[This is a prequel story to the one entitled “Fugitive Brother”]

I had no knowledge of or complicity in the events that led to my fleeing Tyre, but then no possible claimant to the throne of Phoenicia had innocence to excuse them. By my very existence, I, having survived to fourteen, was an unwanted wrinkle to my father, King Salem, and most certainly a threat to the designs of his older sons. As soon as my half brothers realized that, my fate was sealed—or at least would have been if my mother, Stella, and one of the king’s counselors, Taari, had not taken matters into their own hands. Of course, taking matters into their own hands had been what had drawn the king’s attention and ire in the first place. They apparently viewed me as a possible successor to the king.

I doubt that King Salem even knew I existed until two of his other sons, by Phoenician wives, Jabez and Xander, both being well past twenty, not only were becoming anxious and began measuring his throne for fit but the two primary contenders were also starting to point out the subversive activities of the other to the king and were looking around for the possibility of paring down the list of contenders. The king must then have had a list made and been informed that a Greek wife who once had intrigued him and had since relocated to another palace up the Mediterranean coast from Tyre had given birth to and was raising a son. Not only did he have a mixed-origin son, but that son, having reached fourteen years of age, was being trained as a prince. Prince Jabez, for one, was making noises that that was one too many princes, and some of the other princes were mysteriously going to their greater reward, so Stella, the Greek wife, wisely decided that it may be time for me, Hiero, to visit her homeland, Greece.

This came to pass, but not exactly in the way Stella—and her confederate in the king’s palace and councils, Taari—planned.

I had a tutor as I was growing up, a magnificent soldier named Ikaros, who was my devoted companion and, as I was coming of age and into a pleasing form myself, increasingly more than a companion. Part of the training of a prince was in agility and strength, both served by the sport of wrestling. Wrestling in the Greek cultural world, and the court of the Phoenicians had incorporated the basics of Greek culture, was practiced in the nude. Also of the Greek culture was the institution of mentors being sexually dominant over their students. Throughout my world there was little distinction on who you could love or lay with, certainly not one based on gender. Sexual satisfaction and breeding were not always seen as inseparable.

Fourteen was the age of developing into manhood.

I was a prince, even if in neglect, and Ikaros was a common soldier, so there was a taboo to us taking on the traditional Greek mentor-student roles, but as Ikaros and I progressed in our use of wrestling in exercise and building of bodily grace and strength, it became increasingly evident that we desired each other and that I was fully capable of desiring another man.

It was only a matter of time that, social class distinctions notwithstanding, I would be initiated into sex and receive my training in the techniques and pleasures of that art at the hands of Ikaros. We were of a culture where a man could go with other men as well as with women and male-to-male coupling was common, especially in the Phoenician court.

When Ikaros was told to be my companion on the sea journey to Greece to my mother’s people near Olympia in the Greek city state of Elias on the Peloponnese peninsula, we both assumed we would become lovers during the journey. I am sure my mother assumed this as well or she would not have turned me over to Ikaros as my guide. She surely had seen the two of us growing together. We had been kissing and touching for some time, and Ikaros, at least, was a little difficult to overlook as being in magnificent erection as we wrestled in the palace courtyard. That Ikaros was one of my mother’s lovers was seen as no impediment to Ikaros being my lover as well.

My mother was Greek and it even was the way at the Phoenician court. Sometimes a young nobleman coming into his majority in Phoenicia was initiated and taught the ways of sex by women of the harem and sometimes by their male tutors—and sometimes by both simultaneously. My mother knew it was my time. If I hadn’t been a prince, I would have been initiated far earlier than this.

Thus, Ikaros and I looked forward to our sea voyage from the Phoenician coast to Greece as a time for the beginning of intimacy. The first three days on the sea, however, the sea was so angry that we both, not being sailors, spent our time hanging over the rails and heaving into the sea. Neither of us was able to think of coupling at all. And the relentlessness of the stormy sea saw to it that Ikaros and I never coupled—but I was to lose my virginity to men soon enough anyway.

“And no matter what the boy prince tried to think about, he could only think of the golden crown deep in the cavern of the Minotaur, the half man, half bull, who used and devoured any boy who tried to pass him to get at the treasure—who wanted to be king. And there came the day that the prince himself could hold off no longer and went in seek of seizing the crown.”

The storm had abated a bit and Ikaros and I were huddled together at the bow of the ship en route to Greece from Athens. Our time to initiate total intimacy had come. Ikaros wove me a tale of royal succession machinations of this quadrant of the Mediterranean Sea, of the great Minotaur monster who inhabited a deep cavern on a nearby island and ravished and destroyed young princes from the surrounding territories seeking their kingships. Ikaros, a bull of a man, was about to initiate me and was spinning this story to calm me as his gigantic member came closer and closer to my virginal passage.

“The mists of the cavern began working their spell on the boy prince when first he entered the cave and soon he was lost in the labyrinth of passages, stumbling around as if sluggish and drunk, losing his usual agility. He heard the deep snuffling of the man-bull creature and smelled it musky, arousing, enticing scent err before the monster itself came into view, sitting upon its throne, surrounded by the bones and skulls of those princes who had gone before this prince.”

I was naked and Ikaros had pulled me into his lap, crosswise, his left arm embracing my back, his left hand suspended over my left breast, the fingers of that hand touching and stroking my nipple. My right leg was thrown across his thighs, my left leg was dangling between his slightly spread thighs. His right hand was encasing and stroking my cock. His enormous erection pushed up under my balls. It was moving back and forth, now the top of the hard shaft stroking over my puckered hole, now the bulb teasing the hole, mere moments from starting to penetrate and enter me. I was panting and moaning low in anticipation of what was to come, concentrating on Ikaros’s telling of the tale, but yearning for the moment the bulb of his staff lodged inside my entrance and the shaft started working its way up inside me.

“The Minotaur was a being of monstrous proportions. The head was that of a bull, the horns curving up from the sides of its head into a cruel sharp point. The torso was that of a man, but with monstrously bulging muscles. The chest was the color of a man, but at the edges it tapered off to a blue-gray matting of downy hair. The arms were those of a man, but the legs were those of a blue-gray haired bull, ending in cloven hooves. The thighs were turned out, with the monster’s groin thrust forward. The cock was that of a magnificent bull in heat. The Minotaur, sensing the approach of a human sacrifice, was in full, thick and long, pulsating erection.

“The prince’s attention was caught by the glitter of the mound of golden coins behind the throne of the Minotaur, a king’s crown perched on top. His mistake was not in correctly gauging the reach and agility of the Minotaur, who lashed out, seized the boy, and pulled the prince into his body. He held the boy there, crosswise on his lap, holding him fast with his left arm wrapped around the prince’s back, his left hand pressing on the boy’s left breast. The prince’s right leg was thrown over the Minotaur’s lap and his left leg dangling between the monster’s thighs. The Minotaur’s erection pushed out from underneath the prince’s balls as the monster seized the boy’s cock with his right hand and quickly stroked the prince to a release of his virginal juices.”

I cried out my release as Ikaros’s hand brought me to climax. We had been here before, but no further. We both knew we would go further now—all the way to paradise. We kissed passionately, and he grasped and lifted my hips, setting my entrance on the point of his thick erection, the blub of the shift pushing into my anus.

“The Minotaur lifted the prince’s hips, brought his massive shaft into position, and the boy screamed out in surprise, pain, and passion, as the Minotaur pulled his anus down hard on the shaft, which buried itself up in the soft, previously unknown-by-man passage. The prince’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed into a faint as the Minotaur raised him and slammed him down on the penetrating monster shaft, raised him and slammed down, going deeper, stretching the virginal passage to near endurance, raised him and...”

I cried out as Ikaros’s cock penetrated me beyond the rim of his cock head as he pulled me down on the shaft. He lifted me off the cock in preparation for pulling me down hard on the full length of him, and...

The storm was upon us again with a fury. In our preparation for my initiation, we had not been aware that the storm was gathering again and bearing down on us. Just when Ikaros was at the point of deflowering me, we were hit with a giant wave that pushed me hard again the rail of the ship and that sent Ikaros over the side to be swept away in the current.

Chaos took command of the vessel and the sailors were moving here and there as the waves and wind allowed them. Some, like Ikaros, were swept overboard in the initial attack from the sea. The captain seized me and tied me to the mast to keep me from going overboard as well. He well knew I was his most important cargo. But in securing me, the captain himself was swept overboard by a wave.

I saw no other human aboard as the ship continued to be toss about by the fury of the storm until, as I blacked out, I saw the rocks and foaming surf of a ragged shoreline looming ahead and sucking the ship into a cauldron of splintering destruction.

I came to on a sandy beach amid rock outcroppings that went down and into the water, which was calm as glass now. Remnants of the ship were hung up on the rocks a short distance off shore. I was tangled up in the roping and netting of the ship’s mast and it would be some time, if ever, before I would be able to untangle myself. The sky was cloudless, the sun overhead relentless. I was naked, as I had been on the brink of being deflowered by Ikaros. Regret sliced through me like a knife at the thought of beautiful Ikaros, there in one moment, magnificent in erection, and gone the next.

Something blotted out the sun and, focusing, I saw that it was a warrior—a Greek soldier in short skirt, helmet and shield, sandals with lacings up to his knees, and a sheathed dagger lashed to his calf. And not just one soldier, although the one between me and the sun was the largest and most muscular. I looked around. There were six of them in all standing over me. Had I gone to the afterlife, I wondered. And how did I know they were Greeks? I realized I’d instantly recognized them because of their distinctive helmets, my mother having shown me one and explained the difference between a Greek war helmet and a Phoenician one, and because beyond them I spied a Greek naval vessel, a small one, pulled up onto the sand away from the rocks. My mother had spent a lifetime showing me the differences between Greece and Phoenicia.

“What do you think, Phaidros?” one said to the oldest, more battle seasoned appearing of the six. And that confirmed their origin. They spoke Greek.

“I think we sup first, then we sport, Dionitrios,” their apparent captain replied. They all laughed.

That was when I realized they must have been lost in the storm too but had ridden the tempest better than my vessel had and had come onto shore to forage—unless we were in Greece, and I did not think I’d been on the sea long enough to be at my destination yet.

The leader, the one called Phaidros, was swinging a wine flagon. One of the others had a loaf of bread he was taking chunks off of to pass around. Another held the roasted leg of some animal bigger than a chicken but smaller than a sheep in his hand. It wasn’t just food they had foraged either, I could now see. Between where I was and the Greek ship, protruding from the edge of a sand dune, were the bare, slender legs of what appeared to be a woman on her back. The legs were spread open, but they didn’t move.

“Is it a man or a woman?” asked one of the soldiers. They were all peering down at me, and I realized they were talking about me rather than the woman lying still on the sand.

“Does it matter?” said another, and again they all laughed.

“Could be either from the face—a handsome young devil,” Phaidros answered. “But from what dangles between his legs, I’d say a man.”

“And does this man—surely not much more than a boy—have a hole too?” The one who spoke was the one who asked if it mattered what gender I was.

“Let us see,” Phaidros said, and a couple of the soldiers helped him turn the mast so that I went over on my belly. I cried out, “Please, no!” and then whimper a repeated, “Please, no,” as the captain penetrated me with a thick finger. “He’ll be good sport,” Phaidros said. “He’s tight. But he’s for later.” Then he said, “And he speaks. And in Greek. Where are you from and where are you bound for, boy?”

“I came from the sea, bound for Greece—Olympia, archontas—master,” I answered as calmly as I could, giving him a high honorific to please him. “Please, archon, unbind me. I am Greek, like you.”

“You are not Greek like me,” Phaidros said. “You are something else as well. But you do speak well-born Greek. And you seem to be the only survivor of your vessel. Are there others of your ship about?”

“No, archontas, just me—I think. We were set off course in the storm. I think all of the others were washed overboard. The ship’s captain tied me to the mast so I would not be lost.”

“So, you were the captain’s catamite, were you?”

“No, archontas, just a passenger.”

“Just a passenger important enough to try to save above all others? And now shipwrecked on a Cyprus beach where we too were diverted from our fleet. What do you know of Phoenicia? That is where we’re headed. To raid and pillage and make our power known.”

I didn’t respond to that beyond a weak, “I know nothing of these matters, archontas.” Phoenicia and Greece were not allies at the moment. And I wasn’t about to reveal that I was of royal Phoenicia birth. It wasn’t safe to reveal that in the Phoenician court. It was less so to rough Greek soldiers.

“Well, you just stay tight here for a bit,” Phaidros said to laughter from the others, “we’ll come back for you and give you some attention.”

Then they went off foraging. The one who had been called Dionitrios stayed behind to make a fire in a pit he dug on the beach. He came to me a couple of times to ask if I was in pain or needed my bonds relieved, not that he could free me. He made me a bit more comfortable. While he did, his hands fondled me and he became erect. He did nothing to me then, but he did ask, “Are you sure you were not the ship captain’s catamite?”

“No, archontas,” I answered. “I am not known by man.”

“As yet unknown by man? And you purport to be Greek and are a comely boy of fine body? How can that be? You are how old?”

“Fourteen, archontas.”

“Well, I will tell Phaidros so—that you are just a boy and as yet unused—but I fear that will make the men more excited rather than more prone to be less rough with you. Would that I were first, though.” He ran his hands over my body and encased my cock with one. I engorged for him, aching for my first release, and seeing that he was a beautiful, well-muscled man. He leaned down to me and we kissed. I yielded to him. Even then, I think I realized that survival led in pleasing these men. My gaze went over to the parted legs extending from the sand dune over toward where they had pulled their vessel up. The legs had not moved.

We heard the other Greek soldiers regathering before we saw them, so Dionitrios was back tending the fire when they arrived. They had brought food and drink—for them, of course, not me, although when they were done eating but not drinking, Dionitrios brought the roasted haunch of something, bread, and a cup of wine over to me, releasing me from enough of the roping for me to sit up and eat it.

“Here, you will need strength,” he whispered, running his hand through the hair of my bush and touching my cock.

Phaidros called over from the fire, “Romancing our little chicken, are you, Dionitrios? You know that I won’t let you be first—especially having told me that he is unused.” He got up and sauntered over to the tangled mast. I was nearly finished eating and drinking what Dionitrios brought and turned my attention to Phaidros, working at untangling me.

If ever I was going to get out of this dire situation, it was going to be before it began, when the soldiers were off guard. When I thought I was free, I tossed what was left in my wine cup in Phaidros’s face, jumped up, and made a run for it.

I wasn’t entirely free, however. My ankle still was entangled in the rope. I made it some distance away, though, with hope of escaping, when Phaidros laughed, jerked on the rope, and brought me to ground, where I landed, the wind knocked out of me, onto my back and watched the muscular and battle-scared Greek soldier, magnificent of body, remove his skirt and loin cloth as he advanced on me. He was in enormous erection, ready for what he then did. I tried to rise and he backhanded me across the face in one direction and caught me with a slap in the other direction before I fell back, dazed and in shock. He was on top of me before I could rise.

In fifteen painful minutes I no longer was a virgin to anal penetration by a man. Phaidros turned me, belly down, and, at least at first, crouching on my knees and elbows as, without preparation or preliminaries, he worked at stuffing his thick, hard cock inside me and, having accomplished that, swiftly fucked me to his ejaculation, his cock tearing and stretching at my insides, and after the initial pain, setting me on fire with the need of his filling thrusts.