The brace of personal guardsmen in the corridor outside the door had been chosen more for their good looks and youth and grace than for any attainments of combativeness or fighting skills, so they were but a momentary hindrance to the tall, thick-muscled veteran warrior. He left one of them stark dead and the other crawling slowly up the empty corridor, sobbing weakly, in great agony and leaving a broad smear of gore behind him. Portos doubted the guardsman would make it far. He stooped, wiped his blade clean on the fancy cape of the dead one, sheathed it, then pushed open the door to the suite and entered.
Ilios was sitting on the edge of a bed, dark eyes still heavy-lidded, when Portos stalked in. “Wha … what are you doing here, and unannounced, Captain Portos? Those damned slothful guards will be well striped for this.”
Portos grinned coldly. “No they won’t, boy. One of them lies dead out there and the other will be dead soon enough. If it’s protection you want, you should put scarred, ugly warriors on guard, not pretty popinjays.”
Ilios paled, put one hand to a cheek, his eyes wide. “You mean you killed them, both of them? Pahvlos will likely see you hang for such …”
Coldly, contemptuously, Portos stepped closer to the bedside and slapped the boy on the other cheek. “Pahvlos will never again do anything for or to another living soul. He’s dead too. I drove a dagger into him less than three hours agone. The new Strahteegos is Thoheeks Tomos Gonsalos, and he’s a lost cause for such as you, boy; he and his wife live together in this camp and are, I am informed, most congenial and contented, one to the other.”
Seating himself unbidden beside the shocked boy, he gripped one of the bare, dimpled knees with a big, hard hand and said, “On the other hand, boy, there is me. I am now sub-strahteegos, and I always have been most susceptible to such treasures as you.”
Ilios realized that, objectively speaking, he had no other options there and then. Turning his head to look up into the hard, black eyes of Pahvlos’ admitted murderer, the boy smiled shyly, then puckered his lips for a kiss, letting the merest trace of a tongue-tip show behind those lips, enticingly. Such had always worked well on Pahvlos, Ilios’ first and only lover… .
Ilios gasped when he saw Portos’ body stripped of his weapons, armor and clothing—extremely hairy, seamed with scars from head to feet, tall, of a darker than Ehleen average and muscle-corded—but those features were not what brought the gasp. Nature had endowed the man hugely.
Portos padded over to an opened chest of toiletries, rooting through it, then turning with a flagonette of sweet-scented oil. Rubbing a small measure of the stuff onto both hands, he sat back down on the rumpled satin sheets and drew the boy’s slight body nearer.
Ilios gasped when the big, oily hand commenced to work in his crotch. Later, lying in the glowing aftermath of his blissful fulfillment, it took him a good minute to realize that the man, his new protector and lover, was speaking to him.
“What did my love say?” he purred.
“Your body is incredibly small and narrow, I said,” declared Portos, adding, “But then, as I recall, Pahvlos never was able to effect penetration of me.”
To the boy’s look of astonished surprise, the man nodded. “Oh, yes. Did you think to be the first? I, too, was one of Pahvlos’ boys, when I was but a new ensign of barely fourteen years of age and he was a fortyish brigade commander, a sub-strahteegos already. But I seriously doubt that he remembered me in more recent years, for he had so many like me, keeping precious few around for any great length of time.
“But enough of reminiscing now, Ilios. I am not yet done with you.”
Ilios quickly assumed a sitting posture, shaking his head with vehemence and saying firmly, “No. Oh, no. I can’t … won’t let you do that, not yet, no. You’re so … so huge, love. You … you’ll hurt me terribly, probably injure me. No, I …”
And that was as far as he got before Portos’ big, hard, oily palm smashed against the side of his small head, stunning him for a moment. However, he recovered enough to try to resist when he felt those horny hands begin to start rearranging his body and legs. He discovered to his immediate sorrow that such resistance was not only in vain, it was a serious mistake.
Portos’ fist struck his hairless chest like the kick of a warhorse, forcing all the air from Ilios’ lungs, and before he could once more breathe normally, if painfully, the brutal man had shredded a sheet, tied him to the bedstead by wrists and ankles and was returning to the bedside with a waist-belt in one hand and a look of grim anticipation on his face.
“I understand that you enjoy watching men flogged, Ilios. I’ve heard that it excites you. If so, your own flogging should arouse you even more. And even if it doesn’t, it will be a salutary lesson to you that you must never deny me my desires … ever.”
“No … oh, please, please, no. Don’t do it to me, oh, don’t!” Ilios whimpered, straining at his bonds, tears of terror streaking his pretty face. “I … I can’t … cannot abide pain, don’t you see? It … it … I … my heart will … NONONO!”
Ilios had never gained any real friends among Pahvlos’ officers, guardsmen and servants, having always been sullen, aloof, demanding and often downright bitchy, tolerated and catered to only through the underlings’ fear of Pahvlos. As the loud whacks of hard-swung leather impacting upon flesh and the shrieks of pain and shrill pleas for surcease, for mercy, penetrated easily out beyond dead Pahvlos’ private suite, all of the assembled officers and lesser men exchanged grins and nods. The spoiled, overindulged little piece of pig dung was finally getting part of what was, in his case, long overdue.
Portos was no novice at delivering beatings of all sorts, and he tried not to draw blood from the tender, pampered flesh, but he did not stop, to stand, panting, until the entire expanse from Ilios’ neck to his knees was but a single, raised welt and shrieks and pleas and shouts were become moaning sobs.
He left his victim long enough to track down a ewer of wine, splash out a cupful and drink it off before going back to the bed, loosing the ankles momentarily, then retying them to the ornate posts at the foot of the overwide bed, thus splaying the slender legs widely.
Portos took his time, knowing his victim to be completely helpless, enjoying himself to the fullest and beginning to half wonder if, after all, he might not be well advised to keep the boy about until he had had the pleasure of completely breaking him … or he found a wife with a fat dowry, whichever came first. But, as he spent finally within the boy’s quivering, agonized body, he came back to his senses. It was most imperative to Council that this Ilios be “persuaded” to immediately quit the environs of Mehseepolis, for Pahvlos, in his bemused dotage, had named his lover his heir, and such as Ilios was not at all what the Council envisioned as a fitting thoheeks and member of the ruling nobility.
After scrubbing himself well with the sponge and toweling dry, he went to his pile of clothes and gear and began to dress while whistling the tune of a merry harvest-dance popular when he had been a boy, more than forty years now past, virtually unmindful of the steady, low moan and occasional gasps, sobs and whimpers from the brutalized boy still secured to the bed with strips of satin sheet, his small hands and feet beginning to discolor from the biting tightness of the makeshift bonds.