BYZANTIUM 20: ALEXANDER’S STORY

Most of the small country estates did it. They would take their better looking young male slaves and train them in household duties – how to serve a table, clean rooms, help in the kitchen and the yards, take messages... Then they’d be sold to the city slave dealers who’d base themselves in small towns for a month or two, scouring the local areas for slaves to buy and then resell at the city markets.

Household slaves were often at a premium for the dealers. A well-trained and good-looking household slave would bring double the money of a field slave or a girl who was trained in weaving. And because they’d often go to small households, where a young male approaching his sexual peak was undesirable, around half of them would have their balls cut by the slavers to make them into eunuchs.

There was often no rhyme nor reason as to which slave was clipped and which not. Sometimes it was simply a matter of numbers. One week a boy would be purchased and sold entire, his young fertility touted to a prospective buyer, the next week the same boy would have instantly gone to the gelding block, simply because the slaver had too few clipped boys to sell and there was a demand to satisfy.

Alexander was around fifteen when he was taken to a travelling slaver who based himself at the beginning of each summer in the small town near the estate where he’d been raised.

He was a handsome boy, black-haired, cream-skinned, more solid than slim, with well-shaped muscles, a proud stance, and more stocky than tall.

Alexander’s master had him washed and barbered, and together they had started early on the half-day journey into the town. Alexander knew he was to be sold. He knew that he was a trained house slave and had value because of that – he was no ordinary yard slave or field hand.

The city slaver had his temporary quarters in a rundown estate with large slave compound. Alex waited outside in the yard while his master went in. He was nervous but excited. He’d heard about the city, its booming markets, fine buildings, and crowds of people. There were wharves filled with trading vessels from other lands. Black slaves from the south mingled with blonde slaves from the north…

For a slave only used to the country with occasional visits to a small town, this was a prospect of excitement.

Then Alex’s master came out and fetched him. He was taken through a wide gate into a big courtyard with high walls. It was near noon, and the yard was hot.

‘This is the boy,’ Alex’s master said.

The slaver nodded and slowly walked around Alex, looking him up and down. He was a hawk-profiled man, middle-aged, with a neat clipped beard. Behind him were two other men, who simply leaned against a wall and watched.

‘He’s house-trained, good at his work. Estate-born. We’ve had no trouble with him, no more than any other boy. He does what he’s told. Healthy. He’s had no sickness.’

‘Good, good,’ the slaver said, ‘let’s have a look at him.’

‘Strip down,’ Alex’s master told him.

Alexhad never done this before - stripped down before a group of men who watched his every move intently. His fingers fumbled about his tunic-belt. Then he lifted his tunic over his head. There was nowhere to put it, so his master reached out for it.

Bare-chested, Alex undid the knot of his loin-cloth, and pulled it free, his prick and balls exposed in the air, the focus now of the slaver’s gaze.

His master took his loin-cloth as well.

He stood up straight as he had been taught and looked ahead.

The slaver made another slow circuit around him. Alexander could almost feel the man’s eyes on him, front and rear. Then he came and stood directly before Alex.

‘What is your name, boy?’

Alex’s mouth was dry. He licked his lips,

‘Alex… Alexander.’ he said.

‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘Three.’

The slaver nodded, then took Alex’s head between his hands, turned it, looked at his ears, made him open his mouth, checked his teeth, then he went down Alex’s body slowly, making him lift up his arms to show his arm-pits with their streaking of black hair, feeling his biceps, squeezing each of his nipples...

Then his hand was in Alex’s groin, rubbing his pubic hair as if it were wool to be tested, cupping Alex’s balls, weighing them, moving them in their skin. Then he lifted Alex’s prick, turning it, pulling back his foreskin.

‘Been put to a girl?’ the slaver asked Alex’s master.

‘Not so much ‘put’... We don’t breed them when they’re that young. But I’m sure he’s played around. Like every boy that age, he’s usually carrying a stiff prick most of the time.’

The slaver laughed a little and nodded.

Alex thought about Miriam, one of the kitchen girls. He had kissed her and felt her breasts and even managed to get his hand between her legs sometimes, but she would never do more.

The slaver continued downward, stroking Alex’s thighs, and his calves.

‘Turn around’ he said to Alex, meeting his eye, his dark gaze somehow hard and unreadable, a man, Alex knew, who expected to be obeyed and who would punish if he wasn’t.

Alex turned around to face the wall. He felt the slavers hands on his shoulders and back.

‘Doesn’t look like he’s been whipped.’

‘No,’ Alex’s master said. ‘I’ve caned him on his rear a few times when he was young, but not for a while. He learns fast.’

Alex could feel the man’s hands on his buttocks, squeezing them slightly.

‘He ever been fucked?’ the slaver asked.

Alex was ashamed by the question.

Surely they could tell that he wasn’t like that?

Alex knew that there were boys who did this and who wanted to do it to each other. And he knew that there were masters who had boys for their bed. He’d never done it, never wanted to, and his master had no interest in boys like that.

The slaver pulled apart Alex’s buttocks.

Alex winced, not so much from the action, but from the fact that he was being seen there where he’d not been seen before...

‘Bend over,’ the slaver said.

Awkwardly Alex bent forward. Somehow he could feel everyone looking at his asshole and he felt his face flushing.

Then the slaver let his buttocks go, and he heard the sound of a spit. The hands returned, placed differently, and he could feel the slaver’s finger rubbing moisture on his asshole and poking at his hole.

It was hard to stay bent over while it was happening. He had to brace his hands on his knees. The slaver’s finger got a little way inside of him, hurting a bit, needing more spit...

Then suddenly it was withdrawn.

‘Stand up,’ he was told. ‘Turn around.’

Alex felt his face flushed as he faced his master, the slaver and the two slaver’s men further back.

‘Let’s talk,’ the slaver said to Alex’s master, and they went together to the shade and a bench on the other side of the yard.

Alex couldn’t hear, but he could tell that they were bargaining over his price. There was a to and fro of words, and heads were shaken, gestures of exasperation made... It was just like when his master made bids at the markets.

The master had told him that this sale was just a temporary thing, and that the slaver would take him into the city where he’d be sold to a new master, maybe someone wealthy, in a big house, with gardens and baths with pools of heated water, and possibly with many slaves, young and old, and girls...

Then he saw an agreement made and the slaver counting out pieces of silver into Alex’s master’s hand.

He knew that he’d been sold and his heart leapt with sudden regret. He just wanted at that moment to return to the estate and its known people and familiar routine, the only place he’d ever known...

His master came over to him.

‘You got us a good price, boy,’ he said. ‘Now do as you are told for your new master. Do the estate proud. ‘

He nodded emphatically.

‘Yes, sir,’ Alex said and then watched his master cross the yard and leave.

He felt alone in this place, standing naked in the yard while the slaver spoke to his men on the other side by the high white-washed wall. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but he knew that he was the subject of their conversation.

Then they came over to him, all three of them.

‘What do you think?’ the slaver asked.

One of the other men, the one with a flat, hard face, walked around Alex, then stood in front of him. He lifted Alex’s chin, then cursorily examined his body, feeling his muscles, but then just slipped his hand between Alex’s thighs and groped at his balls and lifted his prick.

Alex disliked the indignity. This man wasn’t like the slaver. He could even be a slave himself.

‘Either we keep him as he is, or we put him with the other one we got this morning... He’d probably breed well. He’s got that look.’ the slaver said.

Alex did not like the other man’s touch, its roughness, its contempt somehow... It made Alex feel as if he were an animal in a stockyard. The slaver had seemed interested, at least, but this man was different.

He thought about being bred though. He thought about being put to a girl where he’d be free to do as he wished, every night if he wanted, and he liked the thought…

‘I don’t mind either way,’ the slaver told the man with his hand pulling down again on Alex’s balls.

The man nodded and looked like he was thinking.

‘I’d put him with the other boy we got this morning,’ he finally said. ‘They’re both healthy. Fit and well. They’ll heal fast.’

The slaver shrugged as if it didn’t matter.

‘Right then, put him with the other one.’

Alex didn’t know what being was being decided, but he knew that a decision had just been made.

‘Get the tie,’ the slaver ordered the other slave who had been waiting, and he soon returned with two long leather thongs.

Then the slaver stood back and watched the two men tie Alex’s hands together. The leather thongs were wrapped around his wrists and tied tight.

Alex was puzzled, but then everything was different here. Why was he having his hands tied though? He didn’t understand.

‘This way,’ ordered the man Alex didn’t like, and he took Alex by the arm, and followed by the other slave they crossed the yard, went through a wide door into a shadowed passage, dimmer and cooler, then a wooden door with a barred peephole at its top was unbolted, and Alex was simply pushed in.

It wasn’t as dark inside as Alex had thought.

There was a big floor-to-roof barring of thick planks at the opposite end of the cell which let in the light, and another wider door beside the bars.

There was boy standing there, naked as well, his hands tied in front of him just like Alex’s hands.

‘He just brought you?’ the other boy asked, with an edge to his voice.

He was a little older than Alex, ash-blond hair, gold-tanned on his arms, legs, and face, but white-skinned where the sun hadn’t reached.

His pubic hair was a light brown, and his prick was heavier and longer than Alex’s.

His tied wrists were held up near one shoulder and Alex, free now to move, found himself doing the same. Holding them there made the tight binding easier to manage.

‘Yes,’ Alex answered. ‘My master sold me.’

The other boy’s grey eyes were wide, almost panicked.

‘Did they catch you with a girl too?’ the other boy asked him.

Alex frowned.

‘No,’ he said, not understanding the question.

‘You know why you are here?’ the other boy asked.

‘They’re going to take us into the city and sell us,’ Alex ventured.

‘First they’re going to cut our balls off.’

The words came out in a rush.

Alex blinked. He could hear the tension in the other boy’s voice.

He knew that some slaves did have their balls cut and that they were called eunuchs.

His old masters sister had visited once and she had a boy to serve her, who some of the other slaves had told Alex had his balls cut off, to make him safe for his mistress, so he wouldn’t grow into a slave who could one day want to fuck her or her daughters...

The eunuch boy was about thirteen or fourteen, but Alex wasn’t working in the house then, and hadn’t had anything to do with him, only glimpsing him at a distance.

Then slaves on the estate had sometimes talked of other masters and how slaves were gelded because they had misbehaved or because some masters wanted them in their beds, to fuck them up their asses and treat them like girls...

But Alex didn’t know why this should have anything to do with him, here, in this cell, with this boy with his wide eyes and air of panic.

He didn’t know what to say.

‘It’s why we are here,’ the boy insisted.

Alex wanted to say that they were there because they were on the way to the city to be sold...

‘How do you know?’ he finally asked, knowing too that despite himself his face was screwed up in a look of disbelief.

‘My master caught me with one of his girl-slaves. That’s why he sold me. He told the slaver and the slaver said that they’d fix things, that they’d cut my balls so it wouldn’t happen again.’

‘They didn’t say that about me,’ Alex protested.

He wanted to say that he’d never even had a girl but he didn’t.

Alex walked to the other side of the cell and looked out through the bars, into another yard. He could only see a bit, an old fig-tree on the corner, a flaking whitewashed wall.

He didn’t want to be in this cell with this boy.

Maybe the boy was going to be gelded, maybe he had been making a nuisance of himself with his master’s girls, but whatever happened to him didn’t have anything to do with Alex.

Then he suddenly remembered the words of the man he didn’t like, in the yard a few minutes before, lifting up his balls, pulling on them, and saying ‘I’d put him with the other boy we got this morning. They’re both healthy. Fit and well. They’ll both heal fast.’

‘They’ll both heal fast,’ he repeated in his head...

He turned around and looked at the blonde boy, who stared back at him.

‘Not me,’ Alex insisted, lifting his chin and staring the other boy in the eye.

He needed to piss now. He’d been holding it in since they’d reached the city. Now, he needed to let it out. He went to the corner of the room where there was a clay pot of tufts of goat or sheep wool to wipe yourself if you needed to, and a hole in the floor. He peered down it. There was the sound of a trickle of water below in the dark.

It was awkward managing his prick with his tied hands, but he managed to point it in the right direction, pull his foreskin back a little, uncovering his prick head, to gratefully let a stream of piss jet into the dark hole.

Then he shook it free of any drops.

Turning around again, he saw the other boy, sitting now, leaning against the cell-wall, his tied hands resting on his knees, staring hard into nothing.

Alex could see up between the boy’s thighs, to his rounded balls and his heavy prick loose in its nest of light-brown hair.

Maybe they were going to geld this boy…

He crossed the cell and sat down near the boy, still frowning himself as he tried to puzzle things out.

‘When the slave comes to check on us, ask him. He’ll tell you. He told me,’ the other boy said, suddenly, his jaw set in a strange look that was both hopeless and determined.

The wall behind Alex’s back and the dusty floor under his buttocks were cool against his skin. Alex found that the only comfortable position was like the other boy, his knees up, his bound wrists resting on them, his thighs apart, fresher air around his prick and balls.

‘What’s your name,’ he asked the boy.

‘Dion,’ the boy finally said.

‘I’m Alex.’

They looked at each other.

‘I don’t want to be cut,’ Dion said, hopelessly, looking at Alex.

Then there was movement at the front bars and a man was looking in at them both.

‘Ask him,’ Dion said.

Alex didn’t want to ask, but he stood up, his bound hands hampering his rise, and walked to the front bars.

The man was old, with a wrinkled face, and a scar that went down one cheek. He studied Alex as he approached, his bound hands held up at this shoulder.

‘He said...’ Alex began, ‘he said...’

The words wouldn’t come out.

The old man just looked at him.

‘He said that they are going to... going to make us into... into... that they were going to cut our balls.’

The old man spat on the ground.

‘You just do as you are told,’ he said. ‘Just as the master says. It’ll be over quicker than you can think.’

He grinned, showing a mouth with only a few teeth left.

‘You’re not the first boys he’s done. You’re not going to be the last. Just do as you are told. Fighting won’t get you anything but bruises.’

Then he turned and walked away.

Alex felt his heart sink. His thoughts were filled with rushing pictures and ideas. He imagined sharp knives, boy’s balls grabbed in men’s hands and pulled, flopping pricks, tense thighs, the slaver he’d just seen bent over, looking between their legs...

‘See I told you,’ Dion’s hurt voice came from behind him, and Alex turned to look at him, still there, leaning on the wall.

‘He didn’t say. He didn’t say,’ Alex protested, his newly broken voice suddenly regaining the cracks and pitches he thought he’d left behind months ago.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement, and there were two young slaves at the bars in the front peering in.

They just studied Alex and Dion, before someone called and they moved off.

‘What’s going to happen?’ Alex asked Dion.

Dion shook his head.

Then the old man was back, standing in front of the bars.

‘You both had pisses?’ he asked. ‘Go and have them. Empty yourselves good and proper.’

Then he turned and out of sight again.

‘I’ve already had one,’ Alex said, wondering why they’d been told to piss, not liking it.

Everything was happening too fast when he had things to think about, things he didn’t want to think about...

Dion grunted but in a minute or two he stood up, awkwardly because with his tied hands he couldn’t push himself, and he went to the hole in the corner.

Alex watched him manage his prick with his bound wrists, then Alex waited, but no urine came for a minute.

He was side-on to Alex, and Alex could see how much his prick was bigger and thicker than Alex’s...

Dion adjusted himself, looked upwards at the wall, and pushed forward with his thighs, and then finally he pissed, a heavy stream which jetted into the hole for a long minute.

Then he came back and sat by Alex, like before.

Alex didn’t know what to say anymore.

‘They caught you with a girl?’ he found himself asking.

Dion looked at him. Alex could see him swallow. He almost looked like he was going to cry.

‘My master found us when we were doing it. I was in her and everything. He just came in. He wasn’t even supposed to be home. He just belted me around the head and hauled me off her. I was near to spurting when he did it and when he pulled me off her, I did, and it went all over the place.’

Alex wished he’d had a girl. He’d wanted to. He’d wanted to slip his prick into that silky smooth warm wet place he’d only ever fingered and even then not for long.

There was a long silence in the close air of the cell.

He thought again of Miriam, and how she would let him kiss her, his lips on her hot tight mouth, his hands fumbling with her dress, but then stopping him, saying ‘no’, that he couldn’t…

‘Then... then he brought me here, to sell me, because he said he couldn’t trust me anymore,’ Dion said. ‘He told me it was my own fault that they would clip my nuts so I wouldn’t be able to do it again.’

There was nothing Alex could say, his thoughts still filled with a torrent of thoughts, a girl being fucked by Dion, her breasts and thighs, the sounds he had sometimes heard from his master’s room...

Alex felt his own prick stir at that moment, like it was going to get stiff, but it only rose a little, out from his body a fraction, filled just enough to make it feel clumsy.

Then when he looked over at Dion, he could see Dion’s prick had risen almost straight up between his thighs.

He could see Dion’s foreskin, hooding close his prick head.

They both were thinking about the girl, Alex thought, and things like that, the secret places of girls, their wet slits, the push and the push, and their hidden hair streaking between their legs...

‘What was her name?’ he asked.

‘Helena. Her name was Helena. She was older than me but she said I was better than the others... she liked the colour of my hair. We even thought about running away together…’

Then there was another movement at the front of the cell, then at the door, and the sound of locks being lifted.

Then the hatchet-faced man Alex didn’t like came in. Alex and Dion stood up hastily, Dion’s prick jutting up from his groin and Alex’s sticking out in front, both their tied hands in front as if to cover themselves.

There were two of the other slaves behind the man.

‘Blondie first,’ the hard-faced man said, and the two slaves went for Dion, who backed into a corner, making noises that were like a wail or a cry.

Alex himself backed into the other corner, pushing himself into the wedge between the walls and watched wide-eyed as the slaves grabbed Dion and half-walked him, half-dragged him, as Dion yelled, right across the cell and out through the big open door.

Alex saw them cross the other side of the barred front, Dion’s prick waving and shaking in the air as he struggled, until they moved out of sight, while the hatchet-faced man bolted the cell door before following them.

Alex found he was almost panting with his heart beating like it would burst.

He almost wanted to piss again but he knew there was nothing left in him to piss.

He crossed the cell to the big wooden bars and looked out. Out there was still only the empty stretch of yard, the fig tree and the white flaking wall.

But he could hear Dion yelling, away somewhere that he couldn’t see, until his cries were suddenly cut off, as if someone had put something in his mouth or he’d gone into another yard.

At first he thought the men would come back for him straight away, and he was expecting them any moment to cross the stretch of yard in front of him to the door but they didn’t.

His stomach was clenched now, and his prick had shrunk back to usual.

He walked around the cell, not because he thought about it, but just because he did and it was somehow better than just being still...

Then he leaned against the cool back wall, his cheek against the whitewash, and he felt his eyes prick with tears.

They couldn’t be going to cut him, like Dion said, he thought.

He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d never been caught with a girl. He’d never even pushed his prick into a girl. He’d always done as he was ordered. He hadn’t even been caned for a long time.

They must have got it all wrong and they were cutting Dion’s balls because he’d been caught fucking a girl, but they wouldn’t do anything to Alex, because he hadn’t done anything.

His bound hands and the leather thongs were right in front of his prick and balls, as if to shield them.

Then there was just him, the empty cell, the hole in the corner, the bare walls, and the dusty floor for a long while.

He almost wanted to go to the bars again, to look out into the yard, but then he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, so he just stood there in the back corner, thinking about Dion and what might be happening to him...

Alex had never asked anyone how boys were nutted. No-one had ever said. He just knew they cut some slave’s balls off just like they did horses. He’d never seen that either.

He felt his ball-sac tighten around his nuts, drawing them up close to him. The whitewash was cool on his cheek.

He thought about trying to piss again because he thought he might want to, but he knew he would just stand there, over the hole in the floor, too close to the door, and nothing would come.

He didn’t know why they gelded boys. Someone said it made them quiet and stopped them chasing after girls, but he’d not listened really. He’d never paid attention to the talk.

He imagined having nothing where his balls now were...

But he was sure the old slave had got it wrong, that it wasn’t going to happen to him.

The old man was probably saying it just to scare him, just to play a game...

And it would hurt, he knew. It would be worse than when you feel on a tree branch or a fence-bar, and hurt your nuts…

Alex remembered all the hurt when other boys in play-fight had kneed him there, and the sick feeling that would turn his stomach along with the pain.

Then eventually, after a time, there was a movement again at the front of the cell, and Alex looked up to see the hatchet-faced man come to the door, followed by the two men who’d taken Dion away.

He pushed himself into the corner of the cell as if to hide or to make himself invisible, but the blank-faced man just opened the door and the two slaves walked in behind him.

They were strong slaves, nineteen or twenty years old, both big, and their eyes focused on him as they came across the cell as if they expected him to run or to fight.

He heard himself crying out as they got to him, then in a moment he was pulled from the wall, their hands hard on his bound arms.

They dragged him across the cell, his feet walking sometimes, lifted off the ground other times. He could hear the two men breathing as they hauled him out the door into the sunlight that made him blink, then over a big wide space of open air towards the end of the courtyard he’d never seen, where a mustard-coloured canvas roof that hung out from the wall on poles, and shaded tables and things...

There were other men there.

Alex recognised the slave-dealer standing to one side watching. There was a young boy too, around Alex’s age, and two more slaves at the back in the shadow.

He found himself yelling, surprised by his own noise as he tried to struggle, his cries sounding almost like they came from someone else, not him.

Then as they got close he could see a brazier with coals in it with a heat-haze shimmering above it, a big heavy-legged wooden table with thick legs with ropes around each of them about halfway up...

Then he was turned about unexpectedly and suddenly he could see right back to the fig tree at the other end of the yard as he was pulled backwards now until he hit the edge of the table with enough force to hurt his buttocks, then hauled up the surface, his legs suddenly kicking and scissoring in the air, parted, his cock and balls somehow loose there in the middle, while hands were grabbing him from all directions, it seemed...

A minute later his mouth was filled with a damp and dirty-tasting rag, his arms were stretched above his head, tied to something, and his legs were spread wide as wide as they would go, with his buttocks resting close to the table edge, bent at the knee and his calves tied hard to the table legs...

His thighs hurt at the groin, nearly stretched wide in a straight line, his muscles taut and pulled.

He turned his head and they were all there, the slaver, the hatchet-faced man, the four bigger slaves and the boy who was looking down at Alex with a half-smile on his face, showing the tips of his canine teeth.

He was sure now that they were going to cut him, that they were going to take his nuts away, and that he couldn’t think any different... There was no other reason why he was here.

Then he thought about boys who had too tight foreskins. Sometimes they had to be circumcised. His old master had done it to one of the little boys. Maybe they were just only going to do that to him, even though his own foreskin moved smoothly…

Lifting his head and looking down over his chest, his belly, the small patch of black hair above his prick, with the tight tension of his tied-apart legs which were too far apart and hurt in his hip joints, he saw the slaver standing there between his spread thighs looking down at his balls.

Then he watched and felt it as the slaver took his nuts in one hand, his prick in another, and pulled slowly on both, almost gently. He could feel the roughness of the man’s hands on his tender skin.

All the other slaves were behind Alex now and above him so he couldn’t see them, except for the boy who stood to the slaver’s right, watching intently, as the slaver’s hands kept up their massage and stretch.

‘Can’t believe how cheaply we got him,’ the slaver said, looking above Alex, and then the hatchet-faced man came into view.

‘They just don’t know the value of their boys,’ the other man said. ‘And we should keep it that way.’

He laughed.

‘Once this one is nutted, he should get us, what, do you think?’

‘Eighty? Maybe ninety?’

The slaver shrugged as if the question was unanswerable.

‘Won’t get as much as Blondie.’

The hatchet-faced man shook his head and spat.

‘Nuh, Blondie’ll get us one, maybe one ten,’ the slaver said.

His hands continued their kneading and pulling. Alex felt his balls loosen a little from their tight bunch. He prick was limp in the man’s other hand.

‘Thought Blondie might have spurted for us, that prick of his waving around. But it didn’t happen.’

‘Not like you, Lucas’, the slaver said, turning to the boy beside him. ‘You covered the place when we did you, didn’t you?’

The boy grinned, showing his teeth and his gums.

Alex had time in the middle of his scattered thoughts to realise that the boy must be a eunuch, that he’d had his balls cut too, and that once he’d been where Alex was, tied to a table, his thighs stretched wide, the slaver standing between them...

He squeezed his eyes shut.

The feel of the man’s fingers didn’t stop. They pulled on his balls, eased and let them go. His other hand tugged gently at Alex’s prick.

‘Got the cord, boy?’

Alex opened his eyes onto the light and the bright.

The boy, the eunuch, handed the slaver a long thin leather thong, and the slaver took his hands away from Alex’s balls and his prick, to take it.

Alex lifted his head to see. The gag in his mouth had sucked all the saliva from his mouth.

He watched, but he couldn’t really see what happening as the slaver looked intently down at Alex’s groin, but he could feel him push the leather up under his balls, then he could see the ends of the leather thong as the man tied a knot and pulled it closed.

Alex could feel the leather string tighten, high up, where his balls joined his body. It was almost ticklish.

Then the slave-dealer stopped tightening it, and Alex could feel his fingers pushing the leather loop up as high as it could go, close to his body, making sure it was all the way up there.

Then he pulled it tight...

Alex jerked as the taut leather bit into his the skin of his scrotum, pulling it together in a round clench, gripped hard by looping knot.

He opened his eyes, but the pressure stayed there, wound round the skin of his balls, ringing it, closed and clinched. He tried to shake it off by lifting his hips but he could barely change position and the movement did nothing.

The tight knotting feel went all the way up into his stomach.

‘Lucas,’ said the slaver. ‘Tend the iron.’

The boy disappeared.

And then the slaver walked out of Alex’s sight, followed by the blank faced other man.

All Alex could see was the edge of the faded yellow canvas awning above him, the blue sky, the walls of the courtyard, the roofs, and the fig-tree. He listened but the noises he heard made no sense, there was a high scraping sound, round and round and round…

The tight knot of leather around his balls was warm now, holding him gripped, his balls forced unnaturally together and held out from his body.

Somehow Alex’s prick began to fill. He felt it grow heavy, lift a little, then stretch, lift more, move, and extend itself.

He didn’t want it to grow big but it was nothing he could stop.

The loop of leather around his balls was too tight and this tightness seemed to make him get stiff.

His prick reached its full-length now. He could see its head facing him, above his short black belly-curls and, unseen, the bunch of his ball below, pushed out into space between his legs, hanging out there like a bunch of two grapes…

He hitched his hips again, but nothing eased the grip of the taut leather around the skin of his nuts.

The scraping, rounding sound behind him finished.

‘The other boy still good?’ he heard.

‘He’s good. Doesn’t like it, but no more than usual. Andros is in there with him.’

Then the slaver came into view with the eunuch boy beside him.

Alex looked at the boy again. He looked just like any other boy. He was handsome. Girls would like him. But if Alex had heard right, he had no nuts, under the front of his blue tunic, and when he was cut, when they’d taken his balls, he had spurted, the slaver had said...

But Dion hadn’t. They’d thought Dion would, but he hadn’t.

Alex didn’t understand how and why you would spurt when your balls were being cut, but then his own prick was stiff now, above his sweat-damp stomach, stretching hard and full up towards his navel…

Alex’s thighs hurt more, spread too far, too wide, and held there by the ropes around his shins so he couldn’t move them.

The slaver looked down between Alex’s legs.

‘Grown a bit,’ he grunted, ‘and well-shaped too.’

Alex felt despair take him now. Somehow he knew that nothing he could do now would change anything and that whatever was going to happen would happen.

‘Right, boy,’ the slaver said, and Alex was suddenly surprised because he was being addressed.

He looked up into the slaver’s face.

‘We’re going to nut you, make you a eunuch. It’ll hurt for a bit but it will be over quick. Lucas?’

The boy moved close to the table.

‘Show him.’

Lucas unknotted the tie on his trousers, lifted his tunic with one hand, and pulled his trousers down with the other.

Alex could see the boy’s flat pale stomach, his gleaming black pubic hair in a neat patch, his tan-skinned prick which hung straight down, but there was nothing, no balls, behind it...

‘We’re only going to take your balls, boy, nothing else. Lift it up, Lucas’

Lucas lifted his prick and Alex could see just a tab of skin where the boy’s balls had been.

He didn’t want to be like that. He didn’t want to have his balls cut off. He struggled again against the too-tight ropes.

The slaver turned back to Alex.

‘We’ll do you just as quick and neat as that. Don’t you worry.’

Then as Lucas readjusted his clothes, Alex felt the slavers hand grip his balls and pull them, while his other hand curled round his now stiff prick which seemed almost too sensitive to the touch.

The slaver moved his hand up and down, just like he was going to pull Alexis off.

Alex felt the skin of his prick move up and over his prick head, while the slavers hands tickled and pulled on his balls.

‘A good hard little rod, he’s got,’ the slaver said.

‘Not as big as the other though,’ the other man grunted.

And Alex saw everyone, the slaver, Lucas, and the flat-faced slave, watching.Probably the other slaves he knew were standing out of sight above his head, were looking as well.

The slaver kept on pulling his prick in an easy motion.

The feeling seemed to descend into his nuts and swell there, like he was about to spurt.

They’d said, he remembered again, that the boy, Lucas, had spurted when he was cut, the seed going everywhere, and that Dion hadn’t...

Everything was turning over in his head.

Lucas had no balls now, that he’d been clipped just like Alex was going to be.

It wasn’t fair, he thought. Why were they doing it to him? He hadn’t been disobedient. He hadn’t got his prick up a girl when he wasn’t supposed to. He hadn’t stolen food from the kitchen. Why was he having his nuts cut?

‘Right, Lucas, hold his prick.’

Lucas leaned forward and took Alex’s prick in his hand, holding it tightly, but not too tightly.

His hand was warm on Alex’s stiff penis.

‘Got him? Don’t want it getting loose,’

‘Yes, master,’ Lucas said.

His voice was light with only a small roughness to it, like it hadn’t quite broken.

‘And keep it pointed up, not like the one the other day.’

Alex felt the slaver change his grip and pull more on his balls, pulling hard, more than he’d done before.

Alex lifted his head to see, biting on the gag, as the slaver stretched his nuts there, as far as the skin would go.

He could feel his skin sweating in the sun.

He knew that he was right on the edge of losing his balls, having them cut off, taken away from him, but for a second he hoped against hope that maybe they’d stop, and say it was all just play, that they were just teaching him a lesson...

The hatchet-faced man spat again, the hoick sounding in the quietness.

Then the slaver pulled a knife from his belt. It was small and Alex barely glimpsed it, curved like a pruning knife, before it was down between his left thigh and his balls.

He could feel the flat of the cool metal blade on his sweat-damp skin, moving up it as the slaver positioned it by his nuts.

Then, inside, he could feel a familiar pressure begin, like he was going to spurt, and he squirmed, his slight motion managing to spear his prick through Lucas’ fist a little, back and forth, with each squirm.

The knife moved again and he could feel the edge now on his balls.

The slaver pulled harder on them and they were stretched more than he’d thought they could be stretched, tugging things inside him, with the sharp blade scraping his skin right at the top, by the tight leather tie.

‘Hold him tight’

Lucas moved his hand on Alex’s prick, wrapping round it, and then there was a bright sharp searing pain.

At the same time, he felt the spunk move up his prick and the overwhelming pleasure of delivering that load came along with the pain and the stinging razor-cut.

He screamed in his throat, his eyes shutting, the spray of warm semen landing all over his belly and chest, his head thrown back hard onto the table, banging there, and down below the skin of his balls parting and suddenly free.

He was still crying out, his gulping cry blocked by the dry gag no matter how he tried to let it out.

‘That was a spurt and half,’ he heard the hatchet-faced man say, even though the words weren’t taking meaning in his mind that was only filled with the savage, raw feeling between his legs.

Fingers touched his stomach and messed in the seed there.

‘Thick too.’

‘Too late to breed him’ the other man laughed.

‘Lucas. Iron,’ he heard the slaver order.

‘I think we’ll get more than eighty for him. He’s well-built. There is that ass too. There’ll be some that like it.’

The pain was a place between Alex’s legs, a small focused place that now had grown and taken over everything.

His head was filled with the hurt, but somehow he also knew the feel of the seed pooling on his wet stomach and the slump of his prick, and the ache of his wide thighs with the sun on that white skin there.

His jaw ached biting on the dry rag.

‘The one we got yesterday,’ the slaver was saying. ‘ Black hair. Dark eyes. The one that has just started getting his belly-hair. I was looking at him pissing just before. I was thinking maybe we’ll nip his little nuts too. I‘ll have another look at him. Maybe do him tomorrow. One more would be good… Lucas! What are you doing?’

‘Coming, master.’

Alex lay there, stretched out in the afternoon’s sun, eyes screwed tight shut, his wide legs spread too far, the pain a jagged bright thing between them.

‘Hold his prick.’

Alex felt a hand on his sperm-wet penis, grasping it.

‘Don’t make faces. Just hold it.’

The hand about his prick gripped him more, and pulled it upwards, and a new glance of hurt from the old place lanced up Alex’s body.

Then there was a feel of glowing heat on the skin of his thighs, and suddenly another pain between his legs, a searing one, a new one, completely different.

His body jerked in the bonds that spread him on the table, and there was smell a smell of burning, as the new white-hot pain overlaid the other one, wave after wave.

‘It’s all over now, boy,’ the slaver said to him. ‘It’s all done. Rest easy. We’ll take you down in a minute.’

But Alex wasn’t hearing the words anywhere in his thoughts, which were now only occupied with the emptiness and the hurt and the bright pain and the shame between his out-stretched thighs