The Golden Cord

“Tell the lad then to stay away from my table until he is well clear of the flux,” Guy d’Castilon growled. He stood up from his table, where he had gotten the explanation why his personal server and taster had not appeared. He walked over to the window in the high tower of the Heights of Bestal mesa fortress, one of the few Crusader-held fortresses in Outremer, the once extensive Crusader kingdom along the southeastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, that still remained in Crusader hands in 1154. The forces of the Saracen general Amir Sharif invested the fortress, threatening even the chances of Castilon’s dwindling forces to evacuate by sea, just as the greater Saracen commander, Salah-ad-Din, somewhat more loosely invested the nearby Crusader stronghold at the Heights of Hattin.

Primitive as the knowledge of medicine was in that time and place, Castilon did realize that he too could catch the flux from sharing space and cup with a sick table server. The commander of the Crusader garrison was a robust man, redheaded, hirsute, and fierce of countenance. He stood a head taller than any man under his command and was broader of shoulders and more muscular than any other. He ruled by natural as well as high-born right in the fortress.

His gaze first went toward the rolling hills of desert and scrub nearby and to the deployment of the tents of the Saracens. As usual, his mind went to working out a strategy for getting those in his charge to the sea. He could see the shore in the far-off distance and the Crusader enclave there as well as the hint of the sails of the vessels that were there to transport him and the remnants of his forces should he be able to reach the shore through the lines of the Saracens. As always, he concluded he could not make it militarily. He would have to try to make it by guile.

That’s when he allowed his gaze to descend into the maze of courtyards below at the base of fortress. He looked around in the various nooks and crannies available to his view, watching men moving listlessly about their daily routines—an alarming decrease from mere days before in men, both in numbers and in stamina. At length, his observation went to a small side courtyard off the stables, where a golden-haired stable groom barely in his manhood was standing at a water trough and bathing himself. He was naked, and his body was beautifully proportioned.

Castilon’s preferences went to young men. He moved a hand to his crotch and, unlacing his codpiece, found his horse-hung prick. He looked more intensely down into the small courtyard, catching the first view of one of his knights, Hugh Plantain, as swarthy as a Saracen, for which he could be mistaken, dark-haired and nearly as hunky as Castilon himself, emerge from the shadows. Plantain embraced the stable groom, most notable for the fine head of golden curls that brushed his shoulders, from behind, pulling the younger man into his chest.

The golden-hair groom did not resist. He leaned back into the chest of the knight, who he obviously knew and who had obviously previously known the young groom biblically, judging by their easy rapport and the yielding nature of the young man, and turned his face to the knight’s searching lips. They kissed deeply, and, as Castilon watched, the knight reached down and unlaced his codpiece, releasing a thick, long erection, and then moved the hand around to grasp the young man’s erection. The young man flinched and shuddered as he was raised and then set down on the knight’s erection. The knight leaned back into a wooden column supporting a porch off the side of the stables, and the golden-haired groom spread his legs and raised his feet to press into the top edge of the water trough, as the knight began to pump his ass.

Castilon’s seneschal entered the chamber, and not missing a beat in masturbating his cock, the fortress commander motioned the steward over to the window with his other hand. The seneschal didn’t react at all in finding his master beating his shaft. He was well aware of the man’s appetites and sexual prowess.

“Look down below, Jacques, at the young man Hugh Plantain is riding in that courtyard by the stables.”

Jacques LeClare looked as bade. “The young man? I do not know him. He is beautiful, though, is he not?” The steward had no illusions about where this was headed.

“I wish for you to know who he is. My cup bearer is ill. I wish for that young man to be brought up to serve at my meals as long as the cup bearer is ill—perhaps longer, if he pleases me.”

“Yes, Sire, he will be at your next table—and anywhere else you wish him to be.”

The seneschal backed out of the chamber and Castilon returned his attention to the tableau below. The young man was riding Plantain’s cock well, rising and falling in a quickening rhythm, a look of ecstasy on his handsome, young face. Plantain was standing steady now, clutching the young man’s hip with one hand and jacking his cock with the other. The golden-haired groom was using the leverage of his feet pressed into the rim of the water trough to rise and fall on the cock. One hand was gripping the hand the knight had on his hip and the other one was encasing the hand jacking his cock off. There was no reluctance in him for the plowing of his passage. His head was still turned, his lips open to the deep possession of the knight’s tongue.

As Castilon watched, the golden-haired groom jerked and gave a little cry. Hugh Plantain tensed, momentarily took control, thrust hard and fast up into the young man’s passage, and released, with a cry of his own. The groom collapsed, his cock again erupting cum. Castilon had shot his load as well.

Hours later, his meal complete, the fortress commander was having his dessert. The young groom, now cup bearer, Henri, was belly down on the surface of the supper table in Castilon’s chamber, his head suspended out over the far side of the table, his mouth open, tongue hanging, out, eyes bugged out, white-knuckled hands gripping the rim of the tabletop to hold himself in place, and a pained-ecstasy expression on his face. Standing behind him, between his thighs, his strong hands gripping the young man’s hips, Guy d’Castilon was fucking Henri hard, deep, and fast with a cock appreciably thicker than Hugh Plantain had ridden him with earlier in the day.

Henri made all of the right sounds of glorious taking, moaning and groaning his way through putting his own pelvis into countermotion, taking his commander deep and causing his passage to ripple over the plowing cock, making love to it, and when the crisis came, pulling a series of shudders, jerks, and great gobs of cum out of the virile warrior.

Afterward, after Henri was dismissed and Jacques had come into the chamber, Castilon pronounced his judgment. “Yes, the lad will do very nicely. Clear the other one out of the chamber next to mine and install this Henri. But when I go abed tonight, bring him back to me—to my bed.”

“I am pleased that he will serve for you,” Jacques said, backing out of the chamber.

“Yes, he will serve nicely,” Castilon muttered when he was alone. “And perhaps for more than my own immediate needs,” he added. “Perhaps for all of us.” Already his mind was racing ahead on how this golden beauty might serve his greater need—if, as his spy in the camp of Amir Sharif, Ahmed ibn-Ayyub, told him true about the proclivities of the Saracen general lurking out there in the darkness.

That night, lost to the charms of the young, golden-haired beauty and in deep lust, Guy pulled Henri up from the bed and strutted, bouncing the young man up and down on his cock, to the stone wall beside the window. There, Henri threw his arms around Guy’s neck and hooked his knees on Guy’s hips, as the virile, monstrously huge warrior chief thrust up inside him again and again. At a whisper from Henri, Guy reversed their position on the wall, pressing his back into the stones and gripping Henri’s waist, as the young blond pressed his fists into the stone at either side of Guy’s head and his feet into the wall on either side of Guy’s chest and fucked himself in long, deep strokes on the older man’s cock.

The young squire was wanton and he was good. He was very, very good. Henri was proving to be no innocent at coupling with a man, despite his young age and tender appearance, something that Castilon thought he would be able to use fully to the advantage of all of the men in his care.

Henri fucked on, pulling every ounce of pleasure and cum out of the virile fortress commander that was there to give,

 * * * *

 At the same moment, in the tent of the Saracen general, Amir Sharif, Castilon’s spy, Ahmed ibn-Ayyub, like other retainers of the Saracen general, was peeking through rents in the tent walls at the general taking his sport with a Crusader captive.

The young, blond Crusader soldier had made the mistake of straying too far away from his scouting party from the Heights of Bestal fortress. He had been captured by the Saracens and, because he was a young, comely, and blond, he had been delivered to the tent of Amir Sharif alive. The young man had sustained a couple of wounds in the capture, but nothing life threatening. It would be left to Sharif to have sport with him and finish him off.

There was nothing that Ayyub could do for the young man. His fate was sealed and Ayyub could not reveal any sympathy for the Crusaders.

The young man was naked, on all fours on a carpet in the tent, his wrists and ankles bound, and the bindings at his wrists tied to a spike in the floor so that he was completely defenseless. Mounted on his ass, naked save for a golden cord belted around his waist, Sharif rode the young man hard, fast, deep, and cruelly.

The young man, never before having been ridden by a man, was crying out the pain and indignity of the situation, although, with a sniffle and deep moan, he settled down to taking the Saracen’s cock as bravely as possible. As long as he was being fucked, he was still alive. Sharif was well versed in the art of prolonging a coupling and he fucked the captive for more than a half hour before he came with a prodigious gush. With a groan, the young blond Crusader soldier collapsed under him.

After taking a few post-ejaculation thrusts as long as he was still hard, Amir Sharif untied his golden cord belt, wound it around the neck of his sobbing captive, cruelly bowed the young man’s head back into his chest, and, as his victim gurgled his last, neatly garroted the young man into terminal silence.

With a sense of sorrow and frustration, the spy, Ahmed ibn-Ayyub, pulled away from his position at the tent wall. He would report this to Guy d’Castilon, of course—yet another testament to the Saracen chief’s cruelty and fetish with young blond men, but it wasn’t something the Heights of Bestal fortress commander didn’t know already. He could only hope that this and the other intelligence he had to impart would help relieve the siege of the Crusader garrison. Ayyub longed to be able to set sail with the Crusaders and return to his family in Cyprus.

* * * *

 The day was glorious. The small party of Crusaders that flowed out of the main gate of the Heights of Bestal and made its short way down the side of a ravine to a small stream below the walls made enough noise to attract the attention of the Saracens. The closest of these were held off from arrow distance by a manned defensive trench between the Saracen lines and the walls of the fortress. The armed party came down to the stream, where some went on watch and others stripped down and bathed in the stream. This was a normal routine, and, although the Saracens kept watch over the activity outside the walls of the fortress, unless they knew in advance it was happening, they didn’t have time to launch an attack party before the bathers returned to the fortress—and the launch party would have to get across the defended trench before reaching the bathers anyway.

On this day, one bather, in particular, stood out. He was a young, comely blond with a cascade of curly golden-blond hair that came down to his shoulders. He stood on a rock at the stream’s edge, like a young god, while other bathers sponged his perfectly formed body off. One of the knights broke away from those guarding the bathers and saddled up behind the young man. He was a big bruiser of a man, swarthy and dark haired.

The watching Saracens gasped almost to a man when the knight unlaced his codpiece, revealing a thick and long erection, moved into position behind the naked blond, lifted the young man’s body up, set him down on his cock, and began fucking him. The golden-haired young man yielded readily to the taking, reaching his arms back to fling them around the knight’s neck, fisting his hands together, and raising his legs to hook the fronts of his ankles on the bulge of the knight’s calves. The blond moved his core with the thrusts of the knight, fucking himself on the knight’s staff.

The Saracen troops were well aware of their own general’s sexual interests and proclivities, and it wasn’t long before Amir Sharif appeared at the top of a hill to watch the young blond beauty being fucked. His eyesight was sharp, although he would wish that it was as sharp as the interest and arousal the young man raised in him. Standing nearby was one of his trusted advisers, the man who headed up his cadre of spies in the Crusaders’ fortress, Ahmed ibn-Ayyub.

“That young man there, at the stream, being so willingly plowed. Can you find out who and what he is, Ahmed?”

“I need no help from spies for that, Sire,” Ayyub answered, delighted that the Saracen general was taking the bait.“That is Henri, the son of Count Guy d’Castilon, the commander of the fortress.”

“I want him,” Amir Sharif growled, the hoarse sound coming up from deep in his gut. “Is there a way?”

“Perhaps,” Ayyub said, with a tight smile. “Those in the fortress are approaching dire straits. They have already signaled that they will leave if they can be given safe conduct to the sea, where ships await them. Perhaps you can parley with them on that need they have.”

“And that would give me access to the young man how?”

“It’s customary to exchange noble hostages to provide surety for a parley,” Ayyub said. “You could exchange your son for Castilon’s as surety to negotiate the withdrawal of the infidels.”

“I don’t have a son here with me, and I have no intention of letting these jackals escape to the sea,” Sharif responded with a growl.

“Neither would be necessary,” Ayyub said. And he proceeded to tell the smiling Saracen commander why not.

* * * *

Neither Guy d’Castilon nor Amir Sharif rode to the initial parleys to set up a meeting to discuss terms for the peaceful withdrawal of the Crusaders. The Saracens left those two meetings in the no-man’s-land between the fortress and the Saracens’ tent city to Ahmed ibn-Ayyub, while grim and disapproving Sir Hugh Plantain represented the Crusaders at the first meeting. The first parley established what both sides wanted, the Crusaders saying they wanted safe passage to their ships on the Mediterranean and the Saracens saying they wanted the Crusaders gone. Both sides said they wanted this to happen without bloodshed. Neither side believed the other on this point. Both the Saracens and Crusaders reveled in war making and bloodshed.

They agreed to the exchange of royal hostages, Castilon pledging the son he didn’t have and Sharif, in turn, pledging the same. The hostages would be held until the Crusaders had reached the safety of their ships and then they would be exchanged. The Saracens were a land force. There was little threat to the Crusaders once they had reached their ships.

The handing over of the hostages was the sole purpose of the second parley. Once again Ahmed ibn-Ayyub was there to deliver a frightened young man, a weapons cleaner who had never even been close to Sharif’s tent and whose only sin was that he was barely in his majority and a beautiful young man who Sharif would be pleased to exhibit as a son of his. Castilon’s so-called son, Henri, equally frightened and white with fright, but threatened to an inch of his life not to reveal his true identity and fortified with numbing wine, wasn’t turned over by Hugh Plantain. Another knight, eager to please his master, Castilon, did those honors. Plantain wasn’t present for the turnover.

Castilon was in the first courtyard awaiting the return of his men, with Sharif’s false son in tow, when the parley party returned. The commander of the Heights of Bestal effusively welcomed the young man to the fortress and spoke of the comfortable conditions he would be maintained in while he was a guest of the crusaders. And then, when the young man was off his horse and beginning to feel more comfortable with his circumstance—and had turned his back on Castilon—the Crusader warrior ran the young man through with his sword.

This was all unfolding as Castilon had planned and enlisted Ahmed ibn-Ayyub to execute. He had known from the beginning that Sharif had no son to turn over as hostage—and no hostage was needed for Castilon’s plan. Although he regretted the loss of Henri who was such a joy in bed, Castilon had no illusions that the Saracen chief would treat him any better than Castilon had treated the purported son Sharif had sent to him as surety. Castilon knew of Sharif’s weakness for young blond men and also of his fetish of dispatching them with the golden cord. The loss of Henri was regrettable but necessary in putting Sharif off his guard.

Back in the Saracen general’s tent, Henri’s claim to be the son of Castilon was given no more regard than Castilon had given Sharif’s claim of a son. The intent was the same, but the result was slightly different.

Henri was taken immediately to Sharif’s tent. As Henri stood before him, stripped down by the two burly guards holding him at both sides, Sharif faced him and shrugged off his silken robes. Underneath he was in magnificent erection and naked save for the golden cord wrapped around his waist. It was obvious from his demeanor that he was overwhelmed at the beauty of the young blond god standing before him.

In desperate mode, with no delusions concerning the danger he was in, Henri brashly stepped forward, taking advantage of his guards’ surprise that he would do any such thing, and knelt and took Sharif’s erect cock in his mouth. Submerged in pleasure with what the young blond god was doing with his soft mouth, Sharif waved the guards away, placed his hands on the young man’s head, and helped guide his pleasure giving.

At length, Sharif unwound the golden cord from his waist. The most dangerous moment at all for Henri had arrived. The cord didn’t go around his neck, though. Sharif pushed Henri down on his back on the carpet by the center pole of the tent. He forced Henri’s arms over his head and tied the cord around his wrists, securing the young man, immobile, to the strong center pole.

He wishboned the young man’s legs, knelt between Henri’s thighs, and spent several minutes in devouring the young man’s cock and puckered anal opening. Henri responded with sighs and moans and encouragement in broken Arabic. Overwhelmed with lust, Sharif covered the young man’s body, holding his legs spread and raised, and thrust inside him with his cock.

Surprisingly the young man welcomed the cock with passion, drawing it inside him, and immediately starting to work it with the undulating muscles of his passage walls. Sharif realized this was not a first-time conquest, but a seasoned catamite, and he fucked Henri hard and long with full appreciation that Henri was fucking him back—expertly.

When Amir Sharif at last raised himself up from the body of the young blond Crusader hostage and wound the golden cord around his waist again, Henri, miraculously, had not been garroted. He had participated in the fuck so well and expertly that Sharif could not bring himself to dispatch the young man so quickly. There was no pressing need to do so. He would have the young man again and again before sending him to his infidel god.

The Saracen general, lost to the charms of what he understood to be a talented golden-maned catamite, summoned the guards to take Henri away and prepare him for more complete debauching later. He was determined to reach a cruelty of fucking that would break the young man. The ultimate garroting of the infidel with the golden cord could come as easily tomorrow or the day after as today. In the meantime Al-Bakr would feast on, bruise, and break the young man’s body. He then summoned his commanders to discuss at what point in the journey of the Crusader forces to the sea it would be best to fall upon them and slaughter them all. 

* * * *

 Amir Sharif attended the face-to-face parley with Guy d’Castilon to negotiate the Crusaders’ departure with senses dulled by the sexual charms of Henri, who, in each coupling, had given Sharif promise of even more pleasurable and inventive fucking to come as well as frustrating the warrior in his desire to break Henri to the point of not giving up until he had done so. So occupied with Henri had the Saracen general become that he hadn’t planned for anything but the ambushing of the Crusader forces when they were traveling to the sea, supposedly under safe conduct ensured by the exchange of noble hostages.

Castilon had thought more deeply about this, though. Indeed, he had planned it all, including Sharif’s actions and his mind-dulling obsession with Henri. Castilon made his move at the parley itself. His party pulled out concealed weapons and fell upon Sharif and his party before they could draw their own concealed weapons. As he did so, his forces inside the Heights of Bestal fortress, already prepared for a challenged forced march to the sea after dispatching the Saracen spies within their midst, as identified by Ahmed ibn-Ayyub, poured out of the fortress, joined with their leader in wiping out Sharif and his parley party and began their race to the Mediterranean. The Saracen forces, taken completely by surprise, were too late to muster forces and reach them before Castilon and his men gained the safety of the ships on the shore of the Mediterranean.

In the fight of the parley parties, Ahmed ibn-Ayyub somehow got run through with a Crusader sword as well. It wasn’t really a mistake. Castilon didn’t want the Saracens ever to get the full picture of the scheme he had brought off. And Ayyub was just another unbeliever no longer of much use to Castilon anyway. Castilon gave more thought of regret to the sweet young lay he had sacrificed to the plan. He assumed that Henri had been murdered as soon as he had reached the Saracen camp.

In this, he thought wrong. He also thought wrong that Sir Hugh Plantain was with the forces rushing to the sea.

Hugh Plantain had taken Castilon’s use of Henri badly. He was more taken with the sexual charms of the young blond beauty than Castilon had been. He had refused to be part of turning Henri over to the Saracens, and when he fully knew Castilon’s plans and had also learned from Ahmed ibn-Ayyub that Henri was not yet dead—a fact that he convinced Ayyub not to apprise the Crusader general of—he made plans of his own.

As Castilon and his party rode to parley with Sharif, Plantain, dark and swarthy enough to disguise himself as a Saracen, stole into the camp of the Saracens. When the alarm was raised that their commander was under attack in the no-man’s-land between the fortress and the camp and that the forces of the Crusaders were pouring out of the Heights of Bestal, chaos ensued in the camp. Under the cover of this chaos Plantain slit the back wall of Sharif’s tent and found and unbound Henri.

“Come, you are going with me. Amir Sharif is undone and the Crusaders are on the move to the sea.”

“Can we join them with the troops of the Saracens between us and them?”

“We’re not going with them. Castilon thought so little of you and he was willing to sacrifice you to the Saracens. We ride in the other direction—away from both Saracens and Castilon. We go to the larger Crusader fortress at the Heights of Hattin.”

“What can I do to thank you for saving me?”

“I’ll think of something,” Plantain said, with a grin. “I want to fuck you right here, but we need to get far enough away that it will be safe. I’ll be hard as a rock the whole way, though.”

Henri, the superb submissive, just laughed, folded himself into the strong knight’s embrace, and began to think of some very special way he could thank his mentor knight—and to hang on to his protection into the future. Henri was well aware of the greatest weapon he possessed for his continued survival.