Cast Away

Hispania

Naked Prey 11

by George Gauthier

Author's Note: This is a tale set during the Moslem conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the early VIIIth century. It is the eleventh story in my 'Naked Prey' series for the Historical section of the Nifty Archive, each with different characters. The other stories in the series so far are 'Naked Prey' set in 19th century Africa, 'The Shawnee', set in colonial America, 'Terra Australis', set during the great age of exploration in the South Seas, 'Dangerous Game' set largely in the Caribbean in the mid-seventeenth century, 'White Comanche' set in the American Southwest in the 1830s, 'Fearful Symmetry' about two castaways on the island of Sumatra in the early 18th century, 'Periplus' a tale of a voyage around the Indian Ocean in the late eighteenth century, 'Source of the Nile' set in Roman Egypt, 'Treasure of Carthage' set in the Mediterranean during the mid 12th century, and 'Monsters' set in the Pacific Ocean in the early XIXth century.

This story contains graphic descriptions of the male human body, of consensual and non-consensual sexual activity between adult males, and of moderate bondage and sexual humiliation.

If any of this would offend a reader, read no further. This is not intended for persons younger than an age where they may freely and legally select their reading matter in whatever jurisdiction applies.

It is entirely fictional, with no resemblance intended to any person living or dead, except the general, but his sex life, as described in this tale, is wholly fictional. Otherwise, it is reasonable accurate historically as far as its setting.

Readers who like these stories might want to try my 'Daphne Boy' historical tales or my 'Jungle Boy' series of tales in a modern setting, posted in the Gay/Authoritarian section of the archive. Also, please try my futuristic 'Track and Field' stories in College and my 'Mer-Boy' stories in Gay/Beginnings. For links to my stories, look on the list of Prolific Authors on the Archive for George Gauthier.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Chapter 1. Spain, 712 AD

The enemy already held the only bridge over the Guadalquivir River at Sevilla. To reach the other side, Alaric would have to swim for it. Unlike many another boy of that age, Alaric was comfortable in the water from his two years of service in the Visigothic navy starting when he was fourteen. So he cast aside his sword belt and stripped off his boots and garments. He knew that the heavy steel weapon and water soaked garments would only drag him under, so he dove into the river empty handed and naked, swimming for the far shore.

The current was strong from the spring melt off, and the chilly water hampered the boy's efforts to reach the far bank. Normally Alaric enjoyed swimming but the low temperature and the current made the crossing a trial. Swept downstream by the flow, he finally made it to the far bank quite some distance below his starting point. That was just as well. An enemy cavalry patrol reined up on the south bank where he had started from, found his discards, and started looking for him. He scrambled into the cover of the scrub forest lining the banks, chagrined that pursuit was so close behind.

The shivering boy was fleeing north away from the battlefield where the victorious Moors had slain the flower of the chivalry of the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain at the Guadalete River which runs down to the port of Cadiz. King Roderic was dead and with him the lords and levies he had raised to stop the Moorish invasion. That included the men and boys of the small Visigothic navy sent to join the army in the field, after burning their ships in port in the face of the overwhelming Moorish naval strength that had swept them from the strait between Africa and Europe, not yet known as that of Gibraltar.

No deserter, Alaric had fought bravely enough when the battle on land was joined. When he fled, he was only following orders for the survivors to scatter and try to reach friendly forces to the north. What was left of the Visigothic army was streaming north, the cavalry far ahead of those on foot like Alaric. Enemy cavalry was trying to round up the stragglers.

Alaric had only a hazy notion of where he was and where he was heading. Three days after the battle he was footsore and weak from hunger, lack of sleep, and sheer exhaustion. Alaric was no weakling, toughened as he was by two years in the navy, but even his wiry strength had its limits. First a pitched battle, then three days of flight just to reach the river, plus fear and hunger had all taken their toll of his stamina. It did not help that his short slender frame carried few reserves of energy. The boy did not have an ounce of fat on his taut and tight physique. Now he had to decide where to go and what to do. At least water was not a problem, though it could be in high summer when some streams dried up completely.

The sun felt good his bare skin and soon warmed him up after his dunking in the cold river. The weather was warm in southern Spain, tolerable then for one without the protection of clothing. He was confident that his skin would not burn under the strong Iberian sun. He was not pasty white like most boys with his Germanic heritage. Though pure Visigoth, his hide was a tawny color thanks to his exposure during naval service on the south shore of the Peninsula, where he had habitually gone about nude while at sea. As ship's boy and lookout, he had hardly ever worn clothing since he had been assigned to his ship. Indeed ship's boys really had no reason for clothing except during their occasional forays on land. Otherwise their captains kept them nude, ready for their naval duties, and their extra duties at night.

The blond boy was a delight to watch swarming up the rigging to the crow's nest where his keen eyesight helped guide the ship. Alaric had a head for heights and liked to scramble around the rigging for fun, swinging on lines from one mast to the next, hanging upside down from the sail spar like from a trapeze, repelling down the mast to get down on deck faster than anyone else. He was athletic and acrobatic, the firm but small muscles of his clean limbs bunching and moving erotically under his tanned skin.

In port he went at his assigned chores with a will, scraping, caulking, and repairing dry rot when necessary. The work was tiring, sweaty and dirty but Alaric was naked anyway; the grime that got on his bare hide would wash off, and he had no need to bother about wet clothes or dirty laundry. Alaric's officers assigned him to tasks like that rather than let him work ashore where he might plausibly expect to be allowed clothing to cover his nakedness.

A ship's boy like Alaric often found himself scrubbing the deck. The sailors loved to watch little Alaric at that task, on his knees, pushing a scrub brush back and forth, a nude sailor boy, taut brown butt cheeks flexing, crinkly hole visible in between, genitals dangling between his slender thighs, back and shoulder muscles rippling as he thrust forward and back. Almost like being on all fours to get pronged.

He had not objected and rather liked living that way, not having to bother with clothes. Indeed he had lost track of his, having turned over his few garments to the mate who kept them in his custody. The sexy boy would never be tempted to cover or conceal his nakedness. Not that he ever asked for them. What was the point. It was all part of who he was and why he was aboard. Alaric loved showing off the trim little body he was so proud of, relishing the kiss of the sun on his bare rump and the feel of the wind in his long blond hair. Even on land, his bronzed skin would make him harder to pick out in the woods and fields too. Though for the first time in his life he regretted his shoulder length blond locks. Nothing stands out against the colors of the countryside more than straw yellow.

After crossing the river, Alaric took stock of his assets which were basically non-existent. With all the tools and accouterments of civilization stripped away he was but a slightly built naked boy some months short of seventeen, unshod, unarmed, halfway lost, famished, and dead tired. He really was little more than a hunted animal, so much naked prey for the enemy to hunt and ride down like a hunter does a deer, or in Alaric's case, the fawn he resembled so much. Maybe his coat was an unbroken light brown rather than dappled, but his slight build, his delicate features, and the innocent air about him, all suggested the fawn in him. So yes, an innocent fawn, naked prey for the hunters crossed over from Africa and now loose on the Iberian Peninsula.

One day an enemy scout spotted Alaric on the other side of a rocky defile and demanded his surrender. He even spoke the boy's tongue and called out to him.

"Surrender, infidel boy, and I will spare your life. Serve me a guide in these parts and I will treat you well."

"How much better surrender would be than running around the countryside like a naked animal, your loins shamelessly displayed. Unarmed as you are, you are no more than a victim waiting for the next soldier to come along or prey for a bear or a lion or a pack of wolves. What a shame it would be if they feasted on your flesh. You were intended for better things, in a harem or a brothel. Surrender, pretty one, and I will guarantee your survival. Indeed with your fine looks, I can almost promise you a pleasant life among us." He concluded with an evil chuckle.

Instead the boy dove into brambles then scrambled along the ground to put distance between them and to get out of range of that bow. He scratched himself badly and scraped his knees, but got away. The disappointed rider fired an arrow in frustration, but he could not get his horse across the defile, not anywhere nearby. Alaric heared wolves howling that night and the one after that. He hoped they were not on his trail. His natural armament of fists, and teeth, and finger nails was no match for theirs. As for a bear or a lion, yes those roamed the area too. Indeed he had even seen pug prints of a lion, so he knew they were about. Any of these predators too might take up his spoor. And what could he, an unarmed slightly built bare ass boy, do against them?

At times he took to the trees either to sleep at night or so he could break any trail he might have been leaving. He was lightweight enough to be able to cross from one tree to another using interlocking branches though occasionally he had to jump a gap, grabbing a branch or landing with his feet on a stout limb. There were no vines in this forest to swing on from tree to tree. He had to put up with the squawking of birds and the scolding of squirrels both cross at his intrusion into their domain. He meant them no harm. If only they would keep quiet and stop alerting potential pursuers to his presence. Sometimes he walked in a stream bed to break his trail. Once though he slipped on moss and banged his knee. Later he nearly broke a toe on an underwater rock. His feet were taking a real beating. Shipboard life does not produce calluses on the feet. Nor stamina either, not for running cross country day after day.

Cuts, bruises, scrapes, scratches from bushes and man-tall grass marked his skin. The blood from minor cuts attracted insects too. He had no protection from any of them, running around in just his skin like an animal. Then there was that time a broken branch had caught him right in the balls. Talk about pain. He had not been able to go on for quite some while, kneeling on the spot, just holding himself down there and whimpering. No, he never expected to use those tender spheres for procreation, but he prized them just the same, as any teenage boy would.

Another close escape was when he heard horses and barely had time to flatten himself on the ground in a field of wheat as enemy soldiers galloped down the farm road. At least among the wheat his straw blond hair was not out of place and did not make him stand out against greenery, acting as a natural camouflage.

It made him wonder how different was he then from any big game animal, hiding, running on bare paws, creeping about, relying on camouflage, bearing nothing but his natural weapons, living in the wilderness, squatting to evacuate his bowels on the ground, fearful of any predator on two legs or four. He had nothing that marked him as human: no clothing, no weapons, no tools, no fire. In that light, being naked was the least of it.

He foraged for what food he could in burned out homesteads, and abandoned garden patches. Sometimes he managed to kill a squirrel or a rabbit with a rock then ate the flesh raw. He had been reduced to life at its most basic level, surviving as little more than a wild animal himself.

He tried enlisting assistance at villages and isolated dwellings but was always turned away or even driven off. Soldiers fleeing on horseback had made themselves unwelcome by commandeering supplies and acting arrogantly. The animosity they aroused extended to those who came after them. Taking their cues from their masters, dogs chased him off before he could plead his case; one mastiff even nipped him on the butt cheek as he ran down the footpath. One overcrowded village simply had no use for another refugee, another mouth to feed. What use to them a naked unarmed boy. He could not aid their defense. Why he didn't even have a scrap of cloth to cover his loins, so why should they help him?

That night Alaric gleaned what he could at one burnt out farmhouse, some raw parsnips and carrots from a root cellar and a portion of dried and salted pork. As he settled his bare butt into the corner of the shell of the cottage, a skinny tabby cat came up to him meowing piteously. It was a female not yet fully grown, its tail raised high, the tip in a crook.

"Hello there, little kitty. Want a bit of this, do you? Here, I always share with a pretty kitty like you."

As he had with their ship's cat, Alaric spoke in a friendly voice, knowing it would respond to the soft tones of a human benefactor. The lonely boy put a portion of the meat in a cracked bowl he had scrounged. It seemed the young feline was the only survivor of the household that used to live there. The young cat settled down and suffered his hand to stroke her as she chewed the meat he had offered, purring the whole time. When she finished her meat, she looked up hopefully for more, but the boy did not want the starving cat to get sick from eating too much at once. He set aside the rest for the next day. As kitties do, the cat licked her chops and paws. He let her sit in his lap where it curled up and settled down to doze, content for the moment. No wanting to disturb her, and comforted himself by her presence and warmth, Alaric lay back and went to sleep.

He woke up during the night to find the feline had settled on his chest, paws tucked under her breast, tail curled around her front, eyes drawn into slits, purring softly. For the first time in days he felt good. A purring cat has that effect on people. Still the next day he had to push on. Thinking maybe he could leave the cat at the next village or farmstead he picked the cat up and put her on his shoulders. She rode easily enough except once or twice when he stumbled or clambered over an obstacle she dug her claws in for balance. He accepted the pain and minor cuts, knowing the cat was not trying to hurt her benefactor, just trying to hang onto her perch.

At his next stop, he never got a chance to ask them to take the cat in at least, if not himself. When he knocked on a stout door in the middle of an otherwise featureless wall of an square building, a woman's face scrutinized him through the grill and shouted for him to decamp. The establishment was a convent, and the good sisters who dwelt within had no intention of letting any male into their cloister, must less a wild boy walking around as naked as the day he was born.

He moved on, barely dodging rocks and clods of earth hurled by the inhabitants of a forted up farmstead. What was it about him that they feared? He was a small naked youth, unarmed as they could plainly see. Maybe it was because there wasn't anything about him that they couldn't see, including that he could not possibly pay for anything, maybe not even with honest work, not with his slight build. Strange that no one was moved to pity by the sight of a comely boy, one so obviously in distress and in need of succor: naked, sweaty, exhausted, besmirched with the dust of the road, and much the worse for wear.

He trudged on, wishing yet again for stout boots or sandals at least. Used as he was to going barefoot, that was aboard ship with its smooth wooden deck. The piers were rougher; he had gotten splinters from the wood, but nothing had prepared him for barefoot travel overland. His feet were taking a beating. It also felt uncomfortable being naked as he journeyed through the settled countryside. Around a ship and on the water, perpetual nudity felt natural with the sun kissing his bare skin. Indeed it was what he was used to, but around landsmen he was out of his element. Oh you might come upon naked youths swimming at the creek or climbing into olive or almond trees to harvest the crop but not tramping along the roads day after day without a stitch on and with a skinny cat perched on his bare shoulder.

He got his hopes up when the wind carried the smell of wood smoke and of meat cooking over a fire to his nostrils. It made his mouth water and stomach rumble. He reached a small hamlet just as night fell. The superstitious peasants and their priest denounced him as a ghost or mayhaps an incubus come to deflower their women. Those angelic features were surely a lure of the devil. Why else had he arrived shamefully nude in the dead of night -- well late twilight -- calling for them to open the gates to him. As if they were that reckless of creatures that walked the night. And what was that creature on his shoulder with glowing eyes but his familiar, demon spawn for sure. In his hasty retreat, Alaric and the young cat got separated, and he never saw her again. He hoped she managed to infiltrate the town and found a new home for herself.

At one farmstead, they heard enough of his story to declare him a deserter from the King's army.

"Deserter? What do you mean? I did my duty. I fought till all was lost, and we were ordered to flee. It was every man for himself."

"Lousy deserter, tossing your weapons away, even your clothing in your panic to run from the battlefield. Coward!" the men shouted, evidently ready to blame him personally for the Christian defeat and the prospect of Moors scourging the countryside. He was their scapegoat.

How unfair! Alaric had done his duty and fought well enough, managing to kill two of the enemy himself and helping slay another. Not a bad score for a slip of a lad in his first and only battle, even if luck had played a large part there. Alaric was no deserter. He had retreated under orders.

Despite the truth of it, two men grabbed his arms. Another punched him in the stomach, taking the wind out of him. Caught by surprise, outnumbered eight to one and all of them grown men, struggling just to catch his breath, Alaric was little more than a punching bag for their pent up frustrations. First he took four or five blows to the body. Then the big guy who was working him over aimed his next punch at the boy's face. As luck would have it, Alaric's head lolled forward so the man hit the top of his skull instead, the hardest part of the human body. The big man howled at the pain. Unable to continue punching the boy, he kneed him in the groin causing pain to exploded in the boy's belly. His feeble resistance did little to keep them from bending him over a fence rail, and whipping him with a switch on his bare back and legs and ass. The man with the switch first worked him over from behind then moved to in front of him.

"You're lucky we don't hang you for your cowardice, boy. Now then, Len and Karl, hold his legs apart so I can lay this cane right into his ass crack."

The switching resumed, crisscrossing the earlier welts, concentrating on his cleavage and his crinkly rosette. They pulled him forward so the tip of the switch would land full on his genitals and anal ring. He screamed and writhed as they vented their wrath on his helpless tortured body.

"Why not rape him too?" suggested Karl.

But the proprietor shook his head at that, and the farmhands holding his limbs let him drop to the ground. He stumbled away utterly disconsolate, hardly able to see from the tears in his eyes, sore from the beating and the switching and weary to the bone, despairing of finding a welcome anywhere.

After that final rejection and the punishment he had taken the distraught boy ran into the woods and fell to the ground sobbing, his face buried in his arms, his entire back on fire from the beating, his anal ring swollen as if beestung. And if he did give in to self pity and to tears, who can blame him? He really was a good kid, a plucky lad suddenly thrust into an impossible situation. His was a disheartening predicament, a crushing burden on a boy not yet seventeen: hunted, alone, naked, defenseless, beaten, in disgrace and rejected by everyone he turned to for help. After a while Alaric was all cried out. He pulled himself together and thought hard about his future, about escape. Somehow he had to get over the mountains.

Chapter 2. Petrus

Alaric followed a creek upstream into the foothills of the Sierra Morena. At first the slope was gentle, but soon he was scrambling over rocks and rilles, climbing ever higher. Branches whipped his bare hide, he slipped and scraped his flank on a rock. After nine days, he was almost at the end of his tether. Finally he could walk go no farther. A shepherd's hut looked to offer shelter, so he rapped on the door post. A scruffy shepherd pushed aside the blanket that covered the doorway and looked out at his caller.

"Now who would you be, lad. And why are you running around stark naked?"

"Please, sir. I was in the great battle at the river. All is lost, the king, the army, the kingdom. I beg ..."

At that point the boy fainted dead away, utterly spent. The shepherd caught him in his arms, a look of concern on his face as he took in the boy's condition: the strain evident on the boy's features, the welts from his recent switching plus the scratches, cuts, bruises, and bug bites acquired during his flight. Sighing, he picked the lad up in his arms and brought him inside and laid him on his own cot. It was not hard to do. Though halfway into his seventeenth year, little Alaric was quite small for his age and very slender. He stood just shy of four inches over five feet (162 cm) and weighed only 110 pounds (50 kg). He had a fawn-like physique but with a wiry musculature, toned and taut.

The shepherd could see that the youth was prettier than any boy rightly ought to be, blessed with delicate features, a straight nose, high cheekbones, and, before he closed them in a swoon, large green eyes topped by a blond thatch. He had no hair on his body, not even wisps under his arms or at the fork of his legs, a naturally hairless boy, a condition probably related to his failure to reach full height, as was his flawless complexion.

He did his best to make the lad comfortable, examining his injuries, sponging his body clean to prevent infection of his cuts. The boy never stirred during his ministrations, dead to the world. Petrus had first taken him for a youth of fourteen, but the musculature on the limbs he had washed were those of a boy past his growth spurt, little as that was in this boy's case. Curiously hairless too, even the fork of his legs, not that the shepherd objected. There was nothing to obscure the sight of the boy's nicely formed manhood that way. Though his round rump rivaled those attributes for catching the shepherd's fancy.

Petrus watched over the boy stretched out on his cot, eyes closed, chest slowly rising and falling, so petite and innocent, a boy of surpassing beauty like an angel in a church painting. Except that angels were never depicted nude, were they? The sight of the beauteous lad brought Petrus to mind of his own first love, another blond boy, but that was many years earlier, and things had ended badly. This new boy aroused protective feelings in him as well as a healthy appreciation for his naked beauty. The shepherd longed to pet and caress and stroke this sexy little creature, to enfold this wondrous lad in his arms, but he held himself back. Petrus would not take advantage of an unconscious battered boy while he lay defenseless and in Petrus' own home no less, where the hapless lad had sought shelter. Let him be to take his rest, well earned as it looked to be.

Time enough on the morrow to see what would develop with this lovely youth. He was glad he had no extra clothing to offer the lad, who must perforce remain naked. Well, with his dark tan unbroken all the way down to his ankles, isn't that how he usually went about, completely unclothed? Meanwhile, Petrus contented himself with touching the boy's beardless cheek with the back of his hand. What matchless features this beauteous creature bore. He could make a monk forget his vow of chastity.

Alaric awoke to the wonderful smell of a savory lamb stew whose aroma filled the humble shelter where he had taken refuge. It was mid morning so he must have slept many hours.

"I let you sleep, lad. I figured you needed that even more than food. Here, let me help you outside to relieve your bladder, which must be bursting. Then it will be time for nourishment, but take it slow. Don't wolf this food down. That will only make you throw up."

Alaric nodded to his benefactor, did his business, then went back inside and ate his stew slowly savoring the well cooked meat and vegetables. Some unfamiliar spice or herbs had been added to the broth, characteristic of the local cuisine. It delighted his palette and not just because the boy was hungry. He said so, his sincerity patent in his guileless features. That brought out a smile on the older man's face. He so seldom had guests who could appreciate what he could do with the simplest of ingredients. Well he had had years of practice and cooking had become a hobby in his solitude. He gave the boy a cup of cold water to wash his food down with.

"Spring water, lad. It's pure so it won't give you the runs. My name is Petrus, a shepherd of these hills, obviously."

"Alaric" he introduced himself simply.

Alaric found himself liking the kindly man. It was hard to tell his age. The life of a shepherd was hard and rapidly aged a man. Still he could not yet be out of his thirties. His strong limbs were tanned where his tunic did not cover and he had that weathered look about him of a man who spends much time outdoors. Withal he had craggy good looks that inspired confidence. Alaric explained his plight and the reasons for his flight which had led him to this point. The shepherd nodded, his worst fears confirmed. He had spotted riders on the old hill road earlier that day and from their banners and accouterments they were clearly not the soldiers of any Christian lord. The boy was downcast at the news, uncertain what to do with enemy soldiers already ahead of his line of march.

"There is little hope for either of us, lad." the shepherd told the boy sadly. "The Moorish soldiers will probably slaughter my sheep to feed their army and will either kill or enslave me or at least press me into their service. These hills are not rugged enough to present much of an obstacle to their army. I know. I was once a soldier myself, during a misspent youth."

He smiled wryly as he remembered his younger days. Alaric guessed that while there was much about the past the man might regret that did not include his days as a soldier. He said as much. That made the man laugh.

"A sharp one you are boy. Yes, it was the one great adventure of my life, though what the war was fought for, who can say? To put one man rather than another on the throne, each claiming to have the right of it, as best I could make out. But I got back home safe and sound and with a few gold pieces I managed to, shall we say, retrieve from a slain knight who no longer had any use for them. I settled here and purchased the beginnings of my flock. Here I have lived in peace these past fifteen years."

If the Moors come, will you fight again, Petrus?"

"With what, my shepherd's crook? My belt knife I cut my meat and vegetables with? Against swords, lances, bows and arrows, and men in mail mounted on horses. I have no real arms to fight with. Maybe that is just as well. You would ask me to lend you my sword if I still had it, so you could fight them again. That would only get you killed. Better to surrender when they arrive and hope for the best. It is just as well that I cannot offer you clothing to cover your nakedness. Best they come upon you this way, looking harmless, youthful, naked, pretty, and unarmed. You said you were going on seventeen. You hardly look it. Especially nude as you are, you could easily pass for two years younger, maybe three. In your case I see a fate different from my own."

"What do you mean, Petrus?"

"The Moors practice sodomy especially with captive Christian boys, the pretty ones at least, and that certainly means you. A lad with your exquisite looks would doubtless serve as a catamite, either of a great lord or in one of their boy brothels. Have you ever slept with a man? Answer me true. I'll not hold it against you, either way."

Alaric colored, stammering, hemming and hawing in his shame, eyes downcast.

"Yes, Petrus. I ... I admit it. I was in the navy. To my shame, my captain and commander both took a fancy to me. These past two years I have warmed their beds virtually every night. Everyone aboard ship knew of my disgrace too, especially since the two of them would speak openly of it, discussing my charms and what they would do with me next. They liked to keep me naked while we were at sea, even more than other ships' boys. Several times, when I angered them, they let the crew pass me around to be impaled on cock after cock after cock. The worst is that lately I found myself enjoying every bit of it. Please don't cast me out for my wickedness, Petrus. I have no place else to go."

The shepherd took the boy in his arms. His embrace was reassuring and comforting, not the embrace of a man who would force his carnal desires on a boy. Alaric looked up into his face with shame, relief, and gratitude.

"So, I don't have to offer myself to you as payment for your help."

"No. Definitely not. I'll not take you on those terms, not out of gratitude nor coerced either. I'll help you no matter what, Alaric. You deserve my help if only for your spunk and your defense of this Christian land against the Moor. Mind you, I would never turn down a sexy lad like you. It does get lonely up here in the hills, and I was never one to fancy sheep."

The laughter and simple sincerity in the man's voice persuaded Alaric not only that he was in good hands but that he should let the man take him to his bed that very night. The men who had used him in the past had aroused perverse physical desires in him. With this man, the attraction felt right, healthy even. Anyway, Alaric rather liked the shepherd's rugged looks and lean powerful body. He looked forward to their tryst. Petrus showed him the spring he drew his water from and the small pool if flowed into, just right for bathing. The boy used the sponge and sand and ashes to get clean for the first time in more than a week.

After their evening meal, the pair sat around the fire. The flames cast a red and orange light over Alaric's tawny hide, the shadows outlining every corrugation of his chest and belly. From his tiny red nipples to a deeply indented navel, to narrow hips framing a surprisingly ample manhood for one so slight of build, Alaric was real beauty. He carried so little body fat that his flat belly showed a tracery of downward pointing veins just under the skin. The beat of his heart was visible on the left side of his smooth chest.

From the front, the boy looked so, well flat, though corrugated with rippled abs, pecs, ribs, and nicely formed muscles, but his fawn-like physique was the very opposite of the bulging muscles of a strong warrior. From the rear, the boy was all curves: the calves, the thighs, the firm globes of the buttocks, the swale of the lower back, the slope up to the shoulder blades which formed winglets on his upper back, to the cylinder of his neck.

Farther down Alaric had a smooth cock with a vein running along the top from his belly to where the foreskin hugged his cock head, outlining the ridge of the glans under the skin, leaving just the slit at the tip visible. Cock and balls were reasonably sized but he wouldn't be scaring the sheep much less the horses. It might take both his small hands to cover his erection, but only one when he was soft though it did look larger from the way it sprouted out of a groin bearing no more than a suggestion of blond pubes. He was sleek and smooth, tanned nearly as dark as a Moor.

Petrus's hands roamed over the boy's trim body as he stood before the older man, ready to submit to whatever use the man desired of him, proud to show off his trim little body. He was a real beauty; everyone said so, even if Alaric thought himself rather too short and slight of build. His hair was definitely too long for military life, but his commanders had insisted he let it grow girlishly long down to his shoulders. Though from his smile and the way his hands combed Alaric's locks, Petrus rather liked it that way. Well, let him enjoy this body of his that it might bring a moment of joy to this good and kind man whose life in these hills must be very lonely.

"I have never seen a lovelier creature, little one. You seem so fragile and delicate, I am afraid I might hurt you. I am quite large and strong and rather well endowed, you know."

"Don't be afraid of that, Petrus. I am tougher than I look. Remember, I am a soldier too. I have seen war and even killed my man. Don't hold back. Those men I spoke of never did, especially when the whole crew took me of an evening, and I am none the worse for wear. How much more you deserve my charms than they who only compelled me. I am really quite fond of you Petrus and find you very sexy. There I have said it. May I not burn in hell for the thoughts of you that have put a fire in my belly. See." Alaric said, pointing to the unmistakable sign of his arousal at the fork of his legs.

"So be it then, Alaric. Since this is of your free and unconstrained will, let us enjoy this night together. Who knows what the morrow will bring."

Actually they managed three nights of physical bliss. Each day, as Alaric recovered his strength, their lovemaking grew more passionate. Despite his isolation, Petrus was a man of the world, well versed in taking pleasure from and giving pleasure to a young male. Soon the man was riding the boy hard, covering him like a stallion does a filly, almost engulfing his small body, penetrating to his utmost depths. Petrus could not believe how good it felt to wrestle with a boy lover once again, to grab and hold on to his sexy little body as he struggled to accept his huge endowment. Still Petrus was patient, slipping his truncheon of a cock inch by inch into the boy's tight hole.

How wonderful it felt clutched as if in a velvet glove, warm and moist, slick and welcoming and so very tight. After sinking all the way and holding it there for delicious minutes, Petrus started long stroking his young lover. The sounds the boy made roused Petrus' lust to new heights as Alaric moaned and gasped and whimpered. He babbled almost incoherently, telling the big man to push in deeper, to thrust more forcefully. Petrus pulled out all the way, smiling to see the tiny orifice virtually wink at him, begging him to thrust back inside. He did so, repeating the cycle time and again.

For Petrus, Alaric was a walking wet dream. He loved to clutch the pretty boy to his chest, his tight little body all slick with sweat, tugging, pulling, and squirming in his arms, twisting and straining, trying to help the man slide his cock in and out of his orifice while the man's right hand played with his own much smaller cock, stroking and playing with it, trying to make them erupt at the same time. Usually it was the boy who came first; he was only sixteen after all, twenty years younger than his lover, but the way his internal muscles clamped down on Petrus' own member during orgasm soon had the older man shooting his juices deep into the boy's fundament. For both it was the best sex either had ever had.

For Petrus, it was a healing experience, an end to his loneliness over the years since he had returned from war only to find the boy he had always loved had been forced to marry by his family. Will's life was a living hell from that day forward, his new wife a shrew, her family grasping and judgmental. After a year of a loveless marriage, he had taken his own life, leaving behind a last letter as a testament of his love for his boyhood friend.

The final morning, a clatter of metal and the sound of hoofbeats announced the arrival of a Moorish patrol. Petrus stepped out of the hut to confront them, his crook in his left hand, his right arm thrown protectively over Alaric's bare shoulders. There must have been fifty soldiers in the band armed not only with bows but also lances. Pennants fluttered from the points of the foremost. One of the Moors, not the captain but an interpreter, called out to them in the Vulgar Latin speech that had not yet evolved into a Spanish dialect, ordering them to surrender.

"On what terms?" Petrus asked

"Your lives will be spared in return for service. We are also confiscating your sheep to feed our army."

"A man can shear a sheep every season for its wool but can get mutton from a sheep only once. Are you sure your lord would not like us to pay regular taxes on our wool year after year?"

The captain smiled at the shepherd's verbal sally and replied with his own verbal thrust.

"Well spoken, shepherd. What you say makes sense in the long term, but I am afraid my general is more concerned about provisioning his army in the short term. Will you surrender peaceably or must we slay you?"

Petrus tried again. Nothing was lost by talking, and this captain seem to enjoy their battle of wits and tongues.

"I am only surprised you do not slay us out of hand for unbelievers.

"Ha! For that I turn your own argument back upon you. Unbelievers must pay taxes which we Moors do not levy on the faithful. And a dead infidel makes a poor worker indeed." he added with a sardonic smile.

"I find that argument persuasive for myself. What of the boy?"

At this point the captain spoke in their Berber tongue. The interpreter conveyed his meaning to Petrus.

"Only Allah knows the fate of this boy as he does of us all. With his exquisite looks, likely he will be turned into a eunuch to serve in some court or harem."

"Noooo! Alaric shouted, clutching himself down there. Don't let them emasculate me, Petrus," he pleaded in a panic. "I would rather be dead."

Shaking his head, Petrus held his crook at the ready crosswise to his body. "In that case, we must fight, for I will not let you slay the lad nor castrate him, not while I have breath."

At that point, an overzealous archer who had understood the exchange and seen the shepherd take a defensive stance loosed an arrow. Despite the instant angry counter order from the captain, the arrow sped from the bow into brave Petrus' breast. He fell to earth, blood bubbling from his mouth, transfixed in the lung. Alaric threw himself on his friend, begging him not to die. Petrus could not talk. He smiled fondly at the boy, caressed his soft cheek one last time, then died.

Alaric was shocked by the sudden turn of events. Before he could snatch up the shepherd's crook to fight the men who had killed his friend the soldiers were all over him, binding his arms behind him, putting a rope lead around his neck.

"What was this man to you, boy? Your father or uncle?" the interpreter asked, not unkindly.

"We were friends. No, we were lovers." Alaric replied defiantly, head held high.

The captain shook his head in regret and spoke once more through the interpreter.

"My master says he pledges to you that you will remain whole, a functioning male after all, if only out of respect for this intelligent and brave man whose death he regrets. He had enjoyed their verbal sparring which is why he is so sorry that he spoke carelessly, suggesting a future for you as a eunuch as your most likely fate. His words raised needless fears on your part, with the regrettable results we have seen. My captain really did not want to push your protector into open defiance. The bowman acted without orders. My master adds that nothing declares a man's character more than the manner of his death. That applies even to infidels, as with your brave protector here."

Alaric nodded, acknowledging the captain's obviously sincere regrets. The man had no need to say such things to Alaric who was no more than his captive, powerless, a naked slave boy. The Moors did not want to take the time for a proper burial but at least they laid Petrus out on his cot then used the force of their horses and ropes to collapse the hovel down upon it. The tumbled rocks that had comprised the hut would serve as his cairn and protect brave Petrus's body from wild animals.

Chapter 3. Tariq ibn Ziyad

The patrol rounded up the sheep and drove them toward their army's camp at an easy pace. Alaric walked in front of the rider who held the other end of the rope around neck. Alaric's stay at the shepherd's hut over the last few days had restored his strength and health. Even his captors could see that sweating and dusty though he was from the march in the sun, his naked physique was a vision of youthful male pulchritude. Their eyes followed his progress along the track, entranced by the sight of the boy's perfectly formed buttocks dimpling fetchingly as he strode along.

Alaric now fully expected to be enslaved as a catamite, hardly an unfamiliar role for him, but at least the specter of castration had been lifted, though it had cost the life of a brave and kind man. He reproached himself that his unthinking panic had precipitated the violence that had lead to Petrus' death. He vowed to survive, if only not to waste Petrus' sacrifice. Strange, he had known the man only four days, but it was the closest relationship he had had since he was orphaned seven years earlier.

The captain and a single soldier marched the boy to the general's tent. The guards smirked at the youth's nudity as he was led inside the elaborate pavilion, nodding to each other. Here was another pretty one for the general's bed. So what if he were a boy. The general bedded both sexes, as long as they were young and beautiful. This Visigothic lad certainly fit the bill there.

After the captain briefed the general, the man spoke directly to Alaric in his own language.

"I am Tariq ibn Ziyad, the commander of the forces of the Prophet. May peace be upon his house. Know then little one, that I will honor my captain's pledge to you. Whatever happens, you will not be made into a eunuch. For now you will travel in my train and work in my personal household, serving me as a pleasure slave. I understand you have done this sort of thing before?"

At Alaric's nod the general put his hands on the boy, feeling the strength of his shoulders, tracing the flat plates of his pectorals and running his fingers over the chevrons of the boy's ribs. Alaric could feel the calluses on his hands from a lifetime of handling a sword. Tariq's touch was surprisingly gentle, his finger tips sliding just under the rib cage, stroking the flat belly, his thumb pushing briefly into the boy's indented navel. Then his hands roamed lower, feeling the sharp hip bones that framed the boy's belly and groin, to the fork of the boy's legs, cupping and weighing his genitals, thrusting the blade of his hand between the boy's legs, a finger probing at the crinkly hole within. With a satisfied nod the general continued.

"Good. For now, while we are on campaign and in the field, you will remain as you are, utterly naked. From your deep tan I see that you have gone about bare rather often, so that will be no hardship for you. I suspect you rather like putting yourself on display, looking very much like the shameless male nudes in the Roman and Greek statuary everywhere in public spaces in the lands we Muslims have conqured. How strange, you Christians think of us Muslims as shameless sex fiends with our multiple wives yet so many of your secular lords and senior ecclesiastics sleep with pretty boys like you.

"Understand you may not always find my attentions pleasurable to you, though they will be to me. As part of your lot you must accept a certain amount of pain with the things I will do with your lovely body. Nothing I do will damage you permanently. As Allah has made you, so will I enjoy your charms. I particularly am attracted by your lack of body hair on the physique of a fully grown boy. How smooth and clean you are even at the fork of your legs. And nothing around your little hole either. Mind me now, pretty one, do not try to escape. Realistically you can hardly expect to slip away from my whole army, a blond lad like yourself, naked and on foot, not speaking a word of Arabic or Berber. Serve me well, and I can be a good master. Never cross me. This is your only warning."

With a nod to the captain, Alaric was turned over to the general's servants who led the boy to a tub for a bath. They stripped off their own garments, a pair of low slung loose fitting pants, then bathed him using an early version of soap, making something of a game of it, scrubbing and rubbing more than was strictly necessary for purposes of hygiene. Alaric rather enjoyed the attentions of the two lads even though he could not understand a word of their speech. They were both olive skinned and dark haired, a couple of years younger than he, their epicene beauty accented by gold rings in their earlobes.

Nevertheless, Alaric did get nervous when they passed a razor over his skin, removing every trace of his very sparse body hair, even on his arms and legs. They made him get onto all fours in the tub while one boy addressed his rear cleavage. Alaric whimpered fearfully as the blade delved into his crack and passed over his crinkly anal ring then down to the ballsac hanging so vulnerably below. He knew he had no hair back there really. The boys must be toying with him, but he submitted in silence. After all, a sex toy like him must expect to be played with, even by the servant boys, and can expect rather a lot of attention to the nether regions of his body. Evidently they were quite serious about keeping him naked, indeed as nude as it was possible for a boy to be. They shampooed his hair too and brushed it out. That felt wonderful, untangled and smelling sweet. Alaric rather liked the scent the servant boys rubbed into his skin, attar of roses. They also lubricated Alaric's hole with olive oil.

The lads giggled at his erection as their hands touched him everywhere. Alaric stood there his manhood tumescent, sticking straight out, a string of precum hanging from the head of my cock, all purple and swollen. his hairless groin made his genitals look larger, though they were a pretty fair size for someone with his slight build. He looked so sexy with his ball sac pulled tight to the fork of his legs, engorged cock jutting straight out with a fleshy purpled glans shaped like an arrowhead at the end, a droplet of fluid glistening on its tip, a composition bursting with youthful male assertiveness.

They brought him into the general's bedchamber, separated from the rest of the pavilion by a curtains. Rugs and pillows were strewn on the floor and there was a small table which held a pitcher and a wine goblet. The general had already slipped off his weapons and armor, relaxing in comfortable silks. He used a silken cord to bind Alaric's wrists behind his back, telling the lad that this was a necessary precaution. Alaric after all was newly enslaved. Until he could be trusted, he would be bound while pleasuring his master.

A push on his shoulders told Alaric to kneel. The general pushed the boy's face into his groin. Alaric drew a deep breath through his nostrils taking in the man's masculine scent along with more than a touch of horse scent from the hours he must spend every day in the saddle. As the older man dropped his trousers, the boy leaned forward to minister with the lips and tongue and throat to the man's cock. Alaric did his best to pleasure the man who held his fate in his hands. The man was obviously pleased by the boy's earnest efforts and grunted loudly as he discharged his seed down his new slave's gullet, smiling with considerable satisfaction.

"There, that was good for both of us, wasn't it little one? You like being on your knees, worshiping, giving pleasure, taking pleasure too from the way your own boy cock stayed rigid."

With a cock in his mouth, Alaric could do not more than give a short nod. The man had the right of it. He did like taking cock in his mouth and up his ass. He was a shameless bottom boy, a natural sumbissive. The general may not have been conventionally handsome, his hawkish features were too strong and masculine for that, but he was very experienced sexually and had been careful to let the boy breathe around the member invading his throat. Alaric was grateful for that thoughtfulness.

The general took a breather to let his powers recuperate, drinking sparingly from a goblet of wine. Alaric stayed on his knees, occasionally taking a sip himself when the general put the goblet to his lips. Some spilled onto his chest, leaving a red streak that drained down the center channel of his chest and into his navel.

Then Tariq laid Alaric belly down across a couple of stacked pillows. That thrust his rump up high. How delightful the twin globes looked, curvaceous, smooth, and firm to the touch. The man pushed into the boy's nether orifice with a finger then two, adding more oil, spreading it around, pushing deep enough to touch Alaric's joy spot, making him shudder with pleasure. Tariq's cock replaced the fingers, the head and glans poking at the sphincter guarding the entrance. The man was formidably endowed, so his cock looked huge compared to the tiny entryway, but he pushed in slowly, watching the anus dilate as his cock head and glans lodged firmly inside. The boy moaned and breathed deep, squeezing his anal muscles to help the process along. He knew that the invading shift could not be resisted nor expelled. The only thing he could do was to surrender and let it slip inside. Alaric knew that soon the pain of the intrusion would be replaced by the intense pleasure of arousal and orgasm. As indeed it was.

However, these conventional forms of sex were only the beginning. The general had other games in mind too. In preparation he bound Alaric's ankles to either end of a stick, keeping them spread apart. Alaric has to open his mouth wide to accept a leather gag in the shape of a ball, the straps tied behind his head. The general explained.

"One thing I do not like from a boy is piercing screams. I find that so tiresome, a cacophony that assaults the eardrums. The gag also prevents pointless verbal appeals. Nothing you can say or do -- no plea, no promise, certainly no threat will dissuade me from the pleasures I will now enjoy by the minor torments I will inflict on your delicious body. Remember, I promised no permanent damage. I do want to see your writhe and struggle and squirm. I want to hear your sobs and whimpers and moans, but I will not torture you. There are no red hot irons or strappado in store for you, little one. No whip will strip the flesh from your back either. Keep that in mind during the next hour or two when I shall, perhaps for a while, seem like a veritable fiend, chortling at your pain and degradation. Remember too that you are my slave and must accept whatever I wish for you. Now they tell me you were a soldier at the battle of the Guadalete. Be brave once again, little soldier. You will live through this."

Gulping around the gag, the boy broke into a nervous sweat and began trembling, uncertain what the man intended. Tariq found the boy's understandably exaggerated fear intoxicating. He had nothing terrible planned for the lad, painful and humiliating though his next hours might be. He started off with the giant ants. With the boy laid out on his back, Tariq brought the head of an ant up to his left nipple. The insect closed its jaws on the tender nubbin. Alaric gasped at the sudden pain. The man twisted the abdomen and its poison sting right off, leaving the head and thorax still attached. He did the same to the other nipple, then went on to decorate the boy's navel and the bottom edges of his pectorals with the painful decorations. He seemed to enjoy the hiss he provoked from the helpless boy with each painful addition. Next he took a silken rope to Alaric's genitals, first caressing them, marveling at their shapeliness, the way the tube of the cock sprouted directly from the belly wall, its root not hidden by pubic hair. The boy was so smooth down there, not stubbly like a shaven youth. The skin at his groin felt more like that of a prepubescent lad than of one nearing seventeen.

Skillfully he wound the cord around his victim's cock and balls, taking five turns around the narrow the neck of flesh that connected the genitals to the belly. Then Tariq wound the cord around the ballsac alone, winding the last lengths around the whole package again and tying it off. Alaric's genitals were swollen with the blood of his arousal, empurpled and trapped within their bonds. His cock lay cantilevered over his belly, his balls pushed to the bottom of their sac, looking like a fine red plum. Tariq used his fingers to torment the boy, tapping, drumming, tickling on genitals made hypersensitive to stimulation by their bondage. Alaric writhed with almost unbearable sensation, a combination of pain and arousal. Here he was a small lad bound hand and foot, his genitals themselves in silken bondage, his captor playing with his very manhood, using his cock and balls as toys, squeezing and stroking, caressing and tormenting.

Tariq delighted in the way his attentions made the boy writhe and squirm, he loved to see a boy's body move that way, such a lubricious display of the youthful male physique. It took just a stroke of the fingers under his ribs and on his belly to generate the hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach that reminded the boy how helpless he truly was, arms bound, legs spread out, gagged, at the mercy of a trained killer.

Tariq was especially gratified with the results from his hand cupping technique. His initial stroking of the boy's cock had been of the shaft alone. Now he cupped his hand over the head and glans. The boy was both ticklish and intensely aroused by the rubbing of his glans. It was both wonderful and terrible. Alaric did not know whether to laugh or to cry. His body writhed and shuddered in both pleasure and pain as Tariq ministered to it. He whipped his head back and forth and flexed upward at the hips shouting into his gag as he simultaneously giggled and whimpered, responding to his master's nearly unbearable touch, feeling the sensations the man wanted to impart to him.

Alaric moaned as the man shoved first one finger then two into his hole, all the time playing with his trapped ballsac and turgid shaft, bringing him repeatedly to the point of ejaculation then backing off, to let the boy's urges cool down, only to start up again. Poor Alaric was tempest tossed on a sea of physical sensation, virtually cock whipped by the man's fiendish technique. He needed to come, his body and soul cried out for it. Finally, after over an hour of exquisite sexual torment, Tariq let him come. Alaric let fly with perhaps his most intense ejaculation ever. He fell back onto the pillows exhausted, nearly in a swoon.

It didn't stop there either. Tariq knew that Alaric's cockhead was supersensitive after ejaculation. He continued to play with it, tugging on it, running his thumb on the sweet spot. Alaric thrashed in pleasure and pain. His cock felt so good it hurt. He whimpered around his ball gag, muffled pleas for Tariq to stop barely escaping from his throat. He looked imploringly at the general who finally relented and let him go.

After that Tariq untied him and lay with him on the pillows. He spooned the boy's body to his own, inserting his cock into the boy's hole, impaling him, then told the tired lad to go to sleep. He fell asleep right away exhausted by a very eventful day. Still his sleep was disturbed by dreams of Petrus. He found himself talking with the man, begging his pardon for precipitating his death, ashamed with the way his body had responded so readily to the general on the very day Petrus had died. To his relief, the man in his dreams gave him his blessing, telling Alaric that it was no betrayal to make the best of his situation as a captive of the Moors. Was that not just what Petrus had told him when alive, when they talked over their likely fates? After than, Alaric slept easier.

During the night Alaric got up to go to the jakes, feeling the man's member pull out of him with a plop. Directed to the facility by one of the servant boys who slept in the outer chamber, he did his business under the watchful eye of the guards. When he returned he saw the general's sword and knife were within reach, but he passed them right by. Escape was impossible. Tariq had not permanently injured him, after all, even if his idea of sex play was unorthodox, certainly nothing Alaric had ever experienced in his young life. He wondered what other fiendish sexual torments the man had in mind for him. Alaric realized that he wanted to find out. Within him was a desperate need to let the man tease and torment him as he had that very evening. What would this man do next with Alaric's sexy little body tomorrow evening and the one after that? Tariq had hardly played with his boy hole. No doubt there were a thousand things a man with a wicked imagination like his could think of to do with that orifice. Alaric could hardly wait to find out.

In truth Alaric was a sexual submissive and all his life, or at least since puberty, he had really wanted to surrender himself into abject sexual servitude. Only this very night had he realized that was both his fate and his deepest desire. Alaric would play this hand out and see what life had to offer the sex slave of a Moorish general with a very strange imagination. He promised himself that as long as Tariq held to his promise, he Alaric would do his very best to please the man with his body and his loyalty.

Chapter 4. Sex Slave

General's favorite or no, Alaric soon found out that he would not be treated as some pampered strumpet. The guards and the general's major domo set him to work fetching water, serving food and drink, airing out clothing and bedding. When it was time to break camp, Alaric helped take the pavilion down and packed it aboard a mule cart. He and the serving boys had to walk beside it, the servants in their houri boy pants and Alaric entirely naked. If the cart got stuck in a rut or had troubled fording a stream, the other boys had to push from the back while Alaric suffer himself to be hitched to the front of the cart to pull. Of necessity, Alaric soon picked up enough Arabic and Berber to get by, and less fortunately, to understand the jokes and taunts made at his expense.

"A strong colt like you should feel right at home in harness, Alaric. It only needs a bit to make things complete. After all, doesn't the general put you into harness nearly every evening?"

Alaric flushed as the boys and the nearby guards smiled at him. There were no secrets in camp, not those anyway, not with the boys peeking into the bed chamber then teasing Alaric the next day, mentioning for anyone within earshot which fiendish sexual technique the general had used on Alaric the previous night. They grinned mischievously as they asked with patent insincerity whether Alaric's rump was still sore from last night's paddling.

"Oh your poor little fanny Alaric, smacked and spanked and paddled and drilled for half the night. What a shame. It is such a shapely little bum too. Isn't it Qamil?

"Oh yes, Yusuf, why any boy would be jealous of its shapeliness."

Qamil and Yusuff expressed mock sympathy when the boy's guts spurted or farted, expressing concern that anal incontinence could surely follow from insertion of overly large objects into a boy's fundament, like those cucumbers last night. And so on. The guards chuckled and even Alaric eventually grew to take it in more or less stride, as one more form of the ongoing sexual humiliation that was his lot in life. What could he expect but that he would be the target of rough humor for his rather unorthodox role and sex life. After all, he went about perpetually naked in the midst of an army whose soldiers all knew that he was their general's bum boy.

Tariq did not disappoint Alaric's expectations about sexual excitement and degradation. Yes it hurt when the man dripped hot candle wax on his tits and belly and balls. Yes, he squirmed as the man snapped his fingers at his tiny tits. Yes, a hand instead of a cock up his butt felt very strange indeed. But how exhilarating it made Alaric feel. At least the general had started him with the smaller hands of the servant boys. He did not want to damage Alaric after all. The silken cords came into play in many other ways too, as the man wound the ballsac at the base then wound the cord around each ball, separating them, making them supersensitive to the touch as well as to heat and cold in all their manifestations. In time Alaric would tremble just from the touch of a silk cord drawn over his skin anywhere. He was totally in thrawl to the commanding Moor.

Not that their relationship was one of friendship, much less love. Tariq was Alaric's owner. The boy was neither Tariq's friend nor his lover. He was his sex slave, a captive boy he used for gratification and sexual release. Each satisfied a craving in the other, and a perverse one at that. For the general it was his need to dominate and to control, hence the bondage to render the boy helpless. Tariq was not a sadist, not exactly. He was a man who used pain and humiliation not so much for their own sake, as to make a boy respond physically and emotionally in ways he enjoyed. His methods were to set the lad to begging and whimpering and squirming and crying out. Tariq loved to see the captive youth trembling and moaning and breathing rapidly as his master teased or tormented nipples or balls or cock.

Tariq's methods were ways to set Alaric's trim little body to writhing and twisting erotically, to screw his angelic features up in all the expressions a boy's face can take on: from fear to lust to guilt to shame to joy. And finally to provide two moist holes for his cock to fill and expend itself into.

For his part, Alaric had a deep need to submit, to spread his legs, to surrender himself for rough use. He craved sexual humiliation. He knew his genitals, his whole body were never intended for procreation but for recreation, of others even more than of himself. He was a boy who belonged on his knees or on all fours, his orifices offered in service to a powerful male. The bearable torments the general inflicted only roused his lusts to heights he had never before experienced.

At the general's insistence Alex had been trained to make his body more flexible, enough so that he soon was able to lie down on his back, bring his hips up ass over teakettle and suck his own cock. Of course that position put his vulnerable hole topmost, with all the perverse implications you can imagine for a clever man like Tariq. As Alaric soon realized, these days his little boy hole was as much an entrance as it was an exit.

Not that he was complaining. He got a fire in his belly just thinking about the torments and humiliations the general put him through. The man was endlessly inventive in the ways of playing with a youth in bondage. That tickle torture of the soles of his feet had been almost unendurable, making Alaric laugh so long and hard he got out of breath and light headed. His ribs hurt for days. It did not help that he was suspended upside down with a huge cucumber in his hole, a ring in the middle cut out so his anal sphincter locked it in place.

He found himself suspended upside down rather a lot too. It left his hole and genitals at convenient height. How pretty his cock and balls looked at the fork of his legs, hanging down his belly. A perfect time to drip hot wax on the inner thighs and let it run down onto the ballsac. Or to drip wax onto the ballsac itself, to watch it run down the shaft to the cock head. The armpits were also very sensitive to hot wax. Alaric trembled and squirmed so excitingly, whimpering as the torment went on and on. The Moors were always looting churches of their candles. Plenty of wax to play with, enough to coat the boy's balls and cock completely time and again, to cover that flat belly, to run down the middle channel of the abs and in between the pectorals. Then after it cooled and solidified, there was the fun of knocking the congealed wax off with a switch, which also did good duty for the boy's rump.

Despite the rough treatment during sex, after five months Alaric was in better physical shape and had more stamina than ever before. A life at sea does little to build endurance, but all that marching and hauling and lifting certainly did. If the boy had ever had even a scrap of excess flesh on his trim body it was gone. His tanned skin was practically transparent for how little it concealed the bundles of the individual muscles or the veins on his forearm, belly, and legs. He was an anatomy drawing come to life, lean, brown, sinewy and sweaty under the late summer sun. Tramping about unshod had put calluses on the soles of his feet. Like Qasim and Yusuf he sported gold rings at his ears. Hard work, good food, fresh air left the boy practically glowing with good health. The Moors were careful about not polluting their water supplies, so their army suffered less from water borne diseases than the forces of the Christians. Their attention to personal hygiene was also far superior.

Tariq went from success to success defeating the Visigothic forces and local levies time and again, expanding the control of the Moors over Iberia. The Christians never could seem to unite their efforts under a single commander or follow a consistent strategy for very long. Tariq's accomplishments aroused concern in those around the Caliph that he might be planning to carve a kingdom out for himself, not content with his post as a regional governor. The Moors were already calling the great limestone promontory that guarded the north shore of the strait he had crossed after the general. Jabal Tariq means Mountain of Tariq, from which derives its modern name Gibraltar.

Several officers called on their general though he had already retired to play with his boy toy. Alaric was hung upside down, tied by his heels to the top of the pole that held up the roof of the pavilion. Tariq had been playing with him arousing him as only he knew how. A string of pre-ejaculate hung down from the cock past his chin, threatening at any time to detach itself and land on Alaric's exquisite features.

Tariq did not mind the interruption. He welcomed the chance to show off, to describe what he was putting his boy through. The officers crowded around the bound lad, running their hands up and down his slender legs, remarking on how smooth his skin was, silken to the touch. Their hands touched Alaric on his inner thighs and on his rump, spreading the cheeks apart, a thumb shoved into the lubricated hole. Tariq told the officer some of the raunchier tales of his sexual adventures with the boy. Poor Alaric blushed to hear him tell how he had been used and degraded.

Alas, the humiliation and touching was too much. It pushed him over the top. Before Alaric could give any warning, his cock started spewing, shooting past his belly and chest to splash on his face. One of the men lifted his head to make it a better target. Alaric moaned as he shot again and again, coating his chin and cheeks and nose and eye sockets with his gism. He whole body shook with force of his release.

"God be praised, general. You have a live one there. He started shooting just from the way you talked about him. And who would have thought this small ballsac here could hold so much fluid."

Fortunately the general took the unexpected climax in stride, slapping the boy's rump and laughing with the officers at Alaric's premature ejaculation. He told the man to keep holding the boy's head up then ordered Alaric to release his urine.

"And mind you do it as I have taught you Alaric. Not a drop on the rugs. All of it in your mouth. Remember, upside down as you are, you cannot swallow so fast. Control the flow, or face my wrath."

Despite a cock that was still hard, the humiliated boy had to piss into his own mouth and swallow every drop of his urine with everyone watching his degradation. His throat muscles worked to push the liquid up into his stomach. When it was finally over, the men left the boy hanging, still helpless in his bondage and went into the outer section to talk business.

From what Alaric could overhear, there was every chance that the Caliph would recall Tariq to the capital in far off Damascus in Syria. Where would that leave Alaric? Tariq would hardly transport a naked sex slave the length of the Mediterranean. Alaric realized he had been living in a fool's paradise. Sure the sex was terrific. Despite the pain, he had craved the uses the man had put his body to. But there was no future for him among the Moors. Not as a sex slave. In time the general would tire of him, or, as Alaric grew older, he might get passed on to other masters, sold into a brothel for any one with a few silvers to rent by the hour. Alaric had better snap out of this sex addled idyll and think about survival and escape.

Eventually the wary Caliph did recall general Tariq to Damascus. Oh, the soldiers who came for him were very courteous, and he kept his sword on him, but he could see he was really going into captivity.

"It was fun while it lasted, little Alaric. Our year together will live in my memory. Your fate is now out of my hands. Farewell, my pretty."

Alaric was demoted from general's plaything to commander's page along with Qamil and Yusuf except now they were placed in charge of him. The boys had shot up and were now taller than Alaric, despite being younger. In garrison, they liked to hitch him up to a daily supply cart, really a small hand cart. The new commander wondered whether it were proper for a male, even a Christian slave, to go about with his loins uncovered. The boys cleverly suggested that as a mark of his fall from favor and as an example of what might happen to those whose ties to the disgraced general Tariq were too close, that Alaric should be treated as a beast of burden, a draft animal, so much livestock hitched to the supply cart. Since when did livestock ever warrant clothing?

Even though his draft duties took only a couple of hours a day, the commander agreed that the slave boy would be kept naked at all times, just as before. The pages had a wicked imagination much like their former master's. When they hitched Alaric up, they put a bit gag in his mouth with reins attached and tied his wrists to the cross bar he pushed against. The boys liked to flick the horse whip at the boy's rump and back. The long lash could even wrap around his slender body to snap his chest and belly and even his nipples and genitals. They were not allowed to whip their charge severely or to whip him hard enough to leave scars. However, the new commanding general did approve of their degrading his predecessor's favorite.

The pages seldom lost a chance to verbally humiliate the Christian boy. As he bent over pulling on the shafts of the cart, Qamil or Yusuf, whichever was driving, would remark on his human pony's attributes, especially his round rump, the dangly bits between his slender thighs and the crinkly hole in between. Alaric's driver mocked him in front of the soldiers, regaling everyone within hearing with tales of Alaric with a man's hand and wrist up his fundament, writhing in lust, begging his tormentor to shove it deeper.

They chortled as they described how his boy hole looked afterwards. As his master's hand withdrew from its tight confines, it pulled the anus right away from the cleavage, everting the anal ring and the surrounding flesh into a cone. It stayed that way for long moments afterward, dilated and twitching, so shocked by the trauma that it gaped open, a portal into his rectum several fingers' breadth. Finally the distended flesh pulled into the asscrack, closing though not completely, not for a while, dripping oil and cum and blood from the tortured orifice.

Alaric burned with shame as the boys relived his every humiliation, unable to protest through the bit gag, unable to run off either, hitched to the cart as he was. He turned red all over in a full body blush, but to his shame he also felt a tingle in his groin and a twitching at his hole. Aroused by stories of his utter degradation -- what kind of a slut did that make him?

The pages decided Alaric would looked better fully ringed. They started with a slave ring through the nose, nearly three fingers across, fitted through a hole in his septum. It looked much like the nose ring of a bull. The Moors kept their promise not to permanently damage the slave boy, but they did effectively emasculate him. First came a ring that passed through the tip of his foreskin, an infibulation that trapped the head of the cock within its sheath making an erection impossible. The last ring went through his scrotum above the balls. No longer would they be drawn up toward the belly in arousal.

They showed him to the new general who, though he had no use for Tariq's torment games, liked to fuck the little Christian slave boy at both ends. Alaric looked just perfect now, standing there arms tied behind with a silk rope which made his frame look even more slender plus the spreader bar at his ankles. The officer reached down to heft the boy's imprisoned genitals, the cock that would no longer erect and the balls trapped at the bottom of the scrotum by the ring passing horizontally through its folds. He smiled at Alaric's utter mortification, as the general nodded his approval to the two pages.

Alaric bemoaned the loss of masculine functionality but the boys only mocked him, telling him to focus his attention on his two holes. That was what he had been enslaved for anyway. Alaric started to wonder how far they would go to in taking away his masculinity, such as it was. Would they cut him, leave him with just a nub for a piss hole down there, his groin otherwise devoid of any sign that he had ever been a male. With his blond hair already down to his shoulder blades he looked more and more like the girl the Moors seemed bent on transforming him to. The general had openly mused about when the tips of his locks would grow long enough to brush his pert rump. What kind of a boy would all that make him. A non-boy, that was what. This was when Alaric realized that he really must escape the Moors, while he still was a boy and not a eunuch.

Meanwhile, to show off their pony boy's new decorations the pages took roundabout routes through the town, giving more people a chance to look at him, only adding to Alaric's shame. Nor did it help when the pages devised a kind of pony tail of horsehair attached to a cleverly carved butt plug.

"Open up, slave. This is no wider across than a man's fist, and we know a slut like you can take that."

The bound boy had no choice. Dutifully he squeezed his guts open, distending his anal ring as wide as he could. An enormous ball as big round as a grapefruit was pushed into the orifice. A narrow neck joined it to a T shaped retainer so I would not slip entirely into his guts. With the tail hanging behind his ass, Alaric was a pony boy indeed. He shame was complete. At least the pages let him go about normally when not hitched up, even if he had to stay naked.

Alaric still had the run of the camp when he was not hitched to the supply cart and, though watched, was not confined. Alaric knew that if he were to escape to the lands in the north that the Christians still held he would need an ally, someone who could fight and find his way there.

Chapter 5. Erik

As luck would have it, a young Christian turncoat named Erik who had sided with Tariq during the initial invasion had decided to changes sides again, hoping to ride north and renounce his conversion to Islam. He too was looking for an ally, someone who would provide him with weapons to free him from house arrest. He had been place in preventive detention after the fall of his patron. The Moorish army was getting ready for a spring campaign after quartering in a town along the Tagus. Erik knew their plans. That would be his passport to the north.

Erik had known Alaric for some months now. As one of Tariq's officers, had seen the boy strung up and bound for the general's sex games. He never got to fuck Alaric while the general was in charge, but he had enjoyed putting his hands on the silken skin of the pretty boy and feeling him up. Too bad the general was never one to share. Christian or Muslim, he gave no mind to what the Bible or the Quran said about sodomy. That captive boy was hot, even more desirable at seventeen than when captured a year earlier.

He was very surprised when it was Alaric that sought him out on a pretext of bearing a message. Alaric had actually traded that duty with Yusuf. Their new commander entrusted them with errands like messages that did not involve tactical military affairs/ He had dispatch riders for that. Alaric came again often to his quarters. Erik's guards suspected nothing amiss. What could be more natural than that a randy bum boy like Alaric, left in the lurch without a lover, would turn his attentions to a strong young man like Erik, a fellow countryman in the midst of an army of Moors. Their affair was real enough, at least the sex was, and welcome to both, though it was also a cover for continuing clandestine contact.

Alaric found himself warming to Erik and not just because he was twenty-three and tall and very handsome, clean shaven with long black hair and hazel eyes. Yes his body was strong and the man was potent and skilled in bed, but it wasn't just his physical charms. He had come to respect the man. At first Alaric had thought him the very worst sort of traitor, but to hear the man's story, he was forced by circumstances into his situation. First out of family loyalty he had opposed the irregular accession of King Roderic and fought against his army. That made him an ally of the invading Moors. To spare his people rapine and the sack, he had converted, accepting his family lands in fief to the Caliph. These were reasons Alaric could understand and accept. Out of loyalty to his fallen general Erik was once again in a bad situation. Still his house arrest was comfortable enough, at least for now, and the guards were lax, there in the middle of a Moorish held town.

Their lovemaking was exciting and vigorous, even more than Alaric had expected since Erik had no use for bondage and discipline or for inflicting minor torments as General Tariq had done. Erik's objections were both ethical and emotional. He did not like hurting people. Fighting for a cause was one thing. That was part of soldiering, but taking pleasure in inflicting pain on a defenseless boy was something else. He found such things repugnant. As gently as he could, he indicated to Alaric that his physical and emotional response to Tariq's techniques were perverse and unhealthy. He hoped the boy would see that for himself and grow out of them.

As the pair drew closer, Alaric did find himself enjoying conventional male sex with Erik more and more. The man could be incredibly virile during sex yet he had a tender side that Alaric responded to. Maybe Erik was right that what he had done with Tariq and had had done to him was something he should look on as in his past, a phase in his own process of growing up. After all it was true that he had been introduced to male sex far too young, by two men who took advantage of their position as his military superiors and had raped and dominated the fourteen year old lad he was then, coercing him into serving as their bum boy.

As Erik had reminded him, at that age, boys are still tentative and uncertain about their sexuality, and interested only in persons their own age. Sexual contact with an adult is usually unwelcome and often traumatic. And anal sex is something that one grows into after experience with milder forms. His masters had taken him too far and too soon, stunting the course of his sexual and emotional development. Perhaps Alaric had learned to enjoy rough sex as a way to cope with a bad situation, to rationalize his situation, trapped as he was in the clutches of older males who used him roughly and shamefully. Tariq had built on that foundation, using the boy's lusts as chains to bind him. Was Erik right that now it was about time for Alaric to give up some of his perverse ways, in effect to grow into the young man he might have become already if left alone to develop naturally, taking things step by step, finding his first lover among his contemporaries.

Those were keen insights and unlooked for wisdom in someone like Erik who was still, when all was said and done, a very young man himself. Alaric took Erik's words to heart and thought long and hard about them and about his feelings, past and present. He felt gratitude to the older man for helping him understand himself better. This was a lover who clearly was looking for more than his own gratification. He wanted to help Alaric both as a lover and a close friend, helping him clear his head about his sexuality. After Petrus, the man was only the second real friend Alaric had ever had.

Besides, Erik was incredibly handsome and virile. So if Alaric no longer got tormented or humiliated or fisted when taken to bed, he did get the best man/boy sex in his life. The man's technique was flawless. He was tireless and well enough endowed to fill even Alaric's hungry hole. Alaric of course was still on the bottom. That would never change. He was one of those boys who needed to be fucked hard and often and by a man who knew how.

"My, you are so smooth, little one, not a trace of a beard yet, though you are closer to our eighteenth birthday than your seventeenth. Nothing really anywhere else. I like that, my little hairless boy, smooth as a girl and prettier than most."

"Most is it? Name one girl you have seen prettier than I am!" challenged Alaric, affecting a pout.

"Ha! You have me there young one. In truth, I have never seen anyone lovelier. But stop fishing for compliments, Alaric, and let us put our heads together to devise an escape. Besides, your remark just now has given me an idea."

The pair decided to take advantage of the hubbub surrounding the army's mobilization for the spring campaign. Erik had worked in Tariq's headquarters and could forge orders and a laisser passer to get them through Muslim lines. It was easy to get away from house arrest, using the knife Alaric slipped him to cut the leather hinges on the back door. Alaric had also been Erik's messenger to friends who provided horses for their flight. Alaric was dressed as a female, a captive Visigothic lady in Erik's custody, with the slave ring through the nose removed. Erik's dark good looks, mustache, and flawless Arabic allowed him to pass as an enemy soldier escorting the lady to his lord. They rode through the gate virtually without challenge and soon put distance between them and the town. To throw off pursuit, they first traveled west and south, opposite to where they would be sought when the hue and cry was raised.

In time, they circled to the north and managed to get to the lands held by Christians, with Alaric back in boy's garb once again. Underneath his clothing his functionality as a male had been restored by the removal of his genital piercings. He kept the earrings by choice. Still they had to face down skeptics among the Christian forces who wondered whether the two of them, riding from Moorish held lands, were turncoats or maybe spies. The archbishop distrusted anyone who had professed Islam, even to preserve his life. It was a demonic creed to his way of thinking, but the Christian princes needed the edge that Erik's information on the coming campaign provided. It allowed them to avoid a strategic trap and to retreat in good order to the mountains and hills in the northwest of the Iberian peninsula to establish a strong Christian redoubt. That region served as the base from which, over the centuries, Christians would reclaim the entire peninsula.

Erik no longer had his land holdings in the south, so went to work as an officer for hire, his earnings supplemented by loot and occasional ransoms for captured Moors. Over the next months, he trained Alaric to became his squire, riding by his side, guarding his back, sharing his adventures and his life. They became best friends as well as lovers and knight and squire. With Alaric's slight build, he fought best with only leather armor, his speed and agility more than madking up for the lesser protection. Together Erik and Alaric made a formidable team.

Alaric also shared Erik's bed. As his squire, Alaric was supposed to sleep on a pallet at the foot of his master's bed. Instead they slept spooned together, for warmth they maintained if asked. In the middle ages, everyone slept in the nude, which is why blankets and such are called bed clothes. Their four poster bed enclosed the nude sleepers within curtains to keep their body warmth inside. At least they had a tiny room to call their own.

If Alaric had any regrets, it was that in those cool rainy mountains, he had much less chance to run around naked than in the sunny south. He compromised on the tightest possible hose which followed every curve of his calfs and thighs and fine round rump, especially tailored to highlight his cleavage. In nice weather he might strip off for swimming. Alas that was the best the former sex toy could manage once he was back in "civilization".