Authors: Amber Green
Khyber Run (17 page)
Dusk thickened in the valley, though I could look up and see afternoon in the sky and on the snowy mountain peaks. When I looked down again, the dusk around me seemed denser. Ah, I'd ruined my night vision by looking into the brightness overhead. I said my evening prayer and kept my eyes down.
When the sun left the sky, we rode on in the dark. Now I could look up, watching the stars shimmer into place and the planets appear, ready to lead the moon in the track ordained for them. In another month, the fireflies would fill these valleys with tiny floating candles, but then the mosquitoes would outnumber them.
At moonrise, Oscar headed downhill off the road.
I dismounted to lead my filly. She might be good at walking downhill in the dark with a man on her back, even on rough ground, but that wasn't something to count on. And why had we left the trail?
He came back in view. “We'll keep the horses between us and the road, to confuse any echoes."
"What have you found?” Was there a cave, or a good overhang, or a tight opening between the rocks to hide and sleep in?
"A good place to fuck."
My blood pressure surged. But no-go, no-go. “We have nothing for lubrication."
He disappeared into the darkness. “So?"
I blinked. Anger stirred, like fire catching on the tinder of that harsh voice. “Are you used to taking it dry?"
Did he know how much damage he could do himself like that? How much the abrasion increased his chances of catching any passing infection?
And if he thought I was taking it dry, we were going to match blades first.
I followed him into an enclosure, partly raw stone and partly brick, but roofless so that the moon dimly revealed piles of rubble all about. A plastic bucket that didn't feel cracked had been wedged into the bricks near the doorway. I hobbled my filly next to his, poured a test cupful of water into the bucket, and shared a silent moment removing the tack and running our hands over their legs, inside their hooves, and along their backs, checking for any chafe or injury.
I kept hip-nudging the fillies away from the water, but finally checked and found still about the same amount in the bucket. I poured in about a pint more—not enough to satisfy even one horse, but I could refill it more easily than I could deal with wasting water.
After a moment, I noticed Oscar's mare was standing alone, peacefully slurping at the water. I turned and found him sitting naked in the moonlight. Watching me.
"Ain't used to taking it any way,” he said.
Before I could say,
then don't
, he hunched down, planting his elbows on what I realized was an unrolled fleece or mat and resting his forehead in his hands, completely submissive.
That quiet admission took all the remaining anger out of me.
I undressed and knelt behind him, admiring the subtle sheen of moonlight on his skin. Then I realized it meant he'd broken a sweat.
I pulled my knife and slid it across his flank like a razor, feeling the initial smoothness and then the chill bumps rising, trying to catch the edge of the blade.
Angling the edge back, I swept it over his skin without risk of cutting in. Units that kept their soldiers in the field longer than overnight were routinely allowing them to grow beards because a break in the skin, however shallow, is risky in a foreign land. But how foreign was this land to a man like Oscar?
I lifted the blade, turned it to catch moonlight on the ribbon of sweat scraped from his skin, and tasted it. Dust and salt and musk. Essence of Oscar. I smeared it over my cheek, the cold steel raising my own chill bumps, and scraped up another load of sweat to wipe over my other cheek. Painting my face with Oscar.
Nobody else would ever know I had done this. But I knew.
Oscar didn't move. He had to be wondering what I was doing, but his discipline—or his pride—held him still.
A warrior, given to me to use or abuse as I saw fit.
I drew the blade tip down alongside his spine, pulling a dark matte streak of dry skin in the moonlit shimmer of sweat. Just a little more pressure, a slightly different angle, and that would be a blood streak. He wouldn't object. He wouldn't let himself.
Again I tasted the blade, the salt and the skin oil and the man. The man who shivered against my thighs.
I folded down over him, shielding him from the sharpening wind, and resting my weight on his powerful back, his powerful legs folded beneath him. I sniffed behind his ear, down his neck to the shoulder, the warm amberlike scent hardening my cock against the small of his back.
I set the knife aside to reach between his knee and elbow and found his cock against his belly. With fingertips on it, I flicked my tongue against his ear. His cock lunged against my palm, hardening further as I grasped it.
Still, he made no sound. No protest, of course. What was I trying for, begging? No. Something in me recoiled at the very thought.
I took the blade into that cave he'd made of his body, pressed its cold length against his belly. He tensed. Couldn't really call that a flinch. I scraped the unsharpened back of it quickly across his nipple.
That brought a flinch and a growl. Quickly swallowed. But no move to protect himself.
I set the knife aside again and moved sideways, knee-walking steps, so I could balance with my left hand on the stone beside the mat, and with my right reach in and cup those warm heavy balls. They moved, as if exploring my palm.
I released them and grasped his cock, now clear of the delicate sheath of foreskin. He thrust into my grip.
I could have his ass. Because I could, I didn't need to. Taking him that way would prove nothing, except perhaps that I had a petty sense of vengeance.
Vengeance is too powerful to waste on a man's honest mistake. I thrust against his sweat-slick back, humping him like a teenager with my cock clasped warmly between my body and his, sliding against his skin. My cock didn't need the grip of his ass.
The revelation exalted me. I didn't need him to pay in pain.
He thrust too, fiercely fucking my hand. The sweat gave out, was replaced by a smear of precum and then more sweat, mine and his together. Still we shoved at one another, clenching our muscles and fighting as if to break through barriers of skin and self to each merge with the other. We struggled together to reach that brief foretaste of paradise.
Our gasps echoed against the stone and brick walls. Something hard in the fleece beneath us dug into my shin, but wasn't worth moving.
I got there.
Light burned through me, scorched from deep in my ass through my balls through my cock, turning into pure wet heat shooting out across Oscar's back.
Oscar laughed soundlessly under me. I fell onto his back and laughed with him. But he hadn't made it yet.
I cupped his balls again, explored the loose skin that made him hiss. When I moved to the side, I had to unstick the cum that glued us together.
But he was losing rigidity. What he needed wasn't a soft-handed exploration. I balanced across his back and pumped his cock with one hand, cupping his balls and mashing my thumb hard on the puckered line leading back from there.
A man jerking himself off has a better effect than a man trying to tickle himself, but someone else can still do a whole lot better. I caught a thatch of his hair in my teeth, pulling hard enough to add a strain to his harsh gasping breath. I fell into rhythm with it, pulling in time to my pumping hand.
He groaned out a deep, rending sound like an oak twisting its roots free of the earth, and spasmed in my grip. I held him as he bucked under me, keeping my grip on his cock with difficulty.
He collapsed slowly into the sheepskins. I guided him down.
"Fuck,” he whispered, sounding dazed.
I smiled in the darkness. This time I let him clean up with my shemagh. I cleaned up with the same one, then knotted it to remind myself it needed washing and tucked it in the corner of my pack. “Let's pick up some lube at the next stop."
"Roger that."
The next morning, the booming of a waterfall brought us to an icy stream plunging into a gorge so deep no daylight lit its depths. Oscar found a mud basin near the fall and patched it with clay and rocks. I used his plastic sheet to divert a splashing stream to fill the basin so the horses could drink. While they drank, we rinsed and wrung our socks and underwear repeatedly in the painfully cold falling water, sponge-bathed with the clean cloth, and rinsed them many more times. My hands ached.
I mumbled something about not really having the time to stretch things over rocks to dry. Oscar showed me how to clip them to our packs to dry in the wind. My red and aching hands were too clumsy to operate a safety pin by then, but he just grinned and pinned my socks for me.
We caught more water, filtered it, and refilled the flattened bladders in our packs.
The wind picked back up. I stood shivering in the lee of my horse, breathing her dusty, warm scent, while Oscar cleared the signs of our stop. My hands were brilliant red, and my sleeves were wet to the armpits.
"We need to sanitize our packs,” I said when he'd finished.
He rolled his sleeves back down over his muscled forearms. “Cache it here? Wouldn't that be obvious?"
I shivered and thought longingly of hot food. As much as I'd sweated through the afternoon, that cold water and the chilling wind had sucked all the living heat out of me. “There'll be a shrine nearby. There's always a shrine. Anything left there will be sacrosanct until we return for it."
He looked at me, then seemed to focus his attention on the complex and mentally taxing puzzle of how to button his cuffs. “I think you're talking about how things should be. Or used to be."
Of course. What else did I have? “Wasn't the whole point of your bringing me on this mission to use my memories of how things used to work, how they're supposed to work?"
"Mike's an optimist."
What answer did I have to that? But it didn't matter, since we didn't find a shrine.
At the next crossroads, we approached a man loaded like a donkey, trudging three-legged with much of his weight on a knotted staff. He looked so worn by work and hunger I couldn't guess his age, except to hope he was older than me. When we came close enough to smell him, the bundle moved. I reined in, startled.
The bundle he carried was a woman. Her frighteningly thin hand drew a fold of cloth over her haggard face.
I swallowed. The standard greeting,
may you not grow tired
, would be obscenely ironic here. I touched my forehead. “Asalaam aleikum, Uncle!"
"
Wa alaikuma as-salaam
.” He leaned on his staff, his breath coming in wheezes and sweat beading all over his face. Sweat crusted his gray
shamiz
too, making a camo pattern of whitish salt, dun dust, and gray fabric. Even his beard too was gray and white and dusty. “Have you seen the nurse-officer?"
I wasn't entirely sure I understood him. I shook my head, though, because we hadn't seen any females who seemed likely to fit such an unusual description.
He leaned harder on his staff, mumbling to himself, then raised his anguished eyes to me. “Tell me please, she has not moved on again before we have reached her?"
"I do not know. We came to a village only to buy horses and saw no extraordinary females there."
"No crowd? Then she was not there.” He looked eastward. “This way, then, is my road. May you not grow tired.” He trudged uphill.
I couldn't stand it. I swung down. “Please! I am tired from riding, but this foolish horse needs more work to teach her patience. Could you do me the favor of riding for the next little distance?"
He blinked many times. Tears beaded his eyes and rolled down his face with the sweat. “You are truly Pakhtun. So rare, in these hard days."
Me
? No. I was just human and trying to hold on to my humanity.
He tried to mount, but the weight on his back was too much. Nor could I give a quick boost without shaming myself and them.
But I'd positioned uncooperative bodies before. He had one of those serapelike blankets poor people wear when they can't afford a coat. Oscar and I could use that as a sling to lift the woman. Okay, the trick here was that I didn't know how to mention the woman without offense.
So...okay. Don't mention her directly. “If you should spread your blanket on the ground, Uncle, someone could sit on the blanket. If you should then mount the horse, my man and I could lift the blanket up to you."
He finger-combed his beard and agreed this might work very well.
For a while the trail was wide enough I could walk at his stirrup, using his staff to push past thorns that crowded me. And sort of just staying handy in case the woman perched behind his saddle should fall.
The man chattered, whether from pure relief or what I don't know. His name was Khiel Khan.
I gave my name as Zarak only, because I wanted him to keep talking. I was Momand, while his name said his ancestors had likely been clanless Punjabi Muslims who'd fled India after Partition to escape the Hindi mobs. He asked about my family. I thought about lying, but instead asked about his. He nodded sagely and changed the subject.
He'd carried his wife from their khel to a village where the traveling nurse-officer was set up with her... These weren't words I knew. From context, he might mean a clinic. He'd risen well before daylight to reach the...something...before she left that village, but had stood aside from the road, averting his eyes, as a truckload of women drove by, an armed guard perched on their front bumper.
"I saw her go,” he kept saying, mournfully. “But I did not know one of those women was the one I sought. What honorable man looks at unknown women?"
He cupped his hands and studied them, as if praying. Then shrugged. “I saw her go."
He'd followed them to the next village, knowing the pattern was to spend two days and expecting his own trip to last one day. But the nurses had been threatened and had left the same day they arrived. He had become desperate, and God had brought him us. “As fast as a young man can walk with your little pack, bismillah, we will intercept them very soon!"
