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The moment he heard Crozier announce that it was Hickey, not the natives, who had murdered Lieutenant Irving, Solomon Tozer abandoned any thought of joining the would-be mutiny.
His horror and regret had only just begun to register before Crozier’s speech was cut off by a deep, guttural roar. Everyone at the execution turned toward it at once, but only Hickey was fast enough to make a break for it before the demon bear barrelled into camp. The rest of them scattered in all directions as chaos took hold: every man for himself.
Tozer, abandoned by his guard and forced to think on his feet, dropped to the ground, pulled his knees to his chest, and wrestled until he could slip his rope-tied hands out from behind his back. Another few seconds and he’d wrenched his wrists free of their bonds. All he had to do then was find a gun.
In the descending fog, he’d lost track of Hickey, but Tozer sighted down his recovered rifle anyway, aiming for his best guess at the direction he’d run.
He took a few steps back, trying to pinpoint the sound of Hickey calling to his fellow mutineers – and out of nowhere, as if produced by the fog itself, appeared Jopson.
Tozer and the newly made lieutenant froze, eyes locked on each other. Incredibly, Tozer saw, they both held their guns in the exact same firing stance, pointed in the exact same direction. Both of them, for a moment, hesitated.
That must have been long enough for them to be sighted by Hickey or another of his band, because Tozer heard the sharp crack that announced a gunshot and, breaking his stare to look down, discovered he had been hit.
The objectives he’d held up to that point – kill Hickey, escape alive – fled his mind, leaving him with nothing but an urgent, pervasive pain. Tozer fell to one knee, then collapsed, holding tight to his gun until the last moment he could. As it slid from his nerveless fingers, he saw Jopson approach with rifle raised.
Come to finish me off, he asked, though he could not seem to make the words be heard aloud. Jopson didn’t answer him.
There was quite a lot of blood coming from the wound in his side, Tozer found. His fingers felt for it and met a messy pool, sticky and smelling of copper, growing steadily beneath him. With a dull sense of alarm, Tozer realized that everything around him was getting darker.
Everything but Jopson, who was about the only thing Tozer could see with any clarity. As if Tozer weren’t lying right there on the ground like a maimed dog, Jopson took up his place over Tozer’s fallen body, standing astride him in a defensive stance. He spared a glance down at Tozer, then held his gun up to his shoulder and stared intently out into the mist – aiming not at him, but at their mutual enemies wherever they might be.
Nausea swooped into his belly, and Tozer could do nothing for the moment but watch.
He perceived, dimly, the bear making a charge at a sheer angle from their position, in pursuit of some unseen target. Jopson sighted, took aim, and fired; landed a solid shot at the terror, from what Tozer could tell; it stumbled before regaining its charge away from them.
Jopson, unflinching, reloaded the rifle as calmly as if he were folding the captain’s underthings. Tozer stared up at him from the ground, thinking dazedly, He’s a beautiful shot. Where did he learn to shoot like that?
The bear galloped further into the fog, no longer visible. Jopson took aim instead at a figure Tozer could barely make out but who seemed to be carrying an armful of maps. Leading his target precisely and accurately, Jopson fired. A thin scream: the figure dropped its goods and staggered off at a run, clutching its arm. Another successful hit.
The incoherent grey of unconsciousness had begun to crowd the corners of Tozer’s eyes, but he had time to wonder why he no longer felt the blood pooling under his body but heat pooling between his legs before his injury caught up with him, and he passed out.
Tozer fell to his knees. Some part of him still resented the upstart captain’s steward, so lately promoted, so infuriatingly capable. He pushed it aside, and looked up expectantly at Lieutenant Jopson.
Jopson, angelically stern, was naked except for knee-high black leather boots and a black peaked cap worn over his neatly combed hair. He reached down and took Tozer by the jaw. His thumb brushed across the corner of Tozer’s mouth; Tozer opened it slightly in response. Jopson tilted Tozer’s head up so their eyes met. With his level grey gaze, he bound Tozer to an unspoken contract.
Tozer only took his eyes off Jopson’s when he reached for Jopson’s prick. He found it soft; that would have to change. He did not ordinarily make a habit of sucking off other men, but all the same he knew a trick or two. Tozer wet his lips, then parted them just enough to take the tip. Savoring it, going nice and slow, he coaxed Jopson into hardness with his tongue until his cock stood stiffly at attention.
He paused, looking up for approval. Jopson’s hand teased through his hair. Then he gripped Tozer more firmly, his fingers digging in to Tozer’s jaw. “Stand to your station,” he said, and Tozer obediently opened his mouth.
Jopson fed Tozer his cock, inch by aching inch, then took him by the hair and pressed his head down so close that Tozer could smell his sweat – the rankest part of a man who otherwise kept himself relentlessly clean. He forced himself not to choke, laid his tongue flat and adjusted his jaw. His mouth was full of cock. Steeped in the smell of it. Tozer inhaled deeply, greedily, and started to suck.
It wasn’t long before he felt, rather than heard, a slight quickening of Jopson’s breath, and with his head tilted back like that Tozer could see the muscle jumping in his neck – the signs of his body giving away his excitement. Feeling Jopson throb in his mouth excited him too; his own cock strained inside his trousers, untouched. In fact he was almost painfully hard, though he couldn’t spare a hand to touch himself with one wrapped around the base of Jopson’s cock and the other cradling his ballocks, rubbing his calloused thumb over them in slow and certain circles.
Over his rhythmic sucking, Tozer heard Jopson’s soft grunts and inhalations, growing faster the longer he worked. He couldn’t stop himself from responding: groaning around Jopson’s cock, squeezing him in the ring of his fingers and thumb while his other hand kneaded Jopson’s balls.
As if in response to some signal, Jopson suddenly pulled his cock out of Tozer’s mouth and began to pump it himself. His other hand still held Tozer fast by the hair, and as he stroked he pointed his cock directly into Tozer’s face.
“Watch it, now,” Tozer tried to say, but the words fit into his mouth in unfamiliar ways. He didn’t know how to tell Jopson what he wanted – his cock down Tozer’s throat – not in language that befitted a Royal Marine, anyway, so instead he stared at Jopson hungrily, his open mouth giving the lie to his protest.
Jopson was openly panting by now, his shallow breaths matching the short strokes he was giving himself. His cock, still slick with Tozer’s spit, was only inches away. He came back to himself somewhat and looked down at Tozer, smiling, all his dignity in place.
“My aim’s fine, Sergeant Tozer,” he said, and proceeded to spill all over Tozer’s face.
Tozer awoke with a painful-pleasurable throb between his legs. His first instinct was to put his hand on his yard – what he would do if they had been back on the ship, and him comfortably at rest in his hammock, instead of lying on a bedroll in one of their camp tents ashore.
His hand was halfway down his trousers before he realized that he had company.
Lieutenant Jopson had sat himself near the entrance to the tent and was staring abstractedly at a point somewhere above and to the left of Tozer’s head, his gun cradled between his legs.
Tozer stilled. Removing his hand, now that he knew Jopson was looking at him, seemed foolish. He began to register the rest of his surroundings instead – most notably the lack of screaming – and his last memories from before losing consciousness rose to the top of his mind. Somehow, in spite of being shot at and having their camp torn apart by a wild animal, he’d survived.
Tozer cleared his throat. “The bear?” he asked Jopson warily.
Jopson showed no surprise at hearing him speak. “Chased off. Captain Fitzjames caught it in the side with a congreve.”
Tozer considered this. Before he could form the next question, Jopson added, rather more tersely, “But Hickey and several others made off with guns and supplies. We haven’t found them.”
They sat in silence, not looking at each other.
“So I’m under guard,” Tozer asked, eventually. “Again.”
“Yes,” said Jopson with a thin smile.
“Good thing you know how to use that, then,” Tozer said, indicating the rifle, and then wondered why he’d said it.
Jopson’s smile widened, showing teeth.
“Oh yes, Sergeant Tozer,” he said, low and sardonic. “My aim’s fine.”
And for the second time that day since he’d been shot, Tozer’s cock went instantly and inexplicably hard.