Antinous was groaning and crying as the Tripolian general hunched over him, thrusting hard up into the Kozanian captive’s channel. Antinous was on his back on the couch in General Herotis’s battle tent, his wrists still tied and hooked to a tent pole over his head. His knees were bent, feet flat on the surface of the couch, thighs spread, and a cushion under the small of his back, as the general knelt between his thighs and huffed and puffed at getting his cock deeper up into the small captive’s channel.

“Give it to me, cub. Open up to me more,” the general growled. “Don’t tell me you haven’t taken a man’s staff before.”

“No, not ever,” Antinous whimpered. He was panting hard. The worst was over now. The conquering general was inside him, and the pain was receding. He was opening to the cock, and as the staff settled down to a smoother ride in pumping him, Antinous’s groans melted into moans.

“Not ever? You’re not a boy. You should be experienced. How old are you? Don’t Kozanians know how to train their boys to the cock?”

“I’m fourteen, Master. And I’ve never...”

“In Tripolis you’d be well trained to it ere now,” Herotis murmured, moaning his own pleasure now that he was well-saddled on the lad and had settled into a steady stroke. “Backward Kozanians,” he added, “leaving sweet meat like you to later.” When the bound captives from the successful battle in the north against the recalcitrant Greek State, Kozani, had been brought to the commanding general of the southern Greek state of Tripolis, the small, handsome, blond boy had stood out as desirable. Herotis needed a new cup bearer; his previous one had died in the day’s battle. And he always fucked his cup bearer to release tension. The ways of Tripolis were for older men to mentor and sexually train boys.

“It’s not the way in Kozani, Master,” Antinous replied through clinched teeth. He was getting the hang of it now, putting his pelvis into countermotion to the general’s thrusts and learning to relax his channel so that it would open to the demands of the cock. He even found that he could manage some control of his passage muscles rippling over the hard shaft and that this brought him added pleasure too. Both of them were getting pleasure from the coupling. Antinous was learning he could enjoy this. Herotis’s pleasure increased as Antinous did so. It wasn’t long before they were moving together as one.

Herotis was surprised to learn that the customs between older and younger men were different in Kozani. But no matter, the young man was delicious even though he was older. Fourteen was still a nubile age, and it was the lad’s first time. There was added pleasure in being first inside the channel of such a comely young man. And the captive was taking it well now, giving the general new waves of pleasure as he yielded to Herotis.

The lad would do. He would do nicely. He aroused Herotis’s phallus more eagerly and made it harder than his previous cup bearer had done. At Herotis’s age, hardness and maintaining hardness were important goals to strive for.

The general turned Antinous over on his belly, urged him up onto his knees, remounted him, and, saddled on the young man’s hips, began pumping him again. Antinous moved his pelvis back onto the shaft in rhythm with the general’s thrusts. The young man knew it was in his interests to please the general, and he’d known that if he’d been successful in being captured alive and brought to General Herotis, whose sexual appetites were well known, what he was expected to do was to wheedle himself into the general’s tent and trust. He’d already know that would mean making Herotis want to be inside him again and again.

“What is your name, lad?”

“Antinous, Master.”

“You will be in my tent from now, Antinous, as my cup bearer.”

“Yes, Master,” Antinous answered, his spirits soaring despite the soreness in his gut from the thick rod pistoning his channel. The first phase of his mission had now been accomplished.

The general fucked on, unaware of the viper he had brought into his tent. He smiled as he stroked. After a cold start, the Kozanian captive was warming up nicely. He had opened to the cock, was moving with it, and the muscles of his channel walls were undulating over the staff, massaging it and giving the general extra pleasure. He would do nicely, quite nicely. There were advantages in breaking in an older boy; their bodies were better developed, they accepted their fate better, and they learned more quickly. This captive was refined. He wouldn’t say, but he obviously was from the upper classes in Kozani. He might come in useful if and when Herotis launched an all-out offensive on Kozani. They had done well, but it was time to pull back now; supplies were getting low and the Kozanians were holding firm behind their walls. Good thing one of their key generals had defected to the Tripolis side.

They may be withdrawing from the battlefield, but Herotis had no intention of withdrawing from this luscious boy’s ass. Not until he’d had his full of the debauched virgin.

“I will not buy boys,” Amicus said with a dismissive wave of his hand, although the gleam in his eyes suggested otherwise. “They are unreliable and too inexperienced and they break the crockery while playing their childish games.”

“These are no boys, Excellency,” the slave master simpered. He had brought a line of slave boys to the palace of the senator Marcu in Tripolis and stood at the foot of the verandah for the honored guest of the Greek Tripolis state to inspect. General Herotis, Amicus’s sponsor, stood with them. Marcus scanned the line of youths standing before him, bound, and attached to each other by leather leads. “These are all past their playing stage and have been trained in service—in special service to a nobleman such as you. Besides, I was told—”

“You did tell me you liked your servants lithe and blond and graceful and small enough not to overturn the furniture, Amicus,” General Herotis overrode the wheedling of the slave master with a smile. “Come select one of these and be done with it. You have done us a great honor by breaking with Kozani and coming to us. We can surely take Kozani with your help. Accept our gift of your own serving man; you must be tired of calling upon the senator’s servants after he has done with them.”

Within, Herotis was less patient. Get on with it, you treasonous sea slug, he was thinking, and he was not fooled for a second that it was a kitchen servant they were shopping for here.

“Well, I don’t know,” Amicus replied as he reached over for his wine cup. As soon as he set it down, Senator Marcu’s own serving man stepped forward to refill his cup.

Amicus was quick to move his hand under the boy’s skirt I back and finger his whole while he poured the wine.

Angry, but controlling himself, Senator Marcu said. “The slaves over there, Amicus. Do pick out one of those for your own use, please.”

Amicus bounded off his couch. “Well, perhaps if I saw them in the light, and without those loincloths. Come, bring them out on the terrace where there is sunlight.”

General Herotis snorted inwardly. That was what Amicus was most interested in, he thought—how the lads looked like without their loincloths.

Amicus pranced out onto the terrace, and the slave master fell in step behind him, tugging on the leashes of the three small blond men struggling along behind him and hissing at them to strip down while they were moving to the terrace.

“How can we be sure he’ll pick the right one?” Marcu whispered to the general, with whom he shared the ruling of Tripolis, as he watched the defector Kozani general, Amicus, clucking and prodding the bodies of the young men out on the terrace, spending as long as he thought the Tripolis general would tolerate in narrowing his choice to one—in the process getting some pleasure out of all three.

“They are all the right one,” Herotis muttered back, and then he laughed. This was followed by a slight scowl. “But I already regret having included one in the mix. These are among our best-trained lay boys. Whichever one he picks will keep us apprised of his activities here in Tripolis. It was indeed a small victory when he deserted the Kozani and came over to us—he was one of their best military minds, despite his stupidity in other matters. But I don’t trust a traitor.”

“And look at the fool out there,” Herotis continued, changing the subject. “Who does he think he’s fooling? He’s not picking out a servant. He’s picking out someone for his bed. But that’s fine. We want him besotted with whoever he selects. He will be more ours with a Tripolian catamite than otherwise. Ah, there you are, dear brother Amicus, back with us again. Boy, refill the flagon of wine for our hero brother. Have you selected? Yes you have, and a very good choice it is too. Antinous, is it not?”

There was a catch in Herotis throat when he said this. Of course Amicus would pick Antinous. What man wouldn’t? As he feared, Herotis already regretted including Antinous among the candidates—but Antinous had insisted. He continually wished to show Herotis his loyalty to the Tripolian cause.

If Herotis remembered that Antinous too had come from Kozani, as a captive, that had been buried in the back of his brain. He had become so besotted with the young man that he didn’t think about where he had acquired him.

Amicus’s selection was standing in the center of the room, demur, his hands at his sides and his face looking shyly at the floor. He was small, as they knew Amicus really liked, and with blond curls falling down into his face. His body was lithe, that of a graceful dancer, and he was perfectly muscled for the role—not anything either overdone or underdeveloped. He had the cock and balls of a boy, which was particularly in demand this season, but he was old enough now—fourteen—to be well experienced in how to please a man in the fuck.

His lips were full and sensual and his eyes hazel and sultry, as Herotis knew without the young man having to raise his head. Of the three, he gave the greatest impression of being innocent and virginal—although Herotis knew full well this was just a trained pose. He knew this because Herotis was a master of diplomacy through the art of subterfuge and spying and also because he had very intense and personal experience with the boy that belied any claim Antinous might make to being either innocent or, the gods laugh, virginal.