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When our old master died, his widowed wife wanted to move back to her birthplace where she could be with her similarly widowed sister their last years, so she put the estate up for sale. It was purchased, its land, buildings, and all the slaves, by a younger man, a merchant in the city who wanted a summer residence for his family. There were many changes. Rooms were added to the house. New furnishings were brought from the city in carts. Walls were whitewashed. A larger kitchen garden was laid out. Just as I had for my old master, I oversaw the household, but it was newly invigorated and for the first time in many years I was presented with many challenges of organization. When the new master came out from the city for a quick inspection, late in the spring, he approved of my work and the way his orders had been executed. On his second day, as we met together again, he asked me if we had ever made any eunuchs on the estate. I said we had, but not often. The last boy we had gelded was around five years ago, a Greek lad, around twelve or thirteen at the time, who had been cut to serve our old mistress, and who had gone with her to her new home. Do you get a barber in to do it? our new master asked. I told him no, that I did it, that I had learned how to do it when I was apprenticed to the farm overseer, when I was young. I also told him how I was recognized in the district as one of the best and that while we had never made many eunuchs, I was often called to neighbouring estates to geld their slaves. As I told him this, the memory came back to me suddenly of the Greek boys slim thighs spread wide apart, an earthenware bowl pushed high up between them, under his surprisingly full balls, already tied with a thong and waiting there for my knife Hed been easy to do, that one, as if he had been born for the knife. Hed also made the perfect eunuch, composed, neat, devoted to his mistress. My master nodded. I want all the household boys cut, he said, slowly, looking directly at me, all the younger ones. Do it as soon as you can. I want them healed and calmed down by the time we come for summer. Can you do that? I said I could. He told me, through some need to explain, that his family was served exclusively by eunuchs in the city. He had three daughters and in no way did he wish to put them at risk from involvements with a slave-servant. A friend of mines daughter was raped by two boys theyd had in the house since they were born. A terrible thing he added, shaking his head. Then I think they actually make better servants when theyre clipped, he said a minute later. Their minds are focused more on their work, not on their prickles. He returned to the city that afternoon, leaving me to expedite his orders. The next morning I went into the butchers yard, out beside the stables. It was a bleak yard. A curing sheeps skin was pegged into the wall. There were meat-hooks hanging under the roof overhang outside the cooler rooms where the butchered flesh could be stored. There was an old smell of spilled blood. The butchers block was a heavy wooden table, stained and crisscrossed by hundreds of knife cuts. It was where the estate slaves had always been gelded, even in the time of my old masters father, or so he told me. It was a simple matter to prepare the table, with cords tied to each of the four legs, so a boy could be spread-eagled on it. I also brought in a brazier so that it could be filled with charcoals from the bakers oven later, to heat the cauterizing iron. I sharpened the two gelding knives. They were short-bladed like pruning knives, both with worn handles. Theyd always been there, of old workmanship, and occasionally when I handled them I wondered how many eunuchs they had made, how many manhoods they had taken. I had probably cut around two hundred boys with them, over the years, but the knives were much older than me. I carefully honed the thin blades to as sharp an edge as I could manage, feeling the familiar handles in my hand as I used the whetstone, knowing their balance and weight. Finally I ordered that straw-pallets be brought in and laid out underneath the canvas awning that shaded the end of an adjoining courtyard. This was where the slaves would heal, spending three or four days there, until they could walk easily, and begin to resume their ordinary lives. I took Isaac, the farm-manager, into my confidence and asked him to select two burly slaves to assist me. There were five younger boys in the household. The youngest was Leo, who was about thirteen. Then there was Simeon and Michael, who were both fifteen or so, and Manuel, who was slightly older, and then Philip, who was seventeen or eighteen. It was midmorning before I had them summoned from their work. They stood in a group in the middle of the butchers yard, a little curious as to this occurrence. I ordered them to follow me into the high-walled pen where sheep and goats were held before they were slaughtered. The sun lit up the dull mud-brick walls and the pitted dirt floor. The sky above was a flat blue. It was going to be a hot day, one of the first of the year. I ordered them to strip down. They were puzzled but they were accustomed to obey and they lifted their shirts over their heads and undid the strings of their trousers. I had one of the farm slaves collect their clothes. Standing naked in the pen, they were a fine group. The old master had always insisted that we selected the most handsome boys to work in the household, saying that it made the household look good in eyes of visitors. I studied them up and down. Their bodies were all smooth. Their skin and muscles were tight. They were all in the peak of health. Philip scratched at his pubic hair, while looking at me with a frown. Leo was shy at my gaze at his nudity, his stomach pouting slightly, his hands awkward. Michael returned my stare with effrontery. Simeon moved from one foot to the other, almost as if he was bored with a familiar event. Manuel stood there with one hand on his prickle, the other on his chest. I cleared my throat. Our new master, I said, does things differently. He keeps a number of eunuch slaves at his city house. He has three daughters who will be living here over the summer and he does not want any chance that one of our household slaves will molest them. So he has ordered me to clip your balls so that youll be able to serve his family in their chambers. I could see these abrupt words register on their faces, as they took the sense of what I had said and realized what it meant. It was Philip who spoke first. His face was shocked. He swallowed. But he began. Quiet, I snapped, raising my voice. The master has given me my orders. But Ill be good, Philip begged, one hand now covering his prickle as if to shield it. I dont want to do anything to the masters daughters. I told you quiet, I said, clearly and slowly, my tone the same steely one that I used to order reluctant slaves to perform an unpleasant task. You are not the first slaves to be clipped and you wont be the last. They were all wide-eyed, their faces panicked, their breathing interrupted in its rhythm. Their postures were tense. Simeon looked to me, shocked that I could be doing something like this to him. Leo bit his teeth together, his lips drawn away from them in a grimace. Manual clenched his jaw and his fists. Philip stared at me, pale-faced, his hand still tight in his groin, a look of pleading in his eyes. If you do as you are ordered, the easier it will be for you, I said, softening my tone. I turned and closed the solid gate behind me. There was only myself, Isaac, and the two slaves he had selected, in the butchers yard. I had organized it this way. Slaves are invariably curious to see another slave gelded. Its always been the same. Once, I had been called to one of the neighboring estates to clip a young runaway, who just been brought back from his second attempt to escape. I cut him in a courtyard with ten or fifteen other slaves watching, jostling for position, to see me do it. There were even young boys there, ten or eleven years old, staring wide-eyed, and a couple of young girls, fascinated by what they saw. So I had only told those who I had to tell. The rest of the estate was unaware of what we were doing and there would be no fuss or disruption. Wed have no slaves barging in on trumped-up excuses. There wouldnt be faces peering over walls. Wed have the time we needed without distraction. I checked everything. The iron was hot. I had the gags. There were the knotted thongs, already made up into small nooses. There was the bowl that I would slip up between their thighs to catch their balls. There was a bucket that would hold all of their nuts before they were taken and buried in a corner of the garden. The two knives were in my belt. We may as well start, I said to Isaac. Do you want any one in particular? he asked. I shook my head. Whichever one you can grab first, I replied. I dont think theyre exactly going to stay still for you. He laughed out loud. Then he took the two slaves and went to the pen. I stood back from the block to give them ease of movement when they returned. I had been kicked once, when I was cutting a sixteen year old belonging to another neighbour. He always cut his well-hung boys feeling that they were a danger, that their prick-size was related to their sexual energy, that theyd turn into trouble. As the boy was being manhandled onto the table a kick from him landed hard on my cheek, nearly stunning me. I learned my lesson that day, and so perhaps did the boy, for I cut him slowly, with some pleasure, one casual cut at a time, prolonging it, getting my recompense for my bruised and painful face. I could hear sudden loud yelling from the pen and a boys unbroken voice raised up further. They came out of the pen with Leo, the youngest of the boys, and he was twisting and turning between them. He was a slim boy, with long curly chestnut-coloured hair and coltish limbs. He poured the wine at the evening table, and helped in the kitchen as well as being useful in a number of small ways. I dont want to. I dont want to, he was saying, in his boys voice which now would never change and deepen. But they had him up on the block in a moment, his legs kicking and flailing, flashing glimpses of his balls and under them, before his ankles were grabbed by Isaac and held to the table. Soon he was tied spread-eagled to the butchers block, and a gag had silenced his cries. I slipped one of the nooses over my left wrist and walked up to the table. Leo raised his head, wide-eyed, to watch me. His chest was heaving. His eyes were moist as if he had been crying. His face was miserable. Hed probably only had hair in his groin for a few months. It was just a narrow patch of short dark curls. His tan-coloured prickle lolled to one side. His balls were drawn up into a tight round. Isaac and the two slaves watched me closely. I reached up between the boys smooth white thighs and grasped his warm balls with my left hand, and took his small prickle in my right. Then I began pulling slowly on his balls to loosen them from their tight, fear-excited confine. Leo put his head back down on the butchers block, moving it from side to side, as if to deny what was happening. His mouth was filled with a wadded rag and the gag cut at the corners of his lips. His pale throat moved as he swallowed. He had a fine face, pretty at this stage, just as his elder brother had been at the same age. His brother had grown to be a goodlooking, masculine slave, working in the estates olive-press, and now, at the age of nineteen, he had already fathered two children. Whereas yesterday Leo might have followed a similar course, my masters orders now meant his destiny was altered. He was about to lose something that he had only just attained and never would explore. In my hand, I could feel Leos prickle fill out and swell. He was quick off the mark. At that age they always are. His balls began to loosen too, in their sac. Unlike his brother, hed never grow to breed and any knowledge of desire he might have gathered in his short fertility would just become a faded abstract memory. The yard was quiet. There were only some distant noises from the farm to break the silence. The sun overhead was becoming hot. The boys ball-sac was a little sweaty in my hand. The skin had relaxed and eased, his balls freer now. I let go of his prickle. It was half-hard, sticking up. Then I drew the noose up over my left hand, up over his balls, until it was high up where his ball-sac joined his body, whereupon I pulled it tight. I felt his body flinch with the grip of the thong. By constricting the skin at the top, it made his balls stand out from his body, as if they were some round fruit, waiting for the picking. Spread-eagled naked there, his long, lean thighs spread, his upraised arms revealing nearly bare armpits, and with his balls now tied, he looked very young, almost too young to be cut. Dont even know if hed be spurting yet, Isaac said to me. Hes got hair down there, I said. When theyve got hair, they can usually spurt. The boys prick was straight and near stiff now, its foreskin tight around its tip. For his age it was a good-size, looking almost too big on him. He was still lifting up his head to look at me, to see what was occurring, his brow furrowed, the tight gag stretching out his mouth. I pushed the bowl up between his smooth thighs, right up under his balls. Then I told one of the slaves to stand at the tables head and hold the boys head under his chin, pulling it back to the butchers block surface. This always positions them right, somehow arching their backs a little, making them immobile, while presenting their prick and balls at the right angle. He was now ready to be clipped. In the markets, they can do it really swiftly. I have always taken an interest in the way slavers geld their slaves, going out of my way to see it done, and to learn. Once I was in the market, selling some of our younger girls, when I saw a slaver dispatch some twelve or thirteen year old Slavs, seven of them. They had them up on their tables, their balls tied in an instant. Then they were cut just as quick, barely having time to know what was happening. But they do it often in the markets and experience will always tell. I pulled a knife from my belt. Do you want to hold his prickle, I asked Isaac. He shrugged and reached down to the boys stiff member and held it. Otherwise, unheld, the boys prickle would wave around, confusing things, getting in the way. The boy twisted, or tried to, with this new grip. I reached up between his thighs again and pulled hard on his balls, feeling their squeezed rounds in my palm. Then I placed the knife down and under them. The boy was making a series of high-pitched grunts. It was the only sound in the air. The slaves and Isaac were looking fixedly at the boys groin, his white skin there, the darkness of his new pubic hair, Isaacs fist around his prickle, and my own hands poised there. It was as if they were all holding their breaths, waiting for me. I pulled harder on the boys balls, stretching out that tender skin as far as I could. I carefully moved the knife to just under the thong, and then I began to cut him. I just made the decision and my hand and the knife acted together to do it. The younger they are the easier it is to cut them. You can go through a twelve year olds balls like a hot knife through butter. I did one once, where he was just held down on the floor of a room. He only had a streaking of pubic hairs, flat on that small mound above his prickle. He was being neutered to punish him for some crime or another. I bent down between his boyish legs, and the knife took his nuts from him in one stroke, when it usually takes several. I remember being surprised then, at the ease of it. The boy hadnt even had time to feel it happening before his balls were gone. As I cut through with a quick series of strokes, Leo convulsed with the first feel of the knife and then his hips humped and he spurted. I could see it out of the corner of my eye, his prickle in Isaacs fist pumping two or three thick globs of white semen out onto his stomach and over Isaacs hand. It is strange when a young boy like this shoots a mans load; you dont expect it. Then his whole body became rigid as he fought against the pain. A high-pitched cry was caught in his throat. I dropped his cut balls into the bowl. The tied skin between his legs was bleeding slightly, but not much. I got one of the slaves to bring me the cauterizing iron. Isaac was wiping the boys semen from his hands, with disgust. A quick touch of the iron on the cut sealed it. The slaves then untied Leo and helped him to his feet. They supported him as he walked slowly, straddle-legged across the yard to the gate, the gag still muffling his noise, and they took him into the next yard where a pallet waited for him. I had old Alexius in there, waiting to tend the boys, to wipe them down, to clean the wounds with salty water, to tie their hands to a ring on the wall to stop them touching themselves down there for the next few hours, and to give them water. Hed done it before and he was careful and clean. We had never lost a new eunuch on the estate because of infection. I dumped the boys balls in the bucket, the flap of pink flesh and the two grey-green stones there in the bottom, and I wiped out the bowl. When the slaves came back, I told him to get the next boy. There were the same yells and cries from the pen after theyd entered it. I could imagine the naked boys pressing against the walls, moving in an effort to escape, until one of their number was finally cornered. They came out with Michael. He worked in the household kitchen and as a waiter to our old master. I had whipped him more than a couple of times for various sins. He deserved more, but I could never prove it. The old master seemed to have a tolerance for him that I could not understand. He was still growing, his body sleek with finely delineated muscles. His black hair was cut short. He had an olive skin, creamy pale where the sun did not reach. He was also well-endowed, for a fifteen year old, his prickle flopping between his legs as he struggled on his way across the yard. He was fighting, or trying to, twisting in the grip of the two slaves as they half-dragged him, half-walked him, with his yelps and yells and grunts of resistance an accompaniment. Then he too was soon spread out on the table-block, the thongs knotted around his wrists and his ankles, the leather tight where the black hairs on his calves ended. He had fought the process all the way, kicking and punching and he still fought on the block, though there was no room to battle against his bonds. I gripped his balls and his prickle and began pulling to slowly ease his nuts loose. His pubic hair was glossy with damp sweat, so was his skin. As I pulled at his plump ball-sac, I studied the stretch of his body, from his pale arm-pits with their flash of black hair, to his tight small nipples, and his flat stomach quivering and tightening with his strain. He was a fine slave, physically. His prickle was fat in my hand, and swelling further. I had been sure for some months that he had been sporting himself with a farm girl or two but I had never had real evidence. I doubted that he was a virgin. Then I noosed his nuts and tightened the thong so it bit into his skin. Well hung little bastard, said Isaac, nodding appreciatively. I nodded as I slipped the bowl up between his thighs, wedging it there, right under his balls. The boys erection was now full, and his prickle pointed straight up towards his navel, his foreskin slipped back to show his smooth glans. Boys prickles are always softer-skinned somehow than a full grown mans. I think hes already been playing around with it, I said to Isaac. Im sure that hes been dipping it in a girl or two, but I could never catch him at it. Thats another whipping he avoided. If the old masters son had been still alive, he might have been just been getting a sore arse though, with a prickle that size. The old masters son had died several years before, in his mid-twenties, when he fell from his horse. Rather than girls he had a fondness for slave boys. He had liked them well-endowed, around fifteen or sixteen years old. Several of them had passed their way through his bed and when he walked around the estate or watched the boys swimming naked in the stream, he made them all nervous with the intensity of his glances. Whenever he called a boy out to look at him more closely, you could see their reluctance as he demanded they showed him their prickles. Michael would have fitted his needs perfectly. I had not thought this before. Perhaps it would have been better for him to learn this submission, to turn up his rear for another male, rather than follow his own will. And the old masters son had been nothing if not eager in his needs. A boy was summoned two or three times a day to be fucked in the dim shade of a bedroom, sometimes in the woods, often in the bath-house. Michael would have had no time to indulge himself. The tip of the Michaels prickle gleamed with a drop of clear fluid. It twitched suddenly, raising up from his stomach and then falling back, as if it had its own mind. The boy was still trying his bonds, still trying to free himself, still fighting. Struggling wont help you, I said to him, exasperated. His brown eyes darted anger at me, but there was something else there, just beneath it, fear perhaps or defeat. I had no sympathy with him. On other estates he would have been gelded sooner than this. There was his cock-of-the-roost strut, his ease, his casual obedience to orders, and that knowing look that was usually in his eyes would have led him to this same end. Other slave owners would have seen fit to nut him to nip his disobedience completely in the bud. With a nod of my head, I indicated the boys prickle to Isaac and he reached to hold it still. It was longer than his fist, a clear two or so inches more, heavy headed. The other slave gripped the boy under his chin and pulled back his head. A muffled cry of impotent rage was caught in his throat. His whole body seemed to convulse with strain and effort. Lets get him done, then, I said, pulling the knife from my belt, and finish this off. I pulled on his balls, harder and tighter than I would normally, and I could hear his gagged grunt of pain. Id just got the knife positioned, when he suddenly shot his load. His seed pulsed out of his prickle in a series of jerks. The smell of it was in the air. Couldnt wait, Isaac said, shaking his head. Finally, I began to cut through the skin of his ball-sac, feeling the knife go through his skin and then to the tubes inside. We could hear him screaming, the sound blurred and stifled under his gag. It was a good neat cut and I sealed it with the red-hot iron. Then the slaves untied him. He tried to close his legs when he was still on the table, but renewed pain forced them back apart. Hes one that will be a better slave without them, I said to Isaac, as Leo was supported across the yard, the round of his buttocks pale in the sun, the dangle of the thong noose, still tied to the stub of his ball-sac, swinging between his thighs. The next one they fetched was Manuel. He was a well-proportioned sixteen year old. He was sturdy. He had the easily-tanned skin that one often finds in blonds. His hair was the gold colour of corn. His body-lines werent sharp and hard, instead they were softened slightly. His stomach curved a little. His cheeks were downy. His body hair was minimal, just a patch of dark-brown in his groin and some streakings on his calves. The slaves had one of his arms bent up behind him and they were running him across the yard. He was propelled before them. He was a trained body-servant, able to address all the needs of his owner, from dressing to bathing, shaving to tidying. The old master, though, did not like the fussing of body-slaves and so Manual had worked in the guest wing, for the old master liked to entertain guests, especially in his last years when age had wearied him and physical activity exhausted him. He liked nothing more than to converse with friends and acquaintances, over wine and a meal. Manuels duties had sometimes involved keeping guests company in their beds, should the guests rather have a boy there than one of the younger maids. Hed always done it reluctantly, with a sullen look on his face when he was ordered to do so, but his fear of the whipping that would result from his refusal was sufficient to motivate him. Id once accidentally seen him through a window in the middle of an afternoon when one of the masters guests had retired in the heat of the day. Manuel was crouched on all fours on the bed, with the prickle of the older man slamming up his rear, between his buttocks, with repeated strokes. The look on Manuels face was a grimace, that tightened with pain in time with the rhythms of the older mans pace, and his body shuddered with each inward thrust. I watched his head rise and fall with each slap of their flesh. On the block, once he was tied there, it was as if hed abandoned himself to his fate. Unlike Michael, he lay there without a fight. He kept his eyes screwed shut. The only movement of his body was his quick erection, rising in a series of small jerks. His prickle was not big, but it was straight and neat. His balls were smooth, almost unhaired. I pulled on them while I held his erection in my fist. My grip slid his foreskin down to expose his pointed tip. I wondered if he had managed to find himself a stolen fuck with one of the estate girls. Then I tied his balls with the noose. Blonds got good prices in the markets and blond eunuchs got more. I saw a pair of them being cut once, bent over the table in a slavers back courtyard, their legs splayed out and tied at the ankles to iron rings embedded in the flagstones. They were both around sixteen, captured in one of the northern campaigns. There were a lot of gelded young slaves that year. Their buttocks were parted by the position and their assholes were exposed along with the neat lines of gold-brown hairs going down to their balls which hung beneath. The slaver was careful and slow in his cutting. There was a lot of money at stake. A pair of such geldings were one of the most expensive slaves that money could buy. The only rarer thing was a pair of identical twins who had been made eunuchs. It was said that such a pair was sold to the emperor for more than 100, 000 silver pieces. So there was one cut of the knife, then another and another, with the slaver holding hard on the balls of the slaves, their stiff prickles pulled down and pointing at the flagstones dotted with moist gobs of semen. I can remember how both boys tried to clench their straddled legs closed with the first slice of the knife, and then they could only hopelessly hump the table surface with each new cut. I slid the small bowl up between Manuels thighs. Then Isaac reached over to hold the boys prick. Then his head was pulled back. He was already biting hard on his gag as he waited for the inevitable. Hed probably stay on at work in the guest wing, I thought. He was good at those duties and he still would serve in guests beds. There were many men who preferred a eunuch in their beds than a boy who was entire. Youd see them at the markets examining the eunuchs for sale. There were some who only liked new-clipped eunuchs. Others liked them if they had been cut young. Others preferred them if they were gelded late in their teens. And there were several brothels in the city that specialized in young eunuchs. There was even one were the boys still possessed their balls, but had just had their prickles cut off. Such a boy could only come to orgasm by having a prickle inside his rear, hammering against his insides until it forced the seed out from that tiny hole in the midst of the coin-sized scar that was the only indication they had ever possessed prickle. They were said to be the best eunuchs for such sex, humping and twisting as they attempted to procure release in the only way they could. They had the need but no longer the means to find release otherwise. I had actually seen a couple of such prickless boys for sale, standing naked under a slavers awning, demonstrated to buyers, turned to display their perfect buttocks, turned back to show the neatness of the scar where their prickles had been. I watched them being auctioned, marveling at the prices they fetched. I grasped Manuels nicely-rounded balls and pulled them away from his body, lining the knife up with the thong. Again everyones gaze was focused on the slaves groin, between his splayed out legs. Poised to make the cut, the knife just resting on the skin of a slaves balls, is a moment when you contemplate the act you are about to perform. You move the knife, judge and assess. You know in a moment the boy you have before you will be changed forever. Then you act I began with a quick cut, slicing the skin apart. Then another cut to lengthen it. And another. For some reason he was harder to cut than the others. I had to keep the pressure on. It wasnt until I was halfway through, a long sound of pain coming constantly from his throat now, that he spurted, once, then once more, then another time, ceasing almost at the same moment that his stones and their sac were severed completely from his body. Then there was just his prickle, after Isaac had released it, in a smear of its own seed on the boys stomach, and the place beneath where his balls had been but were no longer. As he was helped up off the table, I saw him dazedly look down at himself, his prickle now becoming limp and the darkened, still-tied cauterized wound beneath it. He looked at himself then squeezed his eyes closed again, as if to deny what he saw. Simeon was next to be dragged from the pen. His prickle was already mostly hard, up vertically against his belly and barely moving as he struggled against the two slaves who held him. He tried to grind in his heels, but the slaves just dragged him across the yard. He fought hard when he was at the table, but it was an unequal fight. Then his legs were forced wide apart and his arms were tied to the table corners above his head and Isaac jammed a wadded rag to his mouth. He had dark long hair with a wave or two in it. His upper lip was shadowed with hair. His body was beginning to lose that slimness of youth and to become more solid. He had a good chest tapering to a narrow waist. His prickle was around average length, and now, with him bound on the block, it was hard, completely hard, swollen to its bulk already, almost glossy with this stretch. I liked the boy. Hed been my boy for a couple of years, running my messages, fetching and carrying, before hed grown too old for such a simple job, and he was given to the butler to be trained in that art. He stared at me, as if he would accuse me, as if I had betrayed him. Ill do you quick, boy, I said to him. Its not my doing. It is the masters order. A year ago, when he was still with me, I had caught in mid-hump with the bakers fourteen year old daughter. Hed gone missing in the afternoon. I needed him for some task so instead of waiting for him to return, I tracked him down, asking slaves if they had seen him until at last I found him in the back of the stables with the girl. His trousers were down to his thighs and his naked buttocks were moving as he screwed her. I watched him for a bit as he took her, their murmurs sounding on the shadowed air. I did not interrupt him but waited outside until theyd finished. As he left the stables I greeted him and marched him to the punishment yard, where he had to lower his pants again and bend over the whipping horse while I gave him half a dozen lashes of the cane, the bright stripes appearing on his buttocks with each stroke. I reached up between his legs and took his balls into my hand, fingering their rounds inside his sac, weighting them. Then I held his prickle with my other hand and slowly pulled beneath it, to loosen his balls, to ease them out. Simeon squeezed his eyes closed as I did this, tossing his head, his hair spreading over the butchers block, trying to hitch his body away from my grip. Then I noosed him, and as the thong tightened in that irrevocable step, clinching the skin of his ball-sac tightly, I felt sorry for him. He deserved better than this I thought. But I had my own job to do. A slaves body is his masters possession to be used as his master orders. Simeon knew this as well as I. I took the unused knife from my belt. Just as I did this, Simeon opened his eyes as if he sensed something. I could hear the sound of shock in the noise he tried to make, seeing the knife for the first time. He tried to struggle again but it was too late. I nodded at Isaac and the slave. The boys chin was cupped and his head eased back, exposing his throat. Isaac reached across his hip and held his prickle in his fist. Simeons stomach pulsed and his thighs shivered. I remembered again that scene in the stables, his wet prickle slipping and sliding in the girl, his curved buttocks clenching and unclenching. I had thought of his future back then and Id eyed a few of the girls whod soon be available to be mated. I had imagined of him proud with young sons. Now such thoughts were irrelevant. He was stretched out there waiting to be clipped, to lose his manhood, to become a placid slave with no desires except to obey his master. Hed always regret the loss of his balls, but there would be no force of desire to power that regret, to turn it into anger or rebellion. Shame about this one, I said to Isaac who nodded. But he too was waiting for me to act. I took Simeons bal-sac in my hand. I could feel his two balls moving within that skin. I gripped them, then pulled the sac away from him, out over the bowl, the skin stretched up to the constriction of the thong. Simeons whole body now strained tightly, his muscles clenched. As his balls reached their fullest extent, he arced his hips upwards a little and held that position, tense and waiting. I placed the knife carefully. Are you ready, boy? I asked him. His body shuddered. I tried to cut him quickly but it was not to be so. It was as if his tubes and cords were harder than the other boys I had done that day. He spurted as I cut, his sperm splattering his chest and even his face. And I had to use more strength on the knife and tighten my grip on his balls before the job was finally done and his nuts dropped into the bowl. Simeon was howling behind the gag. It was a deep guttural sound, broken by his breaths. I cauterized the wound carefully and then he was untied. He was dazed and shocked and as he tried to sit up and to close his legs, he found he couldnt and he slumped back down. The slaves had to lift him off and half-carry him across the yard, his head bowed in defeat and loss. I shook myself free of regret. There was one more to do. When they dragged finally Philip from the pen he was yelling at me. You cant do this to me. You cant do this. He was a well-made youth. His body was muscled, not in the over-developed way of some of the farm workers, but more natural. His hair was dark and his skin was pale. He had blue eyes. He was in charge of the younger boys in the house, keeping discipline while attending to his own duties which included the stores and the fetching and gathering of the household requirements. He had been given permission to mate by our old master just before he died. Hed moved into a room with one of the younger maids. She was already pregnant, her stomach just beginning to swell. His prickle was half-hard from anticipation as he waited in the empty pen. It quivered horizontally as he fought with the slaves across the yard. They slammed him into the table with force. He was bigger that the other boys wed done. He was older. He was stronger. And there was more of a struggle to get him tied. I had to join in, gripping one ankle while Isaac slipped the thong over it, doing the same for the slave who held the other leg. However the conclusion was foregone and he was outstretched there, legs wide, locked under the noon sun, his mouth gagged. It was good that hed bred, I thought. Hed probably sire a good child. Often, on other estates, they do this deliberately, choosing the boys they were going to geld, for the markets or their own use, and put them to a girl to get her pregnant. Then, on the ordained day, the youths would be taken to the gelding tables and unmanned, but having left a replacement child. It made good economic sense. I did it every second year for an estate on the other side of the valley. Theyd choose their youths for market and then let them mate. Then in mid-summer theyd be gelded, one struggling seventeen or eighteen year old after another being dragged to the block to lose their manhood. They knew what they were losing more so than younger boys. I saw the same knowledge in Philips eyes. His girl would not rejoin him but shed be given to another male after she came to term. I reached up and took his sweaty balls in one hand, his thick prickle in my other. His balls seemed to be bigger than those of the other boys. His thighs were heavier. A line of hairs stretched up toward his navel from his pubic bush. Then he too was noosed, the thong hard and tight high up where his ball-sac met his body. The bowl was eased between his thighs, his balls hanging over it, as if they were poised and waiting to be cut. His chest was gleaming with a faint sweat. It was smooth and hard. His nipples were broad and flat. He lifted his head to follow my moves, occasionally struggling against the tight bonds, before collapsing back again. Then one of the farm-slaves forced his chin back and Isaac reached for his prickle. I took the knife from my belt again. He soon wont be doing the amount of fucking he was, said Isaac, almost sounding resentful. His own wife was shrewish, with a sharp tongue. I could see how he could be jealous of a youth with a young willing partner. Philips body shuddered there, stretched and arced tight. I took his balls into my hand. The slave holding his head forced it back further and his hips shifted. I gripped his nuts and pulled them out from his body, until the skin of his sac was completely taut. At the very first touch of the knife on his skin, he heaved a spurt of seed out of his prick. I continued to cut him, sawing the knife back and forth as he spurted again and the sound of his pain rumbled in his throat. He heaved and tried to move away from the source of his agony, but he could not. I knew what I was doing, as I unmanned him, taking the one thing from him that had value for him. I had been ordered to do so. It could not have been different. I finished the cut clean through and dropped his balls into the bowl between his thighs. They lay there still and moist, still wrapped in the skin of his ball-sac as Isaac released his prickle, which fell against his stomach. The slaves eased the youths bonds, and helped him to his feet. They walked him slowly across the yard, one step at a time. Well, thats them done, said Isaac, wiping his hands down with a rag. I tipped Philips balls from the bowl into the bucket. There were ten of them in the bottom, some still inside the ball-skin, others oozed out, pale, cords still attached. I told one of the slaves to take them out and bury them in the garden. Then I told the other to clean down the table. Isaac and I walked into the next yard. Philip had just been put onto a straw pallet. His hands had been tied to the wall over his head to stop him putting them between his legs for a couple of hours, until the wound dried. Then Alexius would free him and take off the noose that was still tight around the remaining flap of his ball-sac. He was wide-eyed and sweaty with his pain. His legs were still stretched wide apart, but now it was his doing, not ours. He shifted himself trying to find ease but not succeeding. Behind his gag he tried to groan. The other boys were much the same, all lying on the straw pallets, their legs wide, and up between them, where their thighs met, I could clearly see their still-tied scrotal flaps, dark at the end where the iron had been applied. Its a job very well done, Isaac commented, as he surveyed the clipped boys in the shade. Alexius was taking off Leos gag, pulling out the wet wad of rag from the boys mouth. Then he pressed a cup of water to his lips. The boy drank it gratefully. Doing any other ones? Isaac asked. Not here, I said, but Ill be going the Cominina estate to do a couple of their boys tomorrow. Theyve decided that the Slav boy they brought last year is old enough to lose his stones, and theyve got another one, about the same age. Simeon, in the middle of the row of boys, twisted himself across his pallet, closing his legs convulsively against some sudden twinge of pain, then spreading them again. Alexius, undoing Michaels gag, paused to check Simeon, then resumed his task, pulling the chewed rag out and filling another cup of water. I was still looking at Simeon. He couldnt get comfortable, humping his hips upward, flashing the emptiness between them. Once he settled, hed be a good eunuch, I thought to myself, masculine looking, sturdy, but undistracted by carnal thoughts, and somehow calmer. I doubted hed end up looking like some eunuchs, growing fat and feminine. Youd not be able to tell unless you asked him to drop his pants and then youd see his prickle hanging down, with no balls behind it, and youd see the shame in his face at the revelation. I wiped my hands on my trousers. I needed to wash them. I nodded at Alexius. Ill be back later, to check on them, I said, suddenly looking forward to something to eat and then perhaps a quick sleep in the heat of the day before getting back to work. |