WHILE EMPERORS CONTEND AT ROME
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
Titus Flavius Sabinus rode down the Latin Way in Campania, weary and dust-covered after four days of hard riding in the hot sun of early July in southern Italy. He saw the familiar gleam of white marble in the distance, the country estate of the Antonius Primus family, and the home of his once-friend Antonius Primus Justinius. Far from making his heart glad, he let a frown crease his travel-weary body. He was neither expected nor welcomed, he knew, for Justinius had left Rome at the time of the death of Nero, and the official version of events was that Justinius was ill and could see nobody.
For this reason, Sabinus pulled up and stopped at the posts before the house, tethered his horse by its reins, and strode up, helmet under his arm, looking no doubt as bedraggled as could be, hardly a credit to Rome.
As he had expected, Justinius met him with a sword and with no hint of illness about him. "Hold and declare your intent!" he called out when Sabinus walked onto the portico, a wide porch with columns, practically an open-air room.
"Pax!" called out Sabinus. "I am your old friend, Titus Flavius Sabinus, and I come from Rome with evil news."
"Sabinus!" Justinius' voice held gladness, but then his body stiffened once more. "All news from Rome is evil in these days." Justinius replied curtly. "If you have no other business, then you should travel on to my neighbors, for I am afflicted with the measles." There was not the slightest pock upon his body, and his strength was as great as Sabinus had remembered. He could not help but sigh as he remembered their days in the barracks at Mars Field, two young men new to the toga virilis, and in the darkness of the room of sleeping bodies, when Justinius' body had slid into his bed next to him, and the hand that grappled for his young penis, sending thrills through his body, and he reached for Justinius' prong and found it hard and waiting for him, and so they shared the innocent joy of young boys in the near-madness of fresh pubescence, stifling their gasps of pleasure in the snore-filled darkness. This had cemented their friendship when awake, and they had been inseparable until some five years ago, when their commands had sent them to different parts of Italy. Now Sabinus saw that arm which had given him so many nights of pleasure, and watched as the muscles in that arm rippled as Justinius moved the sword in a gesture of his dismissal.
"That is what your father told me in a letter from him that I received but six days ago." Sabinus agreed. "And I came immediately to see you as he requested."
Justinius lowered his sword and Sabinus looked into those old familiar eyes. Justinius was a large man, as were all of his family, with broad shoulders, large arms and hands, deep brown hair and a handsome face...that was long overdue for a shave and a tunic that was overdue for a change and wash. Perhaps Justinius felt Sabinus' slight frown upon his incipient beard, for he rubbed at his face and said, "If you lie to me you die, despite our old friendship. But if you know my father and he has sent you, then you can offer me a password. Tell me why I live here far from Rome, pretending to be afflicted and avoiding all my former comrades."
Sabinus smiled. "Because your father and three older brothers are all important men in Rome. One died earlier this year when Galba came to power because he had backed the cause of Nero against the rebellion. Another has been banished to Lusitania Caesari Province in Spain for supporting Galba over Otho."
"Yes, and that was six months ago. Now Galba is dead and Otho is dead and the latest soi-disant emperor, Vitellius, still approaches Italy with the armies of the Upper and Lower Rhine at his back. He claims himself emperor though the Senate has not yet confirmed it." Justinius said. "All this I have heard to my sorrow. Why, then, are you here?"
Sabinus looked into Justinius' eyes earnestly. "Because Vitellius is unworthy to lead Rome in these days. We need a strong man who understands the armies and will keep the men in check. Vitellius is incompetent, his armies march more like the guests of a wedding party, drunk and stopping to feast at every town they come across. It is no army, it is a mob of armed men."
"Yet the armies of the Rhine with Vitellius at their head outnumber the armies of Italy more than two-fold." Justinius said, still not giving anything away. Those deep brown eyes of his still held no comradeship despite their years together as cadets on Mars Field, sharing the same table, drinking at the same bars. "And now that Otho is dead, what shall prevent him from becoming Emperor?"
"Nothing, and so he will win," Sabinus agreed, "but he cannot prevail."
"And so you would back yet a third man for Emperor." Justinius said. "And you would ask me to join you in this."
"Not only I, but my father and yours." Sabinus said.
"So who would you have for emperor, then?"
"My grand-uncle." Sabinus said with no further preamble.
"Vespasian?" Justinius said. "But he is at the siege of Jerusalem and cannot arrive here before fall, far too late to take an army into the field."
"Nay, he is now at Alexandria, and has thus cut off the shipments of grain to Rome." Sabinus told him. "Twenty thousand of his men are coming to Italy under Gaius Licinius Mucianus, and will land near here very soon. Do you doubt that my uncle can rule Rome?"
"He can rule the armies." Justinius agreed. "And what else is there in these days?"
"Then will you join me?"
"For what? More battles and more Roman blood on Roman swords?" Justinius said. "Nay, you have distracted me with this news, I admit, but I now recall my question to you. I ask you once more, if you expect my good-fellowship, tell me what I already know, why I am here in Campania when all Rome is on the march and corpses of Roman soldiers lie unburied in disgrace at Bedriacum?"
"Because your father gave you a single order, to live and carry on the bloodline of Antonius Primus." Sabinus said. "Should he and his brothers die, you are to go into hiding and thus preserve the family name."
He had spoken truth, and Justinius' eyes showed trust for the first time. "And so I live here." Justinius nodded. "Why should it be that my father has changed his mind and risks me, his youngest son and his bloodline?"
"Because your father is now in Pannonia mustering the armies of Ilyricum and Dalmatia." Sabinus said. "And they shall outnumber Vitellius' forces two-fold in their own turn once they join with the armies of my grandfather."
Justinius stood there, and Sabinus sagged within his armor from weariness. "I am with you."Justinius said at last to Sabinus' great relief. "Yet it shall be weeks before they can arrive. What shall we do in the meantime? Ride to meet with the armies of my father? Or await the armies of Mucianus?"
"We shall recover from the measles together." Sabinus said. "For I find I am afflicted as well." And he smiled slyly. "And your father is not the only one who thinks of the family bloodline."
With a hard laugh, Justinius reached out and grabbed him with those huge arms, hugged him tightly, squeezing a grunt out of Sabinus as this arms nearly crushed his ribcage despite his breastplate. "Ah, my friend." He said. "It has been lonely here for these many months. I have been as those panthers we saw in their cages, waiting for the games on Mars Field when we were very young; remember how they paced? So have I paced this portico not daring to go out, but unable to do anything else. I understand those panthers now; they are my brothers and we pace as one."
"We will wait for your father's armies to arrive and then we will join them." Sabinus said.
"That will be many weeks yet." Justinius repeated. "Enter, my friend. Helga, a bath for my new houseguest, and hot food to follow." he called out as he turned to go inside. Sabinus smiled and followed.
Some hours later, after a blessed bath and a meal full of wine whose ending he did not clearly recall, Sabinus awoke with a start. It was nearing dusk and the day was cooling, as a breeze had begun to rise from the sea. He turned on his eating couch, seeing the table had been taken away while he had slept, looked up. Justinius was there, awake, looking at him. Just looking. Justinius had also been active while he had slept, his face was now clean and his body garbed in a fresh tunic of dull brown, a soldier's tunic.
"I fear my weariness has caused me to be a poor guest." Sabinus said as he rose up to a sitting position. He pulled at the white cloth of the house-tunic he now wore, it was a loan from the house store of clothing, for his had all been soiled by his ride, and this tunic was somewhat too small for him.
"It has been a pleasure to me just to see someone besides the farm laborers and these three old German women who my father sent here to care for me in my...illness." Justinius said. "They all keep my secret well, for they have been promised their freedom in exchange for this time of service. But they have been poor company and have no conversation worthy of the word."
"What then have you been doing to occupy your time?"
"Very little." Justinius admitted. "I dare not risk being seen in the exercise field, or go out riding. My instructions from my father were clear, I was to give no indication that I was not ill and near to death."
Sabinus lay back down on the couch, resting his head upon its sole raised arm, for this couch had no back to it and his body ached from the days of riding. As he did, he felt the tunic again riding up embarrassingly high. And no underwear beneath it! "Feh, this is no tunic, it is a jerkin!" He swore. "Have you nothing else in this house that I can wear until my own clothing is clean and dry?"
"There may be." Justinius said. "But this is what I told them to lay out for you."
"Then I shall wear it." Sabinus said and lay on back. "Though I thought you knew my size better than this."
"I knew your size, to the very inch." Justinius said and he came over to sit on the edge of the couch where Sabinus lay. "You have asked what I have been doing these days? I now tell you that I have been sacrificing to Liber most unceasingly."
"With the German slave-women?" Sabinus was confused and repulsed at once. By invoking the name of the god Liber, Justinius was referring in a discreet way to sexual release, done not for procreation but for pleasure. But these women were white-haired and nearly feeble, they seemed too old and ugly to be sexually desirable; he had already dismissed them from his own calculations on that.
"Nay, alone." Justinius said. "I give my seed to the air and wash it away in the bath, letting it go up to Liber unimpeded."
"Ah." Sabinus smiled. "The age-old occupation of a person who is idle. But I am idle now too, it seems."
"And so we will sacrifice together." Justinius said in a tone that permitted no refusal.
The strong hand rode up Sabinus' thigh with the firmness of a Roman legion and it laid siege with fingers for scaling ladders around the foreskin-wall of Sabinus' cock, surrounding and seizing him.
"I would not have it otherwise." Sabinus gasped out. "I confess that I have missed our days at the academy when we shared our bed at nights."
"Pouring forth abundant offerings to Liber." Justinius agreed. "Even now your body cries out for the sacrifice."
Sabinus looked down to see the clear fluid oozing out of his cockslit. "Liber smiles upon me this day."
"He smiles upon us." Justinius agreed. "As he did in the days of our youth. But we are not young anymore, and I would take you as a man, not as an unskilled lad that knows only his hand."
"My body is yours." Sabinus gasped. "Take it as you will for the glory of Liber."
"May his name be exalted." Justinius intoned and his body leaned over and his lips brushed the top of Sabinus' cockhead.
Sabinus gasped as Justinius' tongue probed into the taut opening of his foreskin, exploring the dimpled cup-like opening that remained even when his manhood was in full erection. His tender cockhead, nestled and protected within this sheath, was tender and the skin that rarely knew contact blushed strongly upon the moist contact with the tip of Justinius' tongue, that caressed him and the saliva that poured down like wine pouring to fill his little cup as the tongue kissed away the blessing of Liber, snatching it away as an impious beggar might snatch the meat from the sacrificial fire of an unattended altar, seizing it for himself.
But his body had more and Sabinus felt his cock gush forth with more of the crystalline fluid of his potency and his need.
And now Justinius leaned over the more and captured all of Sabinus' turgid prong, sending the organ thrilling to the very depths of his mouth and throat, covering him with warm friendship made flesh, wrapping him up and covering him in the way the brief tunic could not.
Sabinus groaned and his hand fumbled across the desert of Justinius' thigh, finding the canyon between his legs, the walls of which opened to him in gladness and Sabinus questing fingers found and encircled Justinius' manhood, and Sabinus was pleased to feel it once more after so many years, larger and more confident in its tumescence than they had been in the bunks at night, furtive and surrounded by their sleeping comrades, here was no need to be covert in their actions, he brought Justinius' cock into the light of the still-strong day creased by long-but-dim shadows that reached across this room, the air was cool and fresh upon their skin, and it was as if the entire world smiled upon this, their hour of joining.
Sabinus manipulated the strong prick of the strong patrician tribune, and Justinius groaned in appreciation as he suckled and nursed his friend's cock, his head moving in unwavering, unapologetic motions, for this was the hour of Liber who watched over them with their entreaties, and did he not smile most warmly upon love that was freely given and taken?
Justinius' cock weeped its own offering to Liber that poured onto Sabinus' working fingers, and Sabinus shifted on the couch and Justinius understood his movements, and joined him on the couch fully, pulled Sabinus down by two powerful hands upon Sabinus' ankles that scooted him down so that his powerful legs could land their knees upon either side of his head, and Sabinus' world became dominated by the aroma of Justinius' freshly washed and oiled body, fragrant with the perfumed body oil from Parthia, and Justinius' scrotum landed upon Sabinus' nose, dropping over it like a velvet bag loaded with two large stones.
Sabinus lifted his nose free and the velvet bad slipped down onto his lips, and Sabinus began to lick them as would a dog, hearing in reward Justinius' grateful grunts as he continued to slurp mightily upon Sabinus' prick, sending breakers of pleasure to wash over his body and smooth out his soul as the waves do the sands of the beach and Sabinus took the ballsac into his mouth and sucked it as an infant does a weaning bag, hungry for the milk locked within.
Justinius groaned and then, impatient with this adoration of his testicles, raised up and reached down to his crotch and Sabinus felt the balls being snatched from his mouth and an imperious cockhead shoved into its place. He grunted in partial surprise, and then the long prong became buried in his mouth. "Mrph! Gluh!" he choked as Justinius lowered his body back down, the cock perforce was shoved into him quite deeply and Justinius left it there while he recaptured Sabinus' cock and then was kind enough to lower his body onto his side, carrying Sabinus with him.
Now side-by-side, and with Justinius in a precarious position nearly falling off the small couch intended for one person, Sabinus held tightly to him and found that he didn't want this massive prong to be withdrawn from its deep incursion into his body; he craved it where it was, and nurtured it, only reluctantly permitting it a brief excursion from his body and then reclaiming it, the way a doting mother will guard her child in its first steps, only such brief freedoms did Sabinus permit Justinius' prick, he preferred it kept safe and warm within his mouth, where it could pulse happily, and Sabinus placed one of his legs behind Justinius' head and roughly pulled Justinius onto his own prod, shoving his own cock deep into Justinius while sending Justinius' prick deep into his own mouth and he held them both there, buried deeply within each other, and felt for the first time the pleasure described by the philosophers who touted men as being only half of the original creation of the gods, and sex being the search for the other half, and now it felt as if that primordial being had been rejoined, he had found his other half!
He would have kept them joined in this way forever had Justinius not struggled and freed himself almost roughly from this over-fond embrace. "Gah, my friend, enough!" He said. "I burn as I have not in many months, and I would burst if I but permitted this bond to remain as it was."
Sabinus was surprised almost as Justinius rose entirely from the bed and then he rejoined Sabinus, this time face to face, and Sabinus reached gladly for those lips that sought out his own, and when they kissed, the reconnection was again complete.
And he felt Justinius' hands lifting up his legs as the spit-slimy prong crawled down his crotch as a viper, and sought the dark cavern below.
Deny Justinius this? Can a man deny his own hand? Could he deny this, his other part, from its rightful place within him? Never! His legs sought purchase upon Justinius' broad thighs, his heels found and dug into Justinius' buttocks as Justinius' cock found the entrance to his nether body and slithered inside.
He felt his body's pain, but it was a small thing, to be ignored in the greater joy of reunion, there was only the accommodation to find, and Justinius was adept and kind, waiting when the skin protested and tuckered under his thick schlong's entrance, and waited until Sabinus could straighten the path once more before pressing on into him.
Soon enough, a moment or an eternity later--what was time to them, who must be patient until events could free them from their self-imposed exile?--Justinius' cock was fully within him, and Sabinus felt his own body reacting, joyfully spasming and clutching at this bulky cock that hummed with life inside of him, and he could bring this life forth by giving it leave to move inside of him; his body heeded this impetus and obeyed.
Justinius felt the release of Sabinus' bowels and he smiled genially into Sabinus and began to slowly fuck Sabinus. Sabinus reached up and stroked Justinius' kind jowl, his gentle cheek, his loving ear, feeling him out--he was real, he was real once more!
Justinius nuzzled and kissed Sabinus' palm and then reached down to feast once more upon Sabinus' lips, and their mouths met and curled about one another as the petals of a flower-bud, meshed and seamless in their joining, and within this cocoon of life their tongues sought out each other and writhed together.
Justinius' moves were as smooth and even in tempo as the winds moving the trees outside, this same breeze caressed their passionate bodies, cooling and nourishing them in their joining which was as ancient as the origin of life itself, as the clay molded by Prometheus at the order of Zeus, who breathed life into them and they moved about together, in those first moments, the legend said, they were fluid and moved together and about each other, and this was the movements that only at the time of sex could a man recapture so briefly.
Sabinus' arms stroked Justinius' strong body as he brought them closer and closer to their mutual passion. Only at the very last did the religious requirements recall themselves to him.
"Wait, wait!" He begged. They could be careless later on, but this first time the dictates of religion must be heeded if Liber's further favor was to be expected.
"What?" Justinius asked, his face flushed and his breaths blowing ragged from his mouth.
"The offering to Liber." Sabinus gasped out. "We must complete it."
Justinius swallowed hard. "You're right, my friend. But let us hurry."
Sabinus slipped out from beneath Justinius, who rolled over onto his back. Sabinus straddled Justinius' stomach with his back to Justinius' face, and in this manner, he could and did press their prongs together, feeling the powerful heat of Justinius' passion-driven prong that screamed red-hued for release, and his own cock took the heat and made it his own.
Using both his hands to hold them together, Sabinus flailed at these two dongs, feeling Justinius' climax roiling up and into his own body, they were caught in a mutual heat, and Liber's ultimate acceptance was shown as they reached their orgasms together.
Through the blood-pounding haze of his ejaculation, Sabinus looked to see gratefully that they had erupted as one, two cockhead spewed their juices of potent white seed out, and Sabinus saw that save for a few of the foremost spurts of jism, the come flowed out of them to coalesce together in a steaming warm white pool on Justinius' thigh
Justinius was roaring like a beast beneath him, and Sabinus felt himself as a man he had seen at the Circus, who was astride a tiger, holding onto its ears and riding it like that, and the tiger roared as it obeyed the man momentarily, racing about until the man unfortunately slipped, and the tiger tore free, rolled him off and then attacked the rider, mauling him before the attendant archers could fling their arrows at it, and he felt mauled as that man had been, and like the man, he groaned feebly as his climax finished with him, chest blowing hard, the cold wind of life snarling in and out of him.
A gentle hand at his head pulled at him, and Sabinus leaned back and kissed the man beneath him. They were together again, and would be for the rest of their lives. He felt this with a certainty, and said a quiet prayer of thankfulness for the prophecy granted him by Liber in this, their moment of post-coital satiation which was the glory of Liber.
"It shall be many weeks before my father's armies can arrive in Italy." Justinius said once again. "And when they do, they shall approach from the north, so as to draw as many men as possible away from the forces that will land in the south of Italy from the Eastern regiments."
"We would have to ride a most circuitous route." Sabinus agreed blearily. He had little heart for this discussion, but it had to be thought out. Rome was in turmoil, and love must wait until safety was obtained. "We could ride across the Appenines and up the Adriatic Coast until we found a boat to Ilyricum."
"Or we can wait here until we are sent for." Justinius said. "By the time your grand-uncle's men arrive here, the war itself shall be mostly won, I think. We do owe a duty to our family bloodlines as well, you know."
"Yes, that may be the best way to serve our family's wishes." Sabinus said. "The days shall be long and tedious and we shall have to occupy ourselves as best we can."
"We shall be priests of Liber and glorify his name endlessly." Justinius agreed. "Let those who live in Rome heed the call to power. We shall serve as pontiffs here in Campania while Emperors contend at Rome."
"I'm feeling very religious already." Sabinus smiled down. "But I think a long course of study would be the best beginning for our new life. And we should wait here until things are calmed down in Rome."
He smiled as he said that, for he felt with a new certainty that such calmness would not be obtained in Rome again for many years. Justinius' words showed he had a similar view.
"Blessed be Liber."
THE END
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