IN THE SHADOW OF THE PYRAMID, CHAPTER TEN
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
I woke up to pain and when I managed to focus my eyesight enough, I realized that I was back in my pit. The grate was still up there, and still unaccessible to me. I started to try to climb up to it anyway, but the pain in my shoulders, my legs, my arms, was excruciating. It was a waste of time anyhow, if I could somehow climb out again, I would be captured again. The guards would not kill me until morning and then only at the High Priest's order but I had learned...oh, how I had learned...that there was a lot they could still do to me!
That left me nothing but to wait until morning. My pains would have kept me awake even if my distress had not. As it was, I ached and I worried, I fretted and I winced with every movement, and yet I could not keep still.
The night wore on, and when there was less time of darkness to come than there had been by quite a margin, I had fallen into a mild stupor that mimicked sleep without any of its restfulness or relief, when a noise came from overhead. I had little to understand, I had only heard that noise once before. It was the sound of my grate being lifted up.
The next sound was also equally familiar/unfamiliar to me, the sound of a ladder being lowered down to me. "Come out of there now, quickly!" came the hissing sound of a man's whisper above me. He was only a shadow upon the night, occluding stars but otherwise indistinct, only a semi-shape. "I am going to get you out of this place!"
I regarded the ladder with dismay. I had been tricked before, told I was going to freedom and it ended up with a beating that I could not even now, so soon, recall clearly nor wish to. But I remembered keenly the time before, when I had thought I was walking to freedom, and at the end of that path had held only pain.
"Come on!" he told me.
"I must die tomorrow." I said to him with aching lips. I realized only then that my left cheek was one huge bruise, my words were mumbled.
"Come with me if you want to live!" he hissed to me.
I had no reason to believe him. I had every reason to suspect him.
But he offered me a chance. Against that chance of freedom was stacked another dose of pain and death in the morning. The price of losing was high, but it was the only chance I had.
I stood, which was misery, and I reached for the ladder, which was agony, and I climbed, which was torturous. Every move was slow, every rung ripped out a piece of my life, but I made it up and out of the pit.
"I am out." I said to my benefactor. I had never seen him before, but he was not one of the guards who had beaten me. I would remember their faces until my dying day.
"Then come with me." He said. "Are you able to walk? We will have to go a great distance."
"I can walk as far as I must." I assured him.
He led me through the quiet buildings. I was surprised by this, a certainty of a prison is that someone is always awake. I asked him about this and he said, "We slipped a drug in their evening supply of wine." he said. "The guards always end their day by drinking, and the night guards start their work by drinking. So all are asleep."
"Shall we release any of the others?" I asked. I knew the prison held over fifty men.
"No. Only you." he said. "Come."
"But why me?" I asked.
"Now is not the time for questions." he said. "Come, and quietly. One of the guards may not be as asleep as we may wish!"
That silenced me but our exit from this place was without incident. Beyond the prison, there were people, and by some manner I couldn't understand, we avoided some of them and mingled freely with others. Whatever his pattern was, it worked and we were walking out of the city and to the harbors. Of course, there was no other way to flee in Egypt, other than to plunge into the desert beyond the river's fertile banks.
"The sun will rise in another hour's time." my rescuer (for I finally believed that this was what he was) told me. "We must remain hidden until a ship we can trust arrives." He led me to the narrow space between a wall and several large urns of grain waiting for shipment. "Can you lie silently?"
My body's pains were worse than before, the movement had exacerbated the injuries, I suspected. "I will do whatever I must." I said.
"Then try to sleep." he said to me. "Our ship will not arrive until well after dawn. If it arrives at all."
"I shall lie silently." I said and I lay down upon the hard stone. It was worse than the pit, which had been worn into various concavities, by lying down in the right place, it bore a reasonable conformation to the human body (the result of many hopeless lives before my own tenancy), but this stone was all bumps and lumps. I lay down and I hissed in pain as the stones due into my ribs.
We were not yet free! The High Priest's guards could find us yet! Or we could be discovered by the stevedores. I shifted and shifted again, and shifted yet again.
"You are restless." my rescuer said to me.
"How can I not be?" I said. "The dawn which is approaching was to have been my death day. For that matter, I do not understand why you have come to rescue me." I turned to look at him in the first dawning of light, and saw him clearly for the first time. He was lean, tawny-skinned and lithe as a leopard. His muscles weren't large, but they were whipcord strong, they could move him as agilely as an acrobat. He could fling himself about as his duties required with a grace and an expertise that would let him...well, let him break into the High Priest's prison despite the locks against the night, and bring away the prisoner he chose to bring away. His nose and cheeks spoke of noble blood, and I knew that many younger children of the noble families sought a life in the military. For this young man, it was a life he would have reached for eagerly.
"Yes, I did promise to tell you when we got away, did I not?" he said. "I admit that sleep eludes me as well upon these damnable stones, however desirable the quietness that sleep would afford us. Ask me, and I shall answer as I can, but I must warn you there is much I cannot tell you."
I smiled at him, and that hurt as well, winced, and said, "Will you tell me at least your name?"
He smiled back and said, "My name is Harsetshup."
"So, Harsetshup," I asked, "Why was I the only one you came to rescue from that prison?"
"Because I was ordered to do so by the High Commander." he said. "You traveled here upon a mission to protect the Pharoah, and it would have been the height of ingratitude to let you be executed as a result of that mission."
"I can understand that." I said. "But why is the High Priest permitted to gain adherents to the worship of the All and the Great Architect if you know how he plans to use it?"
"Because this is all new to us as well as you." Harsetshup told me. "We learned of the threat only a handful of days ago and have spent the time marshaling our forces to oppose the threat to our Pharoah. If we were to reveal our foreknowledge, the High Priest might move faster than we will be ready for him."
"So I went to the High Priest to warn him about the threat to the throne when he is in fact the leader." I said.
"And so I came to get you out again, because the High Commander feels that a man of your courage must be saved to serve the Pharoah through these difficult times to come."
"Are things that bad?" I asked him.
"No." Harsetshup said. "They are worse. This rebellion has grown quietly, in the guise of a large number of cults. They now have the hearts and loyalties of a sizeable percentage of the population. The Pharaoh should have banned the cults when he learned of them, as they fail to give him his own due as their god-made-flesh, but such cults rise and fall on a regular basis, usually without having to do anything."
"So what will the High Commander do now that he knows?" I asked.
Harsetshup smiled. "That is a question I cannot answer for you."
"Can not or will not?"
"A little of both." Harsetshup admitted.
"Then I shall not ask you the more." I said. "I shall merely express my gratitude to you and later to the High Commander, for my salvation."
"You are offering the usual coin of gratitude?" he asked me.
I smiled in gentle denial. "My heart is willing enough." I said. "But my body has been badly misused, and I cannot provide you the talent you would properly deserve." The very thought of attempting to give Harsetshup a blow-job or riding his cock was enough to make my every bruise pulse angrily.
"Then I shall not have you move." he said. "If you will but permit me this liberty with you...."
"I should be honored, my kindly savior." I agreed.
His response to that was to kiss me and again I felt the pain in my cheek, but I ignored it for the sake of my rescuer. Harsetshup's hands were gentle upon my abused body, his strokes played upon my skin both whole and broken, and both treated his touch as the welcome caress of a hero and source of succor and serenity, he calmed me and relaxed me even in this place of danger and I felt like nothing would stop us from simply stepping onto that boat and sailing away from this horrible place.
Our tongues played with each other, for it was the one part of my body that did not ache and would move as I wished it to. He moved for me, to let me kiss his cheek, his neck, his shoulder. My mouth played over his breast and he lingered to let me suckle the tender nipple, and then I was traveling down the ribs and onto the hairy line of his stomach hair down to the damp bush of pubic hair.
"You don't need to move." he hissed to me, straining with the effort to control his body, to move it so my head did not have to rise up in the least, yet could rest against his leg. "Just let me moisten myself inside you and I shall be ready."
I let him slide his cock into my mouth, and he was true to his word, his finely tuned body was slipping upon my tongue and into my mouth and throat, and all I had to do was stay as I was, hold my lips tight upon him, work up my saliva, Harsetshup did the rest as his long, slender prick was dancing in and out of me, seeking out and picking up a fine coating of my saliva upon him, and I heard Harsetshup moan as my mouth stimulated his pud to a fine humming of incipient delights, and the panting sounds he made were not entirely due to his efforts, for his passion was building within him. Yet he persevered as he had before, never forcing me to take him in any way save that I wanted, his crotch did not invade me, it nestled me, with the gentle touch of a beloved pet that seeks out the comfort of your side, and his dong pulsed inside me.
"Ah, ah, enough!" Harsetshup gasped out at last. "Any more and I shall be done. Remain as you are, I only ask that you turn a little more onto your side for me. The rest, I shall handle."
And Harsetshup did, he moved around so that he was behind me, and his hand lifted up my uppermost leg and as he spread my butt cheeks apart, his slippery prick kissed its slick way into my bowels, and my sphincter dilated gladly for him, and without my volition, my butt muscles clenched and worked to pull him deeper inside me.
Harsetshup moaned but again, he held back and wormed his way into my body in slow stages, even though I milked at him unceasingly, he kept it kindly and solicitously paced, so that my entire body glowed rather than flinched at the warm, warm length of him slipping deeper, deeper into me.
At long last, Harsetshup's entire sleek dong was within me, he held me so as he gasped warm breaths into my ear. "And now." he murmured to me, "now we shall join our joys together, you and I, and again, I ask that you let me do all the labor."
"I shall." I groaned, though truth to tell, my body longed to move to help this generous lover fulfill our passions, I still ached from my beating, but now my pain was like a scythe of revelation, now I knew how firmly stubborn life could be, that even in my damaged state, I could seek out this joy, the pulse of my heart throbbed in my bruises, but it also pounded in my brain and drove me to react, respond, cooperate, join in, take over, bring it through, it was the time when our minds were closest to the gods, and even in this uncomfortable situation, in this battered state, my soul cried out to drink the ambrosia of coitus, to mix my body with Harsetshup's until we were both drained of this portion of our spirits that reached out to the future to continue our blood-lines upon this world.
But I reminded myself that Harsetshup was not only wanting to make love to me without injuring me, but that his body was so finely formed that such a feat was well within his powers, and so I lay as I was and Harsetshup began to thrust with his hips and send that long pud deep within me, pull it out with the skill of a song-player as he sucked in air through his instrument and made the reed within speak as though he blew it out, and then he drove back into me and my body rippled with his energy and the joys of a lusty man fucking my ass raced through my internal organs and buzzed about my body as so many agitated bees!
Harsetshup made increasingly frantic sounds of growing lust as he hammered his cock into me, I was the wall which his spike would hold fast and I wanted them only the paintings of sacred images upon my form to speak praises to the gods, and I would be complete, and the thought of myself as part of a structure, as part of a building, that awakened once again my craving for the Great Architect, working upon the All, I had heard truth within those words, even though they were spoken by a scoundrel, truth is as it stands even when the speaker is himself false to his own word. Blame not the words, blame the one who speaks them.
And I felt part of the All, that I could again turn to worship this divine conformation without the filth that had been piled upon him by the greedy High Priest, and I prayed, "Kindly Great Architect, I beseech you to take your tools to this unhappy land of mine, and let all return to the rightness of things, and if that is done, I shall sing your praises until my dying day, take back from the unworthy hands who hold you the proper offerings, take this offering of my body and my joy, and use it to save my country and my people!"
And the joy of the Divine Presence surged within me and I could only moan as softly as I could (for people were about, they were near, the stevedores had come to the docks to labor at loading the ships!) and let my joy take me, rush through me, flee out to combine back into the great All from which we had all sprung.
And as my rapture jumped up within me, it converted into the most ineluctable ecstasy that arose into a roar and thrashed inside of me, my body was thrown about, almost, by the raw force of this delight and I crooned and ejaculated, my seed spraying out of me to splash upon the stones of this dock.
And my body was heating up around Harsetshup's prong and he felt my climax wrack me, and he clung to me the tighter, he moved his hips the more energetically without being rougher, he thrust his prick deep into me at a hectic pace and as my own orgasm ended, Harsetshup spasmed, his arms closed upon me like a vise, and he drove his dong to the very base inside of me and stifled his scream of passion upon my shoulder as his prick exploded into me, hot steamy clumps of liquid joy peppered my intestines, I felt the hot rush and I sighed, felt a sort of phantom second orgasm dance through my body, whether it was Harsetshup's climax feeding itself into me or just a desire to join with him in this moment, I cannot say, I know I felt once again a sort of warm, soft wrapping of delight seize my soul, burying me in its silk, and then slipping away again with a whisper of farewell.
And the stevedores came to the group of urns that we were hiding behind, and Harsetshup and I stood up, my body remembering its pains, and we dressed ourselves again quickly, and I was as composed as any could be when we walked out the other side of those huge jugs overflowing with the Pharoah's grain. I knew those jugs were intended for the pyramids, and I remembered my life there now with the same longing I felt for my home village. Would I ever return to my life's work again after all this? Could I be once again a mere stone-cutter, or had the Great Architect bent my life to another purpose?
I did not know, but I pondered it as Harsetshup pointed with delight to one ship that was arriving, and considered it as he introduced me to the captain as a friend, and studied it still as we left the dock once more to travel yet further down the river, further away from the pyramids. I knew we were going now to join the forces of the High Commander, and I took this time to rest my body as best I could, for I knew that I would need all my strength to see myself through the days that were to come.
For like a sandstorm boiling out of the desert, a civil war was coming, and before it was done, plenty of good men would lie beneath the sands or, if they were lucky, reside within a tomb, dressed in rags from toe to head, their spirits reading the sacred writings upon the wall that would guide their prayers and take them on to the next world. And what would be left of my country when this civil war was done, that remained yet to be seen.
THE END OF CHAPTER TEN
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