Herotica 2. Kerry Greenwood

tion>

      

      HEROTICA

      Adventures in Love & Time

      Vol 2

      KERRY GREENWOOD

      Herotica

      Adventures in Love & Time vol 2

      Tales of love and lust between heroic and adventurous men across the ages from Ancient Greece and Troy to almost-modern times.

      Kerry Greenwood's historical detail and sense of place and time sets the scene for a wonderful collection of happy-ever-after love stories.

      The second in a 3 book series, Herotica will take you around the world in 29 stories of adventure, romance, lust, exploration, war and peace, and above all love.

      Or, as Kerry herself says: “Wonderful stories of gorgeous gay men shagging each other senseless in impeccable historical settings.”

      Kerry Greenwood – the creator of the fabulous Phryne Fisher - is also the author, for Clan Destine Press, of Out of the Black Land; the Delphic Women trilogy: Medea, Cassandra and Electra; and Salmancis.

      THE LAMENT OF ACHILLES

      He tasted my blood when I was only eleven years old and now I shall burn a city and slaughter a people in revenge for his murder.

      He wasn’t a lamia, of course, a creature that drinks blood for sustenance. He was Ariston Patroclus, who found me sitting and bleeding from the knees, having fallen while training. I was stung with defeat - I hate losing - and also with the grazes, which were full of gravel which I could not remove.

      ‘Prince,’ said Patroclus, who was fourteen to my eleven years and even then calm, grave and serene in presence, ‘let me tend you.’

      ‘Sir,’ I responded, wiping my face, ‘why would you do so?’

      ‘Because you are hurt,’ he said, and took my hand.

      He sat me down on the river bank, brought water in his helmet, and washed my injuries. They were minor. I should have ignored them except that it was so pleasant to be cared for. Patroclus was strong, fast, a good fighter. I respected him. He didn’t appear to want anything from me but for me to sit still while he tended me.

      So I, Achilles, Grey-eyed, Swift Runner, Sacker of Cities to be, pre-destined greatest hero in the world, sat still, as requested.

      He washed all the small injuries and then examined the sad state of my knees.

      ‘I can’t prise every speck out without injuring you more, and I will not have such a perfect body develop scarred knees,’ he told me. ‘So I will do as the animals do.’

      He knelt down and started to lick and suck the grazes.

      It felt very good, like being licked by a large, friendly dog. His hair was long and curly and moved tickling across my thighs. His two hands held me in place. Lick, suck, spit: he was drawing the gravel out. The injuries felt warm. Soon he moved to the other knee, comforting it with his mouth. He sat back on his heels, pleased by his work. No gravel remained.

      ‘You have drunk my blood,’ I observed. ‘You are mine, now. We are brothers.’

      He looked up with a flash of bright eyes. Then he took his little knife and just nicked the heel of his hand. A bead of blood appeared. He held the hand up to my face. I sucked the wound. Then he kissed his own blood off my lips.

      ‘Brother,’ he affirmed.

      It was an oath. He never broke it.

      My Foster father knew that I was fated to be a great hero and to die young. Therefore he taught me - mercilessly, relentlessly - to fight for my life. With sword and shield. Without a shield, without a sword, with a spear, with a knife, with a noose, with a rock, with my bare hands and teeth. My master would not have me die, lest I die untimely and miss my destiny.

      And Patroclus, who was a prince, no lowly slave, stayed by my side, as close as I would allow him. Sometimes a battle madness took me, and I would not recognise my friends. I feared I might slay him in error, so he watched from a safe distance as I hacked my way through bushes and briars. When the rage was spent, he would take me by the hand and lead me back to our tent, where he would tend me and kiss me and kneel at my feet.

      ‘My prince, the brambles have defended themselves well today,’ he would observe, again extracting thorns with his mouth from the long scratches striping my sides and back.

      ‘A fierce enemy indeed,’ I would answer. I looked down at his bent head and loved him with all my stony heart.

      For I loved no one else. When Agamemnon proposed the adventure of Troy, I joined the League. My fate was drawing in upon me: I could sense it. But I had no idea it would take ten years to manifest. My myrmidons accompanied me, of course, as was right and in accordance with their oaths. But Patroclus came because he loved me.

      He was always there when we slept rough. His chest was ever a pillow for my head. We made love, now, as soldiers do, as lovers do. Not in the Godless Achaean exchange of master and slave. We kissed fiercely, made love gently or passionately as I desired, and lay together in the holy incense of our seed.

      Once, when battle madness seized me untimely, when Patroclus saw the God-given glaze come over my grey eyes, at a moment when, if I had gone raging, I would have lost us the battle, he fell to his knees, bared his body, and offered himself to me.

      I fell upon him and ravished him like a conquered city. I thrust into his willing, loving body as though he was my worst enemy. I bruised him wherever I grasped. Shoulders bloomed purple under my handling. He braced himself to receive me and he held his position against my full strength, against my rage. I heard him cry out in pain with every stroke, but I could not stop and the madness did not abate until I screamed like a hawk in his stooping and collapsed on him. He lay bleeding beneath me, my battle rage expended.

      But then he gently disengaged us, held me in his arms as I ruefully wept, comforted me and kissed away my tears. I slept.

      When I woke I kissed every bite and fingermark and tenderly sucked him to spill his seed in my mouth. I was horrified at how I had hurt him, Achilles’ only love. But he told me there was nothing to forgive.

      ‘If one consorts with heroes, there will be pain,’ he told me, and limped off to see the Asclepid.

      When I dreamed bad dreams in the darkness, he was always there. He always woke and embraced me. He would tell me long tales of our ancestors or silly stories such as goat herds tell, to while away the long hours with the flocks. His voice went softly in the night, banishing the monsters. I hardly remember any of his stories and now bitterly wish that I did. For he is dead. Now my dreams are uncomforted, and the night contains nothing but revenge.

      He was a fierce fighter, but in his own, grave way. He would confront an enemy and consider him, deflect every stroke, watch, circle, and then strike. Once. That was usually enough. I used to tease him about this. Was his sword so precious, I asked, that he did not like to clash it against another, lest it be damaged? He liked to point out that if one stroke was enough, then it would remain unscathed. It was a fine blade, war booty from Achaea. I had given it to him, to replace his old sword, which had broken when he deflected an attacker who was trying to stab me in the back. For Patroclus came from an old but poor family and his gear was not anything like as splendid as he deserved.

      When we were between battles he delighted to tend me. He would uncoil and wash my hair, rinsing it with herbs, and then comb it like a mother would. Gently but relentlessly, until every strand was perfect and the comb ran freely from scalp to tip. Then he would knot it again above my forehead, a pad to support my helmet, or leave it loose, a curtain to hide a lover in.

      I have shorn it now, and burned it in Patroclus’ funeral pyre, along with a hundred Trojan prisoners.

      How