Bound & Bound – the Curse and the Captives – - 17. Chapter 17: With Eyes Raised to God

Chapter 17: With Eyes Raised to God

Cold moonlight bathed the high walls of the castle. Slumbering souls within its girdle of stone slaked off the previous day's toil with placid dreams and anxious unthought notions of the challenges of the day to come.

Angled shafts of heatless moon glow broke in upon highborn and lowly alike, for a castle like this is partitioned vertically in layers like a cake. On the lowest levels dwelt slaves, serfs, and prisoners beneath the vaults carrying the weight of the upper levels. High above, the piano nobile was peopled with lords and ladies living comfortably under panelled wooden ceilings. In between these extreme layers resided the support staff. Here could be found the chambers of vassals, attendants, and servants – and this was also where one lone pageboy crept along a corridor in total silence.

His destination was a forbidden one, and in his youthful mind, this glimmer of danger heightened his sense of urgency to get there. He recalled how fortuitous were the circumstances of the lord having built a new bathhouse for himself and his wife, and thereby the old one – on a middling level within the structure – had been given over to Lady Gretza's chief lady-in-waiting to use as her private lodgings.

Louis approached the closed wooden door to Maria's chamber and rapped his knuckles softly on it twice; he did so to alert the girl that he was about to let himself in.

He opened the door, and in the harsh but only momentary blindness that always accompanies transition from dark to light, he entered and secured the door closed behind him. Before he took a step away, he twisted the iron key within its lock and thus obtained a level of privacy for Maria and himself.

Turning around he let his back come to rest upon the wood of the portal, and allowed his eyes to adjust to the light. He loved this chamber, and especially at times like this when various rushlights added a flickering romance. To his right, a series of slender columns marked an area accessed by a couple of steps down to the pool now filled with warm and fragrant water.

Directly ahead of him was a large expanse of room where Maria's canopied bed occupied the unbroken wall to his left.

He suddenly blinked. Where was she..?

"Maria?" he whispered. As he listened, he subconsciously crouched slightly and began to creep into the room. "Where are you?"

He heard movement – the light rustle of material – and halted.

From behind the fabric folds of her dressing screen, the ever-radiant Maria stepped out.

Louis' heart leapt into his throat. This dark-haired beauty always took his breath away, but now that she stood seductively in front of him with only the gauzy tissue of a transparent silk dressing gown veiling her naked body, he felt his lips part and his mouth instantly go dry.

He loved this girl; there was no denying it.

With the powerful confidence that only youth commands, he strode up to his young lady and laced his arms around her. Her delicate fragrance was intoxicating, and the demure way her fingers landed upon his chest – right over his beating heart – only heightened an innate sense of wanting to protect this winsome creature.

He pushed back slightly and closed his eyes. In the next moment, her soft lips were on his, and Louis let his mind reel. The motion of their parting and gentle closing mouths elicited saliva and rhythmically placed breaths which got caught in each other's throat. His right hand rose and unerringly found the stiffening portion of her nipple. Cupping an open hand, he lifted the nubile breast from underneath, and his thumb gently flicked sidelong glances on the rigid bumps of the areola. A moan escaped Maria and fed itself directly into the young man's lungs. He became excited to feel his girl's pleasure, and used his thumb to press harder and with more insistent beats to match the steadily increasing pulsations from his heart. His reward? The nipple under his dominating control flared rock hard.

She pushed back with a sigh. "Louis…"

He regarded her soft brown eyes and continued to play with her breast. She laid her head on his chest and his left hand slipped down along the smooth burn of her silk garment to her hips and backside.

Maria moaned again, and Louis tugged and jostled the flesh in his hand, knowing the motion had the effect of shaking her emotions down to the fundaments.

He loved being in control with her, and he well understood the nature of her pleasure at being coveted and desired, for he experienced such flushes of excitement daily with Lord Laszlo. Louis contemplated that he understood Maria on a level few other men might let themselves admit, but that nevertheless they feel: a desire to give oneself over to a lover fully, without fear, and with a total desire to be used, passive and free. For his concept of himself and for what he wanted and could provide, Louis knew he could be content with Laszlo; that that man would be enough for him to love, be loved by, and to commit to for a fully realized future. He could have been content with that man, but Laszlo was unobtainable in that way viz. Gretza. Perhaps because of that fact, or who knows, in spite of it, Louis also had no doubts that he loved Maria. She was perfect for him: sweet, intelligent, and able to effortlessly enhance his youthful concept of his 'manly' role as protector and chivalrous paramour.

Louis felt Maria's fingers splay flat upon his chest. She used him to push herself back.

A knowing smile enlivened the young woman's visage as she raised a beckoning hand and sauntered towards her bed.

She spoke in a jesting tone, "Are these techniques of seduction – the gentle kiss, the hand on the teat, the grip on the backside – those which Lord Laszlo uses on you..?"

The teen boy felt a prickly sensation on his cheeks; Louis knew a riotous blush was colouring his face.

She sat on the edge of her bed, and the boy strode over with confidence. He walked in close to her and positioned his tights-clad knees along her inner thighs. He took another half-step in, and forced those legs to spread for him. His hands landed on her shoulders, and his grey eyes locked onto hers. "Your tone, Maria, is one of suggestive good humour, but you cannot hide from me a genuine intonation of jealousy."

Now it was the girl's turn to redden. "Is it that My Lord Louis thinks he knows me so well?"

"Aye," the boy said with a winning grin. "I know you swagger your envy round-about me as a means of alluring display. In that regard you are like a peacock strutting his prowess for his peahen."

The girl's hands began to slide up the outer line of his thighs in an ever so slowly corkscrewing manner. They drifted up and to the top of his legs, disappearing above the hem of his green velvet doublet, and paused on either side of his growing bulge.

In Louis' mind, the slowly dissipating heat in the trail of her hands felt like the glow worms' gossamer tracks left sightlessly in the night across the garden. He was being preyed upon, and he loved it.

Suddenly, she spoke again, and Louis had to swallow to achieve a level of concentration on her words.

"If only…" Her fingers grabbed his manhood though the tight fabric. "I were a peacock, then I'd be assured of possessing the object of your desire."

He moaned. "Silly girl. You do not need to be a boy for me to love you. For everything that you are, I could wish for no improvements or additions."

He bent down to kiss her; he thrilled as her touch became gripping and insistent, for it perfectly matched the kicking mule nature of the beast she was rearing.

As their tongues explored open mouths and became bathed in pulsating sighs, Louis saw that his love was reflected back to him as if from a two-sided mirror. Maria showed one side of his manhood to him that was soft and supporting; while the reflection coming back onto Louis from Laszlo was strong and ambitious. He had gentler, though more commanding, sex with her, and connected passion and unquestioned equality with him, but Louis would trade neither solely for the other. Both of the faces he saw in the mirror were his, and both showed him the same thing: that he could love either with commensurate affection and devotion.

Her hands drifted behind and pulled up forcefully on his ass cheeks.

They parted lips, and Maria sighed, "Time is short, My Lord. Let us bathe."

He stepped back and in the same motion stepped out of his shoes. He then began to unbutton his doublet while Maria rose and drifted flawlessly like a cloud to the area beyond the columns.

She stepped down and he followed into her embrace. While he removed his jacket and shirt, Maria's delicate fingers slipped between his tights and burning flesh. She drew them down and knelt to extract them off of his feet. He braced himself on her shoulder and bent to kiss the top of her head.

She stood erect, and the naked young man slipped the silk gown off of her body.

Hand in hand, they stepped into the tub and Louis immediately sat in the warm water at the pool's edge. He extended his right arm for Maria to nestle against his chest.

After a brief kiss, the girl looked troubled.

"What is it, Maria?" His tone was as soothing as the lavender-scented water.

"Oh Louis, I cannot help thinking of my father's ambitions to marry me off to a powerful man."

"Do not worry, Maria. I have hope, and I have faith, because with Laszlo's continued tutelage, I will be exactly the sort of highly-placed courtier your father wants for you." He stroked her hair and scanned her eyes. Guiding her to lay her troubles down, along with her cheek on his chest, he told her, "Do not worry, our future will be bright."

"I have faith in you, Louis, because I love you."

"And I love you, Lady Maria. My dream would be for you and I and Lord Laszlo to form our own union. I am confident you would come to love and honour him as I do."

"Do you mean," the girl abashed with a glance down to the floor. "That you wish for the three of us to 'be intimate?'"

"No, Maria. I mean that in my perfect dream the love I have for you and the love I have for him can find a balanced marriage of hearts. As I say, I think you would come to trust him as I do, and if the time was ever right, the three of us may consider sharing our bed, but that is not necessary for us to regard one another as part of a three-personed unit. Do you see..?"

"Yes, I see what you mean – but, Gretza would never allow that."

Louis sighed. He said deflatedly, "I'm afraid you are correct."

Maria's hand again came to rest over Louis' heart. She told him frankly, "I am sorry to sadden you my dear, and if I exhibit any flash of jealousy, it's because Laszlo is handsome, generous, smart and kind; it's this that makes me envious because Gretza is none of those things."

Louis hugged her tight with both arms. "You will let me know if you ever feel in danger with her, won't you?"

"Yes Louis, I will. It's true, Lady Gretza frightens me sometimes. When I am with her I feel I have no secrets, that she can rifle through my mind at will."

"She's not right for him, and I hope one day Laszlo will wake up and see her for what she is."

"What is she, Louis?"

"She's a serious threat to you and I being together and happy. That's what she is." Another ardent flush rose through the core of Louis' body, but this was no blushing embarrassment. This was a flaming desire to fight and keep the ones he loved protected at all costs. The teen recognized this as what men – grown men – feel. This is what grown men willingly fight to defend. "Something must be done about her."

˚˚˚˚˚

Within the high walls of the castle, slumbering souls dreamt to forget the past day's toil, and ready mind and body for the day to come. All slept, except one lone Turkish slave who inched along a moon-lit corridor.

The arrangement had been made earlier, and the jailer 'accidentally' omitted to fully secure the iron gate to the slaves' vaulted cell.

Ahmed trudged along the lower corridor as anxiously as a mouse in a bear pit. His burley frame stepped as lightly as it could, and any crack from a piece of reed or hay underfoot made him hesitate and listen for the sounds of someone stirring; he'd move on only when satisfied he remained undetected.

The lower passage of the castle was vaulted, just like his cell, and rectangles of moonlight broke through as angled shafts from the high-set voids in the outside wall to light his way. A moody dustiness lingered in the air as a presentiment of his approach; he had to find the round tower that he knew contained the wedge-shaped steps that led up to the next level. That second floor up contained his destination.

Ahmed's foot found the first riser of the steps, and he began to mount the pitch-black tower interior with muffled footfalls and thoughts. If he was caught, what would he say? – He'd have to confess what he was doing and then be dependent upon the integrity of the man he was meeting to vouchsafe his story. Below this flexing of reason and rational tit-for-tat thought, he relished his excitement. It had been a long time since he felt like a soldier on a mission, and in duty's name, suppressed the fight or flight reflex that pumped a bitter resolve into his veins.

He was relieved to recall that no one but Junayd knew where he was going, or why – although the dervish knew only a half-truth on what Ahmed's real undertaking was.

In a few minutes, Ahmed lightly rapped on a door. In another moment, he raised the iron latch and let himself slink in.

After he closed and secured the door behind him, Ahmed turned to eye Stefan Karolyi sitting on his bed. The room reeked of stale beer, and indeed, a tipsy ale jug was crooked by the handle within the grip of the overseer's thumb.

That man let the pitcher fall, then he stood and strode over to Ahmed.

The professional soldier felt himself be grabbed powerfully from behind the neck and forced to accept the Hungarian's tongue down his throat.

Ahmed hid his revulsion, and after a long moment of passivity, gently pushed on the supervisor's chest.

The Hungarian moved back just far enough to leer lustfully at the man whose neck he still gripped.

"Your breath smells of alcohol," Ahmed said softy.

Stefan Karolyi jostled the slave's head roughly for a moment then released it. As he walked away, he told him, "Damn, that dervish has taught you to speak well."

Ahmed saw that the overseer was heading back to his jug, so he said with a sly smile, "He's been teaching me a lot of new things. Give me some beer."

"Oh yes, I have heard those Moslem monks are like European ones." Stefan Karolyi grabbed and brought up his ale jug to eyelevel, and sloshed it around. "They like to drink, and – they like to fuck. Is that true?"

As the overseer found two earthenware mugs, Ahmed bit down his ire. He said in mock disinterest, "Is that what Junayd told you, directly?"

Stefan sauntered over showing he was already sufficiently drunk not to pay too much attention to Ahmed's impertinence.

"Slave, I have set my sight on that young man – I will woe him, I will injure his pride, and bribe him with a tasty morsel or two, and I will get him into this chamber – as I have with you – and I will bend that boy over and fuck him without mercy, over and over. Depend on it."

"Well, but perhaps sex with a boy who you can control has it own gratification, but so does being with a full-grown man."

"One who's dangerous, you mean?" Stefan glowered.

"Yes – that's exactly what I mean." Ahmed smiled.

"You surprise me, Muselmann. Your leading me on with a sexual advance was a pleasant diversion."

"Diversion from pursuing Junayd, you mean?"

"As I have said, I will have him soon enough, but why not 'fiddle' with you too? If you want it so badly, I can supply you handsomely."

The taskmaster held out a cup for Ahmed to take; he then tipped his pitcher rakishly, and amber liquid sloshed out. Once the beaker was full to the brim, he filled his own.

Within the soldier's mind, he had all the confirmation he needed that the man before him was a genuine risk to Junayd's health and well-being. And as a soldier, he knew he must neutralize the threat from this common enemy to their security – while the opportunity served.

The overseer held up his mug. "But I thought you ordinary Muslims didn't drink."

"I have never been a pious man, so why would I start in my captivity?"

Stefan offered a toast: "I'll drink to that! To impiety!"

"Yes." While over the brim of his mug, Ahmed watched Stefan Karolyi drain his beaker to the dregs and considered this back and forth with the Hungarian as a form of strategic planning and assessment. To gauge your adversary's strengths and weaknesses before the moment of actual combat engagement was critical; to assess whose manoeuvres could obtain and hold the upper hand position, and who among them is better served to play the aggressor versus the defending party. Right now, a small flush of pleasure erupted on Ahmed's face while he considered who truly operated the levers of control.

The supervisor lowered his cup, and made a loud guttural sound of satisfaction. "Drink!" he said, and Ahmed did so while watching Stefan Karolyi rubbing his stiffness through his breeches. The taskmaster said in a deepening and lecherous slur, "You are going to please me, Muselmänn. You are going to swallow my Christian seed, and like the little birdies your prophet spoke about, raise your eyes to heaven in humble thanks."

The professional soldier reached out. His fingers gently moved those of the overseer's aside. "Oh, am I?" he intoned in a low croon, and began to finger Stefan himself. "What you just said is sacrilege, and you know my people, we have slaughtered whole Christian communities for less."

Stefan lolled his eyes shut in pleasure, and let his head tip back as he moaned, "Don’t talk 'sacrilege' as if you care one bit about such things."

"You are right, I do not care, but did not your prophet speak of turning the other cheek?"

The supervisor opened his eyes full on the slave. "That he did. You know some The True Faith."

Ahmed grabbed Stefan full along the shaft through the fabric and pressed the man's member against the overseer's inner thigh.

"I know a little. Perhaps he meant turn the other ass cheek, no? Is that not what Christian monks do to each other?"

Stefan Karolyi looked angered; colour radiated up his cheeks as his hand re-clamped onto the back of the slave's neck. The Hungarian opened his mouth and laughed heartily.

The infidel's breath disgusted him, but Ahmed smiled. The Turk said in a newfound seriousness, "We'll see who is humbly thanking Allah by the end of tonight."

Stefan's tongue led an imposing kiss again into Ahmed's mouth. The soldier too used one hand to lock onto the back of the Hungarian's head and drove his Turkish tongue deeper into Stefan's greedy throat. His free hand found the cord of the overseer's breeches and undid them. He then extracted his own stiffened rod over the top of his loincloth. He manoeuvred their hips together and the naked flesh of their members pressed tightly between them. A quick adjustment, and the men's swords came into breathless contact from tip to base. Stefan Karolyi grunted in obvious pleasure as Ahmed skilfully began to gyrate in a slight up and down motion; the Hungarian's gaze fell rapt on the sight below their waists. This was not Ahmed's first time doing this, and the action alone provided the Turk with its own pleasure, despite the offensive personage attached to his dick on the other side.

Stefan kissed him again, exploring gums, the insides of cheeks and back molars deeply with his ale-scented slobber.

Ahmed could feel this form of stimulation excited the man from where their members were joined.

The supervisor broke away from the embrace with a look that bordered on the maniacal. His voice was hoarse with lust, as he commanded, "Get on your knees, slave."

Into the glance of his enemy, Ahmed smiled the little grin of victory – this man's will was his to do with what he pleased, and the Turk knew it. He caressed Stefan's cheeks gently while both of his hands made their way to the top of Stefan's head.

Ahmed whispered, "I know what you want."

He applied pressure and delicately made fistfuls of Stefan Karolyi's hair. He guided the Christian to the floor.

In another moment, with another glance upwards, the Hungarian began to suck him voraciously. The loud slurps and broken suction sounds mingled with the pleasurable sensations to inform Ahmed's brain that this man was both skilled and obviously experienced. The soldier felt lips and tongue toy with the Muslim's circumcised glans, and clean the dripping end over and over again in maddening repetition. The Hungarian's reward for such diligence? – Ahmed shoved his member deeper into Stefan's gullet and slicked the roof of the man's throat with a great abundance of his crystal-clear sweetness. Ahmed built a rhythm and used Stefan's follicles as a handle.

The Christian was grunting in muffled pleasure and abusing himself.

Ahmed's commanding fingers worked themselves over his taskmaster's scalp like snakes through man's vanity in the Garden of Eden. He built a pulsating rhythm of grip release; grip release; shoving Stefan's head farther onto his pole, then relenting to allow the man's frictive suction to come back up to the head. The cycle repeated with a shove of his hands, and the man's mouth would again be forced to take his sword until he could feel Stefan's hot breath beating against the hairs of his pubic region.

This forceful play only made the Christian's suction on the Muslim cock all the more caressing and passionate. The man's mouth on the slave's member was drawing Ahmed inextricably closer to a rollicking climax. A flash of Junayd's smile, and how his youthful moustache rode the top of his lip, centered Ahmed's resolve. His hands slowly drifted downwards from Stefan's scalp onto his neck. He maintained the same thrusting beat, but looked down at him to ask, "You want my Turkish seed in your belly?"

The eyes the supervisor drifted up to the professional soldier said that he did, in no uncertain terms.

Ahmed's tender and lustful attitude changed in an instant. "Then, take it!" He latched on like a clamp of iron to the side of the man's head near the ears with open palms on his cheeks. Brutal thumbs pressed the supervisor's nostrils closed. Ahmed shoved his cock far down Stefan Karolyi's throat and let out a guttural roar.

He pumped torrent after torrent down the victim's throat, and the Christian gagged violently on it.

The soldier in him had fully emerged, and it was the soldier who deflected Stefan's blows on this arms, legs and flanks as puny. In his mind's eye, his motivation and objective was clear: the overseer's demise.

As a professional soldier, Ahmed was trained in the ways of death. He knew the human gag reflex works automatically to make it impossible for a person to clamp down when something is caught in their windpipe. The action of gagging itself forces the jaws to open wide and stay open while the air is trying to be expelled from the lungs to dislodge the stuck item. To close the mouth is part and parcel with swallowing and that is the antithesis of the mechanics of someone choking.

Although Karolyi's eyes bugged and pleaded with tears streaming, Ahmed stared into them unmoved; in point of fact, the begging made his hands press the man's nose closed tighter. He continued to orgasm with indescribable pleasure and satisfaction into the void of another man's life.

The supervisor's struggles paused; his choking sounds deepened perceptibly as the Turk's semen infiltrated into the gasping tissue of his lungs.

Ahmed did not deceive himself. He knew Stefan was not 'suffocating' from lack of air, but gradually becoming asphyxiated in the manner of a drowning man while the semen completely clogged the entrance to his airways.

The dying man's vision faltered. His sight fluttered, his hands stopped beating on the stone body of his murderer.

Ahmed watched the orbs in Stefan's head roll back in total whiteness. He whispered, "Tell God how you died for me, hmm. And be sure to tell the devil who sent you to hell for him."

Just as Karolyi's life was on the verge of being extinguished, the man's death spasms included searing hot semen shooting all the way up to soak the underside of the man's chin, and splash on Ahmed's legs.

After another prolonged minute of lifelessness, the Turk let go, and the dead man fell off of his still rock-hard cock with a thump.

He regarded the man on the floor with cool detachment. Ahmed knew Stefan was not dead, but he also knew the dying man would be unable to inhale any breath into his lungs due to the blockage caused by his seminal fluid. It would be a few minutes, but there was no way Stefan Karolyi would be able to revive; he would wait it out until he was sure.

The soldier slowly allowed himself to celebrate; now at least the threat to the dervish had been removed, and the thought that Junayd would be safe was the only thing that mattered.

A smile crept across his lips, and he stepped over the body to take a hefty swig of beer with greedy lip-smacks of triumph.

'Junayd is safe,' he thought, and almost felt like dancing.