Floating World Bitten Peach

They were camped near the top of the ridge in a meadow, just below the forest line. Niu had said he wanted to be high up whenever he could be. He was standing there looking out over the thousands of cook fires and tents spread across the meadow when Shun, carrying the supplies for both of them, managed to trudge up the hillside from the road below.

“I wonder which one he is in?” Niu said to no one in particular.

“Who?” Shun murmured as he prepared to set up their encampment.

“The king. The King of Wu. Jili. He must be down there somewhere.”

Shun clucked his lips. He’d heard this a thousand times on their journey from Nantung, first to the Wu capital of Gusu, only to learn that the king was on the march into the neighboring kingdom to the north, Chu, to redress some grievance of his own—or of his own devising. He was known to be fierce for war—not necessarily to acquire land and booty but just because he enjoyed making war and wanted to keep his army on a fine edge of preparedness.

Since they had left Nantung in the middle of the night just ahead of the Duke of Shi’s avenging guard, however, Niu had had the obsession to join with Jili and to swear allegiance to him. The servant Shun had the impression that he wanted to do so because the king and the duke were sworn enemies. Niu had been taken into the service of the duke from the Nantung nanleshijia—male pleasure house—that they had both been employed in. But Niu had returned soon thereafter, pledging enmity for the duke for some indignity he would not name and with the duke’s soldiers in hot pursuit.

Niu now was seeking out the King of Wu, and, nonsensically, Shun thought, assumed that he could audience with the king directly. He apparently believed that all he would need do was meet directly with the king and a collaboration would be struck.

Shun half believed that this could be done. Niu was an arresting man, handsome and tall and muscular, and with a bearing that commanded attention in any gathering he was in. He was a trained warrior too, which had cachet of its own at the court of the King of Wu. The servant equally acknowledged that part of why he saw Niu standing high above the rest was that Shun himself was smitten by the beautiful giant. But he had not been the only one to be so, and thus Shun thought his judgment was sound.

Niu, who had been the nanleshijia’s baoan, or protector of the house, had been sold from the pleasure house precisely because of the effect he had on the jinan—the male prostitutes—in the house. The Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia was famous for being able to supply the most beautiful and nubile—and trained—virgins for the first bite of the peach for any man who could afford it. Niu, who was supposed to protect the virtue of the jinan in preparation, however, was prone to want to take this first bite himself. The premier virgin of the house, Xiu, was only barely saved from this fate on the night Niu had fled the service of the Duke of Shi, with the duke’s warriors in hot pursuit.

Niu probably only made it out of Nantung with his skin because Shun, a servant of the house, had shown him a secret route—and had accompanied him and served his needs along the long road from Nantung to, first, Gusu, and then into the territory of Chu.

Shun, who pined for Niu, hadn’t been allowed to serve all of Niu’s needs, though. As the two folded into the lines of men following the army of Jili to join his service and seek their own fortunes and adventures, young, bright-eyed, and naïve young men increasingly became available. Of these, Niu had picked off the more handsome and innocent of the offerings and thus was quickly adding to his tally of bitten peaches—virgin males deflowered. He had bitten Shun’s peach, as well, but had shown little sexual interest in the servant who worshipped him since.

As they grew closer to the vanguard of the army, the crowds of men grew. Even in this throng, though, Niu stood out. Men naturally gravitated to him as a leader. And this night, when Niu and Shun had finally attained the central encampment of the King of Wu, down in the meadow, this phenomenon was repeated.

Niu hadn’t asked for a retinue, and when the two, at Niu’s instruction, had struck out up the hillside for a camping spot rather than down in the meadow, others had followed him. As Niu stood there enjoying the view of a thousand campfires flaring up in the darkening dusk and Shun finished laying out their blankets and started making a campfire, the men started to gather about them.

While Shun was setting the wood for the fire, he felt a tentative touch on his arm and looked up.

“May I help you with that?” The young soldier was shy and hesitant in his speech.

“I can manage,” Shun said, returning the small smile the young man gave him.

“It would help for me to have something to do.”

“You are afraid of the coming battles and wish something else to think of?” Shun asked. Then, when he saw that his thought had struck home and had caused embarrassment, he quickly added, “We are all afraid of that. Even the ones who boast of battle are afraid and are hiding their fright. Yes, of course, you may help. What is your name?”

“Rong.”

“Where do you come from, Rong?” The two were working together, stacking the wood so that it would catch fire quicker but last longer. The young soldier was more adept at this than Shun was, which made Shun think he probably was used to these primitive conditions.

“I live three days’ walk from Gusu,” Rong answered. “My village is very small . . . and poor.”

“And you’ve joined with the army to make your fortune?”

“More because there wasn’t enough food for me to stay in the village. If I had not left, my parents would starve. There was not enough for three. Having a son serving in the king’s army brings honor—and increased food—to my parents. I possibly die so that my family can survive.”

It had been said with sadness, but with acceptance. Looking closely at the young man, Shun could see that he wasn’t asking for sympathy, only understanding of the condition that affected so many in the kingdom.

But Shun also saw that Rong was looking beyond him, at the figure of Niu, standing on the hillside, striking a majestic pose, and looking out over the encampment below. And what he saw in Rong’s eyes was admiration—and longing—a longing not less than Shun himself had for Niu.

“You came up here to camp because of him, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Isn’t he magnificent? You are with him, aren’t you? Do you serve him?”

“Not as I wish,” Shun answered sadly. “But I can tell you that you need to be very careful with Niu.” He took a long look at the youth. He was thin, but well muscled as any young man who engaged in hard work in a small village was. His face was strikingly handsome. Not quite as handsome as the young men of Nantung, of course, but their beauty was legendary. This young man had a gentleness about him and a smile that was engaging.

“Niu is a man’s man, Rong. Do not look his way with longing if you do not know what that means.”

“I . . . I don’t understand,” Rong said. And this told Shun what he suspected—and he felt an instant protectiveness for Rong.

“Niu lays with men, Rong. And he prefers men who have never lain with men before. And he is not constant; it is all for just his enjoyment. Do you understand what I am saying, Rong?”

“Yes, I think so. You are with him? Did he lay with you too? And was he your first?”

“Yes to both,” Shun said, remembering, first, where Shun negotiated Niu’s biting of his peach for information about another youth that Niu wanted and then the harrowing trip up Langshan—Wolf Hill—in Nantung, where Niu was trying to get to a conquest who he had been pursuing for months before the monks of the Dragon Temple had ruined the young man. When he failed, he had taken out his anger and despair on Shun instead. But Shun had reveled in that—his second lying with the magnificent man. Alas, since then there had not been another. Niu’s sights were set much higher than the servant who clung to him in eternal hope.

“But—”

Shun was unable to go on because Rong’s attention now had refocused to farther down on the hillside, and when Shun looked there, his own line of thought was arrested.

Two soldiers, in the livery of the king’s guard and mounted on war horses, were picking their way up the hillside to where the band of men had gathered around Niu to camp. They pulled up in front of Niu, said a few words to him, and then rode to the fringes of the camp and dismounted. The two unsaddled their horses and tied the reins off on trees at the fringe of the forest in a high stand of grass, where the horses could feed. They brought the saddles to near the fire and then sat at the fire and roasted a plucked and gutted fowl one of them had taken from a sack on his saddle. They spoke with the soldiers around them, but only sparingly.

Word made its way around the camp that they were pickets set out on the fringe of the greater encampment to warn of possible attack. The forces of the King of Chu were assumed to be not far away, and the Chu monarch was known for his dishonesty and cleverness. Battles were supposed to be conducted according to formal, long-held rules and on set battlefields. But the King of Chu didn’t always remember or heed this, according to the rumors.

Niu sat with the two imperial guards and chatted as wine was found and passed around. Shun melted into the shadows and watched, knowing what was likely to happen, but not having the power to do anything about it.

Rong was the one passing the wine. When he passed by Niu, who was leaning against the saddle of one of the guard’s horses, Niu reach up and grabbed his arm and dragged Rong down beside him.

“Come rest a while, my fresh little peach,” Niu declared with a jovial voice. “You have served the wine long enough. You are a perfect little peach. You are a peach, are you not?”

“Yes, sire, if you wish me to be,” Rong answered in confusion, but he could not hide the admiration and looking in his eyes for Niu, who now was encircling him with one arm and patting him on the arms and breast with the other.

Shun’s heart leapt in his chest. He wondered if Rong even knew that a peach was a ripe, unpenetrated young man. Rong, perhaps unknowingly, had just sealed his fate. Even without the wine he had drunk, Niu could not resist taking the first bite of a peach.

But, with the wine, Niu lost all inhibitions he might have had in the center of a group of skittish and randy soldiers, most of whom had not had a good fuck for days or weeks.

The young Rong didn’t have a chance. When Niu, holding him close with one arm, moved a hand under his tunic and grabbed his thigh and then started working the hand up his leg, Rong strongly suspected what was happening. He could not have escaped then if he had wanted to. But he was conflicted, not knowing if he wanted to, smitten that Niu was showing him attention.

When Niu pulled his tunic over his head and ripped away his loin cloth, though, Rong knew for sure. Here his fear of the unknown and his anticipation swirled together, causing him to cry out in surprise and fear and to grunt and moan, as Niu’s lips and teeth found his pert little nipples and Niu’s hand grasped Rong’s yang chu—his cock.

Shun looked on in horror and concern and disgust as the soldiers who were titillated by such taking—which was most of them—gathered around and egged Niu on with boisterous words and more than one hand getting such groping feel as they could themselves of the young Rong’s virginal body.

The imperial guard who had been sitting beside Niu cupped Rong’s buttocks, remarking on how nicely rounded they were, rolled them apart, and began to finger Rong’s tight little hole, while another young soldier parted Niu’s traveling tunic and took Niu’s yang chu—his pert, small member—in his mouth.

To cheers from the gathered men, Niu, naked, his magnificent yang chu hard and curved upward for all to see, did pushups, his toes digging into the dirt of the hillside and the heel of his hands grinding into the grass on either side of Rong’s shoulders, as Rong lay under him, his heaving belly on the inner curve of the saddle and his rounded little butt cheeks pointed to the heavens and split in two by Niu’s pumping yang chu. Rong was grasping Niu’s wrists in a white-knuckled ineffectiveness and initially writhed under Niu and cried out for mercy, a mercy that did not come. The young man struggled without effect and cried out and moaned deeply as the thrusting Niu took a massive bite of the peach.

One of the imperial guardsmen quieted Rong by kneeling under Rong’s bobbing head, taking his own hard yang chu in his hand, and giving Rong’s face something to bob on. Niu’s stamina in the fuck eventually made Rong’s body go limp and completely accepting, reduced to low groans and whimpers.

The gathered men had cast bets upon which stroke Niu would give up his seed inside the bitten peach, with Niu winning if none guessed correctly. Such was Niu’s skill and stamina in the stroking that they all lost, their highest number having been reached well before Niu was finished. Thus, Niu became a much richer man that night.

So impressive was his performance that, when he had finished biting the peach and had drunk another flagon of wine, he accepted the begging of other men to go with him and mined many another hole that night. But before Niu would pick his next conquest, his deep voice could be heard ringing out. “Who here, who else here is a peach? Who wants me to tease out and pop his pit?”

Hearing the erstwhile friends of a young lad answering that call on the young man’s behalf, Niu took another swig of the wine and lurched off toward his new conquest.

Rong was pulled up from the saddle by four men, each to a limb, and was carried off to the forest and shared out by the four.

It was here, hours later, that, having waited for the camp to quiet down for the night, Shun sought and found Rong, lying on his back in a fern bed, whimpering and moaning quietly.

Shun had brought salves with him and knelt beside Rong’s body and began to rub the salve on the youth’s bruised flesh.

“Have you come to have me too?” Rong murmured. He opened his legs and raised them up, heels dug in the damp earth, resigned to the next in a succession of men in the night.

“No, Rong. I do not take other men. I’m sorry. I tried to warn you about Niu. You could have hidden rather than serving the wine.”

“Do you think he will have me again?” Rong asked.

Shun looked down into the youth’s face. He saw that he was still smitten with Niu—if anything, more smitten now, having been possessed by the magnificent yang chu of Niu’s. He started to say something, but then he locked his jaw. Who was he to say anything? Didn’t he beg for Niu to take him again? Didn’t he still seek to ride the shaft again?

“I don’t think so, Rong. Not unless you had a palace to give him or could regain what you had before tonight. His ardor is for biting the peach.”

“But he could, couldn’t he? He could lay with me again? He lays with you, doesn’t he?”

“That’s what I tried to tell you before, Rong—before the imperial guards arrived. No, he has not lain with me again—not after that first two times—and both times because he was in a state, wanting something he could not have and covering me for solace when he wasn’t in his right mind. I serve his every need but that one, and he hardly knows I am here. Perhaps if you were a king and could offer him a palace. Or if your name was Xiu. I have only seen him look on one person with love that is more than a carnal desire to be first. Xiu is a jinan in preparation in the Nantung . . .”

But Shun looked down at Rong and saw that he needed no explanation. The young soldier, more worldly wise now than when the sun rose that morning, was already mercifully fast asleep. Shun lay down beside the young soldier and hugged him tight to keep him warm through the reminder of the night.

If only he were a man who penetrated other men.

* * * *

Shun was awake at dawn, finding himself alone in the fern bed. He rose and walked out of the forest and into a camp of muttering, hung-over soldiers stumbling here and there and making ready to be on the move again. Rong was there too, moving around with his head cast down, not speaking to anyone, but being very industrious.

Shun wondered what he should say to Rong about the previous night, but when the young soldier looked up, his face pointed to Shun, Shun could see that Rong wanted to act like the previous night hadn’t happened at all—that Rong wanted to act as if he didn’t even recognize who Shun was.

Rong obviously wanted the previous night not to have happened—other then the lying under Niu. Shun could see from the way the other soldiers looked at Rong, however, and used any excuse to touch him and whisper to him that Rong was now marked for sport. Each night as the sun went down in the camp, he would be carried off and covered by men—more than one. He had now attained a function in the camp of tense men obsessed with near-term pleasures in the face of the dangers of battle. If he was to survive the camp, not to mention the battlefield, Rong would have to adjust to his new role in the scheme of things.

Perhaps it was for the best that he not befriend Rong further, Shun thought, and he went off to find Niu.

But he didn’t find Niu, and when he asked if anyone knew where he was, he was told that Niu had left before dawn with the two imperial guards. Gathering up Niu’s and his possessions and strapping the bundle to his back, Shun gave a little sigh and started to work his way down the hillside, bound for the encampment in the meadow. At least Niu is so tall, he thought, that he will be easy to pick out among the crowds down here.

At that moment, Niu was down in a tent in the meadow, nearly in the center of encampment, where the tents were larger and of the best quality.

He had been bathed and given a new, silk hanfu—robe—and was standing nearly at attention between the two imperial guards he had met on the hillside the previous day. In the morning Niu had found out that the guards weren’t on the hillside to be sentries; they had been sent there especially to seek Niu out in the interest of someone much higher in the rankings of the army.

“Come closer,” said a refined voice from across the room.

Pressed by the guards, Niu took three steps closer to the canopied bed with the damask drapes. A bejeweled hand reached out beyond the foot of the canopied bed.

“Take your robe off.”

With the help of the two guards, Niu drew his hanfu over his head. He was standing there in all of his magnificence.

“Yes, he is pleasing. You have scavenged well. You may go now.” The bejeweled hand beckoned the guards away. “Come. Come into the bed.”

Niu climbed into the bed on his knees, finding himself kneeling between the spread legs of the King of Wu, who had untied his sash and spread his hanfu off of his naked body.

At a signal from the king, attendants closed the damask drapes around the bed as Niu moved closer in to the king’s body and the king lifted his ankles to Niu’s shoulders.

For the next hour all that those inside the tent but outside the enclosed bed could hear were the cries and moans of the king and the grunts of Niu, although no one was there to tell them they could not enjoy watching the wave-like motion of the red lacquered bed with its fine silk drapes swaying.

The king lay on his back on his pillows, his hands tied to the headboard over his head with red silk roping, crying out, “Yes, yes, punish me,” as Niu knelt between his spread thighs and rhythmically pumped his cock in and out of the royal hole. Niu had a multithong leather whip with knotted ends in his hand and was switching it on the king’s heaving chest and flanks, listening for where the king was showing he had reached the thin edge between his pain and his pleasure. The king was in ecstasy.

Far away from the tent Shun was hunting for Niu so diligently that he belatedly heard the frightened cries rising above the usual hubbub of a military camp coming awake and packing up for a march. He thus wasn’t aware of the horsemen of the raiding party from the army of the Chu until they were upon him.

He was of no concern to them; they were making a wild dash for the center of the encampment, for the imperial tents. But Shun stumbled in the way of one of the horsemen who, in irritation, raised his sword and brought it down on Shun’s back. Shun went down in a heap. Behind the horsemen, in a wedge, were foot soldiers of the Chu army moving resolutely through the parting panicked crowd before them.

A fiercely angry Niu, naked except for the sword in his hand, swept the damask drapes of the imperial bed open just as the first horsemen ripped the side of the tent with his sword and rode into the center of the space within. Niu stood protectively over the vulnerable and prone body of the king, slow to react only because he was so besotted with sword work of an entirely different variety.

Niu and the horseman exchanged parries of their swords as another horseman was working his way into the tent. The King of Wu’s men had recovered from the shock of the attack, though, and were also rushing under the canvas, swords raised.

Having run the first horseman through with the king’s sword and turning toward the second one, Niu stood his ground over the torso of the king.

* * * *

Months later, as the forces of Wu and Chu feinted and parried in skirmishes back and forth across the border separating their territories, the attention of Wu was turned toward one of its border prefectures. The anger and determination of Jili, King of Wu, was almost palpable as he unleashed his cavalry, war chariots, and bronze and iron weapons—all battlefield levelers that his enemies had never before encountered—on the rebel town of Anyi, which had switched allegiance to the kingdom of Chu. Within hours of receiving the message that the Lord of Anyi would not send tribute and yield in the season of homage, Jili and his loyal servant and trusted chamberlain, Niu, obedient servant to the king everywhere but in the confines of the royal bed, riding three strides to his rear, galloped out of his encampment on the opposite banks of the river Xi, which separated Wu from Chu. Jili’s forces had already been inside Chu territory when Anyi, at his army’s rear, across the river, had defected. That the forces of Anyi put up a stout defense at the imperial army’s recrossing of the Xi only added to Jili’s indignation and anger.

The Lord of Anyi, Zhu Xin Yi by personal name, would need to be taught a lesson that none of the other vassals to Jili’s building empire would forget for the ages.

Once across the Xi, and sweeping the army of Anyi aside like a misting of spring insects, the forces of Jili descended on the city of Anyi, attacking from four directions, the foot infantry from the southwest, double-horsed chariots from the northwest and southeast, and Jili at the head of his vaunted cavalry from the northeast, where the Lord of Anyi had planned a retreat, if that proved necessary, into the surrounding hills.

Jili wanted to seize the seasoned men of the ruling family of the Lord of Anyi alive and thus had taken command of the rising hills that his spies within Anyi had told him the family of the Lord of Anyi would attempt to flee into if the battle went against them.

The King of Wu had put out the order that Anyi was to be leveled and every tenth man, woman, and child within it put to the sword as a warning to any others thinking of holding out on Jili’s drive to unify the Chinese empire. But he had given strict orders that Zhu Xin Yi and any sons not killed in battle were to be captured alive and delivered to him at the temple of the tiger atop Taiyuan Shan, the Lord of Anyi’s sacred spot.

And so it was.

By design, Jili had ridden out to the temple with the royal hostages of all his vassal states that were being held to ensure the loyalty of every other vassal lord. He wanted them to see what happened to those who rebelled. As Jili, the King of Wu, cruelly spurred his battle stallion, panting and foaming at the mouth from five hours of fast gallop and three hours of close-in combat, up the slope toward the Taiyuan Shan temple, he turned and scowled at Niu, who had fallen to five strides behind him instead of the required three.

“Keep up, servant—or . . .”

Niu was panting and ragged of breath as they reached the summit. He had fought hard—harder than Jili, because it had been Niu at every close engagement with the enemy who had shielded Jili from all sides, making the aging king look like an invincible warrior. As tired as Niu was, he strode forward to the required three strides behind his master—close enough to throw himself from his steed at the moment of realization that Jili wanted to dismount, so he could fling his body, prostate, in the mud at the side of Jili’s stallion, in time to provide a stepping stone for his master’s dismount.

Jili trampled heavily and with muddied hide-covered boots on his chamberlain’s back as he dismounted and strode into the temple, with Niu scrambling to take up the required three paces in his wake, followed closely behind by the quivering hostages from the other lands where Jili held sway.

At Niu’s side was the young prince, Jiayi, Jili’s third son, who the King of Wu had brought on campaign to start toughening up the young man, barely in his majority. Jili hadn’t brought his first two sons, because they could not be put in jeopardy while the king was on the battlefield. As the third son, Jiayi barely mattered. That didn’t keep the young man from carefully assessing everything he saw for opportunity. What he often was assessing since coming on campaign, though, was the muscular and arousing body of the chamberlain, Niu. Jiayi had never lain with a man before—which rumor had it would be enticing to Niu—although it was more because Jiayi wanted a worthy sexual master than that he had an aversion to having a male lover. He could not help but wonder about Niu, so subservient to the king in public but yet rumored to be the king’s master in private. Sometime on this campaign Jiayi was determined to test out the legends of Niu’s yang chu—and of his desires to conquer virgin channels.

The cavalry outriders who had captured and brought Zhu Xin Yi and his four surviving sons to the temple stood guard around the five cowering prisoners. They had been beaten, but, with the exception of Zhu Xin Yi himself, who was bleeding profusely and whose right arm had been almost severed in battle, four of the five men of the House of Anyi were alive enough. Zhu Xin Yi stood, bent painfully but defiant, alongside his only slightly wounded eldest son, who glowered at Jili menacingly as the conqueror strode into the temple’s central chamber. The room they occupied was a stone, vaulted-ceiling space adorned only by a vermillion-painted altar standing in the very center under an open skylight, which cast the rays of the noonday sun directly down on the House of Anyi’s ceremonial sacred heart, it’s ancestral altar. Off to the sides were alcoves draped with cloth, where the priests of the temple were said to deflower their initiates.

This was why the Jili had chosen this temple for this ceremony—from a perverse amusement of the knowledge of how the priests here recruited into their ranks.

Zhu Xin Yi’s youngest surviving son, merely a boy, whimpered slightly, no doubt at the sounds of carnage and sight of the rising smoke from the doomed capital city of Anyi below the mountain slope, but his sobs subsided at a sharp look from his father’s eyes. The two middle sons clung to each other as they huddled on the floor, but the difference between them was noticeable. One, the second son, a sword gash laying open a wound on his forehead, had his eyes closed and his face buried into the bosom of the third son, who, blood-covered but largely unmarked himself, looked out at the approaching Jili more in curiosity than anything else.

“Has the Lord of Anyi agreed to yield?” Jili bellowed. Everyone in the confines of the temple shuddered noticeably at the master’s declaration, even Zhu Xin Yi. Although advanced in age, Jili was a magnificent figure, perfectly formed, heavily muscled, astonishingly handsome, and carrying himself with grace and supreme confidence as the unifier of kingdoms that he was slowly bonding into one through his own determination and talent—and on the strength of his modern weaponry.

“Majesty . . .” the captain of the cavalry began in a voice edged with fear and dread. He could neither lie nor tell the truth. Zhu Xin Yi had turned to stone in his recalcitrance. The cavalry officer knew that anything he said at this point was sure to bring down the wrath of his master.

Jili saved him the indignity. The cavalry captain was a good soldier. Jili could not spare him.

“No matter,” he said with a sneer. “Once disloyal is one time too many and it cannot be mended. The Lord of Anyi is no more. I must have a new lord. One of the sons must do. But which one? And all must know of my suzerainty over him.” At the mouthing of the word “all,” Jili let his gaze cover all of those gathered, ensuring that the “representatives” of the other vassal lords were fully aware of the gravity and symbolism of what was about to happen.

Jili snapped his fingers, and his faithful drudge in public, Niu, bent almost double and eyes firmly planted on the ground, stepped up into Jili’s peripheral vision. “Yes, master?”

“You know what I require.”

“Yes, master,” Niu responded. “Not the eldest; he is as unmalleable as the father. He would rebel again as soon as we recrossed the Xi to pursue the King of Chu to his lair in Danyang. And not the youngest; he belongs with the women.” At this, a gasp escaped the gathering of hostages standing at the edge of the temple behind Jili. All knew that the women of the House of Anyi had already gone to join his ancestors.

“Of the two remaining,” Niu continued in a hesitant voice, “one will die anyway of that festering wound. The remaining one looks out at the world with curiosity, even in the present circumstances. He may be trainable.”

“Ah, you have chosen wisely, I think, chamberlain. So it will be.”

The third son, Jiayi thought, his mind soaring to the possibility that Niu was sending a message to him by picking the third son. And was this perhaps an omen of the future beyond the present circumstance? There were those at the court in Gusu, egged on by his own mother, who suggested Jiayi should be Jili’s successor—and perhaps sooner rather than later.

While speaking, Jili unbuckled his belt and let it and his sword fall—into the hands of Niu, who dove for it, lest it hit the ground, although he had to sink to his knees to prevent it from doing so.

Carrying the sword while genuflecting, Niu backed away from the altar area. Guided by Jiayi’s own helpful hand, he backed all the way into one of the alcoves, and Jiayi partially pulled the drapes to the opening together, so that the two of them were alone in the alcove but could still watch the proceedings through the slight opening in the drapes.

“Captain, the handsome one,” the king commanded, clapping his hands. “The one with the curious eye. The ceremony of reclaimed suzerainty of the fallen enemy. Now!”

The captain motioned to the two heftiest of his men guarding the captives, who pulled the third son up and away from his mortally wounded brother. As they stripped the struggling captive, the remaining guards manhandled the father and eldest son into submission, holding them firmly, facing the altar.

At the captain’s command, the two cavalrymen, one at each arm of the third son of the Lord of Anyi, pulled his naked body around to the side of the altar facing Jili and held him down, facing away from Jili, belly flat on the altar and face turned to his still-struggling and cursing elder brother and father.

In the alcove, Jiayi placed a hand on Niu’s arm. He could feel that the man was trembling slightly. “You know what is about transpire, do you not?” Jiayi whispered to Niu.

“Yes, of course,” was the stiff answer. Niu had been reserved with Jiayi ever since he had come into service with the king. He didn’t fool Jiayi, though. Jiayi was sure that the reserve was because Niu wanted him.

“I have heard that the third son of the House of Anyi is a peach. Do you believe that is possible? He is so handsome and well formed, and certainly could have lain with a man if he had wanted to. Kings and princes do as they like. So, our king is about to bite into a very ripe peach. How do you feel about that?”

Jiayi smiled at the low growl he heard rising from deep inside Niu. He moved to in front of Niu, who towered over him, then he raised his robes from behind, took Niu’s hands into his and laid them on the nakedness of his waist under the robes.

“I am a peach too, Niu. Ripe for the bite. And willing. In fact, as a prince of Wu, I command it.”

Jiayi laughed a deep, throaty laugh, as he felt Niu’s hands on his waist tremble—but, significantly, not withdraw at Jiayi’s bold offer. One of Niu’s hands went around Jiayi’s waist and palmed the nakedness of his flat belly between robe and flesh. Jiayi felt Niu fumbling with the sash on his battle robe with the other hand, and then move his fingers between Jiayi’s plump orbs. The eyes of both of them were still focused on what was happening on the altar. Jiayi sighed and leaned back into Niu’s body, enjoying the tightening of his father’s Chamberlain’s palm on his belly and the invasion of the fingers.

At the altar Jili was also letting his battle robe fall open to reveal his magnificent body and a long, thick, and hardened phallus. As he approached the hind quarters of the young prince of Anyi, two other cavalrymen sprang forth to spread the young man’s legs and to pull his buttocks cheeks away to reveal a pulsating rosebud of an anus.

Other servants came forward to anoint Jili’s yang chu with perfumed oil.

With a cry of triumph and uttering the sacred creeds of the House of Wu, Jili then strode up to and between the Anyi prince’s spread legs, positioned his bulging cock cap at the young man’s hole with a steady hand, and then thrust hard and deep inside him.

The young prince of Anyi cried out in pain and violation and writhed, chest heaving and panting, face contorted in the taking, while Jili thrust in deep, searching motions inside him, seeking the resting of his heavy, quivering balls on top of his younger conquest’s. And then thrusting, again and again.

Such was the attention riveted on the action at the altar that no one heard Jiayi’s little cry of triumph as Niu thrust an even longer and thicker phallus than the king’s up into the prince’s channel from the rear. Jiayi arched his back to Niu and his knees got weak. But Niu held him fast with the big hand palming the young man’s belly.

As Jili stroked, symbolically forging his renewed mastery over the House of Anyi as well as enjoying himself immensely, the young prince slowly fell under the master taker’s spell as well—so that before long, not long before he gave up his own seed against the vermillion flanks of the sacred House of Anyi family altar, the young prince was crying out for more and moving with the taking rather than against it.

If he was doing so more out of a survival instinct and cleverness than real enjoyment, he revealed none of this to his king.

Meanwhile Jiayi, the prince of Wu, gasped and sighed as his father’s chamberlain spurted his seed once, twice, and then a third time deep inside Jiayi’s belly.

“Again, again,” the young prince murmured. But Niu was already extracting his yang chu and adjusting his robe. He turned the young prince to the side in the alcove, let him sink to the floor in a long moan, and then strode out to be near the altar when his king needed him. He was smiling to himself. It had been days since he’d been able to leave the king’s side long enough to bite into a peach—and this one was a luscious one. A channel so tight and a peach so ready and willing that Niu had given up his seed almost immediately.

The highly vocal capitulation of the Anyi prince on the altar infuriated and demoralized the elder men of the House of Anyi more than if the young man had been ritually cut up into quarters on the altar. They knew the rituals of the House of Wu. They knew that the new Lord of Anyi had now been chosen and, having been brought under the control of Jili in both body and soul, would be trained to rule a rebuilt Anyi to his master’s dictates. And, to the shame of the House of Anyi, they now could see that he would do so willingly and as the catamite of the evil emperor-to-be.

It was almost in relief and preference that, after Jili had spilled his possessing seed deep inside the new lord of Anyi, Zhu Xin Yi and his remaining sons were led out, through the ranks of the pale and sweating hostages, onto the steps of the temple, overlooking the dying city below them, to meet their public appointment with the avenging sword.

As they had been led out, the captain of the guard approached the King of Wu and whispered, “The youngest son, sire. He is very nubile. Perhaps as a reward to your bodyguards . . . before he is dispatched . . . or perhaps in the dispatching . . .”

“No, enough,” the king declared with a wave of his hand. “Let him perish in dignity with the rest.”

If it was a slight that, after Niu had prostrated himself beside Jili’s waiting stallion again when the victory party descended the temple stairs, the new Lord of Anyi, sore but sporting a lopsided grin, was placed on a horse only one stride behind the master and two in front of Niu, the chamberlain made no sign of feeling it so.

Now Niu had a delicious secret of his own. While Jili was doing his duty to consolidate his power, Niu had been debauching his son.

Later that night, in the tent of the King of Wu on the banks of the River Xi, Niu stood in the shadows and in attendance to satisfy Jili’s every whim as the new Lord of Anyi, in diaphanous leggings and burnished bared torso, danced to the tune of the lutes and thin, pitch-perfect voices of the singsong girls. The young man was well made. Lithe but well muscled. He obviously was clever and good with sword play, having survived the battle unscathed, and he evidenced this with the sensuousness of his movement to the music.

The prince Jiayi came up behind Niu, placed a hand on his buttocks, and raised his lips to first kiss Niu on the ear and then to whisper how he wanted Niu to visit his tent that night—that he wanted more of Niu’s yang chu.

Niu turned his head and gave Jiayi an even stare and said, “I will be busy tonight. I have taken from you what I want. Perhaps if you were a king . . .”

Giving Niu a thunderous look, Jiayi turned and flounced out of the tent.

Niu turned his attention back to the light from the fire to watch as the heir to the House of Anyi danced closer and closer to Jili, who was propped up on pillows in the light of the lamps at the four corners of the central area of the tent marked by the maroon carpet intricately woven in the golds and blues of the House of Wu. Jili was draped in a robe of gold thread, but he was reclining on the pillows and his robe had fallen open, revealing a sword of prodigious length and width curving up from his belly and bobbing with the rhythm of the young man’s dance. There was no doubt that he found his young captive enticing.

And for his part, the new Lord of Anyi was entranced. He had been taken with the master sword once, his first sheathing, and he could not take his eyes off it as he danced. Being clever enough to survive to this point, he wanted to convey that he could not wait to be pierced with it again and again.

The young man was on his knees on the lush carpet now, between Jili’s spread legs, his torso undulating, but dipping ever lower. Until at last his lips were at the bobbing bulb of Jili’s manhood—and opening over the bulb, and taking it inside his mouth, and sucking it close.

Jili looked up into the shadows at where he knew Niu stood in ever-ready service. He snapped his fingers and said, “Only you other than the new Lord of Anyi.”

“Yes, master,” Niu responded, then. Then Niu turned in either direction, motioning the vigilant, yet studiously blind guards and the singsong girls out of the tent. They immediately left in graceful silence.

Niu remained, watching, as the young prince heated up the master, making him moan and sigh at the young captive’s attentions in a way that none but Niu was permitted to observe or hear. No hint of weakness would be permitted.

At length, Jili pulled the young lord’s face from his cock and reached down at his belly and ripped away the diaphanous material. He then lifted the young man and set him firmly and cruelly down on his club of a yang chu. The young lord cried out in pain as he had done before, only once before having been taken and not prepared in any way. But writhe as he unwillingly did—as he clearly wanted to be taken again—he was able to give no resistance to Jili. The King of Wu merely raised him and lowered him ever farther down the blade of the piercing sword with strong hands gripping his waist.

Jili fucked on forever—long after the young lord had spouted his own seed up Jili’s hard, muscled belly.

Nearly exhausted, the young lord whimpered in thanksgiving when Jili finally lifted him off his bludgeon and let him fall over to the side. The young man started to slither away, across the rug, but he should have known that Jili was only toying with him; the master’s cock was as hard and thick and long as it ever had been.

The young lord squeaked in shock and fear and trembling, as Jili came up on his knees and grabbed the young man around the waist again and held him there, belly to carpet, as Jili encased the young lord’s thighs between his knees and, using the humbling position of the dog, thrust down inside him again and rode him and rode him and rode him.

Niu heard a sound at the back entrance to the tent and turned to see that prince Jiayi was spying on what was transpiring in the center of the tent. But when Jiayi saw that Niu had found him out, a hateful look spread across his face and he withdrew.

The new Lord of Anyi was completely conquered and nearly comatose when Jili at last cried out in his own ejaculation and was finished with him. The ruler snapped his fingers, and Niu lifted the nearly unconscious and whimpering young man in his arms and carried him to the front entrance of the tent. He muttered instructions to the guards outside, who carried the young man away, and then drew back inside the tent and pulled down and firmly tied off the flap covering the entrance.

Niu turned and moved toward the center of the tent. As he did so, he was untying the knot of his own robe. He let the robe fall open and fall away at his sides, revealing his own well-muscled, sinewy torso and a proud yang chu rising hard out from his center.

Jili was on his knees at the center of the carpet, facing Niu.

“Are you pleased? Did I do well, master?” Jili murmured.

“Well enough, but I think you have been enjoying the new Lord of Anyi too well. I think you need to be punished,” Niu was standing taller now, his voice hard, more demanding. The chamberlain was now in his element. He had taught Jili well, but it was now time to remind him who the real master was in private.

“Yes, yes, master. I need to be punished,” Jili whimpered. He slithered across the carpet on his knees to where Niu was standing and took his chamberlain’s cock in both hands and fed it into his mouth. Niu stood there, pelvis hunched forward, and pulled Jili’s hair and slapped his face with open palms while the servant king pumped his cock in and out his mouth.

“The pallet. Now!” Niu commanded.

“Yes, master,” Jili answered in a whispered tone after taking his mouth off Niu’s cock. He stumbled back to the side of the tent, in the shadows, where animal skins, layered thick on a low platform, lay between four sturdy lacquered-wood posts. Niu tied the old ruler’s wrists off on the two posts at the head of the bed and lifted and spread his legs and tied them off high on the posts at the foot of the bed, forcing pillows under the small of his back to raise the King’s buttocks to the level of Niu’s pelvis.

Then, while alternating fucking Jili’s hole hard and roughly and slapping his buttocks red with hand and riding crop, Niu showed he was the real master of the House of Wu as the king moaned and groaned and asked for more and spilled his seed on the banks of the Xi River over and over again in the ecstasy of the mastering.

In the ensuing days, Niu spurned the advances of Prince Jiayi more than once, telling him that since he no longer was a virgin, he was of no interest to Niu as being anything less than a king.

One evening as Niu was taking a stroll before returning to the king’s tent to apply the discipline the king thrived on, Jiayi approached him and, with a smirk, said, “You have said that a king is as arousing to you as a virgin, have you not?”

“Yes, I did say that,” Niu said, his face showing the confusion that was on his mind.

“Then perhaps I will see you in my tent before dawn,” the young prince said. Then he laughed, turned, and strode away.

Niu could not decipher what Jiayi meant, but a feeling of dread overcame him and he rushed back to the king’s tent in a stumbling run.

The drapes were drawn around the pallet of the king. Niu approached and with trembling hands pulled the drapes aside. King Jili was lying on his back, naked. The handle of a knife protruded from his lower chest and he was looking at Niu with unseeing eyes.

Niu immediately knew what had happened, who was responsible for this. He did not have the least doubt that even now the princes of Wu number one and two were lying in similar death stances back in the capital of Gusu.

What Niu didn’t know was whether Jiayi’s invitation to him just now was to a tryst with the new king or to a trap. Niu would be the natural suspect for this dastardly act of regicide.

The one thing that Niu knew for sure, though, was that he could not test out which of these alternatives was true. He knew that when the king’s body was found, he, Niu, would need to be as far away from the encampment on the banks of the River Xi as possible.