Training Asu

"You cannot put it off any longer, my friend. If you do not choose for Asu soon, the priests will take him. The choice will no longer be yours—or Asu's. He is of age for starting the life chosen for him. He cannot do other than meet his destiny."

"I know that, Sargon, it is just so hard . . ."

Baltasar, the wood merchant, was sitting at a table outside of the tea shop in the bazaar, sipping a blend that the owner of the shop, Sargon, had recently received from the East and had invited his friend to try. Sargon had, in fact, been pestering him to stop by, but Baltasar had been keeping to his own apartments above his shop for some time—precisely because he didn't want to have this conversation with anyone.

"You know what Asu is meant for, Baltasar. You've known for years. His destiny for it has been evident since he was a child. He knows too, I am sure. He has not tried to leave the city, as some others have under these circumstances—until they are dragged back. So he is resigned to it."

"Yes, yes. All of that is true. But it's hard . . ."

"I could recommend the perfect place for him. There is a wine shop just inside the bazaar on the high road, almost in the shadow of the palace. That would be perfect for him. The wealthiest merchants and even the king's officers go there. He would be your family's fortunes."

And yet Baltasar hesitated.

"It is inevitable. He is of age. The priests would do the same with him. Why not secure the family's fortune rather than just having some meaningless tablet of favor from the temple to hang on your shop wall?"

After a brief pause. "You know of this wine shop? Do you really think it is the best opportunity for him?"

"I go there myself."

* * * *

"Do not wiggle away from the patrons like that," the wine shop owner, Hatim, hissed at Asu as he took him aside at the end of the long table the wine was served from. A soldier of the Palace Guard, Nasri, was leaning on the end of the table, several cups of wine into his evening. He, like all of the palace guardsmen, was a massive, heavily muscled man, battle forged. His chest and arm and thigh muscles were bulging. Clearly discernible as a mark of the elite palace soldiers was his short, heavy-leather slab skirt, sandals laced up to his knees, a chest medallion declaring his rank, and nothing else. The merchants and other private citizens of the town wore long gowns, called thawbs, of various quality of material. Most worn on the street were white in color.

"Sorry, master," Asu whispered back. "It is just so difficult."

"Do you want to be here, performing as required, or shall I take you to the priests at the temple myself?"

Hatim held his breath for the answer to that. Asu was far too beautiful for Hatim to want to lose him at the shop—and just as he and the tea shop owner, Sargon, had discussed, it would be one of the world's tragedies to see Asu taken into the temple, not to be seen again, even if then, until after his beauty had been wiped away by continuous sacrifices to the gods.

The youth was small, but perfectly formed, with curly black hair and a sensuous smile. It was hard to believe he was of age, but everyone in the bazaar knew of everyone else's age. They had all watched Asu grow to adulthood—some watched more closely and with much greater interest than others. Some with flashing eyes and licking lips and members that would harden under their thawbs as Asu walked by.

There was no hiding that it was time for Asu. Everyone knew it. Therefore the ravenous priests knew it as well. The giving of Asu to the wine shop by his father, Baltasar, estopped the certain plans of the priests, but for how long? If Asu could not cross over that curtain here willingly, the priests would take him and force him across the barrier. Asu knew that.

And Asu had just now traded his short cotton skirt, which, as he grew older and formed into perfection, drove many in the bazaar to distraction, for the thawb. The thawb could hide his form, but it could not hide his beauty. The priests will have noticed by now that the changing ceremony—the change from a short skirt to a thawb—that marked for all to see the cross to adulthood had been performed.

"I know, I know," Asu said, a slight edge of panic in his voice. "Just be patient with me, please. It's such a hard curtain to cross."

"Try faster," Hatim hissed. "See your sponsor over there. His cup is empty and he is showing its emptiness to you. He's a rich and powerful man. Take him this cup of wine—and do as he wishes."

Asu was trembling as he came around from behind the wine table. He was watching the nearly full cup he was carrying, trying hard not to spill any of the wine, his mind racing on this trip he was making—just across the wine shop floor, but perhaps across the curtain as well. As he passed around the side of the table, the burly soldier, Nasri, grabbed one of Asu's rounded buttocks cheek through the material of his white cotton thawb, and Asu nearly spilled the wine. When he looked into Nasri's face, the soldier winked and leered at him.

Asu scurried over to the table Hatim had directed him to.

"Put the wine cup down," Asu's father's friend, Sargon, said in an alcohol slurred voice, low and husky. "And come, into my lap, and feel what a man is like."

The tea shop owner pulled Asu roughly down into his lap and held him close to him in the embrace of an arm slung across Asu's little chest. Sargon was big and fat but his grip was strong. And his demanding lust was obvious. As Asu was pulled into Sargon's lap, he could feel the strength of a hard cock poking at his virginal buttocks.

"I have waited for years for this little one," Sargon growled. "Feel what I have for you?"

Indeed, Asu could feel it. Although he would normally wear a loin cloth under his thawb, Hatim had told him not to wear it in the wine shop. The shop owner had made no secret why that was so, and Asu had not needed to wonder why. The wine shops were brothels as well, and this one was a male brothel. The patrons did not come here only for the wine. The fate of each of the citizens of this city was sealed long before they reached adulthood. It depended on their family status and business—and in the case of the soldiers on their size and musculature and promise of fighting skills. For young men as small and beautiful and as well formed as Asu, their destinies were set for either a wine shop such as this or the priesthood, where their bodies would be used just as fully—and perhaps more brutally and more often. They just wouldn't receive the recompense that a wine shop gave, and the life span of a temple serving boy was sometimes marked in months, rather than years.

Sargon obviously wasn't wearing anything under his thawb either. Asu squirmed around on his lap—not being unwilling or railing against his fate, but being scared and needing more patience than he was being given. Sargon was fat and gross and smelled not just of the wine, but also of the opiate he smoked and the spices he was served in his food that few others in the city could afford. And he was being rough and brutal. With his free hand, he reached around and grabbed Asu's balls through the material of the thawb, and squeezed.

"Don't fight. Or do fight me, it will make the taking all that more pleasurable. I will have you here and now. I have waited and schemed for too long."

Asu, eyes watering, looked toward the wine table in panic. Hatim and the solider, Nasri, had their heads together in quiet conversation and were watching him.

Sargon was moving Asu's rump around on his cock, almost, but not quite, achieving penetration through the two layers of cloth. His hand stopped squeezing Asu's balls, but only so that it could gather up the hem of Asu's thawb and work its way onto Asu's leg. His long fingernails were scraping their way up the inside of Asu's thigh.

The young man wailed, "Not yet . . . please," and managed to break away from Sargon and almost stumble out onto the floor beside the table. He did go down on his knee, but while Sargon roared his anger behind him, Asu found his footing and struggled, the other men now in the hunt, each wanting to be the first, snatching at him with their hands as he passed.

He was nearly sobbing when he reached the relative safety behind the bar table again.

Surprisingly, Hatim didn't admonish him. Rather, he held out a cup of wine and said, "Here, calm yourself, Asu. Drink this to calm yourself."

Asu downed the cup of wine. Wine was not something that you were permitted to have before you came of age. Thus, although Asu had had a bit now and then and more than a bit in the week since his ceremony of change, this wine was stronger than he was accustomed to. So was the second cup.

He was feeling a bit woozy when he felt one of the soldier, Nasri's, hands on his arm and the other one on his waist. Asu looked, with unfocusing gaze, at the soldier's face. His expression was inscrutable. He was looking stern, but Asu noted a hint of a smile—and something else. The same lust that had been in Sargon's eyes.

As for Sargon, he was still loudly mouthing his indignation at his table, but was soon stopped as Hatim hovered at his table, another one of the serving boys beside him, Hatim's hand gripping the young man's wrist. Asu saw Sargon lifting the hem of his thawb to his belly, and Asu saw the plump, hard cock of the man. And then Asu watched the ass of the other serving boy descend on the cock. It was all unreeling like it was in a surreal dream, though.

"Your master is done with you," Nasri said in a growl. "I am taking you home."

"No," Asu whined. "He must give me another chance."

"You will come with me," Nasri said.

And there was no arguing with that, as Nasri had merely leaned over, taken Asu by the waist, and flung him over his shoulder.

Outside, after barely twenty steps, Asu was aware enough to say, "This is not the way to the wool merchant's quarter. This is not the way to my father's house."

Nasri reached up and slapped Asu on the rump and said, "Perhaps we are not going there. Perhaps I am taking you to the temple for the priests to debauch." And then he gave a hearty laugh.

* * * *

Supper couches, with gently raised backs, were fanned around the stone walls of the room. The floor was stone. So was the ceiling. There were torches, only half of them lit, fixed to the walls around the four sides. All of these couches were facing one, in the center of the room, that was flat.

The center couch had red-leather ropes attached to each of the four corners. The two at one end were tying off the wrists of a young man, swarthy in complexion, with a short beard and black body hair. The young man, not much taller than Asu, but more heavily muscled, covered in blue-tinted tattoos of primitive symbols, and thin of waist, with flaring thighs, and bulbous buttocks cheeks, was supporting the weight of his torso on his shoulder blades. His belly was inclined up, his jet-black cock and his heavy balls flopping back and forth, his black bush mingling with the more reddish, auburn bush of the man holding his torso on the incline and, kneeling between the darker-skinned man's thighs, grabbing his waist, and fucking him in hard thrusts.

One of the dark-skinned man's arms appeared to be broken—he screamed each time the thrust of the cock of his assailant jerked it. There were bloodied slashes across his chest and his thighs, and a dirty rag tied around one of his ankles. He was bleeding from a knife wound in his side. His knees were bent and lacerated—Nasri remarked to Asu that this was caused by sinking to them in defeat on the battlefield—and his bare feet, his ankles bound to the long, red cords at the foot of the couch, were flat on the surface of the lounge on either side of the soldier's beefy thighs.

It was obvious that it was a member of the Palace Guard who was fucking him. The short skirt with the leather slabs was on the floor next to the couch, the soldier's sandals next to that, and the medallion of rank was still around the soldier's neck, swinging back and forth in rhythm with the thrusts of his cock. The soldier's musculature was magnificent, as it was with all of the palace guardsmen, and his cock was thick and was pistoning hard and fast.

The man tied to the couch had been screaming when Nasri carried Asu into the room over his shoulder. They had not gone to Asu's father's house, but they had not gone in the direction of the temple, either. The solider had carried Asu into the entrance of the king's palace and turned immediately to the right, entering the guard house and proceeding through that to the living quarters of the Palace Guard.

The man on the couch had long, black hair, in ringlets, and as Nasri and Asu entered the chamber, hearing the man's screams from as far away as the entrance into the palace forecourt, the soldier fucking him had grabbed him by the hair, punched him in the face with a fist, and pounded his head against the hard surface of the couch until the man was reduced to moans and groans.

The soldier grabbed the man's legs by the ankles and wishboned him in a wide, high spread to the limits that the red cords binding his ankles would permit, and started fucking his hole with deeper, anger-filled stabbing thrusts.

Upon entering the chamber, Nasri stopped about five paces from the center couch, pulled Asu down the front of his body, and held Asu to his pelvis. Still dazed, Asu had no trouble discerning that Nasri's cock pressing in the cleavage of his buttocks was harder and bigger than Sargon's had been.

Nasri pulled Asu's thawb over his head and cast it aside on the floor. All Asu was wearing now were his sandals and the golden chain around his neck that his father had given him for good luck.

"Hatim has paid me to get you over your reluctance," Nasri said. Both he and Asu had their eyes trained on the taking on the couch. "He wants it done fast and completely, and he wants you returned fully conditioned and resigned to it. Are you going to fight me?"

"No, Sire," Asu murmured. "I want it done as much as he does." His voice, however, revealed the great fear and regret with which he spoke this accepted truth.

"A pity perhaps," Nasri said. "I like an attempt to fight. That man on the couch has fought. But he has lost. A captive from battle yesterday out on the plains. Karan there saw a friend of his lose his life to this man in battle. The captive was given to Karan. I thought that Karan would be finished with him by now, but he is toying with him. He had started when I left for the wine shop. I thought the taking couch would be free. No matter, though, I will initiate you standing here while we watch."

Asu moaned and trembled in Nasri's embrace. Nasri was holding the shorter young man off the floor, with just one arm encircling his waist. Asu's body was jutting out from his at the pelvis, and his arms were dangling beside him. His head was lifted, though, and he was watching the brutal fucking on the couch. The soldier was up on his feet, crouching, taking deep, slamming thrusts into the captive's channel. Rearing his buttocks back to where the long, thick cock came out of the hole, and then ramming it inside with a hard thrust of his hips. The captive was groaning quietly, just hanging there, supported only by the soldier's hands on his waist raising the man's pelvis to the punishing cock. The wounds on his chest, side, and thighs had opened and blood was oozing out of them. There also was a trickle of blood coming down from his scalp in front and his lower lip and an ear, torn where the soldier must have taken bites out of him. Cum was dribbling out of his hole. There had been several takings. The soldier had even taken time out for refreshment and then come back to resume the attack.

Asu felt the leather skirt of his own soldier hit the floor and get pushed aside with a foot. And he felt the hard cylinder of the cock, skin on skin. Long, hard, thick. Another Palace Guard requirement. Virility was the pride of the city. When the guardsmen marched on parade in the city, they marched naked except for their medallions of rank. If they could not take pride in what was swinging between their thighs, they would not be in the Palace Guard. Nasri's cock was lodged between Asu's thighs, pushing at the base of his balls and cock. He was slowing stroking, dry fucking Asu already.

"You are so big," Asu murmured in fright.

"The best to initiate you. When you can take the cock of a palace guardsmen, you will have no trouble in the wine shop. This is best for you. Tonight you will take more than one palace guardsman's cock. I promised to return you fully prepared."

Asu moaned and began to shudder.

"Do not fear, my sweet little one. I will take good care of you. I almost would not take Hatim's money. To be the first in one like you—to ream you to Palace Guard requirements—is reward enough in itself."

Over the next several moments, Nasri worked to get his cock inside Asu's hole, but it just wasn't working. Nasri was too big and Asu too virginal. Nasri gave up on the direct approach. He carried Asu over to one of the other couches, crouching down as he moved and retrieving the leather bands used as belting for his leather skirt. Laying Asu's back on the end of the couch, he called out, "Bring me taking grease."

In short order a Nubian slave arrived with the requested lotion. In the meantime Nasri had tied Asu's ankles together, pushed his legs up to his chest, and then tied his wrists in front of him, so that his legs were encased between his chest and his bound arms. When the slave arrived, Nasri was tonguing Asu's hole and patting it, commanding it to open for him.

Asu was moaning at the unexpected pleasure of this sensation. He arched his back and groaned loudly, though, when Nasri's beefy, greased fingers started to work at opening his channel up.

"Sorry that you must be bound," Nasri whispered. "But this must happen, and quickly. There will be no running away from me as you did from that fat, rich merchant, Sargon. Hatim has declared that when you come back you will sit on Sargon's cock—or not come back alive."

Asu moaned as much for what Nasri had said as for what he was doing with his fingers.

"Servants," a voice rang out from the center couch. "I think it is finished for now. I wouldn't want to use him up in one session. Come clean up and throw him in the cells."

Asu heard a scurrying of feet, the sound of something being carried off, scrubbing of the center couch and the floor around it—and then silence.

"Ah, good," he heard Nasri say. "We can use the taking couch after all."

Bound at all four corners of the couch, but with enough give that he could kneel on all fours, Asu had his head raised and his mouth hanging open, panting heavily and whimpering. Nasri was covering him close from above and slow pumping his cock inside Asu.

The screaming and begging for mercy were over—had been over for nearly half an hour. It had been difficult even with the taking grease and the preparation by the fingers, but Nasri was insistent and determined—and Asu was bound and helpless. Asu could take no more of the demands on his knees and elbows and, with a groan, he sank to the surface of the couch.

"Just as well," Nasri muttered. "I must ensure full access."

Asu had no idea what the soldier meant until he felt the giant pull out of him and the leather strips being secured around his thighs and his calves, holding his legs close together. He arched his back and screamed again as Nasri started working his cock into the now-tightened channel.

There had been a change of shift in the palace guardsmen, and those going off duty had passed those coming on duty in the supper room. The city was large, but the repute of Asu for beauty and the end of the counting of his days for the change ceremony were well known, so all stopped beside the center couch while passing from and to their duty. They could not believe their good fortune, when Nasri told them what he was doing with Asu, why, and that they all might have a part in it.