It had been a day since Mikhail went to the block in the slave market. He was fifteen, nearly sixteen. He had ash-blond hair. He was sturdy for his age. He stood there naked on the block in front of the maybe twenty men who were buying slaves that day. He recognized the three buyers who had inspected him earlier, pulling back his head, checking his teeth, asking him his name, asking him to tell them how many fingers they held up, feeling his muscles, asking him to lift his arms, then eventually they felt his balls and his prick, pulling back his foreskin, and then they turned him around, running their hands over his back, grasping his buttocks and pulling them apart to see him there. Then two of the men had forced their index fingers up inside of him. His face had flushed with anger and violation while he stood there, his legs slightly apart, while the men behind him twisted and turned their fingers inside of him

‘A farm slave with some experience of household tasks, around fifteen years of age, estate-bred,’ called the auctioneer. ‘Can we start at 50, have I a bid for 50? I have 50, 55, 60. I have 65, 65, 65. Have we more? Any other bids? Last call for bids. I have 70. I have 70. Have I 75? 75? 75? A fine boy. You’ve got him here before you. I have 75, have I 80? Have I 80?’

Mikhail had tried to see who was bidding but he couldn’t.

‘Have I 80? 80? Last call for bids. We have a bid of 75, going at 75, going once, twice, gone at 75.’

Now he was naked again, in a small cell that felt overcrowded with all six of them there. The day was hot. Through the grating he could see the hard blue sky. There was no breeze. In the courtyard in front of the cell, he could see the slaver as he directed his men. Mikhail’s hatred focused on him as if, all by itself, it could kill the slaver and fell him where he stood.

‘Die, die, die,’ he thought.

‘Die, die, die,’ he repeated in his head.

Mikhail’s heart was pounded in his chest. He could feel his fear deep down inside his belly. None of the boys was talking because there was nothing to say now.

Mikhail was intensely aware of his balls, gathered tight up against his prick. He was aware of the proximity of the other boys in that crowded space. He could smell their sweat made sharp by their awareness of what was to come.

In the slave market they had eventually been roped together at the end of the day. They were all somewhere between fourteen and sixteen. Mikhail was one of the oldest. The slaver had wandered down their row with two other men, looking his new purchases up and down.

‘Good price for that one,’ he said of one boy, ‘I would have gone higher…’

‘Once you’ve barbered this one’s hair, washed him and neatened him up, he’ll be presentable,’ he said of another.

‘When will you be going to the city?’ asked one of the men.

‘About a month,’ the slaver said. ‘I’ve already got seven other eunuchs we clipped after last market day. I’ll cut these ones’ balls tomorrow and so it’ll be around three weeks before they’re healed enough to travel.’

They paused in front of Mikhail.

Mikhail had heard the slaver’s words but his reaction to them seemed to come a long time after they were spoken.

His former master did not believe in gelding slaves and so the estate where he’d been born and grown up had no eunuchs. However he’d heard from other slaves of estate owners who had all their boys clipped as soon as they could spurt, or how most young slaves destined for the city markets usually had their balls cut to fit them for their city roles.

He had imagined having his balls cut off and he’d asked about how it was done. But it was something that happened somewhere else to other slaves and he paid little attention to the stories.

‘This one will get us a nice profit,’ the slaver was saying as he and the other two men looked at Mikhail.

‘Once he’s cut he should fetch 160, maybe even 180. Fine blond. Household-trained.’

Suddenly the sense of what the slaver had said became clear to him. Mikhail felt his mouth widen but no sound came out. Inside his chest he felt a great emptiness open up and turn around itself tightly. He licked his lips and looked at the other boys whose faces showed their similar reactions to the slaver’s words.

One of the slaver’s men had moved along their line with his whip out, daring them to move. He pushed one boy. He stared into Mikhail’s eyes until Mikhail had lowered his gaze.

The cell they were in smelled of piss from the open toilet-hole in the corner. They hadn’t been here long. They’d been taken from a larger pen and stripped and thrust into this barred room. They all knew what it meant.

Yet after they had been forced into the stinking cell, nothing seemed to happen. No-one seemed to pay them any more attention. It was as if they’d been forgotten.

But now out in the courtyard the slaver and two of his slaves were walking towards the cell. Mikhail’s heart raced. The cell door was opened.

‘The black-haired older one. That one, him,’ the slaver barked, pointing at the boy next to Mikhail.

There wasn’t room to move but suddenly they were all pushing against each other and the walls.

As the slaver’s men grabbed the boy next to Mikhail, the boy began to call out.

‘Please master, please don’t do it to me, please master…’

He tried to struggle but he was quickly dragged out. Mikhail could see his black belly hair and his prick and the pale curves of his buttocks as he twisted and turned in the grip of the slaver’s men.

Then the door was closed and barred again. Through the grating they could still see the boy as he was pulled across the yard and out of sight.

‘Are they… are they going to…are they…’ one of the younger boys tried to ask, his voice constricted.

No one answered him.

Mikhail could hear them all breathing. They were the short breaths of frightened animals. He wanted to piss.

But outside it was as if nothing had changed. There were no sounds. The blue sky was still flat and hard. The empty courtyard was bare.

Mikhail was right by the toilet hole. He held his prick and pulled back his foreskin and pissed there. It was a strong stream of urine, urgent in its need for release. When he stepped back one of the other boys, took his place and pissed too. Mikhail could hear the noise of the other boy’s piss splattering the sides of the hole.

He looked around at everyone else. Their eyes were wide and their faces drawn. Some met his eye, others wouldn’t. He let his gaze lower and he glanced at their pricks and balls. They were all going to lose their balls. They were going to be cut. One of the boys was holding himself, his hand gripping and concealing his prick, as if that could help Mikhail could see all their neat patches of pubic hair, black, dark brown, or light brown. To Mikhail’s surprise the prick of the only other blond boy, besides himself, was half-stiff. He was a goodlooking fourteen year old, tanned from outside work, wiry, with short hair. His prick was sticking out in front of him.

As Mikhail saw it, he suddenly felt an answering swelling in his own prick. He didn’t want to but his prick began to lift and grow a little thicker by itself.

One of the kitchen girls had pulled Mikhail off a few weeks ago. Some of the other boys on the estate had fucked her but she wouldn’t let him the day that he had arranged to meet her in one of the storage rooms. She let him kiss her though and feel her small tight breasts. She’d lifted her dress to show him herself. He’d fingered her slit. It was moist and he wanted to do more. Then she pulled his prick out from his trousers and stroked him until in a minute he felt himself spurt out his seed.

Mikhail knew that they cut boys’ balls to stop them wanting girls and to calm them, just like when they cut the balls off yearling colts.

He didn’t want this. He didn’t want it to happen.

His breath grew tight inside of him. His prick was awkward now, sticking out more. He imagined the knife cutting his balls off. He didn’t want to think about it but the thought repeated itself again and again. It was going to happen. He couldn’t do anything.

Mikhail’s hatred for the slaver reignited. He wanted to hurt him and kill him. He wanted to throw himself against him with all his force. He wanted the man to die. He wanted a knife so he could slash the slaver’s throat.

The heavy air remained still and unstirred. The sunlight outside was stark.

The blond boy’s prick was completely stiff now, straight and pointing upwards. His foreskin was tight around its swollen head. His hand moved over it, like he wanted to hide it. His face was soft with sweat. One of the other boys was pissing in nervous starts. Mikhail could see his pale neat buttocks clenching and thrusting with each new squirt of urine. Another boy had turned his face to the dirty white-washed wall in denial.

Then Mikhail caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look through the grating. The slaver and the same two men were crossing the courtyard again, coming towards them. One of the men was laughing and shaking his head. The boys all pressed against the back wall of the cell. The door opened.

The slaver looked over them.

‘That one,’ he said, pointing, ‘the older blond one.’

For a second Mikhail thought he meant another boy. He looked to see who it was but at the same instant he realized that it was him who had been pointed out.

He tried to get away but the other boys were a tangle around him. He could feel himself banging against them. He could feel their backs and legs and the tangle of them all as they struggled in the confines of the cell. Then he was grasped by one pair of arms, then another and he was pulled out and turned.

‘Master, I don’t want to be cut,’ Mikhail called out to the slaver, desperately

But he was already being hauled through the cell door and out into the blinding bright sunlight.

He could feel his half-hard prick hitting against his thighs as he was hauled across the yard. His balls seemed to constrict even tighter against his body. His bare feet dragged and scuffed the dust. They heaved him around a corner and then he saw the heavy table there, with ropes at its top and others tied halfway down its thick front legs. There were two other men waiting there. There was a hot charcoal brazier.

He had hardly time to think before he was turned and dragged backwards, hitting the tabletop hard. He kicked with his legs, but already hands were grabbing him. His arms were lifted up over his head. His calves were gripped and his legs were bent over the table end at his knees.

He could hear loud grunts and gasps and protests and he realized it was him.

They looped and noosed the ropes around his wrists and he could feel them winding rope around his calves. He lifted his head and looked down over his smooth chest, across his taut stomach, and past his half-stiff prick lolling there on his moist light-brown pubic hair. He could see the heads of the two kneeling men bobbing at the table end and he could feel them knotting and lashing his calves tight to the table legs. His arms were stretched out over his head exposing his pale armpits with their fine streaks of underarm hair. His thighs were stretched out so wide he didn’t think he could stand it. He knew his underparts were now open and exposed.

Then the slaver came into his view and put his hand over Mikhail’s face, pinching his nose. He struggled and tried to turn away and he opened his mouth to breathe but as soon as he did, he felt a thick wet cloth being forced between his lips to fill his mouth as he choked for air.

Releasing his pinch on Mikhail’s nose, the slaver lifted his hand from his face. Suddenly it was as if the men who had tied him there had all stepped out of view. Mikhail’s mouth was filled with the musty taste of the wet rag.

The slaver looked down at him, with curiosity, studying his body, and he moved down and around, to stand above and between Mikhail’s splayed tight thighs. He let his glance fall on Mikhail’s prick and balls.

‘You know, if he was a year older,’ the slaver said, ‘we’d probably get even better money for him as a breeding slave.’

The words came to Mikhail with a stab. He’d thought he would grow to be a breed slave like his older brother. His brother had been put to half the household maids and he’d already got two pregnant. Simultaneously Mikhail remembered the just haired slit between the kitchen-girl’s legs and how he had fingered it and slipped one and then two fingers inside of her and turned them about in that silky passage and how he wanted more than this, how he wanted to ease his prick right inside of her and fuck her like his brother had.

Instead Mikhail had been sold and now he was stretched out on a block, his straining thighs stretched wide, waiting to have his future taken from him.

The slaver put his hand on Mikhail’s left thigh, as if he wished to part it further. Mikhail couldn’t look now. He let his head fall back to the tabletop and he shut his eyes tightly.

He felt the slaver’s touch move upwards, between his legs, then right under his balls, the fingers rubbing down the warm crease there with its trickle of hair, until the tips reached his asshole.

One of the slaver’s fingers pressed insistently there on that soft spot and increasingly harder until he felt himself involuntarily give before its force and the fingertip entered him a little, pushed itself up into that close place and filled it for a hot instant.

Then it withdrew and next Mikhail’s balls were gathered up in the slaver’s rough hand. Mikhail moaned, low in his gagged throat. His eyes were shut against it all. The slaver began pulling on Mikhail’s ball-sac. Then Mikhail felt the slaver’s other hand grasp his prick, fist about it, and slowly begin tugging at it at the same time as he pulled on Mikhail’s balls. His movements were slow and easing. He stretched Mikhail’s balls and milked Mikhail’s prick.

Suddenly the slaver let him go.

‘The cord,’ he demanded to one of the other men.

Mikhail wanted to open his eyes to look, to see what was going to happen, but he couldn’t.

Then there was a different sensation between his legs. He could feel something touch him, under his balls and to their side. It tickled against his thigh. It was light and long. Somehow it gathered up as a noose around the top of his balls, where the sac met his body. The slaver’s fingers pushed it up as high as it could go. There was a moment when nothing happened and then Mikhail felt the noose tighten and more. It quickly bit into him and it hurt. The pain increased as the compression narrowed. Mikhail felt his whole body heave against it as he was squeezed unbearably down there.

But the first sharpness of the pain ebbed swiftly to a low dull ache.

Mikhail knew that this knot around his balls condemned him. The hard tie down there was preparing and presenting his balls for the knife. He wanted to squirm against that cruel string. He wanted to shake it off and release himself.

Mikhail felt his bunched balls grasped again, and then his prick just like before, and he was being lazily pulled and slowly stroked by the slaver some more. Strangely, the corded clinch around the top of his balls had become a darker, thicker throb which somehow made his prick begin to swell again. He felt his prick fill out and then grow taut, and jut up from his body, and soon become rigid within the moving close fist of the slaver.

Mikhail kept his eyes still squeezed shut, and in that blackness it seemed like his whole awareness was focused on the sensations between his legs. His balls, in spite of his fear and tension, had eased and loosened a little. The slaver’s fist hooded and unhooded his prick-head with every slow pull.

Then he was released from the slaver’s hands.

His prick was straining upwards. The tightness of that thong around the top of his ball-sac forced his balls together, ripe for the pruning.

He could hear movements. There was a dragging sound if something was being pulled close to the table.

‘Alex,’ commanded the slaver, ‘check the iron….yes, yes.’

‘You come down here with me this time and hold him,’ the slaver ordered.

The motion of the men about Mikhail stirred the air and he could somehow sense this faint trace of their movements on his sweaty skin.

‘How’s the first one?’ the slaver asked.

‘Good,’ a new voice replied, ‘and there’s not much fight left in him now. His cut looks clean and the iron has sealed it all. I’ve given him some wine to calm him. John is still in there with him, sponging him down.’

There was a moment of silence. Mikhail’s ears strained to hear anything.

‘This one’s got a good-sized prick, hasn’t he?’ the same voice commented loudly and closer.

‘I was just saying before that if he was a year older we’d probably get the same amount of money for him if we sold him as a breeding slave,’ the slaver said.

Mikhail heard the words repeated and hatred for the slaver overtook him again. With all the force of his fury and thought he turned against the man who was going to clip his balls and take them from him He cursed him. He wanted him slaughtered or strangled by soldiers or ripped apart by wild boars. He wanted the man on the same block he was, his legs spread and tied, just as he was, waiting for the gelding knife…

Then it seemed that everything was still and quiet again. Mikhail’s whole body was rigid with tension but he found he couldn’t keep it that way any longer. He breathed out suddenly, all his pent-up breath exhaled, and he relaxed his locked muscles and opened his eyes, blinking in the blare of the wide day’s light.

The new man was looking down at him, in assessment. Their eyes met. The new man ignored that fact as if Mikhail were no more than a thing and he continued his survey, armpits, arms, moving up behind Mikhail’s head. Then the slaver came into view and one of the other men, the youngest one, the one with curly black hair who’d fed them their meal the night before followed him.

Mikhail lifted his head to look down his body. He could see the head of his stiff prick and his sweat-damp stomach, but he couldn’t see what still gripped his balls so tightly. He ached down there more than he could stand.

The slaver stopped at the end of the table between his thighs. The curly-haired youth moved up to stand by Mikhail’s left thigh. Mikhail hated him too now. He had a sneer to his face.

‘Hold his prickle,’ the slaver ordered and the curly-haired youth reached out and gripped Mikhail’s prick, snorting in some sort of contempt at his actions. Mikhail could feel the youth’s coarse and calloused palms.

Mikhail’s heart started to pound harder. The tension in his belly twisted.

‘Make sure you keep the head unhooded in case he spurts, so peel back his foreskin,’ the slaver ordered.

Mikhail could see the other four men above and around him leaning in to watch but their gaze wasn’t on his face. They were looking down between his legs. Mikhail’s breath was coming in quick gasps now. He tried his bonds with his legs and arms again but there was little movement no matter how he strained.

He could see the slaver but he couldn’t quite see what he was doing between his legs. He could feel it though. He felt his balls weighed and gripped. Then the slaver began to pull hard on Mikhail’s balls now. Mikhail was biting on his gag with the pain.

The curly haired slave adjusted his hold on Mikhail’s prick, pulling back his foreskin completely now to reveal his prick-head completely. Mikhail shuddered with nauseous apprehension, all his body back to being taut and tense, his balls still pulled hard, the tight noose down there feeling like it was burning.

He looked down at himself. Behind the arm of the curly-haired youth, he could see that the slaver had one hand between his legs that was the one gripping his balls.. The slaver was also pulling a knife free from his belt. It was a small knife with a curve to the blade.

This sight made Mikhail jerk at his bonds but it was useless. He could hear himself calling out in protest but the sound was held in and muffled by the gag.

Wide-eyed now, his skin all sweaty, he watched the slaver take the knife down between his legs. He felt the back of the slaver’s hand brush against his upper thigh.

The curly-haired youth grinned down at him before turning back to watch the slaver.

Suddenly Mikhail could feel his seed gathering up deep inside himself, just like when he was pulling himself in bed at night and he knew he was about to spurt soon. The quickening rhythm of his breathing had built up to a point where he wanted just to hold his breath in and stop it. Then there was the touch of metal against the skin of his balls, up somewhere near where the close knot bit so cruel and dumbly.

‘Please, master,’ he found himself trying to beg but the dirty-tasting gag choked the sounds back.

His prick reflexively lifted.

‘Nice little handful here,’ the slaver said, still concentrating on his task. Now he was pulling hard on Mikhail’s balls again, squeezing them so that Mikhail felt sick. Somehow he could feel the razor-sharpness of the slaver’s knife as it was positioned against that sensitive skin. Through half-closed eyes and looking down at himself, it seemed as if his groin was the focus of all these men’s hands which held him in their grip. His sweat bloomed on his skin.

He wanted to squeeze the white spurt out of himself now. He just wanted to let it go. He wanted it to come.

‘Hold him properly’ the slaver comanded the curly-headed youth and Mikhail felt his prick taken with a new firmer grip.

In his blinking vision, Mikhail could see the other men move in even closer to the table, their attention fixed down there between his spread thighs too, where it seemed that everything was happening, where he was stretched out and noosed tight and grasped and ready.

Then, slowly, with deliberation the slaver moved his hand.

Mikhail felt a slice of light sharp sensations at the same time that the sperm inside of him flooded up inside his prick and burst and spat out over his chest. He felt the relief of that wave of easing sensation as his thick white seed was freed and launched but this feeling was quickly tangled in the quickening intensity of the spiraling pain as the slaver cut his balls, one short sharp slit after another, the dumb knife movements between his straining thighs while the spurts were still pulsing out of Mikhail’s prick and his head slammed back against the table, the gag bitten, his eyes clenched tightly shut, his hips still pumping out the very last squeezed jet of his seed to splatter and drip onto his stomach, the blindingly intense cuts of the slaver’s knife, his agony and finally there was a gasping sudden illusory freedom when things separated between his legs, his prick released to flop, hands withdrawn, but a new airy pitch of pain began to build up down there where his balls had been, everything in him focused on that one raw quivering spot, and suddenly even the gag in his mouth wasn’t able to smother his cries entirely

The men around him were talking but the sounds barely separated into words for Mikhail. His body was shiny with sweat. His head lay back exposing his throat. He still jerked and shuddered. His prick lay slumped heavily on his sperm-pooled stomach. Between his thighs, the tight cord still ringed his ball-sac close but immediately under it there was only a remaining bloodied flap where once his young balls had hung

‘He cut well’ the slaver said, ‘very well.’

‘Load of spurt in him,’ said another.

One of the men handed the slaver the red-hot cauterizing iron. He blew on the end of it.

‘I did tell you that this one’s got two brothers, didn’t I?’ the slaver said.

‘When I brought this one the auctioneer said that if I was interested, he’d get be able to get the younger boy for me. He’s fourteen, nearly fifteen. They were just waiting to see what this one fetched. They were pleased with the price and if I wanted to pay the same, they’d be more than happy to sell me the younger boy. He looks like this one, apparently. Hung just as well. They’re bringing him in tomorrow morning to let me see. I’ll probably take him. If I get him we cut do him in the afternoon and he can join these ones. There might be an older one as well, seventeen maybe. He’s being bred but the auctioneer is going to try for him as well. If he’s as goodlooking as this one I’ll definitely try for him as well. We could do with a few older boys this trip. So we might have two more to do tomorrow.’

The slaver blew casually on the hot cauterizing iron again and then a moment later Mikhail’s gagged cries intensified once more and swelled to a smothered climax as the remaining flap between his legs was finally seared and sealed.