Chapter 36 - Brothers Separated; Brothers Reunited

 “It was Will, the blond junior page boy,” Raymond reported to his royal master. “He helped Courcey escape. But he says he has no idea where the traitor went.”

Prince Felix, his composure restored, nodded petulantly. “I shall dispatch Odin at once to track him down. After all, it’s down to his carelessness that Courcey got away in the first place. He can stay out there until he finds him again. As for the boy, I take it you will have him put to death?”

Raymond nodded smartly. “I know exactly how to deal with him, your Highness. I’ve wanted that particular brat out of my hair for a long time now. It will give me great pleasure to put an end to his time in service at the castle once and for all.”

The sun began to sink slowly in the west. Raymond had wasted no time. A sleek grey charger had been saddled from the castle’s stables and he sat atop it, a fine black riding cloak round his shoulders, long leather boots enclosing his silver-hosed thighs which in turn clasped the stallion’s flanks. The drawbridge was lowered and he trotted across it, over the moat and out of the castle grounds.

He glanced behind him. There, tight blue arse bobbing up and down in time to the rhythm of the horse, was Will: ankles and wrists tied together under the animal’s belly, fair head dangling, the cruel butt plug still lodged within him, the soapy residue of the suppositories lathering his arse crack and bubbling through the material of his tights, making them slick and moist. Every muscle in Will’s body ached from the stretching he had experienced on the rack, every jolt of the animal was painful, and his guts had never undergone such wrenching torture.

Had it really been nearly a year since he’d first entered the castle gates, Will wondered, ironically in exactly the same fashion that he was now leaving them – bound and slung over the backside of a horse? What things he had experienced and seen! And now it was all over, he knew that well enough. Raymond had won and was finally free to exact his revenge. Will could only hope that the end, when it came, would be swift, and that when Raymond did decide to slit his throat and dump him in the nearest ditch, his death would not be a lingering one.

On they rode. Raymond did not speak, merely glancing behind him occasionally to appreciate the sight of Will’s bouncing blue buttocks, the base of the plug obvious between them. Suddenly, Will experienced a jolt of recognition as they passed a familiar hedgerow. Sure enough, Raymond steered his steed down a curve in the path, and before long, they had reached a smattering of wooden huts with straw roofs. Will swallowed hard as he raised his head to look around him. For the first sixteen years of his life, this had been his entire world. He was home.

The little village seemed deserted. No children played in the late afternoon sun. There was no happy chatter among the neighbouring farm workers. This was hardly surprising. Finely dressed visitors rarely brought good tidings with them. Indeed, the most recent had been the Viking giants who had terrorised them all and chopped off the hand of Honest Eric the thatcher.

A door opened and out stepped a young man, maybe twenty-seven years old and presumably the bravest of the villagers. He had light yellow hair on his head and across his upper lip: although the attempt to grow a moustache was not altogether successful, given its fine wispiness. He was of medium height and was good-looking in an unremarkable way. His body was clearly trained with physical labour and his face tanned from the sun. He was clad in the traditional hessian smock and woollen trousers of the peasantry. Peering out from behind him, and clutching his arm, was a woman. She was in fact no older than her husband, though her sour, down-turned mouth and long, greying hair made her appear so.

“Who is it, Jack?” she hissed.

“I told you to stay inside!” came the reply.

The woman displayed no intention of obeying her husband’s command, so Jack cleared his throat and addressed the finely-dressed youth on the impressive stallion. “What can we do for you, my Lord?”

“I am called Raymond StClare and I am the Chief Steward at Castle de Montford,” announced the proud young man. “I have a question for you, peasant. Is this creature known to you?”

Raymond turned his steed so that the villager could see the spectacle of Will, bound in that most undignified fashion.

The peasant called Jack screwed up his eyes to peer at the strange sight: a blond-haired young man dressed in a beautifully embroidered blue doublet and the tightest-fitting hose he had ever seen. The hose encased the short but well-muscled legs with a shimmering blue sheen. The youth was fixed firmly in place, so his head dangled upside-down and his firm arse cheeks were pointing skyward. The blond lad raised his head and Jack gasped in recognition and surprise as he looked into those big brown eyes. “Will? Is that really you?!”

Will, desperately ashamed at being viewed in this predicament, nodded sadly. “Yes, Jack, it’s me.”

The sour-faced woman squeezed Jack’s arm. “Will?” she whispered. “Your brother?!”

Raymond raised one perfectly-curved eyebrow. “Then I am in the right place. Good. Know this, peasants. This miserable urchin was given a chance beyond his wildest hopes and dreams. He had an opportunity to rise far above his station. An opportunity he did not deserve. But his lack of moral fibre has revealed itself all too easily. He has disgraced himself and betrayed his King and his country. He merits death for what he has done. However, I have determined to grant him a fate worse than death. He has had his taste of luxury, and now he is to be flung back into the gutter. You may blame him that you are taxed so heavily and suffer so in these harsh times. His apostasy resulted in the mutilation of your neighbours. I am done with him. He is yours to punish as you see fit.”

Raymond brandished his bejewelled knife, and in two sharp, slashing motions, cut the ropes that tied Will to the stallion. With a thump, Will’s fatigued and aching body fell to the ground.

“After all this time, I am finally free of you. Goodbye and good riddance, goat-shit!”

And laughing with pure abandon, Raymond wheeled his horse around and galloped back to the castle, secure in the knowledge that he would never see Will the junior page boy ever again.

Once the coast was clear, other villagers began to emerge from their homes to view the curious spectacle. Jack stood over the prone form of his younger brother, a stern and slightly sickened expression on his face. His wife knelt down and touched the fabric of Will’s tunic. Her eyes glistened avariciously.

The neighbours jostled round, gawping silently. Jack busied himself untying the cords that bound Will’s wrists together, then did the same for his ankles. As he did so, his hand brushed against the silken lustre of Will’s tights.

“What the hell are you wearing?” he demanded through gritted teeth. “This garment would not look out of place on some high-class prostitute! Everything is on show. Your legs – your arse! It leaves nothing to the imagination. It’s positively indecent!”

“What’s that at his crotch?!” jeered one of the onlookers. “I told you those folk up at the castle were filthy perverts, didn’t I?”

Will instinctively rolled over onto his front to conceal the humiliating steel cage that even now kept his dick locked in permanent softness.

However, lying on his front served only to draw everyone’s attention to his hosed bottom instead. “And what, in God’s name, is this?” demanded Jack, prodding at the wide base of the plug lodged in Will’s sore and aching hole. “Answer me, damn you!”

“It’s – it’s a butt plug,” mumbled Will, and in that unfortunate moment, his body convulsed in a last desperate attempt to free itself of the tortuous soap suppositories nestling within him. With a desperate grunt emitting from one end of him and a squelching fart from the other, the plug was propelled from between his buttocks, rapidly followed by the gunky white residue of the bars of soap.

His elder brother grimaced in disgust as the plug, coated in a slick layer of soapy lubricant, and the gloopy white mush of what remained of the soap lay trapped and confined within the constricting bright blue fabric of Will’s tights, sitting obscenely between the crack of his buttocks; the thick, white ooze pooling there and now slowly beginning to dribble between the young man’s thighs.

Will looked away in shame, unable to meet the gaze of the very folk he had known longest in the world, realising that they would be looking at him with varying degrees of amusement, pity and revulsion.

“You’re a disgrace to our family,” muttered Jack. “Now pick yourself up and get inside!”

He rose to his feet and addressed his neighbours. “All right, everyone. The show’s over for today. Get back to your own affairs!”

Jack hurried his wife and his youngest brother inside the hovel, and with relief, slammed the wicker door shut behind the three of them.

“Well, I never thought to lay eyes on you again,” he said tersely. “We have a lot of catching up to do, it seems.”

Will nodded in dumb agreement.

“This is Lizzie. She’s the daughter of a Dunchester mercenary. We married in the Spring. She has a sharp tongue, an eye for a bargain and she rarely smiles. But then we’ve had precious little to smile about this past year.”

His wife’s expression became, if it were possible, even dourer.

“A copper piece a month we were supposed to get,” Jack continued. “That was the price Mother settled on for selling you to that nobleman! Whatever happened to that?”

“You didn’t get it?” mumbled Will.

“For a while, yes. Then it all stopped. Nothing.”

Of course, thought Will, that must have been at the time of Alexander’s disgrace and imprisonment. It was no surprise that no payments had been sent since then. “Where are Mother and Father?” he asked, looking around and taking in the familiar sights and smells of the mean little hovel.

“Dead,” replied Jack unsentimentally. “Father worked himself into the ground not long after you abandoned us. Couldn’t cope with the extra workload you left him with. Mother followed him to the grave soon after.”

Will nodded numbly. “And Daniel?”

With equal brevity, Jack informed him that their middle brother had signed up to join the King’s futile foreign adventure, and for all he knew, was very likely dead as well. “I hope to God the three of them are together and in a happier place now. They had precious little joy in this world.”

Will looked sadly at the only remaining member of his family. He and Jack had never been close: the ten year gap between them an insurmountable obstacle.

“And what news do you have, brother?” asked Jack.

Will shrugged. How could he begin to explain? To hope to make Jack understand the bizarre perversities of his time at Castle de Montford? “You don’t want to know,” he mumbled.

Jack let out a long sigh. “You’re probably right. You look as if all you’re good for nowadays is to be a rich man’s slut. Well that’s all in your past now. The question now, is what do we do with you? I suggest you start by cleaning yourself up and getting rid of that thing sitting between your arse cheeks.”

Jack was too ashamed to allow Will out of the door, so it was decided that he would assist his new sister-in-law around the home, in feminine tasks that would better fit his whorish experiences at the castle. Lizzie wordlessly acquired his fine embroidered tunic and would have done the same with his tights, had not Will objected so strenuously.

“Elizabeth, do you really want to wear them, given where they’ve been and what acts we can only imagine have been committed in them?” asked her husband.

“I can’t afford to be proud,” spat the wife. “They’ll come clean in the wash. And they’re finer than any stockings you’ve ever given me. I’ll be the envy of all the women in these parts with those to grace my pins!” She hitched her skirt up to show her pale, thin calf in what she intended to be a flirtatious manner.

“She can’t have them,” said Will implacably, outraged that the gorgeous garment could possibly be wasted on her stick-thin legs. Besides, they were his last reminder of his time at the castle. Under no circumstances was he prepared to relinquish their glossy lustre and return to the miserable, rough hessian trousers of his childhood.

“You have the tunic,” sighed Jack. “Let him wander around in his slutty hose if it makes him happy.”

Will smiled at his brother, a small victory in their new household arrangement. Meanwhile Lizzie glared at him with enmity in her dull, grey eyes.

Night fell. Odin the Viking had been on the road since mid-afternoon, dispatched with alacrity to seek out and return Alexander Courcey to face the wrath of his royal master. There had been no sightings in the immediate vicinity of the castle. Odin strongly suspected that his quarry had wisely, and with considerable caution, avoided any populated areas. A week or more had passed since Courcey’s escape, and the trail had most definitely gone cold. The one ray of hope was, that as far as he could tell, Courcey was still on foot. Odin - travelling on horseback – would have the distinct advantage.

He was just thinking about the necessity of setting up camp for the night when a sound reached his sensitive ears. There it was again. It was a voice: a hoarse cry for help. At first, he ignored it and made to turn his steed in the opposite direction. After all, he had no time for distractions now. Every second he spent away from the castle allowed that slimy little whore Raymond to worm his way ever deeper into the affections of the Prince. Nevertheless, something instinctively told him this was a curiosity he should investigate.

He rode closer to the sound and came across a small stone cottage shrouded in darkness. He tethered his horse outside, drew his sword and tentatively pushed the door open. He struck his flint and held it up high to illuminate the room. A bizarre sight met his eyes.

There, hanging from the rafters, were two well-built young men, arms tied above their heads, two pairs of muscular legs encased in the same large pair of brown tights. Presumably they had been abandoned there for some time, as the room smelt of piss, and tell-tale wet stains ran down the legs of the hosiery.

“Praise the Lord!” sobbed one of the men, his auburn curls flopping into his exhausted face. “Please, Sir – we have been swindled and misled. Will you do us the great favour of freeing us?”

Odin considered the request for a moment, and then pulled up a chair and sat down, a dark grin on his brutish face. He spread his leather-clad legs wide and rubbed casually at his codpiece. “You seem to have ended up in quite an unusual predicament,” he observed. “Whoever tricked you certainly had a wicked sense of humour.” With a gravelly chuckle, he added, “You look fucking ridiculous.”

Arthur and Stanley went as red as beetroots as the stranger continued to laugh freely at the sight of the two of them, bare-chested and joined at the butt.

“You’ve clearly been hanging here some time if you’ve both had to piss your tights. Maybe I should leave you there for a while longer to entertain me. I could make you dance for me. You think you could manage that?”

“Please, good Sir,” begged Arthur. “As you are a good Christian man, untie this rope for us. We’ll do anything.”

Odin rose from the chair. “You’re lucky I’m in a hurry. I’m tempted to ransack your home and leave you here for the amusement of your next visitor,” he remarked.

Odin’s head almost touched the ceiling in the humble little cottage, so it was no effort for the Viking to reach up and unthread the knots that Alexander had tied so assiduously to the iron hook. Both brothers sighed with immense relief as their tortured arms – stretched taut for so many hours – were finally allowed to sink to their sides.

“There,” smirked Odin. “Now you will be able to pull off that giant pair of tights that you’ve been forced into!”

However, the brothers’ faces only blushed a deeper shade of crimson.

“What is it? Why don’t you step out of those humiliatingly sissy tights of yours?” And with that, Odin yanked at the waistband of the hose and pulled it down to the brothers’ knees. Two pairs of cocks and balls were exposed, but still the brothers remained jammed together, back to back. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked.

“Our… our…” stammered Arthur. “Our bums have been glued together. We can’t get free.”

Odin immediately erupted in guffaws of laughter. “You mean you’re stuck arse to arse!” he exclaimed. “Come along now, surely two such strapping brutes can wriggle yourselves free?”

The giant continued to laugh uproariously as the brothers attempted to do just that. Arthur reached down to pull his feet free from the brown hose, but as he did so, the weight of his brother fell against him, and he toppled onto his front. Stanley – like some bizarrely conjoined Siamese twin, landed heavily on top of his elder brother.

Eventually the two of them somehow managed to roll onto their sides, but like an upended tortoise, could not succeed in getting back on their feet. Panting and gasping, they were too ashamed to look Odin in the eyes. With a contemptuous snort, Odin drew his sword, and, the unhappy smiths cowering before him, slit their piss-moist hose along the seam, leaving the brothers prone and naked on the floor. They could move their legs freely now, but still they had to scrabble around for several minutes before they could co-ordinate their connected bodies and crawl to their feet.

Odin encircled the two naked men. “The glue will come loose eventually I suppose, but I imagine it will be painful – you’ll probably lose some skin, and your asses will be red raw for a few weeks.”

“I don’t care!” blurted out Stanley miserably. “I’ll do anything to get that ginger bulb out of my backside!”

Odin raised an inquiring eyebrow. “So he stuffed your butts too – and with ginger? What a bastard. That must be stinging your bumholes really badly, boys, I guess. All that ginger juice coating your cunts? Your visitor has certainly left you something to remember him by. I wonder why he went to so much trouble.”

Suddenly a pained expression crossed Stanley’s face. “Of course!” he exclaimed.

“What is it?” asked his brother.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? He wanted to buy Fallow, didn’t he?”

Stanley waddled over to the window, his older brother with no choice but to follow him. “Look! That thieving bastard has stolen our horse!”

“He was on foot?” asked Odin, his heartbeat quickening. “Tell me – what exactly did this visitor of yours look like?”