Gladiators On The Web...
Harga Part One

The sun was dipping down to the west, a ponderous red medallion of fire seeping into sky and lake. Squadrons of swifts hawked and skimmed through clouds of insects smoking over the waters. Rooks cawed from their roosts. The banks were hemmed with reeds that jostled like ranks of serried spears, concealing a puzzle of light and shade in which moorhens and coots paddled in their own quaint little dreams. The creck and kowk of their cries drifted forlornly over the surface and mingled with the honk of frogs among the lily pads. Above the crouching forest, the sky was rippled and creased with clouds. The sun was sinking like a dying warrior into his grave.

My wrists were fastened above my head and attached to a cord that had been slung over the bough of an oak. I was naked. Whenever I moved, or twisted in my bonds, I could feel the creak and lurch of ancient timber passing through my limbs and into the ground. Hear, too, the rustle of foliage, the sudden fluster of wings, the murmuring of female voices. The sun now beamed directly upon me, dousing me in light, drowning me in warmth. A sun as intense and luminous as God. Unwatchable. Yet its warmth consoled and soothed me. Sunlight caressed me. Kissed me. Ran in molten streams down my body, drowning me in forgetfulness.

Garius was next to me, bound to the same branch, his back to the lake. He was watching the darkness unfold in the east, an invisible beast prowling towards us, the lean silent panther of death and dissolution. The moon was his god. Yet the sun blessed him too, bathing his back in a liquid pageant of shadow and gold.

We had set out early that morning from camp. We were on horseback. We rode slowly through the tents and smouldering fires; watched yawning men in the bleak light of dawn stumbling around with unshaven faces. We trotted past the stands of swords and shields and spears, past the paddock with its steaming troop of horses, the waggons that rattled with pots and pans and shook to the snores of cooks. We cantered off down the forest trail, past the outlying sentries who stared at us with unfeeling eyes. And then the forest drowned us in silence and gloom, as though a viscous green river had risen slowly and imperceptibly around us and submerged us.

Silence? Not quite silence. For the gloom itself was a murmuring darkness, smothering us in a shroud of prophecy and promise. For this was a dangerous world, full of meandering trails that led back upon themselves, through thicket and mire, into a complex puzzle of swamp and lake in which were buried the skulls and bones of dead soldiers and lost adventurers. It was a wilderness of trees that stretched for uncountable miles to horizons warped by haze and marked only by the mean, discouraging fires of hostile tribes. Beyond, lay the mountains from which cold, untameable streams bounced through gorge and defile, down towards the plain, swelling into dark, sullen rivers that lazed like dangerous serpents through a trackless waste of trees. It was a landscape of bleak, forbidding madness.

And this - from the forest to the mountains - was the land of the Harga. A warrior tribe - subtle, devious - who skulked among rock and tree and shadow, beguiling adventurers with the prospect of easy trails leading to lush meadows and villages ripe with nubile women. They tempted the Roman legions too. We came looking for plunder. For slaves. For women. We wanted to trap them all in the vast net of Empire. But they were quick, elusive and crafty. They sniped at us from their armour of darkness, from the shifting shadows of the forest gloom, picking off scouts, picking off stragglers, beckoning us deeper into destruction. They laid false trails, trapped the waggons in quag and morass, then lured the weary remnants of these bold expeditions into tranquil meadows, with tempting ponds and crystal streams. The soldiers relaxed. Stripped naked and bathed, easing their aches and pains, until, from the very trough of silence, the forest erupted in the dreadful ululation of death, and shadows teemed forth in a clamour of painted bodies and shining blades.

Most of the Romans died in the meadows, some fled through the turmoil of fighting into the forest, and were hunted down and killed by rearguard skirmishers. A few were taken alive - the cooks, for example, their fat buttocks squirming under pots and pans, shivering and shitting themselves with fear, reciting prayers like menus. These, of course, were too cowardly, too ugly, to kill. And the Harga had no need of sophisticated Latin cuisine. So they - with others deemed too mean, too old, too ugly for sex and sacrifice - were turned out, jeeringly, into the forest where they would wander around lost, succumbing eventually to bog and beast and starvation. The others - the young and the beautiful - had different fates awaiting them. Tests of manhood; of sexuality; of endurance. In the end, of course, all would die - some sacrificed to the forest gods, some killed in one-to-one combat, others tortured and executed for the entertainment of the tribe. The studs merely expended more sperm in arriving at death than others - the lucky ones in the wombs of selected Harga women, the rest futilely into air and soil.

The men were warriors; the women too. Trained in all aspects of guerrila war, of hand-to-hand fighting. They were redoubtable fighters, all the more so for their fearlessness in face of death. They fought without armour; they fought without shields. They wore but the lightest clothing, always exposing the navel, their talisman of courage and sexuality, the sign that the warrior was ever-ready for copulation and death. Sometimes, indeed, a fighter, dedicating his soul to the forest gods and offering up his or her life in battle, would fight nude, knowing the naked, unadorned flesh would draw the spears and arrows of the clamouring enemy, and satisfy the lust of the gods for a beautiful death.

Sometimes they wore body-paint - adorning maybe just the face, perhaps decorating an arm or leg or breast, even occasionally covering the entire body from head to toe. Body painting was their highest artistic expression. They painted on neither wood nor canvas, preferring the flesh, which they adorned with mythic tales of heroism, scenic views of lake and forest and distant mountain, of moonrise and sunset, portraits of bird and flower too. The women especially loved painting themselves - not to terrify their enemies, but to charm them into death.

And sometimes, too, to taunt their adversaries, they painted their bodies - male and female - with scenes of copulation and scenes of death. Arrows protruding from belly and breast; sinuous streams of blood trickling down throat and waist, thigh and abdomen; sombre insights into disembowellment, with intestines sliding from gaping bellies.

Later that morning we came across a shallow stream bubbling through a defile in the rocks. There was a clearing to one side, a small glade with rich green grass, fresh and supple as a woman's flesh, and tiny forest flowers that gleamed in the sunlight like precious stones. The river tumbled through rocks, then broadened out and washed against the green banks and formed several finger-like shoals of sand. Garius said he had no fear of Harga. We should tether our horses, he said, and swim.

"In that shallow water?" I laughed.

"Well, paddle then!"

And so he jumped from his horse and tied it to a tree.

"Come on!" he yelled.

I looked around anxiously at the trees fringing the clearing. In that turmoil of water it would have been impossible to hear the tread of feet, the rustle of leaves, the sound of weapons testing the air.

Garius, anyway, had already stripped off his clothes. He turned to me, laughing, jeering at my timidity. His prick was hard and defiant. Arrogant. Challenging. My throat tightened. Went dry. There was a curious sense of weakness in my bowels.

We splashed together in the water. Behaving like small boys. Then we relaxed, sitting in a pool, our thighs covered with water. Garius talked about sex. He eyed me mockingly and toyed with his genitals. He told me about the women he'd had. Willing and unwilling. He told me of the young men he'd deflowered. He laughed a lot at that. He caressed himself obsessively and his eyes became dreamy. He asked about me. About girls. About boys. I felt nervous. Shy. I gazed out over the forest. I couldn't look at him. But I told him how I had made love for the first time the night before the regiment left on its expedition. In the town on the fringe of the forest. With its baths and olive groves. He laughed again. He wanted to know all the details, he said. Was it one or more? Did her nipples harden at my touch? Was her cunt warm and cosy? Did she shiver and tremble when she came? I blushed and wouldn't answer. He laughed mockingly and asked if I'd been taken by any of the older men in the regiment. I averted my eyes. Embarassed. Not knowing what to say. Frightened of where his questions were leading. I couldn't bring myself to answer.

"Don't worry about it," he said, kicking my foot playfully under the water. "There's plenty of time."

And I felt his toes rubbing against my calf like some curious fish. My heart beat more rapidly, my pulse quickened, my belly quivered in fear and expectation.

But I didn't move away.

Then he seized my hand and jerked me up, pulled me into the shadows. Kicked water over me. We were no longer nervous animals, brooding on sex, but small boys again. Misbehaving. I retaliated and sprayed him with water. He assumed an air of mock rage, and roared and swore. He'd cut my prick off, he said, and wear it round his neck as a good-luck charm. He lurched towards me. I laughed, and said, "You'll have to catch me!", then turned and ran across the the shoals of sand, leaping up onto the bank and running across the green grass, with him pounding in pursuit after me.

Then suddenly he grabbed my wrist. I stumbled. He tugged me back to him. I gave a sudden playful cry as his arm slid round my waist and his nails bit into my bellyflesh. He pulled me down. Onto the grass. Onto the throbbing earth. He grappled me onto my back. Pinioned my arms. Forced my legs apart. He gazed down into my face, panting. His eyes were bright with victory. I glanced downwards, past my heaving chest, my skin glistening with water and sweat, and saw his prick - a great, bloated monster, glaring at me through its one lascivious slit of an eye. It dangled over my belly, threatening me like a scimitar. It glided over the soft, pale flesh, coaxing my own sex into hard, uncompromising life.

"I guess you're lucky it's just me," said Garius, smirking in triumph, "and not some horny stud of a Harga male. Now he'd really make you wince!"

And he worked his way slowly up my body, his prick slithering like a serpent over my belly, pausing hungrily at my navel, then worming up my chest and nudging my throat. He hunched over me, his cock probing my lips. I felt weak and helpless, shrinking before his superior strength. I tried squirming away, yet was mesmerised by that robust beast, with its purple head and throbbing veins.

"Suck, little cunt, suck...." he purred, in a pastiche of tenderness. "Suck at the fountain of life....."

And I closed my eyes, and though my body trembled with fear, and quivered with revulsion, yet I felt myself drawn to obey. My lips parted. He laughed, and wedged his cock between them, forcing them further apart.

"No biting now," he whispered. "Cos that'll make it a whole lot harder. For both of us."

And again I obeyed, opening my mouth, permitting the long, empurpled shaft to force its way in. I felt faint. Dizzy. I swooned. My mind seemed to separate from my body; I lost contact with my limbs. My flesh seemed to melt into grass and soil. Involuntarily I began to suck, accepting his mastery over me. My tongue curled and quivered round the head like a devotee surrendering to his god. It ebbed and flowed in rhythm with his movements, as though we were both obeying some innner tide.Suddenly the pulse of his cock began to quicken. As if he were some beast of prey, stalking my dreams, I could hear him gasp, hear him groan, his breath now rasping in my ear. There was a brief animal shriek, which seemed to tear into my own inner darkness like a blinding flash of light. I tried to respond. To match his cry with my own. But his cock was now burrowing down my throat like a serpent. Smothering all sound. Choking me. Suffocating me. Desperately I squirmed, my legs wriggling and kicking beneath him. I strained my arms, trying to flail upwards, frantic for air, but his hands held my wrists in a vice of iron, the nails digging excruciatingly into my flesh. His firm balls rubbed against my chin. I bucked. Heaved. Felt my prick jerk and slap against my abdomen. Dilate. Throb. Swooning into unconsciousness, I felt the thick juice of my spunk pulsing through the shaft.

Then suddenly I was free. It was as though some demonic force had hurled Garius backwards. HIs prick jerked out of my mouth, dripping with saliva and cum. I gasped for air. My chest panting, heaving. The ecstasy of dying over, my prick jerked in spasms, spilling my milk onto my belly.

My eyes flickered open. The sky swirled above me. A whirlpool of blue. Of flickering light. Birdsong breaking in upon me. I could hear the babbling of the stream. Could feel the dreamy caress of sunlight on my body. Then shadows thickening around me. The world swimming into focus as I gasped for air.

Garius lay on his back, propped on his elbows, panting with the exhaustion of sex, trembling with fear and bewilderment and rage. His prick was still hard, quivering with foam , yet unappeased. Five Harga women had crept upon us. Two were unpainted, one had the image of a butterfly on her arm, another an oriole upon her breast, a third a sunflower breaching from her bush, the petals blooming round her navel. They had stumbled upon us by chance, dressed in loincloth, or thong, or short cotton shift that barely covered the thigh. They wore beads and rings, bracelets and armlets, gold anklets and leather footwear studded with beads. They stalked around us, jabbing at our naked bodies with spears and swords. Sneering. Smirking. Laughing.

"Cocksuckers!" they jeered, in a mixture of Harga and Latin. "Thought we can't see you, hey? Thought you oh-so-private here? What you girlfriends say? Maybe send balls back to Rome in little packet. Say how we found you, huh?"

They were not going to kill us there. They were going to kill us later. At their leisure. They let us put on our sandals, but that was all. We abandoned our clothes. They tightened leather thongs with ornamental bells around our genitals and led us through the forest on their horses, tugging at the cords from time to time, teasing little rhythms from the bells and singing saucy songs in their own language. They laughed as we sweated and squealed with fear and pain.

They made camp at the lake. We were tied, one after the other, to the bough of the tree, our wrists above our head, and they interrogated us in turn. I was the first. Because judged the weaker. Garius was kept in seclusion some distance away.

Dela was the leader. The eldest. The cruellest. With short cropped blonde hair and hard blue eyes and sharp, menacing features that would never soften in love or pity or the sight of pain. She wore only a beige leather thong that barely concealed her sex. she stood in front of me, staring haughtily into my eyes, wilting me with her power, her shoulders thrown back in a gesture of pride. She stroked her groin provocatively, swaying her hips, occasionally glancing from side to side as if distracted by other things, so that her breasts trembled and wobbled. The nipples were hard and pointed. She drew nearer to me and ran her fingers down my cheek, my chest, squeezed the index into my button, then rippled downwards over my abdomen, caressing my cock. It was erect, engorged, throbbing forlornly in front of her, the head bobbing, as if in slavish devotion, towards her belly button. She pressed closer, so that the head rubbed against her belly, dipping into the pit. I felt the sweet breath of desire on her lips as she swayed closer to me.

Then she punched me in the belly.

I shrieked; she laughed.

"Where your camp then? Where it?"

"I don't know!" I gasped.

She raised her hands and wrenched at my pectorals. Kneaded my nipples. Squeezed and tugged them. I stiffened and sobbed. Shrank backwards. Twisted this way and that. Always held fast by the thongs round my wrists.

"How much soldiers? How many cavalry? Got gold too? Silver? Handsome boys? Or only ugly cooks what serve up porridge? Porridge! Porridge!! Porridge!!!"

And with each repetition of the word she pummelled my belly.

The others were clamouring round now, having left Garius trussed up to another tree. One of the girls handed Dela a whip. She lashed my chest, my abdomen, my prick. Never hard enough to draw blood; always severe enough to redden the skin and elicit shrieks of terror and pain. And while she lashed me, another girl squirmed one finger, then two into my anus. Slowly worming her fist inside me.

"I bet you boy-friend do this you all the time!" said the girl. "You like?"

Yes, despite the pain and the humilation, there was also that terrible pleasure. And maybe I would have even resisted until I'd fallen into unconsciousness. But then they fitted a leather harness around my balls, and hooked a cord over the branch, and with each question they tugged a little harder, jerking my testicles upwards.

This was the hoist.

And it would have torn me apart.

I screamed. My heart was racing wildly, my body lurching, my legs and arms twisting and writhing. I begged for mercy. I told them all they wanted to know. Over and over again. I told everything. I told them the truth. Why wouldn't they believe me? I would have betrayed friends, country, lover, for just one moment of relief.

Yet through all this torment, my erection never once abandoned me.

Then they untied me. Dragged me off, sobbing, crying, cowering in fear. Two girls tied me to another tree. Then they left me, one kissing my lips, another giving oh-so-brief solace as she licked my cock.

For now it was Garius' turn.

Across the clearing, above my own self-pitying sobs, I could hear the lash of the whip. The punches. The laughter. His shrieks and cries echoed through the woods. I could hear the girls cooing over his massive erection.

At first he screamed but said nothing. Then he lied. Then he lied again.

I know, because they dragged me back, repeating the interrogation, occasionally finding new innovations. They also had their little jokes. One thrust a candle up my anus, and lit the wick, and while I whimpered with humiliation, so she jested: "Must find way to tell his girl-friend. Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! Light really do shine out of boy-friend's ass!"

Eventually Garius broke down and told the truth, confirming everything I'd already admitted. Or maybe my answers were just too consistent to be anything but the truth.They had used the hoist on him too. Jerking the balls gradually upwards, till, racked with pain, he was teetering on his toes, babbling incoherently. And maybe, in the end, they simply got bored. Torture can pall, after all.

So Garius and I were bound to the same branch of the same tree, our balls raw and aching. The girls had given us water. Given us kisses. Oiled chest and belly. Caressed our sex. Occasionally slapping our buttocks. Then they disappeared. Went, giggling, into a huddle behind a bush, periodically peering out at us to see how we were coping.

Eventually they re-emerged, nude, their faces gloriously painted. A thin shiver of fear trickled through my bowels. I felt a strange caged excitement at such bewildering beauty.

Dela sauntered up to us, swaying her hips. Her skin still gleamed with the exertions of torture, was bright with sexual excitement. Her face was a portrait of the night sky, viewed from some alien landscape with jagged mountains and arid plains and a distant lifeless horizon. There was a multitude of stars. In constellations. The virgin and the Hunter. And there, spreading over one cheek, a beautiful globe of swirling green and blue and white, suspended in the sky like a jewel. A vision of Paradise. And that rugged, airless vista that broke around her chin and lips and nose was the cold, dark hell of our souls.

And my pulse quickened with fear. There was death in her face. I was frightened. Terrified of her power. Of the cruelties that raged in her blood. And yet I wanted her too. Desired her. Like I wanted and desired the strange, elusive world that hung there among the stars, sapphire and emerald, smoking with clouds. My legs trembled in fear and my cock rose in a gesture of worship.

"We give you boys one chance," she said, her lips curving in a taunting smile. "Maybe let you go. If you good enough. If you stud enough. You fight girl. Girl armed with knife. You fight with nothing but cock. Cock very dangerous weapon. If girl better fighter, you get killed; or you get castrated. Castrated mean you sing in choir, but get no future out of it. But then maybe you get better of girl. Then can fuck. Maybe got future. If beat all five girl and fuck all five....wow! you some stud! Have to let you go. Can't kill prize beef-male. But only got time between candle mark to get prick ready." She pointed at the candle that had only recently been protruding from my anus and was now wedged into he earth a short distance away. "If prick go limp, then no fight - just kill you anyway. One little rule. No big deal. Have to fight girl in special order. Strongest male start with weakest girl; work upwards. Weakest male start with strongest female; work downwards. Good idea, huh? So have vote. Four girl say you strongest. " She flicked Garius' cock and watched appreciatively as it joggled in the air. She turned to me and jabbed me in the belly-button with her forefinger. "One say you." She snorted with laughter. She pointed at the girl who had been dressed in a loin-cloth. The youngest. A quiet girl with round innocent eyes who had taken little or no part in our degradation and torture. "That Tarna...Wah! she so sentimental. Must want you bad. But she young. Maybe she learn."

I glanced at Tarna, her jet-black hair hanging sultrily over her bare shoulders, and saw something like pity, something like love, in the moistness of her eyes.

Dela reached up and slashed through the bonds that bound Garius.

"You first," she said. "You fight Tarna."

But Tarna shrank away, afraid of the muscular male, of the arrogant bloated prick. She glanced once at me, her eyes flickering like black pearls. Her face was the sunset. A promise of what was now. Of a sky melting into liquid gold and drowning in the lake. There were trees and reeds and birds winging to their solitary roosts. I could see as well the two tiny figures that were Garius and myself, bound to the oak, against a sombre forest, the sunset reflected like blood on our naked bodies.

Dela handed Tarna the knife. She took it reluctantly, feeling the ebony handle, running her finger suspiciously along the blade. It was eight inches long, with a silver surface that sparkled in the light, and an edge that curved into a single, terrifying point. Her breasts were heaving with fear, her legs were trembling. She whimpered, curbing the panic that melted her bowels.

Garius prowled round her. He was proud of his maleness. Proud of the firm, glistening pecs; the muscles that flexed and crinkled beneath the skin; the shining rugged abdominals. But most of all he rejoiced in the engorged cock that swung towards Tarna like a serpent. The serpent of death and retribution.

The girls egged Tarna on, cajoling her, teasing her, then humiliating her with harsh cries. She was frightened of men. Of the tough Roman soldiers with their arrogant, boastful ways, their insatiable appetite for sex. Now she would learn to loathe them. She had to feel the Roman cock inside her belly. Had to be violated to become a warrior. Only sex and battle would harden her.

Then Garius lunged. He had no fear of this frail girl, with the tempting body and the dreamy look of sunset in her eyes. Tarna squealed with shock and fear. Shrank backwards. Stumbling. The knife slipped from her grasp. The girls groaned in some kind of mutual despair. Tarna, they knew, would never make a warrior. In battle she would be lost. The helpless victim. Mesmerized by the enemy's flashing sword, the source of all his masculine power. Unable to fight, unable to flee. Surrendering her weapon to the palsy of fear. She would stand in the open, naked and alone, eyes moist with tears, legs shaking, wanting so desperately to be a hero, preferring , deep in her soul, to die rather than kill. Shaking with the shame of cowardice. Trembling with terror. Cowering in the field of battle, intimidated by the clamour of the enemy - their cries, the thumping of their swords upon shields. Emancipated finally from fear by the lance of death shivering into her guts.

"No touch knife, Roman dogling! Only weapon you got is damn big serpent sprouting from your thighs! If touch knife, fill you so many arrows, hedgehog come make love to you!"

But Garius didn't need a knife. Not against Tarna. Maybe against Dela he would have to learn to cheat. But not here. Not against this timid girl with the wide, innocent, obsidian eyes.

Then he was upon her. She wrestled desperately against his superior strength, wriggled as he pressed her into the ground. Screamed and spat when he laughed in her face. He hunched her thighs upwards, pressing his prick into her bush. Again, she writhed, sensing defeat. Flailed at his back, scratched his shoulders with her vermilion nails. The girls were silent. Watching. Garius snarled with triumph, relishing his victory. He thrust firmly and hard. A series of jabs increasing in momentum, his body rearing up and over her like a cobra, his head flung back, hers too, the neck arching, the face in a web of jet-black hair and rich green grass. The sun licked his back, caressed his legs, as he held her in the thrall of his shadow. From the tangle of light and shade and contorted limbs, there arose a shrill keening as Tarna surrendered to his ruthless onslaught.

The girls watched morosely. They didn't say anything. It was, anyway, no more than they expected. They forced Garius to his feet. He was smirking with triumph.

"Who's next?" he laughed.

Dela lashed him on the buttocks with her whip. Hit bit his lips, suppressing his cry, keeping the pain and the humiliation inside. Then they trussed him to the trunk of the oak. Slapped his prick. Punched his belly. Pinched his nipples. Then Dela grabbed his hair, pulled his head backwards, and bit his throat. This time he cried out, a shrill, tormented shriek that cut through the air like a sword. She stepped back, satisfied. A red weal glowed at the base of Garius' throat.

"More jokes," purred Dela, "and maybe we drink blood, cook balls and cut off prick and use as backscratch!"

Then she punched him in his belly and jostled his cock - in a gesture of mocking admiration perhaps. He had his cock, she laughed, but she had the knife. So who had the power? Then she glanced at me, extending her tongue and vibrating it mischievously in the air. She laughed again and soft-footed towards me, her toenails, black like tiny nuggets of coal, swishing through the grass. She held the blade menacingly in her hand. Her eyes once more were mean and threatening. I glanced at Tarna, on her back, in the dying sunlight. Sobbing. They wanted blood now. My blood. Victim for victim.

The sun was still warm and comforting on my flesh, baptising me in its glow. Yet I shook with fear. My legs trembled. I twisted in my bonds, squealing in despair. The sweat was trickling down my cheeks, dripping onto my breast, sliding down my belly. I wanted to piss, but my cock was hard, tingling with terror, and my bladder was blocked. In the shaking blur of my fear I was barely conscious of my sphincter opening and the shit squeezing out. Dela sneered. The other girls recoiled slightly, laughing with embarrassment and pleasure and disgust.

"Some soldier, you!" mocked Dela. "Shit yourself in front of death. Maybe you should stay in Rome and do tapestry of battle-scene with other women!"

I was sobbing with shame.

One of the girls ran to the lakeside and soaked a cloth and came back. Giggling, she cleansed my anus. Pushing the cloth inside me. Lingering over the ablutions. The others laughing.

Dela sliced through the bonds. I felt faint. My knees gave way. Dela pulled me forward. And held me. Her breasts pressed soft and voluptuous against my chest. I closed my eyes, swooning, in the twin tides of dream and nightmare.

"Can't have you go faint-fall into shit," said Dela, whispering into my ear. "Spend all night cleaning, polishing. No time fun."

End of Part One


Written by Tony [email protected]

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