Easy stops before the Duchy of Hightree

Lanks steps back and lowers his blade. "Better, sire," he says.

"Thank you, Lanks," you say. You stow your blunted soldier's sword in a gesture that's starting to feel natural.

You're aching and smarting from your bodyguard's blows despite helmet, pads, and gauntlets. Indeed, Lanks is more an armsmaster than a bodyguard to you, these days. The thin fiction of your identity as "Rex", a sometime member of the Phoenix Company of The King's Own Regiment, wears better if you can move and fight like a soldier.

Your Royal Progress has marched across the countryside at a good pace. Your sister Vesper came partway, and her tiny holding was graced by a symbolic repetition of her feudal vows to you, as Lady of the Crossroads, held directly under the Crown alongside Itheria's Dukes and Counts. This being the dry season, your troop (or troupe, insisted Vesper, for all its posturing and play-acting), has made excellent time.

You've taken three feudal oaths, laid hands of blessing on three newlywed couples and four expectant mothers, attended a dozen banquets, two hunts, and an archery competition.

"You're so like your father, your majesty," said one old Count who had been too ill to make the journey to your coronation. "There's hope for Itheria yet. Lord Gilbert held it safe, and now, here you are."

And now your party, less a couple of lame horses and a gouty clerk, and augmented by several younger second and third noble children, has wound its way through lightly forested hills to camp on the borders of the Duchy of Hightree.

"This'll be the night, sire," Lanks tells you. "You'll want a bath."

"I'll be ready, Lanks." If a little bruised and sore.

Phaedra and the sergeant of Phoenix Company, together, run the soldiers' quarters with exemplary efficiency. Your frequent public appearances and "Rex's" absence during the march make it impossible to conceal your double life from the observant. Those in the know have closed ranks to let King Bryce and Rex each have their place in the Royal Progress. The king, young and restless, but careful in his duties; and the soldier of the Phoenix Company of The King's Own, growing into his boots. Pinch assures you that he can hold up your part of the husbandly duties with the wives of the Company in your absence, while you're quartered among the nobles. Phaedra tells you she's only coupled with you since the Company wedding night, and Pinch supports her story, up to a point. "None of the men, true. She goes cunt to cunt with a coupl'a the more boyish girls to get her joys on. But it's not like the lads object to missing her charms," he says. "One-armed nut-kicking bitch, they call her. But she was randy enough on the Company's wedding night."

You've whispered your stories to each other late at night. Phaedra was part of a corps of Amazon warriors working as mercenaries on the borders of Phebis. When Phebis called on its alliance with Itheria, her corps was cut off and scattered, she was grievously wounded and captured. When she had recovered, she was put to work, and to her good fortune was assigned to The King's Own, a body she considers well-disciplined and high in morale. You're not sure you understand her age -- she quotes her birth year in a calendar you don't know -- but she seems to be about ten years older than you, and most of those ten years spent as a warrior, a mercenary, or an instructor at arms. It's no wonder she has such physical confidence among the soldiers -- she's probably more than equal to the company sergeant in experience.

Lanks wakes you after midnight. The last-quarter moon gleams in the east, just starting to peep over the horizon. You work your way through the tents of the Phoenix Company. Though your flesh throbs with exercise and ****, the anticipation of coupling with Phaedra tonight makes the aches fade and the fatigue drop away. You've had a bout or two with Flora and with some of the more experienced wives, but more than half the time, it's Phaedra who receives you. You recognize some of the sounds. Pinch's snore. Flora's happy little grunts and the pleased sounds of the two men she's receiving carnally. A rustle as a woman turns over, the gleam of an ornament in blonde hair, Merrimay.

Phaedra greets you. For a time, you stand and embrace her, feeling the wiry strength of her body, the little softnesses here and there.

"The moon will be beautiful tonight," Phaedra tells you. "Shall we leave the snores and giggles behind for once, and have the night to ourselves?"

"Or perhaps we should take Pippa," you tease. Pippa was a young woman with a slim, boyish figure who Pinch had told you was one of Phaedra's partners for the game of woman to woman, wet to wet, pearl to pearl, grinding their cunts together.

Phaedra laughs. "Perhaps."