Part 5

During the night after the men had bedded down Trowa noticed Heero’s unusual tenseness at his post in front of the prince’s tent. The prince’s attendants had just left their arms burden with their lord’s baubles and what not.

Heero spared them not a glance. The man seemed agitated and kept glancing back behind him. His normal stoic expression was grim with a frown upon his brow.

Reluctantly Trowa went to investigate. He hated scenes and ravings immensely he did not want to come upon another between the prince and his lover. As he approached Heero came to attention. He stepped in front of the closure but not before Trowa got a glimpse of his prince inside. He was lying amongst a pile of furs with his arms wrapped tightly about his courier. They were kissing. As Duo turned his unbound hair curtained their features blocking the rest of their love’s play for view.

Trowa felt obscurely furious. It was jealously he knew. He was only an ordinary man, and ordinary men were supposed to have desire but his feelings for the prince were immoral.

When he looked back at Heero he felt the guard watching his men. The frown was gone. His normal stoic expression was back in place.

“Your men watch the prince’s attendants with undue interest,” Heero said softly.

It was meant to be a diversion from what the both knew was happening only a few feet away in the enclosure. Still it was the truth, his men knew how rich their benefactor was and were not above stealing.

Trowa turned to see two of his men watching the attendants with undue interest. He walked up to them allowing his anger for what he felt as his prince’s betrayal be directed at them. “You two will have the last watch since you value sleep so little,” he snapped.

The two men were instantly attentive. Their cunning looks disappeared into innocent expressions. Trowa wasn’t fooled they were up to something.

As Trowa sought his cold hard bed the tent and the deep furs behind him whispered hellfire on the nape of his neck. His defenses crumbled against the endless question of why a common man must be denied. Why, why must only the privileged have such privileges.

* * *

Quatre waited until he was sure they were alone and unobserved before pushing Duo away. Duo rolled to the side easily. He had whispered to him about the tainted jewels—again Heero was tried for his life. Quatre laid awake in bed thinking. This was twice now Heero must be getting suspicious or desperate. To Duo he had told that the end of this trip would be to a monastery. To Heero he said that he would be heading to his wife’s lands to secure and fortify them and that Duo was unaware of it.

Truly, Quatre waited for the moment when he could be rid of both of them. He had directed his fighter in a fickle course, winding and turning toward the safety of a stronghold in his own lands.

He worked upon Duo’s fears of the plague. Like his fear of Heero it went beyond reason Duo who had killed a man before his twelfth birthday, would tremble in fear from the plague.

So he thought, though sometimes he feared it was only another act. Duo was a master at illusions. Yet the safety of his fortress was nearly at hand. Quatre turned gently in his feigned sleep. Heero was standing guard watching him. Quatre had no doubt that he was trying to betray his cousin Wufei. Heero may be a bastard, however he had a strong claim to the land beyond the border.

Duo didn’t need to tell him about the poisoned pin. He knew that Heero would try again. Of the two, Heero was the most dangerous. Still it was strange that he had not killed Duo already. He had to know Duo would hinder him if possible.

* * *

As Trowa laid in the dark with the fire fading, staring upward into the night sky, he had a bitter thought that it might have been to his advantage to take Duo as his prince had suggested. Maybe he could have gain the other’s attachment to himself.

Trowa prayed asking forgiveness of thinking such thoughts. It was wrong to take someone against their will. He also offered a prayer for the mortal sin of easing himself too. For after viewing the prince and his lover he had been so overcome by lust that no sooner had he been under his blankets his right hand had stole into his breeches.

It had not taken him long to relieve himself. His member had been hot and ready eager to release its burden. AS Trowa had brush the sticky fluid into his spare blanket he felt sullen and ashamed. He should get away from him. When it came to the prince he was lost, and even after being rejected if the prince were to rise and call him now into his tent, he would go. He was shameless.

He slept badly, dreaming old dreams, in which he was lost and searching. The howl of the wind brought him fully awake. He lifted his head and noticed that the fire had gone to dead coals, there was no sign of the guards. It was about two hours to dawn—the last watch.

Trowa slipped out of his warm place. He stood up in the frigid night, sliding his feet into icy boots. He’d ordered those two men the last watch. A loose tie fluttered on the prince’s tent. Heero’s back was pressed into the tent for warmth. His chin rested on his chest. The man had fallen asleep on his feet.

Trowa walked around the camp searching. He found the two men a bit away. He gave one of them a kick. The man didn’t move. Trowa leaned down grabbed a blanket and tugged it away. The man rolled over. His body was twisted in the throes of death, his dead eyes rolled back to show the whites, his cheeks were peppered with dark spittle.

Trowa kicked the other man over. He was in worse shape. His face and neck were swollen and grotesque. Trowa swallowed a gag and threw the blanket over the dead man’s face. He turned gasping for breath. The fear of the plague held him frozen.

He glanced at the prince’s tent. Heero was standing up alert watching silently. From between the leather flaps of the prince’s tent a pale face peer at him, long strands a hair whispered around it in the pre-dawn mist. Duo.

Trowa looked down upon the men and saw what his mind had not recorded a moment before in his panic. One man clutched a handful of the prince’s jewels. A bloody knife lay near the other. They had fought and one had knifed the other over the prince’s jewels. The other man seemed to have choked to death. This was not the plague missing from the bloated face was the black boils and the stench and neither man had the putrid stench that plague carriers had.

Trowa glanced back at the prince’s tent. Duo was no longer peeking out. Heero was still as if he had never moved, as if the man wasn’t even breathing. Trowa quickly tugged both men together rearranging the blanket to hide them both. He thought furiously over way to prevent panic. Duo’s fears and preening had everyone on tenterhooks. Trowa saw now he should never have suffered any talk of plague at all. They should have taken a straight and direct road.

“Are they dead?”

Duo’s choked voice had startled him. The man had slipped past without him noticing. He was dressed and wrapped in furs. He had foregone braiding his hair in his haste.

“They murdered each other,” Trowa said quietly.

“You lie!” Duo hissed. “I saw them when you lifted the blanket! One was warped with the black death’s agonies. He was swollen!”

“No, come see for yourself,” Trowa said flipping back the blanket. “There is no black boils, no stench.”

Duo stumbled back with a cry. The camp had come awake around them. He knew they were all listening yet the area was deathly quiet.

“Listen to me. This was no plague’s death. The smell not be of plague, there’s no black boils. Not just a few hours past they were fit and talking like the rest of you. They fought and killed each other.”

No one answered. “Once, I saw it take a priest in half an hour,” came a shaky voice from somewhere further in the camp. “There were no black boils. Right quick it was—he died over the man he had come to shrive.”

“Silence!” Trowa hissed. “They fought I say!”

They all simply stared at him.

“You two are on watch,” Trowa said pointing to the men nearest him. “You find the man who spoke and tie him up. Ten lashes at first light. Relight the fire and if any speak so loud as to wake the prince, tie him too and he shall have twenty lashes.” He swung around to Heero pointing at Duo in the shadows. “You watch this one.”

Trowa didn’t noticed if Heero agreed or not for as he looked beyond Heero he noticed the prince standing at the tent’s entrance. He was pale and wrapped only in furs. “My prince has been disturbed?”

“Indeed, he has.” It was the prince’s amused voice. “How could I sleep in this uproar? What passes? Where is Duo?”

His courtier didn’t answer.

“My prince, it is nothing,” Trowa said. “I beg you to return to your sleep.”

Instead Quatre walked closer to him, alone without his guards or attendants. “What is it?” he asked sharply.

“Two of my men had died in the night,” Trowa confessed.

He sucked in a sharp breath.

“My prince,” Duo moaned in grief. “Foresaw death on the road, you have. Its the pestilence.”

“No, my prince,” Trowa argued.

The prince stood silent a moment then he lifted one hand, “uncover them.”

Setting his jaw, Trowa leaned down and pulled away the blanket. Let him look if he must. May he choke on his own revulsion.

But Quatre did not flinched nor cringe. Instead he went forward, gesturing, “a light.”

No one move so Trowa fetched a lantern himself and lit it. As light pooled across the bodies Quatre knelt and lifted the hand of the man still clutching his jewels, “poor man. He must have suffered, I fear.”

For a moment Trowa thought it was real, this sympathy, the echo of regret in his voice. Then he rose turning towards Duo.

“Come to bed my love. There is nothing to be done for them.” He walked towards his courtier. Duo made a choked gasping sound and backed away from him. “Come, do not be foolish the men died not of the plague.”

“No,” Duo said in a whisper of horror.

Trowa watched Quatre advancing slowly upon Duo driving the other in to a frenzy on purpose. Only for the cruelty of it he did so. For Trowa knew that the prince would not have touched them err he thought it was the plague.

“You must love me not?” Quatre murmured in a hurt voice.

“Touch me not!” Duo cried. “Get away!”

The prince stopped swayed slightly. He turned to Trowa. “Help me for I suddenly feel not well.”

Before Trowa could respond the prince fell to his knees. Trowa moved on instinct, he raced to Quatre’s side cradling his limp form in his arm. He lifted the prince up shocked and mindless. Fear hit him like a hammer. He carried him into his tent and laid him on the bed of furs. He then called for his attendants he thought he shouted it.

No one answered him. In the utter darkness of the tent he groped for a lantern, fumbling in the dark he lit the lamp. As the light rose, he looked towards the prince.

He was smiling at him. He sat up on his elbows happy with his jest. Trowa’s jaw went slack then it stiffened in outrage. He shoved himself off the ground, and stalked out of the enclosure.

“The prince is of fine health,” he uttered angrily. “I need two men to help for the burying.”

In the tallow light no one moved. Duo shrank even further into the shadows and even the prince’s guard Heero stepped back from him.

“Damn you all,” Trowa shouted. Trowa took an extra horse and draped the bodies over it. The creature did not like its burden and fretted as he strapped the men down. He took him own horse and rode in search of a place to give them a proper burial.

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