you to the soldiers.”

 

“What’s medical research?”

 

“They test medicines and treatments out on you,” Spike said, not meeting his eyes, his gaze jumping into the trees overhead, “… if they wanted to see if they could reattach fingers they’d snip your fingers off and try.”

 

He heard a little gasp of breath and closed his eyes. “…what?” Liam whispered.

 

“Testing,” he looked up, seeing Liam’s eyes twice as wide as usual, “that’s just an example.” He could think of much worse. Alla City had learnt more about treatment and medicine since the Great War started than it had in the last five centuries. All because of unruly prisoners.

 

“I … don’t want to do that.”

 

“No,” Spike agreed.

 

They sat in silence for a moment. “Get your shirt on,” Spike said, “we’ll go back.”

 

Liam paused for a moment, still lost in his thought, before grabbing his shirt from the ground and tugging it on. He stood and looked at the raging river.

 

“You’ve really never been more than two days away from Seget?” Spike said, trying to guide Liam’s mind elsewhere as he set about dousing the fire. No one would be using it now.

 

Liam slowly shook his head watching the rough water. “No. I’d never imagined something like Palso City, the stores there. Or even this. I knew they existed, but I’d never thought I’d see another river. I thought Manna would be the only one I’d ever see.”

 

Spike looked at him. “That is Manna.”

 

Liam frowned. “No it’s not.”

 

“Yeah, it is.”

 

“But it’s so…” he paused, watching the river slosh, his voice sad, “it’s so angry. Are you sure?”

 

Spike twinged at having thought the exact same thing, before he nodded. “It’s different.”

 

Water frothed up over the rocky riverbed. “Everything’s different,” Liam said softly.

 

They stood for a while and watched Manna rage in the dark.

 

---

 

Chapter Eight – Greater Good.

 

 

 

 

 

Liam was sick.

 

A sneeze erupted from the corner, Liam’s body rocking in the sheets with the force of it.

 

Sick. Nothing too bad, just a cold. But he was sick. Spike stared up at the dark roof, he’d forgotten to get more oil during the stop and so the lamp was unlit, but he could still see that shape of it, a swaying dark shadow above him.

 

Another sneeze. And then the sound. The sound Spike hated without reason, the sound that make his bones rotate in his skin, worse than screaming, worse than nails on chalkboard. Liam sniffed. Wet sniffing.

Spike cringed.

 

“Don’t sniff Liam,” he said, deathly serious.

 

“I can't help it," Liam's tired voice replied.

 

Spike sighed and Liam exaggeratedly hissed out his own. He sniffed again and Spike's shoulders hunched up. He could hear the muck, feel it going down Liam's throat in glugs and he felt ill.

 

"Stop it!"

 

"My nose is running."

 

Spike threw back the covers and wriggled off the bed. He toed Liam's thighs out of the way and knelt on the floor next to them, leaning under the bed and clawing around blindly in the dark. His fingers scrabbled at dust covered floor and extra blankets and at boxes and empty bottles.

 

"What are you doing?" Liam asked from behind him, irritated after a few moments, tired and sick and having no tolerance.

 

"I'm trying to find something for you to snort your bloody nose on."

 

"You have kerchiefs," Liam said doubtfully. He snorted in amusement. "Are they lacy?"

 

"No, you twat," his searching became frantic as Liam sniffed again. Wetly. Spike heard the swallow after the snort and reached back, grabbing Liam's wrist in warning. "Don't do it," he said, his voice quiet.

 

Liam actually laughed, a little chuckle in his throat. "Why do you hate it so much?"

 

Spike felt his skin wriggling, still remembering Liam's sniffing. "I don't know," he pulled his head out from under the bed to look at the Liam shadow shape in the corner. "It’s so bad for you, you know. It gets in your stomach, and wedged up your nose in dry infections. It's really bad."

 

He could tell Liam was smiling at him in the dark. "Okay," he said insincerely, his voice tinged with singsong.

 

Spike was waiting for it, his whole body tensed for it, his whole universe narrowed down to the waiting for what he knew was going to happen.

 

He did it again.

 

Liam sniffed again and Spike exploded, gritting his teeth so hard he could hear ringing in his ears as he reached out and slapped his naughty herder’s thighs through the covers roughly.

 

“Hey!” Liam cried in the dark, his body a shadow as it curled up away from him, “you can’t hit me! I’m sick!”

 

Spike slapped him again, the blow somewhat hindered by the thick soft blankets he was keeping his prize on the floor in. “Don’t Liam!” he warned, “I’m ordering you not to.”

 

“Well then you need to give me something. I’m not ruining my bed sheets.”

 

Spike whipped around and shoved himself halfway under the bed, resuming his search for something, anything, that he could sacrifice for Liam’s nose. He finally grabbed what felt like one of his old tee shirts and thrust it at Liam’s hands, hauling himself up to his bed again.

 

Finally, he felt the tranquil contentment that swelled and frothed and filled his body as Liam blew his nose on the cloth. He spread his arms out as he lay back on his bed.

 

“Can I keep this?” Liam asked nasally from the dark corner.

 

Spike frowned at the ceiling. “Why would I want your snot rag?” he asked gruffly, closing his eyes.

 

 

*

 

 

Touch, Liam’s sleep slow brain identified as he floated away from dreams that were cool and blue, dotted with flashes of skin and heat. Something was touching him.

 

He opened his eyes, the bright late morning light that spilled into his pupils achingly blinded him for a moment, his eyes blinked rapidly, stickily, until he adjusted. Spike was kneeling over him, his fingers smoothing Liam’s hair back from his forehead, his eyes gazing down at him softly. There was something gentle there, in his touch, something gentle that not often appeared. Gentle was no good for predators.

 

Liam blinked again, before frowning, reaching up with his restricted hands and grabbing his wrist. The muscles in his neck ached to hell, strung tight like bowstrings. “What are you doing?” he rasped, his voice stuck in his stiff vocal cords.

 

Spike’s eyes were distant, pupils dilated as the light from outside made a spirit nimbus of his outline, fusing with his white hair and making it glow. “Breakfast?” he said in his gruff accent.

 

Liam closed his eyes and rolled away from him and the light, facing the wall. His head ached, not just from the sun but because he was sick. The soreness of his neck started to spread into his shoulders. He shook his head weakly, the sagging ill feeling sinking into his brain.

Spike’s cool steel fingers wound around his upper arm and rolled him back.

 

“Sit up,” he said, being nicer than he usually was.

 

Now Liam was sick and suspicious. “Why?” he asked.

 

Spike rolled his eyes, kneeling in front of him. “Just sit up.”

 

Liam hesitantly obeyed, grunting a little in displeasure when Spike reached forward and set his collar down from where it had settled itself uncomfortably up tight against his neck. Spike reached behind his crouched form and brought forward a large mug, steam filtering into the air from it in a wafting cloud.

 

“What’s that?” Liam asked, clearing his throat as he shuffled his sore bones against the wall to sit easily, reaching out to take the cup in his weak fingers. The heat of the mug warmed his hands. It was tea, but it smelled sweet, and … strange. From the tiny amount of scent that he could get through his nostrils. He sniffed deeply, feeling thickness at the back of his throat. His ear crackled inside when he swallowed and the world sounded somewhat tinny.

 

“What is it?” Liam asked suspiciously as he sniffed it again.

 

“Tea with honey and green radish.”

 

Liam pulled a disgusted face and put the mug down. Spike swooped forward, picked it up in long white fingers and put it into his hands again. “Sip it. Slowly.”

 

Liam pressed his lips together, wrinkling his nose. Spike’s eyes were cold on him, strangely fine featured face displeased with his refusal and Liam couldn’t find the energy to argue with him. He sipped the mixture, the honey sliding over his tongue on the hot tea before a sudden burst of freezing spice raced up the back of his nose and into his cheekbones. He coughed, eyes watering. His whole face felt cold inside, his passages felt wide open like the wind could blow through his head.

 

He spluttered a little. “It’s strong.”

 

Spike nodded. “Drink.”

 

Liam blinked, sore eyed, before sighing and sipping again. Spike beamed at him like a proud parent. “Good herder,” he said happily, edging closer, “I like it when you obey.”

 

“I’m too sick to fight,” he said weakly, closing his eyes. They felt sandpapered. “My head hurts,” he mewled.

 

He hated being sick. His whole body collapsed on him and sapped his strength so much he was basically bed ridden and sleepy until he got better. His health usually returned to him quickly though, he just had to wait it out. Normally he could hand himself off to someone, Kat or Del usually, and they’d take care of him, and pout sympathetically when he moaned, and get him soup and make sure to look after him with love.

His nose started running from the hot radish burning away the blockages and he grabbed the rag he’d stuffed under the pillow at sometime during the night, when Spike had thrown a pissy fit about him sniffing. It turned out to be one of Spike’s soft black shirts. Very soft, especially on his raw nose. He blew his nose on it and looked up to see Spike watching him looking irritated.

 

“What?” Liam said, tiredly defensive. “I wasn’t even sniffing that time.”

 

“I didn’t realise I gave you that one,” Spike said, shaking his head before getting up. “One of my favourites.”

 

Liam looked down at the shirt in his humid hands, stuck together and mangled with crusty patches. He smiled. “It’ll wash,” he said, his eyes watering with itch. His head was thumping, like his brain was swollen inside and way too big for his skull.

 

Spike stretched lithely, his long pale arms only covered by a small bit of dark sleeve right near his shoulders. His shirt was tighter than usual, so tight Liam could see the slight raise of his nipples underneath it, see the shirt clinging to his flat stomach. Spike was staring absently at the oil lamp on the roof.

 

“Remind me to go get oil for that,” he said thoughtfully.

 

Liam rested his heavy head back against the wall, closing his eyes as they started to fill with water from the pressure in his skull. He hated being sick. He moaned, wallowing in self-pity.

There was movement; he could feel it, like the air was moving against his hot flesh as Spike displaced it. He waited, leaving his eyes closed.

Cool fingers trailed across his forehead, from temple to temple, across his brows. It was invasive, but Liam couldn’t muster up the energy to push the fingers away, not when it felt good, cool and inviting and the actual human touch of someone else. His abused body had been aching for some kind touch since Seget, and he was too miserable with sickness to force it away.

 

Spike’s light touch became a cool palm against his cheek. Liam kept his eyes closed.

 

“You’re hot,” Spike murmured. “Do you want some water?”

 

Liam’s head throbbed. Clear water ran from his nostril and he opened his eyes blearily when he grabbed the shirt to wipe it away. He blinked wetly, his eyelids feeling thickened. “Why are you being nice?” he asked raspily.

 

Spike looked amused. “I … I can’t help it. You should see yourself, really. You look … so horrible. Your eyes are swollen up… it looks like you’ve been attacked by wasps, and your nose is red… and water’s leaking from it. It’s disgusting.”

 

Just words. Too sick. The tone didn’t sound bad though, so he let whatever it was fade away into the air without the energy to puzzle it out. A swell of pity rose up inside and Liam closed his eyes, feeling like he was about to fall back to sleep. “I’d love some water, thank you,” he breathed, rolling his face up to the ceiling.

 

Spike was silent for a second. “Okay.” A moment later the hand was back, a finger trailing over the bump in his throat, and then a palm curving around the side of his neck gently. Fingertips ghosting along the skin behind his ear, almost tickling, a too long thumb guiding his face back to the side. And it was almost like Del’s touches; if only the hand hadn’t been so thin and soft skinned, too small to be Del’s big palm, nails too square and too smoothly long, not bitten down in jagged mountain ranges. The hand skated down and a soft pad of thumb brushed over his lower lip.

 

Liam opened his eyes and Spike smirked, the intensely focused look he got flashing away in an instant. His hand dropped down, fingers just brushing Liam’s chin and shoulder as he pulled back under Liam’s gaze.

 

“Can you unchain me?” Liam asked suddenly, the question burbling out from between his lips.

 

Spike looked at him, face closing down, becoming a blank mask.

 

“Please,” Liam rasped, his whining tone reminding him of his sister’s young demeanour. “I’m so uncomfortable.”

 

Blue eyes flicked to the chains around his hands and then back up to his face. He looked conflicted for a moment before he reached forward and unlocked the cuffs. Liam moaned with relief when the heavy cuffs slipped away, resting his head back on the wall as he weakly rubbed his wrists. “Thank you.”

 

“Water,” Spike said distractedly. “I’ll get you some cold water from the lake.”

 

Liam heard footsteps, they echoed under the floor of the carriage. “What lake?” he asked, but Spike had already gone, closing the door, and Liam was talking to himself.

 

He sat dopily for a while, eyes closed, half asleep, drifting in a mental fog. He realised he still had the tea next to him and he picked it up, feeling the warmth leaking from the china into his hands and sipped. The radish flew into his nostrils again as the honey coated his tongue from it and he panted a little, heat and cold rushing through his head, like his body couldn’t decide which extreme the spice was. It did clear his nose though, not completely but enough to let him breath. His ears crackled even more now and he was working his jaw, trying to make it click when Spike opened the door and bathed him in searing light again.

 

Liam winced, turning his head away, cheek against his shoulder until he heard the door click closed again. More footsteps, glass things clinking together, and then the scuffing sound of Spike kneeling heavily beside him. Cool glass bumped against the back of his hand and he turned, taking the bottle from Spike and tipping it to his lips. Spike watched him avidly, his eyes a presence, a feeling on Liam’s cheek.

 

The carriage was gloomy after the bright sunlight, but calmness came with the dim light, like it was evening and the sun was setting, drawing the serenity after it. It was almost breathed red glow, like the sun was trying to burn through the wood to him, and Liam’s sore eyes picked up tiny dust motes fluttering up on shifting shafts of air through the tranquillity.

 

Spike was quiet, not fidgeting, and the only sound was Liam’s throat working as he swallowed the frigid water.

 

“Did you want to eat?” Spike said, breaking the placidity.

 

Liam shook his head slowly.

 

“What about soup?” Spike said.

 

Liam wrinkled his nose. “For breakfast?”

 

“You need something.”

 

Liam sat silent for a moment, the cold morning rising. It was a cold snap, and Liam had fallen ill from the sudden drop in temperature. “Maybe some sausage,” he said weakly.

 

“Okay, I’ll go get you some.” He stood, knees cracking, leaning onto the wall for support over Liam’s legs.

 

Liam looked up at him. “Are they cooking?” he asked, sniffing the air.

 

Spike nodded, “We’re upwind. Can’t smell it.”

 

Liam wriggled down to the floor; ready to lay down when his elbow was caught and hauled up again. He tried to tug his arm away but he couldn’t, and he uselessly followed it up to a standing position, his body limp and acquiescent. He pushed Spike’s chest away from him once he stood and his other hand was easily caught as well, laughter burning his ears.

 

“What are you doing, you great poofter?”

 

His body was pushed onto the bed, sprawling as it fell, limbs sprawling across the feathery mattress that cradled him like arms.

 

“Stay on the bed,” Spike said, standing tall, his lips curled into a small smirk, “I’ll get you some food.”

 

“Just sausage,” Liam croaked. He paused. “And maybe some of that cheese bread….,” he added quietly, “If there is… some.”

 

Spike left him for a little while and when he returned, sausage and bread in hand, he could smell smoke on his clothes and on his words when he spoke. It always smelled so strange on him, something Liam had never smelled on someone’s breath.

 

“Here you go, pet,” he said, breathing burning tobacco, helping Liam’s aching body up to a sit and placing the food plate on his lap. It was piled high with the spicy sausage, the meat surrounded by hot buttered cheese bread. Liam’s stomach gurgled happily, clenching in anticipation. He hadn’t realised he was so hungry.

 

He stared at the food a little longer, the voice in his head that was telling him not to eat anything Spike offered him was getting dimmer by the day, almost completely gone. Where else was he going to get his food, another voice offered rationally. He couldn’t leave Spike’s sight.

 

“Eat up, luv,” Spike said, snagging a patty of fire cooked sausage mince as he settled next to Liam on the bed, “need you healthy.”

 

The hot smell arrested Liam’s nostrils and made him salivate, clawing at his guts until he sank into the food weakly; slipping the hunk of buttered cheese toasted thick herbed bread into his mouth and biting down with relish. The food just tasted so good, the flavour so strong and arresting and rich. The bread was still hot from cooking, the inner whiter part soft against his fingers as he scooped it out greedily. Bread had never been so soft or tasty. Bread was bread, it was something to line your gut before you worked not something to be enjoyed. Most of his meals were like that. Hard bread that had to be torn apart with knives and fingers, cheese and meat stew. Just something to eat, to stop the hunger, not like this, where food was something to savour and made his tastebuds swell in receptiveness.

 

They couldn’t always eat like this, he thought as he tore apart one of the mince cakes, feeding pieces of spicy meat into his mouth. It was just too… much.

 

Spike crossed his legs, his boots digging into the covers and creating little ripples of fabric. “We’ll be moving on soon,” he said, eyes on his food disinterestedly. “Heading towards the flats.”

 

Liam’s brows drew together. “Flats…” he echoed, trying to remember when he’d heard of them, a slight feeling of falling growing in his belly.

 

“Flat Plains,” Spike said. “Bit below Palso City.”

 

Liam nodded, slowly exhaling a gulp of air. “Right,’ he swallowed, nodding again. “Alright.”

 

Spike smiled. “It’s flat,” he said helpfully, “no mountains.”

 

Liam tried to plot out a map in his head of where they’d been, which roads they had travelled but it was useless. He had no idea.

 

“Right down in the flats it gets really hot in the warmer months. And it’s sandy. But that’s months away, we’re not going there.”

 

Liam looked up. “Have you been there?” he asked, a small cough rattling up through his throat.

 

Spike nodded. “Didn’t like it much,” he shrugged.

 

Liam had never left the Barrier Mountains, he’d travelled way up into them, where the air was thin and it was too hard to go further, and he’d travelled down to Rennet, but he’d never left them. They were his. “Where haven’t you been?”

 

Spike grinned. “I’ve been everywhere.”

 

“I don’t believe you’ve been everywhere.”

 

Spike raised his dark eyebrows, leaning forward to whisper his words conspiratorially. “I’ve even been to islands, travelled by boats for weeks on end and come to shore on other lands with white sand and mountains that puffed smoke.”

 

Liam watched him warily, not sure if Spike was joking or not, trying to make him seem like a naïve village boy who knew nothing of anything. He didn’t answer; just looked down to the food and snatched another chunk of bread, ripping pieces from the core to tuck into his mouth. Spike watched him, always watching him, like it was interesting the way he fed himself. Liam cracked his neck and coughed again, feeling the food cutting through the phlegm in his belly.

 

Spike was gazing up at the oil lamp again the next time Liam stole a glance, his neck stretched and long and white, like the swans that sometimes flew to Seget.

 

Blue eyes flicked up to meet his own, catching his gaze, lids narrowing in thought. Liam felt himself blushing, embarrassed because of all the times he’d told Spike not to stare at him.

 

“Drink,” was all Spike said. “Drinking’s good for sickness.”

 

Liam blinked stupidly. A curl of pink lip and Spike was up, loping over to the glass bottles of water inside the chest by the door, and tossing one harmlessly on the soft covers next to Liam’s thigh. “Drink it all.”

 

Liam watched him approach the bed again, and picked up the bottle in a weak grip. He drank some of it to appease the stalking white predator that prowled around the bed and then lay the bottle down next to his hip. Spike watched him closely as he ate, a mother hawk that perched on the corner of the bed and focused on him until his skin started to shiver. Swan and hawk, mixed up and given a wolf’s eyes. Spike was more predator than pretty, Liam had to remember that.

He frowned, and refused to look up, not wanting to feel that crackling feeling that buzzed when he came into contact with the sharp animal gaze of Spike. It spooked him a little, he felt like a scared horse, feet pawing at the ground, ready to bolt if Spike leant any closer with his intense strange blue eyes.

 

“Don’t,” he finally said calmly, hiding his real feelings as he set to wiping the crumbs off his lips and licking his buttery fingers.

 

“Don’t what?”

 

“Stare at me,” he gathered his nerves and looked up, the prickly feeling sweeping down his back as Spike’s eyes bored into him. Spike made him so uncomfortable when he did that. Like his eyes could see through bone and sinew and he could watch Liam’s heart beating in his chest if he so wanted. It made him feel naked. “You don’t have to watch me. I’m not going anywhere.”

 

Spike continued to gaze, although the fierceness that turned his eyes molten had softened with Liam’s words. His eyes raked over Liam, feet to ears, slow enough and tangible enough to make Liam’s toes curl up.

 

Liam looked away, unsettled by the scrutiny, his entire body prickling now. “Spike, please.”

 

“I’m allowed to look.”

 

“Even when I ask you not to?” he said, his spooked horse gaze jumping to Spike’s eyes then away again as soon as he realised the blue was still stuck to him like glue.

 

Spike grinned prettily, his cheeks dimpling, showing his teeth, straight lines of white except for that one rebellious tooth that angled out a fraction and ruined the harmony. Could only see it when he smiled. “I watch you when you’re sleeping too,” he said, and Liam felt his irritation rising, “you’re a pretty pet.”

 

“I’m not your pet,” he said, too roughly, his voice trembling into coughs.

 

Deep belly laughs issued from Spike as he sat on the bed. “Settle, you’re sick,” he said, his hand slipping over Liam’s shin and squeezing. Liam lifted his gaze to Spike’s face and glared.

 

Spike’s head tilted as he smiled faintly, taking it in. His hand lingered before drifting away with a small smug chuckle. He picked up the bottle of water and held it out. Liam continued to glare at him, the sick feeling in his body suddenly fuelling his displeasure.

 

“Not thirsty.”

 

Spike rolled his eyes and nudged Liam’s belly with the bottle, “just take it,” he said, nudging his flesh again, forcing Liam to take the carafe to stop it annoying him.

 

“You’re a very irritating man,” he said, sipping the cool water, “has anyone ever said that to you?”

 

Spike simply smiled and nodded.

 

Liam grumpily stared out the small windows. The bright sun had filtered away, leaving the light grey and mellow.

 

“When are we going?” Liam asked sharply, suddenly filling the carriage with his cough-raspy voice.

 

“Soon enough. Got some stuff to pack up. Have to go out later.”

 

Liam watched the tiny window, smelling the leftover sausage patties in the room and the thick sweet smell of cheese toasted bread.

 

He stared, watching the sky darken from its white brightness of the morning, settling in for something bleaker as the clouds blew over the sun. He heard men outside, talking in rough Union and Spike moving about the carriage, grabbing the plate from the bed and putting it… somewhere… Liam wasn’t paying attention, his mind distracted and untethered. Flat Plains. Alla City. Islands with white sand.

 

He felt sleepy.

 

White sand. Liam had never seen anything other than riverbank sand, dark soil mostly. He knew Spike had been talking about beaches though, Doyle had come from a coastal town before he’d moved to Vara Town. Beaches. Where the rivers met the oceans. Like Doyle had told him, his mind rambled as it slowed down for sleep. Where there would be white sand that rested under water as far as they eye could see. Water to the horizon, water going on forever, the hugest lake in creation, blue under the sun and sky and nothing else.

 

 

*

 

 

Liam woke in the evening from manic dreams of swimming out into a lake that stretched until forever, hands keeping him afloat as his body gave out and filled with lead. He breathed in through his nose and he could smell that it had rained, the fresh smell, one of his favourite smells, of newly washed grass and clean damp earth. It was cool and it was everywhere and it made him feel instantly better to have that scent wrapped around him, up his nose and in his mouth. It smelled like home.

 

As his awareness spread he realised Spike was not in the carriage, couldn’t hear breathing or feel the warm presence sitting next to him on the bed, even as he rolled his head to check. The bed was empty apart from his over hot self. Wasn’t by the chest of books, or kneeling to look under the bed. Liam was alone.

His brain started to pick up, to activate, and he felt a pressure in his bladder, pushing and pulsing and he grunted lightly in discomfort, even as he sat up, looking around as if Spike would magically appear and take him to relieve himself. No sign of startling bright animal blue or shock of white hair.

 

He shifted on the feathers in the mattress, his body sinking in a little more. His bladder was aching. It must have woken him up, the sick pressure of it.

He stood up, rolling his shoulders. He hadn’t been for a while and his gut was tight. He walked in tight jerking steps, his head swimming sickly from his cold; hands tucked up under the warmth of his underarms, hunched over himself with curled shoulders in the cool evening temperature.

 

He had to busy himself, wait for Spike to get back and just distract himself until that happened. He sat down on the bed, rolling his hips back and forward a little, gyrating against the covers to try to expel the full feeling in his guts. He really needed to piss.

He pressed his thighs together as tightly as he could and looked around for something to distract himself with. He bent and looked in the small chest next to Spike’s bed, finding a few tattered well used leather bound notebooks with pages haphazardly bent and crinkled inside. He opened one of the books up, the leather soft against his fingertips.

 

Words were written on each page in slightly jagged print, some scratched out, some added above others, the few lines on each page messy and blotted. A pattern to them, some lines were long and others were short but they seemed to fit together to make a drawing rather than a paragraph of words.

 

Liam mouthed the words as he read, brow crinkled in concentration, distracted if only a moment, by finally figuring out the puzzle. It was clever, the word at the end of the line rhymed with word at the end of the following line. He smiled widely.

 

A sunlight beam

cutting a swath of glimmering gleam.

 

He wondered if Spike was clever enough to write something like that. It was pretty, the way they sounded alike.

 

A sharp crashing sound snapped his head from the mottled pages and he watched the door, bladder suddenly twisting like a wrung wet rag as he hoped against hope that Spike’s blond head would stick through the opened door.

It didn’t and he sank back into the covers, his body insisting stronger than ever that he relieve it. He placed the small leather book back into the chest and stood up, pacing restlessly for a second, head hot and nose starting to run again.

 

Maybe he should just go.

 

He paused.

 

Stopped, thinking it over. What’s the worst that could happen?

 

He went to the door, walking in tiny steps so his thighs were very close together acting as a dam for the torrent that felt like it was about to flow loose, and opened the suddenly loud wood, sneaking a look outside.

 

The camp was silent in the evening, a large glow a little ways away, which Liam assumed was the fire cooking food. He could hear voices but they were far away. There were carriages lined up in the twilight, a few horses sleeping still hitched to their carts, still saddled and dressed. No one around.

The carriages were settled right next to a quiet strip of woods, dark green treetops reaching up in the black to the sky, crowded together protectively. He stepped down the first step hesitantly, his feet bare, feeling the cold dampness of the wood beneath them. The breeze suddenly rolled around him, crisp and sharp, making him gasp as every pore on his body contracted defensively and bumped into goosepimples, his nipples hard beneath his shirt and his balls twitching in his thin pants. He stepped down, warily looking around and then stepped to the wet grass, crunchy and damp in between his toes. A flood of exhilaration ran through him and he quickly walked towards the woods, tight strides, hands crossed over his chest to keep himself warm. How many times had his bare feet crossed over rain fresh grass? He felt giddy with the freedom, not alone, just free, even as his collar rested heavily around his neck.

He came to the edge of the woods and clearing and stepped through, crunching on dead leaves and sticks, his softened feet hurting a little after being off them for so long in Spike’s company. The cold started to work its way into his chest and he coughed, his nose taking the cue to become wet and annoying. He sniffed as he pulled himself from the soft pants, spreading his feet and looking up at the sky as he relieved the pressure. The stars were just starting to dot the blue glimpsed through the gaps in the tree branches and it was pretty. He wanted to lay down on the wet grass and watch them for a while like he used to, bring out a warm blanket and just lay with someone, watching the sky, hands or hips occasionally brushing under the covers as they fidgeted to stay warm, sometimes the innocent brushes turning to nothing, sometimes swelling into something interesting in the moment.

 

He finished, smiling faintly with the memories of Cordy and Del, refusing to let his mind take the next step and remember where he was. Happy to reject reality for a moment and live in the past, in his head, where it was filled with love and comfort and security.

 

He turned back regretfully, heading back across the dead crunching leaves underfoot, feeling the texture change to wet grass as he stepped out of the woods and walked across the small empty grass strip towards the camp.

His bones were cold and he walked quicker, his forearms rubbing against his stiff nipples as he strode, wanting to get back under blankets even if it meant losing his tiny freedom again. Maybe he could convince Spike to leave him out of the cuffs for a while, maybe forever. He hated his basic movement being robbed from him.

 

A whistle sounded behind him, breaking his thoughts as he walked, a human whistling, at him, close behind him and he turned to see a man hanging out of a carriage, blue eyes fixed on Liam, small strange smile on his face.

 

Liam looked at him. The man looked back, his gaze running over Liam, starting from his feet and sliding up stickily.

 

“Where’d you come from, you pretty thing?” the man asked, stepping down the steps of the carriage.

 

Another man’s head poked out from the carriage next to Liam, an older man, with the pale, almost white-blue eyes that Unioners tended to get. His face brightened when he saw Liam standing there and he too stepped down from the carriage, another man following him out, pointy faced with a head of curls.

 

Liam turned back to the first man. “The woods,” he said, answering his question, noting the yellow band on his arm.

 

The men laughed. “Are you a wood nymph are you?” one asked, suddenly behind him.

 

He turned and shook his head.

 

“Who hired you, entertainer?” the third man asked, his voice quiet in the not so empty camp.

 

Liam blinked. “Uh… Spike?”

 

The man’s face suddenly hardened. “I think you mean General Spike.”

 

Liam raised his eyebrows. “Okay,” he said slowly, turning and trying to step past them.

 

“Where is the General, boy?” the first soldier asked suspiciously.

 

Liam turned to him and shook his head slightly. “I don’t know.”

 

The men suddenly stopped, and Liam caught a few side-eyed glances. “Did he give you permission to leave his carriage?” the first asked, stepping closer.

 

“No,” Liam said slowly, “I don’t know where he is.”

 

“You’re not allowed out by yourself, whore, you know that,” the elderly man said and Liam turned to him to find him much closer than he’d realised, his face harder and colder than Spike’s had ever been. Liam stepped away from the hate in the man’s eyes, heart suddenly picking up.

 

He turned to see the third man watching him with glassy eyes and suddenly realised with a sick feeling that he’d suddenly stepped into a wolf’s den without even realising it.

He nodded smally, feeling six inches tall, noticing out of the corner of his eyes that the men were stepping closer to him. His stomach felt watery. He knew he was in trouble, knew it without doubt in the certainty, it was heavy in his chest, pressuring his heart into quick little rabbit hops.

 

“I’m just going back,” he said softly, to no one in particular.

 

Fingers suddenly ran up his arse cheek through the thin material of his pants and he span around to see the third man grinning evilly.

 

“Don’t do that again,” Liam warned.

 

A hand slapped across his arse and he span back around with a yelp, getting a slap across his cheekbone as he turned. His cheek felt raw, and his face exploded into pain blossoms. The older soldier grabbed his chin and yanked him forward, forcing him on his knees on the wet grass, glaring down into his eyes. “Never give an order to an officer, boy-whore,” he spat harshly, bending down, spittle flecking from his rubbery lips onto Liam’s cheek, “Do it again and I’ll cut you apart myself.”

 

He felt fingers like worms on his backside, cupping around his cheeks and gently squeezing him through the fabric. The older man glared down at him as it was happening, daring him to look away, his gaze pinning Liam still like a cruel boy with a needle and a fly. The hands slid further between his legs and Liam’s mind slipped out of his head, leaving him useless and rubbery with shock.

 

The solider behind him knelt down behind him and Liam could feel indifferent lips on his neck as the hands travelled up under his shirt. He pulled free and rolled along the now harshly prickling grass, yelling out loudly when he was tackled down, screaming for help in intrinsic reaction as everything suddenly sped up, six hands on him and pulling at his clothes and over his mouth as he repeatedly pulled it off his lips, kicking and wriggling like a worm on a hook as rabid wolves bit at him on the ground between two carriages. His cries were hindered by a coughing fit that swamped his chest for a few precious moments, wildly wrecking his body as he tried to wriggle away from iron hands that held him down, pushing him into the wet ground.

His cold numbed foot connected with something hard and sharp, bone under thin skin and he was being rolled over, a fist in his hair tugging out strands in painful firecracker yanks and his shirt was suddenly over his head and pinning his arms as he screamed into the grass for help and freezing fingers were scrabbling at his pants.

 

Everything stopped and Liam’s heart almost seized with fear. His breath echoed in his head.

 

“What are you doing?” a voice asked and Liam fell limp with relief, his face streaked with cold tears, shaking a little from the shock. His shirt created a tunnel of cloth and all he could see was grass and his trembling arms.

 

Spike.

 

Liam was soup. Thank you. Thank you, gods thank you Spike.

 

He yanked his shirt back down and hauled himself up, pulling his pants back into place, feeling both pieces of clothing were basically useless, wet and sticky from the wet grass, his skin clearly visible through the wet shirt. He kept his eyes on the ground, refusing to look at any of the men, his cheeks flaming red and sectioned apart with freezing tears.

 

“That’s my prisoner,” Spike’s coldly furious voice said, and Liam ran blindly towards the sound, looking down at the nail scratches gouged into his own arm flesh, “What the fuck are you doing?”

 

“He was sneaking out Spike,” one said, Liam couldn’t think who, never wanted to think about them again, “trying to run.”

 

Liam turned, feeling more than ever like a spooked horse, actually shifting from foot to foot, his shoulder bumping against Spike in closeness, feeling like he was about to cry in front of everyone like a scolded child. “I was peeing,” he said softly to Spike, loud enough for everyone to hear.

 

He could feel his face was in a contortion of shock, but he couldn’t relax it. He wanted to run.

 

“You should have bought him to me. How dare you touch my personal property,” Spike barked at them. His hand closed around Liam’s wrist and Liam felt so secure he was glad he’d pissed earlier because he thought he might wet himself with relief. Like Spike’s hand was an iron barrier around him from… those things…

 

He was still breathing in short sharp bursts, and his face was still aching from the blow the old creature had given him.

 

“He’s dressed like a whore,” the older man said calmly, “we didn’t think he actually belonged to you.”

 

“He is dressed like a whore Spike,” said another older man Liam only then noticed was standing on the opposite side of Spike, his voice vaguely amused as he spoke, “how were they to know?”

 

Spike turned to the man as the man’s icy eyes slid over Liam, lingering on his chest where his nipples were prominent and dark through the wet fabric. Liam crossed one arm over his chest, hand on his shoulder, his other hand in Spike’s possession. “With all respect Commander, there are no whorehouses in the middle of a wood in Plain’s Boundaries.” Spike was speaking stilted and angrily, lips pale.

 

“Still,” the Commander said conversationally, stepping forward and taking Liam’s chin the way the other soldier had, to force Liam’s face up. “He was out without you. He deserves to be punished.”

 

Liam kept his eyes on the floor, even as the Commander tilted his head, like his pupils were weighted and he couldn’t lift them. His heartbeat throbbed in his ear channels.

 

“He does,” Spike said stiffly after a moment, his hand still around Liam’s wrist as the Commander touched him.

 

“Where did he come from?” the Commander asked, breathing roasted fish breath on Liam’s lips.

 

Another pause. “Seget, Commander.”

 

The Commander was so close Liam thought he might try to kiss him. Liam didn’t know if he could stomach the idea, dry heaving once but covering it with a cold shudder.

 

Everyone was silent as the Commander continued his inspection. “Is this the one that you’ve taken as a new slave?”

 

Liam’s eyelids fluttered in instant defiant response, but he wisely kept his mouth shut, so close to so many fangs he wasn’t sure he could do anything but be limp and quiet.

 

“Yes,” Spike said tightly.

 

“I see why.”

 

Liam’s face was released and Spike’s fingers tugging his wrist closer was suddenly more comforting than anything he’d ever felt in his life. He didn’t like these men, these creatures with their emotionless eyes and cold indifferent hands. He’d never been touched like that in his life, like he was nothing, worse than nothing, like they’d actually disliked him from the very core of their beings, like he was something dirty to be touched viciously, not deserving of respect or kindness. Spike’s cool tempered fingered around his wrist seemed like tender kisses compared to that.

 

His other wrist was suddenly clutched in death’s fingers and brought up to the Commander’s eye level. “He’s not secured.”

 

Spike’s glanced from Liam’s face to the Commanders. “He must have slipped out,” he said with an angry glance at Liam’s eyes, “I thought I’d trained him well enough that he wouldn’t still try.”

 

The Commander raised his eyebrows amusedly. “It seems to me, Spike, that you haven’t trained him very well at all, he slipped his restraints and then went for a wander…”

 

“Yes,” Spike said, casting another tight lipped angry glance at Liam.

 

“Not a good impression,” the Commander said, “how can one keep his men in order, when he can’t even keep his slaves?”

 

“It won’t happen again Commander.”

 

Spike looked grim, his hand tightening around Liam’s wrist and tugging him away. He followed, coughing a little, a tickle in the back of his throat, his lungs expanding and squeezing rapidly with fear because his body was still too busy trying to get through the shock of what happened to slow his breath down. He was pushed up the stairs and into the familiar carriage, a yawning pitch black mouth. Spike pushed him on the bed and Liam heard his booted feet clomping around quickly, closing them both into the blindness, before some tiny flint sparks dotted on the dark ground. The oil lamp lit, Spike slipped it back onto the latch on the ceiling, as it’s light warmly filled the room in golden waves. Task completed Spike stood for a second, face set and stern as Liam watched him from the bed, feeling the fear ebbing away from him and leaving him hollow with embarrassment and guilt, ashamed of what had nearly happened, what he knew would have happened without Spike’s interference.

 

Mouth unhappy, Liam looked up at Spike, seeing the man looking down at him, stern as a parent with a troublemaking child. “Thank you,” Liam said, his voice hitching.

 

Spike’s eyes flickered to furious, burning with outrage and he reached out, his hand slapping against Liam’s ear and making it throb. Liam’s hand clamped to his ear and held it, head bowed, tears threatening to flow out in a flood that couldn’t be stopped once it started. He held his breath. He was too weak for this.

He couldn’t believe what had …

He felt sick and so ashamed. He wanted to crawl under the bed and just stay there until all the horrible feelings went away and he could swallow the tears that clung to the back of his throat.

 

Spike’s hand curled around the front of his collar and pulled him forward.

 

“What… were you thinking?” he growled, animal eyed.

 

Suddenly, ‘I needed to piss’ just didn’t mean anything. He stared woefully back, pleading with his eyes for Spike to leave him alone.

 

“Do you know what would have happened if I hadn’t been coming back then?” his hand tugged forward on the collar.

 

The tears had found their way up from his throat to the backs of his eyes. He nodded, his chin against the back of Spike’s hand. Spike let him go for a second, fists in tight balls next to his thighs. Spike closed his eyes, and exhaled. His lips were pursed and he paused a few more moments before reaching out and clipping Liam’s other ear. Liam’s head rang, his ears tingling and sore.

 

He wanted to have a bath, a long, hot, slow one. His skin felt rotten and soft where the soldiers had touched it, like bruised fruit. He felt oily inside, and tears were fighting his body to come out and pour down his face.

Everything was different. He knew what this thing; this Union monster, was capable of.

 

“I tell you and I tell you,” Spike said shaking his head as he knelt down, grabbing clanking chains from underneath the bed, “and you just can’t understand me you stupid, bloody thickheaded farmer. Well I’m not wasting my breath anymore. I’m not going to keep trying to make you see common sense, I’m just going to force it on you, cause you just don’t get it.”

 

He resolutely clicked the cuffs around Liam’s ankles as Liam watched him quietly. His feet were dirty, as were his pants.

 

“The next time you go anywhere without my permission, I am going to spank the skin off your arse. It you continue to do it, I’m gonna piece a leading chain through that soft bit in your nose,” he flicked the soft skin between Liam’s nostrils, making Liam’s hand come up to shield it in instinctive response, “and I will chain you to the wall that way. Like a bull.”

 

Spike grabbed his wrists forcefully and cuffed them.

 

“You’ll do what I say,” he said hooking a curled finger under Liam’s chin and guiding his eyes up to meet his own gaze, “when I say it. Or end up poked like chicken on skewers, in more ways than one. Can you understand that?”

 

“Yes,” Liam said angrily, his eyes starting to blur.

 

Spike let him go and he stood up, looking down at the blue eyes before shuffling to the corner and sitting down with his face to the corner, replaying their actions from so many times before.

 

“Don’t pout,” Spike ordered from behind him.

 

Liam stared at the grain in the wall, water slipping down his cheek without his acknowledgment. His chest and thighs were cold from being pushed in the wet grass. He realised his cheeks were wet and swiped at them with an angry sigh.

 

“What?” Spike asked.

 

His voice triggered Liam’s brain, kicking it into action. “Did you help me because you own me, or did you help me because I was in trouble?” he asked simply, eyes on the wall.

 

There was silence in his ears for a second. “With you Liam, those two are one and the same.”

 

Liam wriggled down to lay on the floor, burying himself in the blankets, pushing his wet face into the pillows.

 

Spike spoke again, from the bed above. “There are worse places to be than here,” he said smoothly.

 

Liam clenched as the memory of being rolled over on the wet ground as he screamed for help played over in his head. There was only one thing stopping it, one strange wolf in his own right, who had taken him for some reason. Who decided to protect him.

 

“If I let you go,” Spike said distantly, like he was thinking a million miles away, “that would be your life.”

 

Liam felt sick. He closed his eyes and tried to close his mind as well. A moment later he heard movement on the bed and the light was suddenly blown out; leaving them both swamped in protective darkness.

Liam nibbled on his lower lip, a headache started to spin behind his forehead. He could hear Spike breathing, in and out and Liam wanted so desperately to see inside his head, to see what was happening, and what he thought, and why he’d helped before and again.

 

Some men talked lowly as they wandered past Spike’s carriage and Liam wondered with a thud of fear if they were the men he’d come across.

 

“Thank you,” Liam suddenly blurted, voice high with the wet in his throat. A tear slid down from the corner of his eye and dropped off his nose to the pillow. “For whatever reason, thank you for helping me.”

 

Spike didn’t answer that. “Take the wet clothes off Liam, you’ll just make your body worse.”

 

---

 

Chapter Ten – Beguiling.

 

 

 

 

 

Liam’s body was being twisted between a hundred formless hands, slapped and pinched and squeezed. He was crouching in a box, his forehead to the ground and everything was cold, his bare skin, the tips of fingertips and the feeling deep in his belly, like there was nothing between his flesh, no stomach or heart, just cold emptiness.

The hands started to pull hunks of his skin away like warm taffy and he couldn’t feel a thing.

 

*

 

Liam’s eyes blinked open wide, his heart thudding in his throat and his breath somehow in his skull, around his brain, making him feel light headed and dreamy.

The room was dark, but it wasn’t closed in like the box in his dreams and it immediately started to calm him slightly. Not enough though.

 

He could see a shaft of moonlight through the window, splaying out across the far wall in a block, catching half of Spike’s body on the way as the blue grey light slipped in over the bed. Liam shifted up in a shallow jangle of chains, feet kicking the hot covers down off his body as he peered over the top of the bed, seeing Spike, rolled away from him, bare pointed shoulder painted whiter by the moon, hair scruffy and his body half sunk into the feathers in his mattress. He snored easily as Liam sweated, feeling the dampness over his lips and forehead start to cool. He sat, arms awkwardly held to the side; hands suspended by the short chain to the wall that Spike had locked him into before he’d fallen asleep.

 

He sat on the feather-downed mattress in the corner on the floor, a petbed, as he slowly scanning the dark shadows with wary eyes, looking suspiciously at the thick black beneath Spike’s blanket covered body. Anything could be under there.

A brief suddenly violent open-eyed nightmare slipped into his head, cold fingers of hundreds of hands suddenly slithering out from under the bed towards him, fingertips edging into the moonlight as they reached for him, for his skin, and Liam was transfixed, his heartbeat thudding a tattoo in his ears.

 

He blinked and they disappeared, and he was left with an empty feeling, a shelled feeling- like someone had scooped out all his insides- and breath that hissed and gulped up his throat and down into his chest. He was shivering. So uncontrollably his teeth started to shudder and clack against one another and he gracelessly pulled the covers up to his chin again, lying down, his hands suspended in air again, knuckles brushing the wall as the blankets did nothing to help his shivering. The collar around his neck stayed stiff and inflexible, another plague on his body, the metal turned freezing from the night. He sat back up restlessly and watched the darkness under the bed with doleful eyes, his nerves sizzling his blood hot and cold as he just waited for the hands to come from somewhere else. His heart was in his throat and his shoulder furthest from the wall was beginning to ache from the angle it was being twisted and his muscles were bunched up all over his body. He could feel them compressed and hot like sun baked stones sitting in the flesh along his back and in his arms and thighs.

 

Time slid by, only knew time had moved at all by the light hushing sound of Spike’s breathing caressing the silence in the room and wearing it down. In and out. He couldn’t hear his own quickened breathing as long as he listened to Spike sleep. He closed his eyes tightly and focused on the breathing, calm and smooth.

 

In.

 

He breathed in and held the cool air in his heart beat rattled chest.

 

Out.

 

He breathed out slowly, eyes wet and lips shaky.

 

In.

And Out.

Calm. It was just a dream.

In. And Out. In Out. Breathe it.

 

His slow breath started to calm his heart, tricking it into thinking he was calm, even if his nerves and muscles were still strung tight as catgut. His head didn’t feel so dizzy as he tracked his eyes over the room again, nibbling his lower lip as his mind played tricks on him, made the shadows jump and writhe when his gaze wasn’t pinning them down. He huddled as far down into the thick blankets and cushions as he could, his raised hands making a small chilly tunnel across his chest, the thin shirt doing nothing to keep him warm. He shifted again, unhappily, tongue feeling swollen with worry and starting to get a headache from his tension.

His toes were freezing. He wriggled them against the warm covers, trying to create some heat, brow furrowed as he looked towards Spike’s bed again.

 

His spine stiffened as he saw pale fingers resting on the ground in the dark swathe and he cried out, a useless loud bleat, only to blink and realise it was just the edge of a rumpled cover peeking out into the moonlight.

 

Sudden movement from the bed, and Liam was stricken; heart popping beats in his chest as his head jerked up to see what it was. Spike. Sitting up, swinging his legs out to the floor away from Liam with a slight pat of sound as his feet slapped to the ground, his lean muscled shoulders lit to glowing by the moonlight as he bowed his head.

 

“Liam,” came his voice, floating to Liam’s ears, croaking tiredly, “just go to sleep.”

 

Liam blinked at him, all his worries about nightmares and hands so far away now that Spike was talking to him, throwing him back into the real world.

He hadn’t even known he was awake. Liam didn’t say anything.

Spike looked over his shoulder, moonlight blazing on his face, dark stripe under his cheekbone, eyes hooded. His lips were too pale and he looked unreal, like a dream version of him. Liam noticed the slight slump in his cocky frame, shoulders rounded, like he was weary. Tired.

 

“What’s the matter?” he asked roughly, glaring over his white wing of a shoulder, “Why can’t you sleep for more than fifteen minutes?”

 

Liam clumsily scratched his chin with his cuffed hands. “The cuffs,” he lied.

 

Spike turned away, pausing for a moment, silvery head bowed again before he stood up histrionically, sighing loudly, and climbing over the bed in his low slung pants, sliding down off the covers and unlocking Liam from the wall, and then unlocking his cuffs. “There,” He said, slamming the metal rings down onto the bedside table with a clatter, “Now bloody sleep!”

 

He slumped back into bed, sleepily pulling the covers up over his legs.

 

Liam huddled down easily into his own covers. “Did I wake you?” he asked quietly, rubbing his raw wrists under the warm blankets.

 

The room was intensely silent for a moment, with Spike’s body tightly drawn as it was, and Liam thought that when he spoke it would be in an angry yell to match the set of his shoulders.

 

“You’re noisy,” Spike said quietly, voice low.

 

“Sorry,” Liam said, feeling dispirited with tiredness. He hadn’t slept well for so long. Days now. Maybe a week. He was losing time. And he felt so nervous all the time, he felt older than he was, like his mind was too old for his body, a doddering old man’s mind, finding everything so new and complicated.

 

More silence. Not tense silence like before, just thinking silence. Liam stared at the ceiling, slowly and tenderly rubbing his wrists.

 

“They won’t come here,” Spike said with a sigh, settling into the feathers, “I promise you.”

 

Liam wondered what the promise of a murderer was worth.

 

“I told you I’d look after you. And I will. I’ll keep you safe, pet.”

 

Liam snorted. “Because you own me.”

 

“Yes,” Spike said calmly, sleep in his voice, “I look after my own.”

 

Liam wanted to hiss that he wasn’t Spike’s but he couldn’t see the point anymore. Why argue with him about that? He wasn’t going to change. So he just sighed through his nose and enjoyed his freedom from the cuffs for the moment. The joint-bones in his wrists were hurting, rubbed against metal for days on end; they felt bruised and sore. He stared up at the dark roof as he absently played with the soreness, wincing as he pressed gently against the raw strips of flesh.

 

Spike shifted in the covers. “Liam,” he said testily, “sleep now.”

 

Liam closed his eyes obediently, a subdued notion slipping in his subconscious, of falling asleep before Spike did, so the man could make good on his promise to watch for the soldiers. Liam smiled bitterly as he realised he was putting trust in someone who so clearly couldn’t be trusted. But then again, he thought to himself sleepily, what choice did he have?

 

 

*

 

 

When he woke up, the sky was early morning dull, a blue cast over everything, even his skin, lustrous grey like shiny river stone. His fingers scratched along his scalp as he sat up, the light making the room seem like a dream world. Booted feet on the floor, aligned with his pillow and he looked up to see Spike sitting on the bed, dressed in black on black, his elbows resting on his knees, a long leather coat swathed around him, dotted with roughened patches and scars from wear.

 

“Morning,” he said smiling.

 

Liam yawned, frowning, mouth tasting like old food. “You’re gonna have to stop watching me sleep,” he said.

 

“You sleep late.”

 

He pursed his lips indignantly. “I’m tired.”

 

“Hmm,” Spike said, standing up, leather boots creaking a little. Liam sat on his mattress with his heavy lidded eyes closed. He scratched at his stubbly chin, fingernails rasping on the short hair and tried to wake himself up. “Come on,” Spike said, the familiar toe jabbing at his thigh as he urged Liam up.

 

Liam glared up at him and stood, wrenching his shirt back down his body from where it had ridden up during the night. The cold air hit him like a slap, as soon as he shed his blankets and the cold made him breathe in suddenly, crossing his arms over his tightening chest to keep his warmth to himself. His feet froze on the floor and he subtly shifted from side to side, like a fighter before a battle.

 

“Cold,” Spike noted.

 

He grabbed a long thick black coat from the messy bed covers and held it up by the shoulders, open for him. Liam hesitated before stepping and turning to slide his arms inside the soft thick wool, uneasily letting Spike flick it up over his shoulders and turn him around, straightening the sides and the lapels like he was dressing a child. It was soft, and smooth, and instantly started to heat up around him.

 

Spike nodded, pleased. “Yeah,” he said, his voice a purr, “I like that.”

 

Liam stretched in the coat, the warmth surrounding, feeling it bend pliantly around his arms as he moved. Liam’s hand was suddenly caught in steely fingers and he looked up in alarm to see Spike’s intense concentration focused down at their palms. He pushed the sleeve of the coat back and Liam saw a thick band of red raw skin around his wrists, pink and sore looking.

 

Spike’s dark brows were drawn together. “What have you been doing?” he asked, cold ice eyes flicking up to catch his gaze.

 

Liam raised his eyebrows. “You cuffed me.”

 

Spike’s eyes narrowed and he turned to the bedside table and plucked the cuffs from it, holding them eye level and glaring at them suspiciously. He looked back to Liam who was just standing; too tired to express anything or understand what Spike was doing. Liam yawned, finger combing his hair back.

 

Spike made a little ‘humph’ noise and shook his head, coming over to Liam and holding the cuffs up. “Alright,” he said, shaking his head again and opening the cuffs, latching them closed around Liam’s wrists. Liam pouted slightly but said nothing, not looking at Spike, as the feeling of being cuffed again settled heavily over him. Spike then locked something new on the cuffs that made Liam snap back to life. A silvery chain with a polished leather loop that Spike hooked over his own white knuckles.

 

“Hey…” Liam said, disconcerted. He frowned down at the chain that locked between his wrists.

 

Spike looked at him, mild surprise on his face that Liam might have something to say about the addition. “What?”

 

“What’s this?”

 

“Chain,” Spike said slowly, raising an eyebrow.

 

“I don’t want a chain.”

 

Spike sighed wearily, rolling his eyes impatiently. “Liam, it’s either on your wrists, or on your collar. Those are the choices.”

 

Liam frowned at the chain again, his face slowly screwing up in distaste. He slumped. “Wrists.”

 

“Good,” He swung the chain over his shoulder as he turned away and stepped forward, the motion tugging the moderately lengthed chain and pulling Liam’s wrists along behind him. Liam stumbled for a second before following the silver snake, out of the cabin and down onto the streets.

 

He noticed that it wasn’t actually that early, but the dark clouds that were hovering far above them in the sky, smothering the sun and it’s light, made it seem that way. The temperature was low and the clouds hinted at a storm. Men and women wearing thick coats passed them, walking quickly, wanting to be inside and away from the sharp nasty breeze that ricocheted off pavers and bricks with no warm earth to soak the cold up at all.

Chimneys puffed smoke from fires and Liam could see warm blazes from stores windows every now and then, from the small fires within.

His feet were cold on the pavers that ran between the identical stores Spike led him through, they soon turned numb and Liam pushed them from his mind, stumbling ungracefully along behind him. They turned and walked along another smaller park for a little while, before turning away and heading down some other paved streets. Spike knew his way everywhere, didn’t get lost even when everything looked like a copy.

 

Spike suddenly turned into a shop, stepping to the side to hold open the door for Liam to step in after him. Liam did, his numb feet feeling bitten as the warmth from the store fire spread and tried to warm him. He wriggled his frozen feet for a moment before he took in the store, lips parting as he saw the display of chains and cuffs on the wall, varying metals and designs and widths. Some cuffs looked long enough to cover the entire forearm, thick heavy things with heavy silver rings that made him feel weak just looking at them. There were things on display that Liam didn’t even understand, chains connecting to things that looked like they’d be harnessed to something, but he couldn’t figure out what. The store had a few browsers already inside; one man was leading a dark haired girl by a chain around her neck. She was standing staring vacantly at nothing as he looked into one display box filled with sharp little metal things that Liam couldn’t see properly.

 

“Morning Gen’ral,” an older lady said to him, her fine hair as white as Spike’s, except tinged with light brown around the skull. “Looking for anything in particular?”

 

Spike surprised him by turning and clicking the cuffs off his wrists. He stood, unused to being free when other people were around, feeling almost nervous, feeling upside down. He wasn’t meant to be uncuffed around other Unioner’s, he fretted, that was bad, wasn’t it? That’s what got him in trouble last time. Had the rules changed? He warily eyed the other patrons of the store, two of them with shiny metal plates on their fingers that he could see poking from their coats, armour that looked like claws. He stepped closer to Spike so that there could be no room for confusion.

 

Spike tossed the cuffs to the woman and she caught them. “Want to upgrade,” he said, before reaching back and holding up Liam’s bruised wrist, pushing the wool back as he had in their little room, “they’re abrading him.”

 

Her eyes ticked down to his wrists and then up to his face. “I can understand not wanting a show pony to be marked,” her lips twisted wryly. “He’s top product, I can see you give him the best…” she tilted her head, narrowing her eyes at Liam’s face judgingly, “Let me show you something I think you’d like.”

 

Spike and the woman stepped away from him and he hurriedly followed them, glancing up, startled when his gaze brushed the chained girl’s. She watched him with empty black eyes over a darkly bruised mouth. She looked half dead and it made him cold inside, like she’d seen right inside him and turned his warm insides to the freezing wind, so cold he was glad when her eyes ticked to the ground and let him be. He walked into Spike’s back, not realising he’d stopped, jostling him forward a couple of steps.

 

The woman looked at him and then at Spike.

 

“He’s new,” Spike sighed. Liam stepped away from his body and watched the back of his silvery head, not game enough to look around the store and chancing seeing that girl’s eyes again.

 

Spike’s head tilted, “I like those…” he said.

 

“Ah, good taste, what I was going to show you actually. They’re for show ponies and performers, you know, things to stop the marks.”

 

“That’s good.”

 

Spike turned around and grabbed his wrist, latching a new cuff around the pinked flesh. But instead of hard cold sharp metal against him, he felt soft slippy material, thick and warm. He looked down at the ornately decorated cuff around his left wrist.

Spike was holding the other in his hand and Liam could see a band of shiny red inside the silver.

 

“That’s hand woven silk in there,” the woman said, “On wool and cotton padding. If he can get bruised through that, you need to take him to a medicine man or something, cause there’d be something wrong with him.”

 

Spike snapped the other one around Liam’s wrist.

 

“They can link together,” the woman droned, “and the padding and lining can be washed and replaced easily.”

 

Spike’s hands were gently looped around his wrists, half of his skin hidden from Liam’s but the silver cuff.

 

“Also, you might try full leather when he’s been trained enough,” She said, handing over a long brown soft cuff to Spike who brushed his thumb along the inside, testing it, “they’re tough, and they look nice besides.”

 

“I’m allergic to the dyes in some leather,” Liam suddenly piped up, activating with the information.

 

Spike slowly turned to him, a look of disgusted surprise on his face. He closed his eyes; white teeth bared a little and brought his hand down across Liam’s cheek. Liam yelped in surprise, fingers automatically rising up to press against the shocked flesh. His other cheek, not the already bruised one thankfully, stung. Spike turned back to the woman.

 

“I’ll get the leather ones… in black,” he turned around and unlocked the cuffs from Liam’s wrists, “And these.”

 

“Need anything else?”

 

Spike shook his head and grabbed Liam’s hand, leading him into the back room with the woman. She pulled out a new pair of the silver cuffs and gave them to Spike to look at. He peered at them and rubbed his index finger over the quilled engraving around them.

 

The woman led them both to a small table and slipped Spike a piece of paper as she sat down. Spike jotted something on the paper and then pushed it across the wood to her, along with the silver cuffs and a filled bag of coin. He grabbed the leather cuffs from the table and buckled them around Liam’s wrists.

 

“Those should be ready after noon,” she said.

 

Spike grabbed his hand and led Liam out of the store as Liam eyed the easy to remove cuffs he now had on around his wrists and forearms. They were longer than the other rough ones he’d become accustomed to, halfway up his forearm and slanting to a soft point underneath, towards his elbow. Only three thin silver buckles kept him cuffed and he instantly started slyly trying to remove them, cheek still smarting from the embarrassing slap Spike had given him.

 

“Don’t even try it,” Spike said over his shoulder.

 

Liam glared at him.

 

“And why did you talk?” Spike said, strangely frustrated, “You bloody moron, what’s the matter with you?”

 

Liam refused to answer.

 

Spike stopped and turned, watching him intensely. “Do you know why I hit you?” he asked him clearly, face unreadable.

 

Liam hesitated. A sharp nod answered Spike’s question.

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I spoke?”

 

“Yes. Don’t do that. Don’t speak unless I speak to you first.”

 

Liam dropped his glare to the floor, feeling tensed with anger. He couldn’t help himself. “I am allergic to some leather though. I get itchy welts.”

 

Spike sighed and suddenly wrapped his arm around Liam’s waist, pulling him close, pressing their bodies flush and before Liam knew what had happened, Spike’s hand had snaked under his coat and spanked him smartly on the arse cheek. Spike let him go as suddenly as he’d caught him, and turned, grabbing Liam’s hand and leading him away. “It doesn’t matter Liam,” he said in a bored tone, like he’d repeated himself a hundred times, “Don’t talk unless I give you permission to talk.”

 

“This is all so stupid! All of this, rules and slaves … it’s all so stupid,” Liam cried out suddenly, about to start a rant but stopped, almost swallowing his tongue when Spike whirled around, his eyes blazing cold fire, looking cruel and pinched, and so Union. White skinned and unnatural and unmerciful, a hungry wolf with wet snarling jaws snapping at him. Liam’s mouth clapped shut.

 

Fingers wrapped around his collar, pushing him into an alley that smelled like piss and old wine. Knuckles jabbing into the soft flesh of his throat as Spike pushed him to the bricked wall and held him there tightly, barbed power in his smaller frame. “Stop!” Spike hissed, shaking him once by the throat, “Stop this now. You’re going to get us both killed if you don’t keep your fucking mouth shut.”

 

His hands came up pleadingly over Spike’s colder knuckles as he pressed his head back against brick, trying to soften the hold on his throat.

 

Spike’s fingers let go of his throat and Liam sucked a breath in, gathering himself together before Spike grabbed his shoulder and shoved him flush to the wall again, slapped cheek against the rough brick. “That is a bloody stupid thing to do, Liam.” He flipped him, pressing his face against the wall and hissing into his ear. “Let’s get this straight, I don’t want to die. And you don’t either, I know it, I can see it in your eyes. Talking trash about the Union? Will get you killed. Worse than. So shut. Your fucking. Mouth. Especially here. The very walls are Union aligned in Delph Crossing.”

 

His belly was pressing his hands against the wall and he bit his lip at the few sharp slaps Spike aimed at his arse cheeks. The cold seemed to make it worse.

Spike yanked him off the wall and when Liam stole a glance at him, his face was scrunched up and nervous, eyes showing his concentration. His movements were stiff and jerky and he led Liam down the street quickly, turning at a seemingly random street, crossing the road, then heading down another.

 

“Where are we going?” Liam asked quietly.

 

“To wash you,” Spike said shortly, “got nothing better to do, you should probably have a wash and I need to get you off the streets in case anyone heard you.”

 

He shook his head crazily and turned, this street revealing a large stone bath house, not very pretty, quite ordinary looking compared to the other buildings, and Liam was puzzled until he realised this was the slave’s bathhouse.

Spike led him through the door and down the row of stairs, warm humid air bubbling up to meet them. The baths spread out before them, a few brightly coloured flowers mixed in with the dull stone and wood. A bubbly young woman came to meet them, shoving towels into Liam’s cuffed arms as she babbled at Spike. Spike’s hand was a vice on his fingers, squeezing them so tightly his fingertips were going purple.

 

There were about six long wide pools in the huge enclosure. Mainly people were being bathed, but a few people with collars were bathing themselves, very slowly, to the very font of the rabble. There were random red curtains falling from the high ceilings, separating the pools in some places, creating places for towels and soaps in others. The place was noisy, splashing and murmuring and laughter in some spots. Steam was rising up from the water in the cold day, and the thump thump of the hot water pumps was steady and loud. Large flat bowls of slightly flaming coals and wood lit the enclosure warmly, dotted around without a pattern.

There were soldiers milling around in the humidity, sweat making shine on their foreheads, their armour bright and abrasive amongst the low pools and bare skin. Liam watched them from the corner of his eye.

Spike disengaged himself from the woman and led Liam to the furthest pool, separated from the rest by a long flowing curtain. Spike sat down on one of the stone seats and unbuckled the cuffs quickly, like he didn’t want to touch him, not looking at him as he frowned at the rest of the pools, not lingering and watching Liam’s skin like he usually did.

 

“Wash,” Spike said, pulling out one of his rolled cigarettes and sticking the end into the small flames of the brazier.

 

Liam looked around, and slid off the coat, setting it neatly on a low flat stone seat, and then pushed off his shirt, quickly followed by his pants, sliding into the hot water quickly. As the heated water enveloped him, he looked over at a young man a couple of feet away from him in the bath, younger than Liam, being washed roughly by an older woman with a collar around her neck.

He looked back towards the other pools, his eyes alighting on a soldier washing a youth with a gold circlet around his thin neck. He was dark haired and had a pretty face like a fox, sharp with almost black eyes. The boy was gazing blankly at the ceiling as the soldier’s hand pawed between his legs. Liam snapped his gaze away once he realised what was happening over there, sliding off the slight step in the pool and dunking himself underwater. It was hot, and his rigid feet were burning with either cold or heat, he couldn’t figure it out, but it didn’t matter much anyway because they were slowly becoming lax again. He surfaced and wiped his eyes, seeing Spike lazily watching him, face relaxed and small smile curving his lips. He looked away, keeping as much of himself under the water level as possible. He dunked under again, to push his clinging wet hair back from his face and stayed under for as long as his breath would let him, keeping his eyes closed tight against the soap already in the water. He swam for a little, sliding through the surface again and again, rubbing the water from his eyelids before looking around. He’d swim a few strokes deeper into the pool, loving the heat of it around him, hot, pressuring his bare body with the heat.

 

He swam down towards the heated bottom of the pool, careful not to touch it as he swam like an eel along it, feeling the rising heat baking him, trying to sizzle him, before he was slipping easily towards the surface again, splashing through the water’s skin. He cleared his eyes and looked up. Spike was sitting at the water edge, cigarette pinched between his pink lips; boots off and pants rolled up so his feet resting on the water covered step, playing with a shaving knife between his fingers.

 

Liam blinked at him from the safety of the middle of the pool.

 

“Here,” was all Spike said, pointing at the step.

 

Liam watched him for a second before hesitantly swimming over. Spike had pushed his long sleeved shirt up to his elbows and the muscles in his arms were smooth and firm, the skin stretched tautly over them downed with soft hair. Liam slipped up to the inner seat in the pool, covering himself as best he could as he sat there. Spike’s gaze slid down to his arse on the step and then back up, slowly, and Liam could hear him breathing, focused on it, over the rabble of the bathhouse.

 

Spike grabbed his slippery shoulders, losing grip on one for a moment before pulling him back between his spread feet. The wide bony part of his foot, before his long toes branched out, brushed against Liam’s bare thighs on either side. Liam sat, hunched over, feeling vulnerable with his naked back to Spike’s vision and hands, wanting to slip off away from him. What was he doing?

 

“Lean back,” Spike said around the cigarette stuck between his lips.

 

Liam looked at him over his shoulder. He had a lathered shaving soap in his white hand.

 

“Lean back,” he repeated, more firmly.

 

Liam turned back away, paused as he thought furiously, and wriggled back. He didn’t want spike to slap him again, which is hat he might do if he disobeyed him in here. Spike’s finger’s, some of which were holding the sharp shaving tool, guided his head back, resting it against one of his thighs, so his face was directly pointing to Spike, neck bared. Liam’s hands slid instinctively over his lap, one bare foot sliding up, brushing Spike’s as he tried to find purchase. His calf whispering against Spike’s he hooked his toes around the side of the step so he wasn’t so stretched. Spike watched him, watched his eyes slide down Liam’s body as the heat of the humid pools rose up around him. His neck was against the rough thick material of Spike’s pants and he watched the face above him closely, his heat beating fast.

Spike’s fingers brushed along his neck, from the collar up, playing along the wet skin, his thumb brushing gently against the risen pointed bump in his throat. His thumb brushed against the bruise on his cheek gently, then back down over his chin and across his throat again. Liam fidgeted a little at the ticklish sensation, lips curving instinctively as he watched Spike. Spike smiled, stopping the touching and swathed his wet skin with a lather of shave soap.

 

“You’ve got a pretty larynx.”

 

“What’s that?” Liam said as the soap covered his cheeks as well.

 

Spike’s finger brushed against the bump in his throat again, gently. “This.”

 

“Oh.” Liam looked away, eyes to the side wall, wondering if anyone else had ever told him he had a pretty throat bump before. He didn’t think so. Maybe it was a Union thing.

 

Liam went rigid as the first swipe of the knife slid expertly over his skin, running up his neck.

 

“Why do you want to shave me?” Liam asked when Spike finished the slice; “You never have before…”

 

“Ah ah,” Spike said, placing the blade against his neck again, “Don’t speak. Don’t want to slip now.”

 

Liam stayed silent, placing so much trust in Spike as he kept his neck bare and his fingers cupped over his cock and balls. At some point Spike’s free hand had crept around to support his head, his fingertips frosted as they slowly stroked the smooth skin behind his ear, his other hand deftly removing the stubble from his face without a slip or a scratch. Liam closed his eyes against the intense concentration, the look Spike got, closed off and set upon his task, refusing to stray from it for a moment. His concentration was in his fingers, and his eyes and the set of his mouth. Liam wasn’t sure if Spike was even seeing him anymore and relaxed a little, the warmth of the water making him sleepy in the cradle of Spike’s wind cold arms.

 

“Done,” Spike said softly, making no move to shift Liam out of his arms.

 

Liam’s eyes blinked open and a hand instinctively came up to his face, brushing along the smoothness. “Thank you,” he said, remembering his naked state and carefully sliding away, back into the protection of the deeper water. Spike stepped out of the pool in an easy motion, turning away, drying off his calves and feet and rolling his pants back down.

 

Liam washed the excess shaving foam off his face, ducking into the water and sliding back up quickly. Spike set a small bowl of cream on the side of the steps as he sat back down and rolled his shirt back down to his wrists. “Use that,” he said shortly, lifting his chin, his concentration wavering now, his eyes darting off to look up at the long red curtains.

 

Liam swam to the side and peered in the bowl. Hair cream. He slathered it on his hand and sat down on the step again, back to Spike, and massaged it into his unruly hair, feeling refreshed with his stubble gone, new and awake. He looked around the pool as he finger combed the sweet smelling stuff through his hair and his eyes lit on a couple in the bath, hiding behind one of the low curtains. He watched across the bath which was still busy apart from Liam and the two he was watching, and saw that a young dark haired girl sat there, gazing at the water, her thin frail collar glinting in the half light as the stout white haired soldier behind her worked hair cream into her long hair with his white fingers. He was bare armed, the muscles on his frame standing out as he washed her. Liam watched, his attention snagged because something wasn’t right. It was off, askew somehow. The girls face, it wasn’t… wasn’t how prisoners usually looked, for some reason. Not hooded and wary, or dead like that girl in the cuff shop. She had long dark straight hair, like Miko; it was fine even though she was so obviously a mountain girl with her pointed nose and straight features.

He stayed watching and his lips parted in surprise as the man’s hand slowly reached down, cupping her side tenderly under her breast, his hand half over the width of her rib cage, guiding her softly back. She looked up immediately and they both glanced around guiltily before sharing a kiss, not a usual possessive kiss like he’d seen, the few times he’d seen a kiss or a touch happen between a Union soldier and a prisoner, it was warm and soft and her tanned thin arms reached up and hooked around his neck, like any normal couple he’d ever seen before. He stared dumbly. The man’s hand was tender on her as he lifted her boyish body up, quickly covering her nakedness with a ready towel, wrapping her up protectively and guiding her away hastily, towards a curtain covered corner, but not before Liam saw her hand seek out his and wrap around it firmly before they disappeared.

 

Liam was struck speechless.

 

He turned back, looking over his shoulder to see if Spike had noticed, but if he had, he gave no indication. He was just busying himself with a new cigarette, lighting it from the old one as he had it between his teeth, his legs lazily spread, heels flat on the roughly tiled bath floor. His eyes flicked up when he felt Liam’s gaze, a hint of a question in the blue but Liam turned away, sliding under the water again to rinse his cream slippery hair, the strands feeling like silk against his fingers as it splayed out in the warm water.

 

 

*

 

 

Spike led his herder back into the slave restraint store to pick up the cuffs he’d bought him earlier. It was a good store, Missus Burton’s, the best in Delph Crossing, probably in the entire plains. Missus Burton herself came back to greet him, her light hair in need of a bleach, now pulled back from her forehead.

 

“Ah Gen’ral, all ready for you,” she reached behind one of the counters, pulling out the impressive cuffs, lined with blood red silk.

 

He turned to Liam, who was still hot from the baths and smelling so sweetly it made his jaws water in want, and unbuckled the play cuffs, sliding the new ones over the raw looking skin on his wrists. They were shiny, bright things, sitting snugly against his skin, the filigree pattern surrounding his name engraved on the broad upper of each cuff in possessive script. That was the most beautiful part. His name on Liam.

 

Liam wore his coat still, so Spike couldn’t see the full effect, but he did notice Liam peer at the cuffs for a moment, testing them by twisting his wrists, obviously not uncomfortable in them. Spike’s cock was sore from all the futile waking it had been doing, he’d been rock hard in his pants when he had Liam laying trusting in his arms, trying to concentrate on the shaver in his hands, his arousal making his fingers weak with need. So hot and smelling so bloody good Spike wanted to lick him, lick up the muscles on his shoulders, up his neck, across his lips and make then shiny with his saliva. Fuck, he was getting hard again.

 

Liam looked at him with his dark eyes, obviously waiting for whatever would happen next, looking different and sharper with his black wet hair pulled and tied behind his head. He looked sleek.

 

Spike nodded, feeling the bubble of heat in his throat that would make his words croaky if he spoke, and led Liam away, covering himself with his coat, his stiff cock aching for attention. He didn’t think he could stand this much longer. Even his teeth were itching for it. When he finally got into Liam he was pretty sure he’d have a few bite marks on his smooth flesh, just because Spike was so ready for it. Ganting for it. It was swamping his dreams, filling his thoughts every second. Seeing his skin in quick flashes when he changed clothes wasn’t helping, nor was seeing his tongue dart out to lick his lips, plumping them, his tongue pointed and wet.

 

He realised he’d forgotten his errands, just wandering aimlessly, leading Liam to nowhere. He tried to focus, but Liam was standing close to him again, wary look in his eyes as he watched a group of soldiers sitting in a small seated area in the town at the end of the street they stood in. Spike leaned into him as he was distracted, smelling him, smelling his clean sweet hair. His lips were whitened a little as he pressed them together in the cold, brows slightly furrowed as he watched them with bright eyes. Gods, how soft his neck had been, how pliant he’d been, stretched out in the baths between Spike’s legs, his eyes closing as he’d enjoyed the feel of Spike tending to him. He’d so badly wanted to lean down and kiss his slightly parted humidity flushed lips and watch his dark brown eyes flick open in surprise. And maybe heated with want.

 

Boots. He had to get Liam some boots or his toes were gonna go blue and drop off.

 

He turned and headed back the way they had come, ignoring the saccharine scented girls that past them, feeling a little angry that they were robbing him of Liam’s own hot scent, his nostrils filling with perfume instead of skin and soap. He snuffed, and yanked Liam into a pokey boot makers, shoving him down onto a cushioned seat in his elegant tight fitted wool coat.

 

“Boots for him,” Spike said to the man who’d stood as they’d entered the store. “Black, thick. Good quality.”

 

“Yes sir, General,” the man said hurriedly, hauling himself over to Liam and lifting his foot to measure it.

 

He ran off out the back and Spike fidgeted, still hard in his pants, belly still tight and wanting for the subduing of Liam’s body. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it in the small corner fire that was busily flaming away. He puffed quickly, trying to calm himself with the hot billowing smoke, staring edgily out the window.

 

The man returned and started fitting Liam without speaking to him, handling him roughly and insensitivity like one would shoe a horse, and Liam didn’t say a word about it or even look offended. His sharp beautiful face gazed down with slight interest and Spike puffed his cigarette quickly as he watched him, reducing the tobacco to falling grey ash quickly. His cuffed hands were clasped primly in his lap; his nails were growing longer now, quarter moons of white above the wide pink. He’d trim them. It was fashion to wear nails a little longer now, Spike did himself, but he liked the look and feel of Liam’s hands when they were blunt, only the tiniest sliver of white showing above the wide base. Just the way he liked the way Liam looked clean-shaven.

 

“What about these General?” the man asked, looking back at Spike from where he knelt in the middle of a splay of boots on the floor.

 

“What?” Spike hissed, taken off guard, his mind still filled with images of Liam’s long fingered hands.

 

“The…” the man’s eyes flickered nervously, “the boots?”

 

Spike gathered his wits and looked. Liam was wearing thick black leather boots that rolled down at his calf, a mimic of outlaw’s boots. Spike nodded and paid the man quickly, feeling jittery and quick, like he’d had too many sweets, but then … also aggravated. He shook his head as they stepped out into the whipping cold again. The clouds were darkening with rain.

He didn’t look at Liam, as he led him back, chain in his hand as they walked. He could hear Liam’s boots against the pavers and didn’t like it, he liked the patting pads of his big feet, bare and wild herder, but his feet would get too cold in the plains. There was nothing here, the soil even seemed to be thin, over large plates of rock, nothing to trap any kind of heat that might rise during the day. Maybe even colder than the mountains, Spike wasn’t sure. He’d never been there in the winter.

 

He dragged Liam back in a bundle of energy, Spike felt as sugared and sleepless as a child, restless, needing to move fast and keep moving, keep the speed up. It was making him itch inside, and the heat in his lower belly was unbearable.

 

Liam didn’t speak on the way back to the lodging and Spike couldn’t even take amusement in the wide-eyed looks he was giving all the shops they passed. He was too distracted, but not by anything he could pin down. Just, irritated. Dressed up in the soft leather boots and thick coat Liam was almost scrubbing up, apart from the mane of dark hair around his face that was so different to the short, sheared styles that were in fashion.

But Spike didn’t think his long hair would be going anytime soon. He wanted to thread his fingers into the thickness and get it pliant enough to run his fingers through it all, feeling it slide along the soft webbing between his fingers.

His cock twitched as they hurried along the edge of the large park. He wanted to grab a thick handful of it, and viciously wrench Liam’s head back to bare his soft throat, make him feel insecure and exposed and then touch his skin with gentle lips and trembling fingers, malicious and adoring all at once.

 

He yanked Liam inside the cabin too roughly, making him stumble through the doorway as his balance tipped, and then pushed him onto the long couch, down near the now blazing fire. He separated the cuffs absently, brows drawn tightly. It was swollen with heat in the room, dry heat, and it was wonderful on his frozen fingers.

 

Liam slid off the seat and down on his knees in front of the fire, holding his hands out to the buffeting heat to warm them. Spike slid stiffly down into the chair, his skin feeling too tight and dry for his bones, feeling like he would split along his shoulders, or across his cheek, just because he felt so bloated inside. He couldn’t relax the scowl from his face. He could smell Liam’s scent, the hot faintly flavoured soap his skin was washed with.

 

The licking flames tried to reach out to Liam as one broad hand slid up and pulled the tie from his hair, wet black waves falling down across his shoulders. He shifted; unbuttoning the coat and letting it slide off his long arms and puddle to the floor behind his back. His skin was honey cake in front of the flames.

 

Spike stood abruptly, knocking his knee against the edge of the low table. “Stay here,” Spike ordered as Liam looked over his shoulder in surprise.

 

Liam blinked and Spike, boiling inside, stepped forward past the table and grabbed his upper arm coarsely. “Do you understand me, herder?” he growled.

 

Dark eyes gazed at him, slightly confused. “Yes,” he said calmly, “I do know how to speak.”

 

Spike let him go, stepping back.

 

Liam’s straight brows slowly knitted together. “You look sick… maybe you should sit down.”

 

“I have to go you stay right here don’t get up and don’t move or I’ll know,” He said in one long burble of words.

 

Liam’s eyelashes fluttered in bewilderment. “Alright?” he said slowly.

 

Spike rushed from the room, back out into the cold, feeling better the further he got from Liam, his mind starting to work again, things starting to make sense.

He sighed out shakily as the clouds slowly began to darken. They’d been teasing at it all day, teasing at a storm.

 

Things were all strange; Spike thought to himself, brows drawn and lips down-turned. He was all backwards again, that strange out of place feeling he’d been getting. His cock was still half-hard in his pants.

That was probably what it was. All his blood had been feeding his cock. Making him feel strange. He just needed to get inside someone, fuck all the tension out, clean himself out and he’d feel more himself. He nodded. That was it. He left the parkside lodging and turned away from the way he and Liam had walked, heading downtown, following the stink of horses and cattle with quick steps. Where there were stables, there were brothels. The towns usually kept them together and tucked away, outside the usual function of the city. He followed his nose, finding more and more soldiers walking in clumps and knowing he was heading in the right direction.

 

Noisy. People yelling for customers even as the rest of the town started to pack away in the cold, submitting under the threat of the storm. Spike turned and was suddenly swamped in men. He could smell booze over the stink of the horses that were kept somewhere nearby.

 

It was a long street, and men walked three deep in the narrow confines. Whores were milling around on the sidewalk, Madame’s and Owner’s were yelling about how young and fresh their stock was, youths and women sitting half dressed in windows like store displays, lips white with cold and arms crossed tightly across their bellies. Soldiers were pairing off with workers and flooding into the performer’s inns, and everything had a slightly dirty feel to it. Greasy almost. Probably because the whole place smelled like hot flesh and sweat.

He worked his way through the crowds, being accosted a few times by the more lively whores who smelled like oils and come, their dresses already half undone for ease. He edged past them, past the girls in high curled white wigs that imitated baroness hair and down another just as noisy street. He picked a place at random; it didn’t even have a name, and walked down the narrow musty stairs into the dim stagnant belly of it.

It was a large room, filled haphazardly with lounges and tables, already dotted with soldiers even in the early evening, and it stuck spicily of old sex. A couple of drunken soldiers were fighting over the use of a slave girl with a thick collar under her hanging curtain of long dark hair. She looked frail and sick, but she was very pretty as she watched them without interest.

A blonde wigged slave was faux cheerily jumping on soldier’s laps and was getting good response.

 

A few youths were standing on a slightly raised platform at the back, bare-chested and too thin looking. They were mountain slaves, herders with large frames and big hands, but had obviously been thinned out to try to get a bit more use. Most Union soldiers were as tall as Spike or shorter than, leaner too, to match the fashion, and mountain slaves tended to be bigger. Like Liam. Most slave whores looked like that, too thin to attract clients used to smaller people, long sinewy arms and big hands and feet. Quite a few soldiers looking up at them and discussing prices with the Owners that stood in the shadows to the side.

 

A tall graceful thing stepped up on the platform and turned around, still flushed from a customer as he took his place. He scratched his straight-bridged nose absently and Spike felt a flutter in his stomach. His hair had been hacked into short bristles and the pants he wore were long and low and soft looking, dipping down under his hard flat belly and a few curls of wiry black hair peeking up over the waistband.

 

Spike headed towards him like a bull towards red, elbowing another soldier out of the way and grabbing his large palm to yank him off the stage.

 

“Hey,” a man protested behind him, “that’s my stock, he’s getting bidded on, so put him back!”

 

Spike turned, no patience for this, eyes narrowing as the fat little man stepped back a little from the ice in his eyes. He reached deep into his pocket and pulled out a small sack of coins, tossing it at the man. “Keep it all,” he said, leading the whore away, back into the bowels of the brothel, hearing sounds of sighs and sex behind the closed doors.

 

“Which one?” he asked brusquely, turning to face him.

 

The whore looked down at him with almost angry dark eyes and Spike’s body almost melted. The boy led him through a door into a small dimly lit room, unprepared for the almost flying tackle Spike attacked him with, suddenly fearful wide eyes looking up at him as Spike pushed him down onto the bed that sat on the floor.

 

Spike wove his fingers around the thick warmed metal cuffing his wrists and kissed him, tasting beer and cheap abrasive wine on his tongue as he settled in between the boys thighs. One of his hands slid up a thin arm and into bristly hair that felt like scrubber against his palm.

He ripped the boy’s pants down his legs, revealing long smooth honey coloured thighs and a large sleeping cock nestled in short dark hair. He let the whore’s mouth go for a moment, slipping his shirt off over his head, his skin hanging from ribs, too thin, he should notice that, but his mouth was already on dark nipples, plum coloured in the light, getting a little twitch from the body beneath, a hand sliding along the leather coat on his back.

 

Spike was ready, more than ready, and he slipped his painfully hard cock from his pants, too sensitive as it brushed against the thick material, purple hooded and hot in his cold hands. He kneed the boys legs apart and sunk into him with a strangled howl, biting the soft neck beneath his lips to keep himself quiet. Thanking all the gods of the jackal that the boy had cleaned himself out from his previous renter, not encountering anything unfavourable in the boys loosened channel apart from the oil he’d slicked himself with.

 

He was hot inside, seemed to grow hotter as Spike started to thrust, laying little bites and licks along his shoulders and throat, around the uneven collar, holding him down with his mouth as he thrust quick and hard and without any skill or teasing. Just rutting, just trying to get rid of all the pent up frustration in a boy that smelled like sweat.

He fucked him hard, his knees practically touching the floor through the thin bedding of flattened feathers, the boys hand resting impersonally against his shoulder blade, his coat falling down around them both like a hot skin. He thrust, biting soft skin, feeling it resilient and flexible between his teeth and lips, never biting hard enough to break it, just wanting to own it for a few moments. And he fucked and licked and he tried and he couldn’t… get there. He growled in frustration and took the boys mouth again, fucking it with his tongue as his hips slammed against the boy’s ass, making his cheeks jiggle nicely as he drove into him.

 

The boy’s tiny moans helped, and Spike was disgusted that he’d hadn’t shot already, stuck in this painfully hardened state and teetering on the edge.

 

He released the lax lips and pressed his forehead down against the bony chest as he tried to slow his fucking for a better result. There was pressure in his balls but it wouldn’t release. He paused for a second to gather himself, hot and sweaty in his clothes now, not thinking that it would be a long enough transaction to warrant taking them off.

 

He panted against his skin, frowning, an unpleasant confusion unfurling in his stomach.

 

And the nerve, the nerve of the boy. “Anything wrong?”

 

Spike raised his head and looked at him, without expression, eyes cold as flint and the boy wisely averted his gaze.

 

Spike slipped out of him roughly and rolled him over onto his knees, spreading his cheeks wide with his palms flat on his flesh. His hole was reddened and puffy and it wasn’t all from Spike’s vigorous fucking. He slid back inside and heard a quiet moan, anus tightening around him and making Spike’s balls twitch upwards. His hand slid under the body, finding one of his dark nipples and starting to play with it, creating more moans, a gasp, as he teased and pinched and pulled at the hard bud. He fucked easily into the twitching ass, closing his eyes against the room and concentrating.

 

He pulled the nipple roughly and the boy yelped and Spike felt him tremble. That was what he wanted. He sighed out, his erection throbbing buried deep into the body and slowed his rutting, drawing it out. It felt good to be inside someone after such a long abstinence.

 

The boy moaned lowly as Spike’s hand slipped between his legs and massaged at his hanging hot balls. Felt good to be inside, feeling heat and muscle around his cock. He’d been frustrated for so long.

 

His body shuddered unexpectedly when he remembered Liam in the baths earlier that day. His cock pulsed with blood, making a burble of renewed excitement rush through him. Bloody hell, his skin, his throat under Spike’s fingers, soft and warm and wet and the feel of his damp head leaning back against Spike’s leg, eyes closed and lips parted as Spike ran the sharp knife along his skin made him…

 

Flashes of Liam and scent and heated skin, and the wild look of him, a beast, his hands, his hard dark nipples poking against the thin fabric of his shirt, his shoulders. Then fantasy images of Liam moaning beneath him as Spike impaled him on his cock, another: Liam sitting on his lap, naked, writhing, rocking back and forth, big hot hands clutching at his shoulders and whispering needily against Spike’s cheek with dry lips as his face flushed high from the exertion.

 

He grabbed the boys body suddenly, half drawing him close and half pushing his head into the bed as his hips jerked erratically, his climax bursting out of him like he’d been popped, so bloody sudden, catching him off guard, a keening wail so loud and painful in the room as it dragged his entire body through his slit, leaving him wrung out and useless on the other side, muscleless, boneless, slumping down over the boys body and absolutely unable to get up.

 

His head span for a moment.

 

He couldn’t blink, his cock still pulsing in the boy’s come coated ass. He couldn’t move. He didn’t know where he was for a second, he couldn’t remember his name and he knew his face was completely shocked white.

 

When he breathed again, it was shaky, like he’d forgotten how. He stood on legs filled with soup and looked down at the boy, red bite marks dotted over his neck and shoulders, a beautiful pattern as he sat and looked up at Spike with dark eyes. It was the eyes. Spike was caught for a second, watching eyes that weren’t the boys at all and it was suddenly Liam sitting there, used up and weak from fucking with Spike’s marks across his neck.

 

Spike turned and practically ran from the room, leaving the stinking whorehouse, his heart thudding painfully in his chest as he stepped out into the cold.

 

---

 

Chapter Eleven – Red Band.

 

 

 

 

The fire was fading slowly, settling to sleep, flames trying to blaze as Liam watched over them sleepily. Rain poured, drumming on the roof in heavy patters, sluicing off in tiny waterfalls down past the window. Everything smelled like wet earth and grass, and the rain brought the chill already in the air lower, making the floors and the walls cool to touch.

 

Liam was leaning against the long soft chair, head on his neatly folded coat, fiddling with the cuffs that encircled his wrists snugly. These weren’t joined together like the other ones Spike had put on him, it was like he wasn’t wearing anything at all, until he glanced down and saw thick shiny steel trimming his wrists. They connected though, with a thin strong chain, but it wasn’t even attached. Spike had just linked each cuff separately into the long chain he’d held.

But now Liam was pretty much freed. He wondered what the point was, not that he was complaining, he liked having the use of his arms back, but they weren’t very effective at keeping him restrained. They just looked like strange jewellery, bands of silver.

 

The day was dying, a quick death under the heavy rain, evening sneaking over daylight behind the clouds, just turning everything a dimmer shade of grey. Spike had been gone for hours, and the cold was deepening. His toes were chilled white on the floor as the fire’s heat waned.

 

Liam lazily unfurled and stood up, slipping another of the waiting logs onto the fire, stoking it awake with a few prods from the poker that rested on the mantle. The flames spattered and popped, crackling at him as he arranged some thin twigs beneath the thick log, to help it catch alight. He scuffled back and leaned against the chair again, tugging the coat back down and fanning it over himself like a blanket. It was soft and thick and it heated with the fire, warming along the thin material of his pants. His shoulders brushed with cold but sitting next to the rising heat of the fire was helping.

 

It crackled like a living thing.

 

The coat’s threads bumped under his fingertips as they played along the width of it, over his thighs. The collar was stiff. The buttons were slippery. It was finely made, and it was starting to sound like an echo in Liam’s head, but… he’d never seen something so nice. The excess work that had gone into it, and the care. For what? A coat. Something to keep you warm. He’d never really had much interest in clothes, he never needed anything other than the few long shirts and pants in varying thickness that he wore throughout the months, wearing and washing them until they fell apart. No one in Seget was much interested in clothes. Why buy nicely tailored clothes when you could barter for something worthwhile like livestock and feed, or animal healer visits?

 

He stood up restlessly, bringing the coat with him as the warmth from the fire whispered over his skin. He slipped the layer on again, feeling the slippy lining on his bare arms, crossing the sides tightly over his chest and belly and feeling the heat already baking inside it. It really was nice. Elegant. Like something the other people were wearing when Spike took him out on the streets. Fine and expensive and he felt strange and comfortable in it all at once. He’d never thought he’d be wearing something like that. Couldn’t imagine his old self wearing it.

 

His belly grumbled a little, hungry, as he slid the wool from his arms. He folded the coat up neatly again and set it on the chair, brushing his fingertips over it before he wandered to the window and peered out through the glass. The park was empty with the wet growing darkness; the expanse of grass was shiny with water. He realised he hadn’t eaten all day as he watched the rain fall from the sky, it was no wonder his stomach was begging. He shuffled along the window a little, arms cross tightly over his chest, the air not as warm near the icy sheet of glass, and peered out into the huddled huts from a different angle, hoping to catch a glimpse of Spike between the cottages. Nothing.

His face screwed up in annoyance. Its not like he could go outside and get his own food. He was free and the door was only closed, but it may as well have been bolted tight with a hundred steel locks. Spike held all the keys. The door wasn’t even there in Liam’s mind; he was just surrounded by walls. The door wasn’t available until Spike walked him through it. It was a sour thing to think and it left a bad taste in his mouth, but it was a lesson he’d learnt.

Besides, it wasn’t just the food, what if he needed to relieve himself, or what if… what if soldiers came round and found him unchained? He felt less nervous about that when Spike was around. The other soldiers listened to him.

 

He frowned, his stomach growling, taking one more look out into the rain trying to spot a white haired pale skinned creature before he walked towards the few treats on the table. He’d ignored them for the moment, he was pretty sure they were intended for Spike, not him, and so he’d left them alone, but now the temptation was too great. He stood before the treats shiftily, stomach talkative, edging closer and kneeling before them all. There wasn’t that many but he was hungry and his mouth watered at the sight of them. He picked up what he’d thought was a tiny sweet meat pastry and popped it into his mouth, flaky pastry sizzling on his tongue and his stomach frantically clawing at the food when he swallowed. It was luscious. He picked up the next treat from a small square dish. It was some sort of fried dough and when he bit into it, sweet pork and sesame seeds and seasonings filled his mouth tastily. He let out a tiny moan of enjoyment as he filled his stomach with it, going to the next plate and snatching up two of the small steamed beef minced balls coated in thick rice jelly and shoving them into his mouth lustily. Everything was cold from sitting there but he ate it voraciously, licking his fingers between treats and tastes. Some he’d never had before, like the crisp pockets of spicy rice and potato and his tongue felt huge under the assault of so many delicious foods at once. He finished on the chocolates, creamy thick sweets in his mouth making his head spin as he burped behind his hand and slid back lazily into the couch. It had been more filling than he’d thought and his belly was warmly full, sating him as he lazed there.

 

The fire had watched him the entire time, slowly licking the log black as Liam ate, continuing its own feast as Liam slithered off the couch and lay next to it, feeling the warmth almost burning the bare skin of his arms and face. He lay on his belly, forearms crossed under his cheek and he watched the flames with drooping eyelids.

 

A toe in the small of his back made his eyes flick open to the almost dead fire. He was confused for a second, disoriented and wondering what was happening with his unconnected brain, until he realised he must have fallen asleep. The room was dark and the rain was harder than ever, some even dripping through the chimney onto the flames. He sat up quickly, his eyes blinking sleepily, his arms sore and one hand numb from the weight of his head. He looked back and saw Spike’s coat, shiny with wet like the grass had been, glittering in the dying firelight. He glanced up, feeling his neck muscles hard and unwieldy with the chill from the floor, and saw Spike looming over him, looking down at him.

 

His white hair was slickly plastered down on his forehead and neck with water, and the slight curls that had formed dripped drops onto white flesh. His leather-covered shoulders were shiny as well, the water sluicing off him like off duck feathers. In his hand he held the handles of a saturated hessian bag, filled with something that clinked. Spike’s eyes were narrowed and dark as they watched and his eyelashes wet. As Liam looked up at him, looming over the top of him, gazing down with fierce eyes like an infatuated spirit, a drip of clear water slid a tiny glittering river down his temple and onto his cheek.

 

“Wake up,” Spike said quietly, small smile curving his lips.

 

Liam suddenly caught the smell of heady wine, floating heavily on Spike’s breath.

 

“Want you to drink with me, pet,” Spike said in that low purring way of his, like he was half-feline. He slowly slid to his knees, his eyes never leaving Liam’s face. The bag clinked down next to him as he dripped on the floor.

 

“Drink?” Liam rasped, his voice in a bubble from sleep. He cleared his throat as he scratched his head quickly. “Drink what?”

 

Spike tore his gaze away and brought seven bottles out of the damp bag. He uncorked one and handed it to Liam, who took it, snuffing in shock as his hand brushed icy frozen fingers.

 

“You’re freezing,” he whispered, settling the bottle end on his thigh, sitting warm and dry across from Spike’s wintry white wetness.

 

Spike smiled and his lips weren’t as pink as usual, colder looking. He slipped his coat off and slung the wet skin over the side of the long chair. His arms were bare underneath, long and pale and dotted with cold bumps. His fingers looked whiter than usual. White like bone, skeletal.

Liam frowned, edging over to the fire and stoking it back to life for him.

When he turned around, the fire was glinting in Spike’s eyes as his vigil of Liam continued.

 

“You’ll catch cold,” Liam said briskly as he sipped at the strong wine, feeling it heat him from the inside, burning in his throat and chest and belly pleasantly until he thought steam might come out his nose. It was good and Liam’s body ached for more. It had been a long time since he’d had a drink.

 

Spike smiled strangely, tight lipped, the smile not reaching the rest of his face. Liam stood and stepped past Spike, slipping one of the blankets off the bed and wrapping it around himself before slipping onto the chair in a covered bundle. Spike slid up beside him and they both watch the lively fire for a while, sipping their wine in silence.

 

“Do you know mathematics, Liam?” Spike asked.

 

Liam looked at him questioningly but Spike was watching the flames, as mesmerised as Liam had been before by the fire dance. “Not really,” Liam said. He paused for a second but it felt like more needed to be said. “I didn’t take to the lessons well, but I learned enough.”

 

Spike sipped from the wine with one hand, and the other snaked up to rub at his eye wearily. He wasn’t drunk, not just yet; his movements were still sure even if they were performed with cautious slowness. “Neither. I never really learned it.”

 

Liam wondered where this was going, or where the question had come from. Although Spike was a little strange, maybe it was just that.

 

“Do you have school? In Seget? Is there a school?”

 

Liam frowned, confused. “Uh… I was schooled, is that what you mean?”

 

Spike turned his gaze from the fire with a long swallow of wine. “Is there a building, only used for teaching children?”

 

“No.”

 

“We have that, in Alla City.”

 

Liam was baffled. “Oh. Okay. Was it … good?”

 

Spike snorted. He turned back to the fire. “No. It was bloody awful.”

 

“Oh.”

 

The light from the flames bounced easily over the walls now that it was dark. It lit the room in flickering bursts, edging into the shadows before fading, the sound of the pops and crackles guiding the volleys of light. Liam stole a glance at Spike’s body, nodding a little when he noticed the cold bumps had disappeared. One white hand was wrapped tightly around the dark green bottle of wine; the other was resting laxly on his thigh as he slouched in the chair.

 

“Are there whorehouses anywhere near Seget?”

 

Liam flinched at the abrupt question. “Not really,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. He knew what they were though, had heard of them through Del, who’d seen them when he’d travelled, brought back stories of the boys and girls that offered flesh on the sidewalk’s of the bigger towns, of the performers that danced.

 

“You’ve never been?” wine-wet lips asked, watching the fire.

 

Liam shook his head.

 

“In Alla,” Spike said, toying with the thin neck of the bottle with careful fingers, “it’s sorta expected, you know? A rite of passage. Showed you were a man.”

 

Liam looked down at his lap, and started fiddling with the bottle. He nodded. “I get that,” he said, hoisting the bottle up to sip from it, “we didn’t have anything like …that… though. We just had the mountains.”

 

He felt Spike look at him and sighed a little, resigned to explain. “When you reach about eight on ten, you’re meant to prove your endurance, climb up into the Barrier’s as far as you can.” He paused, wondering if he should share the rest, with a Union general, with Spike. But he thought for a moment, and it seemed alright to share it, to offer something of himself up. He didn’t know why, maybe the wine was already in his head. But he spoke anyway. “When it was my turn, with my friends… I went further than anyone had in years; everyone else had to turn back, but I kept climbing until I felt weak from the thin air, until my fingertips went blue. I remember turning around and seeing everything, not just the valley, I could see so far I though I was seeing the entire world.”

 

He heard Spike sip at his wine in the following silence. “And why is it that you could go so far when every one else gave up?”

 

Liam shrugged, sneaking a side-eyed glance at the man beside him. It was something from deep inside himself, one of the best memories he had. And when Spike simply nodded as he took it in, staring dreamily at the fire, Liam felt alright with saying it.

 

They sat and drank in silence for a little while. Liam finished a bottle of the smooth mulled wine easily and Spike handed him another without saying a word.

The fire danced in the bricked hearth as they sat in relative silence, the quiet only broken by Spike’s peppered questions. How many sheep did he look after… where he lived in Seget… what he usually ate. Strange purposeless questions that Liam answered shortly, trying to figure out why Spike was asking, double guessing every question.

 

“Tell me about Kat,” Spike said, not noticing the way Liam’s spine stiffened. Blue eyes flicked to him. “She was your sister?”

 

Liam looked away from the blue eyes, feeling the lightness in his brain, queasy and happy roiling together and making the walls shudder a little. He could see Kat soundlessly laughing at something he’d said as they shared eggs across the small table in their home. Some strange detached memory, he couldn’t remember what happened before or after that tiny moment in time, but the moment itself was burned clearly into his brain.

 

“Tell me,” Spike said again.

 

Liam shook his head, frowning, feeling hot in the face. He finished the second bottle and set it on the table harder than he’d intended, the bottle wobbling unsteadily. Spike’s hand was already pushing another bottle into his hands and when Liam glanced across at him, he could see two empty bottles by Spike’s feet, and a third half drunk in his other hand. Liam took the bottle and uncorked it, gulping it down, suddenly feeling it very important to drink more than Spike.

 

Spike was watching him again, his hair was drying into short loose curls and he was resting with his back against the arm of the chair, elbows on it to support himself. One of his feet was on the ground, the other boot flat on the cushions, knee bent lazily.

Liam paused in his drinking for a second, noting the flutter in his brain and the way the lines of the room were becoming a little fuzzy. The fire was just light without flames, he couldn’t focus on them. He felt half asleep even as his brain ticked furiously, not really understanding anything but running all the same.

 

“What about partners,” Spike’s voice said. Liam looked at him and he was all pale smooth skin and dark blue eyes. “Did you have a partner?”

 

Liam slowly shook his head, a slight bubble of regret building inside him. He half wished he had now, half wished he hadn’t waited for so long. He wanted to look after Kat properly, wanted her to partner to someone insightful and good-natured first, before he did.

 

“Did you have a lover?” Spike’s voice asked, sneaking into his thoughts and pulling him back to reality.

 

Liam looked up at the fire, seeing it glow with heat. “Not for a little while.”

 

“Why is that?”

 

Liam frowned a little, at the difficulty of the question. “Because… I don’t know.”

 

“How many have you had?”

 

“Three,” he said with a loose tongue, feeling it slapping around in his mouth drunkenly.

 

“Did you,” his words stumbled clumsily, “ did you care about them?”

 

Liam snorted a laugh, “Of course I did. Why would I lie with someone I didn’t care for?” He rested his head back against the couch. The wine had suddenly hit him and knocked him flat, making him feel like he was floating. It was sneaky. Not like ale, that steadily slid you into bleariness, it had happened all at once.

Dizzy.

 

He leaned forward and put the almost done bottle on the table before heavily dropping back against the couch, trying to swallow the dizzy feeling. His fingers rubbed across his eyes, trying to clear them.

Cool arms wrapped around him and ungracefully pulled him to the side.

His body was yanked onto Spike’s, and he lay on his back, head spinning, in between Spike’s sprawled legs. His thigh was pressed between the back of the chair and Liam’s arm and Spike’s hands linked together over his chest, forearms squeezing him tightly like he might try to escape. He wasn’t planning on it though, being wrapped up in someone was nice, it was a mimic of Del and the way he’d always sneak his arms around Liam afterwards, when they were sweaty and panting.

He let his head roll, let his cheek and temple rest against Spike’s flat chest, his own hands lying limply on his belly as Spike breathed against his hair.

 

After a moment Spike’s hands released their fierce grip on Liam’s body and one slowly slid up, cold fingers brushing against his throat. He found himself tipping his chin up a little, like a cat getting scratched, giggling when Spike’s fingers brushed past ticklish skin. He was drunk, he knew because everything was becoming funny.

 

He felt breath puff down across his forehead as Spike chuckled lightly at him. His fingers tickled up behind Liam’s ear, stroking the flesh there before jumping across and running a fingertip down the bridge of his nose. “Does that feel nice, pet?”

 

Liam laughed, shoulders shuddering. He could smell Spike’s skin, the sweet wood charcoal scent he wore and the fire was swamping them with waves of heat.

 

“You’re nice and complying when you’re rat arsed,” Spike said, a finger curling under Liam’s chin, lifting it so they could look eye to eye. Liam giggled, feeling hot all over from the alcohol, nodding his head as Spike watched him.

 

Spike’s lips cracked a smile when he nodded, bright and gleaming white, the small lines under his eyes turning into tiny folds. Spike held his gaze, and ran his fingertip down the bridge of Liam’s nose again.

 

“I like’t,” Spike slurred. “Maybe I should keep you pissed all the time.”

 

His palm cupped Liam’s throat, and his skin was actually warm for a change. Fingers traced his jawbone tenderly. “Would you like that?” he asked softly.

 

Liam laughed again, tears of mirth in his eyes. He wouldn’t mind feeling this all the time. “I’d like that…” he said between giggles. The fingers touching him suddenly turned to hands around his shoulders, turning him over. He clumsily rolled with the guiding hands, his knees digging into Spike’s thighs as he ungainly tried to turn. He finally settled, his knees finding space on either side of Spike’s hips. He sat down, in his lap, letting the urging hands on his shoulders bring him back down flush with Spike’s body, belly to belly this time. When he rested his head on the arm of the chair, hands wrapped around him warmly, rubbing back and forth over his lower back before gripping and squeezing him tightly for a moment, grinding their hipbones and ribs together before loosening and rubbing lazily again.

 

Something twitched inside his doughy slippery brain, sharp and sudden and then it flittered away, leaving him with a warm feeling inside. His nose was filled with the scent of sweet charcoal.

 

He closed his eyes and felt himself slump heavily over Spike, his chin on Spike’s shoulder as hands slipped soothingly up and down his back. He heard the fire sputter distantly, heard Spike breathing through his nose and then nothing.

 

 

*

 

 

Spike woke, crushed under limp arms and body, his tongue gritty and tasting of stale alcohol. A soft, thin lipped mouth was snoring into his ear. He slithered out from beneath the dead weight of a sleeping Liam and stood, hand flying out to the back of the couch to steady himself as the floor shuddered viciously to the side.

His stomach gurgled unhappily and his bladder was filled. He left Liam snarfling snores on the couch and ran clumsily from the room, his boots thumping down the steps from the cottage and out into the misty morning, skidding unsteadily on the muddy earth. His hardened cock wilted a little as his lungs froze with cold and he clomped over to the housed toilets and pushed inside. Unbuttoning as he walked to the long barseat of holes and pausing for a moment, emptying his bladder with a hiss, rubbing at his cold-wet earlobe with one hand. Herder-beast drool was sticky on his fingers.

 

“Nice,” Spike sighed, wiping his fingers on his pants as he finished up.

 

His head throbbed and he stepped back out of the stinking toilets to catch his breath. His brain was aching. He slumped down on a damp stone seat and rested, sucked of energy from his run to the pisser. He sat in the freezing early morning and wallowed in the sickness in his belly for a moment. He barely remembered last night. He remembered the whore, remembered his embarrassment at not being able to get off in him, like he was some old impotent man. Remembered going to the performer’s bar and watching the pretty boys and girls on stage and steadily drinking until the acts and the flesh all blurred into nothing and then suddenly picking himself up from the seat near the stage, buying a few bottles of overpriced liquor with the intent to get his herder drunk.

 

He couldn’t quite remember why he’d wanted to get Liam on the piss though, that eluded him now. It had been a good idea at the time.

He groaned and stood, heading back to the warm cabin and out of the whipping wind. Liam was still passed out, face down; long body layed out on the couch. Spike couldn’t see his face, it was buried in the space between cushion and armrest, but his arms were bent up, forearms under his mouth, and Spike could see a tuft of dark fuzz underneath his arms. His body sloped down from his shoulders, the shirt hugging tight to him; a small slight valley of a lower back before his arse sloped his outline up again. Even with a pounding headache Spike’s brain was trying to manufacture some interesting designs for his body.

 

Spike blinked blearily, hungry for grease as he wandered over and bowed down, letting his hand pet down his back and up on his arse, resting on the cheeks, feeling them through the soft textured material of his pants. His fingers mischievously pushed the waistband down a little, so he could brush across the hot skin beneath. He remembered seeing Liam’s face on the whore, not realising until that moment how much the brothel boy had looked like his very own herder beast. A paler copy, but those eyes...

It unsettled Spike more the more he thought about it. The back of his mind had picked the boy. He hadn’t realised Liam’s dark eyes and straight brows were on the boy until afterwards. The fact his brain was thinking about Liam even when Spike didn’t realise it… it unnerved him. Who was Liam to get under his skin?

He palmed the firm cheek, sliding his fingers up the flesh, making it shift temptingly.

 

Liam shifted with his caress, his head turning a bit, thigh drawing up a fraction and Spike’s chest twisted. He pinched the cheek lightly and drew his hand away, heading to his bags under the bed, yanking his travelling bag out by the strap and pawing around inside, snatching out a small box of herbal pills for headaches and downing a few with a sip of old wine. He lay down on his bed, closing his eyes against the cloudy brightness of the morning and lay there, in a fugal state, not really taking in anything that was happening, hearing Liam breathing heavily into the couch cushions but not really hearing it at all, everything a blur, everything shapeless and meaningless. He wasn’t thinking, just… drifting.

 

A sharp knock on the door woke him rudely and he jerked up, heart in his throat, suddenly wide eyed and receptive. He swallowed, noting his headache was dimmer now, and stood. Liam had wrenched himself up as well, and Spike glanced at him as he passed, seeing his eyes fluttering with confusion.

 

Spike opened the door and saw a maid standing there with a basket and straining with a bucket of steaming water. “Hot water general?” she said, her thin arm shaking with the effort of holding it.

 

He took it from her and set it inside, also relieving her of some of the towels and soaps she was carrying in her basket. ‘Thanks,” he muttered, his first words of the morning sounding strange and grumbly. “What time is it?”

 

“Quarter of nine,” she said, “thereabouts.”

 

He nodded and leaned against the door to close it. He turned and Liam was slouched into the couch, lazily rubbing his eye with his index finger. The whites of his eyes were spattered with red and pink blotches and his face was sallow. His hair was as unruly as ever.

 

“Headache?” Spike asked as he moved the water to the side of the room.

 

Liam nodded his head slightly.

Spike dutifully snagged some more pills from his bag and gave them to Liam, taking a glass and releasing the pressure on the tap in the wall to fill the cup with cool water. Liam looked at the pills doubtfully, dark circles under his eyes.

 

“From a healer,” Spike said handing him the glass, “Helps with head pain.”

 

Liam frowned at him.

 

“Just take it Liam.”

 

He looked down, eyelashes twitching as he blinked. He brought his palm to his mouth and swallowed the pills with the water Spike had given him, chugging the glass before leaning back into the couch like a rag doll with his thighs sprawled. Spike wandered back to the bucket of hot water, and used a wash cloth on his face and neck, not bothered enough to give his body a once over, too tired and too hungover to even try.

 

They were moving on today, without the second wave of the troops. The backups were staying in Delph to be re-rostered out. The first lot had already been on duty for a while; Spike included, so they were going back home for a while, for a rest, some time with their families. If they had any. But they wouldn’t be missed. Not like there was a lack of troops in the Union.

At noon there would be a debriefing which he had to go to, had to listen to Commander talk about things they already knew for all the tossers that were too stupid to figure it out.

He’d leave Liam in his travelling carriage. Didn’t think his herder would get a kick out of the Commander praising the victory of the Union over the towns like Seget. Besides, he didn’t like the way the Commander had looked at Liam when they’d caught him with the other soldiers that had wanted a poke.

Liam was too slinky for his own good. Long and dark, and so opposite to the Union ideal, it was almost like he was appealing to men’s taboo. They wanted him because they shouldn’t want him. And he was pretty enough to tempt them into it.

 

But first he needed to get them some food. Something fried. Sausage mince or something. He should have asked that maid before, he thought, now he’d have to go out. He sighed and slipped on his coat.

 

“Where are you going?” Liam croaked from the couch.

 

Spike turned, hand on the door already, pausing to look back. Liam was watching him through slitted eyelids. Spike smiled slightly at Liam’s growing clinginess, not wanting to be left alone for too long, actually wanting Spike with him, or wanting him near. Somewhere along the line Liam had gone from seeing Spike as an enemy, to a protector, and that suited Spike fine. He was his protector anyhow.

 

He grinned at Liam’s limp form. “Be back soon, pet, don’t worry.” He slipped out of the room and headed out quickly, tugging his coat tighter around him, crossing his arms over his chest. The sky was threatening to crack and fall again, and the ground was still wet from the last night. It had poured on him as he’d walked, he remembered, hearing the bottles clinking in his bag and trying not to slip on the slippery pavers in the dark.

He walked across to the medium sized food stall he’d seen the previous night, it had been closed before, but it should be open now, ready to feed the hungry soldiers the city was suddenly bursting with. He could smell sizzling bacon, the smell tickling and taunting his nostrils as he made his way through the scattered cottages.

The food stall was indeed open, and a few tattered temporary stalls had opened as well, one selling specialty cheese breads laced thick with herbs. He remembered Liam’s tastes, and headed towards that stall first, pushing through the crowds, buying two large loaves at first, then another few, for the journey, to keep Liam happy in between meals.

He seemed to eat more often than Spike, got hungrier earlier, even if he didn’t eat as much at meals. He moved along the stalls buying a few items from each, some bacon and eggs in a small box for each of them, some crispy spicy sausage covered in sauce. He even found a stall selling onion soup in little closable pots.

 

“Spike!” he heard as he was bartering over the price of some sweet smelling fried tomatoes.

 

Penn’s voice. He sighed heavily. “What?” he asked as he lazily turned his head, only barely acknowledging his presence.

 

He came up close, ignoring or not hearing the disdain in Spike’s voice. “Haven’t seen you for a while. How are you liking Delph?”

 

Spike looked at him. He had his dark eyed slave with him. Spike couldn’t remember his name, but he wasn’t as bruised now, although he looked too thin, like the farmer whores at the brothels, his bigger frame trying to carry the thin weight of a Unioner. His dark hair had been cut shorter, thick straight strands over his forehead and just touching the tips of his ears. He wore a thin short jacket and he was shivering, two thick rings in his frozen budded nipples pushing against the thin slippy fabric of his shirt. His nose had been broken at some point; it had a swollen bump in it now, when before it had been straight. He also had a leading ring pierced through his septum, and it was puffy red, new looking.

 

“It’s a place,” Spike said, eyes on the slave. The prisoner kept his eyes on Spike’s feet. A chain looped from the collar to Penn’s hand. Spike flicked his gaze back to Penn’s blue eyes and smiled tightly.

 

“Are you going to the debrief?” Penn asked, floundering for conversation.

 

“Isn’t everybody?”

 

“Yes… I spose.”

 

“Yes,” Spike said, raising his eyebrows, “Well, interesting as always Penn. Bye.”

 

He stalked away from Penn and his slave, leaving them in front of the cooking buzzing stalls. He walked through the cold, careful on the slippery mud as the hot bag filled with food bumped against his thigh. He made it back to the room without incident, opening the door and seeing Liam kneeling prettily in front of the fire, stoking it back to life, pushing thick sticks into the light flames with careful fingers. He was wearing his coat again, had it tied up around him tightly, the collar flipped up high on his neck, brushing his cheeks and covering his earlobes. He’d tied his hair back, one rebellious strand out of place, down the back of his neck.

 

“Cold, Liam?”

 

“It’s cold in here,” he said, holding his big palms out in front of the fire.

 

“Don’t you come from the mountains?” Spike asked, shutting the door behind him with a kick of his boot and bringing the food parcels over to the table.

 

Liam interestedly eyed the bag with its strong tasty smelling contents. He floated up from the fire and wandered over, watching Spike unpack the food boxes. He put the soups aside, they’d eat them later with some of the cheese bread, before handing Liam a few stacked boxes, watching him sit cross legged on the couch and start to open them curiously. Liam loved his food, he enjoyed it, and Spike enjoyed giving him new things, liking the idea of sparking Liam’s tastebuds alive.

Spike perched on the end of the chair and ripped a piece of bread from the loaf, watching the warm layer of cheese inside stretch out into a tiny string before snapping. He opened the box of egg and bacon and set the contents on the bread messily, uncaringly, just easier for him to eat. Liam was busy ripping things into ribbons as usual, fingers in his food, teasing tongue slipping out to lick bacon crumbs from the pads of his fingers with unhidden relish.

Spike ate quickly, amusing himself by watching Liam, getting up to answer the door when a young light haired luggage boy of about five on ten came round to take his things back to his travelling carriage. He didn’t have that much, and Liam had nothing here, so he saddled the boy up with a few bags, pointed out a few more, and went back to eating with his slave. The boy gathered up everything, and Spike noted the fluttering interested glances the boy was tossing at Liam, drawn by the body sitting with brothel clothes tightly bound around it. Liam was staring absently out the window as he slowly ripped shreds off the cheese bread and nibbled them from his fingers.

The boy was seeing a whore, not Spike’s property like he should be seeing, and therefore keeping his roving eyes to himself. Spike kept his cold gaze on the boy, waiting a long time as the boy dawdled and packed Spike’s things into a box ready to take, crouching next to Liam’s side of the couch and side eyeing him like a prize within reach. Liam was oblivious, as usual, enjoying the food far too much, his toes curling and flexing with pleasure as he ate.

The boy finally caught Spike’s steady glare, and his light eyes went wide with embarrassment, his round face flaming red as he stood with a shudder, opening his mouth to apologise but then thinking better of it. The blush seeped down onto his neck and he rushed out of the room, Spike’s things in his arms and over his shoulders, eyes to the floor the entire time.

 

The quick exit caught Liam’s attention for a second but the food snagged his focus back easily and he began picking at the fried tomatoes, pulling the skins of them and setting them to the side of the card box.

 

“Are we going?” Liam asked, licking tomato from his thumb, looking up at Spike with curious eyes. He nibbled at his thumbnail.

 

“Yep,” Spike said, finishing off the last of his bread and egg, shoving it into his mouth and wiping his hands on a towel, mouth filled.

 

“Where now?”

 

Spike finished chewing, swallowing the food in a big gulp and feeling it travel down his throat and into his stomach. “Over to Satson. We’re stopping there. Then home.”

 

Liam looked away at the word. He nodded.

 

“Is your headache better?” Spike asked.

 

Liam nodded again, thoughtfully. He turned back to his bread, toying with the sticky cheese.

 

 

*

 

 

“We have been victorious!” Commander yelled from the high podium, his voice travelling across the waves of soldiers gathered beneath him. “The Union has almost completed its modernisation of the Barrier Mountains and you have all played an important part in its success. For those of you that are travelling back to Alla City, go home and be proud of what you’ve accomplished. For those that stay, continue to uphold the values and truths of our own Governor Nest. Live them. Know we are right and that we strive to do right by all.”

 

Spike sat behind Commander on the podium, looking out across the sea of upturned faces. The Commander finished his drawl and a deafening roar shot up from the assembled riled soldiers as they pumped their fists in the air and brawled happily among themselves, exalted by their leader. Commander knew how to inspire the troops.

 

Penn sat beside Spike, smiling down at the men benevolently as Spike looked out with barely contained antipathy. These stupid rallies.

 

He had to remember they were important. Had to remember that. It was important to keep morale up, didn’t want a revolt on their hands, not so far away from home.

 

Commander broke into the celebration with more tactic talk for the soldiers about to head out on a new tour of duty and Spike completely tuned out. He couldn’t wait to get back home. It had been a long time. Would be almost six months by the time he got back. He was tired, and sick of the carriage, staring at its roof every night. At least Liam had broke up his continuing boredom. And when he looked back at what Liam had been when he’d first got him at Seget, he really had made progress. From that beautiful wild thing who kicked and hissed at him, to his graceful barely complying actions now… and, hopefully sooner than later, his happy submission.

 

Spike had been thinking about him again, but now he understood why. It was because Liam was such a challenge. That’s why his mind was obviously obsessed with him. He was so difficult to tame. Most people, most would be bowing down to Spike now but Liam continued on his defiant way, stepping to the side just as Spike almost had a bridle on him.

That’s why he’d chosen that particular whore at the brothel. It was because he’d reminded him of Liam, but in a submissive broken version.

 

Spike smiled smugly, having figured the puzzle out. Soon.

 

He suddenly realised the entire procession was staring at him. His eyes widened in surprise as Commander smiled at him, starting to clap. Penn clapped next to him and a sudden flurry of applause filled the space, the general next to him standing and hauling him to his feet, pushing him towards the podium.

 

Commander wrapped his thin arm around Spike’s neck and pulled him close. “Without High General Spike’s battle knowledge and guidance, this campaign would not have been the success it was. Always first in line to fight, always the last standing, he is ten men with one sword.”

 

Another loud applause, some men hooting at him, probably his own men, somewhere in the crowd. Spike held his hand up in acknowledgment, smiling tightly.

 

“And it is with great pride that I offer him this,” Commander said, passing him a small, but heavy, gold box, swirled with intricate silver patterns, an army of hundreds on the lid in silver cuts, flags raised, some on horses, some on foot.

 

Spike opened it dumbly, already knowing what it was before he saw inside. A red band lay on black silk.

 

The band of a Commander.

 

Spike blinked at it as the soldiers roared to life around him, hurting his ears with their noise.

 

“As of his next campaign, Spike will be in the class of Commander,” Commander announced, as Spike tried to take it in. “In a year’s time Spike will lead his own regiment and perhaps some of you, will be lucky enough to be a part of it.”

 

The crowd sang with noise and Spike’s ears were ringing as he held tightly to the gold box. The red band glowed from the black depths.

 

“Do you accept?” Commander asked him, turning to him and waiting for a response.

 

The entire congregation stood before him, mouths half open with dumb anticipation, as he stood frozen with shock. He blinked, struck soundless for a moment.

 

Spike swallowed. “Uh… yes?”

 

Commander shook his hand as the crowd cheered for him, singing battle songs and yelling and shouting and breaking open barrels of ale. Commander said a few more quick words before dismissing the rabble to their pre-journey drinks and turned on Spike, smiling at him tightly as Spike stood up.

 

“Surprised?” He asked as a few other General’s shook his hand, Penn hovering like a gnat around his ear.

 

“Yeah,” Spike said, nodding his head, “Very. I’m young.”

 

Commander smiled coldly and Spike knew in an instant that he wasn’t happy about Spike’s coming class. “You are, but Governor Nest and the other Commanders feel it is time. You saved the camp at Rollet, when those coward rebel farmers tried to burn us out after we sacked their town. You took care of them all before we were even awake, no one else could have done that.”

 

Spike glanced away, snuffing a doubtful laugh. “I was just awake.”

 

“Fifteen to one,” Commander said gravely, “You are worth the red band.”

 

Spike nodded, taking the words with a grain of salt. He wondered who had petitioned for his promotion. He had a reputation, well earned, for being a good fighter, one of the best in any regiment at any time, but still. This would mean he was the youngest Commander in a long time. One of the Commanders, an early one at the Union’s inception had been six on twenty, but there hadn’t been another young promotion in the entire time Spike had been with them. It was surprising he’d made it to High General. Although he had been a soldier since he was four on ten.

 

“So next year then?” he asked.

 

Commander nodded, “You’ll still be a High General until then. And you’ll be co-leading your first duty with another Commander.”

 

Spike nodded, lightly running his fingers along the box, feeling the work in it, the artistry, the silver in gold.

 

“Are you happy?” Commander asked.

 

Spike looked up, smirking. “Ecstatic.”

 

“You’ve done your father proud.”

 

“He’ll be thrilled, I’m sure,” Spike said dryly. “Thank you.”

 

Commander nodded and turned away, stepping down from the podium and into the fray of soldiers.

 

Alone, Spike glanced at the bright red band once more and then closed it up, heading back to the carriage with only minor molestations by other generals and lieutenants and slaps on the back from joyous troops.

 

He slipped back into his carriage without any one seeing, and Liam was curled up on his bed waiting for him, his pretty cuffs chained to the wall laxly.

 

“That was noisy,” he said as Spike closed the door.

 

Spike nodded, turning around and setting the box on the chest by the door. Liam eyed it interestedly; his attention snagged by a pure gold box, the prettiness of it, obviously hoping Spike would show it to him. Liam was attracted to the care that went into art, seeing something beautiful that someone had loved for a small amount of time seemed to make him happy.

For some reason, Spike felt strange about this particular box, and he ignored Liam’s interest in the artwork and opened the chest, tucking it inside. He went to Liam’s side and unlocked him from the wall, sneaking a glance at his face before he turned away. He was just watching Spike benignly. He hadn’t heard anything, Spike guessed.

 

Spike fiddled with the blue band around his arm as he stood over him awkwardly. Liam raised his dark brows.

 

“Yeah…” Spike said jerkily, “read.”

 

He grabbed the book Liam had been reading and thrust it into Liam’s hands, slouching down on his own bed, flipping the coat off and sprawling across the covers. His chest felt tight, and the fact he couldn’t hear pages flipping like he’d ordered irritated him for some reason. It twitched his already itchy skin.

He sat up and looked at Liam. His herder was sitting placidly, bare feet under the covers for warmth, staring at the wall in front of him with a dazed, dreamy expression on his face. He felt Spike looking at him and returned his gaze with a blink. “What?”

 

“Read.”

 

“I don’t want to.”

 

“Read,” Spike said roughly, taking his strange tight-chested feelings out on Liam, “because I tell you to.”

 

Liam rolled his eyes and picked up the book, exaggeratingly mimicking reading, flipping through the pages quickly before closing it and setting it aside again, resuming his faraway sentry of the far wall.

 

Spike flopped back into the soft bed, itchy again. He clamped his elbows to his sides to stop himself from fidgeting, laying still as he listened to the soldier-bees buzzing around outside, loading up the carts, boots thudding along muddy ground, hundreds of voices, hundreds of breaths and laughs. Noisy bloody things that they were. Always chattering, endlessly moving.

 

A knock on the door startled him and he sat up, staring uncomprehending at the wood for a moment. Were they leaving already? It seemed to soon, too quick for them all to load everything up and have it ready. He eased his feet down onto the squeaking wood floors and stood, loping over and swinging the door open.

 

It was Penn, standing on the small stoop, holding up a bottle of bubbled wine with a smug smile on his face.

 

“Thought I’d congratulate you.”

 

Spike blinked at him. “Thanks.” He stood, unmoving, staying hesitantly in the doorway, jaw set.

 

“Can I come in?”

 

Spike blinked again, an entire two breath’s worth of time passing slowly between them before he answered. “Sure.”

 

He steeled himself and stepped aside, hand on the door, stiffly clearing the way for Penn to step inside, exuding with every fibre of his being that Penn was unwelcome in his private quarters. The oblivious rabbit hopped inside and looked around with a smile, feeling out the place with his eyes, breathing it in. He eyed the darkly pretty herder resting in the corner, the perks of Spike’s status slashed all over the small cabin.

 

Penn whipped around and smiled. “Congratulations,” he said with a wide white smile. “How do you feel?”

 

“The same,” Spike grunted, slamming the door closed and prowling past Penn’s slight form.

 

Liam’s dark eyes gazed up at him inquisitively. Spike felt agitated, his muscle prickling under his skin, bones twisting and grating against each other. He rolled his shoulders in a futile attempt to relieve the pounding pressure.

 

Penn turned and was watching him with bright pale eyes, blocking Liam from his vision but he could still feel the heavy pull of his gaze, raking him over, leaving his skin burnt with its intensity. He turned his back on both of them, snatching the bottle of bubbles from Penn’s hand as he did, hoisting out some thick beer mugs he had on hand and popping the cork on the wine. He poured a glass for he and Penn, ignoring Liam and his unwavering eyes.

 

“On your way to the top, then,” Penn said after a sip of the wine. Spike poured half the glass down his throat before he took notice of Penn’s words. “They love you. Another few years and… and you’ll be set.”

 

Spike cocked a cool eyebrow. “Think I’m set now, actually.”

 

Penn flushed and smiled, “well yes,” he said, scrabbling to agree in the same thinly smug-veiled way he did everything, “of course, but more-so. And bravo to that.”

 

Spike pinned him easily with his stone cold glance, watching him twist, watching slight wariness cloud Penn’s soft face, wondering if he’d said something to offend Spike.

So worried about making him angry.

The sadistic streak in Spike adored Penn fiercely for these tiny moments. He knew if he made a sudden move now, Penn would squeal with fright like a stuck piglet. And that was wonderful. The fear Penn seemed to have of him, and the way he kept coming back anyway.

 

He smiled, easing Penn’s nerves, watching his slighter body visibly relax. “Thanks,” Spike said cheerily, topping up his glass, falling back into the game that had kept him so occupied for most of the journey. Bloody Penn.

 

Penn smiled, a little bit of lascivious hope sneaking into his eyes as he raised his glass. “To your,” he said smugly, lips pursed together and looking like rubber, “even better life.”

 

Spike nodded and clinked his glass. “To that.”

 

They knocked back the booze, and Spike could feel it burning up the back of his nose and way down into his belly. He let out a little gasp of appreciation even as he could taste the phantom cheap alcohol he’d sloshed himself on the previous night. An alert trumpet sounded, signalling that they were going to be moving soon.

 

Penn swallowed and nodded vigorously, lips tight over the burning in his belly. “I’ll be off then,” he said, looking from Spike to Liam, his gaze pausing on Spike’s herder like most people’s did, like his brain suddenly realised what he was looking at, like Liam’s thrall took a few moments to work.

 

It turned out Penn looking at Liam for a second was a second too long for Spike's goodwill. Spike took his arm and led him out with a few muttured words, closing the door behind him.

 

“Okay, well I’ll see you at one of the stops before Satson then!” Penn called through the door, oblivious the huge wooden hint separating he and Spike.

 

Spike didn’t answer, already stepping away from the door and wafting Penn from his mind. When he turned he was immediately ensnared by the dark wallflower curled up in the corner watching him with glittering eyes.

 

“What?” Spike said grumpily.

 

Liam looked unimpressed. “You like to play with that soldier don’t you?”

 

Spike raised his eyebrows innocently; “I don’t know what you mean.”

 

Liam looked away, showing the corner of his jaw to Spike’s gaze. “He’s in love with you,” he said, looking back coldly, “and you treat him like that.”

 

“I treat him like nothing,” Spike scoffed.

 

“Exactly,” Liam said, as if Spike had proved his point. “You know how he feels, and you like to tease him. You’re like a spider watching a fly caught in its web.”

 

Spike considered this. Liam had seen it in an instant, whereas Penn couldn’t see past his arse. He was sharp.

Spike smiled slyly, like a cat caught in the yarn bag. “Penn’s not a nice guy,” Spike informed him, “You should see what he’s done to his slave. Broken nose, speared rings through his tits… makes him walk around half naked. Things gonna die of cold pretty soon, just so he can parade him around…”

 

Spike paused, feeling a bit hypocritical as he remembered the thin brothel clothes he had Liam dressed up in. He flicked it out of his mind; he liked Liam in those clothes. Looked tasty. Looked bloody tastier than sweet meat. And Liam was never shivering. He’d got him that coat.

 

Liam frowned as he took that in, his view of Penn obviously hardening. He shrugged it off. “What do you care?” Liam said thinly, eyebrows raising, “I thought you hated anything that opposed the Union.”

 

“I don’t hate them, don’t care enough to hate. Just think you’re all stupider than rocks is all.”

 

Liam frowned, pouting a little, chewing on his lower lip and looking alluring as ever. “Then what do you care if someone’s being hurt?”

 

“Don’t care that much… but I mean… some dogs are stupid, doesn’t mean I want to see them beaten and underfed … and bollocks like that.”

 

“You just really like people, don’t you?” Liam spat sarcastically, curling up further in to his nest of blankets, his big smooth shoulders rounding as he hunched over himself.

 

Spike watched him coolly as he shuffled around, faint smile on his face, strange and small as Liam set about being stubborn and showing his long back to his owner. Spike snuffed a tiny laugh at him, amused.

 

“I like some, pet.”

 

(Continued - Seget Pg2)