Aleksey's Kingdom Read Free

much sun and activity naked outside in the daylight hours, had darkened over the very hot summer we had just enjoyed. I would have been taken for one of my Powponi brothers had it not been for the intense lightening effect of the sun on my hair, which was now the color of gold dust dredged and shiny from a river. We were both very lean, too, living as we did on a diet of mostly fish and meat. And, of course, we had no home comforts other than those we provided for ourselves.
    If we wanted shelter, we had to build it. If we hungered, we had to catch and kill something. If we fancied luxuries like saddles or boots we had to trap for furs, which could be traded. The activity all this necessitated had contributed to our leanness. Even during the war, neither of us had felt so well, so vitalized. Maybe it was other things making us so vigorous and alive. Relief from torture and death can do that to a man.
    It had taken me many months to recover fully from the torture I had endured in Hesse-Davia. I often found it hard to watch a branding iron being heated on a fire and still could not smell boiling flesh without nausea assailing me. The sound of a bone breaking when we cleaned a carcass produced an odd stab of pain behind my eyes, as though my body were expecting a consequent follow-on of agony. My scars were ferocious upon otherwise tanned, smooth skin. I did not mind them too much. Who does not secretly like to be scarred and fearsome with evidence of a life lived as a man? Aleksey spent many hours tracing my wounds, trailing his tongue and fingers around them, roused, I suspect, by the thought of possessing and taming the violent nature they betrayed.
    Other than the scar on his belly, won before I met him, Aleksey was as flawless as the water in the lake when the light struck it just right. His nature more than balanced out this apparent perfection in being so infuriatingly annoying, as evidenced in the lake that evening. Whilst I was taking the opportunity to laze and relax my muscles, as I had been exerting myself from first light with domestic chores, he decided I needed to be punished. He never needed a reason to decree this, as he claimed my whole demeanor to him was an outrage, given he was a king and I was nothing more than a deserter from his army, a fake doctor, and a sodomite. Three death sentences. I would have preferred the scaffold to the dunking and splashing and constant torment he subjected me to in the water. Fortunately, being stronger and quicker and just better than him, I was able to dunk him more than he could me and thus make his life an equal misery.
    We were both shivering and exhausted from laughter and swallowing lake water when we finally emerged to check the fish we were grilling over a fire on the lakeshore. It was done to perfection, and both of us being starved, it tasted better than any meal prepared by chefs and servants in Europe. It was as he was picking flesh from around the bones that Aleksey suddenly blurted out, “Oh, guess what has happened.”
    I swallowed and replied dryly, “One of the soldiers has got you with child?”
    “No, surprisingly, though, for they have all tried.” He flicked me a cheeky look that told me no bad temper on my part was believed now. “They have lost contact with the colony outpost. Isn’t it odd?”
    Our land extended to the north a day’s ride from the junction of two big rivers, which dominated this region of the New World. Where they joined, the waters merged and tumbled over a vast fall, then ran as a wild, rough tumult impassable to man for many, many miles. On the junction above the falls, an offshoot of the colony on the coast had been established a little over a year ago, and consequently a contingent of soldiers had been posted there as well—north of the falls was French territory.
    This tiny colony facing the papists was a good week’s ride, if not more, from me, so I was unconcerned at its presence. But unfortunately we lay as the