by Selena Kitt, Marie Shore, Alex Anders, Terry Towers, Aphrodite Hunt
Prince Miro’s Capture
By Aphrodite Hunt
The late afternoon sun is in my eyes as I regard the army sprawled before me on the barren plains. My father’s bitter enemy, King Jai the Conqueror, digs his heels into the flanks of his white warhorse. He canters toward me without fear or caution.
“My prince, it may be a trap,” Archeon, my father’s most trusted bannerman, cautions beside me.
“It is a truce we asked for, Archeon, and it is a truce we are getting,” I reply. Between my legs, my sleek black warhorse trembles in agitation. The white flag of parley flies behind us, held aloft by one of my soldiers.
Overhead, the sky is cloudless. The sun beats fiercely down on our heads.
King Jai’s people live by the horse and chariot. This is evident in the opposing army, which numbers ten thousand strong. The golden chariots gleam red and gold. The rims of their wheels are studded with sharp spikes. They are almost entirely cavalry, and the fearsome tips of their metal lances score the sky.
My own army numbers eight thousand in contrast. Half of them are infantry. It is because of this that I called for a parley, and King Jai has surprisingly granted my request despite knowing my weaker position.
The terms are well-known in the battlefield – our chosen warrior against their warrior. A fight to the death determines the outcome of this battle, so thousands may be spared.
I already know who my warrior would be.
King Jai approaches. As he comes closer, I can see what a brutal and well-made specimen of a man he is. He is easily six foot six in height, with a gaze that would slay dragons and coal-black hair tied in three parts behind his back. His thick muscles bulge beneath his bronzed skin, gleaming with oil and sweat. He is naked but for his black loincloth, his mighty sword, and the intertwining snake bracelets circling his biceps. His short beard is like a dagger pointing downward.
My throat is dry as I grip the handle of my sword.
“Have you chosen your warrior, fair prince?” King Jai roars.
“Yes.” I grasp the bridle of my horse and nudge him forward. “I will champion my people.”
My own six foot two inch tall frame is well-muscled and lean, a result of many war campaigns for my father. My bare stomach is ripped, and my chest is covered by a heavy breastplate with my family’s insignia. My loincloth is made from canvas, and my thighs grip the flanks of my heaving horse. My own army stands behind me, the sun in their eyes.
We ride towards each other – King Jai and I, Miro, first son of King Vlad – and meet in the midpoint of our opposing armies.
We appraise each other. King Jai is far better built than I, but I possess the element of agility. As a fighter, I have bested over a thousand men who dared take on my sword. We both dismount.
“I too will champion my people, Prince Miro.” King Jai’s voice is deep and strong. “My people expect nothing less.”
I swallow. King Jai is the most fearsome warrior in the Western kingdoms. He is said to have slayed tens of thousands by his own sword. I can well believe it, looking at him.
The smell of iron is strong in my nostrils as we circle each other, sizing each other up.
“Let us begin and give our men the spectacle they crave,” Jai says.
“A fight to the death, as agreed,” I remark. “If I fall,” I told Archeon, “please lay my body on my shield and bring me back on a litter to my father.”
“You shall not fall,” Archeon assured me.
Assessing Jai, I am not so sure. He has easily sixty pounds on me. I stare at the fine lines of his face, the dark kohl of his eyeliner and the double ring piercing his right nostril. I have no such embellishments on my face. I wonder if he considers me inferior because of that.
“Not necessarily to the death,” Jai says. He makes the first feint – a cut to my left, which I parry with my sword.
I thrust to his left, and it is his turn to deflect me. We exchange a series of blows. Steel smites steel.
Our armies are deathly silent. They understand that their fates rest in our hands.
“I assure you, good king,” I say, “that I intend to uphold the laws of single combat, whether or not I’m a prince. If I best you, I will slay you.”
“If you can best me,” he sneers, and immediately lunges for my neck.
I parry his sword in time.
We exchange further blows, our strokes rapidly gaining speed and intensity.
“I have heard tales of your beauty, fair prince,” King Jai says. “It is said that you are fairer than the fairest of women, and that the gods themselves have blessed you thus so you may tempt both men and women alike.”
“My looks have nothing to do with my prowess in battle.” I clench my teeth as I aim for his neck.
He sidesteps my blade and grins. “But the tales are true.”
I’m momentarily stunned as his sword darts toward me. It slices into the flesh of my right bicep. It is merely a nick, but blood begins to well up immediately.
I strike back with a volley of slashes and thrusts, and am gratified to see my blade tear into his chest. A flesh wound, but a ribbon of blood weeps from it nonetheless.
“Very good, fair prince.” King Jai flashes me an admiring glance.
The sun sinks lower as we continue to duel, circling each other. The air rings with the clashing of steel. Buzzards wheel in the sky, and the shadows of the mountains become elongated. My muscles ache and glisten. We must have been fighting for almost an hour, and my sword arm is tiring. But Jai does not seem to be the least bit fatigued.
In fact, his blows have become swifter, harder – as though he has meant to tire me out while he conserves his strength for the denouement. I find myself being forced back, my sandaled feet gripping the hard red ground. My heart sinks as my strength slowly ebbs. If I lose this fight, my army will have to lay down their arms, and I have to surrender the Thiaga Province as we agreed upon – an area spanning the far reaches of the Arimean Sea.
My father will never forgive me.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. I won’t be alive to see his disappointed face.
With a roar, King Jai slams a mighty blow at my sword, and my blade breaks in two. The sharp end clatters to the ground as I stare in dismay at the jagged edge. King Jai raises his sword for the killing stroke. His huge frame is silhouetted in the sun. I close my eyes as I bare my neck, and wait for the sharp blade to tear into my jugular.
Forgive me, my people.
King Jai’s army is cheering. Their raucous voices splinter the hot air.
But the killing blow doesn’t come.
I open my eyes and squint into the dimming light. King Jai grabs me by the throat, strangling me. My broken sword drops as I clutch at his brutish hands, gasping for breath.
“I did say I would not necessarily kill you, Prince Miro. To spare your life, I not only demand the Thiaga Province, but you – fair prince – as tribute.”
Stars swim before my eyes.
“I don’t . . . understand,” I say hoarsely.
He lets my throat go. I claw at it, choking and sucking in air, sinking to my knees as my vision returns from blackness.
“It means,” he says, “you will come back with me as my personal slave.” King Jai seizes my jaw and lifts my face towards his. He grins, showing white teeth. “Your beauty is a prize that will be exalted. I will be the envy of the Western kingdom . . . and even the gods themselves.”
My stomach, encased in the heaving six-pack of my abdomen, sinks.
King Jai turns to his guards. “Strip him and bind him.”
Two guards seize me and remove my breastplate and greaves. They tear off my loincloth, revealing my huge cock and balls in front of both armies. The groove of my buttocks is streaked with dirt.
King Jai strides to my waiting army, which have already laid down their arms. He raises his hands.
The guards strip off my sandals. I am now completely naked. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Archeon bend his kne
e to King Jai, and the entire army behind him following suit. My heart wrenches in my chest.
I let the guards bind me with ropes. They loop the ropes around me in a complicated, crisscrossing pattern. They encase my pectorals, so my nipples stand erect within two rope triangles. These are linked to the strands that cruelly bite into my forearms and wrists. My arms are bent at the elbows behind my back and strung to a noose around my neck.
But they are not content to bind the upper part of my body. They force me to my knees. I can smell the sweat on the guards as they bend my legs and tie my ankles to my thighs. They encircle both my buttock mounds and the area between my balls and inner thighs. They link these to my wrists so my thighs are strung wide apart. My dangling balls are pushed together, and my cock is bared to the eye.
My humiliation is profound. I am unable to stand or move. I can only kneel on the hard ground, cruelly bound, my legs splayed opened. I’m fully aware of Archeon’s eyes on me.
One of the guards says to the other, “The King would not like the prince’s penis limp like this.”
The other guard peers into my face. “He is our first royal captive. How do we treat him?”
“I don’t know. The King has not given us instructions.” The first guard looks longingly at my flushed face and cock. “He’s a beautiful one. I pray we will be allowed to toy with him like the others.”
An icy sweat breaks down my spine.
Cupping their hands beneath my thighs and buttocks and on the small of my back, the two guards hoist me up with difficulty. I am not a small man. They carry me in my bound state to a wooden cart tethered to a horse. They place me on the boards, and run more ropes around my bonds to strap me to the cart. Everyone’s eyes are on me. Laughter, taunts and whoops fill the air.
My head hangs in shame. I am unable to meet anyone’s eyes.
Someone smacks the horse’s rump, and the cart begins to roll with the army. I am being brought – naked captive I am – into my enemy’s camp.
All has been lost. What further humiliation would I have to endure?
* * * *
This much is clear.
I must survive.
I need to survive long enough for my father to find me and bring me back to where I belong – with my army. To do this, I must consent to whatever it is they will do to me and endure it for as long as I can.
Consent. It is a sticky word.
But I will try. God help me, but I will consent.
The camp grounds are littered with tents and troughs for watering horses. My two guards release me from my bonds, which are beginning to chafe my skin after hours of being tethered. I am relieved. My entire body is cramped and sore, and my muscles ache all over, as though I’ve run a marathon. My wounds from the cuts King Jai has dealt me are beginning to smart. I massage my red wrists.
I do not know where King Jai is. Perhaps he is at the head of the army.
One of the guards brings me water in a tin cup. I drink thirstily, water running from my mouth and down my neck.
“Do you want some more?” he says. He is a wiry young man with a cap of curly black hair. His short beard is pointed, and he wears a short tunic like the others, circled at the waist by a leather belt.
“Yes, please,” I say.
He gives me more water, and gropes my buttocks as he watches me drink. He strokes the bottom half of my abdomen and presses my bladder several times.
“Do you wish to piss?”
“Yes.”
He leads me to the side of a water trough, where several horses are tied. They look up, muzzles dripping, as I approach. Several soldiers are stoking a fire nearby, and they too raise their heads.
“A new plaything for you, eh, Spirus?”
“Aren’t you jealous now?” Spirus jibes.
“Be careful with him now. King Jai would not like it if you damage his prized goods.”
Spirus pushes me to the fire, which is crackling merrily now as twigs snap and sparks fly. The men grin as he grabs my cock and points the head at the fire.
“Go ahead and piss,” Spirus says.
The men begin to laugh.
“You can fetch a cock to a fire, but you cannot make it piss, Spirus!”
My face and chest are flushed from embarrassment. To think that only this morning I commanded an army, and was a prince of the blood.
Spirus fondles my balls in his palm.
“Do it,” he hisses, “or you won’t get another chance.”
Somehow, I manage to relax my agitated muscles enough to allow a stream of hot urine to spurt from my upheld cock. The men chortle and catcall. Spirus waves my cock around, oscillating the outflow so that a major portion of the bonfire is sprinkled upon. He milks the last few drops from the tip and shakes it.
“Come,” he says, tugging me away by my cock. It is like a new toy he cannot bear to part with.
He leads me to a clearing between the tents. A wooden structure has been erected there, consisting of two vertical beams struck into the ground and a horizontal one connecting their tops. Ropes trail from the opposing ends of the horizontal beam.
Spirus and two other soldiers seize me and drag me to the structure. I gaze at the ropes in dismay as they bind my wrists to them. The soldiers haul the ropes higher so that I’m hanging from my straining arms, and my bare feet are hoisted above the ground. My abdomen contorts as they grab my legs and similarly tie my ankles to the opposing vertical beams. My body is viciously pulled into a taut ‘X’, with my only weight support coming from my bruised and chafed wrists.
I will survive this, I tell myself. Already, I did not fight them as they did this to me.
Soldiers around us laugh and point at my dangling genitals. I’m beyond caring now. I rest my tired head against the bulging muscles of my right bicep. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see several boys setting up a palatial dais in front of me, and covering it with a tasseled woven carpet that must have hailed from the lands of Araby. They place a broad chair on top of the dais and scatter luxurious cushions upon its seat. A few semi-nude slave girls set a low table before the dais. Silver plates of sweetmeats and goblets of wine are laid upon the table.
Spirus twiddles my cock. In my tethered position, my genitals are at the level of his chest.
“Still limp,” he says with a frown. “King Jai would not like this.”
I’m not surprised. I’m exhausted and my body is wracked with little pains. My survival is paramount. Sex is the last thing on my mind.
“Maybe he needs some help from your hand, Spirus,” says another soldier with a grin.
Spirus begins to massage my cock. His rough palm squeezes and slides down my shaft and head with hard, rapid strokes. I draw in a sharp breath as blood begins to fill my cock.
The soldiers laugh as Spirus continues to pump my penis with the alacrity of an ironmonger stoking a bellows. Finally, my cock stands erect in all its tumescent glory.
“Beautiful,” Spirus breathes, slapping it so that it bounces several times.
“How long do you reckon it is?” asks a soldier.
An industrious boy servant comes up with a measuring instrument. Spirus holds it against my cock.
“Easily a foot long,” he declares proudly, as though he has grown it himself. “Lovely and thick.”
“Then bind it quickly before it deflates.”
Spirus produces a thin leather strap and circles the base of my cock with it, squeezing it so my shaft becomes further engorged. He wraps the rest of the strap around my testicles. My genitals are now very prominent, bulging from my groin like swollen fruits.
A commotion disperses the crowd of milling soldiers and servants in the near distance. King Jai strides into the clearing, easily a head taller than the rest of his men. He is clad in a red and gold cloak. He radiates power and authority.
“Ah, our royal captive,” he announces as soon as he sees me.
Spirus beams.
King Jai stands in front of me. He observes my ramrod s
tiff cock sprouting from my bursting balls.
“Very good, Spirus,” he comments.
Spirus openly grins.
“Give me the glove,” King Jai commands.
Spirus hands him a black glove made from some gleaming thick fabric. King Jai sheathes it over his huge right hand. He goes behind me, and prizes apart my firm buttocks.
“Are you a virgin, Prince Miro?”
“No.”
I gasp as he slides two of his fingers into my anus.
“I meant – have you ever been penetrated in your asshole?”
“No, I have not, Your Majesty.” His fingers probe the walls of my rectum uncomfortably, stretching them. My stomach muscles clench.
King Jai withdraws his fingers. I hear the slap of the glove as it is peeled off.
“Good,” he says. “You’re very tight. In good time, you will be filled and severely stretched.”
My blood runs cold.
King Jai says to a soldier, “Bring the whips.”
I close my eyes. I am expecting to be publicly flogged, so this comes as no surprise. When I open them again, King Jai has selected a curling black whip, as slim and wicked-looking as a viper.
He shows it to me. “It would be a shame to mar your beautiful flesh. This one gives the maximum amount of pain while leaving the least marks on your skin.”
He hands it to Spirus. A crowd has gathered around the little clearing, eager soldiers and servants pressing themselves into rows until they are ten thick.
“Twenty lashes, Spirus, and make sure every one of them hurts.”
I swallow and lick my lips. The fear bubbles in my throat, refusing to be quelled.
King Jai walks to the chair on the dais and seats himself regally. Servants immediately pour him a goblet of wine and offer him a bowl of fruits. He plucks one luscious purple grape and pops it into his mouth.
Spirus stands back. He cracks the whip against one of the beams that hold me. I wince at the sound. It is like a lightning bolt against a hapless tree.
The first stroke catches me unawares on the buttocks – a stinging sensation that immediately flares into fiery rivulets all over my flesh. I grit my teeth as the second follows. And more, and more – until my buttocks are a screaming mess of raw pain.