Written is the Best Word Ever

[erastes]

I’ve been writing. When I manage 1000 words a day I’m happy – if I do this several days in a row I’m ecstatic.  Just writing seems to push the story forward.

With Muffled Drum I have a very rough outline, which is unusual enough—but what actually happens from scene to scene is very much up to the fingers and I like what’s happening. Which is just as well.

Anyway – story is now up to 6,000 words.

Why I set the damned thing in Europe/Prussia, I really don’t know.  Well, I do, a bit, because of the pretty uniforms, but now I’ve pulled one of my protags out of the army entirely and he’s wandering—and I know NOTHING about the times, arghle. I see research in my tomorrow… Note to self. Pretty uniforms are not a good enough reason to set a story in a period you know nothing about. However… you managed the English Civil War and they didn’t even HAVE pretty uniforms!!

A snippet I hear you ask?  (ok – perhaps i was hearing things… ) but here you go.

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Mathias sat By his tent, half slumped in his canvas chair. Becher, his batman, knelt before him, struggling with the loops on Mathias' blood-soaked jacket. "The threads have swollen, sir," he said.  "My fingers…"

Mathias turned his face away from the man's sour breath.  "Cut them."

"Sir?" Becher looked positively shocked at the suggestion, whether it was for the uniform or for his fingers, Mathias didn’t know.

"Cut the damned things off."  When Becher reached for his knife, Mathias took it from him.  "Give it here." He ripped the frogging apart, gold threads trailing and the brass buttons scattering around his feet. "Now.  Get over to Oberst Ratzlaff's tent and see how his day went." 

"I should wash—"

"You should damned well do as you're told, Becher, that's what you should do!"  Breathing heavily, Mathias pulled his hat from his head and leant on his knees, listening to Becher's footsteps squelching away through the mud.  He knew he'd been too harsh, too quick with the man, but his side hurt damnably, and he'd not seen Rudolph once since right at the beginning of the charge, and even then he wasn't sure that the man he'd picked out—far on the other side of the line, galloping straight and fierce—had been his lover. 

Gingerly he pulled the dolman off and dumped it on the ground next to his pelisse.  The blood wasn't pouring out of him—or I wouldn't have made it from the horse lines, I'm sure it of—but his shirt was wet to the touch.  Cold, though, that has to be a good sign?  Becher had a pan of salted water on the boil and Mathias dipped the rags beside it in, waited for it to cool before wiping at the flesh under his shirt.

Soldiers—officers and enlisted men—passed him as he worked, but he didn't look up.  Each man had his own concerns after a battle, Mathias knew that well, one kept to oneself until one could present oneself in a better light than bloody and broken.  Damn it.  Let Rudolph be alive. Please God. Let Rudolph be alive.

He hadn't allowed himself to think what he'd do if the reverse was true—wouldn't even allow himself to think the words.  Death was something he expected for himself, but never Rudolph.  Rudolph was one of those men who would live forever, the type who would grow huge grey moustaches and would bore his grandchildren and possibly even great-grandchildren about the battles he'd been in, the charges he'd led. Mathias knew he wasn't half the fighter Rudolph was. While his own sword work was passable, certainly good enough for a cavalryman, Rudolph could disarm him without breaking a sweat, and no matter how often they sparred, no matter how often Rudolph taught him the trick of it, he had never taken Rudolph's sword, not once.  Their horse-craft was on a par, just, but Rudoph had been born in the saddle, his aristocratic family bought him his first pony in his first months of life, and Mathias worked hard from enlistment and trained several times a week.  He was—along with all the other men—perfectly capable of guiding a horse without saddle or rein—you don't stay with the Hussars for long if you can't ride a horse by touch and feel alone, but he never achieved that perfect symbiosis that Rudolph did with his mounts.

He paused for a moment, at the image of Rudolph as a fond grandfather, with those ridiculous moustaches.  He hadn't been shocked when Rudolph had told him he was married, not shocked exactly. Rudolph had—although Mathias had never met any of them—a large aristocratic family, and a fortune which, although Rudolph rarely spoke of it, was something that needed to be managed. There were always letters that required answering, and sometimes—only sometimes—Rudolph would complain about the incompetence of estate managers who couldn't manage to find their arses with both hands.

"How is it that your family allow you to risk your life the way you do?" Mathias had asked him once.  It had been the only time he'd asked a direct question about Rudolph's family, and he'd deliberately not said wife.

"My parents are both dead—oh I hardly knew them.  Brief visits to the drawing rooms, that kind of thing.  They were both dead—typhus—before I was six.  I've had the title ever since—but other people have always run the place.  And my life is my own to dispose of—to do with what I like. I made that very clear. And I have a younger brother. I'm expendable."

"And you prefer to do this?" That Mathias found hard to understand. A choice between luxury and comfort and servants and clean sheets—and life in the army.

"I prefer to do this. " Rudolph had said, rolling over and putting his hand on Mathias' cock, which twitched in a vain attempt to recover. "And that's something I'd find hard to do in Berlin. Or even in the country houses—"

"Hous-ES?" Mathias had said, aghast.  He'd had no idea Rudolph was so wealthy.

Rudolph had rolled him over, working his kisses down his neck and heading towards his navel. "Don't be impressed, Mathias, for God's sake.  It's one thing I like about you, that you've never cared about my money."

He hadn't, but until that moment, he hadn't really had any hint of the extent of Rudolph's money.  He hadn't realised what Rudolph was putting at risk by taking this course.

Mathias was still chanting an internal litany to a God he hardly believed in, when Becher's hands took the cloth from him. Mathias had been too deep in his reverie to hear him return.  His batman started to strip off his shirt.  "You're all in, sir, let's get you inside."

"No. Tell me."

"Oberst Ratzlaff, sir? He's all right, sir.  Came through it better'n you.  Saw him meself.  Had a bit of a tumble, that's all. Right as rain, lying on his bed and joking away."

Mathias felt himself relax and realised that for longer than he could remember, he'd been holding himself taut like a mantrap, loaded and deadly underfoot.  Safe.  Oh, God.  It was all going to happen. 

- -

Comments

[belluthien.livejournal.com]

First: May I say I LOVE YOUR ICON??? heh. I may steal it.
;-)

Second: Heh. I can relate to clothing as inspiration, but you may know that already.

Third: Yay for writing!

And Fourth: Ooooh, the snippet. I like that!
y

[belluthien.livejournal.com]

Ha! You've made it your Default Icon! Regency Twinks! Rotf... ;)
Hugs you,
y

[erastes.livejournal.com]

please steal! i got it from you, anyway! :)

[ammonite7.livejournal.com]

My goodness, I planned to ask you where you got that icon. Can't decide whether it is funny or sexy. Actually, I have decided - it is sexy.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

I like your icon too, ammonite7 matter of fact,
Lovely snippet with cranky wounded Matthias. And no h/c on the immediate horizon, which is a nicely teasing bit of restraint.
I note in paragraph 7 a bit where you said I instead of third person, and I'm not sure I followed that jump in person very well. Just sayin'.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

thanks dear - that should have been italicised - mea culpea - it's thoughts.

[beckyblack]

Ah, interesting stuff. Loved that tension of not being able to ask about whether his lover fell or not.

he had never taken Rudolph's sword, not once

Oh, that's a shame. ;-) Oo-er missus, that made me giggle in a double-entendery way.

I wonder if typhus is the best thing for the arisocratic parents to die of? Would people like that have been living in the kind of conditions where typhus spreads? Heh, sorry, I can never resist a bit of nitpicking - appropriately enough when talking about typhus!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Good point - although there was an epidemic around that time - no-one was truly immune from it, although obviously the rich might have missed it. I'll choose something else. :)

[beckyblack]

Maybe cholera? That pretty much got everybody didn't it?