Skevyn, though, who knelt close, oiling his master’s broad blade, listened with the rapt expression of a child nestled at his father’s feet. He held now, in his still-soft hands, the very tool old Habzuk utilized to ply his red trade—soon enough, its sharpened edge would once more see a stomach slit wide, till the bowel, unhidden, suddenly unfurled like some obscene flag. Countless times had the apprentice watched such executions carried out, but at a distance; it would be a few years till the lad, not twenty yet, was given leave to carve the waists of criminals himself...
“You want to try it, dont you?”
Habzuk’s clear eyes, crystal blue and sparkling with life despite his middle age, now pinned his own. The hood he donned in public hid his features from the common folk, but Skevyn, being student to the headsman, had the privilege of his true face: sagging, silver-stubbled jowls, bright bits of copper glinting underneath. ’Twas said he once had sported curly red locks; now, near bald, the greater portion of his hair grew solely ’pon his tanned chest. Smooth, by contrast, was his broad, brown stomach—fat and freckled, it shone beautifully on killing days, so slick with sweat and holy oil that even viewers in the far seats caught a glimpse.
“Try what?”
“To gut a man,” he laughed, “to feel your steel in his waist!”
“I do,” the lad admitted to his lord, “but I am young yet.”
“For the killing sands, perhaps,” said Habzuk. “Here, though, in the headsman’s quarters, we are hidden from the law’s eyes.” Suddenly he stood and thrust his great gut forward like a round prize. “You are eighteen, old enough to be a swordslave. Boys your age are slitting bellies left and right... but you, my son, have been deprived such thorough education. You’ve been eager for a long time, Skevyn—stab me, take the pleasure of my flesh!”
Son, Skevyn thought—that word, which pointed to a thing he’d never truly been, nor understood, burned in his belly like a thrust blade. He was street-born, parentless; the headsman, made his guardian some years ago, had raised him lovingly, if roughly. Was the old brute father, or instructor? What he offered now was intimacy greater still than blood relations shared, than lovers even!
“Here,” indicated Habzuk, framing with his hairy fingers where the point should sink—“against the hip; scoop low, just deep enough to pierce the muscle there, as you have seen me do.”
The young man shivered. Habzuk, gripping Skevyn’s shoulder, pulled him closer; though his hands were wet and trembling upon the hilt, at last, reluctantly, he put the freshly oiled swordtip to his master’s stomach, dimpling the skin...
“But you will die!”
The headsman, hearing this, released a hearty belly-laugh. “Think you so little of my strength, boy? What I grant today is but a mere taste—thrust, defeat my gut-meat!”
Skevyn, grunting, stabbed his master’s middle as he bade. The steel pierced his tanned hide, plumbed his fat with terrifying ease. An odd sensation shuddered through the young man’s crotch; his loincloth bulged, and suddenly he wasn’t sure he could contain himself, the urge to spill seed overwhelmed him so completely. What a fine fight Habzuk’s belly gave, once sword hit meat; how dominant and powerful the boy felt, pushing through it, feeling muscle give way to intestine!
Habzuk hissed through clenched teeth: “Hrnghhh—a fine first jab, lad! Next, expose the innards; draw the blade across, and make a—urghk—” He gazed down, pressed his whiskered chin against his chest: the kid was overeager, and a slit of six full inches yawned already, stretching underneath the headsman’s navel. Quavering, the old man held his pupil closer, and together they observed with awe the fat bulge shudder forward, threatening to spill loose...
“I have—”
“Yes—you’ve gutted me,” he said with pride, “and thoroughly at that! I granted you a glimpse, naught more, yet you have laid me wholly open. I should punish you for this, but...” Sighing, Habzuk let the slick, pink organ pour into his palm; he bore no belly-scars, had never given of himself so totally before, or so the boy guessed—trusted him with what that handsome stomach held, those vitalest of organs! “...are you glad, son, having spilt a man’s intestines?”
Skevyn whimpered, and his loincloth dampened all at once.
* * *
Three proud northern soldiers had their stomachs slit at midday; one of these, a lad of twenty years, was Donlud. Donlud’s crime, like all the rest, was raising steel ’gainst the city-state of Thorg, that southern juggernaut—all men must bow before its might, else give their entrails to those famous sands in entertainment of her citizens. It didn’t bother Donlud, being disemboweled; like many men his own age, army-men especially, the possibility to prove his courage in such manly fashion was exciting, tantalizing even. He had heard, of course, that southerners preferred a so-called “belly-death,” and often wondered why his own compatriots—those flabby, pale officers who crowed so much of battle-glory, yet so little demonstrated it—sought not to bare their middles for the blade, as Thorgans did. The day before (wrists, ankles bound, of course) they’d let him witness what was called “a swordslave bout,” to scare him, he supposed: two slender, lithe men, all of eighteen, each one eager both to give and take his death-jab. Only Donlud wasn’t frightened, not the least bit—no, instead his unclad cock grew fat with blood and rose to belly-button height as the attractive gladiators, damp with sweat and slippery with oil, gored each other—thupft-thlickt—and became entangled like a pair of lovers. Sand-caked, crimson pooling at their feet, they moaned in unison as viscera from both their bellies slithered slowly down in one great, steaming heap, the proof of all their effort. Whilst the crowd screamed, Donlud gave a full load to the dirt between his bare feet; seeing this, the guard laughed. “You are one of us,” he said, “a southerner at heart!”
Today, though, it was Donlud’s turn... and he would learn how Thorgan he might truly be!
The men were dangled from a gallows: hands tied, furry, dripping pits exposed, toes barely touching sand. The executioner, or “headsman” as they called him (odd, he thought, considering the task at hand) soon entered, and the audience erupted. Many hundred viewers filled the stands this day, the day his life fled; comforting, somehow, that he was not alone in death—not merely Abrund, Porvid, who would die themselves before or after him, but the entire city would observe his doom, lay eyes on his intestines!
As it turned out, Donlud was the last to perish—or, at least, the last to have his gut slit, for their flames would no doubt flicker painfully for minutes, hours even, after the destruction of their stomachs. Would he beg, scream? No; he’d practiced endlessly for this eventuality, imagined since he was a boy what being gutted meant. And now the time came: Abrund, wide-eyed, made an odd noise, animal in nature, as the hooded headsman splayed his naked belly open. Tight-packed viscera like pale sausages began to ooze out, pulsing still with what he’d ate last. “Fuck me!” Porvid hollered, seeing this, but at the selfsame moment he, too, felt the blade’s edge slide across his own bare middle, slitting it. His breast heaved—he was trying hard, so hard, to be a man about it—whilst long, heavy loops of pink gut slithered out around his stiffened penis, which ejaculated suddenly and fully from the burden. Abrund also, urged on by his own end, reached a final climax; Donlud missed that moment, taken as he was with Porvid’s prize, but there was proof of it enough: white, gleaming seed-ropes strung across the sand in front of him, his stolid manhood rising from its own mess like a ruddy, pearl-encrusted sword.
And now the headsman stepped in front of Donlud, gory blade drawn back, tip poised to bite...
Their manly gazes met; the soldier’s (so he hoped) told of his resolute desire to endure this grim fate, same as any southern son. The great brute, standing there, about to slaughter him, observed this—Donlud, certain of that fact, took heart. The headsman gave a slight nod—aye, a nod of recognition, admiration even! Every minor detail of the bastard’s body entered now the victim’s mind, that moment just before he gave his guts up (I must know this man, the lad thought, he who snatches up my life): Thick, wooly chest hair, copper hid beneath the silver; freckled, sun-browned skin, the product of some several dozen summers; and a belly scar—a deep groove, dimpling his underbelly hip to crotch. He’s spilt his own guts, Donlud realized...
And then it dawned upon him.
Donlud, too, was red-furred; thickly did the copper curls burst ’cross his fine chest, bristle from his knobby abdomen. He’d never known his dad, was sired by a Thorgan interloper who had slain all male villagers then claimed his mum’s virginity to boot, or so she’d said, once. “Eyes like ice,” his mother still remembered, hesitant to speak her shame aloud... but Donlud gazed now into ice-blue eyes set deep within the hood’s holes, fixed upon him, fascinated with this doomed boy and his all-too-southern pluck. The proof, though, was the scar he wore, for even as he put the child in her womb she’d stabbed him, gutted him she thought, and cradling his tripes did he escape.
“You’re—”
Donlud’s body quivered and his ears rang as the killer took him in his huge grasp. Chin pressed to the headsman’s shoulder, he began to cross his eyes; an odd sensation, warm and overwhelming, swelled inside of him—yes, deep inside of him, sword deep! The blade, indeed, was buried in his middle; he could feel the cold hilt prodding at his sweaty flesh, and something more: blood, pouring out of him. My guts, the young man realized—he’s carving me apart! His cock throbbed; what he’d trained for, waited for his whole life, happened now, right now, and by his long-lost father’s hand!
My kin... my enemy!
“You suffer well,” the old man whispered in his ear, at which point Donlud arched his back and forced his eager belly even further forward, helping to eviscerate himself.
“My—hrnghf—g-guts!” he sputtered.
“Yes,” the headsman told him, stepping backward to expose his bounty to the audience. A strange elation filled the northern fighter’s butchered body: he was energized, alive more now, at point of death, than he had ever been before, as queer as such a thing was. Looking down, he glimpsed a great bulge, veined and purple, threatening to burst forth; underneath that, his embiggened member, swollen, dripping, readied to explode—and just then, Donlud’s killer reached down, rubbed his own fat cock-tip up against his son’s. They came together, friction urging each of them to coat the other’s manhood with his thick seed...
But he vanished, naturally, as fathers do. No sooner had he left than Donlud’s guts dropped, splatting loudly out between his hairy bare thighs; hands bound, he could naught but stare intently, innards dangling. He didn’t think to speak his pain, made no attempt to vocalize the agony like his companions had; he hoped his father saw this, spied the mighty Thorgan blood that made his blade dark!