Previously: Harkut the Novice
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Captain Harkut had no children (none that lived at least, or that he knew of), but there was one person who had been a son to him, called Kert. They’d gone to war together; it was Raklun, actually, whose error saw the young man captured. Though the captain never did lay eyes upon the corpse, by all accounts the lad was hanged and disemboweled in public on the orders of a northern tribe-king. Harkut mourned him, in private; all knew their connection, the depth of it, yet for his stolid mien and nigh imperturbable calm, one could only guess how weighty his pain. So, at noon on the day of his third fight, when Kert himself appeared opposite him in the sands of that vast arena—albeit absent an arm, his throat rope-scarred and belly marked with an eviscerating groove—Harkut fell on his knees outright, beaten without a blow.
“What they told me... it’s true, then,” Kert said, sword in single hand, approaching slowly—“a gladiator, undefeated...” Past thirty now, he’d come into his own; severance and scars aside, the skinny kid that Harkut knew (it seemed so long ago!) had filled out, bulked up: hairier his chest looked, broader, and despite its wound his abdomen had seemed to bounce back—if he had managed to keep his innards after such a total carving, they had since become well hid, protected by such a stout, curvaceous mound of fat and hard meat. All that said, he lacked the gladiator’s loincloth, and the bath—aye, he was naked, filthy—and his three limbs, Harkut noticed, each bore the notorious, ink-black bands of a tribe-king’s hand-picked bodyguard, his ermhos. Such markings, etched into the skin itself, proved Kert to be not just some northern leader’s lapdog, but devoted war-lover—pledged, arse and blade alike, to his liege’s whims!
“You... live,” said Harkut, blinking, though the words took some time to depart his lips.
“Not much longer, don’t worry,” Kert muttered, smirking. He lay his sword down, sat in the sand—soles touching, heels at his genitals—and clutched his toes. “My alaghos is slain, you see—my king—and I intend to follow him.”
“By baring your ‘honor,’ no doubt,” the old man spat, referring of course to the double-edged meaning of that manliest word in the northern tongue: khos (which lent itself, in turn, to alaghos, “spiller of guts,” the preferred epithet for a lord or ruler). He’d come back to himself, somewhat; perhaps knowing Kert meant to disappear once more, die again for the first time, heartened him—for even if the chosen method of that death were grim, he approved it implicitly.
“You know me too well, sir.”
“No better venue,” said Harkut, indicating with his chin the death-pit and those many hundreds gathered round it. “This lot, at least, ought to enjoy the sight...”
“But will you?” Kert asked, looking Captain Harkut square in the eye.
The lad—no, not a lad anymore, but a grown, beaten man—had, whilst they spoke, built a steady, rather sizable erection, doubtless anticipating what he was about to do to himself. More so even than southmen, northerners (Kert included, it seemed) enjoyed, at any opportunity, to splay their middles, show what they were made of; Harkut knew Kert wouldn’t hesitate, would make a show of it in fact. He’d taken his blade in hand again, set its tip to the curled end of his old gut-groove—prepared to tread, a second time, that well-worn path. And tread it he did, before Harkut could manage an answer, reddening at once his pubic bush and stiff shaft—“Hrrrnnnhhh,” he growled through his teeth, still staring down his long-lost friend. The captain, aroused at this sudden, virile sight, bore his own bulge, the member within threatening to slip its cloth. It didn’t take long; even alone, that one arm, muscular as it was, defeated Kert’s stout belly-wall with queer ease, aided maybe by the earlier northern attempt. Harkut’s breast swelled; the audience screamed, for they saw now the foreigner’s organ, bulging purplish and slick beneath the sun. Without a word or sound, Kert gave his seed up—loads of it, one spasm following the other like a wave—and it covered his stomach, the white, sticky mess running down as if drawn to the slit. His toes curled, bunching up and spreading, bare feet flexing hard against each other in defiance of the pain... or, perhaps, for the joy of his climax—who knew?
Harkut watched, intently, as the ropes of Kert’s entrails unfurled, draping the root of his impressive manhood—which, though the man himself sat dead now (there was little question), kept up its rigid, pulsing form with beautiful endurance.
Once more, the victor by default, he thought—and sure enough, the crowd was cheering for him, or for the prize spilt. But no victory, this; far from it. No, a reminder only of just how much Harkut had given up so far... and, aye, what he had, to that point, withheld. There was more to do—to show—before the day was done and the fans left. Not wits, experience and strength alone would Harkut demonstrate, but honor too, after a fashion anyhow. The man didn’t fear losing his own guts one whit. If he had triumphed at King’s End before—twice in fact, a rare feat for any gladiator, let alone a low one—it was only because he liked playing at swords slightly more than he did dying, though in fairness he couldn’t yet speak to the latter. All those he’d loved had left; naught else was there to linger for, except these red games they’d put him to, and he tired of them. No puppet, that one—Harkut would sooner slice his own strings than keep dangling on stage, playing the fool for their pleasure!
The crowd was astute; when the old man straightened his spine, pulled back his hairy shoulders and made taut his abdomen, a mixture of wild excitement and hushed awe overcame them, for they knew at once the fool was about to attempt something brave—attempt, that is, not carry out, for few indeed were capable of succeeding at so ugly a task as that which he set himself to then. With chin pressed hard to wooly, thumping breast, Harkut felt first at the moist, hairy firmness of his own waist, deciding at last on a spot between hip and navel. Pressing his palm, framing the target ’twixt finger and thumb, he put his sword there, pushed without a second thought and pierced the barrier. But this was the easier step, by far; the rest would test him sorely, and he wasn’t sure he had the courage...
That day, like any Harkut fought, Megart observed from an advantageous seat. Leaning forward, fascinated, silent, even whilst all those around him exploded into the savage frenzy of bloodlust which is all too common in such places, the high magistrate dared not blink; eyes wide, mouth gaping, he would drink in every hint of agony old Harkut allowed his face and broken frame to betray—which, in truth, wasn’t much: a bit lip, a tight-furrowed brow, a certain shivering tension in how he held himself. But for all the blood (and more) that brute had wrenched from his boy, what a joy now to see the white cloth covering that bastard’s loins turn crimson; and how elated—why, everyone was!—as the gash spread. Almost halfway across, an impressive spasm gripped at once every muscle in him; ’twere as though that crude body, against the orders of its guiding ghost, rebelled. Harkut’s sword left the slit it had cut, slipped from his fingers... and, in its wake, a loop of gut bulged free, with plenty more behind if he allowed it.
Megart’s heart skipped a beat, and his tunic grew damp at the groin.
Harkut made some sort of bellowing utterance: a moan, words, whatever it was the magistrate failed to tell, what with the din of the masses. But it spoke pain, and Megart enjoyed that. Holding the bit of bowel in his palm awhile, the audience meanwhile boiling like the contents of a cauldron, the captain—having at last decided something, it seemed—pulled his hand away, lifted his chin, and gazed with wonder and pride at the crowd who would watch him die. Though he did not retrieve the sword for a second try (this half-wound, he’d deemed, was not worth perfecting, being wide enough already to empty and end anyone), a gruesome death-urge led him next to arch his back and bend forth at the waist, forcing his pink insides out even more. Propping himself up with one arm, the old man stared in awe as his guts hung, plump and pendulous, above the burning sand; should they drop, he was done for. Many years had he swung steel, and naturally fate saw fit, more than once, to expose what was hid in his waist; that sight itself was no surprise. Yet never, till that day, had Harkut’s entrails leapt so fully and eagerly forth—time then, perhaps, to let go. Trembling like mad, he watched them slither, inch by precious inch, towards the earth...
“Enough!”
’Twas the pitmaster’s voice. So rarely had that thundrous horn been heard, it sent a wave of shock through all those present (not least half-gutted Harkut); all the same, its authority was unmistakable. Though he normally worked in the dark, out of the public eye and ear alike, Fehrso wasn’t above descending (or was it rising?) to the sands himself, in person and larger than life, when the world didn’t go his way—and, being a former prizefighter, the proud old bear made as much an impression, or more, as anyone fighting under him did: barrel-chested and mighty of belly (though the latter he chastely withheld ’neath a big leather girdle), his hide was a fine, olive hue, and the hair on his arms, breast and back thick and silver. His beard, fabulously large yet well kept, bespoke his virility, even if his shiny bald head showed his age.
At but a word, a pair of beefy servants did their master’s bidding, rushing to snatch the gut-stabbed gladiator by the arms and drag him down into the bowels of the pit, innards and all. Megart seethed: despite his low birth, Fehrso held no less power than him, more in fact, and though he seldom exercised it the results were downright catastrophic when he did. What in hells did that fat fool want with his foe? Why intervene—only now, at the last, best moment—when Harkut himself, stubborn to a fault, was so dead set on ending his own life?
Next: In Harkut’s Absence