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Fifteen years in the legions, and all Vernon Roche had to show for it was a meagre pension, a deaf horse and an honourable discharge. The surgeons had done what they could for him, but a ruined shoulder was a ruined shoulder and the legions could not keep him along for charity.
He understood that. He had seen fellow legionnaires sent home with fewer limbs than they had arrived with and had always been one of the ‘at least you kept your life’ gang, but now that he was part of said gang, he wondered if he had not actually preferred for the arrow to hit a little closer to his heart after all.
Perhaps there was a club back home in Rome for wounded ex legionnaires where they all sat around and complained about their wounds and drank and gambled until Mars took pity on them and sent their despairing souls to eternal torment or rest whatever it was the priests preached these days.
“Bloody Germani,” Roche mumbled as he adjusted the sling across his torso, a curse he had spoken many times over the last years but never as frequent as now. It was not helping his foul, pained mood that it was too warm to wear the extra layers of the sling in the late summer heat, neither was it helping that in his melancholy he had insisted on travelling from Germania Inferior to Italy on his own.
It had seemed far shorter when he marched the other way with the legion.
At least the land was not throwing a lot of surprises at him. There were no alps here, he was going to go around those and reach the coast, sell the stupid horse and get on a ship back home, so it was just him, the lazy river landscapes and the various locals trying to sell him stuff left and right.
In the end it had annoyed him enough to send him into the wilderness, the lack of any better roads than paths kept open by sheep walking in single file did his shoulder no good but his horse seemed less bitchy and there was a slight breeze rustling through the tall grass, cooling his overheated skin.
All that was left of annoyances now was the pain and the heat and the bugs. He could do little for the pain but the heat and the bugs could be easily fixed; with his constant avoidance of cities and rudimentary hygiene, he was on the ripe side of overdue a bath.
He tied up his horse to a fallen log and very carefully got out of the overly complicated sling-setup the surgeons had put him in, pulled the tunic and his pants off and then spent what felt like an eternity getting the leather straps of his sandals open with one hand.
The water was better than he could ever have expected. Cool, soothing, the river bed was a nice mix of rounded, small rocks and fine sand filtering soothingly between his calloused toes. The lazy river was not particularly deep, so he hunkered down and sat on a reasonably smooth rock, then leaned back until only his face was above water and let his feet drift gently in the slow current. The sticky, feverish feeling that had clung to him since he left the legion washed away along with every single thought and worry in his mind, until it was only him, the cool water and the soft rustle of the river in his ears.
Until something that was a lot heavier than a normal bug landed in the water by his toes.
Roche lifted his head out of the water and looked down. It looked like a small bundle of colourful feathers tied to a long piece of thin string, it was tugging against its tethers as the current tried to pull it along down stream.
He would have merely found it curious if the little thing had not brushed against the arch of his foot and bit ever so slightly into his skin.
His scream was more from surprise than any actual pain as he stood as quickly as his mangled shoulder would let him, rising from the water like a vengeful siren with water cascading off his scarred, bronzed skin. This seemed to set off another shocked outburst behind him, a burst of panic which caused the little biting feather bug on the string to fly out of the water, followed by a scream of true pain from the tall grass up river.
Roche had the clarity of mind and the instincts of a soldier yet, so he pulled the gladius from its scabbard, hugged his arm to his chest and staggered unsteadily down the stream until he found the source of the commotion.
A very pale being sat on a small sand bank with his hands clutched to a long, pointy ear. He froze when he looked at Roche, his one eye looking the man from face to shoulder, then to gladius and his very bare skin before pointedly meeting Roche’s scowl. The blush hit the elf’s cheeks so hard he looked like a briton after a fortnight in Hispania.
So, elven kin, Roche concluded. That ruled out most of civilised society, but he did not look particularly Caledonian or Saxon either, and he did not know of elves elsewhere in the world. He had none of their typical clothing nor did he carry their marks or styles. The elf definitely knew what a roman legionnaire looked like based on weapon alone, so Roche decided to pass on his laughable knowledge of the primitive languages and go for Latin.
He was about to inquire what the hell was going on when the long fishing pole tipped over and caused the attached string to tighten, tugging at the small bundle of feathers by the elf’s ear, making him utter such a pathetic whimper of helpless pain that Roche found himself walking towards him with a little less fear of an ambush or robbery than he normally would have under similar circumstances.
Then he saw the blood trickling down the elf’s fingers.
The feather-bug seemed to have bitten him as well, but unlike the quick nip it had dealt Roche’s foot, this seemed to have dug in far.
“Let me see,” Roche said as he walked onto the sand, tucking the gladius under his arm and raising his now empty hand in a sign of good will as the elf tried to scurry off backwards, only hindered by the reach of the fishing pole.
The elf did not call out for help, nor did he seem to try and attack. He seemed much too distraught by the blood and the pain, but Roche had both seen, caused and received pain so many times the last decade that a little more did not phase him at all.
“Hush, calm down so I can help you,” he said, making soothing noises that probably did not help at all as the elf finally was as far away from the fallen fishing pole as he could get without pulling the string taut.
Sighing, Roche gave up, walked over to the elf, pulled his gladius free and cut the string next to the feather-bug.
He had expected the elf to run away or perhaps thank him for the rescue. He had not expected to be tackled to the ground, have his own sword torn from his hands and pressed to his throat as the elf straddled him.
The elf had not expected Roche nearly blacking out from the pain of having his shoulder jolted like that.
They stayed like that for a few moments, each of them frozen in their individual experiences of pain and confusion until the elf sat back, staring at him with blood trickling down his neck.
“Truce?” the elf asked in passable Latin, dripping scarlet on Roche’s bare skin.
“I did not want a fight,” Roche said, his voice breathless from trying to manage the screaming fury of his broken shoulder. He pushed it to the back of his mind as best he could, focusing on the biting feather bug on the elf’s ear. “You’re bleeding.”
“You’re broken,” the elf replied nastily, the snarl pulling unevenly at the scarring on his face and now Roche’s attention was on the low hanging fringe over the side of his face, hiding what was no longer there.
“In that we are equal,” Roche spat back, pushing himself onto his good elbow. “But I am not the one with a stinging feather fly stuck in my ear right now.”
That seemed to deflate the elf a little, and after a tense few moments of the two of them studying each other in the idyllic afternoon, Roche agreed to the elf’s proposal of truce.
“I have never seen such a thing before, elf,” Roche said as he carefully inspected the feather fly in the elf’s ear. It was a fine fishing hook made from tempered iron wrapped in precisely placed colourful feathers imitating a fat insect.
“My name is Iorveth,” Iorveth said. He was holding a wad of cloth to his ear to catch the blood as Roche worked at flattening the little barb at the tip so the hook could be pulled back out.
“Caledonii?”
“Close enough anyway,” Iorveth mumbled, then glanced at Roche with his one green eye. “Roman?”
“Roman. Vernon Roche.”
“Doesn’t sound roman.”
“I am still a roman citizen,” Roche said as he carefully wiggled the fishing fly out of the soft skin of Iorveth’s earlobe while the elf did his very best not to whine from the pain of it until the fly came free from his flesh.
“Does this really work?” he asked, and Iorveth looked puzzled for a moment before Roche showed him the feather fly. Iorveth replied by pulling a wicker basket from his small pile of belongings and showing Roche the contents. It was six fat, fresh trout, their scales shining like armour in the golden light.
Iorveth proved to be a talented fisherman. After Roche fetched his tunic so he did not wander around just wearing his gladius and little else, they ended up in the river again, wandering out into knee deep waters so Iorveth could show him how feather fly fishing worked. There was a trick to it, Roche was sure, as he pulled the long pole to the side and tried to get the elegant whip-wave movement of the thin string that would send the feather fly upstream where it could float innocently down the river and catch any hungry fish with a surprise of a lifetime.
Doing it one handed was not easy, and his left arm was not much help.
“Damn this shoulder,” he hissed when the thin pole almost twisted itself out of his grasp again. Iorveth picked it up and placed it back in Roche’s hand, this time showing him how he could hold it in the crook of his elbow and balance it with his hand.
“Use the momentum of your torso, not the strength of your hand,” Iorveth said as he stepped close to Roche’s back, one hand gently supporting his bad shoulder, the other guiding his arm into the proper motion. “Just like a thrust with the blade.”
Perhaps it was the fifteen years in the legion that did it. Perhaps it was the long walk back home, or that this was such a change from the constant pain and misery, but Roche found that he could have stayed in this river and learned fishing from Iorveth and listen to him talk of his homeland in Britannia, what it was like in the past, hundreds of years ago. Iorveth was close, careful and gentle in every way his life had not been this far. He felt his skin ache with need as Iorveth hugged him for support as a huge salmon caught the colourful feather fly. It thrashed and fought as the nasty little hook embedded itself into its greedy mouth and Roche felt almost as if he saw himself from the outside as he laughed, adrenaline and victory mixed with joy as he and Iorveth hauled the fish on land, finding almost hard to believe that it was him who seemed to enjoy life in the moment.
He was jolted back into himself as Iorveth gutted the salmon and asked Roche to breathe life back into the little camp-fire, and while the fish was frying, he brought his horse and his gear over along with his bread, wine and olive oil to go with the salmon.
The meal was good. The fish was good and the company was better, and Roche had not realised he had said that out loud before he heard his voice in his own ears as the two of them lay side by side on blankets in the soft grass, watching the stars come out along with the unflattering hoots of some escaped pigeons in the woods.
“I never thought I’d hear those words out of the mouth of a roman,” Iorveth said, the twisted smile on his face made something in Roche’s chest tighten with longing.
“Rome is all about making you a citizen, no matter your origins, we see people from all over the world,” Roche said quietly. “Perhaps not… well. The path is longer and more perilous for some.”
“For elves, you mean,” Iorveth replied, turning his head a little so he could meet Roche’s gaze. “Rome conquers, Rome changes things, and we are not good at change. I would not last long in your lands.”
“Could if you passed as human.”
“And cut my ears? Fuck that.”
“Might have to anyway, if that gets infected,” Roche said, pulling Iorveth’s hand away as the elf tried to touch his ear again. Iorveth grunted and took Roche’s hand, weaving their fingers together and that had not been Roche’s intention at all but now that it was done he was as helplessly caught in Iorveth’s grasp as if he had been the one with the hook in his mouth.
Roche watched him for a while, swallowing stupid, smitten words over and over while Iorveth studied how their hands seemed to fit together so perfectly, setting Roche’s heart racing in his chest just by stroking the cuticle of his damned thumb. He had to do something, say something. He had wasted fifteen of his best years fighting for an empire to which he was now just a number on a pension plan with an honorary discharge attached to it; he had been prepared for wasting the next fifteen years begging in the filthy streets of the city that he had thought was closest to his heart but found that was not what he wanted to do.
Perhaps, for once, he could choose for himself.
“I might not be fit to travel for a while, bad shoulder and all,” Roche suggested after a few false starts.
“You would probably perish out here on your own,” Iorveth agreed, licking his lips as he turned to his side. “Can’t even catch fish.”
“You should probably rest as well,” Roche said in a matter of fact way, and Iorveth hummed his agreement. “Could be a nasty infection in that ear and I did do the field medicine course.”
“I might become entirely delirious,” Iorveth whispered as Roche bit back a moan, already feeling half crazy from having his fingers touched, he was not sure how much more he could handle.
“Perhaps you already have a fever?”
“It’s raging within me, I’m sure of it. You should probably keep an eye on my temperature,” Iorveth said as he pushed their entwined hands up underneath his shirt, leaving Roche’s hand on the string of his waistband.
Iorveth was warm. Very warm, his lips and his tongue left fires in their wake wherever they touched his skin and this time when the elf straddled his hips they were both equals in their nakedness, stripped bare of markings and rank they touched and explored the hills and valleys of their scars, the stretches of soft, undisturbed skin unaccustomed to gentle touch tingling with every passing stroke.
“I thought Rome were the invaders,” Iorveth panted, struggling to keep himself together as Roche pulled him in between his legs, guiding him to where he was wanted most.
“You taught me fishing,” Roche whispered, muffling a moan into Iorveth’s neck as he took all Iorveth could give. He used his one good hand to grab a meaty buttock, setting a pace that he felt all the way to his toes. “It’s only fair you… you get a chance to invade Rome.”
“I’ll not just invade, I’ll bring Rome to its knees.”
Not only to its knees, Roche thought to himself as he stroked Iorveth’s hair once they had both sated their needs. He felt full in all ways, full like he never had been before. Full of food, seed, contentment and a feeling he had a hard time identifying, not because of its vagueness but because it seemed to fill his world. Iorveth stretched beside him, having temporarily woken from his light sleep.
“Good invasion tactic,” Roche mumbled.
“Score?”
“Seven out of ten.”
“Need practice, then,” Iorveth said with a small smile as he nuzzled into Roche’s good shoulder, and Roche waited until he was reasonably sure Iorveth had gone back to sleep before he admitted it to both Iorveth and himself.
“Rome might not have fallen tonight,” he whispered, closing his eyes as if the truth was too bright for him. “But my heart was indeed conquered.”