He accompanied our master as a servant when our master left the estate. He was given gifts by our mistress – a silver earring, a uniform-tunic of fine fabric. He was seldom disciplined for laxities that would have meant punishment for other household slaves. And so it was that he gained the belief in himself and his new confidence meant that he embarked upon a number of schemes which enabled him to gain his own way in many matters, both great and small.

For example, the master’s major-domo was a slave called Simeon. Alone of all the master’s household servants he saw through my brother’s schemes. Simeon was responsible for my brother’s few punishments that left him out of favour with the master and mistress for weeks until he could regain their trust.

One day my brother mentioned to our master casually that he’d seen Simeon sewing something into his mattress. The matter was investigated and a small silver bowl which had gone missing a week earlier was found in that hiding place. Simeon was disgraced. He was whipped and lost his position in the household, being sent to the farm where he was set to work in the butcher’s yard.

It takes no great skill to uncover the real story and just who had really stolen the bowl and who had lied to the master. Later when everything was discovered our master went to Simeon and begged his forgiveness and he was restored to his former position in the household.

There were numerous successful schemes of this sort and with each one my brother’s position in our master’s and mistress’ affections and trust seemed ever more secure.

Late one summer’s afternoon, when the household had retired in the heat of the day to sleep, our mistress’ chief maid, discovered she could not sleep. Instead she went to a linen room with the intention of sorting out those items that had become shabby. While there she could clearly hear, through some freak of the building, sounds and conversation that disturbed her.

It did not take her long to discover the real source.

The young household girls had a dormitory to themselves. No male was permitted there and the doors were locked when the girls slept. However my brother had discovered a climbable tree and an easy window to enter and over a period of weeks he’d set up his own harem there.

He was dark-haired, well-featured with a solid body despite his youth. The servant girls took little persuasion to indulge him in his passions and he had deflowered four of them.

The maid ran straight to our mistress and within minutes my brother was caught in the act. When the door was opened, it revealed him, completely naked, having sex with one of the younger girls while the others, in various states of undress, watched his performance.

Alex was taken and locked in a small room off one of the old courtyards. The house was in an uproar and, as Alex had boasted to the girls of his many achievements, his deeds were discovered and his true nature was revealed.

Our master, all those who saw him that day testified, was white with fury.

Two days later a stranger and his three slaves arrived at the house and that afternoon Alex and the three other younger male members of the household staff had their balls cut to make them eunuchs. The stranger was a slave-dealer who was often called in by slave-owners to geld boys when they reached a certain age, or to punish them.

Manuel, one of the older house servants, saw it all. They did it on the butcher’s block where ropes had been tied to the legs. One by one the struggling boys were dragged from their cell and the slaver tied their stones and then cut their balls with a small curved knife like the knives used for pruning vines.

He said that some of the boys, after their balls had been tied, got stiff prickles and that when they were cut some of them even spurted seed as it was being done.

My brother was the last slave to be cut. Manuel said that he was half-stiff even when he was being dragged to the block and after he was tied his prickle became even harder. His was the largest out of all the prickles of the boys cut that day.

Because of his crimes the slaver had been instructed the cut Alex slowly so that he’d know the pain. Manuel said that as the slaver took his ease cutting Alex’s balls from between his legs, Alex shot spurt after spurt of semen. And he’d been left ungagged so that the household servants could hear his pleas and cries and then his pained shouts as he lost his manhood to the slaver’s blade.

Alex alone of all the slaves did not return to the household. He was sold. Manuel was one of the those who accompanied Simeon to sell Alex at the slave-markets. He said that Alex was stripped down and made to stand with the other new eunuchs, his prickle dangling in the manner of all eunuchs when there are no balls to back it.

Alex was perused by a number of buyers. They examined every part of his body. He had to lift his prickle to show the emptiness behind it. He even had to bend over so that his asshole could be fingered and it was one of these men whose bid closed the auction, a man with a reputation for owning beautiful young eunuchs who not only were his servants but who shared his bed at night.

I was twelve when this happened and while I knew the basic story, I did not know all the details. By the time I was thirteen, however, I had discovered the near complete story. My resemblance to my brother was often remarked upon and people told me parts of the story as a consequence of being reminded by my presence of a detail or something they had been told concerning my brother

But there was one detail I had not been told.

On the day Alex and the other slaves had been gelded, our master told Simeon that he wanted no repeat of things. He told Simeon that as soon as my voice broke, the slaver should be called and my balls cut. The same sentence was imposed upon my younger brother. Our master was also firm on the fact tha tunder no circumstances should we be bred because, as he said, our blood was tainted.

Our natures were too close to Alex’s, the master told Simeon, and there had proved to be only one way of dealing with it.

In my ignorance, I lived my small existence as best I could. I had been set work in the household kitchens where I learned the art of bread-making with our master’s baker. The fact that I was Alex’s brother meant on one hand that I was watched more intently and quickly punished for any mistake, but on the other I found that many slaves secretly aided me in many ways.

Alex’s audacity had meant that he was a secret hero to some of the estate slaves, despite his end. So I found myself part of many things – stealing the master’s wines from the store, having other slaves conceal my absences when I felt like not working, and keeping a cache of small valuable objects that I could exchange for money should I ever run away from the estate. And as I grew older I became a certain object of attention from the girls of the estate.

When I turned fifteen, my voice began to break, going back and forth from a boy’s treble to a young male’s husky tone several times a day. I took pride in my developing body. Waking in the morning in the dormitory I could see that my own stiff prickle, when compared to those of the other boys, was of a good size. I checked my appearance in the reflective waters of pools or in the polished metal of the kitchen utensils. I prided myself on my proportions.

I was already gaining experience in sexual matters. One day I had taken a shorter route between the kitchen garden and the house and discovered that I was not the only one to do so. One of the household girls, Miriam used the same rough path. Our first accidental meeting was followed by others that had been arranged and our shy words gave way to explorative touches and more focused desires.

She allowed me to lift her skirt and discover the slight-haired slit she possessed instead of a prickle. She let me finger her there and feel its moist slip. She, in turn, lifted my tunic and stroked my prickle till it roused fit to burst and then brought me off so that I gasped and shot my load on the leaves of the oleanders that concealed us.

I had just returned to the kitchen after such an encounter. Miriam had let me rub my prickle-head against her wet little slit and the proximity to the passage I so desired to penetrate had been more than I could bear but a nearby noise started us and we both rearranged our clothes and separately fled.

When I made my reappearance, Manuel was waiting for me.

‘Where have you been, boy,’ he said, ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

I had never really liked Manuel. He was around thirty years of age and he worked closely with Simeon. Every story he told me about my brother seemed to involve a subtle relish of the matter that I did not like. I also felt that he was one of those slaves who watched me like a hawk.

Now, this day, I seemed to sense something else in his manner. His eyes almost shone as he told me peremptorily to follow him, that Simeon required my presence.

Instead of going to the small room that was Simeon’s office and where the household accounts were compiled and bills paid, we went through the back courtyards to one of the smaller cool rooms that had once been used to store meat but now was nearly empty except for a stack of straw mattresses.

Simeon was accompanied by a man I’d never seen before. He was dark-haired and dark eyed with a short scar on one cheek. Two strange slaves around twenty years old stood back against one wall, as did a good-looking black-haired boy around my own age. Manuel waited at the door of the large room with its meat-hooks still in place high above us.

‘Come here, boy,’ said Simeon.

I went and stood before him.

The stranger studied me up and down.

‘How old is he?’ he asked.

Simeon shrugged.

‘Fifteen - at a guess.’

‘He’s well-made,’ the stranger commented.‘Very well made.’

‘No sickness or fevers of late?’ he asked Simeon.

Simeon looked at me and shook his head.

Inside I felt that something was wrong. Nothing quite made sense. Simeon’s glance had a sense of triumph in it, or at least that is what it seemed to indicate to me. I felt as if I was in water and I was out of my depth.

‘I’ll get him stripped down so you can see him,’ Simeon said to the stranger.

‘Undress, boy,’ he ordered. ‘All your clothes.’

As I lifted my tunic over my head and then undid the knot on my loincloth, I thought perhaps I was being sold. It wasn’t uncommon for our master to sell off extra slaves and I knew they were stripped for examination and checked by their buyers. I’d seen two or three young boys or girls, roped together being taken from the estate by purchasers in recent months.

‘Come on boy, don’t dawdle,’ Simeon snapped and I peeled off my loincloth and stood naked in that room. I could feel every eye upon me. I glanced down lest my prickle had some tel- tale sign on it that would betray my recent actions with Miriam, but it looked exactly the same as normal.

I faced Simeon and the stranger who looked me up and down once more, then walked around me. He stopped behind me and I seemed to feel his steady gaze upon my back. When he stood in front of me again, he lifted up my chin with his hand, and studied my face for a moment, before turning my head and checking my ears, asking me to open my mouth so he could look into it. He made me raise my arms above my head and he checked my armpits with his careful fingers. Then his hands moved downwards and my prickle tightened a little at the thought that he might reach it.

He fingered my navel, tested the flat of my stomach, teased and tugged my dark pubic hair, then reached down under me and curved his hand around my balls. It startled me. No man had ever touched me there and stories I’d been told flew into my mind about those men whose pleasure involved forcing young male slaves to submit to their desires and my stomach knotted at the thought that such a man might buy me for his pleasure.

The stranger lightly weighed my balls in the cupped palm of his hand, then he fingered them, moving my stones in their tender sac. Next he lifted my prickle. It was soft and he turned it and slid my foreskin back from its head. The warmth of his hands somehow made my prickle start to swell a little.

‘Fast off the mark,’ the stranger commented to Simeon who did not respond.

I was grateful my prickle no more than stirred briefly. I tried not to think about it lest it swell more.

Then the stranger moved behind me. I could feel his hand roaming down my back and down towards my buttocks. I suddenly thought of the young male slaves who I had been told worked at the public baths in the city, where strangers paid their owners to take them into private cubicles where they were buggered, spreading their legs to let men’s pricks into themselves, time after time in the day, men spurting inside of them, never freed to explore their natural desires with girls…

He gripped my buttocks, as if to test them, then he pulled them apart. I felt my anus tighten. I waited for a finger to touch me there, but it never came. Instead, after a long minute, he released my buttocks and I felt the familiar concealment of that part of my body.

The stranger nodded at Simeon.

‘He’s in good condition,’ he said. ‘He’s a very fine boy.’

There seemed to be something else that wasn’t being said but I did not know what it was.

Simeon exchanged a look with the stranger who turned and gestured to the two sturdy slaves who had been standing against the other wall. They came up to him but I was surprised because they each grasped my upper arms in a firm grip. My first impulse was to shake them off for their hold was hard and tight.

‘Go with them,’ Simeon ordered and I felt myself pulled and drawn across the room, walking naked between the two slaves, out the door into the butcher’s yard where they slaughtered the sheep and the goats.

The ground was pitted against my bare feet. The day was overcast and cicadas buzzed desultorily in the distance. I wasn’t sure what was happening. We moved towards the big butcher’s block, dark stained, pitted with knife and axe cuts, somehow smelling of deep ingrained blood.

Suddenly everything came together, the block, my brother, the ropes tied to the legs of the butcher’s block, the charcoal brazier and I didn’t believe at first what my thoughts told me. I couldn’t be going to that block to have my balls cut. They wouldn’t do it, surely. But the grip of the slaves on my arms drew me on.

I ground my heels in.

‘I don’t want to go there,’ I heard myself crying out but it was too late because the two slaves whirled me around and I was hauled onto the butcher’s block in confusion. I tried to kick and struggle but hands grasped me, and grasped at my arms and legs. Manuel half lay across my chest, pinning me down. My arms were yanked above my head while my legs were rudely pulled wide, and then they were bent at the knee and I felt ropes wrap around my ankles, binding me thereto the legs of the butcher’s block.

‘No,’ I was saying between my useless struggles. ‘You can’t. Leave me alone. I want our master. I want our master.’

Then the stranger’s hand griped my nose forcing me to open my mouth to breath and a wet, musty-tasting cloth was forced into it, choking me.

Manuel rose from his position on my chest and I found myself tied tightly - my arms stretched out above my head, my thighs spread wide apart, and my ankles locked to the legs of the block.

‘Easier than I thought,’ Manuel said.

All of them were looking at me now.

‘I know you’re going to keep him after he’s been nutted,’ the stranger said, ‘but if you do want to sell him, I’d like to register my interest. I’ll pay a very good price.’

Simeon nodded.

‘I’ll tell the master that. Give him a few day’s to consider it.’

The stranger moved down and stood between my outstretched thighs. Then he reached between my legs. I felt one hand grasp my balls while the other circled my prickle. I lifted my head from the table to see. It was like he was milking me as you’d milk a goat. He pulled at my balls, easing them slowly. In the warmth of his fist I felt my prickle stir again.

My thoughts were running pell-mell on top of each other. They couldn’t be going to cut my balls. They couldn’t be, but that word ‘nutted’ hung there on the air. Nutting was what they did to yearling horses…

And I thought about Alex, my brother, and the other boys who were cut that same day I’d been told about. Hadn’t they been done here on this same block where I now lay.

I strained my arms and legs against the ropes but nothing changed. The man still stood there between my legs, touching me in that easy rhythm, stretching my balls out, then letting them ease back. I looked to the side as if that could offer escape and I caught the eye of the slave my own age. He had a strange half-smile on his face as he watched. The other two slaves watched me casually as well, as if it didn’t matter in the least. Manuel’s face was satisfied. Simeon’s scrutiny was unreadable.

The stranger released me from his hands. My prickle fell back on my stomach, half-roused. My balls were freed.

The stranger unwrapped a thin cord from around his wrist and let it dangle in a loose arc between my thighs. Then I felt it move up underneath my balls. He tied a slip knot above and closed it slowly. I felt the cord close a little around the top of my balls where they joined my body. He bent further over me, intent on his task. I felt his fingers adjust the thong, pushing it up higher, and then I felt the increasing bite as he pulled the cord tight and even tighter until it hurt. I felt my body involuntarily react against the increasing stricture and futilely try to shake it off

The stranger stood back as if to look at his handiwork. The tight ache where the cord bound my balls seemed to settle or at least it grew no worse.

‘Rest him for a bit. Let it tighten’ the stranger said.

‘Your boy,’ Simeon asked, suddenly, nodding at the stranger’s younger slave, ‘is he Albanian? He’s got the complexion.’

‘He is. I got him from one of the big slave trains that came in from the north about six months ago.’

I was barely listening for my mind was filled with confusion and fear and doubt and hope in a conflicting mass.

‘Come here, boy,’ the stranger called to his slave. And from my position on the butcher’s block I saw the younger slave move to his master.

‘They’re good slaves once they’ve been tamed.’

‘Is he…’ I heard Simeon begin to ask before his question falter.

The stranger nearly laughed.

‘It was the first thing I did when I got him home. I had him on the block, legs up, and got his nuts off. Took him a month or two to calm down but he’s a fine boy now.’

The boy did not seem to mind being talked about like this.

The dull ache of the tie around my balls seemed to make my prickle stiffen further, and I could feel it fill out further and reach and harden.

‘Undo your pants,’ the stranger ordered his boy, ‘and let them see.’

I saw the boy’s face flush but he began undoing his belt. Then he lowered his trousers. At first I could see nothing but his master reached a hand out and positioned him better for Simeon’s gaze.

The boy’s dark pubic hair was bold against his pale skin. I could see his prickle which wasn’t as big as mine, hanging there strangely, because the boy had no balls to push it out like ungelded boys

‘A good clean cut. You’ve barely got a scar there. He was up and about in a few days.’

The boy lowered his head but he seemed almost to be pleased with the attention.

I thought then that soon I would be like him - I was going to look like that. The thought panicked me and I tried my bonds again but I could not shake the knots which stretched me out on this block under the dull cloudy sky.

Soon I wouldn’t have those things that mean I was a man. Without my balls I’d lose everything I was. Didn’t they say that eunuchs didn’t want to do it anymore? Didn’t they say you stopped spurting and even getting stiff?

I didn’t want it to happen. I shut my eyes against the thought and bit down on the gag that filled my throat.

Then I felt hands between my legs again, touching my balls.

I opened my eyes. The stranger was there again.

‘So he’s the brother of the one I did a couple of years ago, is he?’

‘Too much so, said Manuel with a snort. ‘Both the same character if you ask me.’

‘I still remember the amount of jizz his brother squirted,’ murmured the stranger. ‘He pumped it out when the knife started between his legs’

‘You get up to the top,’ he commanded one of his slaves.

‘Boy, you down here by my side,’ he ordered his young eunuch.

I lifted my head again to look down my body. My prickle was as stiff and tight as it ever was. The knot of the tight cord about my balls ached. The stranger was bent over me, one hand on my balls now, the other reaching for the shaft of my prickle.

I suddenly thought of Miriam’s slit, the soft lips there and the wet tunnel my fingers had filled inside her. I thought about my prickle forcing itself inside of her, slowly, easing into her…

The stranger’s fist moved my foreskin up and down the shaft of my prickle.

‘You know there would be those who’d pay good money to have this one as a breed slave,’ he said to Simeon. ‘They’d put him to a few girls at a time. My guess is he’d be potent. If his children took after him, they’d be worth a pretty price.’

‘A friend of our master offered exactly that for the boy a few months back but the master refused,’ Simeon said. ‘Our master thinks the boy is tainted, just like his brother. They’d pass on the corruption to any offspring, he says. He wouldn’t even allow his friend to check the boy and make an offer.’

I heard the words and knew that someone had wanted me to be a breed slave. There had been that man who looked at me a lot who had stayed with the master a month or two ago. Perhaps it was him - the one with the big estate across the valley.

Breed slaves were put to girl after girl, doing one until she became with child then getting another. They could have sold me to the man and I’d be having girl upon girl instead I was here, my legs stretched out wide, waiting to be gelded…

‘Take his prickle,’ the stranger said to his eunuch boy. I felt the boy’s hand curve around my taut shaft and grip me. Behind him the stranger fumbled at his side and drew a knife from his belt.

It was small. Its wide blade seemed thin and it was curved a little, like a pruning knife. Somehow I found myself struggling once more against the ropes that bound me to the butcher’s block. It was hopeless. Strangely, my prickle was the centre of my world, hard and held by that boy, and all my moves and struggles felt they were made around that shaft.

‘Chin’ the stranger commanded, peremptorily.

From behind me, two hands cupped under my chin and pulled my head backwards, exposing my throat, making my whole body arc a little, and even my groin seemed to lift itself further, presenting my prickle and balls towards the man who stood between my thighs.

I couldn’t see him now. My view was upside down and close to the loins of one of the stranger’s slaves. The thick fabric of his trousers nearly brushed my face. He had his balls. I knew this. He had been allowed to keep them. Why not me.

The stranger’s hand rested on my left thigh.

‘Just like a bunch of grapes waiting for the picking,’ the stranger said, as I felt his hand enclose my bunched balls and pull hard until I felt myself stretched out down there, the skin tight as a drum.

His grip hurt and with the boy still grasping my prickle. I couldn’t move.

Then I felt something else, a cold curved blade moving between my thigh and my outstretched balls, and then under, and positioning itself, first in one place, then a slight shift to the other. The stranger’s hand changed his grip on my balls.

Somewhere inside my loins I felt the tension stir as I waited. I found everything begin to swell and things became pent-up but still building.

‘It’s not often you get them this virile at this age,’ the stranger said, and I felt the sharp knife edge reposition itself close to the tight ring of the cord tied around my nuts.

My prick began to feel like it was going to burst soon. The slave behind me pulled my head back hard and further.

‘Don’t do him too quick,’ I heard Simeon’s voice say. ‘It’s better that he remembers it.’

And then I felt a movement and a slight nick that grew sharper and bigger. I felt the movement of the knife back and forth and my hips thrust convulsively into the air and against all of this the pent semen inside me spurted up inside my prickle in thick pulses out into the air while further down I could feel the greater high-pitched cutting of the knife and a piercing pain that grew and grew and grew…

Then I felt the separation of my balls from me amidst all the sensations. They went from me suddenly, just like that. There was a strange noise which I knew was me trying to scream through the gag in my mouth. The spurts of seed slowed and then one final jerk spat from my prickle and then there was nothing. The boy’s hands released me and my prickle slapped against my stomach.

Between my parted thighs was nothing but white hurt and emptiness.

‘Nice clean cut.’

I heard the voices through the curtains of my pain.

‘He spurted as much as his brother, look at the mess.’

‘That should calm him down.’

‘Get me the iron’

There was a flare of heat between my legs, a new flash of hurt, a strange smell and then it was over except for the raw absence down there that bit and would not ebb.

They took me back to the old meat store and I lay there on one of the straw mattresses for two days, holding my legs wide apart for that seemed to ease the ache. The pain ebbed and gradually became less sharp. I dressed again but they still kept me locked there for a week with only Manuel for occasional company as he supervised my washing between my thighs with salty water.

Then one afternoon, the door was unlocked and it was our master, Simeon and the stranger who had taken my manhood.

I stood up awkwardly. I still stood with my legs a little unnaturally apart.

‘I don’t know how you talked me into it,’ our master was saying to the stranger, ‘but it’s probably for the best. I’d keep him but to what end? There’s his younger brother – another chip of the old block - and as I said before, if you want him too, you’re welcome, but I’m not selling him unclipped. I’m not having them breed for anyone. How old is he?’

‘Thirteen, perhaps.,’ replied Simeon to the question. ‘He’s got belly-hair and he’s started to spurt. He looks to be hung as well as the other two.’

‘We usually do them when their voices break but it’s up to you,’ our master remarked.

I was confused and did not understand

‘I’d probably do him now, rather than wait,’ the stranger said.

Then Simeon made me lift up my tunic and everyone looked at me down there. The stranger reached down and lifted my prickle and bent to see me. He reached under me with his other hand and gently touched about the hard scab that I wanted to itch free.

I was still puzzled over the words I’d heard. Was I being sold to the stranger? What about Stephen, my younger brother? Was he to be sold to the stranger too? Were they going to clip him?

‘He’s healing very well,’ the stranger said with satisfaction.

Then they left me there alone again in that room where I had been locked with my thoughts for too long.

I was sleeping uneasily on the pallet a few hours later when the door was opened by Manuel. He looked at me with a grim, smile then stood back to let the stranger’s two slaves carry the naked body of my younger brother into the room.

Manuel pulled another straw pallet from the pile Manuel ordered, and they lowered Stephen down onto it and stretched his smooth legs apart.

He was barely conscious, shaking his head, and trying to curl his body into a position that would ease the ache.

‘Be still, boy,’ Manuel ordered.

Stephen’s stomach was wet with sperm and his prickle, still half hard, slumped on his small patch of belly hair. And at the apex of his thighs was nothing but a dark round cauterized wound where his stones had been

He groaned.

‘Get him some water,’ Manuel ordered.

And when they left us alone, I felt my eyes prickle with tears at what had been done to us.

We both left the estate around two weeks later. Both of us were loosely roped together behind the stranger’s horse which ambled at an easy pace. It was late afternoon when we reached his estate. There was a large complex of slave-pens and behind them the olive trees clung to a sheltering rocky slope.

At first there were the three of us - the Albanian boy, and my brother and myself, and we served our new master in both his household and in his business as a slaver. Then the Albanian boy was sold at the next slave-market. I stood with my new master as he was lined up for sale, naked in front of that crowd, and I watched and heard the auctioneer display him, lift up his prickle to prove his nutless state, part his buttocks, lift up his arms… and I thought of myself there in that same place and the shame I’d feel.

Things changed. The anger and hate I felt for our new master somehow softened and ebbed. I began to take part in greater and greater stretches of his day.

Then, one sharp spring morning, he took me down to the slave pens and had me assist as he gelded a slim Hungarian boy. I fetched the cord for him and held the boy’s stiff prickle and I watched with fascination as my master’s knife cut the boy’s balls free.

I saw too and felt the slave’s last ejaculation as he shot those white droplets out onto his stomach.

Then it was Stephen’s turn to be sent to the market. I pleaded with our new master that he should stay but he was adamant. We both aid our goodbyes at the foot of the auctioneer’s block just before they undressed him. He stood up there, naked, his legs apart, his head downcast as his eunuch state was shown to both the buyers and those who gather at the markets just to see.

He fetched a high price but I never saw who purchased him and I have not seen him since.

Now I work with my master closely. I have a newly gelded Slav boy to run my errands for me. My master’s business has grown. He buys boys in from the slave trains that come in from the borders, rests them, then they have their balls clipped and we sell them in the city’s slave markets three weeks later. It is a business that has good profits.

I geld about half of the slaves we cut, myself. I have grown skilled at it. My master also says I have a knack of choosing the slaves from the slave trains who will make good eunuchs. Often now it is me who is calling for them to be stripped-down for me. It is me who decides if we should buy them or not.

This morning I cut four healthy sixteen year olds for one of our regular customers. We usually only cut slightly younger boys, so the event was a little different from the usual morning.

As the first of the boys was dragged out from the cell and roped down on the block, for some reason I was intensely reminded of the day I had my own balls clipped. Whether it was the sight of an older boy with his legs parted on the block, the overcast day, or something else that reminded me of my own gelding, I did not know.

The boy splayed out before me was nicely muscled, white-skinned, with a rounded heavy ball-sac and a stiff hard arrow of a prickle jutting up from a small bed of darker hair. I did him as neatly as I could, and somehow as I quickly severed his balls from his body all his hip-thrusting masculinity seemed to be just some instant of final bravado that meant little.

‘I know how it feels,’ I said to him as he moaned as we loosened his bonds. ‘I know exactly how it feels’ I repeated.

But then there was already the next one in line, struggling as he was thrown onto the block, black-haired, blue eyed, smooth skinned, his prickle already half erect, his balls curved close to his body, and my knife was already resharpened to take his manhood as well.

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