Iain Banks - A Song Of Stone

For all its warlike aspect. the castle is a civilised thing, its value appreciable only in times of peace; for it thoroughly to resume its old significance and its power, all about us would have to sink even lower, to the point where no engines worked and no guns fired and people like the lieutenant and her men were reduced to arrows, bows and spears (and even then siege engines could still level it). The map the lieutenant soiled with her unwashed hair and mud caked boots will bear less legend now, and that fine paper, representing, must support us all.

Am I doing, and have I done, the right thing? Perhaps I should have misled them over the map and somehow sent intelligence of their attack to the opposing side, then contriving not to go with them stayed behind and overcome whatever troops they will he leaving here in the hope that their main force is annihilated by their enemies. Perhaps I should not have told them about the fuel we hid underneath the carriage.

But still I feel I am in the right; they fight our fight for now and I pursue our own ends in helping them attempt to capture the gun. That weapon has the measure of us, and only luck prevented it from destroying half the castle and you and I with that first round this morning. Who knows what will happen this afternoon? My own place in any attack will perforce be at the rear, unarmed. If they fail, I should be able to run, retreat with them, or even escape their company altogether. In either event, the reason that those who fired upon the castle did so will have been removed from it and they may leave us alone. If the lieutenant's band succeeds, still surely reduced, the most immediate threat to the castle is still cancelled, brought into the lieutenant's control or simply destroyed.

And if nothing else I rid this place of them for a while. I'll lead them out of it to their own battle, and for this inconsequential episode, if no more, I will be involved; allowed to feel alive in a way I have not felt before.

Perhaps none of us will come back, my dear; perhaps only you, our few servants and the meek, damaged ones of the lieutenant's troupe will inherit the castle. I look at you, yawning, brushing a heavy fall of dark hair back from your face and spreading some butter on a ragged slice of bread, and wonder if you'll remember me fondly, or after a while at all.

Oh dear. I do believe this is self pity. I am imagining myself dramatically dead, tragically taken from you and even more lamentably forgotten. What dreadful cliches war and social strife reduce us to, and how powerful the effect must be, if even I am so infected. I think I must pull myself together.

You finish your breakfast and rub your fingers, looking around for a napkin. I am reaching for my handkerchief when you shrug and use the edge of a sheet, then suck on each finger in turn. You see me looking, at you and smile.

I wonder how much time we have. I ought perhaps to make the most of what may be the last occasion we see each other; pull the bedclothes from you, part my fly and quickly plant myself between your legs, urgent with the impending threat of an unlittle death.

Suddenly I recall the so, so many times our love deemed wrong, congenitally, and further enhanced by every irregularity we could devise was made manifest within this high, wide canopied bed, this stage for our copious acts, this platform for so many provocative views: once with perfumed oils that took an age their sweet odours to remove; once with a nightdress pulled up to your neck, stretched tightly over your face, removing you in that blankness, picking out each feature of your face as you bucked and writhed (which taught me that sometimes it is the smallest twist, the tiniest, most contingent variation that can provide the greatest pleasure); indeed how many times in some way masked while at the same time naked, or with the body as disguised, by the language of dress lying about its sex; or confined, tied, with soft scarves or leather thongs, one of us made an X of between the burly posts of this great bed; or in some incontinent abasement engaged, bestial and cruel; or you, or I, leashed, our very quickness held in the power of the other noosed, hide strapped or with your hair when it was long, my favourite gasping to an air starved climax our poor looters were denied; or with others, in a tangle of candlelit and lambent bodies, smothered and abandoned within a shared blizzard of caresses, sweet and tart and gentle and fierce and lenient and strict and lubricious and raw, all slipping, struggling, pushing and forcing our way to a staggered multiplicity of release.

And, especially, that first time I shared you, towards the dawning end of a party many years ago now, before our get togethers became quite as notorious as they later did, when, having so encouraged you, by hints, cajolings and implied example, I was allowed to find you here, unbridled upon this bed in a full plumped landscape of pure white, pinned and pinning and on a spur of pleasure jouncing, rising and falling like some abandoned vessel on a rolling, stormy swell of sea. He was a cousin, one of my better friends and one with whom I'd rode, shot and fenced and spent many another drugged and drunken night. Now I discovered him below, harnessed and secured by tasselled satin ropes, enjoying you as you rode him, erect and arched, hands round his ankles clenched, then once the lad had recovered from his initial surprise at my appearance and come” round to the idea, and indeed, patently been further energised by the notion for me you bowed forward, leaning to him and kissing while I joined you too, ascending and mounting close by him, parallel with his generous strokes but tenderly, patiently, taking pains not to cause such applying myself to a more fundamental approach. With you by a word of mine stilled, like any obedient mare, and feeling, I believe, him move beneath and within, by his efforts he realised and released in me what he sought inside both you, and himself.

It was, perhaps, my finest moment. judged by the crude technicalism and regrettably naked score keeping that can attend such matters, we duly outdid ourselves on many a subsequent occasion, but there was a freshness, an irreplaceable, unrepeatable novelty about that first time which made it as precious no, more precious than the loss of virginity itself. That first act for any one of us is commonly a cause for nervousness, fumbling clumsiness and those exquisite zeniths of embarrassment only youth in full provides; it can never be attended by the physical accomplishment and the intellectual refinement of taste the ability fully to appreciate the act that one is engaged upon which experience only brings and which, over time, one is able to apply in subsequent variations of the deed, no matter in what specifics it may be unprecedented.

I appear to have persuaded myself. All is silent for a moment. I reach for your ankle, grabbing it beneath the covers while you look up, startled, and a door is brusquely knocked. The sound comes from my own room. We both look.

“Yes?” I say, loud enough.

“We're going now,” shouts a soldierly voice. “The lieutenant says you've to come.”

“One minute!” I yell. I whip the bedsheets from you.

You look sullen, raising your hips to tug your nightdress up. “Are we attempting a record?”

“Some things will not wait,” I say, minimally unbuttoning as I hoist myself towards you.

“Well, don't hurt…” you say petulantly.

More than pain, such unexpected forcing still takes time, however determinedly done. I bury my face between your legs, submerging in your scent, at once earthy and sea salt tanged. I loose a lubricating mouthful of spit, then rear and take my plunge.

Another shout.

A lower vestibule; in the castle's front hall, the lieutenant's opera cloak lies discarded like a velvet skin, thrown over the shoulders of a hollow armour suit standing beneath a rosette of swords upon the wall. The jeeps” engines sound cold and clattering in the courtyard.