Lord Tesuan just smiled and didn’t seem to believe what I was saying. I didn’t care what he thought. Of course I wasn’t weak for that slave that was just nonsense. In my country, in the mountains, we had no such slaves. Didn’t use servants. At least not young and healthy persons like myself. No, slaves were for hard work and really hard work alone. They were workers and we had no relations to them, they were just animals to us. We sure as hell never became intimate with them. We were proud men that took care of ourselves. I would have absolutely no use for him when we returned there. If he was an anomaly here, it is nothing compared to what he would be considered there. If I let him serve me there like he did here I would be an object of ridicule. I felt ashamed of myself. I had really gone weak living here and for only such a short time too. I had got much too used to these luxuries and their ways of living. Maybe Lord Tesuan was aware of this, maybe not, either way it seemed a bad idea to follow his advice and take him with me. Well, I have always been bad at listening to myself…

*

-If you go with me I can’t assure you that you’ll even survive it, do you understand that?

He nodded slightly but didn’t show any particular reactions. Either he didn’t understand after all, or he didn’t care.

-Have you any notion of what my land are? Or even where it is? No? Do you realise how far away it is and how cold it is? Do you know that we must pass five rivers? That we have to go through a deep forest and that we then will enter terrain where there are no trees at all and where the winds are strong enough to take such striplings as you with it?

There was still no reaction.

-We can’t take any consideration to you; we can’t slow down because of you. You must keep up or we’ll have to leave you. Can you ride a horse? Yes? Where on earth have you learned that? Never mind, that’s one good thing…I’ll get you a horse and good clothes, but you will have to fend for yourself most of the times, get it?

He nodded…

-Do you realise that it is not a civilised world out there? It’s lawless land, full of bandits, if a band steals you…

A slight shudder but he nodded.

-And if you make it all the way…I really don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with you in my father’s house. Do you understand that there is none of your…kind, in my land. We don’t use servants like you at all. I could ask my father to let me keep you and he might be curious in an exotic object from this strange land…but if he sends you to the mines, where most of our slaves are, there’s nothing I can do about it…

He looked down and bit his lip. Not so sure anymore hah? I thought. No wonder. He couldn’t possible realise what it would be like. I had tried to explain it to him but in reality it would probably be much worse for him.

-So, I have explained to you what’s in store for you if you come with me, and you know better yourself. Better than I do. How your life will turn out if I leave you in the city, but I would guess it must be a much better choice for you. I tell you all this because I will give you the choice. Think hard about it because that’s the only choice I will ever give you. You decide. Do you want to come with me despite all the hardships and the hazards, or do you want me to find you a buyer here…? In the end you might even want me to leave you in the palace if the choice seems too hard to make… That will, of course, mean a certain death, but it’ll be a quick one and sometimes it’s for the best, though I think it a terrible waste but you do have that choice too. I’ll give you till tomorrow to think about it, but you can speak now if you want to ask me anything.

-If you don’t mind me saying so master… he said hesitatingly and I ushered him on.

-…I think I know already…I want to come with you Master, if you’ll please let me…

I looked at him rather surprised. I had been quite sure he would change his mind after all I’d said. But he seemed persisted and bent on facing the unknown. Life here couldn’t possible be that bad. He looked up at me now and almost met my eyes. Strangely enough the dead look was gone.

-I’ll ask you one more time, now think about it because after that it’ll be no turning back. Do you really want to come with me?

-Yes!

Was his simple reply, no hesitation in his voice now. I must admit he impressed me. He might be small and lean and built like a woman, he might be effeminate and deprived of all manhood, but it seemed he had been born with the heart of a real man and that, they had not been able to remove.

*

He stood before me as I lay at the fur-clad bunk in the tent. The tent was well heated and built to withstand more bad weather than a house of stone. We would ride out the blizzard here in perfect safety. I could here its muffled sound out there and now and then the tent covers shook in the powerful gusts of wind. Out there it would send arrows of snow and ice to blast the hides of all living things. But in here things were calm and still and warm…And he stood there before me.

He had removed all his clothes except the leather boots. The bootlegs reached up to the middle of his thighs and were hard bound with leather strings around them not to glide down. They were high enough not to let the deep snow in and were lined with the whitest of rabbit’s winter fur. The snowy white of the fur stood against his dark lean thighs, an appealing sight.

I let my eyes wander over his body where he stood, relaxed, arms at his side, his eyes at the ground. His bony hips protruded slightly, his flat stomach could still show for a deep navel that was a black well in that desert landscape. He was hairless like a doll, carved and polished from dark wood. He was still proportioned somewhat like a man though and his shoulders were wide compared to his hips however skinny they were. He had been lean when we left but the trip had so far been quite rough on him and he was really skinny now but he didn’t complain. His meagre frame filled me with a kind of tenderness.

I told him to turn around and he did without so much as a questioning look in his face. He never questioned my orders, not even in his head. I could never figure it out. I demanded of him that he fended for him self during our travels and he did, never bothered me. So thinking and acting on his own did not present any difficulties for him. Still, when we made camp and I now and then allowed him to share my accommodations I demanded of him the absolute opposite, to totally submit to my wishes and never question anything. That didn’t present any difficulties to him either, obviously…

I looked at him from behind. He had scars on his back, I had put them there but that was before, when still in the palace. Since we left I had not hit him once. Didn’t feel the urge to anymore. He didn’t irritate me as he used to. His submission didn’t make me awkward anymore. He didn’t need to prove to me anymore that he had human values. That he had strength and pride, courage and even a mind of his own. These features all lay on another level though, for him there were other ways of being true to them. I told him to join me and he turned again and slid under the covers of my bunk. He sighed as he let himself glide near my body and I folded my arms around him. I felt his little warm body coming as close to me as it was humanly possible and I didn’t push him away. I kissed him…

*

It was still not a natural thing for me to do. But I did make love to him. For several reasons I told myself. First because I was a man. A real man and real men have urges and because there were no other ways to relieve those urges out here. There were no women here. Well, except for him, he was as close to a woman as there was here. I did it because I was young and virile and he was even younger and as smooth and soft skinned as any woman, his natural scent as fresh as any girl’s, his hair as soft. I did it because he had lashes as long and thick, lips as soft and full, teeth as white and smooth, voice as silky and a heart as passionate as any woman I’ve ever known. I did it because his eyes were not dead when we did it. I did it because he really enjoyed it. I did it, and, I admit that now when I’m old enough not to care about what people say anymore, because I really did care for him.

*

We passed dangerous land, lawless land and it was no man’s land. It was hard to believe anyone lived out here. I saw that now more than before after living in the lush gardens of the palace I’d just left. The warmth of their land seemed to be the natural climate for human beings to dwell in. And the richness of the greenery that grew everywhere, the multitude of colours of flowers and birds was something rarely seen in our land. Except when the gods "drew their multicoloured curtains over our black skies" as our old nursemaids used to say when we as children stared wide-eyed at the northern lights.

It was hard to believe that anyone would want to live out here when there was a paradise down south. But as uneasy as I felt out here on these frozen fields I still longed for my father’s castle. Cold it may be but not as desolate and frozen as here. But people did live here. People had in spite of all that chosen to live out here.

If you could call that a choice, because they were people that were welcome nowhere else and who valued their freedom more than their convenience. And that was the most positive thing that could be said about them because the reason to why they were shunned by every civilised nation was that they were bandits and rogues all of them. Not an honest thought in their minds, or any courage in their hearts. They had no compassion, no morals, no loyalty, no honour and certainly no other way to make a living out here than to rob all the unfortunate souls passing or nearing their wretched land.

And for weeks now we had sensed a presence and for some now days we had found evidence proving we really were followed. We were constantly on our guard knowing that as soon as they found a week spot they would attack us. There were obviously a large number of robbers in the pack otherwise they wouldn’t dare to nibble at the heels of a party of warriors from my father’s kingdom. They must know our strength but thinking they could still beat us if they greatly outnumbered us and managed to surprise us. Every moment we suspected them to fall in our backs and even though none of us doubted that we could kill every one of those pathetic thieves and robbers it was still hard and put a lot of stress on us just waiting for it to finally happen. And so we made plans to beckon them out.

*

I saw him stiffen in his tracks, like he had bumped into an invisible wall. He arched his back and his head flew backwards and for a few seconds he was suspended in air in this position like a dancer or a playful horse frozen in time. But then he fell slowly backwards and landed softly in my arms. He looked like a pincushion…

Some twenty arrows stuck out from his meagre body. They protruded from his chest, from his stomach, from his arms and from his thighs. My men came rushing past me avoiding me like a tidal wave the powerful rock. The enemy archers would not have time for another round. Their surprised screams of terror blended with my men’s roar of bloodthirst as the slaughter began.

But I sat still in the snow and held his little body in my arms. Why on earth would he do a stupid thing like that? Why would he jump in front of me? If he hadn’t I’d be the pin cushion…

He was strangely enough still alive, but I knew he couldn’t remain so for long, I gave him at most a few minutes. He was conscious and he looked me in the eyes like he never used to do, his face stricken with pain. He tried to speak but only a gurgling sound was heard and a gush of blood welled out of his mouth and spurted over his chin like a waterfall. It couldn’t be long now. He knew it too, that he was about to die, he didn’t try to save his strength. He clawed the air with his hands and tried to grab at my shirt breast. I understood he wanted me to hold him tighter but there were just too many arrows in the way, I couldn’t get close to him. I let go of him and he sank down a bit in the deep snow. He might have thought I was about to leave him because his face now got the expression of real fear that it had lacked when he’d faced the archers. But I didn’t intend to.

With the fastest and strongest motion I could muster, to cause him as little pain as possible and before he would pass I broke the arrows at his torso as close to the skin as possible. His face twitched in unimaginable agonies as I did so but he didn’t signal for me to stop. As I finally finished I could take him in my arms again and this time hold him tight. I could feel the sharp ends of the broken arrow-shafts prick my chest but I didn’t care. I held him tight and whispered soothingly in his ear, he buried his face at my neck and I could feel the warmth of his blood as it ran down my back at the inside of my shirt.

For a short moment he answered my embrace but then his arms went limp and fell back and a barely audible sigh in my ear told me it was all over. I let go of him then and he fell at his back in the snow as if he had been a ragdoll. His eyes were still open but glazed over, as dead as when I first had looked into them, but now there was no way to revive them again. I drew my sword and stepped over his corpse and joined my men in the battle. I didn’t leave a single flare of life behind me…

*

The ground was too frozen for us to be able to bury him. We put him down directly on the snow covered ground and built a mound of stones over his shrouded little body. I hoped that would keep the carnivores from ripping him apart and spreading his gnawed bones across the land. Earlier I had myself taken care of his corpse. Cut every barbed arrowhead out of it. Washed the blood off his limbs, off his tattered chest, off his cold cheeks. I closed his staring eyes and forced his stiffened jaw to move so I could close his mouth and I wiped the clotted blood from his lips. And he looked as lovely as he had always done then, his face as pretty and I admit I shed tears thinking of the love he must have felt for me and that that beauty of his would soon be destroyed by the frost. And I admit I wept when I let the shroud cover his face. He would warm my bed no more…

*

But when we surrounded his grave to read him the last rites I was all gathered, it was not my nature to show weakness like that in front my men. I was glad though that he had died the way he had, his courageous deed was the only thing that gave him the right to a burial like this. In my land, dead slaves were only slightly more worthless than living ones and their corpses were kicked over the edge of the nearest ravine, left as food for birds. If he had died any other way than saving their King’s son’s life my men would never have allowed me to show any respect for his dead body.

Now I watched in surprise that many of my men were touched too as we stood around his grave. I realised he had spent as much time with my men as with me on our travels back to our land and I guess they had already then not quite seen him as just a simple slave for he looked nothing like the slaves they were used to. Sure they had at first thought him week and small for a man and felt contempt. But then he had proved his tenacious nature. And I guessed they had learned to respect him in much the same manner that they respect our women that may be small and seem weak but who are as strong as our men in their minds and hearts if not in their bodies. I had let him fend for himself among my men and some way he had charmed them.

No one cried, they wouldn’t do that even if I had died. But they were all there, they all stood with their eyes downcast, grave looks in their faces, they all without exception paid their respect to the man that gave his life to save their leader. And I had to smile and think it was all for the best even though it pained me a lot that he was gone. He had never had a good life but he had got the best death he could hope for. And when he jumped before me to take all those arrows he had maybe done it more for his own sake than for me…

*

And that was all that it was to it. I have had many women in my life and my father bestowed me with three wives that I married for political reasons and which I felt much respect for but no passion. I also took two more of my own choice that gave me much pleasure, and all did they give me sons and daughters that were my pride and joy. And I have lived to be a very old man but I have never forgotten that gelded boy that for a short time shared my bed…

My nameless character in yet another version
Isn't he just beautiful? He has a very sexy tummy ^_^

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