What a Boy Must Do

 

The Age of Iron

This is Part Two in the `What a Boy Must Do' Series. Each short story in this series is self-contained and complete in itself, the passage of time being the very tenuous link between them; from early man to a perhaps not too distant future. Like the other stories in the series, `The Age of Iron' contains scenes of sexual activity between a boy and an adult male, so if material of such nature is not to your taste this story is not for you.

Please remember to make a donation to `Nifty' – nobody makes any money from these stories but the Nifty site does cost money to run.

The Age of Iron

By Ivor Sukwell.

Red is for blood

 

He stayed hidden and silent, his emotions a boiling mixture of rage, fear, helplessness and horror.

Part of him wanted to run screaming from his safety, stab his little flint knife into one of the bearded horrors who were murdering his village, but another, bigger part of him wanted to live.

He knew he would not get within stabbing distance of any of the hairy faced monsters who were killing and laughing as they killed. He had but a small knife of flint, the monsters held long, broad-bladed knives that were not flint though he knew not what they were. He knew only what he saw, that those knives, the colour of autum leaves, sliced easily into the flesh of men, chopped through the wooden shafts of flint-tipped spears and sliced open a man's throat with a flick of the wrist.

And the throats of women too. The very young were picked up by the feet and their brains dashed out as their bodies were swung, heads smashing into rocks on the ground or against the stout posts that held up the mud and straw houses of the people being slain.

The older of the young were not slaughtered, but herded into the fenced stockade where a few cattle were kept for safety at night.

Had he run screaming at the men who were killing his village then they might throw him there too, for he was not yet a man, but he knew that those in that stockade, boys and girls, were not destined to live for long and that their deaths would not be peaceful.

He was safe here, high in the tree at the edge of the woods that crowded around his small village. He had climbed there before the monsters came, escaping from the work he should be doing, sorting through the rocks the men had brought in baskets from the mine, looking for flints to make knives and arrow heads and spear points.

The people of his village were not warriors, they were a peaceful folk who lived by farming and hunting; the arrow heads and spear points were not meant to kill men but to hunt the deer and the small game that gave them meat.

The long knives of the bearded men who slaughtered his family and the families of all others were meant for killing men and they would kill him too though he was not yet a man.

The first signs of man hair were showing on him, down there, above the part that hung between his slender legs, a part he had long known was meant for more than just pissing with, but its other uses known, as yet, only to his hand. Another winter, the elders had declared, and he would have enough hair to be called a man; but now the elders were all dead and he thought he would not live long enough to become a man.

He stared at the horror beyond and below him, unable to tear his eyes from the slaughter, fearful that even the movement of his eyes would betray his hiding in the tree.

The slaughter was ended now, but the horror had only just begun. None were left to kill save those penned in the stockade, and those, he thought, were to be slaves.

His people were a peaceful people, not given to war and the taking of slaves. Slaves they had – how else could the mines be worked – but they were taken in trade, not war, and he had never questioned how it was that they came to be slaves; they just were. Now he thought he understood how it was that slaves were made, though he could not understand why the bearded monsters had killed all the men, people who were strong and would have made valuable slaves.

Why keep only the young? Girls and boys half his own age and older, but all younger than he, what use were they?

He knew the story, the passed down tale of long, long ago. There were paintings on the walls of the caves that were the mines that were also a sacred place, for they told the tale of the Saving of the People, a thing that had been when the ancestors had ancestors.

It was a tale that every boy of the Stone People knew for the Elders took boys to the sacred part of the caves when the time for them to be taken there came, and told the tale to them.

The tale told of how, in the long ago past, a boy who was almost a man, but had not yet enough man hair to be called a man, had saved the people of the village from warriors who would steal their land and make them work as slaves in the mines they owned.

The boy, so the story said, and the paintings showed it to be true, had gone to the fierce warriors and stood before their leader.

He there had taken off the skin he wore as clothes and stood naked before the warrior and offered his body for the warrior's pleasure if the people were spared, and work not as slaves, but as free people in the mines for the warrior people.

The paintings and the tale told that it had happened so; that the warrior had lifted high his skin covering and revealed his hardness to the boy who had taken that hardness in his mouth until he had eaten the warrior's seed, and then he had begged the warrior to use him as a man uses a woman and that, too, had been done and the people saved from slavery.

The Elders taught all the boys of the Stone People that one day, in the times to come, another boy who was almost a man but had not yet the hair of a man, would come again to save the people in this way, and that all the boys of the people must know that it may be them who did this thing, and if that time came then a boy should offer so his body for the saving of the people, and he should do so willingly and with honour, for he would be the new Chosen One.

"You know there's a lookout in that tree."

"I see him; and he's not a lookout. He's staring at the village not at the woods around."

"Wishing he was down there making his first kills, probably. Shall I put an arrow in him?"

Six mounted men had stopped some paces from the tree where the boy hid, their approach unheard above the screams and laughter below where the killing was ending.

"No; he'll make noise falling from that tree. And he's but a boy and not one of them." The man nodded towards the monsters in the village. "One who escaped, I think, and we came for boys."

"Not going to get any from here," the other shrugged, "What a waste!"

A waste indeed, for boys of the Stone People were highly prized as slaves for the beds of civilised men.

Less skilled in the arts of fucking than boys from the East, but those were trained from an early age in the ways a boy can use his inside muscles to work the cock that is in him, and fucking one such is an experience all men should have; but the boys of the Stone People gave more pleasure.

Boys from the East did as they were trained to do and they made wonderful whores, but the boys of the Stone People worshipped the cock they served, and they would serve only one.

Tall, slender and red-haired they pleased the eye as well as the cock, and because hair grew most unwillingly on their legs they were smooth and delightful to the touch.

The mounted men came from a city beyond the island of the Stone People and knew of the legend of the Chosen One. They could have conquered the Stone People, taken all their boys as slaves, but they were men of trade as well as war and used the legend for their profit.

Each village they found they exacted tribute from, a tribute of the five most delightful of the boys who were almost men, boys who would become Chosen Ones, offering their flesh for the pleasure of the great ones in a far-off city, and their village would stay safe from war and plunder.

Each year five such boys were selected and presented to men like the mounted ones and taken to the city where the prices paid for them were almost beyond imagining.

This village was one they had not visited before, and now they were too late to gain tribute and profit.

"He's seen us," the second mounted man said quietly.

"Bring him down," the other, who was the leader, said. "Don't harm him, but get him down fast; there are things he should not see."

The other looked again at the village and his face whitened and tightened in anger and disgust.

Below and beyond the mosters were stirring into life the fire cooking pits of the village, setting up spits for the roasting of meat.

"They came for meat as well as sport," the leader said, his voice hard, "This no boy should see; his people slain and then eaten."

"We should charge them, scatter them, stop this abomination."

"Six against forty?" the leader said, "Forty with the blood lust still on them. What good would we do?"

"We cannot let it happen! A crime against all the gods!"

"All but one, I think. Their god approves it. But they will not go unpunished. Let them sate themselves on unholy meat and ale, cool their lust for blood in the rape of those they have kept, and then we will go amongst them." The leader of the mounted men stared hard at the village below and the monsters that now strutted there, and when he spoke again his voice was as hard as his stare. "None will be killed when we go among them," he ordered, "Take all alive. Their deaths will come slowly, chained to an oar in a war galley."

The other men nodded, knowing the punishment was fitting. Only the worst of criminals were sentenced to a life at the oar of a war galley. Those galleys fought war but little, though they trained for the days of war relentlessly, and the wicked, knotted whip of the oar master tore skin and flesh from the backs of the slaves who worked the oars. And if the back of a slave was too raw to whip again then the knotted lash would start to strip the flesh from his legs until he learned to obey the commands he was given.

A slave might live for several years and never leave the oar. He slept chained to his oar, he ate there, he shit and he pissed there until he was of no further use and then he was fed to the fish of the sea.

"Still six against forty," a mounted man observed, "Even when they've drink the place dry and tired themselves with rape."

The boy in his tree heard the words of the men, though he understood them not for they were not words of the language of the Stone People.

He thought he had been discovered by the monsters who slew all below and beyond him and he almost pissed himself with fear, but when he looked down he saw that they were not those monsters but monsters of a different sort.

They numbered but few, no more than a handful of fingers and perhaps another finger or two, for the boy knew nothing of counting and numbers, and they sat astride deer that were not deer, for he knew nothing of horses either.

And he knew not if they were men or monsters indeed, for each was encased in a shell, much like a crab may be, for arms and legs were not covered by the shell.

The shells were the colour of flint, not the wondrous black flint that is so sharp, but the grey of the flint that is easier to work but blunts and chips soon.

The shells were not flint, though, for shells are not made of stone, and each had another, smaller shell on his head from which feathers or hair grew.

He calmed his fear for he knew these strange creatures had not come to kill him and were not the same as the monsters who had slaughtered his people.

One put an arm from his shell and beckoned to him to come down from his tree, a finger held to lips so he knew he must not cry out or make a loud sound, and he understood that these creatures in their shells did not want to be known by the monsters below and beyond.

The gods of his people spoke then to him as he hid in his tree, for though his people were dead now their gods lived still; and the gods said to him that he was the Chosen One and that he should give his flesh to the leader of the Shell Men for his pleasure so that he would avenge the slaughter of his people on the monsters who had slain them.

His body glowed with pride that the gods should speak thus to him and that by the sacrifice of his flesh he should avenge his people, though he knew it would not be an easy thing to do.

To take the hardness of the leader of the shell men into his mouth and eat his seed was a thing he could do, though he knew not how it would be, but to be used as a woman is used was a thing he did not know if he could do, for he had not a place like a woman has where the hardness of the shell man could go.

The gods were kind and soothed his fears that he would not be able to do this thing, for he remembered the paintings on the walls of the cave that was the mine and knew that the man would enter him from behind and use that hole in his body as he would use the slit that is at the front of the bodies of women.

Knowing now what he must do, he climbed down from his tree and stood before the leader of the shell men, who climbed off the deer that was not a deer he had been sitting on, and, wonder of wonders, he took off the shell that covered his head and looked now more like a man.

With ceremony he took off the skin of the animal that covered him and stood naked before the leader of the shell men that he could see clearly the flesh that was being offered for his pleasure.

He went on his knees before the man, his hands held out cupped before him, offering them as a place for the man to put his hardness, and he opened wide his mouth, for the man must know he could use that as he wished.

This he did as the paintings told him he must do, for this is what the Chosen One had done in ages long past.

"Looks like you got lucky, Critas," another of the shell men said with a grin on his shell-covered face, "Any chance we could all have a go when you've finished?"

"No chance at all," the leader who was called Critas said. He knew the legend, the story of the Stone People, for he had traded with them and taken the tribute of boys from them in other villages. "The boys of these people offer themselves to one man only as a bargain to save all others. They trade their flesh for the safety of their people, and a man who has one is amongst the most fortunate of men, for I am told that even the boys of the East are but as women in comparison to these."

"Can't save his people now, can he," the shell man said, "They're all dead and, by the look of it, soon be eaten as well."

The leader of the shell men looked at the boy kneeling before him, his cupped hands outstretched, his mouth open as the ritual demanded.

Long of limb and slender of body, a waist so narrow a man might think he could encircle it with his hands; fair of face, his hair the red of an autumn leaf, his eyes the green of emerald, the boy's form would have driven prices high were he placed on an auction block.

A few whisps of man hair, a darker red than the hair on his head were all that grew on the smoothness of his flesh, enough to show that the boy could make seed, and all men know that a boy who can seed is the best for pleasure, for in his eagerness to seed a boy will permit a man to take his pleasure in any way he wishes.

Such a boy could only be bought by the wealthiest of men, and Critas was not a man of any such wealth.

"Take him and sell him then," a shell man spoke, "Get good money for him in any market."

"That we cannot do," Critas said, "For he is offering himself as a Chosen One, and if we take him with us, his offer not accepted, he will be dead before we reach ship."

"Looks healthy enough to me," the shell man spoke and spat on the floor of the woodland.

"If I do not take his offer," Critas said softly, "He will have failed his people and his gods and he will not live with that. He will make himself dead, stop breathing for shame."

"Got yourself a nice bit of flesh, then," a shell man observed, "Wish he was on his knees to me."

"There is a bargain yet to be made," Critas told them, "A boy does not become a Chosen One for nothing."

He looked at the boy still kneeling before him and spoke to him in the language of the Stone People, for Critas had traded with them much and had learned the language to do so.

"I accept your offer," he said kindly, "What must I do for you in return?"

"Avenge my people, lord," the boy said humbly, "And my body lives only for your pleasure."

Carefully Critas explained to the boy what he intended for the monsters who were now feasting on the flesh of the dead and raping those young who still lived.

"It will take them a long time to die," Critas explained, "Even some years, so you will be long a man before the last one dies. And every moment they are alive will be torment for them, torment without end while they breathe."

The boy nodded his understanding; this was fitting indeed.

"You will not want pleasure with me for all those years, lord," he said, and then he spoke the words of the ritual the elders had taught him and all other boys since the time of the first Chosen One. "But while I am a boy I swear that no boy alive would give you greater pleasure."

"And should I make the time that you are a boy be longer than you think, and not allow the man hair to grow on you until the last of those is dead?" Critas asked, for he knew the Stone People used the man hair to determine if a boy had become a man.

"I would welcome that, lord," the boy said, "And I would beg only that I may watch them die."

"That too, shall be," Critas said, and lifted his tunic so the boy could receive his hardness in cupped hands.

"Don't mind us," a shell man grinned.

"Turn your backs or watch as you will," Critas said, though speaking was not easy now for the boy's hands were soft and warm, his fingers gentle, "But this part must be done now."

Breath hissed from Critas as the boy leaned forward and took man hardness in his mouth, and though Critas knew that no cock had been before where his now was, he marvelled at the sensations the boy was giving him.

Though the boy had never done this deed before he, like all other boys of his people, had learned the lessons he had been taught by the elders, how to use his tongue and his lips, how to cover his teeth and how to open his throat, for his mouth must give pleasure to the man if the bargain was to be sealed.

It was, the boy marvelled, no hard thing to do. The man felt good in his mouth, as though his hardness was meant to be there, and he felt pride when he opened his throat to take that hardness deep, so his nose was pushed against the hairs of the man, that he gagged not, but swallowed the man with some ease.

The man's hands were round his head, not forcing him onto the hardness in his mouth, but stroking his hair and his neck as he used throat, tongue and lips to pleasure the man, and though his stretched jaw began to ache he had no wish to stop for he longed now for the shell man's seed in his mouth

The seed came in thick spurts and the taste he found was good and he swallowed all and smiled as he did so, for now he was truly a Chosen Boy and the shades of his people would be proud of him as they sat now with the gods.

He did as the elders had said a Chosen One must do, inspecting with his lips and tongue the cock of the man, for not a single seed must be left, all must be eaten, and then, with the covering skin eased back into place, he held the cock in his soft, cupped hands and kissed it lightly with his lips, giving thanks to the cock and to the man who's cock it was for the honour of eating the seed.

"Look as though you enjoyed that," one of the shell men grinned.

"I've been sucked by as many boys as any of you," Critas, mumbled, his breathing still not steady, "But never anything like that!"

He raised the boy to his feet and turned him to face the other shell men, hands resting on slender young shoulders.

"Look as much as you want," he told his men, "And if any of you would rather set eyes on a woman then you are a weak, degenerate man."

None would, for the boy was fit to be the bedboy of a god, his slender body a thing of perfection, his own hardness standing proud from his almost hairless groin.

The boy stood tall and unafraid as the eyes of the shell men devoured his flesh and his heart filled with pleasure that the shell men found him good to look at, and his young cock twitched with joy as men licked their lips, wishing they could taste his hard, young flesh.

He was now, as every boy of his people wished to be, the Chosen One, his slender, young flesh dedicated now to the pleasure of a man, the man who would avenge the slaughter of his people. He had done what a boy must do, offered his body in a bargain for his people, and he was filled with pride and joy that his offer had been accepted, the bargain made.

He tilted his head backwards, turned to look at the man who had strong hands on his slender shoulders.

"You must use me as a man uses women, lord," he said.

"I will," the man told him in the language of the Stone People, "But not here and not yet. That moment must be dedicated to the gods. It must be as the sacred paintings show."

The boy's heart filled again with joy, for the man knew of the ritual and would use him as the sacred paintings showed.

The boy did not look upon the horrors beyond and below for he had been told he must not so do and he obeyed the word of the shell man he had given himself to.

He heard the screams of those of his people who had not been yet slain, they screamed as they were raped time and time again, and the laughter of the monsters was loud as they raped.

He smelt the roasting of much meat, and in his heart he knew what that meat must be, for there had been no meat in the village to roast.

He watched as the six shell men made good their shells and climbed once more onto the deer that were not deer and they rode down to the horror below, war clubs in their hands.

He heard no more laughter then, but shouts instead of rage and fear and screams of pain, from the monsters now, for no more screams came from those who had been raped as none of them still lived.

He looked when the woods rustled with movement and he smelt the fear of the monsters, for they were captive now and all felt pain.

Cracked skulls and broken ribs, the monsters shuffled in a long line, each with hands bound behind him and roped to the monster before him with a double loop of rope around the neck, and he gave thanks to his gods that the vengeance for his people had begun.

He looked with awe at the thing that was drawn up upon the beach; a huge thing, made of wood and hollow inside, and he knew not what it was for he had never seen a ship.

"Nice little galley, Critas," a shell man said as they gazed upon it, "Thirty two oars by the look of it and an evil looking ram."

"No slaves," Critas observed, "These creatures were sea rovers." He gave a wicked grin, "Be used to sitting at an oar. Ride along the coast, find our ship and bring it here. We'll need an oar master, a helmsman and a lot of chains."

"You mean to keep that galley?"

"Aye, and use it, too. We will do some pirate hunting. The boy with us, so he can watch these bastards die slowly."

The shell men nodded, agreeing with the justice of it.

He stood on the little platform at the front of the ship, for now he knew how to name it, and gazed with pleasure at the now naked monsters who were chained to the oars that made the ship move through the water.

The monsters were naked, and would be so always until they died, for the shell man had said they must be so, for it was right and proper that he should see the skin and flesh of their backs and thighs torn by the knotted, three-lashed whip as the oar master urged them to row harder.

"Be gentle with them," Critas had told the oar master, "It is not fitting that they should die too quickly."

He smiled with pleasure as that lash landed on a monster's back and blood seeped from the welts it left.

He smiled with pleasure as the cool sea air raised bumps on his naked skin, for he was naked too, as he always was, for it was right he should be naked for his man to feel and fondle as he pleased.

He smiled more when he leaned back into the body of the shell man who had accepted him as Chosen One, and the man's hand reached round him and held his hardness in a rough, but gentle hand.

A wonder it was that the shell men were shell men no more, for they had taken off their shells when the ship left land and were now as normal men. And this he was thankful for; he had wondered much how a man in a shell should be able to use him as a woman, but now it could be done as the sacred paintings showed.

"It is time, my lord," the boy said for he could feel the hardness of the man against his back.

"It is time," the man agreed as his hand felt the hardness of the boy and his desire rose as his cock had risen.

"Here, lord, where I can hear the cries and groans of the monsters as the whip bites their flesh. Here where the shades of my people can see the torment of their killers, and see also the joy on the face of their Chosen One when he is entered."

Fitting indeed, Critas thought, though any joy the boy might feel would come only after much pain, for when a boy is entered for the first time it is not an easy thing.

He did as the ritual in the sacred paintings showed, going on his knees as he had before, with his hands cupped before him, and waiting for the man to shed his tunic.

He softly kissed the tip of the weapon that was to spear him and said the words the elders had taught him he must say.

"I am yours, lord. Use me as a man uses a woman."

"No," Critas said, "I will not so do. I will use you as a man uses a boy, for a boy you are and more wonderful than any woman."

His heart filled with joy, for the man knew the words of the ritual, and he lay on his back, his hardness pointing high towards his face, so it could be seen that he was indeed a boy.

He raised his legs and held his knees to his shoulders so the place of entry was seen and controlled his breathing as he had been taught to do and his mind thought only of the joy of being entered, for that was the way there would be no pain.

The man greased his hole with the fat of a pig, for by doing that he would enter more easily, and placed the tip of his spear of flesh against the hole of the boy, a hole that was already pulsing and trying to open for the boy knew what he must do.

A scream came from the boy as spear of flesh drove into his never-before-entered hole, but to the boy it was a scream of joy and not of pain, for though his body felt that pain his mind knew it not, but was instead awash with the glory that the man was inside him and he was truely a Chosen One, and the man who fucked him now would avenge the slaughter of his people.

Soon his body felt no pain and his mind went down to the part of his body where he had cock inside him, and he felt fully the glory of the cock inside him, how it filled him and moved within him.

And when the man withdrew that cock, only to plunge it back into the gaping hole in his body, he cried in joy at the pleasure of it and wanted it to happen again and again.

When the man had finished and withdrawn for a final time his spear of flesh, and brought the boy's legs down from high above him, he felt the seed of the man leaking slowly from his hole and he wept tears of joy that the man had seeded inside him and used him as a boy must be used.

"You are my boy," the man whispered to him, "And I shall keep you and use you as a boy should be used until you are no longer a boy."

"Soon I shall be a boy no more," he said through his tears, "For the hair of a man grows already and soon will be thick and I will be a man."

"To be a man amongst your people," Critas whispered again, "The man hair must show thick. I will remove all so you will have no hair there and you will stay still a boy."

He wept anew, for he would stay a boy awhile yet and the man would use him as a boy and being so used was a delight to his flesh.

"Let me hear them scream," he begged the man, "That the shades of my people may laugh at their pain."

And he lay his face on the spear of the man that was no longer a spear and smiled as the three-lashed, knotted whip of the oar master tore skin and flesh from the backs and thighs of the monsters who had slaughtered his people, monsters who screamed now in their agony, chained to the oars of a ship.

 

That was the second story in this little series. Hope you enjoyed it.

 

ivorsuckwell@hotmail.co.uk