The Book of the Broken

Derek

The next day, Ohean said, “We will ride away from the King’s Road,” and they left the great highway and traveled further west. The land began to rise and towns were scarcer while the land became more greener. It was colder now, though, for they were leaving the south, and there were still now and again touches of winter. To their constant left, which was west, rose green hills going higher and higher to the trees, and these they followed along low slopes.

“We are a merry and slow bnad of criminals,” Anson had said.

“Criminals!” Quinton’s voice rose.

“He’s just joking,” Gabriel told his old friend.

“But not entirely,” said Myrne, who had not removed the veil from her head in all of their travels, and maintained company with Sara, Obala, and the herds most of the time.

“Anson is right,” Ohean said. “It is we, Imogen, Myrne, Anson and I suppose myself, who should be crossing the border as soon as possible, and though there is safety in a crowd—“

“Perhaps there is more safety in splitting up and some of us hurrying up.”

“Precisely, Conn,” Ohean said.

“And,” Anson added, nodding at Conn with admiration, “Safety in some of us traveling slower.”

By this he meant Conn’s sister with her baby and and Sara and Obala with the herds, some of which were dropping lambs or nursing chicks. The Great Marnen Road was not just an arc of land the Marnen herders traveled, by a tract of land on which they lived, and they came closer to the Chryan border there were whole settlements where it was wiser for Obala and the others to rest a few days at a time, then match the pace Anson and Ohean had set.

“And there is little need for you, friend Derek, to travel so fast either,” Anson said “The Blues can make their way settling in homes for the night where we cannot.”

“We will not be parted from you,” Gabriel said stoutly.

“Conn shall not be parted from us,” Ohean said, “for there is much to teach him. But we will set out at a hard right a day ahead of you, and you meet up with us when you can.”

This turned to be an excellent plan. Afterward, Derek would remind himself that Ohean was a wise councilor and Anson a strategist so they should have known better. In the last year Derek Annakar had wanted to feel part of something. In his seven years in the temple he had always felt part of that life until the war came, and then he wanted to feel a part of the outer world, he longed to be out in it.When they had begun their travels, Derek felt very much a part of whatever was happening, for something was happening even if no one could name it. He remembered not only those days when they would all have long nights and long lunches in their shared rooms, but the trips to the river to be among the Marnen herds and their pilgrimages to the Wedding Country. Here they were, he, Matt, Quinton, Gabriel and Cal, only Lorne and Brian and a few others left behind, traveling in the spring weather under budding leaf and pink blossom, Sara and Jon in a bright vardo, ponies placidly pacing beside them for when walking grew tiresome, and the great dirty white herds of sheep, and the honking flocks of geese led by the Marnen and then, in the midst of it, Anson and Ohean with their strange companions, Wolf and Pol and Austin Buwa, the last two of whom Derek had a curious desire to learn from, maybe even lie with.

And now they were parting company. Two who were rarely seen, and whom Derek realized were more in need of hiding than anyone else, emerged from the herds, the dark haired, pale maidens Imogen and Myrne. Myrne, apparently had been in hiding for some time, and was a member of the Herreboro family in Hale, She was not technically a princess, but she was high up enough to be in danger if seen roaming Westrial. Imogen was the very daughter of late King Anthal fleeing King Cedd and his orders to marry her off to whomever he saw fit. It was of the utmost importance that those ladies get as far from Kingsboro as possible. Surely this was no light trip for them.

As Derek watched them ride off of at a high pace into the northwest, Conn’s blue cloak streaming out alongside Anson’s, he felt, rather than the weight of losing friends and a lover—if only for a time—a curious lightness about his own life. He stood beside Matteo, watching the riders grow smaller and smaller until they could be seen no more, and then, bidding goodbye to Sara and Jon, to the herds of the Marnen which were grazing slowly and would probably only travel a few more miles before night came, Derek Annakar mounted his pony and was the first of the Blues to began their meandering trot in a direction that, slowly, and in view of more towns, would follow their companions.

Traditionally Blues traveled two by two and they mimicked this now, Derek and Cal, Matt and Quinton. They had passed three towns, but none had an inn, and as evening approached an old farmer with the ancient stone herms on his boundaries came out waving to them.

“You are Blue priests,” he perceived. “Be at peace in my home this night.”

Though old and poorly appointed with floors which had been scrubbed so much the wood had gone white and then grey, the house was large and clean and run by the old, rawboned man who was red skinned and looked like one of those combinations of Royan, Sendic and Tribesmen which so defined the countryside of Westrial. He had a son only les rawboned and they laid out a good table of fresh bread, brown butter, bean soup, a couple of roast chickens, and small beer.

“There are no well appointed rooms as in nice houses,” the man said, but me and the son sleep in that great space there, and beyond those pillars is something like a room for ye. I can bring blankets and pillows and the like and you can sleep well, holy masters.”

Here was a man, like many in the west, who kept the old ways and honored the old priests.

“I only ask,” he said, not look at them but at the floor, as he laid the blankets out, “that you bestow your gifts on my and the boy who is powerful lonely, and on our land before you leave.”

Derek and Gabriel nodded solemnly.

“Of course,” Gabriel Rokamont said.

They rose early in the morning, wishing to join their friends more than to sleep in and, at any road, Matt knew how Quinton’s leg troubled him and sleeping on a floor, no matter how gracious the master of the floor had been, did not help.

“You would have done better staying with Obala and the wagon,” Matteo chided.

“I didn’t want to be parted from you.”

“You know I would have stayed too.”

“Then we would make no progress. I can live with pain,” the handsome little man said. “I do not court it, but neither will I indulge it.”

As they tried not to argue, from the inside of the house came the stifled cries of the man and his son, the finally unrelieved shouts of the boy as Gabriel fucked him in one room of the house. They could hear the clapping and clapping of flesh against flesh. From the open window came the sighs of the old man while Derek rode him to completion. In the end it was not the old man, but Derek who cried out as he ejaculated inside of him.

For Matt, the moments after the cry, rather they came from his mouth or not, were always reeling and strangely silent. The birds the chirped again were almost a violation and he heard a strained climax again, presumable from Gabriel or from the boy, as Derek, solemn faced, smoothing his blue cloak and tunic came out of the house, taking a hand through his black hair.

They took the northwest road for some time, hoping to catch up with their friends, but Derek after a time Derek confessed: We underestimated them. They had been on thoroughbreds builf for speed, leaving the few heavy things they had behind with the ponies and wagons. These ponies, strong enough and fast enough in their own right, were not going to catch up with Connleth and Anson and Ohean today, and Ohean, Derek realized, had not meant them to.

In this country, they saw often the Red Priests and the Red Priestesses stopping by fileds where a great pole with a red banner wrapped about its top were planted. There were no Red Priests in Kingsboro, but they were all of a kind and so they made the sign of reverence to Derek and his companions as they departed into the fields to find the men or maids who awaited them. They traveled the road with a handsome, dusky skin man named Jayson who told them at this time of year he rode through here and if a family could not conceive, then they would invite him in for the night and then the man would leave and have him lie with the wife.

Derek pretended not to be shocked, but Gabriel could see he was.

“This I understand,” Gabriel said, “for my mother was a Red Priestess as my uncle was Blue and I came into the world this way. She served in the fields to bring blessing to the land and came back to the temple pregnant with me and later with my sisters.”

Derek, who loved the life of the Blue Temple had been born into the very conservative world of the Doman middle class, and had to remind himself of this.

The last night when they traveled alone, before they would rejoin Conn and Ohean, they stayed at a brookhouse, one of the wealthy boat houses kept by university aged boys on vacation from school and family. It was far more sumptuous, though far less pious, than the home of the farmer and his son who had so plainly asked for Gabriel and Derek to lay with them, and Derek felt the strange drunken lust which did not much resemble reverence sneaking over him as they changed from sober blue robes to the snug mesh trousers through which one could see their sex, and they drank and feasted well into the night, knowing this was in the service of the God as well. As firecrackers went off from other boats and hooting and laughing was heard all along the river, in a darkened room, on an expensive bed, Derek planted his hands on the shoulders of an eager college boy and plowed him into the night while, in the next room, Quinton lay on his back gasping as another boy rode him. In the main room, still lit with chandeliers and littered with expensive plates and half empty glasses, Gabriel fucked one boy against a sofa, mouth open and panting while, on the floor, legs pushed back till his knees touched his ears, Matteo took the other.