A war like this was what Lord Gwindrom, twenty-seven when his life was snuffed, had trained for. Next in line to rule his noble nation, he was not as handsome as his father was; few women wanted him, and so he put off marriage, spent his days instead with sword in hand, stripped naked to the waist—still dreaming, as he had in childhood, of manly battle-death. His partner in this, Brenon, knew the prince’s body better than his own—they’d pledged as boys, you see, to die together, and prepared for such with almost daily exercises, sparring till their stout young bodies glistened for the effort. Short and burly both of them, the prince was smooth and milk-pale; Brenon, for his part, was brown and hairy as a commoner—in fact he was one, joined the royal house in servitude. But for the special passion of their friendship, Brenon would’ve died anonymous, a soldier faceless as the rest; instead, he led the vanguard at his lord’s side, fierce and fearless as a well-bred nobleman.
Their swords grew very swiftly red. Young Brenon grunted as he tugged a man close, pulled his body ’pon the waiting blade—“Hlurgkh!” choked the victim, eyes crossed, face grown twisted with his death throes. Having kicked him off, he sliced at once another youth across his bared waist—“Aieee!” he yelped, eyes widening to gaze in horror at the red mess popping from his split belt: guts, his guts, that pretty barrier of leather doing little to prevent their loss. The fighter shivered; never had he slain a man before today, nor spilt one’s insides, yet it energized him in a way he’d not felt since they’d fantasized about the act, the prince and him...
For his part, Gwindrom slew the same amount of men or more, their bodies toppling before his sandaled feet. His golden breastplate, red-drenched, felt somehow less heavy than it had before; in killing, he had gained heights he could scarce imagine once. Would dying, Gwindrom wondered, lift him even higher still? He looked left, caught the sturdy, hairy-shouldered shadow of his Brenon: he too, handsomer in war than he had ever been, looked ripe to die in glory, and the thought then of their slaughtered bodies lying one atop the other made the prince’s heart leap.
What of Heksr, their opponent? Quite an old man (for a warrior at least), at sixty nearly he had seen his share of blade-cuts; ’neath his bronze cuirass, a plenitude of bad scars crossed his sun-tanned, silver-pelted hide. A tall man, Heksr bore a slender, very fine physique; more lean than most men, not an inch of fat hung from his meaty bones, each vein and sinew visible as day beneath the skin. His beard was braided, but his head was near bald. When his black eyes fixed upon a man, that man would die, and knew it—such was Heksr’s terrible and virile will, a thing few foes could chance to stand against and live!
He caught now in that gaze an Argabathan straggler: doe-eyed, innocent and all but untrained. With a high cry, Heksr flung his sword—thluckt—and the boy looked down to find the whole blade buried in his stomach. Stunned, he wrenched at it a moment, till the warlord charged him, helped the weapon take an even deeper taste. “Hranghf!” groaned the lad, his guts gored; then, with savage flourish, Heksr ripped it from him, sent the entrails slithering aground. For this brute, killing was a quick thing—any combat fantasy he’d held when half as old was long fled, mere efficiency what mattered anymore.
For near an hour, blood poured, watering the dirt. The iron stench of sweat and viscera was unmistakable, indeed a scent more heady than the ones still living understood—it made their hearts swell and their bellies stretch to offer of themselves, that more intestines might erupt upon the red plain. Why do men yearn for their own destruction, seek the savagery of disembowelment? Soldiers know, yet cannot put it into words; the strange, wry smiles on their ashen faces and the naked pride erupting from their midriffs tell enough. In any case, a mere few dozen fighters now remained amongst their brother-corpses, and a lull fell, only crow-cries audible across the old field.
“Heksr,” cried Prince Gwindrom, weapon leveled at his distant enemy—“let’s bring this battle to a close... as men.”
No, Brenon thought, for he had realized his lord’s intent—here? Now?
The warlord laughed. “You jest. A duel, boy? I would end you in a heartbeat.”
“Maybe... maybe not.” He lay his sword down, fingering the straps of his cuirass. “Remove your armor, sir—I’d like to see those famous war-scars.”
“Hmph.”
The veteran approached. The last men, men of either side, surrounded now their leaders, formed a circle round them. Gwindrom, stripping, bared his white chest, slick pink nipples hard as dagger-points; a handsome sight that fat, pale waist would make, thought Heksr, crimson-streaked! His own plate fell, his leather belt too; backed arched, stretching wide his hard, brown chest and slender gut, the many marks of Heksr’s terrible career stood out like warnings to the young man—warnings, aye, but tantalizing also, making his erection bulge.
“You’re hard, boy.”
“You as well, old man,” said Gwindrom, clutching in his hand the bounty which had overflowed his loincloth. Heksr’s cock, he saw, was long and blade-like, half-emerging from his own cloth; ruby-tipped, it dripped already with the hint of climax, promising an even greater flow to come. He’d heard, of course, that men could not help giving up their seed once slain, the reasons for it more mysterious than he could fathom—finally, his naked body aching badly for the sword, he understood it for himself. Now, clad in sandals only and the barest bit to hold their cocks back, they would battle to the death... and whosoever still stood, once their steel had sung, would win the war at large. For centuries, although the two would never live to know the legend for themselves, young men and young-at-heart would tell of what transpired next; would, in the ruddy killing-sands of Thorg and smaller pits throughout the south, put on for eager, screaming crowds the blood-red play of Heksr versus Gwindrom, Argabath and Hyrkhust!
Aye, a legend in the making... but the truth of it, you see, was swift and brutal, uglier than any poem. Brenon gasped as Gwindrom plunged forth sword-first; Heksr, quick upon his feet, allowed the blade to bite his brown flank as it slid by; he, meanwhile, elbowed Gwindrom in the back and took his breath away. The young prince staggered, felt the steel sink into his bare thigh; crying out, he pulled off, limped away as though a wounded animal, blood dotting on the ground. Old Heksr grinned; he licked his weapon’s edge, enjoyed the taste of men’s gore or enjoyed, at least, the faces men made as they watched him do such strange and heinous things.
Not half a quarter-bell passed, likely less, before the combat shuddered to a close. Both fighters, swinging for what seemed a veritable lifetime to their captive audience, were sweat-drenched, huffing; thin, red rivers trickled from their many cuts, no mortal wounds but bad enough to make of each a frightful mess—and then, at long last, one amongst them bleated out that throaty, desperate rattle of the gut-stabbed—
“Hraghk—!”
The victim crumpled into his attacker’s arms, as they are wont to do; at which point Heksr, fatherly almost, enveloped Gwindrom, clutched his bare back, eased him slow yet all-too-surely unto good death. Brenon’s heart dropped; from the place he stood, he couldn’t see quite what the old man did to him—a belly-stroke of some kind, doubtless—but it made his dear lord shiver, made his limbs twitch and his tongue stick out. The prince’s mouth hung open; he was moaning, drooling, and his penis drooled too, dripping long, thin strings of silver exudate. The boy’s spine, stretched across the ground now, arched tight in a violent spasm, laying bare for Brenon’s eager eyes the bad wound Heksr’d carved there: Gwindrom’s small bowel, pale, greasy, was erupting vigorously from a gash beneath his naked navel. Sword still gripped, he pressed his free hand to the organ bulging from his waist, but couldn’t stop it spilling out across his crotch. His youthful strength now spent, he chuckled slightly, watched helpless as the victor shoved one sandaled foot upon his penis, pressed his weight and forced the semen out—His last, best seed, his lover thought—then perished.
“Well then,” Brenon muttered. There was naught for proper troops to do, of course, but fall upon their swords at witnessing a scene so sad and beautiful as this, and Gwindrom’s troops were nothing if not proper. Back then, it was customary for the servants of a fighting man to follow swiftly in their slain lord’s wake; an honorable, admirable act, and those who’d witnessed then their prince expire had no fear of it. The eyes of Heksr’s soldiers full upon them, Brenon and the others, stripping armor like their lord before them, stretched their naked bellies to the blade—
“Hunghf—”
“Arghk—”
“Hraghk—”
“Urghk—”
—and plunged. Some, lovers mainly, shared a last embrace and ran each other through; still others, friendly rivals to the end, knelt opposite each other, smirked and offered dead-set, goading gazes, daring one another to keep going, cutting, bearing it, until the stinking, curdled mess of all their courage piled up between their bare thighs like a badge of triumph, gory though it be. Most did the deed alone, for death is ultimately solitary: sweating, snarling through their gritted, bared teeth, naked muscles glistening and popping from the stress—but what a prize, oh what a prize, men! How their eyes shone when it showed itself; how beautiful their voices as they sang out wordless last prayers, bellowing to gods...
It hurt bad; Brenon had expected this, of course, but agony is difficult to know before one undergoes it firsthand. He’d imagined something like a lightning bolt—bright, sudden—or a mighty, well-aimed arrow through the middle... only these too had no basis in experience. The real thing was hard to bear, and all the more so for the fact he forced it on himself. “My guts,” he suddenly exclaimed, and as he spoke those words he realized that they had started to escape, the tender pink loops of his vitals slipping from the neat cut. Dropping on his knees, he leaned far forward, let his hairy, opened stomach hang above the damp earth. One hand tight around his swordhilt and the other arm preventing him from falling in the dirt, he lowed deep, long, and let his head drop, watching upside down his own ripe, slippery intestines sag. A sad thought—that he’d never feel the tight, wet, secret pleasure of his lord inside of him again—weighed suddenly and heavily upon his stricken mind... but at the selfsame time, despite the overwhelming pain, a pleasure grander than he’d ever known enveloped him. “Urnghf—I’m—c-coming—Gwin!” he grunted, and the steaming pile he’d deposited grew silvery with fresh seed, sprung unbidden from his hard, red prick.
The warlord Heksr and his men were awed indeed—they’d won the war it seemed, but something finer still and braver yet by far had been awarded those who lay now, guts bared, stomachs gaped wide for the blue above. They buried them—Lord Gwindrom, Brenon and the other belly-butchered soldiers of his retinue—and from that day Vergallunt, nevermore a field good, was Hagrwodt.