by Jack Whyte
Four years had elapsed since the death of Publius Varrus, and in the interim the two hesitant, neophyte captains recalled from that initial, probationary patrol had evolved into brash, confident but effective and competent commanders of the cavalry troops of Camulod, tried and tested in battle. Uther and I had emerged from the crucible of harsh experiences transformed into professional soldiers—warriors in the true sense of the word. We had become men, and in the pursuit of that status we had progressed far along the road to building the legions Publius Varrus had told us we would need in the days ahead.
Uther was a voluptuary, a lecher and a hedonist. So was I. But neither of us thought of ourselves in such terms. Why should we? In the days of our youth the notion of carnal sin' was confined to incestuous relationships with immediate family members. It was only much later that the new, monastic churchmen introduced to our beautiful island the idea of the sinfulness of casual lust, and then, I am convinced, they used it callously, as a tool to prime the minds, of men to accept the idea that women were inferior beings and vessels of sin.
Their efforts were to no avail, thank God, but in the attempt to force their will upon our people they caused great hardship and much grief in every corner of our land, where men of God and men of goodwill struggled with the incompatible desires to serve God by heeding the edicts of His Church—which now demanded no less than the disenfranchisement and subjugation of one-half of our society—and to please Him by continuing to love, honour and respect the proud women of Britain who had been the equals of their men since time immemorial.
None of this, however, affected us as young men. As I have said, we were voluptuaries and, as to carnal sin, completely innocent. Equally innocent were the young women who shared our lives and our carnal pleasures. For the most part, they were attractive and sometimes even beautiful outsiders who had few or no family ties within our Colony. They worked for their keep, as did everyone else, performing by day whatever tasks best suited their individual natures and abilities, and spending their evenings and nights enjoying the pleasures available to them. In effect, they were the camp followers of Camulod, and in the way of camp followers, many of them found permanent mates among the soldiers of the Colony. Invariably, in the way of youth everywhere, they considered themselves Immortals— fit, healthy and full of life and love and admiration for the equally young, healthy soldiers who ensured their safety and prosperity in a time when safety and prosperity were undreamed of luxuries the length and breadth of Britain.
And so we shared each other's pleasures. As we were insatiable without being satyrs, they were concupiscent without being concubines; as we were riotous without brutality, they were acquisitive without venality. None criticized our conduct with one another, or felt or betrayed any censure or surprise. Why should they? Uther and I, living to the full with all our friends, were the Princes of Camulod, the wonders of all our Tribe. We were at the flood tide of our rutting youth, and we were invincible in war. And when we had no wars to fight, we patrolled long and hard, trained long and hard, and worked long and hard at the onerous duties of the administrative Council, set up by our own grandfathers to govern our Colony, on which we both served as members. What could have been more natural than that we spent our evenings and our nights in Camulod and elsewhere filling our bellies and emptying our loins at every opportunity? Food and sex ruled our off-duty existence, with food taking only as much precedence over sexual pleasure as was required to maintain the strength we needed to generate new seed. My own early dreams of inadequacy in the face of Uther's lusts had long ceased to bother me. I was his equal in size, endurance and instant readiness at any time. In those days, impotence was a temporary phenomenon engendered only by over-indulgence and was easily and quickly cured by rest and titillation.
I was in just such a state when I first noticed Cassandra. I had seen her previously, but there is a vast difference between merely seeing a woman and really noticing her. We had returned that same day from a long, tedious patrol, and she had been part of the baggage we had collected in the course of our sweep. Uther, riding apart from our main body, had found her in an open glade, deep in the forest, hidden from the road, and crouching by the corpses of two people we had to assume were her parents. There was no encampment, only a rough shelter of green boughs and dead wood thrown together so that it barely remained upright around the supine corpses. There was no evidence of struggle or violence surrounding the deaths, nor was there any means of telling how the two had died. Uther had had to drag the girl by the wrist to get her to go with him, and had lifted her onto his horse and ridden with his arms around her for the remaining days of the patrol. She was a skinny, lacklustre little thing with great grey eyes and a wide mouth that dominated her small, pointed face. And she was utterly silent. She had not spoken a word from the time he found her. She reminded me of a frightened little rabbit, looking at no one, and walking, when not on horseback, as though she held herself close within her own arms. On our return to Camulod, she had refused to quit Uther. No one could talk to her, none could penetrate her total silence, and she steadfastly refused to leave Uther's side all that day, even when his fancies led him where she should not be.
That evening found the three of us in what Uther called the games room, where I was reclining like an emperor on a bed of thick furs. I had just been thoroughly serviced by two of our willing and nubile hero-worshippers and I had that empty, sated feeling in my belly that told me I would not be ready for any more play for some time. I lay back, my hands clasped comfortably behind my head, as I watched my two companions try in vain to raise my dead to life, their heads together, nibbling lips and tongues and teasing fingers willing the impossible.
A series of deep, determined grunts from Uther, over on my left, told me that he was rapidly approaching his destination and I turned indolently to look, finding myself pleasantly positioned to observe his phallus being engulfed and regurgitated by the wench who rode him like the stallion he was. Her buttocks quivered and shuddered with the effort of receiving him, presenting quite a sight to my clinical and rather cynical gaze. Uther liked his women big. And then it was that I noticed the girl, Cassandra, as Uther had named her. She was sitting there on the edge of his pile of furs, watching the goings-on in front of her as casually as though she were watching him at dinner. I hitched myself up on one elbow to see her better, dislodging myself in the process from my own attendants, who resumed their activities as soon as I was resettled.
Like me, Uther had two companions, the one who was impaling herself so determinedly upon his spike, and another who knelt behind him, supporting his shoulders on her lap while her large breasts fell on his face and supplied him with the handholds he needed for leverage in his exertions. Her associate, who faced her across his body, gripped her firmly by the shoulders for balance as she rode.
Cassandra's face was empty of expression. No lust showed there, no interest. Her eyes moved over the heaving, grunting tableau in front of her emotionlessly. I saw her glance downward at the junction of the two slapping bellies and then up again at the other woman's breasts and the hands that gripped them and as I looked, the woman supporting Uther's shoulders opened her mouth and lolled out her tongue like a thick, pink snake glistening with saliva. The sight of it must have triggered the peaking lust of her companion, for she went into a paroxysm, jerking the other toward her and sucking the jutting tongue into her mouth. But the movement pulled her free of the meat that pierced her just at the wrong time and there was a frantic scramble to reinsert the already spitting object before the moment was lost forever. I found myself laughing at the unconscious buffoonery of the sight as my eyes returned to Cassandra.
Her expression had not changed, but this time I noticed how her seated posture drew the rough, grey fabric of her plain smock into tension against her thigh, outlining the sweep of it, and my loins gave an involuntary twitch, which did not go unnoticed by my two friends, who redoubled their efforts and found life where none had been. The reacti
on, unwilled and unexpected, surprised me, so that I looked more closely at this strange young woman. She had none of the attributes that I normally found attractive. In fact, I decided, she was almost ugly. And she was definitely not right in the head.
Uther and his rider had collapsed, and I could feel my own resurgence progressing. I left Cassandra to her vacant observations and returned to what was going on below my waist. |
I lost track of the time that elapsed between then and when Uther called my name, but when he did I was preoccupied. My companions and I had achieved a happy state of closeness that allowed me to move from one to the other with great ease and speed, and so I ignored him and concentrated upon not concentrating too much on anything. But he was not to be ignored, and his insistence finally distracted me.
"What is it, Uther? What do you want?"
"Come here! Come over here and look at this."
"I'm busy! Look at what?"
"Come and see. Look what I have!"
I tried again to ignore him, snuggling my face into a plenitude of flesh, but he became even more insistent and I finally had to respond to him, merely to quiet him. "I don't care what you have," I told him, "I have things of my own to see to here."
"You can finish that later. Come and look at this."
I rose with a sigh and crossed the room to where he lay, aware of the cool night air on the moist parts of my body. "What?"
"Look at this. Have you ever seen the like?" I had, but I was looking at the wrong thing. One of his two companions was working at his erect phallus with her mouth, enjoying in her turn the mouth of her companion who suckled noisily between her lazily spread thighs. "Not that! This, this, this!" Uther drew my attention to Cassandra's face, which he held in his right hand, pinching her cheeks between finger and thumb so that her lips were pouted out of shape into a formless mass of soft flesh. Above her puckered lips, her eyes still gazed at him with that same, almost mindless docility. "Look at that mouth, Caius. Does it remind you of anything?" I looked. It did.
"I think so," I said, "but I don't know what. Let go of it."
He released her and her mouth went back to normal. It was an astonishing mouth, taking up more than half the width of her face, with full, fleshy lips. The mouth, and those eyes which never strayed from his, eclipsed the rest of her entirely. I found myself wishing she would look at me.
"That's quite a mouth," I said, as he squeezed it again from both sides, not enough to hurt the girl, but just to crush the lips back into the shape they had been in before. "What does it look like to you, Uther?"
He gave a great shout of laughter and released the girl, twisting his body around to grasp the hips of the wench who was being tongued by her friend. "This!" he shouted, pulling her body towards him with one hand and slapping her worshipper away with the other. Ignoring the disgruntled protests of both of them, he pulled and hauled at the one he wanted, twisting her around and lifting her legs over in front of him until she lay face down, diagonally across him, her nakedness turned up towards his face and her head down by his feet. "Come round here and look at this!"
Grinning, I moved around to his right shoulder. The girl on his lap began to squirm in protest and he slapped her a stinging blow on the buttocks. "Lie still, woman, and spread your legs!" He reached with his left hand and pinched the lips of her vulva between his thumb and forefinger, hard enough and with enough downward pressure to pout them open. "There! You see? It's wetter, but it's the same."
"Hairier, too," I agreed, smiling, "but there is a resemblance."
He reached out again with his right hand and pinched Cassandra's mouth once more, his eyes going from those lips to the ones he held pinched in his other hand.
"Uther! You're hurting me!" This came from the region of his feet.
He slapped her again. "Then get your great wet arse out of my face, woman!" Finding herself released, the woman scrambled away from him, pouting reproachfully over her shoulder at him, but he was oblivious to her. Her friend, on the other hand, leaned towards her and pulled her lazily over to where she could resume her interrupted activity. Uther, in the meantime, continued to stare at Cassandra's mouth. Slowly, without relinquishing his hold on her chin, he got to his feet and stood in front of her, the tip of his phallus poised about an inch from her pouted lips. Her eyes had moved upwards, following him as he rose, so that her head was now tilted back to see his face. He twined the fingers of his left hand, gently enough, in her hair, and pulled her face downward.
"Now," he said, pushing himself gently forward, finding the space between those lips and inserting himself minutely. She did not respond in any way and he withdrew and did it again, a little more firmly. Still no response, although it was obvious that her teeth were together, barring his entrance. My own tumescence had shrunk to a bud and my two bed- mates were watching the proceedings with bored interest. I began- to feel some misgivings at what he was doing, although I could not have said why. She was here of her own free will and he was not harming her in any way. Nevertheless, I felt ill at ease.
"Uther—"
"Sssh, Caius! Watch! Come on, beauty, open it." He pinched harder, forcing her teeth apart. "That's better. That's good..." I watched him penetrate her mouth, sliding in slowly and then withdrawing, then sliding again as he released her chin and placed his hand on her head, and then she bit down on him. I knew she was going to do it a full second before she did it, for I was watching her eyes.
He roared like a wounded bull and jerked himself away from her, his hands flying to cradle his injury. In the instant that I had to look, I saw no sign of blood or of tooth marks on him, but any injury would have been too new to have had time to bleed. Cassandra jumped to her feet, her great grey eyes gleaming, but whether in fear, anger or in satisfaction I have no idea. Uther roared again and went for her, his big arm raised to smash her to the ground. One blow he landed, hurling her across the room before I could stop him, and then I hooked an elbow behind one of his and threw my other arm around his neck and wrestled him to the floor. It was all I could do to bring him down. He was in a monstrous anger and I knew him to be capable of killing her there and then. I got my chest across him, pinning him, and exerted all my strength to keep him there. He bucked and thrashed beneath me like a demented thing and then quite suddenly stopped and lay passive. I took that for a ruse and continued to press down on him, but when he spoke, I knew the danger was past.
"It's all right, Cay. You can let me go. I won't harm her. Get up."
I heard the truth in his voice and let him up. I looked for the girl, but she was gone. The other four sat staring wide- eyed at the two of us.
"Where did she go?"
The one with the long tongue shrugged her big shoulders. "Don't know, she just ran."
I rose and went to the door and looked out into the night- filled courtyard. There was no sign of Cassandra. I heard the approaching pacing of a guard and realized I was naked, so I turned back into the room and closed the door.
"The bitch. I'll find her later and teach her a lesson she won't soon forget." Uther was sitting hunched over, examining the shrunken thing he cradled in his fingers. "She almost bit me in two! I'll kill the bitch."
"No, Uther," I said, with a smile. "You won't kill her. Not now. But for a moment there, I thought you would have. Is it bleeding?"
He checked again. "No. But it might have been. The bitch!"
I grinned at him. "Come on, Uther! She didn't even bite hard. I was watching. You were more shocked than hurt, admit it. Your pride suffered more than your cock."
He glowered at me. "What do you know about it? You didn't feel her teeth!"
"Let's have a look at it, then. Is it marked?" I stepped towards him, but he cupped himself in a protective hand and I laughed outright in my relief, forgetting about his pride. "From the size of it now, it looks as though she bit three- quarters of it off!" Only then did I notice how upset he still was and realize that I should not be baiting him. I continued, however, to make li
ght of it, hoping to make him see the humour in the situation. There is no more effective poultice for wounded pride than the ability to laugh at oneself. "Hey!" I said. 'That was a jest! It'll probably work just as well as ever once you stop thinking about it. Girls, why don't you try to see if Uther's staff is still strong enough to lean on?"
They were willing enough and clustered round him in glowing, warm-fleshed nudity, but he would have none of it. He slapped them away and got to his feet with a scowl, grabbing his tunic and pulling it on as he did so. "I'll see you in the morning," he snapped on the way out, and left the five of us sitting there staring at the closed door.
I got up and poured myself some wine from the jug on the table. "Well, ladies," I said. "He'll be back when he's cooled off." I toasted the four of them silently. "In the meantime, why don't we try to see how many times one will go into four?" The fire had burned low and there was only one lamp left burning in the room by this time. One of them, the one with the long, pink tongue, blew it out as I approached them.
IX
I was wrong. Uther did not come back that night, and to this day I know of only two people who might have seen him in the course of the next week. The first of these was the guard on duty in the courtyard when Uther stormed out of the games room; the other, the girl, Cassandra.
I awoke just after dawn the following morning and left my four bedmates asleep in a tangle of limbs. I had had no more than two hours of sleep, and when I finally dropped off, at least two of the girls were still pleasing each other. As I dressed, I noticed that Uther had not returned, but I thought nothing of it at the time. I went to the stables and saddled my horse and galloped down to the villa, letting the crisp, cold air of the frosty morning clear my head, and anticipating the humid, seductive warmth of the bath house, where I could steam and soak the previous night's excesses out of my body.
There was a regular Council session scheduled for noon that day, and I had nothing to do until then, so I spent an hour or so rooting around in the villa. For many years the focal point of the Britannicus family, it was an empty, echoing place nowadays, barely used since the entire family had moved up to live in the hilltop fort years before, although servants still kept it in first-class condition as guest quarters and maintained its magnificent bath house. The fort had baths of its own, of course, but they were utilitarian, makeshift and barely functional—primitive beside the luxury offered by the facilities at the Villa Britannicus.