Scrimshaw & Zelamir

Tribute Boys

A Fantasy in Just One of Our Possible Futures

Book Two

The Boy Hunting Party

Chapter 3
The Great Boy Hunt

Chapter 3a

The arrival of the Germans told by Karl the head keeper

Our boy hunting moors are famed through out Europe and indeed beyond as offering the best and most exciting sport. I carry the primary responsibility to seeing that this reputation is not only maintained but year by year enhanced. Don Carlos employs me and I am proud to work for so keen and discerning a sportsman. Indeed he is a good man to work for. He tells me what he wishes me to provide in the way of days hunting, approximate kill rates and leaves to me such matters as stocking levels, keepering, feeding and so on. The hunting of boys is the main sport we provide but not the only one. In the summer it's boys in the autumn duck snipe and other wildfowl while in the winter we can offer deer stalking and wild boar on the hills and on the lower ground pheasant shooting together with hare and the humble but very palatable rabbit. All in all it was work I enjoyed but I rarely had the opportunity to be idle. Least of all when one of Don Carlos's big spending clients came down expecting a week of concentrated boy hunting.

The big spenders were the most difficult of clients to satisfy. They expected the best food served by the pretty, willing and, the most difficult to achieve in the mountains, clean of brats. They expected to be allowed to lie in bed till late in the morning enjoying the sluts provided, to breakfast in leisure and then at their own convenience to slaughter enough wild boys to slake their often considerable blood lust and to give them ample opportunity to boast of their expertise in the hunting field when they got back to their homes. To satisfy them you had to have everything worked out in advance not only the food and sleeping accommodation but the drives and the killing grounds the latter chosen with some regard to the level of expertise of the clients. Most big spenders measured the quality of the sport provided by only one thing, the size of the bag. The whole operation had to be planned to give them the opportunity of experiencing the thrill of the chase while ensuring that at the end of the day they had a sufficient number of dead boys laid out on the ground to impress the folk back home.

I preferred catering to sportsmen of the old school like old Colonel Cobbold who came to stay with us year after year for a week at the beginning of the season. He would stay at the Arcos lodge with one brat and his own hunting dog. He would go out by himself on his pony perhaps staying out for days on end and would end his holiday with only one kill but one that he had stalked and run down by his own unaided efforts. He to my mind was a true sportsman but he paid only a couple of thousand euros for his weeks sport while the Germans would pay many more times that.

Reviewing in my mind the preparations I had already made I felt that I had left very little to chance. I had spent the morning planning the drives and checking that the killing grounds I had selected would be exciting but not too difficult for the German boys to ride their pray down. The previous day I had been out to the cargo vessel from North Africa that had arrived during the night to inspect the draft of fifty wild mountain boys I had ordered to be delivered to restock the hunting grounds in preparation for the arrival of the Germans. As I handled them checking the strength of their hard brown legs I reflected that the Captain must have taken notice of my request to keep them clean and regularly exercised, no doubt eager to receive the one thousand euro bonus I had promised him if they were delivered in a satisfactory condition.

My presence on the ship served another purpose also. It terrified the brats. No one encountering me can be in doubt of my profession. The boots, the leather leggings, the belt with the long knife in it's scabbard on one hip and the hunting horn on the other, the tweed hacking jacket and the felt hat all speak of the hunt. They spoke only some obscure African language but when they were brought up on deck their hands secured behind their naked bodies with the plastic ties about their thumbs I did not have to understand the meaning of their whimperings to recognise the terror in their fear glazed eyes. That the brats should have no doubt that they had arrived at the end of their journey and their lives I had taken my two favourite lurchers with me, Guardsman and Grenadier, fast, heavily muscled animals who even muzzled snarled and showed their teeth and lunged at the boys. The tart smell of boy's urine filled the air while the crew stood round and laughed enjoying the fun.

I had wanted to get the brats ashore that day and run them out to the holding compound to give them an additional day to learn the country and thus give better sport. Don Carlos refused this. He thought that his clients would enjoy the running of the brats and the sight of them would reassure them that they were getting their monies worth.

"As for sport," he said and smiled a little sadly, "I am afraid Karl we have to have people here who are not sportsmen. It is necessary to balance the books." I said no more on the subject. Don Carlos is a true sportsman with a respect for his quarry. I know it pains him to have to allow men who are butchers rather than sportsmen onto his moors.

I had one thing, I reflected as I turned right handed off the track beside the river onto the metalled road, to tell Don Carlos which would please him and take his mind for a moment off the arrival of his unwelcome guests. The feral was still around. I had watched him that morning through my glasses stalking one of farmer Torres young boys through the olive and cork oak trees that grew on the slopes of Monte Pindo. I had met the boy earlier in the day. He had been sent up to look for a goat that had strayed and was very frightened. Stories of the feral were rive among the Tribute Brats of the area. He wanted to keep close to me but I would have none of it and drove him away telling him to get about his masters business. I didn't want to be bothered with some stupid brat when I had important work to do. I thought too that maybe the frightened little slut stumbling about in the scrub might draw the feral out of hiding in search of food.

And so it was. I remained sitting quite in the saddle of my pony, after I had sent the boy on his way with a cut of my whip across his bare shoulders, watching him through my glasses scuttling in terror through the undergrowth. He was nothing special, a thin little runt, perhaps ten years old, his brown flesh marked here and there with the lash. Farmer Torres did not believe in over feeding his boys or letting them idle their time away. He had hardly covered two kilometres when I spotted a movement in the bushes to his left. It was the feral moving quickly but silently up on his prey. I got a good view of him as he flitted across an opening in the undergrowth a lithe long haired brute his hide, ribbed with a multitude of scars, burnt almost black by the sun and wind. I could easily have dropped him with a shot from my rifle. He was well within range and the old 303 I carry on the mountain is a marksman's weapon but he deserved a nobler death than to be knocked over by a lump of lead fired from behind a bush.

This was the third season he had survived; three summers of outrunning the hounds and the cantering horses of the huntsmen. No doubt some of the scars on his body came from the fangs of the hunting dogs and the lance thrusts of the men as well as from struggles to the death with his own kind. But more testing than the summers, he had lived through two bitter winters when the snow lay deep on the mountains and the freezing wind blew keenly from the East. Naked and alone, huddled shivering behind some rock, waiting for dark when he could venture out and make his way down to the valley. There lights glimmered in farm house windows hinting of warm fires and soft beds within, luxuries which he did not miss for he had never and would never know them. Then creeping in the shadows, alert for the slightest sound that could mean a farmer with his gun alerted by the barking of the dogs he would search for something to fill his empty stomach, a chicken, a sheep, best of all, because the flesh was sweater and there were no feathers or wool covering it, a Tribute Boy in his first or second year.

Silently but quickly the feral crept up on the unsuspecting brat. At the last moment boy sensed something and he turned but it was too late. With a rush the feral was on him. The boy screamed. He knew I was not too far away and he screamed for my help. "Master please Master help me Master." I did nothing. I was not going to kill such a brute as the feral to safe for a few further years of drudgery and lust miserable little tyke like him. The struggle was brief a moment of two of flailing arms and legs and then the feral had the boy on the ground beneath him. He buried his face in the side of the boy's neck. The brat shrieked in agony and was quiet but he still lived for I saw his legs twitching.

The feral lifted his head and I saw a deep jagged hole in the boy's neck from which blood oozed freely to mingle with the dry dust on the ground. The feral had a large lump of bleeding flesh between his teeth. He raised himself to his knees and I saw that he was aroused, his almost man sized cock standing erect out of a bush of dark black hair. So far as I could judge he was a good two years beyond his Release date. He would provide a magnificent trophy for the huntsmen cunning and strong enough to take him. The feral squatted for a moment beside his prey chewing on the bloody lump of boy's meat while fingering his rampant cock.

The boy's hands scratched at the ground and he began to try to drag himself away. The feral leapt on him pinning him to the ground. Then he was driving his cock into the boy with heavy thrusts of his hips. I watched as the feral's haunches rose and fell in hard urgent thrusts as he hammered his cock deep into the brat. The blood, the dust, the mountains, the hot pine scented air, there was a savage rightness about the time and the place. There are people who wish to stop our sport. I wished I could have had them there with me at that moment. Nature is very cruel at times but also very beautiful. The strong live on the weak and the weak feed the strong. Thus it is. Thus it always has been. It is a rule that applies in the cities as it does in the mountains.

The feral was soon finished with the boy. His lust sated he pulled himself clear and them while the boy still lived buried his head between the boy's legs tearing with his teeth at the tender flesh at the top of the brat's thighs. I sat for fifteen minutes or so watching fascinated as the feral sated his hunger on the flesh of his victim. Then marking the place where he had killed I slipped quietly off. I knew the feral would bury the boy's carcass under some rocks nearby to preserve it from foxes and other carrion eaters returning to feast on it's fly blown flesh for some days until he and the termites had picked the bones clean. It would be an obvious point for anyone to start from who wished to hunt the brute.

It was not all good news though. Don Carlos would feel obliged to pay Torres some compensation for the boy. But even that might have been worse. The feral could have taken the goat and that would have been more costly.

There were other reasons too apart from the sporting interest that Don Carlos would wish to know about the feral being on the prowl. It didn't matter too much if it took a couple of farm brats but it would be a great deal more serious if it took one of the high value boys from the hacienda or even worse one of the guests sons. All must be warned and told not to stray into the hills. Don Carlos's son Christopher was a bit of a worry. He was in the habit I knew of wandering off often with that tough little penal brat Xavier potting rabbits with his four ten. The gun would kill a well enough and should protect him but I knew Christopher. He was tough and hard enough himself. I wouldn't put it past him to scorn the use of the gun and to take on the feral himself on equal terms matching his strength and courage and cunning against that of the brute.. It would be a titanic struggle if it took place, for after Don Carlos himself I reckoned Christopher for all his youth as keen a sportsman with a strong a nerve as any I had met, but his father could well feel that it was one that should not be allowed to happen.

Karl's story of the coming of the Germans continued – a short interlude

So now I was eating breakfast in the restaurant of the Marina Hotel on the Gran Via, Ribadesella, looking out at the harbour and the long pier at the end of which the ship carrying the Berber brats had now moored. The boy was standing by my table, the coffee pot in his hands, a somewhat sleepy look in his eyes. He was a local boy but of good quality, a slim child, in about his third or fourth year of Tribute, long legged with the clear almost translucent skin that some times goes with a dark complexion. No doubt the proprietors of the hotel choose only boys for service in their public rooms that would be pleasing to their clients certainly he had pleased me last night. While he poured my coffee I ran my hand up the back of his thighs enjoying the feel of the smooth cool boy's flesh. He wriggle his bottom appreciatively and his tiny cock hardened.

"Master would you like me again please?" he asked hopefully. "The room is yours till midday Master "

I laughed and patted his tight little rump. No doubt he like all other Tribute Boys dreamt of finding a kind Master who would love them and be good to them and in time give them an easy Release. A dream that would delude and sustain him until the moment came when reality finally intruded.

"No boy I will be busy today. But you're a good little whore and I enjoyed fucking you. Here this is for you," and I took a 50 obol coin from my pocket and handed it to him.

"Master," the boy squeaked in delight. "Thank you Master."

He gazed at the fifty obol coin grasped in his small fist in joy conjuring up goodness knows what visions of sickly sweets or cheap trinkets.

"Now I must be off," I said rising. "Get my bag from my room and bring it to reception. Look sharp now or I'll have your bottom tanned."

The boy scampered off and a minute or so later was standing panting beside me in the Hotel Hall as I signed my bill. Don Carlos would meet it in due course and I was being treated with the deep respect that his name engendered with all he did business.

"You are going down to the ship Sir?" the clerk asked me. "The boy can carry the case for you if you wish."

"Thanks," I said and turning away from the counter was struck by the look of terror on the child's face. I could not understand it. I had thought the boy would be pleased rather than otherwise. He would be out of the hotel, he would have the chance to show off the Master with whom he had spent the night and who had tipped him so generously to his friends and the case was not a heavy one.

The clerk saw the look on the boy's face and laughed.

"He's frightened of the Berbers Sir," he explained. "He knows they eat Tribute Boys when they get the chance."

Like most of the many superstitions that fill the ignorant minds of Tribute Boys this had a basis in fact. It was not true of the terrified little brutes now cowering in their own filth on the cargo ship but it would be true of those few of them who survived the seasoning process to which they were about to be subjected and a hunt or two on the Picos. However these suspicions well based or not have their uses in keeping Tribute Boys in order and it is every responsible persons duty to encourage a proper sense of subordination and acceptance among the unfree section of the population.

"He's good reason to be frightened," I replied. "They don't only eat Tribute Boys. If they're not particularly hungry a favourite trick of theirs is to bight a slut's balls of, especially if he's been ungrateful or lazy or pinched food or anything."

I glanced at the boy and saw he was staring at me in wide eyed horror. The only escape, momentary though it is, from the drudgery and humiliation of their daily life open to the vast majority of Tribute Boys is provided by sex and to be deprived of that would be worse than death itself.

"They creep in at night," I continued, "and then snap." I reached out suddenly and caught the boy's hairless balls, hardly bigger than a couple of olives and squeezed them hard. He squealed in pain and fear. "They can get anywhere. No good locking doors or hiding if you've been a bad boy they'll get you."

"Anyway the one's on the ship have their hands tied behind their backs so they aren't very dangerous. Unless you've been naughty that is they can still bite. You haven't been naughty have you boy?"

"No Master no," he replied but I felt his voice lacked conviction.

"Well come along then. You have nothing to fear, have you?"

The boy shouldered my bag and hurried to open the door for me. I winked at the clerk and walked out of the hotel.

I set along the quay at a brisk pace. The boy carrying my bag following it seemed to me somewhat unwillingly.

"You going to help drive the Berbers out of the town boy?" I asked.

"Oh yes Master. My Master's very good and kind. He's told all the boys in the hotel not with a guest to help. He's a very good Master and we all love him very much," he declared speaking rather loudly and with a hint of desperation in his voice.

"If you really think that you're balls will be safe when you reach the ship," I assured him grimly. "They can tell what you're thinking you see so if you're lying they'll be bitten off in a second."

"I do really mean it Master. I love my Master and I'm very grateful to him for letting me serve him. 3; and 3; and 3; I'll do my best to drive those Berbers out of town I don't think we want them here 3;"

I smiled to myself and walked on. I came to the foot of the gang plank. I nodded at the two grooms lounging by the tethered horses. I could hear the under keepers swearing manfully on the deck above me and the occasional sound of blow falling on bare flesh as they prepared the Berbers for the next stage of their ordeal.

I set one foot on the gang plank and turned to look at the boy. He was shaking with fear.

"Come on give me the bag," I said holding out my hand, " and cut off back to the hotel. Quick now."

The two grooms roared with laughter as the slut thrust my bag at me and took off at the run back down the quay. He couldn't have run faster if a thousand Berber boys with bared teeth were pursuing him.

I wiped the smile off my face and walked up the gangway. I knew there was serious work ahead of me.

The drive to the Picos

If they had thought their arrival in harbour was to lead to an improvement in their lot my appearance dispelled that hope. A low whimper ran along the coffle of naked boys as they caught sight of me.

The Captain was waiting for me the transfer documents in his hands. Boys are a troublesome cargo, dirty and given to sickness. He was eager to be rid of them. The crew already had the hoses out ready to clear the filth from the deck. I did a quick head count and then walked slowly down the line of shivering brats checking that the metre lengths of chain linking their iron collars were firmly in place and their hands secured behind their backs. Don Carlos had paid good money for the brats and he would not be pleased if I allowed any to escape. He was a just man and realised that accidents would happen but carelessness he would not forgive.

Most of the brats cowered away from me as I moved among them. One, perhaps thinking he might win some kindness from me, smiled nervously up at me as I jerked on his neck chain. Such delusions had to be quickly crushed. The brutes had to be taught that they could look for no kindness from anyone. They had to learn, before they were released on the hill, that the world for them was a place of total cruelty and their only hope was to run and to run fast.

I twisted my left hand in the brat's neck chain and smashed my right fist into his mouth. I hit him again squashing his nose. His face was a mask of blood. I released my grip on the chain, he bent forward and I saw a broken tooth fall from between his split lips onto the deck. I had spoilt his looks but that did not matter. Don Carlos had not bought him to be fucked but to be hunted and he and his companions had been taught another useful lesson.

While I was busy checking the cargo I had been conscious of increasing noise coming from the quay below me. There were shrill shouts interspersed with the deeper tones of the grooms swearing and the occasional sharp crack of a whip. I straightened and looked down over the side of the ship. I could see a crowd of excited Tribute Boys filling the whole length of the quay and stretching right back into the town itself. They were near hysterical with fear and hate screaming for the 'Berber Ball Eaters' to be killed. The two grooms at the base of the gangway were keeping the mob at bay with their whips. They had cleared a wide semicircle around the edges of which naked boys strained back against the pressure of the crowd. Every now and again the crowd would push forward and the grooms would lash out with their whips causing the lead boys to scream and hurl themselves back into the mob. For the time the grooms were maintaining their position striking low at the legs of the brats nearest them. I could see though that as more and more boys joined the mob and their hysteria rose they would have to use greater force and strike at the brat's faces and balls. It wouldn't matter much if a boy lost an eye and it would be rather amusing if one lost his testicles to the whip when screaming for the blood of the 'Ball Eaters'. A few euros would placate the Masters of any sluts that were injured. No doubt the most valued boys would have been kept safe at home.

Never the less the hysteria was clearly reaching its' peak and consequently it was time I felt to move. If I delayed much longer the brats would have screamed themselves hoarse and their frenzy of hatred would begin to cool as they remembered they had tasks to perform and Masters who would tan their hides if they spent too long away from them. I wanted the Berbers to experience the full hatred of the mob to learn that even other Tribute Boys were their enemies.

I signed the release papers for the captain and handed him a draft for the passage money plus his bonus for delivering the boys in good condition. Getting the brats to their feet was easy though they spoke only some barbaric tongue that no civilised being could be expected to know. Any livestock will understand what you require provided you shout and hit them hard enough. It was another matter getting them down the gangway onto the quay where the hysterical mob of naked Tribute Boys screamed for their blood.

I ceased the lead boy by his collar and hauled with all my strength. The three under keepers swore and slashed at the brats bare bodies with their whips but still they balked. It was only when the ships crew with the Captain at their head weighed in with boots and fists that they began to move. As often happens after the initial resistance they came quickly scrambling down the gangway in a half run.

The howling of the vast pack of maddened Tribute Boys rose to a crescendo. The grooms lashed out desperately cracking their whips into the faces of the advancing boys. I saw one go down a hand clasped to an eye, blood welling from between his fingers, his mouth opened and twisted in a scream of agony that was swallowed up in the general din of the crowd. Again the whip cracked and a boy rolled on the floor blood gushing from the gaping wound at the junction of his legs where the lash had torn his balls from his body.

This momentarily sobered the crowd. One of the grooms took the opportunity to untether our horses. The other, the one whose skill with the whip had emasculated the slut whose high pierced screaming was now in the sudden hush clearly audible, stood ready to strike again. I made a note to mention him to Don Carlos. He deserved a special bonus and the Don might well wish to make use of his expertise with the whip on other occasions.

We mounted quickly. I rode straight into the mob hitting out on either side of me with my whip. I saw the slut who had shared my bed the previous night and laid the lash across his rump as he turned to flee. There was a a strange fierce excitement in raising a scarlet weal across the smooth brown flesh that had given me so much pleasure.

The mob surged about us screaming and spitting at the coffle of chained Berber brats. I heard fists and feet thudding into bare flesh and the cries of the helpless boys as they staggered along in my wake. Guardsmen and Grenadier the two lurchers trotted on either side of me, unmuzzled now, but limited by their training to sinking their fangs into boy flesh only when it pressed close. By the time we were clear of the quay though their mouths were stained red with blood.

Then it was through the town along the Gran Via and the Avenue Marques de Arguelles. Away from the harbour the crowds of Tribute Boys were less great and I had time to acknowledge and thank certain of the citizens who watched the spectacle from the upper floors of their houses and shops.

Soon we were out of the town and on the main Oviedo road. Not many years ago a constant stream of lorries and cars would have roared along this road. Now, since the great oil crisis, there were no lorries and the few cars were the luxurious play things of the very rich. Two or three swept past my column of frightened boys their occupants peering from the comfort of their cars at the brats as we hustled them along the road at a sharp trot. The boys howled and squealed as we drove them remorselessly on cracking our whips across the bare shoulders of any boy who stumbled.

Tribute Boys working in the fields bordering the road would run for a moment beside us shouting abuse and hurling sods of earth, glorying in a few minutes Release from their daily drudgery, happy for once to be able to be the abuser rather than the abused and happy too to find there were sluts even more miserable than themselves.

We ate in the saddle slaking our thirsts with long drafts from our water bottles. The boys of course did not enjoy such luxuries. This was for them a hardening process. They had been many days cooped up on the ship. Now I had to get them toughened up and fit for the hills in only a few days. That would not be achieved by mollycoddling them.

It was early afternoon by the time we had covered the 21 kilometres to Cangas de Onis. There again they had to run the gauntlet of yelling Tribute Boys. Crossing the high arched Roman bridge we whipped them on along the minor road towards Oseja de Sejambo.

The road rose steeply and it proofed increasingly difficult to keep the brats moving however hard we used our whips. Despite our best efforts, even using Grenadier and Guardsmen, the speed of the column slowed to a shambling walk. Boys went down on their knees dragging those in front and behind them also to the ground. We had to keep dismounting to kick and drag the lazy brutes back to their feet.

I had arranged with a local farmer to coral the boys ten kilometres above Cangas. It took us a full three hours to make the turning to the unsurfaced track running steeply down to the banks of the Rio Sella. It ended on a rocky headland below which was a shingle bank backed by a narrow grass meadow. No doubt in the winter the headland would have been a waterfall and the shingle bank covered by the river. Now with the Rio Sella at low summer levels it was more peaceful though the main body of the water ran fast enough in all conscience down it's cliff bound gorge.

The two carts full of supplies that I had ordered was standing on the rocky promontory. The three Tribute Boys in charge of it dozing in it's shade. They woke up fast when we drove the boy's past them and hid cowering under the cart. There were just three of them and lacking the courage of numbers my brats exhausted and shackled as they were, terrified them, such is the power of superstition on the stupid and ignorant.

I left the coffle of boys in the charge of a groom. We did not want them fouling the river with their filth before we had watered the horses and cooled ourselves in the stream. The water was cold and it was pleasant to plunge into it after enduring the heat and labour of the day. The Berber boys had collapsed on the shingle bank apparently utterly exhausted but as soon as we had finished bathing and I gave the word for them to be herded down to the water they moved fast. I watched as they threw themselves into the stream the clear water glistening on brown flesh ribbed with the scarlet marks left by the lash.

I shouted at the Tribute Boys to bring the troughs down to the shingle bank. I supervised them as they filled these with cold maize porridge mixed with tripes. If you want boys to run and to have heart you have to feed them fresh flesh. I knew that if I did not keep an eye on them the thieving little tykes would be filling their bellies with the food.

It was amusing watching the Berbers feed, jostling about the troughs their bums up in the air and their faces pushed down into the food. After they had eaten I had the Tribute Boys remove the troughs and wash them while my brats fell quickly asleep on the shingle. I let them lie there. They had to face a shorter but even harder march on the morrow and they would anyway be subjected to one more educational horror before then.

By dusk I had set out on the promontory, overlooking the shingle where my boys lay huddled together sleeping the sleep of the exhausted, long trestle table covered with a check cloth and set with places for twelve people together with candles and open bottles of wine Some way off a fire had been lit and beside it was a large tray stacked with juicy steaks awaiting cooking. Brushwood torches were thrust upright into crevices in the rock ready for kindling when it was dark. Don Carlos insisted that every time we ran a column of boys up to the Picos we should entertain the local notables of the area, the mayor of Cangas, the chief of police and the larger local farmers and land owners. It was good public relations.

I strolled up the track to meet my guests. One by one they arrived. Each on a smart looking horse, each accompanied by two running boys, one to hold the horse and one to serve his Master. The Chief of Police brought a third boy tethered by his wrists to his stirrup leathers. He was a pretty brat blond and round bottomed although his legs and knees were bleeding from where he had fallen and been dragged along the road.

"That one's for you," the Captain said as he dismounted.

"Has he requested his Release?" I asked. "You know how concerned Don Carlos is to comply with all the legalities."

"No need this time and no charge for the brat either," the policeman replied. "A runaway. We caught him in the town. Should have had him skewered on the spot but I knew you were coming so I kept him back. Mind you he's had to work for his living. The little whores been fucked silly since we caught him."

"Please Master," the brat whimpered, "I'm not a runaway my owner told me to 3;"

"Not a runaway you shit faced little turd," the good captain said slapping him hard across the face. "We caught him in town wearing shorts and he'd removed his collar. It was the brand that gave him away. Just a spot check."

"My owner took my collar 3;"

"A Tribute Boy caught wearing clothes is a runaway," the police man snapped hitting the brat again.

"A run away," I said angrily.

"Take him and tie him to the cart wheel, arms and legs spread, facing outwards. You know how," I ordered two of the grooms. They grabbed the boy and dragged him away.

To my mind a run away Tribute Boy not only offends against the law. He also by his act rebels against nature and god. The strong exploit the weak. That is nature's iron rule. You see it on the mountain when the wolf devours the lamb. You see it in our own society where the Tribute Boys spend their brief lives in the service of their betters. God has made me what I am and it would be blasphemous for me to rebel against his will. I am Karl head keeper to Don Carlos of the Hacienda de los Niños Tributos del Ezzaro. In doing that work to the best of my ability I am serving not only Don Carlos but also god for he has set me to that work. A Tribute Boy who runs away is rebelling against god's will. He sins against god and society and in doing so the ungrateful brute undermines natural and civil order.

If it is not presumptuous for one such as me to say it, I think the Holy Church is quite right when it teaches that Tribute Boys are mere animals devoid of souls. I know Don Carlos and some of his friends hint otherwise and for a clever educated man like him that may be well enough. I am a simple man. I see things only as they are. I look at that little whore I enjoyed in the hotel last night, without pride and without hope, eager to have his bum fucked so as to enjoy a few hours in a soft bed and a brief release from the life of drudgery for which god has designed him. I compare him with Don Carlos's son Christopher, proud, eager, brave. They are not the same. One is an animal the other a man.

I walked over to the cart where the brat was now tied. He wailed shrilly when he saw me approach. I walked to the tail gate of the cart and took a hammer from the tool box kept there. Walking round to face the sobbing brat I knelt down and reduced his right big toe into bloody lump with three heavy blows of the hammer. I repeated the operation with his other foot.

"You won't runaway again," I remarked.

"I'll be back when I've finished my meal," I promised him.

Then I walked back to the table to join my guests the boy's screams ringing in my ears.

Chapter 3b

Into the Mountains

I was tired but content. Boy hunting when all goes well is one of the noblest sports. The speed, stamina and cunning of the brat pitted against the skill of the hunter. At it's best man, horse and hound work together as a single unit and then all is drama and excitement. Nothing I think can match the spectacle as some wild fleet footed boy is flushed from cover to run for his very life the hounds howling with excitement at his heels, the man bent low over his horses neck, galloping at full stretch, the sunlight glinting on the deadly steel tip of his lance. The brat knowing death to be at hand doubles and twists in his flight desperate to escape back into the undergrowth from which he has been driven. The hounds extend every ounce of their strength to turn him away from safety and into the path of the huntsmen and his horse thundering down on their prey. The final shrill scream of the boy as the lance point penetrates his back, the whoop of triumph from the huntsman as he feels the shock of impact and sees the dark red blood well from the boy's wound.

But things can so easily not go well. There are so many things that can go wrong. There are not enough boys, the drive fails to flush them onto the killing grounds, they lack the stamina or will to run well, the horses or the hounds are too slow, the huntsman is inept. All these can go wrong and all, except the last, are the responsibility of the head keeper. So a great responsibility lies on me. I do not complain. I enjoy my work. To see a strong running boy ridden down and cleanly killed in the open and to know that it is my skill and my work that has brought the brat in top condition to that fate is deeply satisfying to me.

I had been at this game for many years and I new that much of the preliminary work had already been done. The hounds were strong and fast. The horses, light ponies really, quick and agile animals were in peak condition. The feeding grounds and drives on the Picos were all organised and well known to me from past hunts. I had brought the coffle of boys who were to form the subject of our clients' hunt to the base of the Picos without loosing a single one. All had gone well so far but there was quite a lot more to do and I would not be able to relax until the hunt was over and our clients had departed laden with the trophies of their kills.

The dinner was drawing to an end and I had one more task to perform. It would entertain my guests, serve as a warning to their boys and serve to further condition the brats in my charge. I stood up. The chatter and laughter was immediately hushed. I crossed to where I had placed my bedroll and took from it the leather apron that I used when working in the flesh house. It covered me from my neck down to my feet. Deeply stained it still was possible to see that it was made from a patchwork of pelts varying in colour from darkest chocolate to light honey. There was a shuffling of chairs round the table as my guests arranged themselves so that they were facing the cart to whose wheel the run away brat was tied. The serving boys hurried about the glade collecting the brush torches and carrying them over the cart so that the slut was in the centre of a pool of light and all around him was darkness.

He caught sight of me approaching and began to sob wildly. I had the attention of most but not all of my intended audience. The whore would have to make much more noise if he was to rouse the Berber brats from their exhausted slumber. I set about achieving this. Taking a blazing torch from one of the boys I held it for a few seconds almost touching the ground between the boy's spread legs. It's flames cast a flickering light up the inside of his legs illuminating his tiny balls and small child's prick. I held it there for a moment letting the boy feel the warmth of it against his bare flesh. Then I lifted it slowly. The flames curled about his hairless crutch blackening the flesh. The air was filled with the smell of burning boy. He screamed. God how he screamed. Shrill shrieks wrung form his body by the pain echoed from side to side of the valley in the still night air. A low murmur of fear and horror rose from the darkness where the Berber boys were tethered. Satisfied that I had their attention I stuck the torch into the ground and picking up the hammer from the tale gate of the cart where I had left it I set to work.

Standing close to the boy I spread the fingers of his left hand on the iron rim of the wheel and pounded them one by one into a bloody pulp of mangled flesh from which shattered fragments of white bone obtruded. Then I repeated the process with his right hand. I paused and looked into the boy's face. Snot and tears flowed from his eyes and nostrils. From his widely stretched open mouth shriek upon shriek came.

Reversing the hammer in my hand I hit him twice with the handle across the front of his mouth loosening the teeth in both his jaws. I rolled up my sleeves and then taking the pliers from the carts tool box I set about wrenching his teeth out. It was a long business and my arms were stained to the elbows red with blood before it was finished.

I was growing tired and many of my guests had some distance to travel home. I knew that Don Carlos, always a thought full and courteous man would be upset if he thought that I had inconvenienced any of them. It was time to bring the entertainment to an end. With two sharp blows I cracked his knee caps and turned away. Removing my apron I moved among my guests shaking their hands and bidding them goodnight.

After they had gone I undressed and despite the slut's whimperings quickly fell into a deep slumber. That is one of the great things I find about working in the fresh air. I have never any difficulty in sleeping especially if I retire to rest in the comfortable knowledge that I have worked hard and done my duty.

There was a heaviness about the air when I woke the next morning that promised trouble to come. Far off to the West occasional faint rumbles of thunder could be heard.

I rolled out of my sleeping bag and stretched myself. I did not bother to dress. There would be more blood soon and there was no point in soiling my clothes with it.

Once I had breakfasted I strolled, feeling the air warm against my naked body, across to where the brat hung by his wrists from the cart wheel. He was in a bad way. His eyes were closed and his breath came in short heavy gasps. Dried blood from where I had torn his teeth from his jaws caked his face and chest. More blood, this time from his mangled fingers, had flowed down his arms. I jabbed the hypodermic needle into the side of one thigh. His eyes flicked open as the shot took effect. He saw me and the screaming began again. I could hardly blame him.

While the under keepers roused and watered the Berbers I worked a little more on the slut using the hammer to break the bones in his arms and legs. I heard shouting from the shingle bank below me. A whip cracked. I realised the coffle of boys was on the move again. When the coffle had passed and was out of sight I unsheathed my hunting knife. At the moment the lead boy was driven onto the head land I lent forward and cut the runaway's throat. He had served his purpose and I am not a cruel man.

Three Tribute Boys were busy loading the carts. One scrawny little tyke passed close by me bent under the weight of the load he was bearing. He was by no means a beauty. The lash had marked his shoulders and robbed him of an eye leaving an empty socket. His Master's boot or fist had knocked three or four teeth from the front of his mouth.

He reached upward straining to lift his load onto the cart. I became aware of a need. Stepping up behind him I took hold of him under the arms and lifted him so he was lying bent over the tail gate. He whimpered in excitement and wriggled his bare bottom lewdly.

"Fuck me Master. Please Master. Let me show you what a good fuck I am Master," he pleaded eagerly.

My enjoyment of the boy was brutal and short. I hammered my cock into his writhing bum and a few seconds later came deep inside the moaning little whore. I pulled away from him my lust satisfied and slapped him sharply across his whip scarred rump. Dutifully he turned and dropping to his knees cleaned the filth from me with his tongue. That done I walked down to the river bank. As I plunged into the cold clear water I could hear the slut behind me crying out to me, begging me to fuck him again.

Refreshed from my swim I mounted my horse and set off to catch up with my column of brats. The path up the valley side was steep and rocky. Even my mount, a sturdy sure footed little cob well suited to the mountains, found the going difficult occasionally slipping on the loose stones. The boys urged on by my men had made good time and the river had been long hidden in the depths of the gorge before I heard ahead of me the shouts of my men and the crack of their whips as they drove the coffle upwards. We were out now on the open mountainside, clear of all vegetation except the occasional thorn bush and clump of coarse grass. The path had been cut into the almost perpendicular side of the mountain, a narrow strip of bare rock, bounded on the one side by a soaring cliff and on the other by a deep abyss.

I noticed the occasional spots of blood on the track. The sharp rocks must have begun to cut up the boy's bare feet. Excellent driving them on now would become a contest between the will of my men and the reluctance of the brats to move forward on lacerated feet, a contest my men would with the aid of their whips infallibly win.

The storm now was much nearer. I could see the dark clouds massed to the West about the peaks of the Pico de Ancares illuminated by frequent flashes of sheet lightening. The rumble of thunder that had been earlier a constant but distant growling presence was much closer now and more insistent.

I rounded a spur of rock and saw the coffle of boys a hundred metres or so ahead of me. The rear boy glancing back caught sight of me. He howled something in the barbaric tongue the boys spoke and broke into a stumbling run. He barged into the boy ahead of him and the pare of them tumbled to the ground in a jumble of naked limbs. Their fall checked the progress of the remainder of the column the sudden pressure on their short neck chains dragging the rest of the boys to their knees. My men swore and struck out with their whips. The boys howled and scrambled desperately to regain their feet. Before they could do so though I was up with them. I lashed out again and again with all my strength at the boy who had caused this chaos. He screamed wildly as the whip cracked down on his bare shoulders raising deep scarlet wheals, splitting the taught brown skin and sending a trickle of dark blood down his back.

At that moment the storm that had been threatening so long broke. The sky suddenly darkened, there was a crash of thunder that seemed to shake the mountain itself followed almost immediately by a brilliant flash of lightening. Then the rain began. It was not a soft gentle rain but sheets and sheets of ice-cold water plunging down on us from the skies washing down the cliff side turning the path into a torrent of tumbling grey water.

"Get them moving. Keep the little shits moving," I yelled at my men over the din of the storm.

Driven on by us the boys staggered forward water causing over them and glistening on their naked bodies. Suddenly the temperature dropped. What was falling now was not rain but hail. Large chunks of ice falling with great force that stung your hands and face. A low moan rose from the coffle of boys as the hail raked their unprotected flesh. But still we drove them forward. The hail eased but now it fell first as sleet and then in large flakes of snow. The track now was white flecked where the boys had stepped with spots of red from their bleeding feet.

There was a drama, a starkness about the scene that appealed to me. The column of naked brown boys toiling up the snow covered path, the towering mountains, the din of the storm all told of the noble savagery of a cruel and unforgiving world.

The storm I reflected was an excellent thing. I had spent the last few days teaching the brats that they could expect nothing but cruelty from man now they were learning the same of nature. When they were loose on the hill and the hunt had begun that knowledge would give them a desperate courage and determination that would render their pursuit and slaying a real challenge. I thought too how wise of Don Carlos to choose such a place for his boy hunts a noble and savage setting for a noble and savage sport.

Some I know criticise our sport for it's cruelty. I can only say that nature itself is cruel and for the boys death when it comes is quick. The desperate run, the sudden bite of the sharp steal piercing his side and then oblivion. A quick death and a noble one, can a Tribute Boy ask more than that. Most I think are not granted such an end.

Then, suddenly, the storm had passed. The sky cleared, bright sunshine warmed the air. The snow a few seconds before coating the world in white vanished and the only reminder of the storm was the grumbling of thunder about Torre Cerredeo to our East.

The sun did not diminish the boys' sufferings merely changed their nature. Heat and thirst replaced the torment of extreme cold. Indeed under the glare of the sun on the shadeless mountainside I and my men despite being mounted and provided with water bottles suffered severely. The brats naturally had no such comforts. By mid afternoon however the worst of their march was over. They had crossed the spur above the Rio Sella and were beginning the long descent to the head waters of the Rio Dobra. There in the holding compound I had specially had prepared for such purposes supplies brought down by the track that ran past the Mirador de Piedrafitas Puerto de Pandaris awaited us.

It was early evening when we eventually reached the banks of the Dobra. Young Juan Torres, the son of the farmer, was waiting for us with a couple of four wheel drive Toyota pick ups. Four Tribute Boys were busy unloading them under the supervision of one of his father's farm labourers, Bartolomé Majuco, a good man whom I knew well, while Juan busied himself filling the drinking troughs in the boy's yard with water from the river.

The compound was in fact no more than an area level ground bound by a dry stone wall hardly a metre and a half high with a narrow gap on one side. There was no gate but the gap could be barred if need be with boards. It was not so much deigned to confine the boys, they would be there only the one night and would not be going any where after the march they had endured, but to provide them with a minimal amount of shelter. Inside the yard they fell exhausted to their knees. My men and I moved among them striking off the chains that joined them by the collars and cutting through the plastic ties that held their thumbs together behind their backs. I doubt in the state they were, they were capable of thinking but if they did and fondly imagined these changes heralded an improvement in their lot they were going to be sorely disappointed before too many days had passed.

One by one they dragged themselves over to the troughs and drank deeply. Once they had slaked their thirst the Tribute Boys, closely supervised lest the thieving little brutes stole any for themselves, tipped sacks of steaming tripes into the troughs.

I had got the boys to the hunting grounds without loss. Now it only remained to turn them out on the hill. One thing though troubled me. The presence of the feral. I did not begrudge him his food but these boys that had been brought from North Africa to be hunted not to feed a wild beast. For the first few days on the hill they would be very vulnerable, weak, unaware of the danger he would poise to them. I had to take some action to protect them. I called young Juan Torres to me.

"Can you spare me one of your Tribute Boys? One that you will not miss," I asked.

"Permanently you mean?" He asked.

I nodded. I knew that he was bright young man.

"Certainly," he said and then shouted. "Cyclops 3; Cyclops you useless lump of sheep's shit get your filthy carcass over here quick unless you want the whip tickling your rib cage again you little turd."

The scrawny one eyed brat whom I had fucked that morning ran up and panting through himself to his knees at young Torres's feet

"You can have Cyclops here," he said prodding him none. too gently in the bottom with the toe of his boot. "No one will miss him."

I reached inside my coat for my wallet. Young Torres held up his hand to stop me.

"There's no need to pay me any money," he said. "Have the slut for a present. I'll be glad to be rid of him. For all the work I get out of him he might as well be dead. He'll be no loss. I should have made him ask for his Release long ago the idle little runt."

"If you're sure 3;" I began.

"Of course I'm sure," he interrupted me cheerfully. Now I must be off," and planting a final kick on the bum of the kneeling boy he turned and walked away.

"Señor," it was Bartolomé Majuco. "Señor a word before I go?"

"Certainly my friend," I replied.

"You will be returning to collect your Land Rover from Señor Torres's farm tomorrow evening?"

"Yes."

"I would be glad if you could find time to call at my home Señor. I have a matter I wish to discuss with you. To be frank a favour to ask."

"Of course it would be a pleasure."

The Torres farm house where we stabled our working horses was near the village of Sierra on the road between Covadonga and Cangas de Onis while Bartolomé's cottage was some kilometres higher up in the mountain. I could easily call in on him on the way to pick up my vehicle.

"Thank you Señor. I will see you tomorrow evening then," he turned and walked away. A second or two larger the two pick ups shrouded in a cloud of dust were bumping along the rough track leading down the Dobra valley.

"Well slut," I said to the Tribute Brat crouched on his knees at my feet, Unsaddle my horse and take the saddle and my gear over to the shelter of the trees. Quickly now."

"Yes Master. Thank you Master." The brat jumped to his feet, the few teeth to him flashing in a gap toothed grin in his sunburnt face and ran quickly off. I walked over to check one last time that day on the condition of the Berbers. The brat seemed pleased to be handed over to me. Perhaps he thought I had asked for him specially because I had enjoyed fucking him. Every Tribute Boy dreamed of finding a Master who fancied him and would give him plenty of sex and an easy Release. Well let the boy think that it would save me the trouble of keeping an eye on him in case he ran away. There was no need to let him discover just yet that he was destined to be eaten by the feral. Cyclops couldn't surely be his real name, it was the name, if I remembered from my school days correctly, of a one eyed giant in some old Greek story.

When I returned from my inspection I found the brat busy collecting armfuls of coarse grass.

"What do you think you're doing brat?" I asked.

"Please Master I thought I could use this to make a mattress for you to lie on Master."

I grunted and looked around. Really the boy hadn't made too bad a hand of things. The horse was tethered to a tree near by it's saddle resting across a fallen log. My gear lay neatly set out on the ground.

I opened my knapsack and pulled out a roll of bread and a hunk of the ewes milk cheese of the region.

"Fill this and bring it back here," I ordered throwing my water bottle at the boy. He caught it and set of at the run for the stream.

"Not there you stupid lump of dog's shit," I shouted angrily at him. "Above the pens. I don't want to be drinking boy's piss."

By the time he returned I was seated on the ground spreading the blue veined cheese on a slice of bread hacked from the loaf with my hunting knife. He dropped panting to his knees front of me and held out the water bottle. I took a swig from it and began to munch on my bread and cheese while the boy watched me hungrily with his single eye. I cut off a slice of bread and threw it to him. He stuffed it in his mouth and wolfed it down hardly giving himself time to chew.

"When did you eat last?" I asked.

"Master please Master yesterday evening Master. I can't do enough work to deserve to be fed more often. Master Torres is very good to have kept me so long Master."

I said nothing but standing up walked over to the bins where the food for the Berbers was kept. I lifted the lid of one of them and my nostrils were immediately assailed with the sweet nauseous smell of ageing flesh. I reached in and hacked off a considerable chunk of tripes. I threw it on the ground by the boy. He stared at me open mouthed.

"Go on then you stupid brute get that inside you," I ordered.

He was on it that second, tearing at it with his broken teeth, stuffing his mouth so full that his cheeks bulged, brown liquid trickling down his chin. He was not a pretty sight but for the moment he was mine and I had an obligation, just as I had to Grenadier and Guardian, to look after him.

I had another obligation to him. I could smell the little brute from where I sat, especially now he had been at the flesh. I had fed him now I had to clean him. Another boy I would have trusted to wash himself but I doubt if the Torres ever bothered to teach their farm brats anything about personal hygiene. I stood up and taking hold of the boy by the ear dragged him over to where the lads had lit a camp fire.

They greeted our arrival with grins and good natured banter. I got a bucket of water heated up and tipped a generous quantity of the dip we would use on the Berbers before turning them out on the hill the next day into it. Then I set to work scrubbing the accumulated filth from my brat's body. As I worked it became my believe that the Torres did not believe in being unduly gentle with their boys was amply confirmed. The little tyke's body bore innumerable old scars and a good number of open cuts and sores caused by no doubt well deserved floggings. The boy stood still only whimpering occasionally when the disinfectant stung in an open cut. These whimpers rose to a howl of pain when I rolled back his foreskin and roughly sponged the accumulated filth from behind it revealing a ring of raw flesh. This scream changed to an excited moaning when I transferred my attention to the cleft of his bottom.

"If you cum," I snapped, "I'll tear your balls off right now."

"Master it's all right Master I'll save it till you fuck me Master," the slut gasped pressing his fingers desperately into his perineum to cut the blood supply off from his suddenly erect cock. The men roared to think of my bothering with so deformed an animal.

"I don't care Master what they say," he whispered turning his face to look at me. "What matters is what you think."

I let that pass. He held no attraction for me in fact with his scarred body and disfigured face he was positively repulsive. I only fucked him that morning to gain release from the excitement engendered from the torture of the runaway. However I saw no reason wasting my time explaining things to him. I dismissed him with a sharp slap on his rump settled down to chat with my men.

It was a good deal later and with several glasses of wine inside me that I made my way back to the place under the trees that the boy had set out my gear. The sky was clear and there was a good moon but under the trees it was dark. It was only when I had stripped and was about to insert myself into my sleeping bag that I saw the little tyke was already inside it fast asleep. My first thought was to tip him out but I was mellow with wine and it occurred to me that though he did know it, it was the little brutes last night on earth. He might as well be allowed to sleep warm. I wriggled in beside him. He stirred but did not wake. I was tired and had no wish to fuck him. I too was soon asleep.

It was still dark when I woke. I was hard and the boy's tongue was busy about my cock. I forgot about his physical defects. Reaching down I pulled him upwards and twisted him round so that his rump was pressed into my crutch. He wriggled against me panting in his eagerness. I found there was not enough room in the sleeping bag to do the job properly. I quickly unzipped it and free of it's restrictions drove the full length of my cock deep into the brat's bottom. The little tart groaned and whimpered as I rode him. I felt his body close about my prick milking it and then I came deep inside him in great gushes of hot semen.

There must have been something about the mountain air for it was fully light and the men were moving around the preparing breakfast when the boy licked my prick clean for the last time. When he had finished I sent him off to fetch some hot water. I watched him as he trotted across to the campfire. I noticed he made no effort to wipe clean his bottom. No doubt he was proud of the evidence of my lust dribbling down the inside of his legs. I heard the men ribbing him when he arrived at the fire. In a moment he was back carrying a bucket of steaming water and grinning happily.

"You're a good little whore," I said patting his bottom and his grin widened even further. Probably it was the first time in his life that he had been called that.

I gave him another good junk of flesh for his breakfast and telling him to clean himself up and to pack my gear I strolled off to supervise the dipping of the Berbers.

The brats had been fed and they were huddled at one end of the compound muttering together in their outlandish language and staring suspiciously around. A sudden silence fell as I and my two underkeepers together with Grenadier and Guardsmen leashed but unmuzzled appeared through the narrow gap that was the only way into the yard. We advanced on the brats lashing out with our whips the dogs snarling and lunging forward with bared teeth. The boys panic stricken broke and we herded them towards the gap. They bunched there screaming, struggling among themselves to force their way out of the yard while we lashed the most backward ones mercilessly with our whips and the hounds nipped at bare legs and bottoms.

On the other side of the gap the grooms were waiting for them with their whips. With us behind them and the grooms on either side we drove them down the slope to the boy dip. I had had this constructed many years ago for just this purpose and it had been used so often that we all knew exactly the parts we had to play. Two high stone walls formed a funnel leading to a narrow passage that ended in a sudden two metre drop to an equally narrow trench cut in the bare rock. This trench was rather more than three metres deep at the passageway end. It's floor sloped upwards to it's further end some ten metres away. It was filled now with a white opaque mix of water laced with dip that would serve to clear the boy's bodies of any lice or other vermin they might have picked up and would disinfect all open cuts or sore.

When we got boys well within the walls of the funnel two grooms split off to stand on either side of the trench armed with long poles. When the lead boy saw the drop to the trench filled to an unknown depth with white strongly smelling fluid he hesitated, but the brats behind, driven on by our whips and the snarling dogs, soon sent him tumbling down into the trench. Boy after boy followed him as the grooms on either side used their poles to force their heads below the surface. Our shouts and curses, the cracks of our whips, the barking of the dogs added to the terror of the boys. One by one they worked their way screaming along the trench until they staggered out soaking wet and shivering with terror at the far end.

They didn't rest there long because we were soon on to them again with our whips driving them out on to the hill. Over the next few days the under keepers and grooms, together with any locals who cared to join in for the sport, would harry the boys further and further into the mountains, riding daily out after them not with lances but with whips so that they learnt if they saw anyone to run and to run fast. By the time I returned with Don Carlos's clients the boys would be wild and desperate and ready for the hunt.

I called my brat and he came trotting up with the horse ready saddled for me. I set off down the track beside the Dobra river the boy trotting by my side. I didn't push him to hard. Indeed I stopped a couple of times to let him drink from the river but it was a long trek and he did well to keep up. After ten kilometres I turned off to the West aiming to strike the surfaced road the other side of the high ground between Covodinga and Lake Enol.

We were now in the area in which I had seen the feral. Scrubby oak trees surrounded us on either side. Soon I sensed his presence. I didn't see him. He was too clever for that. A black bird startled far off to the right. There was a sudden rustling in the bushes nearer at hand. The feral was stalking us. The slut sensed it and drew nearer to my stirrups. He would not try anything while I was about but if he could catch the brat alone he would have him.

Once I was sure the feral was with us and we were well into the wood I drew reign.

"Go back to the camp," I ordered the brat.

He looked up at me fear in his single eye.

"Master there's something following 3;"

"Do as I say slut," I snapped impatiently.

"Master I thought that 3;."

He got no further. I lashed him across the chest with my whip. He cried out and turned from me running in an odd shambling motion back the way we came wailing a strange hopeless cry as he went.

I rode on. Strangely I felt far from content with myself. I could not understand it. I had done nothing wrong. I had not broken the law. Admittedly I had not made the boy ask for his Release but then I was not granting him it. If he was eaten by the feral it would be an accident although one that I was sure was almost certain to occur. I had simply told the boy to go back to the camp. Nor could it possibly bother me that I had sent a brat who may have thought I cared for him, to his death. I knew, because the priests had told me so, that a freeman like myself owed nothing to such brats. They were soulless animals without rights of any sort who existed simply to serve their betters. There could be no question of a freeman such as myself betraying such a brute as betrayal implied a degree of obligation.

Anyway the boy would get an easier death at the hands of the feral than Tribute Boys of that region commonly enjoyed. It was the practice to throw them into the pool at the head of the Cares gorges known as the 'Devils Cauldron', a deep steep sided sheet of water deceptively still in appearance. Then the free boys of the area and increasingly tourists attracted to the area by the spectacle would throw rocks down on them from the cliffs above until exhausted or driven by fear they were dragged out of the pool by the current and swept down into the series of cataracts and falls that lay down stream of it. It was said that twenty years ago one boy had survived to the end of the gorge but none had done so since. Perhaps none ever would now that tourists had taken to throwing bottles and stones from the bridges that occasionally spanned the gorge at the bobbing head of any desperate Tribute Boy that had survived so far.

Despite these reflections though I felt uneasy as I rode forward. I seemed to hear the boy's not so much of pain but of misery ringing in my ears. Then there was a shrill scream behind me. Clearly the feral had got the brat.

Inexplicably my horse's head was turned and it was cantering back along the way I had come. Stranger still I found I was digging my heals into it's sides urging it to go faster. The feral was ahead of me down on top of the boy. I was almost on him before he knew I was there so engrossed was he in what he was about. At the last moment he leapt to his feet his cock erect and dripping cum. With a snarl of his blood stained mouth he ducked away and was gone.

The brat had a deep wound on the side of his neck from which blood was flowing freely. He saw me and a smile that made face despite his empty eye socket and broken teeth for a moment almost beautiful.

"Master you ca 3;." He coughed. A great gush of blood came from his mouth and he was dead.

I was surprised to find I was kneeling on the ground holding the brats body in my arms. There was a warm dampness on my hands. I exclaimed in annoyance. The slut had bled on me and soiled the sleeve of my coat. I dropped the boy's lifeless carcass to the ground and stood up. I stood for a moment looking down at his meagre corpse. For some reason my eyes were watering. Then I walked back to the horse and mounting it trotted off. No doubt the feral would soon be back. I found difficulty in seeing properly for sometime. I suppose some dust must have got in my eyes. I still felt strangely sad but rather less disgusted with myself.

The shadows were beginning to lengthen when I arrived at Bartolomé Majuco's the house. It was a simple two storied structure set back off the unsurfaced road in a carefully tended vegetable garden. Bartolemé was at the gate waiting for me.

Señor I am honoured."

"The honour is all mine my friend," I replied and I meant it. There was a goodness and a simple dignity about the man that I could not help but admire.

"You will dismount and come into the house. My wife has prepared a meal though I fear it is but simple fare."

"A simple dish shared with a friend is better than a feast among strangers."

"Julio," he shouted, "Julio come here and take the gentleman's horse."

A long legged thirteen year old appeared at the door of the house his shorts though ragged and brief marking him as a free boy. I dismounted. He took the reins from me and lead the horse towards the back of the house. My eyes followed him focused on the tightly stretched cloth across the rear of his nicely rounded bum.

"My eldest," Bartolemé said and I had an inkling of the favour he wished to ask me.

Bartolemé led me inside the house. There was a single room dimly lit flag stoned room. In the centre stood a large pine scrubbed table with a wooden chair at its head and benches on either side. At one end of the room a couple of chairs and a settle clustered round the open hearth; at the other an open wooden staircase led upwards. Cured hams hung from hooks attached to the beamed roof.

The room smelt of cooking and freshly bake bread. As I entered Bartolomé's wife a slim dark haired women was emptying a saucepan of steaming rice into a bow. I saw the table was laid for four with large earthenware mugs rather than glasses.

"This Maria is my good and honoured friend Señor Karl."

The woman turned to look at me and smiling nervously curtsied slightly. I bowed gravely in reply.

"I do hope Señor," she burst out that you can help us with this thing. "Jacinto is a good boy and it is very hard but I know it is the law and we must obey."

"Maria be silent now. Señor Karl has ridden all day he must be hungry and we should not press him about our minor problems before he has had a chance to refresh himself." He spoke firmly but kindly.

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