Orgy after orgy, gladiator after gladiator, Aaron Travis' hero goes on.
After the gladiators and charioteers had taken their final
victory march across the arena, and the games were officially
closed by the Emperor, Magnus returned to the athlete's
quarters. He stripped off his fighting gear and allowed one
of the attendants to sponge the Nubian's blood from his
body, then to dress him in a chiton made of red silk, imported from Antioch - his best, since Marcellus was to be his
host for the evening - belted high at the waist with a thick
band of black Spanish leather. The litter arrived within the
hour, as Marcellus had said it would.
Magnus could have reached the senator's villa more
quickly by horse or by chariot; but the litter was a luxury he
had never experienced. He had walked or ridden beside Harmon's litter, but the merchant had never allowed him to be carried inside.
It was an unexpected pleasure - to be carried aloft, without having to consider the route or control a team of horses.
The litter that Marcellus sent had a boxlike canopy hung
with yellow curtains, supported by two long beams of
polished oak that were in turn supported on the broad
shoulders of six slaves, three on either side. The curtains were
tied back with thin silver chains; the box was strewn with
soft yellow cushions that smelled of sandalwood. Among the
cushions Magnus found a skin of red wine.
He settled himself among the cushions, uncorked the skin
and squeezed a spray of wine into his mouth. The wine
splashed off his lips, wetting his beard and dripping, invisibly,
onto the deep red silk of his chiton. Magnus looked around
and behind, studying the slaves who carried him through the
dense traffic outside the coliseum. They were alike as a team
of high-bred horses: strong, dark-skinned Levantines with
hairy chests, dressed in white linen loincloths and thick- collars of gold around their burly necks.
The late afternoon was warm. Shadows were long, the
moon was already showing her face in the pale blue sky, low
in the east. The strangeness of the light, the unaccustomed
luxury of the litter, the splashing of the red wine in his
mouth and the relaxation of his body after the tension of
the arena, all cast Magnus into a dreamy mood. The bearers
carried him high above the heads of the cosmopolitans and
farmers who thronged the inner streets of the city. Everywhere men stood in groups, drinking and loudly reminiscing
about the day's events in the coliseum, lowering their voices
in awe to speak of the thrilling performance given by Magnus
the gladiator.
He passed a group of ploughboys in town for the game
day, stretching their stocky legs and turning their tousled
heads to take in all the excitement, looking for whores or
city boys to show them the town. The youths saw him and
shouted his name, jostling each other and waving with ex- citement.
Magnus waved at the boys and smiled. He would have
liked to have stopped the litter bearers and taken a moment
to speak with the boys. Magnus liked country boys, with
their smooth complexions and strong young bodies. They
were always in awe of him, eager to listen to him talk about
the arena; and many of them were more than willing, after he
had met them in the marketplace or baths, to return with
him to his small apartment in the coliseum. It was a common
dream among such boys, he had learned, to be taken to bed
by the great gladiator Magnus.
The young provincials were not jaded, like city boys, or
tainted, like the attendants at the coliseum. They rendered a
kind of worship to his scarred limbs and rigid staff, as if each
wound were a mark of his triumph over the Fates, and his
sex a magnified talisman of their own beginning masculinity.
The excitement of such boys, so pure and intense, was contagious . Their willingness, their eagerness to please him, even
to abase themselves before him, was intoxicating.
Cruising the markets and baths on festal days or game
days, Magnus had encountered many virgins. The virgin boys,
and even some of the more experienced youths, were always
amazed and more than a little frightened when they first
laid eyes on the shaft they were expected to serve. Magnus
enjoyed coaxing a virgin - instructing the boy first to hold
the staff in his hands, to accustom himself to its length and
girth, then to kiss it, lick it, take what he could in his mouth.
Then came the moment that Magnus prized: seeing the fear
on a virgin's face as the boy, having experienced the shaft
with his hands and lips, contemplated the dimensions of the
surrender that was demanded of him. But despite the fear,
not one of them had refused to obey, even if they trembled,
when Magnus told them to squat above him and impale
themselves on his sex.
He remembered, in particular, a boy he had met some
weeks before during the festival of Diana, a fresh young farm
boy, his family ruined by debts, who had been reduced to
begging in the city streets. The smudges of soot on his face
and the tattered clothing he wore could not conceal the
firmness of his lean body or the downy smoothness of his
cheeks. Magnus had fed him bread and cheese in the market-place , the boy had been hungry as a wolf. He bought the boy a fresh linen tunic and took him to the baths.
Afterwards, his belly full, the mud and sweat washed from
his flesh, dressed in white, the boy had offered his gratitude
in a stammering voice, and expressed his willingness, with
eyes averted, to perform any duty Magnus might require of
him.
The boy was a virgin, but not naive. In Magnus' rooms, he
began to strip, even before Magnus told him to. Later, squatting above the gladiator, impaled on the very tip of his shaft,
the boy had begun to cry with frustration, certain he could
take no more. Magnus had been moved by the tears, but the
seduction had proceeded too far to be cut short. He clamped
his strong hands onto the boy's hips and pulled him relentlessly downward. It had been an ordeal for the boy - his face
became twisted with pain, he whimpered, his chest became
glossy with sweat and his breathing grew ragged. With agonizing slowness, Magnus took the boy's virginity.
When the penetration was complete, a wondrous transformation had taken place: the boy began to laugh and sob together , elated that he had proven worthy, proud that he had
been able, despite himself, to accommodate the shaft, des- perate to give it pleasure.
Magnus had fucked him three times that night, and when
the boy's ass was too raw and aching to take him again, he
had turned his attention to the boy's virgin mouth. By morning the boy had learned to take the full length of the rod
down his throat, as smoothly as a temple whore. He gorged
himself on Magnus' flesh, as ravenously as he had taken the
bread and cheese in the marketplace. Magnus responded to
his hunger, climaxing again and again in the eager mouth and
never growing soft, filling the boy's belly with semen.
The light of noon had found both of them pale and exhausted , drained and covered with sweat. The boy's lips were
puffy and swollen, his throat as sore as his ass; but there was
a smile of contentment on his face. Magnus rolled him onto
his belly and against the boy's feeble protests, took him a
final time. After they had bathed and eaten, Magnus had
taken the boy to the temple of Elagabalus, and introduced
him to the high priest. The boy would no longer have to beg
for his substenance, his mouth and ass would support him.
Remembering the boy had caused Magnus' shaft to unfurl
and lengthen beneath the skirt of his chiton, Magnus felt a
sudden compulsion to be alone and naked. He unhooked the
silver chains and let the curtains of the litter fall shut. The box was filled with filtered yellow light.
Magnus loosened the wide leather belt around his waist
and pulled the chiton over his shoulders. He fell back into
the bank of cushions and ran his hands over his chest and between his legs. He looked down at his body and flexed each
muscle as he touched it. The smooth, sun-bronzed flesh
seemed lit from within under the yellow glow of the curtains.
The dense, dark hair on his chest was touched with amber
points of light.
A great sense of luxury settled over him. He could hear
passing voices in the street, sense the mass of bodies all
around him, just beyond the curtains; but within the box he
was hidden and alone, invisible to the crowd. He closed his
eyes and thought of the grateful virgin. He touched his forefinger to the base of his shaft and pointed it straight from his
groin, as he had done when he had offered it for the kneeling
youth to suck. He stroked himself, recalling the clutching
heat of the boy's ass, and the choking sounds he had made
when Magnus fucked his throat.
Then Magnus remembered the twins, the slaveboys Eskrill
and Erskin, who awaited him at Marcellus' villa. He drew his hand away and shook himself out of the reverie.
Magnus had often known the pedestrian's curiosity when
a closed litter passed, and the crowd was cheated of the sight
of whatever personage moved among them. When the litter
bearers paused at a crossing, waiting for a train of oxen to
pass, he was seized by an impulse to reveal himself. He leaned
forward, bending sharply at the waist, and parted the curtains to his right.
The litter bearer whose shoulder supported the central
weight of the box, a young Levantine with a bristling mustache and large lips, glanced up at him and quickly looked
away. Only one other person saw him, a matronly woman a
few paces distant who stood at the edge of a covered vegetable market, waiting in the lowering sunlight while her
servant girl selected the purchases. The matron was in her
middle years, a handsome woman with brightly painted eyes
and lips. She was dressed in a simple but expensive green
robe, too tasteful for a merchant's wife, the mistress of a
senator or a general, perhaps. The woman saw him and lifted
her pencilled eyebrows. Her eyes raked over his naked body,
then focussed on the staff of flesh standing upright from his
lap, curving upward like the handle of an urn to touch the
hard cleft between his pectorals. Her eyes became hot as
coals. She looked up at Magnus' face. She licked her lips
and seemed about to speak.
Magnus let the curtains fall shut. He fell back into the
pillows, laughing softly. The litter jerked and began to
move.
Magnus ran his hands over his body, touching himself
everywhere but avoiding the tower of flesh between his
legs. He pressed his fingers into the soft, wiry hair around the
base of his shaft, causing the rod to rise from his belly and
stand up straight. He remembered the Levantine slave, and
the brief glance of desire that the man had given him. He
rolled onto his side and parted the curtains an inch. He saw
the man's long nose, bobbing up and down as he bore the
beam across his shoulder and trotted.
Magnus straightened his body and pushed his shaft through
the opening in the curtains. He did not have to speak. He
heard a quiet gasp, and then the slave took the offered shaft
into his mouth, swallowing it until his lips were pressed
against the curtains, somehow managing to keep step with
the other litter bearers while he sucked.
Magnus lay on his side, his head filled with the sounds of
the street. The slave's mouth bathed his shaft with warmth.
Magnus was hidden within the box, his sex hidden in the
Levantine's throat. The movement of the slave's head as he ran provided a constant, urgent stroking.
The noise of the city gradually receded. The bearers carried him outside the city walls. Many times he came close to
spilling his semen, but Magnus had no intention of wasting
his seed in the Levantine's belly. At last he rolled onto his
back, pulling his rod from the slave's mouth. The long thick
shaft was dark with blood, slick with saliva. Magnus grabbed
a cushion and wiped himself dry, then pulled his chiton back
over his shoulders.
He opened all the curtains and felt the cool evening air
rush over him. He looked at the darkling green fields, at the
strong naked back of the men who bore him, moist and glistening , under the slanting light of the sun. He glanced at the
Levantine below him. The man looked steadily ahead. His
mouth and chin were glossy with spit; there was a faint smile
on his lips.
Marcellus' villa was not far from the city, situated in the
midst of vineyards at the end of a narrow, unpaved road
lined with cypress trees. Magnus arrived at the last hour of the day.
The white columns of the great house were pale blue in
the twilight. The ornamental pools in the courtyard reflected
stars in a darkening sky. The statues of Apollo and Venus
that flanked the portal seemed almost alive in the uncertain
light.
Marcellus greeted him at the door. His face was flushed,
and his expression unusually frank and amiable. His toga was
crooked, as if he had just pulled it on; his hair was moist
and pushed to one side. He smelled faintly of sweat. When he
spoke, Magnus caught a hint of wine on his breath.
"The litter bearers were satisfactory?" Marcellus' voice contained an insinuation of punishment.
"Yes," Magnus said. He could not resist smiling, remembering the smooth heat of the Levantine slave's mouth.
Marcellus nodded. "Good." He turned and gestured for
Magnus to follow. "I've been busy, preparing for you. Es-krill had to be punished first, for his impudence at the
games."
Magnus was able to guess, then, the reason for the senator's disarray. He had hoped the boy would be fresh for
him; instead, Marcellus had been abusing him.
Marcellus saw the look of disappointment on Magnus'
face. "Don't worry," he said. "He hasn't been harmed, only humiliated. All the readier for you to use him."
In the foyer, two young eunuchs awaited them. The
slaves were naked; the strings of blue Aegean pearls that
circled their hips concealed nothing. Their bodies were well
proportioned, attractively fleshy and utterly hairless, even
their heads were smooth. Their small organs seemed almost
incidental, incongruous stubs of flesh protruding from the
downy swelling between their thighs. Only a small, faded
scar showed where their testicles had once been.
"You'll want to bathe before you eat," Marcellus said.
"The eunuchs will attend you. Their names are Nisi and
Hetion."
Marcellus walked to the closest of the boys and affectionately stroked his face. "They have been with me for a
long time. I bought them years ago, in Alexandria, when
they were only infants. The Alexandria slavemarket is an
extraordinary place, so much more exotic than Ostia." He
played his fingers among the dangling pearls, then squeezed the boy's tiny penis between his thumb and forefinger.
"If it is a eunuch you wish to buy, not a whole boy, they
will perform the castration free of charge, on any slave up
to twelve years of age. They do it there on the auction
block, for all to see."
Marcellus turned his back on the eunuch and smiled
grimly at Magnus. "I'll leave you now. The slaves will see to your comfort."
Magnus was left alone with the eunuchs. They led him out
of the foyer, through the sprawling corridors of the house,
to a wide, high atrium lit by a skylight of pink glass. They
unbuckled his belt, untied his sandals, and lifted the chiton
over his head. The one called Hetion gestured to a heated
pool of fragrant water. The eunuchs left him.
Magnus lowered himself into the pool. The steaming
water eddied about his body, relaxing the tightness of his
muscles and soothing the tension in his groin. Magnus closed his eyes and dozed.
After a time, the eunuchs returned.
They led him from the pool to a low divan. As the cool air
struck his body, his muscles seemed to dissolve and a curious
lightness filled his limbs and chest. His back seemed almost to hover above the padded surface of the divan.
The eunuchs knelt beside him. Gently positioning his
body, they used their mouths to clean his hands and feet,
and then his armpits. They ran their tongues in broad strokes
over his arms and legs and together sucked the moisture from
the dense mat of hair on his chest, then converged upon his
genitals. One attended to his shaft, licking and kissing it,
the other mouthed his testicles and delicately stroked the
moist flesh beneath with his tongue.
They carefully turned him onto his stomach and pulled
his thighs apart. One of them cleaned the space between
his cheeks, holding the relaxed muscles apart and licking
the crevice with long strokes from the base of Magnus'
testicles to the small of his back; when he was done, the
other put his mouth on the opening itself, sucking at the
wrinkled circle of flesh, licking at the loosened debris.
Both eunuchs then took turns inserting their tongues into
his ass. They lingered over the task, as if the flavor they
found there excited them. Their tongues reached more and
more deeply into him, stroking the slick inner walls, like
kittens vieing for the last morsel of nourishment in a narrow
vessel.
Magnus surrendered himself to the unique sensation.
When he had been no more than a slaveboy himself, rowing
on Harmon's ship, the galley master had frequently used
his ass; but since that time no man had entered or even
touched him there. He had never felt, or imagined, the
workings of a tongue inside him. The eunuchs' devotions
relaxed him to a degree he had never experienced before.
Even his shaft was loosened and soft.
Then he imagined that it was Eskrill's tongue burrowing
deeply into his bowels; and his shaft began to harden.
After the bath, the eunuchs led him through a wooden
door into a cubicle filled with steam. They stayed beside him
in the swirling mist, scraping his sweating flesh with pliable
tongues of leather. Afterwards they laid him on the divan
again. They massaged each muscle of his body, beginning
with his abdomen and ending with his fingers and toes.
They immersed him in a pool of cool, clear water. They
dried him with soft red towels. Then, as he stood before
them cleansed, relaxed, glowing with comfort, they applied
a thin sheen of oil to his flesh, even to the soles of his feet
and his face, so that his thighs slid across one another when
he walked and his rippling broad back shone like a waterfall of gold under the newly lit torches.
They dressed him in the red chiton and the wide belt and
led him barefoot across gleaming marble floors to an empty
banquet hall. They knelt on cushions beside him, fed him
with their hands and lifted goblets of wine to his lips. Having
nothing to do, his hands moved idly over their naked bodies,
cupping the firm fleshiness of their breasts, squeezing the
soft fullness of their asses, reaching through the chain or
pearls to stroke the smooth, insensitive places where their
testicles had been removed.
Magnus settled into the easy rhythm of luxury, awaiting
DRUMMER 32 the appearance of the twins without impatience. It was a
splendid gift that Marcellus had given him: an evening that
allowed him the fantasy of being a free man, a wealthy man,
an owner of litter-bearers and eunuchs and slaveboys from
the North.
Magnus was intoxicated with power: the iron-like power
of his sex, always present, and added to it the power, illusory
but potent, of being an owner of men's bodies. Strong
shoulders to bear him smoothly above the crowd, skilled
hands to massage him and moist tongues to wash the hidden
places of his body; and, waiting somewhere in the vast
house, the perfect golden bodies of the captured barbarian
princes.
Magnus had never had absolute power over another body.
He had used Harmon's mouth and ass thousands of times -
for months, in the beginning, he had fucked the merchant
twice or three times a day. But Harmon was his owner, and
even though he debased himself before Magnus' sex, there
were clear limits beyond which Magnus could not go; and
Harmon was old and soft.
There were the youths he found in the markets and baths.
They were beautiful, but he did not own them. He could
slap them, perhaps, but he could not bruise them; seduce
them, but never rape them. They were free boys, with laws
to protect them from abuse. A suit for damages brought to
Harmon from an angry father could wreck Magnus' popularity with the mob. Harmon might retire him as punishment , and send him back to the galleys.
There were, of course, the attendants at the coliseum. He
was free to use any of them whenever, however he pleased,
as Urius had done that afternoon with the Syrian slave,
Zenobius. Some of them were skilled enough; few boys
certainly, could swallow a shaft like Zenobius, whose throat,
as had been proved that day before all the gladiators, could accomodate even Urius' godlike mallet.
The attendants existed to keep the athletes content. If
that meant a scar across the face, a broken rib or even death,
it did not matter. The gamemaster would simply obtain an- other from the slavemarket at Ostia.
But the attendants meant little more to Magnus than
vessels to be plugged with his shaft after a killing. They were
uniformly attractive, but none of them extraordinary - like
Eskrill. A slaveboy as beautiful as that would only be found
in a rich man's bedchamber, never in the coliseum. And the
attendants presented no challenge, no mystery. Most, like
Zenobius, had been reduced to ciphers, without personality
or resistance, living only to avoid pain and to endure the explosive assaults of the men they served.
Tonight, Magnus had been elevated above the common
run of his life; he was to be the master of two proud Germanic princes, strongwilled barbarian youths who had been
made to grovel under the heel of the Empire. Magnus had
been intrigued by the lingering pride he had seen in Eskrill
that afternoon. Marcellus claimed that he had broken the
boys. They were broken perhaps, but not shattered. Magnus
had sensed a flame inside the boys, a last vestige of will that
Marcellus, blinded by his egomania, could not see.
Marcellus' loan of the boys was a challenge. Magnus vowed
to himself that the boys would not be unchanged by his
hours with them. When Marcellus found them in the morning , they would be as naked of their masculinity, as docile
There was a change in the room, something indefinite and
unseen that drew Magnus back to the present moment.
The eunuchs had vanished, but Magnus was not alone.
Across the room, at the top of a short flight of steps, a
military man with folded arms stood framed between two
pillars of green marble, watching him.
Above the waist, the officer was naked except for a pec-
toral made of golden discs spangled across his chest and a
red cape embroidered with gold, gathered at his neck by a
golden clasp in the shape of an eagle. The cloth was pushed
back from his shoulders, exposing his naked arms. An open
bracelet in the shape of a snake — like the eagle and pectoral,
made of gold — was coiled about the bicep of his right arm.
The officer wore a skirt of banded leather straps slung low
enough to expose his navel. The straps, contoured to his hips
and thighs, descended midway to his knees. His shins were
covered by bronze greaves laced tightly to his calves.
Magnus opened his mouth to ask the stranger's name, then
drew his brows together. The man was not a stranger; it was
Marcellus, his host.
The senator descended the steps and approached the
table. The soft slapping of his sandals against the marble
floor echoed through the high chamber. The long red cape
billowed silently behind him. To Magnus, in his bemused
state, the rhythm of Marcellus' steps and the rippling of the
red folds of cloth seemed a sound and a sight remote from
the ordinary world, simple yet mysterious, strangely alluring.
Marcellus stood before him. Magnus looked up at him, unable to raise his eyes above the dazzling golden pectoral that
adorned Marcellus' chest. The body he saw seemed to be that
of a man much younger than the senator. The arms, usually
concealed in the loose sleeves of a senatorial toga, were thick
with muscle, more like the limbs of a smith than a noble. The
legs were long and firm, dark with hair. Their massive grith
suggested steadfast power; as if, like twin pillars, once set
against the earth no amount of strength could move them.
The flatness of the senator's belly surprised Magnus. There
was no sign of debauchery there; only the faintest layer of
fat, the mark of a strong, healthy appetite, spread thin above hard clusters of scalloped muscle.
The golden pectoral Marcellus wore was made of coins.
The coins were clearly of barbaric origin, roughly cut and
stamped with crude profiles. Beneath the nest of gold wire
that knit the discs together, the symmetrical muscles of Mar-cellus' chest were very distinct, very broad, covered with a
mat of hair as black and finely curled as the hair on his head.
His nipples were the color of copper, set like ornaments at
the corner of each breast, as flat and round as the golden
coins.
The body before him was like a discovered secret, its
revelation another of the evening's special favors. Even at his
private parties, Marcellus dressed with the decorum of his
rank, in flowing robes that gave no hint of the magnificence
they concealed.
To Magnus' surprise, the sight of Marcellus' body excited
him. Magnus' staff had begun to harden, tenting the skirt of
his chiton, and he felt a vague longing to touch himself. He
glanced at the other man's hips, curious, as he had never been
before, about Marcellus' sex. The leather straps lay flat across
the senator's thighs, but curved outward between his legs, an
intimation of something unexpectedly large beneath.
"I trust the eunuchs pleased you." Marcellus' voice, low and measured, seemed deliberately seductive.
"Yes," Magnus said. He raised his eyes at last to the senator's face. It was the stony inflexibility there, and the
touches of silver at Marcellus' temples, that had always distracted Magnus from taking notice of the man's body. Mar-cellus' face, after all, was not as old as Magnus had thought.
He had confused authority with age.
The sternness of the senator's face and the contemptuous
line of his mouth, together with the ageless strength of his
body, suggested to Magnus the image of a god. Not the gods
of boyhood, Mercury or Apollo; Vulcan perhaps, or more
likely Jupiter, master of order and shaper of the greater
destinies. Magnus felt an unaccustomed and uncomfortable
feeling of submission, seated before the standing man. To
relieve it, he decided to stand, but a sudden dizziness of wine
forced him back to the chair.
He found himself unable to take his eyes from Marcellus'
body. He knew, as long as the senator stood before him, that
he would be content to watch the rise and fall of the golden
pectoral, and to study in fleeting glances the uncertain bulk
beneath the leather skirt.
It was said that Marcellus, when he had commanded the
legions in Spain, had been regarded by his men as semidivine.
Magnus understood, in that instant, the source of the
soldiers' devotion and faith. This was how they had seen the
man, dressed not in the shapeless robes of a senator, but in
martial red and gold, hard bronze and leather. They had
looked up from below to see him astride his mount, his
massive thighs pressed against the horse's flanks, his muscular arms naked and bearing a sword and banner.
Marcellus seemed to follow the course of his thoughts.
He raised his right hand to the golden pectoral; the golden
snake wrapped itself more tightly around his bicep. "These
are the clothes - some of the clothes - that I wore in my
final campaign. The coins are from every corner of Spain:
they show the faces of the petty tyrants who styled them-
"I dress this way, sometimes, when I discipline the twins.
They understand the authority of these symbols. They remember the terror of the battle in which they were taken
prisoner, ringed by Roman steel. These garments remind
them of what I was, a warrior, remind them of what they
A wave of jealous distaste, like the anger Magnus had
felt observing Urius abuse the Syrian slave, mingled with
the unexpected desire Marcellus conjured in him. Magnus
thought of the two eunuchs, and knew that it was the body
before him that they had been trained to please with hands
and mouths. He imagined Marcellus, dressed as he was, with
the German twins grovelling at his feet. Magnus became
impatient.
"Where are the boys?" he snapped.
The muscles around Marcellus' mouth tightened, and
Magnus immediately regretted his sharpness. But the line of
Marcellus' lips curved into a smile.
"I was wondering what thoughts were causing that sudden
stirring beneath your skirt. You've waited long enough. It's
time for your reward. I still feel a rush of excitement when I
think of how you handled the Nubian in the arena today."
Magnus rose from the chair. The lightness in his head had
subsided. He followed the billowing folds of the senator's
cape.
They left the banquet hall and entered a long, straight vestibule . Polycandelions, carved in the shape of griffins with
squat candles in their mouths, hung from the ceiling, filling
the hall with amber light. The walls were painted with the
murals in shades of red, dark green and yellow, depicting
scenes of warfare, worship and Bacchanalia. At intervals,
family busts were set into niches in the walls. The marble
faces, male and female alike recalled Marcellus' face; all
had the same broad jaw and grin, faintly smiling lips.
A door at the end of the vestibule opened into fresh air.
They walked through a covered portico to a large, low annex
made of stone, situated at the side of the main house. The
cool evening air was filled with the soughing of crickets. The
full moon was still low in the east.
Marcellus pushed open two high wooden doors and entered the stone building. Magnus followed. The air within
was warm. He felt and heard the soft crackling of straw
beneath his feet. The mealy smells of millet and dung
closed about him.
A single torch set into a post illuminated the stable. The
shapes of horses in their stalls, standing as they slept, loomed shadowy and indistinct. The beaten surface of an anvil
glinted in the wavering light. The room was filled with
huge, jumping shadows and the quiet breathing of the
slumbering horses.
"I keep them here, Marcellus said in a low voice, "in
the stables. They go nude in the daytime. They eat and drink
from their own trough. They void themselves on the straw."
The senator lifted a heavy iron mallet and studied it under
the torchlight. The weight caused his bicep to flex massively;
the straining muscle seemed about to break the golden
serpent wrapped tightly about it.
"During the day," he said, "they work. They carry burdens too heavy for the old stable master, brush the horses,
shovel dung and hay. The smith is teaching them to use their
arms at the forge. I do not want their bodies to ever grow
soft."
Marcellus set the mallet aside, lifted a block of wood from
a bolted door and pulled it open. "This is where I keep them
at night. Watch your footing. The stairs are old and narrow."
Magnus followed the senator down a steep flight of
granite steps. There was a strong red light from below, and
rising warmth.
Marcellus continued to speak in a low voice. "The smith
assists me in securing them for the night. I suspect he uses
the boys himself occasionally, but as long as he leaves no
signs of it, I suppose it is his due. The eunuchs help me to
care for them - washing them, shaving and oiling their
bodies. Except for the old stable master, they see no one
else. My wife would hardly know of their existance if it were
not for all the gossips among her servants."
The stairs ended. A short low passageway led to an
underground room. At first, Magnus thought the chamber
was immense, extending beyond the dimensions of the
stable above; then he saw that the walls were made of highly
polished black marble. The reflective darkness of the stone
deceived the eye, and caused the illusion that the room
extended to infinity.
Nevertheless, the chamber was quite spacious, though the
beamed ceiling was low. At the center of the room stood a
huge round brazier. Smoke from the high, crackling flames
pooled about the ceiling, eddied and swiftly dispersed
through a grating of iron bars set at ground level along the
top of one wall. The grating was blue with moonlight.
Magnus' eyes were caught by the leaping flames. He felt
the heat of the brazier on his face and arms, felt beads of
sweat break from his oiled flesh. He looked deeper into the
fire, between and through the tongues of flame, and saw a
form beyond, the color of human flesh.
Magnus heard a sound from far away, above and behind
him – a heavy wooden bolt falling into place. He turned to
see that Marcellus had disappeared. The senator had silently
retreated up the steps, closed the door and barred it behind
him.
The moment had arrived. A delicious sense of anticipation
settled over him, the sweetest of all the sweet sensations he
had experienced that night. Magnus stood for a long moment , studying the naked body across the room in glimpses
through the flames.
He could distinguish few details - only a glimmering
shape, bright in the firelight: a boy with a thick torso and
stocky limbs, prostrate on his elbows and knees. Through a
sudden break in the flames, Magnus saw distinctly the curvature of the boy's uplifted ass. The half-moon of pale flesh
was silhouetted against the blackness beyond. Magnus followed the uninterrupted line with his eye as it arched upward,
around and down to meet and melt into the subtler curve of
the boy's well-muscled thigh.
Magnus' head grew light. Every sensation in his body be-came acute. He felt the blood drain into his groin and begin
to fill his staff. He reached beneath the hem of his chiton and
gently squeezed the shaft between his thumb and fingers.
The smooth flesh felt dense and resilient; the shaft hung outward and down, full of blood but not yet erect. Already the
bevelled edge of the crown was firm, as defined as lips compressed around the staff. Through his fingers, Magnus felt the
heavy throb of the thick veins which pulsed just beneath the
sheer flesh.
He circled the brazier slowly, approaching the boy from
behind. As he walked, his shaft grew fully erect. The long,
thick column rose to part the hem of his chiton. The red
silk slid back and gathered in folds at the base where the
wiry hair grew dense and black. Warm air struck his testicles.
The balls loosened within the sack, hung loose and heavy,
sliding sensuously against the smooth inner surface of his
thighs.
Magnus' shaft was so hard it ached, untouched, with
pleasure. The warm air from the brazier, swirling around
it, felt like carressing fingers.
His mind was drained of thought; it took a long moment
of staring to understand all that he saw.
The body he had seen was bound to a low block of wood.
The boy was naked except for golden bracelets around his
neck, ankles and wrists. His flesh was utterly hairless; the
powerful legs and arms, as well as the chest and genitals, had
been shaved. The head was smoothly shaved as well, and
glinted as round and naked in the firelight as the boy's buttocks .
The denuded flesh had been covered everywhere with a
heavy coating of oil - not a glimmering sheen, such as the
eunuchs had applied to Magnus' body, but a great, glossy,
dripping mass of oil. The heavy yellow liquid poured languidly from the boy's chin and nipples and the tip of his penis,
and made his flesh flash in the firelight like liquid copper.
He was bound to the block of wood by leather straps
across his wrists and forearms, his calves and ankles, so that
he could neither raise nor lower his torso. A wide leather belt
was looped around his waist. Below his navel, the belt was
hooked to a short chain ground in the wood below. The belt
pulled his waist downward so that his back was deeply
arched, and his ass raised high.
A length of thin leather cord had been tied very tightly
around the base of his shaft; another was wound around his
testicles. His genitals were so distended that they looked as if
they might burst. They hardly seemed to be part of his body
the leather cut so deeply into the flesh that the organs
seemed hardly to connect with the smooth, hairless plane of
his groin. His unnaturally bloated shaft and the knob of his
testicles, hard and round as the pommel of a saddle, were red
as wine. The angry color contrasted starkly with the buttery
gold of his thighs.
From the boy's uplifted ass hung a dozen strands of
leather, dangling from his sphincter like a tail. Magnus reached
for the strands, coilled them about his fist and tugged.
The boy threw his head back and groaned deeply.
A pulse of fresh blood ran through Magnus' shaft. The
shaft jerked; the swirling heat of the room was like a tongue
pressed against his testicles.
The mouth of the boy's ass, like the rest of his body, had
been scraped clean of hair. Magnus stared at the tightly puckered closure of flesh which gripped the dangling leather
straps.
He pulled on the strands again, curious to see what held
them inside the boy.
Eskrill's head jerked upward - for it had to be Eskrill,
though Magnus had not yet seen the boy's face; Eskrill whom
Marcellus had punished that afternoon, not beating him but
humbling him, shaving all his body as he had shaved his
