To the Hessian Hills

“Hey, you, soldier. Come with me.”

“Mich . . . I mean me?” Johann answered. He’d learned to speak English fairly well in the more than a year that it took him to move from New York City, to Canada, and then back down here to Saratoga. But sometimes he didn’t think and reverted to German.

“Yes, you. You’re being reassigned. By me. Get whatever gear you have and come with me.”

It was the afternoon of the day Johann and his entire garrison had surrendered to the colonialist. The American soldier who stood before him was a rough, seasoned man perhaps in his thirties. His uniform was probably more worn than Johann’s was. But then, he probably had seen battle the previous day and Johann hadn’t.

He didn’t appear to be a man of any rank, but he was an American soldier, and Johann was now a prisoner of war. Any American soldier outranked him. The other American soldiers who had been ready to march off the unit of Hessians Johann was with didn’t seem to mind this man, looking quite capable, separating out one of the prisoners for other duties, so Johann just shrugged, went back into the compound to retrieve his bedroll, and followed behind the soldier toward what had been the bivouac area of the British encampment.

“My name is Lawrence,” the man said gruffly as they started to walk out. “From here you are my personal prisoner.”

“I’m called Johann,” the young Hessian answered. He wasn’t in a position to choose whose prisoner he was going to be. He didn’t mind too much that it was this man, though. He was tall and muscular—on the thin side, but then all soldiers, on both sides of the fighting, were now on the thin side. Strong-looking hands, though, and he strode out with assurance.

“I know what your name is,” he said, again almost a growl. They were still walking toward the British bivouac area, but not exactly directly there, more toward the woods that abutted the encampment on one side.

What was with this? Johann wondered. He hadn’t been selected out of the prisoner detail back there by coincidence?

“Do you know what I just saved you from?” Lawrence asked.

“Saved me from?”

“Do you know what that detail you were in was forming up to do? Where it was going?”

“No. They told us nothing.” He was a prisoner on enemy-controlled soil now, a whole ocean away from his own country. He was resigned not to being told what he would or could do. In truth the British hadn’t treated the Hessians much better, and his own captain had treated him far worse.

“Those men were being taken to yesterday’s battlefield—to bury the dead. It’s a grizzly task, I can tell you. Not one that someone as pretty and delicate as you would want to have to do.”

The American had a hand on Johann’s buttocks now as he guided him along toward the wooden section. It didn’t take much imagination for Johann to discern what the man’s interest was. Yes, Johann was smaller than most of the men and didn’t look as manly. And, yes, men had seen that as some sort of signal of interest and availability. And, yes, more often than not Johann had just given in to them. But. . . . Johann was having difficulty in coming up with the “but” of that. He sighed in resignation and trooped along in the American soldier’s wake.

“You should be grateful to me for saving you from that. I do have other duties I was told to find one of the Hessians for. They are much lighter duties than you would have found out on the battlefield. You should be grateful for that too. You can show me your gratitude in just a bit . . . before we report to the medical tents.”

“How do you—?” Johann started to ask, but Lawrence anticipated the question.

“I have certain needs. I had someone serving those needs, but your British friends put a bullet through his gut yesterday. I need comforting. And not just for today. I asked around among you Hessians. They said you were the one who serviced your unit’s captain—that Hessian soldier who got shot last night. They said you were his fuck toy.”

“Oh,” was all Johann could say. Lawrence was moving in closer to him, nearly carrying him along, toward the tree line.

“You gonna be my willing hole without giving me a struggle or trouble? Your man is gone now. I can give you protection and a better deal than your Hessian friends will be receiving. I’m head of the guards at the medical tents, where you are going to work. You be good to me and I’ll be good to you.”

They had reached the trees and were moving deeper into the foliage. Lawrence stopped them in a mossy-ground bowl between four trees, with bushes enough around the trees to hide them from view of any casual soldier passing by even within a few steps.

“You going to give it to me without a fight? You going to be good to me?” Lawrence repeated in a low, gravelly voice, as he pushed Johann down in front of him and unbuttoned the fly of his breeches.

Johann was very good to him. Lawrence voiced his pleasure of how expertly Johann sucked his cock. And then Lawrence showed Johann how expert he was in pushing Johann onto his back on the moss, crouching between his legs, lifting and spreading Johann’s legs, working his hard cock into the young Hessian’s channel, and then pounding away inside him, turning him after an eternity onto all fours, mounting him again, and pounding him some more.

* * * *

Lawrence turned a hobbling and subdued Johann over to a weary-expressioned middle-aged man in a white coat splattered with blood at the entrance of one of the larger tents in what had been the British encampment. Johann could hear moaning and screaming coming from inside the tent.

“You took your time in finding help,” the doctor said peevishly to Lawrence.

“It took time to find a German who had any experience in being an orderly,” Lawrence mumbled.

“And do you have experience taking care of wounded men? And do you know enough English not to be slow in following directions?” These questions were addressed by the doctor to Johann.

Johann looked at Lawrence. Obviously, Lawrence wanted him to answer in the affirmative. He had no experience with wounded men, but he had taken care of the captain, so he had experience as an orderly and in dressing and cleaning up after a man. And in lying under him too, he thought bitterly. Lawrence was gripping his arm in a very possessive way. For a few brief hours after Reinhart had been shot, as evil as that might have been, Johann had felt strangely free. He didn’t feel free now. Lawrence fucked every bit as brutally and impersonally as Reinhart had done. And he seemed just as possessive.

“Yes sir, I have experience as an orderly.” he answered. That was true as far as it went. “And I think I speak English well enough.”

“Good, then. You will start in the operating tent. If you can take that, you can handle anything else that is required here.”

For the rest of the day, Johann assisted in the operation tent under the most primitive of medical conditions. Most of what he was asked to do was to help hold a wounded soldier down—the anesthetics for officers consisted of rum or brandy and for enlisted men a stick to bite down on—while doctors worked on their wounds. There were so many men needing operations, American, British, and Hessian soldiers all jumbled together democratically with the only priority other than immediate need being given to officers, that only the most salvageable cases were given close attention. And even among these, the quickest response seemed to be to lop off an offending limb rather than trying to save it.

Johann felt like he was in hell. But what kept revolving over and over in his mind was the doctor’s remark that this would be the worst he would see and Lawrence’s declaration that it was much better than if he had been left to the task of finding and burying the dead on the battlefield. Johann would have questioned the latter supposition, but he knew that the Hessian artillery had been at the center of the battlefield and he didn’t think he could have endured finding August’s mangled body among the rest of the dead.

The surgeon was patient with Johann, giving him a reassuring smile from time to time and telling him he was doing well. He even patted him on the forearm or back occasionally and encouraging him to keep up his spirits for just a few more hours—as encouragement to the wounded and frightened soldiers going under the scalpel.

“It will become easier as the days progress,” the surgeon said, “Unless and until, of course, there is another battle.”

All day Lawrence stood guard at the entrance to the tent, looking in occasionally as if to assure himself that Johann was still there. Johann was ever aware of the hulking American’s presence and he didn’t once forget that he now wasn’t just a prisoner of war of the Americans but also, more specifically and ominously, the prisoner of one randy American—one with a hard body, a big dick, and a vigorous sex drive. As much as this battle loss should have changed Johann’s life, he felt that it hadn’t changed much at all.

As tired as he was that night after a late mess, Johann was pushed into the tent that Lawrence had commandeered for his own use and fucked standing up and crouched over as Lawrence, bare-chested and the fly of his breeches unbuttoned, stood between the young Hessian’s spread legs, Johann’s breeches down around his ankles. Lawrence held Johann to him with one hand palming his belly and the other grasping his throat, and took the young Hessian prisoner in long, deep strokes.

Johann dangled there in front of Lawrence, from time to time the strength of the thrust pulling the young Hessian’s feet off the ground. His arms just hung down from his sides from the weariness of what he’d had to do to endure in the operating tent that day. He could do little more than moan and groan as he felt Lawrence’s deep thrusts inside him and both heard and felt the slapping of the man’s big balls against his buttocks.

Lawrence came in big gobs of cum deep inside Johann’s channel and then pulled out of him and pushed him down on the blanket-covered straw mat that would serve as a shared bed for both of them. Lawrence walked over and took a big swig out of a tankard of beer he’d brought into the tent for his own use—no tankard of beer for Johann, of course—and stood there, long, thick cock still in half erection and dangling from his fly, breathing heavily as he watched Johann lie back on the mat, throw his arms back, and moan and pant softly.

“By God, I needed that,” Lawrence growled. “You kept me waiting for that all day.”

Well, not exactly, Johann thought. Lawrence had fucked him hard even before taking him to the medical tents, and it wasn’t like Johann was just sitting around and playing a flute all day and purposely putting Lawrence off.

“A sweet little body, a hole that can take me. That Hessian officer of yours must have had a thick one. Got you reamed right to my needs. I won’t be missing Tom quite so much, I dare say. Ready to go again?”

Johann moaned and threw an arm over his face—as if hoping to be able to transport himself anywhere else than here.

“I didn’t hear you, boy. I asked if you were ready to go again.”

“Yes, sir,” Johann answered in a tired, barely audible voice. This had been his life. There was nothing he could do about the inevitable. He did need a protector.

Lawrence came down on Johann’s body, straddling his panting chest, and poking his cock at Johann’s face. Johann sighed and opened his mouth wide to receive the shaft. This was easier to take than the ass play. Lawrence was still hefting the beer tankard and laughing a low, guttural laugh, as he began the rhythm of the face fuck.

Later, after Lawrence had taken Johann again in a side split on the mat, Johann lay in the American’s embrace, Johann’s rump nestled into Lawrence’s crotch, both of them listening to the breathing of the other becoming more regularized, Johann hoping that Lawrence was spent for now—but Johann also beginning to melt to the attentions of this rough, but quite proficient colonialist.

“What do you do in life, Lawrence?” Johann whispered, wanting to know more about this man who now possessed him. “I mean when you aren’t fighting the British. Do you have a trade? I heard that there are no professional soldiers here—not like the British have or the Hessian troops I joined back in Germany. I hear that most of the American soldiers are small farmers.”

“Yes, I do have a small farm, but I also am in business near Philadelphia, down in Pennsylvania,” Lawrence answered, his voice not as gruff as before. He was more mellow, not as much perpetually angry as he had been earlier in the day. Satiated, perhaps—Johann hoped—with the sex.

“A business?” Johann asked, encouraging the man to speak, encouraging him to be more human. And, indeed, although Lawrence’s hands had begun to roam on Johann’s body again, they more glided than grasped as they had done before. He wrapped one hand around Johann’s cock and began to stroke it slowly. Johann sighed and nuzzled closer into him. Previously it had all been for Lawrence. He had shown no concern for taking care of Johann’s needs too.

“Yes. I’m a master carpenter. I build houses. And you, little one. You’re much too pretty and delicate to be a soldier. But the way you take cock—were you raised to lay under men? Did the Hessians snatch you off the streets of Hamburg and impress you into service? I’ve heard that’s how they fill their ranks. Doesn’t make for the best fighting unit.”

Nor does just walking off your farms and into battle, as I’ve heard about the colonialists, Johann thought, but he didn’t say as much. It was true that all kinds of men had signed with the Hessian troops, for many a reason, including bankrupt merchants, haberdashers, bakers, and even a poet, and that some of them had been impressed rather than volunteering. But he knew that Lawrence was right about him not being soldier material. He could shoot a Jäger rifle well enough, but he was not built for hand-to-hand combat. And these colonialists didn’t follow the rules of civilized warfare. They were mean sons of bitches in close-in fighting. Now August, he had been built to be a soldier—tall and solid. Hard-muscled and fast in his reactions. But not Johann. It was probably true that he was best-suited for what Lawrence was now doing to him—what many men had done to him in the past.

The slow pumping of Johann’s cock was getting to him and much of his attention was concentrating on the pleasure of what Lawrence was giving him there. He sighed and began to set his hips in slow movement, working with the stroking.

“I take what I have to take from men. I did not choose that. I suppose you could call me a master carpenter of sorts too,” he answered. “I was an apprentice in pargeting back in Lüneburg, a town near Hamburg.”

“Pargeting? What’s that?”

“Plaster work. Fancy designs in house interiors and, in Germany, on the outside walls of houses. Only for the richest. But I learned to do intricate wood carving for interiors too. Oh, God, sir . . . oh God. Either take your hand away, or I’m afraid I’m going to—”

“Yes, I think you are going to also,” Lawrence responded.

Johann was hard and feeling the sap rise inside him. He began to writhe against Lawrence, which caused the American to hold him ever more fast. Lawrence had Johann in the shape of a taut-strung bow in front of him. He had an arm under the young Hessian’s arm pits, forcing Johann’s arms over his head, and he had Johann’s legs trapped between his powerful thighs. He was pumping Johann’s cock hard and faster.

“We will make a good carpentry team then, when we get back to Pennsylvania,” he growled in Johann’s ear. “But now I am going to jack you off and, in return, you are going to ride my cock again.”

And that’s exactly what transpired. Lawrence held Johann fast until Johann had ejaculated with a cry—gloriously, the first such attention Lawrence had given him—and then Lawrence lay back on the mat, arms folded behind his head, eyes boring into Johann’s, as Johann sat in the saddle and fucked himself on a shaft that never would seem to go flaccid.

He reasoned that, in time, it would not be as nonstop with Lawrence as this. The man was just reveling in a new toy. It had been like this with all the men who had fucked Johann. Even the captain had settled into not more than once or twice a night after an initial rampage of sex. Like any coupling of two people, Johann thought, it would eventually settle into a calmer routine.

Back in a postcoital embrace, Lawrence started asking the questions now. “You didn’t tell me how you came to be in the Hessian forces. You aren’t cut to be a soldier. No matter what you say, you are cut to give a man exactly what you are giving me.”

More like taking from me, Johann thought. But he responded to the question asked. “I had to leave Germany. I got into a bit of trouble.”

“Trouble with sex, I allow.”

“Yes,” Johann admitted after a slight pause.

“You have been known by many men, I would guess. It’s what you are built for. You take a cock so nicely—a hole that opens right up to a real man’s needs—that you cannot be a stranger for long to it.”

“Yes, I have been known by many men,” Johann admitted, sadly.

“Not as long and hard as you’ll be known by me, I allow,” Lawrence muttered, revealing a jealous, possessive streak that didn’t surprise Johann a bit—and that prompted his next question.

“This Tom you spoke of who was lost in battle yesterday. Had you known him long?”

“Aye, I had. And I knew his ass as well as I’m ever going to know yours. He worked for me at my farm—from the time he was only begun to be a man. I kept him close to me. He joined with me and I saw to it that he was ever at my side—and under me at night—just as I’ll do with you. I was the first man—the only man—to fuck him. And I kept him fucked right proper.”

“Did he want to be a soldier—was he fearful of it? Did he have a swift death?” Suddenly, Johann was identifying with this Tom he would never know. How could he do otherwise, as clearly as Lawrence was declaring that he, Johann, was the replacement for Tom?

“Aye, it was a swift death. We were talking, waiting for the first salvo, and when it came, I looked around and he was collapsed at my side. Looked more surprised than fearful I’d say. And what would fear have to do with it? He was mine from beginning to end to do as I wanted with, and he died at my side. What else could he have wanted?”

What else indeed, Johann thought. What could he expect for what he gave you—what you demanded of him and forced on him? The one thing he thought he could demand of you was protection. And he died at your side, and you didn’t protect him from the fatal bullet.

And here, Johann thought, I have been counting on protection from you. I have allowed you to possess me as you have for protection. Can I count on the same protection you provided Tom?

Lawrence was off the mat and foraging around at the corner of the tent. When he turned, he held in his hands what looked like a short chain with leather cuffs at each end.

“What is that?” Johann asked, taking a gulp, because he was seeing the fully naked body of Lawrence for the first time. Wiry but hard muscled. Showing the scars of either wounds or misadventures of his earlier life on his torso and bulging thighs. But powerful, lithe, and with low-hanging balls and a prominent cock still in at least half erection even after all of the work it had done inside Johann’s body. His dark hair, curling around his nipples and then trailing down to a thick bush—and also prominent on his forearms and calves—giving him the aspect of a toned wolf.

Wolfish in his other appetites too.

“This? This is a hobble. For you.”

“For me?” Johann said, completely surprised, expelling the air he had sucked into his body upon seeing Lawrence totally naked. He started to back off the mat, toward the corner of the tent, but Lawrence was upon him quickly and shackled his ankles in the hobble.

“Why?” Johann asked, it coming out in a low whine. He had thought he couldn’t be any more a prisoner, of this country and this man, than he already was. But he obviously had been wrong.

“You will wear this at night, unless the surgeon has called you for night duty. You can still move—in a hobble—but you cannot run. The camp is chaotic after the battle and we took far too many British and Hessian prisoners. Escape is easy. Even many of the colonial soldiers are falsely considering the fighting over and are leaving to return to their farms. Desertion is rampant here. But you will not desert me.”

It was like the iron doors of a prison cell clanging shut on Johann. He hadn’t thought of escape before. Where, in this wild, unknown land would he escape to? But he certainly was going to become fixated on escape now.

At least, Johann thought, as he rolled onto his side and Lawrence dropped to the mat behind him and went into a snoring sleep almost immediately, with the hobble, the sexual assaulting would be over for the night.

But he couldn’t even count on that. Not long before dawn, Lawrence nudged Johann over onto his belly, brought his body down on top of the young Hessian, and, encasing Johann’s hobbled legs between his own powerful thighs, entered Johann’s ass with a perpetually hard cock and rode him to a final, heavy breathing, cry of victory ejaculation. Celebrating the first, taxing night he had the Hessian under his “protection.”

* * * *

“We will move to the man on that table over there next,” the surgeon said, pushing the back of his hand across his forehead in weariness. “I have taken care of the bullet wound in the arm already, but the crushed leg is another matter. It’s probably best for him that I take it off.” The weariness of such decisions—being challenged and then made—was clear in the surgeons tired, resigned voice.

Johann looked out to the entrance of the surgery tent to see if Lawrence was still there. On this, his second day as a prisoner of war, Johann was almost relieved to see that the soldier was still standing there, on guard, and glancing at him periodically. And he felt safe here in the tent, where the surgeon was kind to him.

In just getting a breakfast and then moving to the medical tents, Johann had found that it was advantageous to have a possessive protector. The camp was in chaos, the colonialists still celebrating their victory and some of them mistreating and beating their prisoners. More than one soldier had sauntered up to Johann—often not alone—and had started to suggest what they were going to do with him. It seems the whole camp knew that Johann had been servicing his superior officer and now did the same for Lawrence. Johann had a natural magnetism for men who wanted to couple with other men, and he might not have lasted the morning if the formidable Lawrence had not been there to knock heads and cry off the men who might otherwise have carried Johann off into the woods and not returned with him.

“Over here, now,” the surgeon called out to Johann from across the tent. “We have a lull now. Otherwise I would not bother with this one at all.”

Johann tore his eyes away from Lawrence and hurried over to where the surgeon stood over a soldier lying on a table. And then he did a double take and nearly sank to the ground.

It was August.

“He’s only semiconscious,” the surgeon said, not catching Johann’s reaction, “but hold him down on the table by the shoulders in case he rouses while I’m sawing on the leg.”

“Is the amputation really necessary?” Johann asked, barely able to get the words out as choked with emotion as he was. August looked like death warmed over. His head was bandaged but not as heavily bandaged as his arm, from which, Johann remembered, the surgeon had said a bullet had been removed. But his right leg was what was in the worst shape, the flesh torn open almost to the bone all along the thigh.

“It might not have been necessary if I’d gotten to him immediately, but he was only found this morning, they say—by the burial detail. A cannon had tipped over on him and he’d also been shot. And there might be something that could be done if we had the time and the attention to give him. But we don’t. There are just too many men here with better chances of living—and of saving their limbs.”

“What could be done for him if there was time and available attention?” Johann asked.

The surgeon gave Johann a piercing look. “You care about these men, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Johann answered. He thought it too revealing to say just how much he cared for August, in particular.

“You are a good lad, Johann,” the doctor said, his voice warm despite his wariness. “I declare that you are helping me get through this. The first two days after a battle are always the hardest in the medical tent. Yes, there are poultices that could keep the leg wound from being infected and that could speed the healing.”

“And do we have enough of those poultices to spare for him?” Johann persisted.

“Yes, but that’s not the issue. We don’t have the attention available to give him. The poultices would have to be changed regularly. Not through the night, but during the day. He has a fever too; he would need cool water applied to his brow. And his bandages would have to changed frequently. We just don’t—”

“What if I worked extra time to give him the attention he needed?”

The surgeon looked sharply at Johann. “Do you know this man? He’s a Hessian, like you. Is this man a friend of yours?”

“He is more than that to me,” Johann said meekly, tears in his eye.

“Ah,” the surgeon said, looking up to where Lawrence stood at the entrance of the tent. It was obvious that he knew Lawrence well and it had been obvious over the previous day that he didn’t like Lawrence much. But he had been kindly toward Johann. There didn’t seem to be much that he had missed in the relationship between Lawrence and Johann.

“I understand. I doubt that you know how well I understand. I will assign you extra duty time to this patient, then,” he said. “I will let everyone who needs to know . . .” and here he looked up at Lawrence again “. . . that you will have to spend extra time with this patient. I cannot say whether we will save his leg or not—or even his life—but if you want to try, I will let you and I will say I have ordered it.”

“Thank you,” Johann said. And then, hesitatingly, he continued. “And if there is anything you want from me, I will gladly—”

“All men weren’t put upon this earth to take advantage of you, young man,” the surgeon answer somewhat stiffly. “I hope that someday you will be able to understand and appreciate that. Until then, I recognize you do what you have to do to survive. I will not call upon you for favor, although in other circumstances, perhaps . . . because I have known and taken favors of young men in my day. I will not deny that. And you—you’re—”

“I think I knew you fancied me,” Johann said. “You’ve been very kind to me. And when you’ve touched me with your hand when I’ve passed you surgical instruments . . . well, I too—”

“I will not take advantage of that. Caring for your friend will not hinge on that.”

“Nonetheless, I would show my gratitude—whether or not August survives—and I have little else I can use to show it. I would be honored—”

“I will bring the poultice to you,” the surgeon said, turning away from Johann to cut off the conversation.

August had begun to stir at that point. He remained semiconscious, though, through the day and into the early evening while Johann came to him and attended to him whenever there was a break in the routine of working with the surgeon on other men.

That first night would be crucial, the surgeon said. And even as weary as he was, after he had had a few hours of sleep in his own tent, he returned and sat in vigil over August with Johann for the rest of the night. At some point as they sat beside the cot, Johann took the surgeon’s hand in his. The surgeon didn’t withdraw it.

In the next week, the two men, Johann and the surgeon, who now favored Johann above all others to assist him, worked side by side, quickly and expertly, saving as many of the men brought to them as possible—and keeping them as whole as possible. The surgeon seemed to have found renewed energy and purpose from Johann’s plea for August and his willingness to sacrifice to save his friend.

Eight days later, as darkness started to fall, the surgeon declared the crisis with August over. The surgeries that were needed that day had come at an end. There had been fewer and fewer surgeries as the week wore on and more post-operation care. Despite the reduced workload, the surgeon looked exhausted. The weariness had been accumulating over the week and a half.

“Find something that Lawrence needs to do somewhere else in the camp for an hour,” Johann whispered to the surgeon while he kept an eye on the entrance of the tent to check on Lawrence.

“I don’t understand . . . why—?”

“Is your tent nearby?” Johann asked.

Then the surgeon did understand. “I have to give a report at the end of the work day and the general’s tent is across the camp. I can assign Lawrence to deliver the report. He will be pleased and I will be relieved regardless of what else happens. He will have to give the report verbally, so it will take time for him to deliver it.”

When they were alone in the surgeon’s tent, the doctor sat down on a straight chair, his trousers now off and his white, blood-stained surgical coat pulled away from his body while Johann knelt in front of him and sucked his cock. When the surgeon was engorged, Johann lowered his body on the surgeon’s lap, facing him, descended his channel on the surgeon’s hard cock, and did all of the work in giving the surgeon a much-appreciated relieving flow.

“You didn’t have to . . .” the surgeon murmured afterward as Johann embraced the doctor’s head, pulling it into his chest so that the surgeon could play Johann’s nipples with his tongue.

“Many are the men who have taken this from me,” Johann said. “You would not, so, in gratitude for trying to save my friend and all of the other patients, I give this to you freely. Any time you want to send Lawrence away from me, I am willing to ride your staff. You just need to be very careful of Lawrence.”

“I know; I will be,” the surgeon whispered, not just speaking of Lawrence but acknowledging that he would want Johann again.

* * * *

It was a couple of days before August realized that it was Johann who was tending to him, and when he did, he suddenly seemed to acquire the will to live—and to do everything he could to be whole.

Lawrence watched Johann with an eagle eye and normally could not have failed to discern that there was some attachment between the two. But the surgeon did what he could to shield the way Johann and August interacted from Lawrence. And he also found plenty of opportunities to send Lawrence on time-consuming errands at the other side of the camp. And, as the needs for surgery over the next few weeks lessened, he had more energy left over at the end of the day, so that not far into the arrangement he was riding Johann’s ass rather than the young man riding his cock.

As August recovered, he grew more needy of sexual attention too. Johann made a science of giving August hand jobs under the bed sheeting even with Lawrence standing at the tent entrance and of stealing kisses with his lover when Lawrence wasn’t looking.

August eventually was well enough to be moved from the surgery tent. It was the surgeon’s suggestion that August be moved to his tent so, he said, that he could give the young Hessian artillery man the attention he needed. But it was mainly Johann who, while the surgeon had sent Lawrence off on a mission, gave August attention, with August lying on his back on a mat by the surgeon’s cot, Johann straddling his hips and riding his cock, and the surgeon sitting patiently on the side of his cot, cock in hand, watching the coupling between August and Johann, and waiting his turn with Johann.

If Lawrence suspected anything—other than not being happy with the special attention Johann was giving one patient, even though the surgeon said he demanded it—it only showed in his continued possessiveness of Johann and the roughness of his fucking in the hours that the surgeon could no longer hold Johann at work. It was true that, as the weeks went on, the coupling between Johann and Lawrence settled down to be less frenetic and demanding. But the demand for sex at least once every night and often twice was enough, on top of the sex Johann was having with August and the surgeon, to keep Johann exhausted.

But Johann didn’t care. It all was worth it to him. At least it was until the surgeon couldn’t hold August anymore and August had to hobble off, his right leg saved but never again to be whole, to join the general population of the Hessian prisoners.

One night after Lawrence had exercised his fucking rights and he and Johann were lying, stretched against each other and cooling down, Johann asked. “How long are we going to be here, Lawrence? Why is nothing happening with us? Do you know?”

“What I do know,” Lawrence answered, “is that our leaders are in a quandary. There are just too many of you British and Hessian prisoners here. The British soldiers will be imprisoned somehow for the duration of the war, if the British can’t free them. But you Hessians. You are mercenaries. Always before now, mercenary soldiers who have been captured in war would be sent back to their home countries on the understanding they never would return.”

“I’d be transported back to Germany?” Johann asked.

“Normally you would be, yes,” Lawrence answered.

August and him sent back to Germany? That wouldn’t be so bad. He would have August to protect him then. They could restart a life together. And they wouldn’t have to return to Lüneburg, where Johann would face complications. But Lawrence had said “normally.”

“Normally?” you said. “So why not—?”

“We—we Americans—have realized that you Hessians aren’t staying in Germany when we send you back. You are signing up with the British again and coming right back to fight.”

“So?”

“So, my guess is that you will be interned for the duration of the war too.”

“Away from you?” Johann did his best not to make that sound cheery.

“It won’t come to that for you,” Lawrence said. “If I am not assigned to stay with you, I will find a way for you to escape and come home to Pennsylvania with me. Men are leaving from here every day. We are not receiving pay, and men are becoming restless here. Some are brought back because they are lost for where to go. But I would know where you were going. I don’t mind sticking with this job, though. I enjoy being a soldier.”

“Ah,” Johann whispered. Of course, any plans he’d ever entertained of escaping had not materialized—but not only because he would be lost on where to go to—if anywhere but with Lawrence—but also because he now could not go without August. And with August’s leg the way it was, it would be very difficult for them to escape.

“But would we just be interned here?” he asked.

“Not likely,” Lawrence said. He was playing Johann’s body again with his hands. This was going to be a two-fuck night, Johann realized, with a sigh of resignation. He reached back to grasp Lawrence’s cock—hard again, as Johann knew it would be—and to move it into position. He had to be careful to keep Lawrence from suspecting that he was getting sex from anyone else; he had to continue to make believe that Lawrence was the only one and that Johann welcomed his attentions. Of course, Lawrence was an excellent lover, if one wanted it hard and rough, so Johann didn’t have to do a lot of acting that he welcomed Lawrence’s cocking.

“We are too close here to territories the British hold,” Lawrence continued. “My guess is that we’ll move from here—and soon.”

Lawrence’s guess was right. Within another month, In March of 1778, the British and Hessian soldiers, the Hessians still under the command of Baron Riedesel, were on the move to the northwest, to the area of Boston, where they were settled until the winter of 1778, long enough for them to be organized in trades to benefit the colonialist of Massachusetts Colony. It was an uneasy solution, though. Massachusetts was never enthusiastic at having so many prisoners of war in their keeping, and Boston was still too near New York City, which remained occupied by the British. There was constant danger of an attempt to break the prisoners free.

No one who went to the Boston area with the captives that early spring presumed they would be staying there for very long.