Zelamir

Helot

The Adventures of Ayas the Slave-boy

Chapter 1

For Ayas was a helot boy. His family had been for generations locked into a cycle of unremitting toil trying to extort from the grudging soil of the Messinia enough food to satisfy the demands of their Spartan masters, to provide seed corn for the next sowing and to feed themselves, in that order of priority.

It had not always been like this. Ayas knew this for his father had told him, clenching his fists as he spoke, his eyes gleaming with rage as his mother nervously tried to hush him, for such talk was dangerous. Many hundreds of years ago the farmers of the Messinia had been free men. Then the Spartans had come and conquered them reducing them to an iron servitude. But they, the helots, had never accepted this. Over and over again they had risen in rebellion only to be crushed by the might of the Spartan State.

This time though it would be different. Ayas knew that another rising was being planned. His father had not told him, you don't tell secrets like that to eleven year old boys, but he was a boy who noticed things. Strangers coming and going, whispered discussions late at night between his father and other men huddled round the dying fire when they imagined he was asleep like the other children with whom he huddled on the hovel's earth floor. He knew too that it would be different. This time it was not going to be just an isolated rising of a single village driven to revolt by some atrocity committed by it's lord. The whole Messinia would rise as one as soon as the Autumn harvest was in and slaughter the Spartans before they could gather together to put the rebellion down. Anyway his father was leading it and success was therefore, in Ayas' eyes at least, assured.

Until then though, until the day of the rising came, Ayas knew that he and his fellow helots had to endure their servitude and give no grounds to their Spartan master's to suspect what was planned.

From the corner of his eye Ayas caught a movement at the far end of the field. He raised his head. It was Xionedes. The Spartan stood leaning on his staff muffled in a long woollen cloak, the hood drawn up over his head, to protect him from the rain. Two massive hunting dogs, grey and menacing lurked at his heels. Ayas turned back quickly to his task. He did not wish to feel Xionedes stick across his shoulders and that was what he would get if the man caught him idling.

Suddenly Ayas was conscious of his nakedness. The goatskin covered his shoulders but his legs were bare and bent forward, as he was, his bottom was exposed. Usually this did not bother him. Cold, hunger and exhaustion dulled all other senses. Anyway living crammed into a single room hovel with the rest of his family prevented the growth of a sense of modesty. The goatskin was worn to provide some minimal protection from the elements and for no other purpose. When the warmer weather came it would be laid aside and he would run around naked, as would all the other Helot children. Now though with Xionedes eyes on him he was suddenly aware and painfully aware of his mud splashed legs and bare backside.

The helots, men women and children, moved steadily across the field in a single ragged line of bedraggled stooping misery watched by their Spartan lord. They scrabbled with their fingers in the mud for stones heaping them in the wicker panniers that they dragged beside them.

A shrill whistle sounded above the roar of the wind. Xionedes was summoning Ayas' father, whistling for him like a master whistling for his dog. Ayas struggled to keep his eyes fixed on the ground. He did not want to see his father's humiliation. But curiosity and concern got the better of him. Hating himself he glanced upwards watching his father run lurching across the furrows to where his master stood. A few yards short of Xionedes he dropped to his knees and began to crawl forwards. The two hounds growled and bared their teeth their hackles bristling. Xionedes raised his hand. Ayas saw his father press his face to the ground and then settle back on his haunches looking up at Xionedes. The contrast between the helot, his only clothing a few brief rags, kneeling in the mud and the Spartan towering over him, leaning easily on his staff, in his thick all enveloping cloak was stark. Tears of frustration and anger stung Ayas' eyes. He loved his father and to see him forced to humiliate himself in that way before that arrogant pig of a Spartan filled him with a feeling of helpless rage.

Xionedes spoke. Ayas could see that he did not even bother to look at his father while he was doing so. He could not hear what the Spartan was saying but knew that he must be issuing orders about the work in the fields. There was no other matter that Xionedes would talk to his father about. With a feeling of shock he realised that the Spartan was looking at him. Xionedes ceased speaking and made a gesture of dismissal. Ayas' father pressed his face once more to the ground but instead of beginning to back away from his master on his hands and knees he straightened and began to speak in his turn.

This insolence on the part of his helot must have taken Xionedes by surprise for it was a full minute before he acted to check him. Then in one swift motion he cracked his staff down upon the skull of the kneeling helot. Ayas was sure he heard the blow land across the full length of the field. His father made no attempt to ward it off. He swayed under the force of the blow but continued to speak while blood trickled down the side of his face. The staff rose and fell a second time on his head. He fell forwards supporting himself on his hands. Gripping the staff in both hands Xionedes showered blows down upon the man's shoulders and back. The violence of his actions caused the cause woollen cloak to fall open exposing his embroidered tunic and silver buckled belt. There was the glint of gold from the chain about his neck. The corrupting influence of conquest and empire had long rendered the austere laws of Lycurgus ineffective.

Ayas wanted to run to the aid of his father but knew that if he did so he would only make matters worse. He stood with the other helots watching with sullen resignation as the beating progressed. They all knew that if they chose they could get the better of Xionedes and his two hounds but that would only be a prelude to an awful vengeance by the Spartan State, savage floggings for the fortunate and slow death for the rest. Xionedes was one against many but behind him stood the power of Sparta and that fact allowed him to beat anyone of them with impunity.

Ayas' father collapsed under the weight of the blows inflicted on him. Now he was lying prone on the ground his body jerking as the staff thumped down upon it, the only sound the dull thud of the baton and the mournful sough of the wind. The frequency and weight of the blows began to diminish as Xionedes tired.

At last he lowered his staff and lent on it looking down at the helot lying prone and apparently unconscious in the mud. He kicked the man viciously in the ribs and then stepping back spoke quietly to his hounds. The two beasts lunged forward. From Ayas' father, who up to then had endured his beating in silence, came a strange half-human cry of distress. Xionedes watched impassively as the dogs tore at rags and human flesh. He spoke one sharp word of command. The hounds slunk back reluctantly abandoning their prey. Without a further word or a backward glance Xionedes strode from the field the two curs, with blood flecked muzzles, at his heels.

Only when the Spartan was out of sight did Ayas' mother dare to go to the aid of her man. The boy watched her run stumbling clumsily across the rough field, her shrill screams ringing in his ears.

That night Ayas lay huddled together with the other children on the earth floor of the hut that served as their home. Worn out after their day's labour in the field all apart from Ayas slept, hunger and cold banished, for a brief moment, by exhaustion. Ayas though was awake though unnoticed, listening and watching, as his mother dressed his father's cuts and the two adults talked quietly between themselves.

He had listened to his fathers talk of the long off time, before the coming of Spartans, when their forefathers' owned the land they now tilled as slaves. He dreamt of when the helots would again be free. He imagined himself playing some heroic part in the struggle and paying back with interest the cruelties and humiliations inflicted on his father by Xionedes. Up to now he had resented Xionedes as a Spartan lord but now, ever since the moment the man had set his hounds on his father, he hated him with a deep personal hatred.

He was as tired as any of the other children but, as he watched his mother return across the bleak field supporting the bleeding and half conscience figure of his father, he resolved he would stay awake that coming night till he had discovered what had caused the beating. His father had rested a moment on the ground in the lee of the dry stone wall that bounded the field. There his mother had stanched the blood flowing from his wounds. The children laboured on for the work had to be done and done that day if they were to wring sufficient food from the soil to satisfy their master and feed themselves. Indeed so powerful and inescapable was this need that it was not long before the man was on his feet again grimly forcing his sore body back to work. Ayas as he laboured beside his father had been torn between love for him and pride at his strength and rage at the way he had been treated.

Now the two grownups talked softly together in the light of the dying fire. An earthenware bowl steamed gently between them while the woman swabbed out the open wounds on her husband's body. Ayas, unnoticed, strained to hear what was said.

"Eighty measures, that's what he's going to take from this spring's sowing the bastard," his father muttered savagely.

"But the best harvest we've ever Misinus got was just eighty seven and when we take the seed corn out for next year we won't have enough to feed ourselves…"

"I know that Damas and so does Xionedes," the man broke in impatiently, "He's sending us a fully grown slave, a captive taken in the wars."

"He'll need to be fed as well and the children…"

"Not the children according to Xionedes. The new slave will replace them and will eat less and do more work. When he's worn out there's no problem… not with the ever victorious Spartan army about… it will just go off and capture a few more slaves."

"The children?"

"Well you can't expect a Spartan lord like Xionedes to be bothered about the fate of some helot brats," Misinus said bitterly. "He said he'd probably take Ayas off our hands when he's ripened a little more. The sod has had his eyes on him for a few months now… As for the other's… He'll sell them I suppose if there's a market for them… which I doubt, otherwise they'll starve – for all he cares at least."

"But that won't be till the autumn. The spring is coming now Damas and there'll soon be new growth and herbs and other things to fill our bellies for the time being. Then in the autumn we'll see. If the rising is successful we won't be giving any corn to Xionedes. The land and the slave to work it will be ours."

The next day the chill wind still blew but the rain had gone, replaced by clear skies and bright sunshine. It was late afternoon when Ayas, straightening to carry a basket full of rock fragments to the edge of the field, spotted the small column of men breasting the hill above the farm. He called out pointing and the whole family turned to watch it approach.

At the column's head rode a Spartan wrapped in the usual hooded grey cloak and carrying the inevitable stout wooden staff. At his horse heels trotted a boy, only a year or so older than Ayas, his feet and legs splashed with mud, a short tunic flapping against his bare thighs. Behind them trudged four lightly armed foot soldiers wearing leather caps and cuirrasses, short swords on their hips and carrying heavy whips. Helots they served the cause of Spartan supremacy kept faithful by fear; fear of their masters and fear of loosing their own power to terrorise those even less fortunate than themselves. What held Ayas' attention though was not the Spartan Lord on his horse, or his pretty but grubby little serving boy, or the four helot traitors but the coffle of eight naked wretches chained together by their necks. He gazed at them as they were driven forward under the lash of the soldiers� whips wondering which of them had been acquired by Xionides to work on his farm.

The Spartan reigned in his horse and the column of naked slaves stumbled to a halt behind him. They were a miserable sight, mud spattered and filthy, their bodies marked by the lash. They stood heads down, shoulders bowed, exhausted and broken. One only showed any signs of spirit, younger than the rest, although a man, in Ayas' eyes at least, he raised his head and looked about. An act in it self of defiance for what does it matter to a slave where he is or who are about him, he has only to suffer and to obey. Ayas saw that, of all the slaves, he was the only one that had his hands bound.

As the Spartan on his horse drew nearer the waiting helots dropped to their knees in the mud.

"You are Misinus the property of Xionides?" the Spartan demanded of Ayas father looking down haughtily from his horse.

"Yes Lord," Misinus replied bending forward so his face touched the ground.

"Good one of these brutes are for you." The man turned round in his saddle and stared back at the coffle of slaves. "Yes Ocytus – that one there," and lifting his staff without warning brought it cracking on the upraised head of the slave that had attracted Ayas' attention.

The youth, for he was no more than sixteen, staggered under the weight of the unexpected blow.

"Sod you Spartan," he screamed jerking at his bonds in his rage, "if I were free you would not do that to me and escape unhurt. May …"

Ocytus' words were cut off in midstream as the Spartan smashed his cudgel across his upturned face. The youth staggered and Ayas saw blood spurt from his nose.

"But you are not free dog," the Spartan answered his voice cold with menace. "You are a slave and a slave you will remain till you die. There is nothing before you now but hunger and blows and labour and death."

"Unchain the brute," he ordered the soldier and get him face down on the ground."

Two soldiers freed Ocytus from his neck chains and dragged him clear of the other human cattle. He struggled desperately in the grasp of the soldiers, bucking and lashing out with his feet, but with his hands bound in front of him he was powerless to resist them. A third soldier stepped forward and grinning broadly, deliberately drove his fist into the youth's guts. As Ocytus doubled up with pain his feet were kicked away from under him and he fell forward onto the ground. The man who punched Ocytus slammed his foot down on the back of the youth's neck, forcing his face down into the mud. The other two soldiers dropped to their knees and grabbing an ankle each pulled the youth�s legs apart.

The Spartan officer sat on his horse for a moment looking down at the naked lad spread-eagled in the mud, strong young body straining against the grip of the three men, smiling cruelly. Then he swung himself out of the saddle and throwing the reins to his serving boy wordlessly held out his hand to the fourth soldier who had remained standing keeping a watchful eye on the rest of the slaves. The man, taking his staff from him, handed him his whip…

Very deliberately the Spartan walked round the prone youth. Ayas watched with sick fascination as the man positioned himself to one side of Ocytus. The Spartan's face was expressionless, a mask of cold cruelty. The soldiers and the serving boy were all grinning in anticipation of the entertainment to come. Reaching up to hold the reins of his master's horse close to the bit the boy's brief tunic had risen exposing his crutch. Ayas could see that the child's small prick was erect with excitement.

The Spartan advanced his right foot slightly. He swung the whip back over his head and then with one fluid movement brought the lash down across the youth's shoulders. The rich sibilant hiss of the whip as it cut through the air was followed by the crack of plaited leather striking bare human flesh. The youth's body jerked convulsively under the impact of the lash. A strange half strangled sound came from the lad but he did not cry out. For a brief moment a thick white band formed across his shoulders where the whip had landed but it quickly darkened as the blood flowed back becoming a livid red. Blood glinted damply against Ocytus' tanned skin where the tip of the lash had torn his flesh.

The man set about methodically flogging the youth. Over and over again he brought the whip raking down across the lad's naked shoulders, ripping the skin from them, reducing them to a mass of raw bleeding flesh. A red haze of blood droplets formed briefly, thrown up by the impact of the lash, glittering in the sun each time the whip fell. Ayas could see the soldiers straining to control the lad's body as it twisted and bucked under the impact of the lash.

Despite everything though Ocytus did not cry out and did not plead for mercy. The whip wrenched strange sounds from his body half moans, half grunts, but other wise he remained stubbornly silent.

"Well dog, I'll make you howl yet," the Spartan grated.

Shifting his position he turned his attention to Ocytus buttocks and thighs. The first few strokes he laid straight across them until the skin had been well split and torn. Then he moved slightly up the youth's body and taking careful aim he delivered a stroke diagonally down the lad's rump allowing the tip of the lash to curl in between his widely spread legs. Ocytus' body jerked convulsively and a shrill animal scream was wrenched from his lungs.

"That may stop you breeding but who cares," the Spartan said raising his voice to be heard over the laughter of his men. "Now a slave like you will be flogged many times in it's miserable life but I'm going to make sure you'll remember this one till you are thrown in some ditch to die."

The soldier guarding the other slaves stepped forwards and taking the whip from the Spartan, handed him back his staff. The three men holding Ocytus on the ground grinned in anticipation of what was to come.

Chapter 2

"Stand," the Spartan commanded.

Ayas scrambled hastily to his feet. The fragment of goat skin, his only covering, wrapped around his shoulders to provide some protection from the sharp wind, failing to cover his nakedness. The Spartan reached out and snatched even this from him. He dropped it and with one foot ground it into the mud. It hadn't been much before but it was the only covering that Ayas possessed. Now it was even less. The Spartan smiled at the distress on the boy's face.

"Well," he said, "you're a promising looking little whore. Give you six months and clean you up a bit and I might fancy you myself but I expect Xionedes will insist on having you for himself and you won't be much good for anything after that. He plays rough that one."

"What's you're name slut?" he demanded harshly.

"Please Lord, Ayas Lord, if it pleases you lord," Ayas replied giving slightly at the knees as he did so. He hated himself for using this demeaning formula and but again he knew the consequences of not doing so would be painful both for himself and for his parents who would be held responsible for failing to train him properly.

"Well Ayas you're a lucky little slut because you are going to be given an opportunity to help a Spartan lord and at the same time learn the sort of thing that my good friend Xionides might well do to you in a few months time."

The Spartan walked slowly round the prone figure of Ocytus held face down in the mud, his legs spread, by the three Helot soldiers. He came to a halt standing between the youth's ankles. Ayas saw the dimples on either side of Ocytus' rump deepen as the youth tensed his bottom muscles.

"You be much better advised Ocytus," the Spartan said mockingly, "to relax and lift your bottom up for me. What I'm going to do will hurt a great deal, a very great deal. But it will hurt even more if you resist me. So be a good lad push that bottom up in the air…"

"Well you are a stubborn young brute aren't you? Ayas sit astride our young friend's waist facing me and pull the cheeks of his bottom apart. I need to see what I'm aiming at. Quickly now."

Ocytus� waste had been untouched by the lash and Ayas felt the youth's skin, cool and velvet smooth, beneath him. Immediately in front of him was Ocytus' rump, it's skin bruised and torn by the whip. He lent forward and tried to pull apart the cheeks of the lad's bottom, feeling the blood warm and sticky against the palms of his hand, hating himself for what he was doing. Ocytus tightly clamped buttocks were rock hard and unyielding. The Spartan swore angrily and kicked the youth hard between his spread legs.

Ocytus howled and Ayas ceasing his opportunity got his thumbs into the youth's crack levering it open.

The Spartan gently pressed the metal ferule of his staff against the lips of the youth's anus.

"You can't do this to me… You can't," Ocytus protested desperately.

"I can do anything I like to you," the Spartan replied calmly. "You are a slave. I can kill if you want but I shan't. I shall just hurt you very, very much." Grinning he began to tease the youth, gently increasing and then relaxing the pressure of his staff against the entrance to his hole.

"No please… Please."

The Spartan stopped his play and slightly increased the pressure on his staff, forcing the tip into the youth.

"May the God's curse you…," Ocytus began and then screamed as the Spartan drove the staff into the youth in a forceful but controlled lunge.

Ayas saw the staff sink into Ocytus, pushing the lips of his anus apart, widening his hole. Blood welled from the youth's body and trickled down his perineum.

Ocytus' screams rose in shrillness and volume. Ayas could make out some words and broken pleas for mercy among them.

"Howl filth," the Spartan shouted fiercely working the rod inside the youth. "Howl dog. I knew you'd howl in the end slave."

Gripping the staff with two hands he pulled it out of Ocytus giving it a half turn as he did so. Ocytus gave one final shriek of pain and fell silent. A foul smell assailed Ayas' nostrils and he saw a brown fluid mingling with the red blood seeping from the youth's hole.

"Slut… Slut…" wrenching his attention away from Ocytus broken body, Ayas realised the Spartan was speaking to him.

"Yes Lord," he began but he was already too late.

"Misinus your whelp is inattentive you must correct this fault."

"I am sorry Lord… He is but young but I will see he learns to correct his ways."

"Good see to it… Meanwhile since the slut is not paying attention you will clean my staff for me."

Ayas saw with horror the Spartan thrust the end of his staff into his father's face and his father take it, filth covered as it was, into his mouth and suck on it.

Ayas began to sob quietly. Sobs that were caused both by his shame at being the cause of a dearly loved and admired father being subjected to such a humiliation and fear of the thrashing that he knew that the Spartan's complaint against him had rendered inevitable.

"Well," the Spartan laughed, "you should be grateful to me Misinus. Taking the edge of that brute. I think he'll pull the plough now as willing as any ox."

Snatching the reins of his horse from his serving boy he vaulted onto its back. Kicking the horse into a sharp trot he rode off, the boy running at his side. With a great cracking of whips and loud curses the soldiers got the coffle of slaves into motion.

As soon as the Spartan was safely out of sight Ayas ran to his father and throwing his arms about him sobbed out his guilt and penitence. Misinus looked down at the boy's dark head pressed tight against his own chest. Choking back his anger he hugged the naked child. His anger was not directed at Ayas but at fate that obliged him to flog the boy and flog him hard. He had no doubt that the Spartan would pass on his complaint against Ayas to Xionedes. He knew that Xionedes would not be satisfied unless he could present Ayas with a well marked bottom when he came to check that the boy had been adequately punished. That Xionedes would check was inevitable. He liked boy's bottoms and he liked them most when they had been well marked with the cane or strap. If Xionedes was not satisfied he would personally make good any deficiency in the beating and give Misinus another thrashing for good measure.

Even worse any failure to punish his son adequately might arouse suspicions of an impending Helot rising, something the Spartans always feared, and that had to be avoided at all costs. Total surprise was vital for the success of the planned rebellion in the autumn. Ayas' would have to suffer a bloodied rump for the greater good and what made it worse was that he dared not explain to the boy why it was necessary. There were certain secrets with which you could not trust a child. Ayas would have to take his beating believing it was being given him for failing to be properly attentive to one of their Spartan overlords. If Misinus had been aware that his son knew about the proposed rising his anger and frustration would no doubt have been less. Whether he would have felt the chances of bringing the plot to a successful conclusion had been increased is quite another matter.

"What do you think," Misinus asked his wife as he stood stroking Ayas' hair and looking down at Ocytus' bleeding body lying prone at his feet, "of his chances?"

Danas knelt in the mud beside the naked youth. Her hands, hard and callused after many years of field labour, probed his wounds with surprising gentleness.

"Hush now," she said, "lie still," as Ocytus whimpered and stirred at her touch.

"He's strong and young," she said hunkering back on her heels and looking up at Misinus. "If it was only the beating he could be back on his feet and working soon enough. I don't know how bad he's hurt inside though. There's blood coming out of him but it's not dark blood and it's hardly more than a trickle. Maybe he'll be all right. He's been hurt before and badly. There's a long scar across the inside of his one thigh. From a spear or sword trust I would think."

"Probably that's what got him here," Misinus said putting Ayas to one side. "Wounded in battle and taken captive. Anyway he'll either get better or he won't and there's work to be done. We'll put him down in the shelter of the wall for the moment and decide whether to bother anymore about him at the end of the day. Xionedes won't be any too pleased though if the lad dies without him getting any work from him."

Ocytus was lain on his face on a dry patch of ground, Ayas' scrap of goatskin was picked out of the mud and placed in the sun on the wall to dry, and they all returned to work.

Dusk was falling when Misinus finally straightened his back.

"We'll best finish now," he announced, "it'll be dark soon."

He trudged over to where Ocytus lay apparently asleep. He prodded the youth in the ribs with his foot. Ocytus' eyes blinked open. He stared up at the man towering above him with the wide fearful eyes of a wounded animal. Danas squatted down beside him and gently parted his buttocks.

"He's still bleeding," she announced. Indeed Ayas could see the glint of fresh blood as it oozed from the young slave's anus.

"Hardly worth the effort of carrying him down to the hut then. Pity though he's a good strong boy and the spring ploughing to be done," Misinus remarked beginning to turn away.

"Father, please don't leave him here," Ayas burst out. He knew that the chances were that the youth, hurt as he was, would be dead by next morning if he was left out in the open field overnight in the cold early spring. "Please take him back to the hut. He stood up to that Spartan too…"

The boy stopped short. He knew his father hated the Spartans but it was something that it was unwise to refer to even indirectly.

"Much good did it do him," Misinus remarked grimly, "and you Ayas are due for a lesson in the duty of obedience and respect we Helots owe our Spartan masters."

Nevertheless he turned back and bending over rolled Ocytus onto his back.

"Give the baby to the girl to carry and take hold of his ankles woman," he ordered Danas, "and help me lift him."

"One more mouth to feed," he grumbled as they set off, "and we're already on short rations."

Ayas as he stumbled along behind his parents with the other children, the two boys, Callias 14 and Lichas 13, and the girl Caria 12, was torn between pleasure that Ocytus was not going to be left to die in the open and dread of his own coming thrashing. The latter emotion was not in anyway diminished by the attitude of his brothers and sisters who seemed to regard the prospect of watching him having his bottom warmed with the belt as an entertainment laid on for their own amusement. His discomfort was increased considerably when, topping the slope above the hut, he saw the sinister figure of Xionedes leaning on his staff outside the family hut.

"My friend, Leontides, gave me such a disturbing report on the attitude of your family this afternoon Misinus and I felt obliged to come down and see when the position was myself." Xionides said when the helots were kneeling before him. "I fear Misinus that you can no longer be trusted to keep your family in order. Insubordination, disobedience, inattention, very serious faults requiring I am afraid immediate and exemplary correction."

There was no indication in the man's voice that he found the prospect that these words opened up anything but attractive.

"It was only the boy, Ayas, Lord," Misinus pleaded. He was sorry to have to sacrifice the boy but it was after all him who had been at fault and it was better that he should suffer rather than the whole family. "He failed to hear an order of your friend. That was all Lord."

"All, all," Xionides stormed accompanying the words with heavy blows of his staff across Misinus' shoulders. "You cur, you dog," these words were punctuated by further heavy blows. "You dare to say 'all' as though a helot slut ignoring the commands of his betters is a matter of no moment. A slut whom I intend to take into my own service what is more. Am I expected to hope when he is attending me that he might just manage to pay attention to my wishes? And how do I know that the brat didn't choose not to hear Leontides. That the fault wasn't laziness or inattention, which are bad enough but pure disobedience. How do I know that slave?"

"He's a good boy really Lord," Misinus gasped, "willing and obedient. It was just that he is young and he had been holding Ocytus' bottom open so that the Spartan Lord could sodomise the youth with his staff and …"

"Ah Leontides told me of that," Xionides said restored to good humour at the memory and laughing, "good sport that though I hope the brute will recover. I paid enough for him. I'll have a look at him when I've finished dealing with your failure to discipline your own family properly."

"All right," he said becoming serious again, "perhaps the boy was not deliberately disobedient, perhaps it was a simple failure to pay attention. That's still unacceptable and the boy must be taught to do better."

"Yes lord. Of course Lord." Misinus fawned, "I'll thrash him Lord. I'll give him a beating he'll never forget."

"Of course you will Misinus and I will be here to see that you do but first let me have a look at the whelp myself. I need to judge how much he can take. Come here Ayas."

Swallowing hard, for he felt he was going to be sick, Ayas scrambled to his feet and stepped forward to stand in front of his master on legs that were weak with fear.

"What a pretty little slut Misinus," Xionides remarked cupping Ayas' chin in his left hand and tipping his head back so that he could look down into his face. "Strange that your eldest two were just run of the mill brats and then you produce this. I expect it's not yours at all. Your woman probably pleased a passing stranger and he is the result. Of course boys always seem to me to look at their best when they're waiting to be beaten. There's something very attractive about a boy struggling to hold his tears back."

"Oh look the tears are beginning to flow in earnest now and we haven't even began to beat the child. Isn't that delightful."

Xionedes tightened his grip on Ayas' chin forcing the boy up on to his toes. Ayas looked up into the man's face leering down into his, seeing it through a mist of tears, searching for some sign of kindness but finding only lust and cruelty. He felt the man's breath on his face. Its rank stench filled his nostrils. A bead of saliva formed at the corner of Xionedes mouth and began to trickle down his chin. The man's free hand began to move down his body. A nipple was pinched and twisted painfully, fingers probed the tightly stretched skin of his rib cage. Ayas felt the palm of the man's hand brush against the front of his stomach.

Now the man's hand was exploring the most intimate and secret parts of his body. Living all crowded together in a single room hovel with the rest of his family Ayas was not usually shy about his body but to be forced to submit to being handled like this by Xionedes in front of them all was deeply humiliating.

Worse was to come. Xionedes fingers closed about his balls rolling them between his finger and thumb. To his horror Ayas felt his cock hardening. This had been happening to him increasingly over the last few months, often without warning and on the oddest and most unaccountable occasions. This had not bothered him much. He had seen the same thing happen with his older brothers as they grew up and nobody had remarked on it then and nobody did so now when it was happening to him. His father or mother catching sight of the stiff little rod would perhaps smile quietly to themselves but that was the end of it. This was different. To respond in this way to the touch of some one so hateful and nasty as Xionedes was utterly shaming. Why Xionedes might even think that he enjoyed it. Worse still his mother and father and the rest of his family might think so as well.

He just hoped it would go down before anybody noticed. It did go down sometimes just as suddenly and inexplicably as it rose.

But it was already too late. Xionedes' fingers had found it and were playing with it. He knew but perhaps at least nobody else would.

"Misinus this boy tart of yours has gone hard" Xionedes crowed. "Why Ayas what a hot little whore you are but you'll have to wait just a little longer before you're ready for me. I like my sluts ripe before I take them. Now turn round so that I can take a look at that pretty round bottom of yours."

Xionedes released his grip on Ayas' jaw and the boy had no choice but to turn so that he was facing his parents and siblings affording them all an excellent few of his hard boy's prick sticking upright in the air. Ayas instinctively moved his hands to cover his shame. A move that earned him a stinging open handed slap across the bottom from Xionedes.

"Hands by your sides Ayas," the man commanded laughing. "What ever are you thinking of trying to cover yourself. Don't go getting above yourself. You're not some little Spartan Lord, all pride and boyish modesty. You're just a Helot slut and don't you forget it."

Ayas forced himself to stand still, his hands flat against the sides of his thighs, his face burning with shame and embarrassment. Ayas felt the man's hands travel down his body. For a moment they rested on the curve of his bottom. Then pressure on the small of his back forced him to lean forward. He felt the cheeks of his rump pulled apart and then a strange thrill as a finger parted the lips of his anus. A thrill that was all at once converted into sudden and acute pain as the finger was jabbed into him.

"Stand still," Xionedes snapped reaching round the boy and grabbing hold of his balls as he tried to pull away from the probing finger. "What a fuss to make about a finger. You'll have something a great deal bigger than that in you before long and much deeper too."

Ayas whimpered as the man worked his finger inside him, sending waves of pain through his body. Then just as suddenly as it was pushed into him it was withdrawn. "I want his bottom kept a good deal cleaner in future Misinus," Xionedes said. "It didn't matter how dirty it was up to now but I'm going to be taking a personal interest in the boy from now on so it must be kept spotless. And you'd better get your wife to work on loosening it up a bit… Not too much though, just enough so that it doesn't tear too badly when I penetrate him for the first time. I want to be able to reuse the brat a few times. See to it."

"Now get on your feet man. It I time for you to flog your son." Misinus heaved himself upright and unbuckled the broad leather belt around the waste of his threadbare tunic. He stood holding the buckle end in his right hand looking uncertainly at Ayas.

"Now Misinus you are to lay that strap on hard. I want that boy to hurt. I want him screaming with pain and his bum skinned and bleeding. This is a test Misinus of your faith and loyalty to me, your Lord. If you don't do what I want I will know you are disloyal and untrustworthy and I'll have you killed and your family sold as slaves. Do you understand me?"

"Yes Lord," Misinus replied grimly flexing his arm. He felt sorry for Ayas and ashamed of what he as about to do but he had no choice. Anyway the occasional beating was just part of a helot boy's life. If Ayas wasn't beaten today for one thing he would certainly be beaten before too long for something else. In any event he would get over it in time.

"Well just to make sure that your movements aren't in anyway restricted and to allow me to better judge that you are really putting all your weight and strength into the job in hand, take off that tunic."

"I'm to strip Lord?" Misinus asked surprised and then cried out in pain as Xionedes delivered a slashing blow with his staff across his shins.

"Yes Misinus," Xionedes spoke softly as though he had not hit the man, "quickly please."

Misinus had the tunic up over his head and lying on the ground even before Xionedes had finished speaking. Ayas caught his breath. He had often seen his father naked in the close quarters of the family hut so the man's hairy powerful body and massive shoulders developed from years of hard manual labour came as no surprise to him although they were not a reassuring sight for someone about to be flogged by him. What shocked him was the sight of his father's penis starting, swollen and erect, from its forest of coarse pubic hair.

"Why Misinus," Xionedes crowed, "the prospect of beating your son excites you. You helots are all as randy as goats, the lot of you. Goodness knows what you get up to crowded together into your kennels at night."

Chapter 3

Wordlessly Ayas indicated the log to one side of the hut's door that served as block both for chopping firewood and flogging boys' bottoms. He and his brothers were indeed well used to being bent over it while having their rumps warmed by Misinus' belt.

Misinus did not thrash his young sons' and indeed when occasion rose daughter�s, bare bottom because he enjoyed doing so. How else was he to extract from hungry exhausted boys the effort and labour that each had to contribute so that the family as a whole could survive? He had neither the energy nor the time to reason or to explain. If they were to satisfy the demands of their Spartan lord and feed themselves they had all to drive themselves, or failing that be driven, unmercifully. Misinus tempered by years of toil drove himself and the boys hard. Sometimes, indeed very often, the sight of one of his sons stretched naked over the makeshift flogging block squirming as the belt bit into his bare flesh, excited him but that was a consequence, a not unpleasant consequence, not the cause of the lad's punishment. Nor did Misinus feel guilty about this. A boy's spirit, just like any other young beast of burden, needs to be broken before it is of use in the fields. His father had whipped him when he was young now he was doing the same to his own sons. If he thought at all about the way his cock hardened as he laid into the boys it was to reflect that he should not begrudge himself one of the few pleasures that were open to him.

Ayas at heart understood all this well enough. That did not mean though that the fate that harnessed him to the land did not sometimes gall, or that sometimes his endurance failed him. At such moments he knew that it was his father's duty that he owed to his family to quell the incipient mutiny and to exact that final ounce of effort from his famished body. He knew too, the whole family knew, that his father did get aroused when flogging him. He did not resent, or envy him, this. The beatings and his father's excitement were as much a part of the natural order as work and hunger. There was an order and a progression in these things that they all knew and accepted. The boy stretched sobbing on the block as the father grim faced plies the strap; then the beating over; the strap thrown on the ground; Misinus' wordless and sudden withdrawal to the hut; Danas follows him closing the door behind her; the children outside silent apart from the quiet sobbing of the chastised boy; strange sounds from within; a moment of silence and then their mother's voice calling out to them; Misinus whatever demons beset him banished once more gruffly kind; Danas with a soothing lotion to quench the child's burning stripes ready to hand.

This time though Ayas felt it was different. Xionedes by his very presence was making it different. He was turning something that was an inevitable and natural, if painful part of his life, into a spectacle for his own amusement. Even his father was made to look grotesque standing there with his swollen cock wobbling in front of him and was, to Xionedes at least, a figure of fun.

"Well slut," Xionedes' voice cut across Ayas' reflections, "you'd better get down across it so that your father can start to enjoy himself skinning your bum with that belt of his. Quick now boy."

Swallowing his hate and resentment Ayas lay down across the log so that his bottom was raised into the air. He lay there feeling utterly helpless and vulnerable. He felt the iron tip of Xionedes cudgel press cold against the inside of his highs.

"Get your legs apart," the man ordered reinforcing his command with taps of his staff. "The inside of your thighs and in your crack is where the belt will do most good. I'm surprised Misinus you haven't taught your brat better. Maybe you're not up to keeping order in your family any longer. Perhaps you're too soft. Maybe I'd better sell you and get another brute who'd beat some discipline into them."

"That's better Ayas," Xionedes continued, "now push your bum right up into the air. I want your bottom open so that the belt can get right into it. There Misinus you can see how dirty the little whore's hole is. That's not good enough. You Helots love your filth I know but I'll have that whore sometime and I want him kept clean from now on."

"Right you're a strong looking young brute." There was the sound of wood rapping a boy's skull and a squeal of pain. Ayas could not see which of his brothers had caught it but he assumed it was Callias, the oldest and biggest of them. "Hold him down by his shoulders. If he rolls off the block while he's being beaten you'll take his place and I'll have Misinus use the buckle end of his belt on you. You're an ugly looking cur so there's no reason why your rump and shoulders shouldn't be shredded."

Ayas felt his shoulders gripped. He could see his Callias' knees on either side of his head and sense the other boy's animal smell. Turning his head slightly he could see that under the scrap of goat's skin about his waste, that was Callias' only clothing, the lad's prick was erect.

Xionedes leant on his staff settling himself comfortably to watch the spectacle.

"You may start now Misinus and if you don't want to be sent to work in the quarries and have another slave brought in to fuck your wife and flog your children you'd better do this job properly."

Misinus looked down at his son's body stretched naked at his feet. He noticed how fear had raised goose pimples on the backs of the boy's thighs. Pity for the lad, shame at his own nakedness, resentment at his treatment by Xionides, and a certain fierce excitement seethed in his mind. He knew himself well enough to know that once he began fairly to ply the lash all other emotions would be banished and only the excitement would remain. He told himself he had no choice. For his own, for his family's, even for the boy's own sake he had to flog him and flog him hard. Gritting his teeth he slightly advanced his left foot. Alerted by the movement he saw Ayas tense his body in anticipation of the blow to come, the dimples on either side of the boy's rump deepening as he braced himself in readiness. Misinus swung the belt back over his right shoulder and brought it hissing down, aiming the blow a good foot below and beyond where the child's bottom lay raised and open, ready for the strap. With all the man' strength behind it and with plenty of follow through the strap struck down across the centre of the lad's rump, leather cracking explosively against bare boy's flesh. The belt's end curled round to bight painfully into Ayas' flank. As the strap laid a burning stripe across his bottom Ayas' body bent like a bow, his heels and shoulders jerking convulsively upwards. Callias' fingers dug deep into the Ayas' flesh as he fought to hold the boy in place for the next stroke of the belt.

After the explosive report of the strap striking home there was a brief moment of comparative silence as Ayas fought for breath. Misinus watched as the blood flowed back into the white streak that the belt had scored across the smooth skin of the boy's bottom. White turned to angry red and then darkened where the bruising was at it's deepest to a blood tinged purple.

Misinus swung the belt back over his shoulder and began to flog Ayas in earnest. The strap rose and fell, the rich sibilant hiss of it's descent alternating with the sharp crack as it struck Ayas' bruised and tortured flesh while the boy's bare feet beat a rhythmic pain filled tattoo on the ground.

Ayas knew nothing of the tradition of stoicism that required the British school-boy of the last century to take his beating in silence and when it was over to thank his tormentor for hurting him. Usually when he was beaten he howled and felt no shame in doing so. This time though two factors made things different. First he had the example of Ocytus to follow. He had been impressed by the youth's bravery when suffering at the hands of the Spartan Leontides and wished to emulate him. Second he resented the way Xionedes had made his suffering and perhaps even more his father's humiliation an entertainment for his own amusement. He had determined to copy Ocytus and not to give Xionedes the satisfaction of hearing his shrill screams and pleas for mercy.

This resolution held good for the first stroke. Remaining silent was no problem when pain had driven the air from his lungs even though it felt as if a white-hot bar of metal had been pressed against his bare flesh. But as each cut was laid across his quivering bottom silence became more difficult with fresh waves of ever increasing pain coursing through his body. By the fourth cut his resolution had been all but broken and he was whimpering loudly. He was screaming long before his father had begun to direct the end of the strap at the inside of his thighs. He screamed; not for mercy for he knew there was none for him; not to the God's for help, for they would not have time to spare from their Olympian high jinks to care about the sufferings of a Helot brat; but as a wild animal screams when it is hurt.

Misinus as he warmed to his work forgot about his audience and his own nakedness. His whole attention was concentrated on thrashing his son. He was aware of nothing else except the sights and sounds of the flogging. His eyes saw only boy's naked body writhing and twisting under the lash, his bottom ribbed with livid welts. He had noticed Ayas' early attempt to remain silent but soon he had the boy squealing like a stuck pig hung by its heels to bleed to death.

Pity, love, for Misinus did love his children, that was part of his tragedy, were banished from his mind by the dark furies that now possessed it. Ayas' legs flailed wildly allowing Misinus to aim his blows at the tenderest recesses of his young body. The lad's bare feet beat franticly on the ground as the lash flayed the skin from his bare bottom and bit into his crack and between his legs. There was a pounding in his head that almost drowned Ayas' increasingly wild screaming as he cut and cut, and cut again at the boy's raw and bleeding rump.

Then Misinus cried out. There was a sharp pain in his right arm, the strap dropped from his hand onto the ground.

"Misinus," Xionides said lowering the point of his staff to the ground, "you didn't hear me telling you to stop. I did you an injustice doubting your commitment to keeping your brats in order and generally I enjoy watching a boy having his bottom skinned but I have other plans for little Ayas and you have done enough, for the time being at least. I don't want him permanently damaged just yet. Just taught to pay proper attention to the requirements of his betters and I imagine he has learnt that lesson well enough."

"But Misinus, look at you, your cock's all hard and I think, surely, oozing pre-cum." He reached out touching the end of the Helot's prick with his fingertips and then lifting them to his nose and smelling them. "Yes undoubtedly pre-cum. I'm afraid that perhaps you're not to be trusted with Ayas or any other of your brats. Don't forget the sluts maybe your children but they, like you and the whore you bred them on, are my property. The work and the pleasure that can be got from their bodies belong to me not you. You Helots are such randy brutes that maybe I should geld you just to be on the safe side. Eh?"

Xionedes chuckling at the thought suddenly caught hold of Misinus' cock and pulled it hard. This was too much for the already over-excited Helot who moaned and grabbing hold of his prick, orgasmed, semen squirting out between his fingers and dribbling down the back of his hand.

The Spartan through back his head and laughed aloud.

"Well maybe it'd be best to let you keep your balls for the time being Misinus. I may need you for breeding purposes but I'll take the girl with me now to be on the safe side. She'd loose most of her value once you got your dick into her. Not the sort I fancy myself with that stupid insipid slit. I like my fucks to have something between the legs I can get hold of. There's no accounting for tastes though and there'll be someone I'm sure who'll pay good money for the first use of the little tart. Hand that whelp you're carrying back to its mother slut and come with me."

Caria realising she was the girl being spoken to in this way huddled close to her mother and began to cry loudly.

"Lord," the kneeling Danas said putting her daughter gently away from her and bending forward so her head touched the ground, "please let her stay with us a little longer. She is only twelve years old Lord and …"

"She's old enough to please a Spartan Lord and that's all that matters," Xionedes interrupted impatiently. "Anyway you should be grateful that I am taking the bitch with me. There'll be one less mouth for you to feed."

"Now let's have a look at that new slave of mine." He walked over to where Ocytus lay curled into a ball on his side. Placing a foot on the youth's shoulder he rolled him over onto his back and stood for a moment looking down at him.

"Good sturdy slave," he remarked, "pity to loose him if it can be avoided. You've got one more day picking stones Misinus before you begin the spring ploughing. Let the brute rest tomorrow and set him to the plough the day after. Use the hot iron on him if you must to get him working. If he survives fine. If not there are plenty more where he came from."

"Mind you," he remarked poking the lad in the crutch with the end of his staff, "he's well hung and maybe if that Caria of yours doesn't take while she's away I'll put her to him. Should produce strong healthy brat between them."

"Now bitch come with me," grabbing Caria by her ear he hauled her to her feet and walked away driving the child in front of him with blows across her bare rump with his staff.

For a time after the sound of Caria's weeping had faded in the distance the Helots remained kneeling silent apart from the sound of Ayas' muffled whimpering. Then Misinus scrambled to his feet and with a single savage curse strode off up the small hill that rose behind the cabin. After a minute or two Danas rose to her feet and set off after her husband. The children looking up the hill could see the two adults standing together, Danas with her arm around her husband's waste. They did not seem to be talking to each other.

Eventually Danas spoke but Misinus did not appear to hear her. She spoke again this time more urgently and Misinus half turned to look down into her face. Slowly she urged him back down the hill. By the time they were back in front of the hut all the children were busied about the various tasks that the end of the day brought with it. Even Ayas, doing his best to stifle his sobs, was carrying an arm full of logs into the hovel.

Avoiding his children's eyes Misinus ducked through the low doorway into hovel. Ayas stacking the logs beside the smouldering fire in the centre of the hut surreptitiously watched his father settle himself in his usual place on the heap of dry straw facing the door. Taking infinite care he piled the logs neatly one on the other. Then he quietly padded over to where his father sat. Saying nothing he knelt beside the man and nestled his head against his shoulder. After a moment Misinus' arm crept round the boy's waist.

Danas, when she carried the bowl of bean stew to the fire saw that her husband's face was wet with tears.

Chapter 4

Ayas wriggled in pleasurable excitement as his mother gently worked the ointment into the savage weals that his father's belt had raised across his young bottom. Where the strap had split his skin it stung badly but despite that he felt both utterly helpless and at the same time completely safe.

"Good little Ayas, brave boy, my little baby," Danas crooned as she worked. Ayas' thumb crept up and into his mouth.

"Now spread your legs my darling and lift your bottom up for your Mummy. Come on my little one."

Ayas obeyed and for a moment Damas' fingertips explored between his legs and along the cleft of his buttocks where Misinus in his fury had so expertly directed the tip of his belt. Despite, or perhaps partly because, of the sting fresh waves of pleasure coursed through Ayas' body. He whimpered in excitement and raised his bottom higher in response to his mother's prying fingers. He was hard again and with a feeling of unease he realised his mother must be aware of the pressure of his hard prick, small though it was pressing, against her own legs.

Her hand explored between his legs. Her fingers reached upwards touching his balls and brushing against his stiff little rod.

"What a lively little baby I've got," Danas said laughing and withdrawing her hand.

"Lichas my love fetch me a rag and a bowl of warm water so that I can clean up your brother's bottom."

The naked thirteen year old boy, who had all along been standing wide eyed beside his mother watching her working on Ayas� bottom, trotted quickly away on his errand.

"Do you have to do this to the boy," Misinus suddenly burst out. "Xionedes said he would only want him when the winter came and by then…" He broke off leaving unsaid what would have happened by the winter. Danas knew of the planned rebellion but it was not something that was to be spoken of before the children.

"He said he wanted Ayas kept clean and ready for him from now on and maybe if we get the child cleaned up he'll take him before then anyway. The little lad is ready enough for it."

"Aren't you my darling," Danas continued smacking Ayas gently on his bottom.

"You should feel his prick stiff as a poker…"

"It sounds as though you want Xionedes to have the boy," Misinus growled angrily.

"Well it wouldn't be all together a bad thing," Danas replied placidly. "There'd be more food to go round for the rest of us and Ayas would eat better and live softer too if he was sharing Xionedes' bed than he does here."

"Thank you dear," she said reaching up and taking a bowl of steaming water and some rags from Lichas.

"Now push your bottom right up in the air for your Mummy… That's right dear. It is a funny feeling isn't it dear," she continued rising her voice over Ayas' muffled squeak of protest, "but we must get you cleaned up right inside there."

"Not a bad idea … to be a whore to a Spartan and to Xionedes too. You know how he likes to hurt his boys."

"As to being a whore husband that comes to any Helot child that's at all pretty. Why I remember when I was twelve my Lord gave me to three of his friends to enjoy. They never asked me my name nor told me theirs. Just got me to spread my legs and took me on the villa's floor, it was marble and cold I remember, and I bled but my Lord was good to me and had the women in the kitchen look to me and let me rest the next day. And maybe Xionedes won't be too hard on our Ayas if he's lively and pleases him."

"Now we've finished cleaning you up my love… I'm just going to open your bottom up a bit. Yes it does hurt a little but it'll make it easier for you when the Spartan lord puts his big man's cock in you. There one finger, two fingers, lets see if Mummy's thumb will go in too."

"Callias, Lichas," the man snapped jumping angrily to his feet summoning Ayas' older brothers to him. "I want your help with that new slave. I don't know I can manage him by myself."

Misinus knew that his wife was speaking sense and that they had to prepare Ayas for their lord's use. That didn't mean that he liked it.

He pushed out of the hut leaving the sound of Danas' soft crooning and Ayas' gasps of mixed excitement and pain behind him.

Misinus strode across to where Ocytus lay. The youth left to himself had rolled back onto his side and now lay curled into a semi-foetal position his bound hands pressed between his legs. Misinus roused him with a vicious kick to the ribs.

"Up… Up on your knees," he shouted and driving his foot once again into the lad's side. He bent forward and grabbing Ocytus by his arm just below the shoulder pulled him up.

"Fetch the yoke here Callias," he ordered.

Misinus, if the truth was told, felt sorry for Ocytus. He had been struck by the youth's initial defiance of his Spartan captors and he knew it must be hard for him to be, in the instant, changed from a free warrior to a slave. But Misinus wasn't going to show it and he wasn't going to let it effect his behaviour. He couldn't afford to. He and his family lived on a knife edge on the leavings that his Lord allowed them to retain from the fruits of their own labour. Pity for a slave was a luxury he could not afford. He would drive the youth hard. He had no choice. The very spirit that he admired in the lad had to be crushed. It was fine and commendable in a free man but unacceptable in a slave.

He had to break the boy, for in truth on the very cusp of manhood Ocytus was little more than a boy, and he needed to do it quickly. He had also to make sure the slave was secure. Xionedes had said he was to be rested the next day and indeed in his present condition there was little work to be got out of him. But he was young and sturdy and would regain his strength quickly. By the end of the next day much of his strength might well have returned to him and wild and unbroken as he was he might try to make a run for freedom. There was nowhere secure that they could put the youth. Their hut had no cellar in which he could be locked or strongly built barn in which he could be chained. Indeed they had no chains or locks just lengths of cord and leather thongs and those, with patience and determination and the help of a sharp stone could, in the course of a day, be severed. Nor could they spare anyone all day from the fields to watch Ocytus.

There was a solution. It would not be pleasant for the lad but that could not be helped. Indeed it would be an advantage . He took the yoke, a four foot long beam with a rough half circle cut out of it half way along it's length to accommodate its bearer's neck, from Callias. All the boys were familiar with it and hated it, for it was they who had to bear it when they were sent to draw water from the stream and who had, with shoulders aching under their weight, to carry the brimming leather buckets suspended from each end up the steep path back to the house.

Without Misinus' grip on his arm Ocytus almost lost his balance but before he could fall forward the Helot had the yoke across the youth's shoulders and was securing it in place with a cord drawn tight across the front of the lad's throat. Misinus slipped his hand between the yoke and the back of Ocytus' neck exerting a strangle hold on the boy while preventing him from falling forward.

"Now Callias, free his hands and then you and Lichas tie his wrists to the yoke just about where he'd hold it if he was carrying it and tie them tight I don't want the brute getting loose. I'll see that he doesn't try and get away while your doing it." As he spoke he yanked the yoke upwards. Ocytus joked as the cord was pulled tight across his throat.

Callias giggled as he bent down to untie the youth's hands.

"He doesn't look very happy does he?" he crowed with the cruelty that seems to come naturally to a certain sort of teenage boy. "Not so proud now. Look Lichas his eyes are beginning to pop and the veins are standing out in his face and he's gone almost purple. Shall I take them out with my thumb Dad? He won't need eyes to pull the plough." He jabbed his thumb at Ocytus eye and laughed as his victim fought against his bonds in a desperate attempt to get away from him.

Misinus jerked the yoke sharply upward quelling Ocytus struggles by pulling him half off his knees.

"Just do as I said," Misinus snapped, "and do it fast. If the slave chokes to death it'll be you pulling the plough."

Callias giggled again. Bending forward he spat into Ocytus' face.

The youth was rapidly loosing consciousness and he put up little resistance as the two boys bound his wrists to the yoke drawing the cord so tight that it galled his flesh.

Misinus checked the security of the lad's bonds. Then retaining his grip on the yoke he pushed Ocytus forward, pressing his face to the ground and forcing his bottom up into the air. He pushed his free hand between the boy's legs and gripping his balls, feeling the lad's still sparse pubic hair course against the palm of his hand, lifted upwards. Ocytus' bare feet scrabbled on the ground as he was forced up from his knees lifting and opening his rump even further.

Misinus looked down on the boy's bruised and bloodied bottom. The bleeding had now stopped but the flesh was a mass of purple welts ribbed with dark red, almost black, scars where the skin had been broken and the blood flowed. At the edges of the welts the skin was beginning to take on a sickly greenish hue as the deeper bruising came out.

The boy's discoloured and broken flesh did not concern Misinus over much. These were the inevitable consequences of a flogging. The lad would remember a beating of that severity for the rest of his life, which was the whole point of the exercise. He would be stiff and very sore for a few days but he would be able to work and that was all that mattered. He was a healthy young brute so that it would be quite likely that he would not even be permanently marked.

What did concern him though was whether Leontides had done any permanent internal damage to the youth when he sodomised him with his staff. If he had then the youth would not live long and he would get very little work out of him. Misinus looked closely at the entry to the boy's hole. Blood and shit had dribbled from it copiously and trickled down the lad's perineum but he was relieved to see that the bleeding seemed now to have now stopped. There was no fresh blood seeping out of the boy. Gingerly Misinus touched the lips of the youth's anus. Ocytus yelped in pain.

With the entry to Ocytus hole encrusted with filth it was difficult to assess the extent of any damage but clearly there was some. There could hardly not be, considering what had been done to the boy. Danas would have to clean him up and apply one of her lotions but it seemed it was likely that he would live. Now though Misinus intended to give the boy a further lesson in what slavery means to a slave.

He released his hold of the lad. Ocytus collapsed back onto his knees. Crouching at Misinus feet his neck and hands secured to the hateful yoke he dragged great rasping breaths of air into his oxygen-starved lungs. The suspension of his suffering was only temporary.

"Take him over to the block," Misinus ordered.

Callias and Lichas seized hold of either end of the yoke and half lifted, half dragged the older boy between them to the block on which Ayas had recently been forced to lie for his beating. They forced Ocytus down in his place.

Misinus pulled his tattered tunic up over his head and dropped it onto the round. As he walked across to where Ocytus now lay prone his fingers fumbled at the knot in his loincloth. Unloosed he let it tumble to the ground and strode on naked, his heavy man's cock standing erect out of the dark jungle of coarse hair that shrouded his crutch and spread upwards over his belly and across his heavily muscled chest. Stripped of his rags he seemed to have lost the stooped shambling posture that betrayed a lifetime spent in toil and service. It was as though some primitive godhead had possessed his body and was about to assert his power in priapic fury. Indeed Misinus was about to demonstrate his ownership and authority in a way older even than the human race though it would still be practised in Europe by warring factions in the twenty first Century.

It was fortunate for Misinus at least that, like many other rituals of domination and enslavement that it was a pleasure to perform, at least so far as the master was concerned. It was also fortunate that time and the excitement of subduing and breaking Ocytus to the yoke had allowed him to recover his customary vigour after the crisis engendered by Ayas' flogging.

Ocytus perception of the situation, as he lay face down stretched over the wooden log, was very different. Pinned to the ground by the two boys, with the yoke tight about his neck, he could not turn his head to see Misinus approach him but he knew very well what was in store for himself. He had lived long enough to see many youthful slaves treated in the way that he was about to be. He himself had often exercised the privilege of a free youth to enjoy the body of some slave boy, willing or otherwise, who had caught his fancy. He had possessed brats who had whimpered and moaned as they had endured what had to be endured and of those also who, more inured to the agonies, humiliations and it must be said pleasures of servitude, took pride in being allowed to give pleasure to the young master. He saw nothing wrong or immoral in behaving in this way. A pretty boy was an attractive thing and slavery was part of the natural order. However being a slave, being penetrated, taking what was described as the passive part in a man boy partnership, was regarded as deeply shaming and dishonourable. Now though he was a slave and this dishonour and humiliation was to be visited on him.

His position was hopeless and resistance would only increase his suffering. Nevertheless Ocytus instinctively clamped his buttocks tight together and braced himself to withstand the man's assault.

Misinus stood looking down at the youth's naked body, the once smooth skin of his shoulders and bottom ribbed with livid welts from his recent beating. He noted the deep dimples that had formed on either side of the lad's rump as he clenched his muscles in a doomed attempt to avoid the ultimate degradation of being penetrated.

Misinus' lust possessed him like an elemental force. He felt no pity now for the boy stretched at his feet. Callias and Lichas, grinning evilly, tightened their grip on the yoke. Kneeling on the ground, their few filthy rags rucked up about their waists, their hard little pricks clearly visible, they might have been two diminutive but evil satyrs.

Taking up position to one side of Ocytus' prone body Misinus lifted his right foot and drove his heel down between the boys' thighs. They parted under the force of his blow. Driving his foot down until it was firmly on the ground he lent forward slipping his hand between the yoke and the back of Ocytus neck. He clenched his fist forcing the youth forward so that the rope tightened across his throat.

Ocytus struggled desperately as the cord bit into his flesh restricting his windpipe, cutting off the air to his lungs but he was powerless against the strength of the man. Blood roared in his head and a blackness rose before his eyes.

Misinus watched the strength drain from the youth's body as he drifted into unconsciousness and his muscles relaxed.

"Callias and Lichas," he ordered, "Let go of the yoke. I've got the brute under control now. Get down to the other end and pull his legs apart and hold them for me."

The boys scuttled round to obey him. Once they had Ocytus' legs well spread he relaxed the pressure on the youth's throat. He had no wish to fuck dead meat and he wanted to ensure that the boy felt the pain and humiliation of his rape to the full. Ocytus dragged air down into his tortured lungs. As consciousness returned he began to struggle against the hands that gripped him. Misinus gritted his teeth and once again increased the pressure on the youth's wind pipe like a man subduing an unruly cur with a choke chain.

Maintaining the grip on the yoke Misinus knelt down between the youth's legs. With Ocytus' lying across the block of wood and his legs pulled wide apart Misinus had a clear view of the boy's hole. Dried blood and faeces surrounded it but there was no fresh bleeding although the lips of the boy's anus were grazed and torn by the brutal sodomizing he had received from Leontides' staff.

Misinus spat on the palm of his free hand and spread saliva over his throbbing cock. Using his hand he guided his swollen member towards its target. Leaning forward he prepared to force the lips of the boys' anus wider open with his index finger and thumb .

Ocytus body jerked convulsively. A weird shrill scream was wrenched from his lungs as Misinus parted his tortured flesh. The sound was not so very different from the sound made by the gulls as they wheeled over head in the darkening sky. He felt as if molten metal rod was being poured into his hole.

Ayas lying cross his mother's knees heard the sound and stirred uneasily but Danas quieted him. She knew very well what was being done but was not so foolish as to wish to interfere or even to resent it. It presented no threat to her position in the household or indeed to the affection, indeed love that bound her and Misinus together. What Misinus was doing had nothing to do with love or affection. It was a simple assertion of mastership through lust and cruelty.

Misinus twisted the yoke tightening the cord across Ocytus' throat. Once he had the boy under control once more he renewed his assault. The boy screamed again and again as he hammered his iron hard rod into his guts. Xionedes staff had served as a brutal precursor to his own assault and the youth's sphincter was quickly forced, although not, judging from his howls and broken pleas for mercy, without causing him extreme suffering. Now every downward thrust of Misinus' heavy hips was driving his cock deeper into the boy. The lad's screams diminished in volume until they were little more than wild moaning.

"Whore," Misinus roared, "whore, slut," as he felt the youth's heat clamp tight around his cock.

Ocytus hearing the man's shout and unable to prevent his body shamefully responding to the man's cock plumbing his bottom knew that he was speaking no more than the truth.

The full length of Misinus' cock was buried in the lad. Ocytus could feel the man's coarse pubic hair pressing against his rump. There was a slap of flesh against flesh as Misinus maintained and quickened his rhythmic pumping of the boy's bottom. Then Misinus drove down one last time deep and hard. Ocytus felt the blood in the man's rigid cock surge deep in his own body.

A moment later Misinus pulled himself upright. There was a damp sucking sound as he unsheathed his now flaccid prick from Ocytus bottom. Bending he grabbed a handful of dried grass and began to clean the filth from his prick.

"Well Callias," he said looking down at where his eldest son knelt. "It's your turn now. I can see you want it. I've broken the whore in for you. There won't even be any need to hold the slut down for you."

The boy thoroughly excited by watching his father's rape of Ocytus and blessed with all the vigour and impetuosity of a fourteen-year-old lost no time in mounting the youth. However he was not so quick to give way to his younger brother. Misinus had to pull him off by the scruff of his neck before Lichas could have his turn at the youths' bottom.

Chapter 5

Silently Misinus took his place by the open fire that smouldered in the centre of the hovel. He sat there; grim faced, staring unseeingly into the glowing embers. He was neither an evil nor a naturally cruel man. Now the frenzy that had earlier possessed him had been sated his mind was working again and his thoughts were not pleasant ones. He had admired the spirit with which Ocytus had defied the Spartan. He hated the brutality with which the youth had been beaten and sodomised. But he with his two elder sons had become accomplices in the boy's abuse. It was essential that the lad's spirit should be broken but that did not mean he was proud or happy to have been involved in the process.

Danas said nothing but filled her husband's earthenware bowl with bean stew and passed it silently to him. She knew her husband so well that she could understand the remorse and shame that was eating into his soul. Having ladled a smaller portion of stew into another bowl for herself she put the large pot in which the mess had been cooked on the floor before settling herself on the ground beside Misinus. The children crowded round the cooking pot pushing and elbowing each other in their eagerness. The two boys, fourteen year old Callias and Lichas, a year younger than his brother, squatted round the big earthenware bowl stuffing food into their mouths with their fingers. Even Ayas emerged from the shadows to take his place among the circle of half naked brats.

"More for all of us tonight," Callias remarked exercising the privilege that size and strength gave him to wipe the last fragments of stew from the side of the bowl with his hand and licking the mess from his fingers.

"What's happening to Caria do you think?" Lichas asked.

"Expect she's being fucked by a big hairy Spartan" Callias replied heartlessly. "Don't know why Dad looked so upset when Xionedes took her. She's twelve and ready for it. Ayas is next. You saw what Mum was doing to him when we came in."

"Had him over her knees fiddling with his bottom…," Lichas began uncertainly.

"She was loosening up the little tyke's hole ready for Xionedes cock," Callias said interrupting his younger brother impatiently. "That's what happens to you if you're a Helot boy and pretty. Me and you weren't particularly pretty Callias but Ayas is and so he's going to have Xionedes cock up his arse and has got to be got ready for it. Maybe we should help Mum do that? We know just what to do after what we did to that cunt of a slave."

"Yes," Lichas, who followed his elder brother in everything and who any way was excited by the idea of fucking Ayas' bottom, replied eagerly, "that would be great…"

"Having a couple of real cocks in him would be better preparation than just having Mum's fingers up his behind," Callias interrupted. "Nothing like a bit of real meat to train a whore. Ayas you should be really grateful for the care we're taking of you. We'll do it tonight after Mum and Dad are asleep and if you tell Callias and me'll wait till they're not about and then warm the souls of your feet in the fire like we done before."

"And we'll do that too if you don't make a lively fuck," Lichas chimed in. "It won't be good enough just lying and whimpering, like that stupid slave did, while me an Callias ride you. We want a bit of enthusiasm from you just like Lord Xionedes will."

"Not just like Lord Xionedes, Ayas because we haven't got as big cocks as him. He's got a really big one – all Spartan men have – his is bigger than that stallion of his that you saw mounting the mare last time we had to take sea urchins to his house." [Sea Urchins were a Mediterranean delicacy and are still eaten there with relish by some as I found when offered one by a boatman at Rhodes. I politely declined the invitation and he ate the thing himself, uncooked, with every apparent signs of satisfaction.]

"I wouldn't want that up me – not for anything. Would you Lichas? Just think of it tearing your bottom. But it won't be so bad for you Ayas. You'll have had your hole prepared and stretched by Mum and us in preparation and anyway pretty tarts like you can take bigger cocks than real boys."

"Still he's sure to be torn a bit by it Callias. Maybe split you right open Ayas."

"But Lord Xionedes will probably want more than that from Ayas. He cuts the balls off his fancy boys when he's finished with them and sends them to the market at Corinth. He gets a better price for them like that. Remember the one we saw with just an empty ball sack, nothing in it. Still Ayas it won't bother you. Your balls are so small you'll hardly miss them." [Herodotus in his Histories', 8.105 refers to �a certain Panionius, a native of Chios, who made his living by a most nefarious traffic. Whenever he could acquire any boys of unusual beauty, he made them eunuchs and, carrying them to Sardis or Ephesus, sold them for large sums of money.�� (I am grateful to Pueros for finding this reference for me.)]

"No Ayas won't miss them," Lichas chimed in giggling, "he can't do anything and his cock and balls are so titchy I don't expect he'll ever be able to even if he were allowed to keep them which he won't be…"

"Just as well Ayas Dad didn't want you to help us with that new slave. You wouldn't have been any good… All you're good for is fucking and that's what me and Lichas'll do to you…"

Ayas unable to bear any more jumped to his feet and ran out of the hut. The air was cold against his bare skin. The last glimmer of daylight was fading fast. The wind had risen and was sending dark clouds scudding across the sky. Stars showed fitfully as single specks of bright light between the racing clouds. The moon just past the full threw an uncertain light as clouds skimmed across it.

He was near tears. Painful experience had taught him not to try conclusions with his two older brothers. The foot roasting he knew was no empty theft having had the soles of his feet forcibly and painfully toasted on the embers of the fire before now. They would not do anything to him while his mother and father were about but he knew they would not always be there and then Callias and Lichas would seize their opportunity and he didn't stand a chance against them singly, let alone together. He remembered the last time they had decided to have a bit of fun with him. How they had dragged him screaming and pleading to the fire and how Callias had held him with his hands locked behind his head while Lichas grasping him by his ankles had forced his feet into the hot embers. Callias seemed to have an uncanny knack of being able to judge to a nicety the amount of pain and damage that could be inflicted without alerting their parents to what had been going on. As for his telling on them that was only to invite worse retribution later.

They had always taken a delight in hurting and humiliating him. Their current plan to rape him was just an extension of that. There was nothing he could do to thwart them. He could avoid them for a time but in the end they would corner him. He wondered if it would hurt a lot. They were neither of them so very much bigger than himself, despite all their boasting. Not like their Dad, whose big man's cock he had frequently seen and wondered at, for privacy was impossible in a single room hovel. Surely it would not hurt so much to have their boy cocks in him except Callias, in particular, would no doubt find some way of making it hurt a very great deal.

And then there was Xionedes. Was he really so very big? He remembered the stallion. The men at the stables had taken him down to watch, laughing and making coarse jokes and pushing him to the front so he could clearly see the stallion cover the mare, it's hooves grating on the cobbles and it's powerful flanks heaving as he mounted her. Surely even a Spartan could not have a tool as massive as that? But he was not sure. He had been brought up to dread their Spartan masters. He had been told many stories of their cruelty and seen many examples of it in practice as well. The Spartans he believed were capable of any atrocity and enjoyed making their Helots suffer. It was entirely possible that they were possessed of cocks even larger than his own father's and that they revelled in using them to split open the bottoms of little Helot boys like himself.

He knew it was true about Xionedes cutting the boy's balls off. Xionedes had brought one boy to the farm just before he was sent off to the market at Corinth. He had had to hold his Master's horse while Xionedes issued his orders. The boy's short tunic had risen up over his hips and Callias and Lichas had soon spotted the flaccid little tube that was his prick and the empty sack with the scar of the slit through which his balls had been extracted still clearly visible. The child had had to endure their mockery while Xionedes had conducted his business. Ayas could still remember the boy standing there tears flowing down his cheeks.

Was he going to finish up like that too? It all came of being pretty, for he knew he was pretty. He could tell it from the way the men, especially Xionedes, looked at him and by the way his mother crowed over him. He wished he was ugly or just ordinary like Callias, just another grubby tousle haired brat that men didn't bother with, or not much anyway. But he was pretty and there was nothing he could do about it. He could runaway but a lone Helot boy would not get far before he was picked up and brought back to the farm from where he came and then he would be whipped and his father would be whipped too for letting him wander. Perhaps he should just go down to the shore and swim out to sea until he could swim no further and drown himself.

Then he pulled himself up with a jerk. None of this was going to happen, not the Xionedes part anyway. Xionedes had said he wanted him at the end of the harvest, by then the Helots led by his father would have broken free of Spartan power. He knew this was going to happen because his father had planned it. He would still have Callias and Lichas to put up with but he would endure them. After he had helped his father by some heroic masterstroke to ensure the success of the revolt his brothers would not dare to hurt him again. His imagination took fire. He and his father were, standing side by side, were fighting off hordes of Spartans. Xionedes appeared and he hurled himself upon him. Their swords clashed. He saw his opening and thrust.

The sword point was sinking into Xionedes' abdomen, his agonised screams were being followed by his final death rattle when Ayas was brought back to reality by a sound close at hand. He listened intently, ready to run back inside the hut. Even the company of Callias and Lichas would be preferable to that of the wolves that sometimes, especially at the end of winter when hunger made them desperate, ventured down into the lowlands.

He heard the sound again, a quiet sobbing. He moved cautiously forward towards its source. He could see dimly the pale outline of a human body stretched on the ground. Apparently sensing his approach the figure half scrambled to its feet and set off in a crouched scurrying run only to stumble to the ground.

It knelt there whimpering in fear and distress. With a jolt of horror Ayas realised that the terrified creature cowering at his feet was all that remained of the youth who despite his bonds had so gallantly defied the Spartan only a few hours before. Ocytus still wearing the cruel yoke had been tethered by an ankle to a post and was now weeping in terror at his feet.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Ayas said quickly, embarrassed by the older boy's tears, "I just heard you crying and came to see …" He broke off. He was a thoughtful boy and he sensed that for him, a Helot, to offer help to a youth who only a few short hours before had been free warrior would add to his wretchedness.

A couple of loud sniffs came out of the darkness. He saw Ocytus straighten himself. He was still kneeling but he no longer cowered like a dog waiting to be beaten.

"I wasn't crying," Ocytus asserted unsteadily and spoilt the whole thing by sobbing uncontrollably.

"I am not crying," he repeated between sobs. "It's the cold… I'm very cold … I'm shivering… not crying."

Ayas watched helplessly not knowing what to do. Then instinct took over and he put his arms around hugging Ocytus' naked body. The youth's head rested against his chest. He felt the Ocytus' tears wet against his own bare skin.

"Who are you child?" Ocytus asked when he was calmer.

"Ayas son of Misinus the Helot."

"And I am Ocytus son of Gillipus citizen of Thebes – or that's what I was. Now I am nothing, a slave, no better than an animal. No different from you Ayas son of Misinus the Helot."

"You are not nothing Ocytus," Ayas protested. "You are brave. I saw you defy Leontides even though you were bound and helpless."

"And you heard me scream and beg for mercy too. That was not very brave of me," Ocytus replied bitterly.

"Anybody would who had what he did to you done to them. I'd have screamed long before you did."

"Of course you would have boy." Ocytus spoke with easy contempt. "You are a Helot and your people have been Helots for four hundred years or more. You can know nothing of courage or honour or of love of freedom. Slavery is easy for such as you for you have been bred to it."

Ayas said nothing. He said nothing of the stories he had been told by his father of the constant Helot struggle to free themselves from Spartan dominance; of a people who had never given up their struggle for freedom; of a succession of desperate revolts cruelly surpressed. He knew that these were stories that belonged to his father and his people and were not to be shared with those who would only see the constant defeats as proof of Helot inferiority.

"Well," Ocytus said after a pause speaking more confidently now that he had found someone to despise and order around, "we can't stay like this for ever. The yoke stops me lying on my side and my back is so sore that I've got to lie on my face. I'll do that and you get up to me as close as you can and perhaps we'll get some warmth from our two bodies."

He had worked out which of the Helot brats who had gaped at him when he had been brought first to the place was Ayas. Even then he had noticed the quality of the boy under the general dirt and squalor. The thought of having such an attractive little slut pressing his naked body against his attracted him despite his being cold and sore.

"Now Ayas son of Misinus the Helot," he ordered when he was lying on the ground with the boy half on top of him, "tell me why you are out here in the cold instead of huddled in the warmth with the rest of your litter."

Ayas caught the note of contempt in his companion's voice but did not resent it. He accepted his inferiority. Ocytus was born free, and still retained, despite his sufferings and humiliations, the confidence and spirit of a freeman. Ocytus had never had to watch his father being beaten, his sister being taken to be sold for sex, or stand still while his Lord's hands explored his body.

Ayas had been born unfree and had experienced all of this and more. He knew instinctively that when the revolt was over and he was free he would not be free of those memories and they would mark him both in his own eyes and the eyes of those around him with an indelible stigma. And so he wriggled up close to Ocytus and throwing one arm over the youth's shoulders and resting a leg across his bottom began to talk. He told Ocytus how Xionedes had ordered him to be prepared for his enjoyment; how he feared that once his master had finished with him he would castrate and sell him; how his mother was working to prepare his bottom for his lord and the way in which Callias and Lichas were planning to help her.

Ocytus listened to the words tumbling out of the child. Once or twice he asked a question for Ayas was not used to telling a coherent story and in his excitement he became muddled. Ocytus was not surprised by what he heard. This was the way the unfree existed, their bodies at the disposal of their owners, in constant fear of the lash, a sordid mass so depraved and debased as to be scarcely human.

As he listened Ocytus thought that life, if he could only survive until he regained his freedom, for he knew he would do so in time, might have its compensations. It would be amusing to seduce Ayas before that bastard Xionides got round to fucking the little whore. If he wasn't so sore and his wrists weren't bound to the yoke he would have set about it straight away. The small hardness he felt where he child's crutch was pressed against the side of his hip suggested that to him that he would have had a very good chance of succeeding. However as things were this was an adventure that had to be postponed to a later and more favourable occasion.

"When I am free Ayas," he promised when the boy had eventually fallen silent, "I'll look after you. I'll take you back to Thebes. You will have plenty to eat and the softest warmest furs to sleep on. You'll be the plumpest most spoilt little Helot boy in the whole of Greece."

Ayas wriggled in delight. He was pleased and flattered that Ocytus liked him. He would not be able to go with him of course, even though it might mean having enough to eat for the first time in his life. He would need to stay and help his father in his struggle against the Spartans but there was no need to explain that to Ocytus for the moment.

The rhythm of Ocytus' breathing slowed and deepened. Ayas despite the cold and the hard ground drifted in and out of sleep. Then he was brought back to full consciousness by a blast of noise and a sudden flaring light. Callias, with Lichas close behind him, was standing over him holding a torch of blazing brushwood.

"Ayas the slave's whore. Ayas the slave's whore," the two boys chanted.

"Get away from your slave lover Ayas," Callias ordered. "Dad's sent us to collect him. He wants Mum to dress his wounds. Quickly now whore." He swung the torch down towards where Ayas lay and the boy felt its heat and the sting of its sparks against his bare flesh.

"Ayas has got a stiffy. The whore's got a stiffy," Lichas crowed as Ayas scuttled away from them.

"Now let's get the slave moving," Callias shouted. "Come on slave unless you want your bum burnt. Into the hut with you."

He thrust the blazing torch at Ocytus. The youth, already half on his feet stumbled away only to be brought up short by the rope round his ankle. Laughing Callias advanced on him pushing the glowing torch at his bottom.

"Callias please, he can't get into the hut. He's tethered," Ayas screamed urgently.

"Oh he's tethered is he?" laughed Callias, "all the better then we can help Mum tend his bottom by burning it with the torch, like Dad did to your arm Lichas with the hot iron when you cut it with the sickle."

He lunged forward with the torch again and Ocytus screamed as the flames licked his naked bottom.

Chapter 6

Long hours spent guarding the ripening corn from crows and starlings and other birds had honed Ayas' skills as a stone thrower. There was not a boy of his age that he knew could throw harder, or further, or more accurately. The stone, a good-sized flint, struck Callias on the side of the head. He staggered, dropping the brushwood torch, then fell and lay still. The torch blazed briefly and then guttered and went out. The only light now was that of the moon as the racing clouds scudded across its face.

Ayas ran forward. Crouching down he fumbled with the rope around Ocytus' ankle. He was knocked to the ground as Lichas leapt on top of him. He had no chance against the bigger stronger boy. Soon Lichas was sitting astride his chest his hands squeezing his throat.

"We'll roast your bum too slave lover," Lichas snarled as he tightened his grip. Ayas grabbed at his brother's wrists trying to break the other boys hold on his throat. He felt his strength failing then Lichas' weight was no longer pinning him to the ground and his hands were no longer around his throat.

Ayas sat up dragging great gulps of air into his tortured lungs. In the dim half-light he could see Lichas lying on the ground a yard or two away from him with Ocytus towering over him. As he watched Lichas tried to roll over onto his knees and there was a sickening thud as Ocytus drove his bare heel into the side of the boy's neck. He made a peculiar noise, half groan, half sigh, and fell back to the ground.

Ocytus set off in a shambling run away from the house, a grotesque figure, with his arms stretched wide, his wrists secured to the heavy yoke across his shoulders.

Ayas knew that flight was hopeless both for Ocytus and himself. A lone Helot boy would soon be spotted, stopped and returned to where he belonged and soundly flogged for running away. If that was true of himself it was even more true of Ocytus, a captive slave, hurt and exhausted, with a heavy yoke tied across his shoulders. Suddenly he saw there was only one place open to them that they could both be, for the moment at least, safe.

"Ocytus, Ocytus," he called running after him.

The youth turned and stumbled. Ayas caught him up.

"You'll never get away Ocytus," the boy said urgently. "You're not strong enough to go far and as soon as it's light you'll be caught and then they'll beat you again… and they brand runaways on the face… and maybe they'll blind you as well…or chop your big toes off. They do all those things to runaways."

Ocytus stopped and stood hesitating. Ayas tried to turn him to face the hut.

"You've got to come with me Ocytus," he pleaded. "Mum'll clean you up and put something on your cuts and things to make them better. She won't hurt you, or not much anyway," he added quickly for he was a truthful boy.

Somehow he turned Ocytus round and half pulling, half pushing urged the youth back to the hovel. At the doorway Ocytus hesitated but Ayas put both hands on his bottom and pushed. Ocytus yelped as the boy's hands pressed against his scorched skin and shot forward, banging his head on the low doorframe as he went.

"I've got Ocytus," Ayas announced following him into the hut. "Over here Ocytus let Mum have a look at you. She'll make things better for you."

"What's taken you so long and where's Callias and Lichas?" demanded Misinus grumpily, asking just the questions that Ayas did not want to answer.

"Callias and Lichas Dad?" the boy hesitated, searching for inspiration and then said in a rush as it came, "they thought they heard a wolf howling near the goat pens so they went to chase it off… and they asked me to bring Ocytus in… Ocytus lie down on the floor now and Mum can clean your bottom up for you.. If you kneel down I'll help you down the rest of the way… You need to lie on your face so Mum can do your bottom…"

The sight of the boy fussing over the youth started another train of thought in Misinus's mind and he fell silent. He thought he had a good idea as to why Ocytus' arrival had been so delayed and was not too disturbed by it. Indeed he could see distinct advantages both short and long term if, as he suspected Ayas, and Ocytus had taken a fancy to each other.

In the short term it would make the youth easier to handle and less likely to try to run away. In the long term… well there was no getting away from the fact that after they had driven out the Spartans they would still have to live. The farm was not a big one. They would be free of Xionides' demands and that would mean they would get all the produce of the farm for their own use but it would still be a very meagre living for a family of seven. Well six now that Xionedes had taken Caria for his friends to enjoy. Then he wanted to get some things for the farm, a plough with an iron blade, even an ox to draw it and a few more goats.

For all this though he would need money. He had already been thinking about this, turning ideas over in his head and planning. Ocytus from his initial bearing was the son of rich Thebans and they no doubt would be prepared to pay well to have him back. But would it be enough and if it was enough and if it was would it not be helpful to have a little extra cash for unseen contingencies? If Ocytus took a fancy to young Ayas then maybe his parents, in the excitement of getting their son back, would be prepared to buy the boy as a present for him. One of the advantages of freedom would be that he would be able to sell any child of his that was at all attractive, and keep the money for his own use instead of having Xionedes taking the child for his own enjoyment or profit.

He would have preferred of course to have kept Ayas and given him all the benefits that a free boy born of wealthy parents enjoyed. But beggars could not be choosers. He would never be wealthy even if he owned the farm that he now worked under Xionides lordship. If the Gods had blessed him with a pretty boy, and Ayas was very pretty, it was up to him to get the most advantage out of that gift. After all the child's life would be immeasurably easier and softer as some rich man's pampered slave boy than it would be working on the farm.

While Misinus sat pondering in this way his wife, Danas, busied herself tending to Ocytus. The youth lay face down on the ground his legs spread wide as she sponged the congealed filth and blood from his crack.

"Did you scorch the lad's bum?" she suddenly demanded raising her voice to be heard over a muted cry of pain from Ocytus.

"No we didn't do that," the man replied leaving open the question of what he and Callias and Lichas had actually done to Ocytus' bottom though Danas knew what that was perfectly well.

"Maybe the Spartans did it when they captured him," Ayas suggested who was kneeling beside Ocytus' prone body holding an earthenware bowl of steaming water for his mother. He was bound, as every self-respecting boy has been and always will be in every culture and every age, by the rule "you must not tell tales on other boys."

"Most likely," Misinus said letting his lack of interest in so trivial a matter as a scorched slave's bottom clearly show. "They're cruel bastards and they do like their bit of fun."

"It looks more recent than that…" Danas began and then broke off as Callias and Lichas appeared at the hovel's doorway.

"Well did you see the wolf?" Misinus demanded.

"The wolf," Callias said momentarily at a loss and then hastily added. "Yes the wolf…It was a big one but we scared it off alright…"

"What's happened to you two anyway?" Misinus said peering at his two oldest sons in the flickering light of the fire. "It looks as though you've both been in a fight and got the worst of it too."

"I expect they threw stones at the wolf and missed it and hit each other," Ayas suggested helpfully, seeing his older brother was at a loss.

"Yes," Callias said accepting the suggestion eagerly but with no particular signs of gratitude, "an Lichas an me when we catch it, we'll make it suffer. We'll put it on the fire an make it howl."

"You'll have to catch it first," Misinus said yawning. In his experience the boys were always hitting or cutting themselves and it really didn't bother him unless they were so badly injured that they could not do their work.

"Could Ocytus stay in the hut with us?" Ayas asked his father. Sympathy for the youth otherwise condemned to spend the night outside alone in the cold combined with a more selfish feeling that he could do with an ally to protect himself against his brothers' vengeance.

Misinus hesitated and Ayas hurriedly pressed his request.

"It'll help him get strong again for the plough," he wheedled.

"All right then," Misinus replied, "but you're responsible for keeping an eye on him. He'll sleep over in that corner away from the door and it's up to you to sleep near him and wake me if he shows any signs of trying to run away."

Grim, squat and bent from years of toil, Misinus made a very improbable Cupid but that was the roll he was now playing, though for mercenary rather than romantic ends. He felt that the more he could bring Ayas and Ocytus together and the fonder the latter became of the boy, the better the price he could eventually get when he offered to sell his son to the youth.

"Could we take the yoke off him too." Ayas pleaded pushing his chances just a little further, "That'll help as well. He'll be able to sleep better and it'll give his wrists a chance to heel… you can see how they're bleeding where the cords bitten into them. All that'll make him stronger and fitter for work… and he won't try to run away… I'm sure he won't. There's no where for him to run to and anyway he's not strong enough to get far or to attack us while we're asleep."

"He looks a strong enough young brute to me," Misinus said who had been running an apprising eye over Ocytus naked body and had drawn his own conclusions about the lad's potential as a farm hand and a trouble maker. "We'll keep the yoke on him for the time being. He needs another day or so of schooling before he can be trusted out of it."

"Now Ayas your mother has finished cleaning him up; you take him over to that corner and settle him down there. And the rest of you settle down as well. There's a days work to do tomorrow," and the next day and the day after that until we are all dead, he added gloomily to himself.

He watched as Ayas led Ocytus away. He noticed that both of them were showing clear signs of sexual excitement. The contrast between Ayas's small boy's twig like prick and the youths longer broader rod brought a wintry smile to his lips.

"You needn't stretch Ayas's bottom anymore," he murmured to is wife as they lay down together beside the fire on the side away from the door, "just keep it as clean and sweet as you can. The stretching will look after itself."

The children other than Ayas, huddled together in a jumble of half naked limbs on the other side of the fire; Callias and Lichas slightly apart from the others. Every now and again one or the other surreptitiously lifted his head to check whether their parents were asleep and then directed a hard baleful glare at the corner where Ayas and Ocytus lay.

Ayas was aware of being watched by his brothers. He was very frightened. He knew that as soon as they were sure their mother and father were asleep his brothers would grab him, drag him outside where his screams would not be heard and exact their revenge. What exact form that would take he did not know but he knew that with the whole night before them Callias and Lichas would be able to give free reign to their ingenuity and imagination. He had hoped he would have been able to have Ocytus as an ally but with him still tied to the yoke he would be no match for the two other boys.

He lay close to Ocytus, not touching him for he was embarrassed by the other people about him, desperately trying to work out a way of escaping his brothers. He too was keeping a close eye on his parents. Their heads were down, Misinus began to snore. On the other side of the room, by the glow of the dyeing embers of the fire, he could see Callias and Lichas beginning to gather themselves together to launch their assault.

"Ayas, Ayas boy." It was Ocytus whispering urgently. Clearly he too had been watching and had guessed what was likely to happen next. "Untie this yoke. Get it off me. It's your only chance. They'll have you in a minute. I won't run away – I promise. Get it off me before they get over here."

Ayas hesitated. He had asked his father if he might release Ocytus and his father had refused. Misinus was not a man to let direct disobedience pass unpunished. Nor was he a man to lightly defy. If he found out he would be very angry and Ayas knew he would suffer the full weight of that anger. But that was tomorrow. This was now.

Both Lichas and Callias had their heads up staring across at him. There was not a moment to be wasted. He hesitated no longer but got onto his knees and leaning forward began to fumble at the rope securing Ocytus left wrist to the beam, feeling the youth's blood warm and sticky against his own fingers. He found the knot and worked at it.

It was almost free. Lichas and Callias had realized what he was doing. They were getting to their feet. Glancing nervously across to where Misinus and Danas slept they were beginning to move around the embers of the fire.

The cord round Ocytus left wrist fell away. Ayas moved to work on the length of rope securing the youths neck to the yoke.

"No Ayas, no, get my right wrist free. Leave my neck. My right wrist."

Ayas lent across Ocytus feeling the youth's breath against the side of his own chest as he struggled to undo the cord fastening his right wrist to the yoke. He heard his brothers close behind him and just at that moment the cord came free. He was thrown to the ground as Ocytus jumped to his feet. Looking up he saw him turn and face Callias and Lichas. The yoke was still tied to his neck but his arms were free.

The two boys hesitated and then, not liking what they could see began to back away.

"You'll be for it in the morning when Dad sees what you've done," Callias muttered. It was true but it was also an admission of defeat.

Ocytus stood watching the two boys as they slunk away with many backward glances to their places beside the fire, his hands fumbling at the cord securing the yoke to his neck. Ayas scrambled to his feet to help him. Ocytus sixteen years old and well grown was a considerably taller than the little eleven year old. Ayas had to stand close up against the youth and reach upwards to get at the rope. It was the first time that Ocytus had literally been able to get his hands on Ayas and he took full advantage of the opportunity offered him. As the boy struggled to undo the knotted cord Ocytus slid his hands down his back feeling the child's skin cool and silken smooth to his touch.

Please, Ocytus I can't undo the rope if you …,"

Ocytus looked down at the Ayas' earnest face, dimly visible in the glow of the fire, and kissed the boy hard on his parted lips. He shifted one hand to the back of the boy's head holding it firm as he thrust his tongue into his mouth. The other hand moved downwards until it cupped the child's rump.

Ayas wriggled ecstatically as a flood of conflicting emotions and sensations overwhelmed him. Ocytus finger tips pressing into the crack of his bottom sent waves of pleasure and excitement causing through his body. At the same time the pressure of the youth's hand against his rump, its flesh still raw and broken, revived the agonies of his earlier flogging. Pain and excitement combined into a turbulent intoxicating mixture that caused Ayas to abandon all attempts at freeing Ocytus' neck from the yoke. He wound his arms around the youth responding to his kiss with fiery enthusiasm.

Ocytus began to lower the boy to the floor but was checked by the yoke. He pushed Ayas roughly away.

"Quick," he ordered sharply, "get this thing off me boy."

For a moment he was angry. He was not used to anything getting in the way of his enjoyment of a slave boy and Ayas, when all was said and done, was only that. It was the boy's task to minister to his betters' pleasures. The slut should have got the thing off him long before so that he did not experience such a check to his appetites.

Ayas sensing Ocytus irritation fumbled nervously at the knot securing the cord. The delay gave Ocytus the opportunity to recover his temper. By the time his neck was free of the yoke he had reminded himself that Ayas was as yet innocent and, if all went well he would have the fun, of schooling the little slut in the skills of a boy whore. For the moment he had to remember that Ayas was ignorant, his only guide the instinctive urge to serve and to please with which every slave was born.

Certainly Ocytus thought, as he drew Ayas down on to the floor beside him, the back of his hand brushing against the boy's stiff little prick, he was showing every sign of being a willing and enthusiastic pupil.

"Callias and Lichas are watching," Ayas protested without too much conviction as Ocytus pulled the boy to him.

"Let them," Ocytus replied, "they're only jealous."

Ayas giggled delightedly at the thought of his exciting his two older brothers envy and offered his lips to be kissed. Thus licensed Ocytus hands roamed "before, behind, between, above below."

"Are you going to fuck me?" Ayas eventually whispered, somewhat breathlessly, with a touch of apprehension in his voice. He had one hand round Ocytus shaft. He found the feel of the hard flesh and the blood pulsing within it strangely exciting but the thought of having it pushed into his bottom was frightening. It was all he could do to get his hand round it. He hated to think what it would feel like to have something that large hammered into him.

"Sometime I will child," Ocytus replied softly, "but not tonight. I'm too sore and tired to do it now."

"My bums pretty sore too," Ayas remarked, relief showing in his voice.

"Really," replied Ocytus he couldn't see what in the world that had to do with matters. He slapped Ayas lightly on the bottom and the boy squeaked an excited protest.

"Besides," Ocytus continued, "we'd probably make too much noise and wake your mother and father doing it. Look what a fuss you make about just a little tap on your bottom and think what a noise you'd make with me getting that up your pretty little bum."

"Will it hurt a lot?" Ayas asked nervously.

"Well I don't know," Ocytus replied easily. "It's never been done to me, except by your father and brothers just now and that was different. It isn't the sort of thing that is done to free boys. [This reflects what appears to have been a common attitude in Ancient Greece and Rome. There was little prejudice against homosexuality or boy love what was considered dishonourable was for a man or boy to take what was called "the passive part" though I don't myself see how it can be regarded as very passive. Indeed in certain Greek cities a free boy who allowed himself to be penetrated became a slave.] It's just slave brats like you that are fucked. All I can say is that most seem to cry or whimper a bit at the beginning, especially if it's the first time, but they're usually eager enough by the end. I expect it'll be the same when I do it to you."

"Now you're talking too much. There are other and better things that you can do with those lips of yours than talking."

Ocytus, kissing the boy on his lips, both silenced him and showed him one of those better things. Then sitting upright and placing both hands on the boy's shoulders he began to manoeuvre the lad steadily down his body to show him a second and even more exciting thing that he could do with them.

Ayas felt the youth's hands on his shoulders pressing him remorselessly downwards. He knew what Ocytus wanted of him. He had heard his elder brothers talking often enough of cock sucking and cock-suckers although he was not at all sure if either of them had ever been required to provide that service. Their Spartan lords after all had many more attractive young boys available to them than Callias and Lichas. Perhaps too there was some truth in Ocytus belief that Ayas as a slave boy had an instinctive knowledge of such matters.

Regretfully but with a feeling of rising excitement he pulled his lips away from Ocytus' mouth. His lips brushed the front of the youth's still hairless chest. He twisted side ways so that he was kneeling beside Ocytus. Momentarily he explored Ocytus belly button with the tip of his tongue. Then he turned his head to look downwards. His nostrils were filled with the animal odours of Ocytus' body a mixture of stale sweat together now, as his nose was so close to his crutch, with faeces.

He could see Ocytus' cock jutting imperiously upwards it's swollen pink helmet only a couple of inches from his face. He felt a moment of repulsion. Was he to take that thing, the thing through which Ocytus' peed, into his mouth?

Then he felt a twinge almost of shame. He should he felt in a confused sort of way, that he only half understood himself, be grateful that it existed. It provided a means of his pleasing Ocytus, who had defied the Spartans even when a captive and had saved him from his brothers' vengeance. To show his remorse and gratitude he lowered his head and kissed the rod of throbbing purple veined flesh on it's side, feeling the coarse hair of the youth's bush against his cheek.

Ocytus rested his hand on Ayas raised rump. The tip of his index finger teased the lips of the boy's anus. Ayas moaned softly, responding to Ocytus touch by pushing his bottom back, inviting further penetration.

Ayas ran his tongue along the slit at the tip of Ocytus cock and then he took it between his lips. He felt Ocytus place his other hand on the back of his head.

"Be careful with your teeth," Ocytus commanded softly and pushed sharply downwards driving the full length of his prick into Ayas's mouth so that its tip was lodged in the back of the boy's throat. Ayas gagged. Panic gripped him. Blood roared in his head and he thought he was about to suffocate.

"Swallow it," Ocytus ordered relaxing for a second his pressure on the boy's head before driving it down once again on his bloated rod. Again and again he repeated the process, working the boy's mouth and lips up and down the full length of his prick with increasing violence and urgency. Ayas managed to time his breathing better. He gained in confidence even bringing his tongue into play to further excite Ocytus' passions. Ocytus hand fell from the boy's head as the youth surrendered himself to his lust. Ayas now needed no urging as he laboured with aching jaws to bring Ocytus to a crisis. Then Ocytus prick erupted, sending jets of cum deep into the boy's throat. Ayas� mouth filled with warm slightly metallic tasting liquid. The boy spluttered spewing semen over the front of Ocytus stomach.

"You should have swallowed the stuff," Ocytus said grumpily. "Look what a mess you have made."

But then a few seconds later he relented.

"You weren't bad for a first timer though," he remarked in a more kindly tone, pulling Ayas up so that his face was level with his own. He kissed the boy on his lips.

"What shall we do about the yoke," Ayas asked anxiously.

"You'll have to tie it back on me early tomorrow before anyone else is awake," Ocytus said and kissed him again.

Ayas was woken by a sharp pain in his side. He blinked his eyes open to see Misinus standing over him with Callias and Lichas standing grinning broadly behind him. At that moment another kick thudded painfully into his ribcage.

"I told you not to take the yoke off the slave," Misinus shouted furiously. "I'll teach you to disobey me."

Ayas realized that he had not woken in time.

Chapter 7

Ayas twisted over onto his face and gathering his feet under him dived for the door. He was not quick enough to avoid a hefty boot up his bottom that lifted him momentarily clear of the ground before depositing him on his hands and knees in the dirt outside the hut. He crawled to one side of the yard and huddled down in the shelter of the low dry stone wall, hugging himself in a vain attempt to keep warm. Tears trickled down his face. He knew that if his father kept to his word he would die. He would not survive long outside the protection, rough and limited though it was, of his family. Hunger and cold would soon finish him. He would lie down in the shelter of some rock or bush and die. Perhaps though the wolves would get to him before that. He thought of a goat that he had come across, still half-alive, it's body horribly torn by the wolves and the tears came faster. He knew it was hopeless to look for help elsewhere. No other Helot family would take him in. All were driven so hard and lived so close to the margin that they could not take on the burden of an additional mouth, especially of a small boy with very little work in him. As for the Spartans they would simply turn him over to his Lord Xionedes. The wolves would be preferable to that.

He did not cry only for himself. He wept also for his father. Harsh and sometimes cruel though he was Ayas loved the man. To most Misinus was a stunted creature, his mind and body deformed by his years of labour, muddy, dull, sour and bitter like the soil he worked. Ayas saw him though as a hero who would bring the Helots freedom at last. In a half understood way the boy saw that that heroism was increased by the very things that the world despised about his father and indeed his people, their poverty and their current servitude. The boy's ambition was to win his father's approval. In his imagination he would join his father when the moment came for the rising in fighting the Spartans and killing them by the dozen, beginning with the hated Xionedes.

Now though all that was at an end and through his own selfishness. He should not have freed Ocytus from the yoke whatever dangers faced him personally. He should have suffered whatever cruelties his two elder brothers cared to have inflicted on him rather than to have done that. Freeing the youth had endangered the whole family. Ocytus had said he would not try to escape but how could he have been certain that he was speaking the truth? Ayas knew that the youth once his hands were free could easily have strangled him and then attacked the rest of his family in their sleep. Probably he would not have managed to kill them all but he could have done considerable damage before he was overpowered. Perhaps killed one of his brothers, or his father himself, for surely the youth would go for the man first hoping to dispose of the strongest while he was asleep.

Of course Ocytus did not try to escape but that was sheer luck. He could easily have done so if he had so wished. Instead he had…

Ayas began to think of the things Ocytus had done. He remembered the touch of the youth's hands on his own body, the feel and taste of his swollen rod between his lips. Despite the boy's misery his cock began to stir and harden.

Meanwhile inside the hut Misinus was continuing to reassert his authority. Having disposed of Ayas he turned his attention to Ocytus.

"Well you've had a comfortable night but I'll see that you have a miserable day," he stormed furiously. "Get me the yoke."

He reinforced his order by clouting the youth on the side of the head. Ocytus wisely made no effort to ward off the blow. Slightly dizzy from the blow he stumbled off to fetch the yoke. Kneeling at Misinus' feet he offered it to him and then stretched his arms out humbly ready to have it fixed across his neck and shoulders. Only then did he dare to speak.

"Lord," he said and stealing a glance at Misinus he saw a fleeting smile twitch the corners of his grimly set lips. Reflecting on how strange and fortunate it was that even the miserable and oppressed were cheered when they came across someone more unfortunate than themselves he hurried on. "Lord, I am strong. Let me work for you Lord rather than wear the yoke. You would get the benefit of a good days work out of me Lord and I would be spared the yoke."

Ocytus kneeling in apparent humility at the Helot's feet stole another upward glance. He saw the corners of Misinus' mouth twitch again and knew he was near to gaining his point.

Misinus looked down at the kneeling youth and felt a surge of pride and satisfaction. To have a freeborn boy kneel to him, acknowledging his mastery, was deeply satisfying. He would not have been so pleased had he known that Ocytus felt not the slightest shame or humiliation. So far as Ocytus was concerned Misinus was so far beneath him, a being of such total insignificance, that he simply didn't count. Kneeling in front of him, calling him 'Lord' was all play-acting, not to be taken seriously, in fact rather a joke, although he was careful not to let his amusement show. He didn't want to get kicked on the side of the head by the stupid oaf.

"Work?" Misinus growled. "Well stand up boy and let me have a look at you. Let's see how much work you really have in you."

Ocytus rose to his feet being careful to keep his hands down by his sides. He stood in front of Misinus, his head bowed in apparent humility, making no attempt to cover his nakedness. Misinus moved so close to him that he could smell the stale odour of the man's body.

"Well you're a sturdy enough young animal," Misinus remarked prodding the youth in the thigh with his fore-finger, "Now get some food. You'll need all the strength you've got if you're to work for me."

Ocytus instead of muttering his thanks and hurrying to join the crowd round the communal bowl as Misinus expected dropped back to his knees.

"Lord," he pleaded, "forgive the boy, please. Punish him for his disobedience but forgive him and let him back into your family."

Misinus scowled fiercely. He was pleased that Ocytus cared so much for Ayas that he would risk pleading for him. It showed that his plan to make money from restoring the youth to his family and then selling the boy to him was going to work. He was careful though to hide his pleasure and indeed to hide that Ocytus was only asking him to do what he had always intended.

He certainly wasn't going to permanently drive away a boy that with luck and cunning could be turned into real money. Nor though was he going to allow Ayas to get away with direct disobedience to his instructions. The boy had to be punished savagely not only to ensure that in future he did what he was told but also to maintain Misinus' own authority.

Misinus had seen too many men in his time as they grew old and their strength waned shouldered to one side by their own sons. He was under no illusions when the time came, when he could no longer maintain his hold on the family, Callias would take the opportunity to supplant him. Maybe the first time, or even the second time, Callias challenged him he would be able to beat the younger man into submission with his fists. There would come a day though when they would fight and at the end it would be Callias who would remain standing. He would then have to crawl off into some corner of the hut, banished for ever from the place of privilege next to the fire, dependent for his very food and shelter on the charity and kindness of his eldest son and he knew enough of Callias to know that that those would be very limited. That day would no doubt come in time but that time was not yet and Misinus was resolved that it should be delayed as long as possible. Ayas was going to be beaten and beaten hard both to punish the boy and to warn the others that his authority was not lightly to be challenged.

He betrayed none of these thoughts or calculations to Ocytus. He simply clouted him hard with his fist on the side of his head, knocking him sprawling sideways on the ground.

"Go and get some food as I told you boy," Misinus growled kicking the youth in the ribs, "and don't interfere in what does not concern you."

"Yes Lord, sorry Lord," Ocytus whined.

'What a fool that oaf of a Helot is,' he thought to himself as he jostled Callias out of the way so he could get at the food in the bowl, 'to be deceived by such nonsense as that. Still I hope he does forgive Ayas. He's a pretty little tart and it'd be a pity if he got eaten by the wolves or anything before I've had a chance to fuck that tight little bottom of his.'

Misinus seated himself beside the fire and balancing his bowl on his knees began to eat. He was well pleased with the way things were going for all he saw was the outward appearance of things, a frightened young slave pleading with him to forgive his own son. He had no idea that Ocytus fortified by his own arrogance regarded all Helots as little better than animals and Ayas simply as a mere toy; pretty enough and useful for passing the time during his period of servitude but to be discarded once that was over or if a more attractive brat came along.

Unaware that his plan was built on foundations of sand Misinus, as he ate, turned over in his mind ways of punishing Ayas and at the same time of encouraging Ocytus' interest in the boy. The youth he reasoned must like the boy. He had seen evidence of that himself. He had found them asleep in each other's arms and he had noticed a telltale smear of some dried fluid about Ayas' lips. Ocytus must also be grateful to the boy. That stood to reason. Had not Ayas released the youth from the yoke against his own father's commands?

It seemed to Misinus that the two went together very well. The more savagely he flogged Ayas for his disobedience the more grateful Ocytus should feel for the boy's action. While nobody knew better than himself the stimulating effect that the spectacle of a pretty boy suffering under the lash had on the emotions of those witnessing the child's sufferings.

There was more to it than that though. To encourage feelings of gratitude in Ocytus breast it would only be necessary to make the boy suffer and to ensure that suffering was both audible and visible. Nothing more was needed than for him to follow his usual routine when beating one of his boys; order the brat down across the flogging block and then lay into his naked rump and shoulders with his belt. The crack of leather against bare skin, the howls of the brat as the punishment progressed and the sight of the livid welts raised by the strap across the boy's tender hide would be enough to excite feelings of pity. For that mere brutality would be sufficient. However Misinus knew that to rely on brutality alone was to miss an opportunity. The boy's thrashing was an opportunity to arouse Ocytus� lust as well as his pity and to excite the former cruelty had to be embellished with artistry and imagination.

There were practical considerations that also made Misinus feel that a simple hard flogging with his belt was probably unwise on this occasion. Ayas' back had been thoroughly bloodied when he had beaten the boy at the behest of Xionedes. A further basting with the belt would flay the already tender and broken skin from the child's rump and shoulders leaving the brat permanently marked. That would matter little in the normal course of events. No one was surprised to see a Helot boy's back ribbed with weals from old beatings. But it was Misinus' intention to sell Ayas and marking the child might well lower his value.

On the other hand Misinus realised his time was limited. He had the farm to tend. He could not waste time on designing some long drawn out and complicated torment for his young son. Fortunately he had something that met his requirements immediately to hand. Licking the remnants of the bean stew from his fingers he rose to his feet. The chatter of the children immediately died away. The only sound in the single roomed hovel was the crackling of the fire in the central hearth and the sound of his own footfalls as he walked across to the open door. Stooping he picked up the cane that rested against the wall. About a metre and a half long, finely tapered with it's end split and bound with cord made from goat's ligament to give it extra bite, it commanded fear and respect from those whose naked bottoms had felt its searing touch.

"You're going to use that on Ayas?" Callias burst out excitement and pleasure in his voice.

Misinus nodded grimly.

"Yes and I will need your help. Come," and Misinus led the way out of the hut.

As he walked he swung the cane testing its weight and suppleness. He did not often use the cane. His punishments being usually brief brutal interludes in the daily grind of work, designed to do no more than to enforce obedience or to exact the last ounce of effort from an exhausted and half starved boy. For these his belt was the natural tool being ready to hand and needing no particular skill to apply. It was also an efficient enough instrument for achieving those ends but the belt is to the cane what the carving knife is to the surgeon's scalpel. The first needs little more than a strong arm to wield effectively the second requires a steady hand, a true eye and imagination and skill to be used to the best effect. Then too there is something about a boy's bottom, with its tight curves and dimpled sides, which seems to invite the cane. The two in a way appear to be made for each other. The cane is 'right' in the way the belt is not.

These truths Misinus felt rather than thought.

He glanced round and saw Ayas huddled, naked and shivering, in the shelter of the yard wall. He beckoned the child to him. He felt his blood quicken as the excitement rose within him. "It is fortunate," he reflected, "that I enjoy beating the boy."

Ayas rose to his feet and began reluctantly to make his way across to where his father stood swishing the cane impatiently. He saw the cane and knew that this meant that he was not after all going to be driven out of the family. He knew he should feel grateful for that but all he could think of was the pain he was going to suffer when the rod began to tear at his already well flayed bum. His father appeared to be standing a very long way away. His legs felt stiff and he seemed to have difficulty in breathing. By the time he reached Misinus he was sobbing with fear.

"Well Ayas," his father said grimly, "I have decided to give you a second chance and not to send you away."

Ayas struggled to say something but managed only a strangled sob.

"You don't seem to be too happy about my decision. I thought you would be pleased and even a little grateful. If you prefer to take your chances with the cold and the wolves of course you can…"

Callias threw back his head and howled like a wolf before he and Lichas dissolved into heartless laughter.

The implied threat loosened Ayas' tongue.

"No please no I want to stay please…" he whimpered.

"I thought you would," Misinus said smiling grimly. "But Ayas you have been disobedient. You know that don't you boy?"

Ayas gulped and nodded tears streaming down his face. Misinus' right hand moved sharply as he brought the cane cracking down across the front of the boy's shins, wrenching a squeal of pain from the boy and scoring a deep red line across his nut-brown skin.

"That's not good enough Ayas. I want to hear you say it."

"Yes Father, I have been disobedient," the boy's voice was hardly more than a whisper.

"And you have to be punished for it don't you Ayas?"

"Yes Father… I have to be punished," Ayas sobbed.

"So I am going to thrash you Ayas to make you a better more obedient boy, a boy who deserves to have a family and a home. You ought to be grateful to me for taking the trouble on your behalf." Again Misinus paused threateningly.

"I am Father… I know I did wrong Father… I'm sorry…," the boy whimpered incoherently.

"And now Ayas I am going to give you reason to feel grateful. Callias come here and bend forward. Ayas up on his back quickly now."

Misinus stepped to one side as the two boys obediently took up their positions. He noticed that Callias' cock like his own was swollen rigid with excitement.

He glanced quickly behind him and saw that his excitement was also shared by Lichas. Danas of course showed no such obvious signs of excitement but there was a glitter in her eyes and a half smile on her face that suggested she too was not unmoved by the prospect of witnessing her young son being thrashed. More importantly though Ocytus, standing slightly behind the others as befitted a slave, was staring wide-eyed at the developing scene in a state of extreme sexual arousement. Misinus gazed for a moment at the sixteen-year-old�s swollen member, standing full to attention, it's tip rising just short of his belly button.

He nodded quietly to himself. It seemed that all his plans were working out well. He had considered having Ocytus horse the boy but had decided that the youth's lusts would be more excited by watching this part of Ayas' flogging rather than taking an active part in it. Later though he would be more directly involved.

He turned back to find Ayas now firmly horsed on his eldest brother's shoulders. Looking at the boy's slender frame he wondered momentarily how he would fare when the time came for Ocytus to penetrate him. He reminded himself how supple were young sinews and bones and how quickly and cleanly torn young flesh and skin healed. No doubt the child would manage well enough.

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