THE BATTLE FOR LONELY ROCK
Chapter Five: Upon My Seeing the Elephant
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
In the gathering darkness, I hovered as near to the group as I dared, listening to the young blond-haired private playing the fiddle. He was belting out a tune that had most of his comrades up dancing a high-kicking jig. Those who weren't dancing were clapping in time and one guy was trying, not very successfully, to play along with the fiddler on his harmonica. They were having a blast and I wished I could join them. I shifted on my feet, going to try that jig myself all alone, and the chains on my feet clanked and rattled. I don't know what bothered me more at that moment, having the chains prevent me from dancing, or my having actually forgotten that they were there.
I'd been a prisoner here for over two weeks. My fears of being gang-raped were neither unfounded nor validated. Most of the men were pleasant enough, plenty of them would not touch a Yankee prisoner with their comrades watching, most of those who would were, if not gentlemanly about it, at least not rough and rude.
But there were others, men who I didn't dare be left alone with. I'd learned the hard way about four of them, and been warned about a dozen others. I avoided all of them, which is why I was watching these festivities from the darkness nearby, one of those men were among the four.
The scouts had reported the Yankees were getting nearer. I'd heard that tomorrow, we'd break camp to go try and find the Yankees. I was again thinking of escape. Surely they would leave me in camp, which would be so deserted that I could break these chains from my feet and slip away.
A rustling in the brush near me and I jumped like a startled cat. The grey-suited figure came nearer and I relaxed. "Hello, Cotton." I said to him. Cotton was his real name, not a nickname.
"Howdy, Ben." Cotton said. "Didn't know you were here." Only it came out like "Diddenoe yew wuh hee-ah." Cotton was from eastern Texas, not far from the Arkansas line and almost alone of the soldiers here, he spoke with a Southern drawl instead of its close neighbor, the Western drawl.
I smiled, Cotton was one of the few men in this camp I considered friendly. "Just watching them dance." I said. "What are you doing here?"
"Have to irrigate this bush." he said, hitching at his trousers.
"You're supposed to do that at the trench." I pointed out with some righteousness, it was my job to dig and fill those things, and if anybody left their "calling card" and the culprit couldn't be readily identified, I was the one who got to go after it with a trowel and pail and carry it to the trench.
"A little piss ain't going to hurt anything." he said. "And I got to whizz too bad to go all the way over to the trench." It was on the other side of the camp.
He took out his cock, a long, pale-white thing in the encroaching darkness and let it fly. "Ahhh!" He said as the thick, yeasty smell of his piss filled my nostrils, throwing his head back and closing his eyes with a pleasure that was nearly sexual. Nothing feels better than letting it fly, and he was doing just that. The stream made a wet, muddy sound where it was landing, going from a dry pattering sound to a thicker, mushier noise. "Uh, uh, gh, huh!" he said in his relief as the stream thinned and made now a sound akin to rain-drops landing.
Done, he flopped his dong back into his trousers and said, "Why don't you come over and dance with us?" he said. "Wouldn't anybody mind dancing with a Yankee...so long as you let them lead, that is." He chuckled noisily at his joke.
I laughed, too. It was easy to laugh with Cotton, he treated the world like a game. He'd joined up to "see the elephant" and was treating everything like a long holiday...unfortunately interrupted frequently by some damned fools who insisted on such nonsense as drills and marches. But he tolerated them the way you tolerate the fact that Aunt Margaret came along on your trip to the beach and spends the time griping about the sun and the sand and everything until you wonder why she didn't just stay home, the old bag. But you go ahead and swim and play in the sand anyway.
Cotton was a big man, something over six feet tall. His dark brown hair was cut into a short pile by a fellow soldier's knife, and his massively chiseled body had only swelled under the labors of a soldier. He had the broadest shoulders of anybody I'd ever seen, from which his arms depended as two large, knotted clubs. His waist was sharp and narrow, his body curving down from his ribcage in graceful arcs to disappear at his waist where his belt marked the line more by determination than need. His pants were small enough to fit me in girth if not in length, for his legs were not overly large or muscled, it left him looking powerful and somehow majestic, the way an eagle overlooks from its perch on a rock crag while blending into it at the same time, seeming to be part of it. He didn't look the least top-heavy, it was more like he was built to stoop over and scoop up heavy weights at need. His job in the company matched his build, Cotton was a breech-loader, who shoved those heavy balls into the cannon's mouths and rammed them in with the ramrods, then took the time while the cannon fired to wet down the balled swab on the other end so that he could shove it into the cannon's muzzle and extinguish any bits of burning material left inside, so that the powder-man could shove in the next load of gunpowder.
"Come on, I'll let you give me the first dance." he said. I'd been with the company long enough to be semi-trusted by the men, some even ventured it was a damned shame that I was a prisoner when I could be home instead, doing nobody any harm. But nobody set me free, either.
"Not you, Cotton." I laughed. "You got wandering hands."
"You didn't mind last time." he pointed out.
"We were alone that time." I said. "You grope me in front of those guys and soon it'll be a whole line of them ready to poke me." That was what they called fucking, poking. A good enough term for it when the one being poked didn't mean anything to the one doing the poking.
"Only fair, seeing how they're going into battle tomorrow." Cotton said. "Over half of them for the first time." Cotton had been in two battles thus far, so he knew that a green soldier with minimum training had less than a 50-50 chance of living through a nasty battle. Even less if a charge at a barricade was called for; even veterans were on the wrong side of 60-40 to survive one of those. Cotton's second battle had been one of those, and when he spoke of it, it was obliquely and with a sadness in his eyes; he had lost several friends in the space of a few minutes.
But tonight he was joking. "I still prefer to pick and choose who I end up being poked by." I said. "And I couldn't dance worth a damn in these chains, I was trying just before you walked up and waggled your dick at me."
He hadn't buttoned up his trousers again yet, and he reached in and pulled it out again. "You mean like this?" he said and waggled the head at me.
"Yeah, something like that." I said.
His voice was soft as he said, "Go ahead."
"What will you give me for it?" I asked him.
"Couple of hoe-cakes in my pack." He offered. "Made them up a couple days ago, they're still fresh enough."
"Done." I said. This may sound astonishing to you, that I would first be selling my body, then selling it so cheaply. But they weren't feeding me very well, I had to do what I could to eat. And as for the price...I liked Cotton. I would have done it for nothing with him, if he'd not offered.
"Go ahead." He repeated, and now his cock, instead of being a soft sock-looking thing in his hand, was firmed up into a thick eight-inch coat-hook shaped arc of man-flesh, his cock having a sharp bend in it close to his balls so that it nearly pointed upright of its own.
I knelt down and took his cock in my hand, feeling the powerful warmth of it, the heat that warmed my palm, guided its head into my mouth and felt it like a large soft spongy bulb pressing against the roof of my mouth. The only way to suck Cotton's prick was to practically dive onto it from above, and I did that, kneeling up close to him, my head bent over to where my chin pressed against my neck. I pulled up on it, and my motion sent me away from Cotton's body and pressed the cockhead up against my right cheek. I scooted around so that I was almost beside Cotton instead of in front of him, and this let me attack his dong more directly, now I could suckle that turgid meat, feel the hot shaft burning across my tongue, my saliva bubbling around it in my mouth, nursing his dick, loving his dong, I closed my eyes in bliss and my hand went down and into my prison fatigues, I found my own cock and it was hard and waiting for me, it was steel beneath velvet in my hand, hot steel, warm velvet.
"Ah, damn, you're good at that, Yankee." Cotton said to me. His hand came down and caught my head, not hard, but touching me, urging me to speed my task. His lips made soft, warm noises as I sucked him, then he was panting. There were too many men around for us to do this as anything but a frantic, urgent release. I didn't try to prolong it, I took every ounce of his increased desire and inflamed it the more, he was moaning now with his panting sounds, still softly, softly, so others would not hear. We were wrapped in darkness that was total now, sheathed in the dark brush that was lit only on one side by the campfires around which men capered, the fiddle adding its now-eerie sound to the night, a contretemps to Cotton's moans and shuddering gasps of air.
"Going to come." Cotton hissed at me. "Going to shoot it." I appreciated his warning, he was letting me release him if I chose to, and that made me more willing to hold on, I did take my hand and pump his lower shaft while I continued to suckle and stroke his glans with my lips, Cotton moaned, a low, soft sound that caught, jerked, came out louder, ending with an "ooooh!" sound as he reached his climax and his hot seed poured into my mouth.
"Huh, uh, guh, huh!" Cotton panted out as he shot his wad and I gulped in the rich, thick, creamy load, feeling the masculine heat from it, the totally male flavor of it, and my cock heated in the ecstasy of that taste and I reached my own climax, my pants still up and my hand inside them, and my jizz splashed the thin fabric, soaking it, splashing out through it in enfeebled bursts that could only expire as they broke the surface, and drip down the outside of my trousers, a slimy stain that shone faintly, one dot there like a tiny, captured star.
Cotton finished and I sucked my own saliva from his cock as well as the last morsel of come from his prick, and then I let him go and he stood above me, breathing heavily, then the sound of boots caused him to jerk and he quickly tucked his cock back into his trousers and I stood up and he was buttoning his pants when the next soldier came into the bushes.
I followed Cotton out into the light, red dancing on the gray of his uniform. "You wait here and I'll fetch you the hoe-cakes." he said.
"All right." I agreed. They'd taste mighty good for my breakfast. He was back in no time and handed me the cakes.
"Nice doing business with you." he said.
"The pleasure was all mine." I said.
"Next time you crave some hoe-cakes, come look me up." Cotton said. "I got a few more of them." And he walked back to rejoin his comrades, dancing about the fire, living their life now because tomorrow there would be battle, and perhaps an end to life.
"Hey, Yankee." came the hiss from the bushes. "You want a nice big piece of salt pork to go with them hoe-cakes?" It was the soldier who'd entered when Cotton and I left.
"Sure." I said and went back into the bushes. It wasn't a dignified life-choice, but it was better than being rap ed. And they really didn't feed me very much as a prisoner; the meat would be a welcome addition to my menu.
I had expected to be left behind, but instead they came for me early the next morning. I was forced to help them load their wagons, then made to climb up on one and perch there uncomfortably high. At that, my seat was more comfortable than the saddle, for we rode the entire morning at a fair clip.
They put me to helping with the cannons again, four of them, and a fair supply of shot and powder, I was carrying sacks of powder after I fagged out from carrying the heavy balls. Cotton was with me part of the time. "Hope we ain't going to kill any of your kinfolk." he told me at one time. That's an Illinois regiment we're facing, out of Chicago." He said it with three discrete, scornful syllables. Chi. Ca. Go.
"I don't know anyone in Chicago." I assured him. "But you'll forgive me for saying I hope they whip you today."
"Least you're an honest Yankee." Cotton said.
At least they didn't expect me to help do the fighting. When the troops were seen, as a dust cloud rising above the next hill, I was motioned aside. I saw the clump of brush and small trees and headed for it gratefully, it would both shelter me from the sun and screen me from gunfire. I spent some time digging in the soft sand at one point, determined to increase my safety by making a small nest in the sand.
"You turning into a mole, Yankee?" came the voice behind me. I turned and looked up. "Captain Farrell?" I said in surprise.
"Drop your trousers and bend over." he ordered.
I gulped. None of the officers had laid hands on me up until then. I was surprised one was now, the battle was nearly upon us, after all. Shouldn't he be out checking on his men?
A small tree let me grab hold of it as his hands grabbed my buttocks and pulled back on me. I closed my eyes and moaned. Was this how I would die today, being fucked by a Confederate officer, and killed by a Union bullet? I could hear the horse's hooves as the troops rode towards us. A cavalry regiment, then.
"Sir, your men." I gasped as he undid his belt.
"This will take but a moment." He said. "Spread your legs wider."
"Sir, I can't." I gasped out. "The chains."
A clink and then he was kneeling by my foot. "There, that's freed one foot." he said to me. He yanked my trousers down hard. "Step out of them." he commanded.
I did and the next thing I felt was his hard cock pushing into me. There was no lubricant, no gentleness. How could there be, in this moment, at this time?
I heard the order to fire and the cannon's roar, and I moaned, in fear not in pleasure, and that was when he began to fuck at my ass. Hard, rough strokes, his prick was a thick wooden pole in my ass and it hurt, hurt like hell, and I yelled out in pain and fear. Waiting for the bullet that would take my life, and as if the thought brought the word, the cannon's fire was punctuated with the sound of small arms fire.
The captain groaned, I suppose the battle's roar ignited his passion in some unknown, perverse way. He groaned, he rabbit-hunched me speedily, and then his jizz flooded into me, he groaned and gasped and as soon as the last dreg of jism was spurted out of his cock, he slapped me hard on my left buttocks, hard enough to knock me over and I fell to the ground.
"Now stay there, you damned worthless Yankee!" he roared. Hitching at his pants, he got them up and was running out to join the fray.
As for me, I didn't even pull up my pants, I dove into my tiny depression and from there, I watched the battle. I saw the elephant that day, and it was a bloody sight indeed.
Bodies around on the ground on the slope of the other hill, the riders still cresting and coming over the hill. Less time had elapsed than I'd thought during my interlude with the horny captain. Gunshots rang out from my side (the Confederate side, I should say, the force nearest me) and I watched as men fell, as men screamed with pain, as horses tumbled, kicked, jerked. A cannon fired and I saw how it plowed a straight path through the massed men, cutting down one man entirely, slicing him into unequal bloody halves, maiming his horse by taking away one of its flanks and then capping this by landing upon a fallen soldier, wounded or dead, he was smashed by the cannonball with a spray of red into the air.
While the cannon worked its mischief on the bulk of the force coming towards us, the Confederate soldiers were firing at the leading riders. This was death more personal, but not by much, a soldier firing must know if the man he shot fell, though the man who fell may not know who had delivered his death-strike. A man who is shot looks surprised, every time I noticed it, I saw surprise, shock, fear. Only when they fell, after a pause, did they scream.
But the Union forces weren't being idle during this charge, they were all firing as they rode, a heavier but less-aimed enfilade that tore into the masses of gray-clad soldiers near me, and I saw that, too, saw how they lost their faces as a Minie ball plowed into it, lost their arms or lives as red flowers of blood erupted on their clothes or their skin, and they fell and others stepped up to take their place. And I, either cowardly or sensible (I leave it to you my reader to decide which I was, in my position), lay there in my miniscule cover and naked body and ravaged butt, and I counted myself lucky, very lucky indeed, to be here in the brush, naked but safe, instead of clad in blue or gray uniforms, standing up bravely and foolishly to the enfilade of fire pouring in both directions.
The trees and brushes near me were chopped to pieces. No shot pierced my skin though I heard the "whing" of bullets more times than I care to remember clearly now, and I waited for the battle to be done.
The forces closed, the men on horseback, now closed with the soldiers, were using their blades to hack at the Confederates who were unable at this close range to bring their rifles to effective bear, and many men were turning them in their hands and wielding the stocks as clubs.
I stayed as I was as the superior numbers drove the Confederates away, and they fled leaving their cannon and their dead and their wounded, to the Union forces that were now riding their horses about in tight circles, looking for someone else to strike, while others pursued the rebel forces.
A man, a Union officer, rode up to me and looked down. "Well, well, look who we found over here." he said.
I looked up into his face, black hair, black eyes, mustache, and I said only one word in that moment.
"Hunter!" For it was he, my friend Hunter, who had returned to Lonely Rock.
And this is how I ended my term as a prisoner of the Confederates.
THE END
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