Jack Whyte - The Eagles' Brood

Four years had elapsed since the death of Publius Varrus, and in the interim the two hesitant, neophyte captains recalled from that initial, probationary patrol had evolved into brash, confident but effective and competent commanders of the cavalry troops of Camulod, tried and tested in battle. Uther and I had emerged from the crucible of harsh experiences transformed into professional soldiers—warriors in the true sense of the word. We had become men, and in the pursuit of that status we had progressed far along the road to building the legions Publius Varrus had told us we would need in the days ahead.

Uther was a voluptuary, a lecher and a hedonist. So was I. But neither of us thought of ourselves in such terms. Why should we? In the days of our youth the notion of carnal sin' was confined to incestuous relationships with immediate family members. It was only much later that the new, monastic churchmen introduced to our beautiful island the idea of the sinfulness of casual lust, and then, I am convinced, they used it callously, as a tool to prime the minds, of men to accept the idea that women were inferior beings and vessels of sin.

Their efforts were to no avail, thank God, but in the attempt to force their will upon our people they caused great hardship and much grief in every corner of our land, where men of God and men of goodwill struggled with the incompatible desires to serve God by heeding the edicts of His Church—which now demanded no less than the disenfranchisement and subjugation of one-half of our society—and to please Him by continuing to love, honour and respect the proud women of Britain who had been the equals of their men since time immemorial.

None of this, however, affected us as young men. As I have said, we were voluptuaries and, as to carnal sin, completely innocent. Equally innocent were the young women who shared our lives and our carnal pleasures. For the most part, they were attractive and sometimes even beautiful outsiders who had few or no family ties within our Colony. They worked for their keep, as did everyone else, performing by day whatever tasks best suited their individual natures and abilities, and spending their evenings and nights enjoying the pleasures available to them. In effect, they were the camp followers of Camulod, and in the way of camp followers, many of them found permanent mates among the soldiers of the Colony. Invariably, in the way of youth everywhere, they considered themselves Immortals— fit, healthy and full of life and love and admiration for the equally young, healthy soldiers who ensured their safety and prosperity in a time when safety and prosperity were undreamed of luxuries the length and breadth of Britain.

And so we shared each other's pleasures. As we were insatiable without being satyrs, they were concupiscent without being concubines; as we were riotous without brutality, they were acquisitive without venality. None criticized our conduct with one another, or felt or betrayed any censure or surprise. Why should they? Uther and I, living to the full with all our friends, were the Princes of Camulod, the wonders of all our Tribe. We were at the flood tide of our rutting youth, and we were invincible in war. And when we had no wars to fight, we patrolled long and hard, trained long and hard, and worked long and hard at the onerous duties of the administrative Council, set up by our own grandfathers to govern our Colony, on which we both served as members. What could have been more natural than that we spent our evenings and our nights in Camulod and elsewhere filling our bellies and emptying our loins at every opportunity? Food and sex ruled our off-duty existence, with food taking only as much precedence over sexual pleasure as was required to maintain the strength we needed to generate new seed. My own early dreams of inadequacy in the face of Uther's lusts had long ceased to bother me. I was his equal in size, endurance and instant readiness at any time. In those days, impotence was a temporary phenomenon engendered only by over-indulgence and was easily and quickly cured by rest and titillation.

I was in just such a state when I first noticed Cassandra. I had seen her previously, but there is a vast difference between merely seeing a woman and really noticing her. We had returned that same day from a long, tedious patrol, and she had been part of the baggage we had collected in the course of our sweep. Uther, riding apart from our main body, had found her in an open glade, deep in the forest, hidden from the road, and crouching by the corpses of two people we had to assume were her parents. There was no encampment, only a rough shelter of green boughs and dead wood thrown together so that it barely remained upright around the supine corpses. There was no evidence of struggle or violence surrounding the deaths, nor was there any means of telling how the two had died. Uther had had to drag the girl by the wrist to get her to go with him, and had lifted her onto his horse and ridden with his arms around her for the remaining days of the patrol. She was a skinny, lacklustre little thing with great grey eyes and a wide mouth that dominated her small, pointed face. And she was utterly silent. She had not spoken a word from the time he found her. She reminded me of a frightened little rabbit, looking at no one, and walking, when not on horseback, as though she held herself close within her own arms. On our return to Camulod, she had refused to quit Uther. No one could talk to her, none could penetrate her total silence, and she steadfastly refused to leave Uther's side all that day, even when his fancies led him where she should not be.

That evening found the three of us in what Uther called the games room, where I was reclining like an emperor on a bed of thick furs. I had just been thoroughly serviced by two of our willing and nubile hero-worshippers and I had that empty, sated feeling in my belly that told me I would not be ready for any more play for some time. I lay back, my hands clasped comfortably behind my head, as I watched my two companions try in vain to raise my dead to life, their heads together, nibbling lips and tongues and teasing fingers willing the impossible.

A series of deep, determined grunts from Uther, over on my left, told me that he was rapidly approaching his destination and I turned indolently to look, finding myself pleasantly positioned to observe his phallus being engulfed and regurgitated by the wench who rode him like the stallion he was. Her buttocks quivered and shuddered with the effort of receiving him, presenting quite a sight to my clinical and rather cynical gaze. Uther liked his women big. And then it was that I noticed the girl, Cassandra, as Uther had named her. She was sitting there on the edge of his pile of furs, watching the goings-on in front of her as casually as though she were watching him at dinner. I hitched myself up on one elbow to see her better, dislodging myself in the process from my own attendants, who resumed their activities as soon as I was resettled.

Like me, Uther had two companions, the one who was impaling herself so determinedly upon his spike, and another who knelt behind him, supporting his shoulders on her lap while her large breasts fell on his face and supplied him with the handholds he needed for leverage in his exertions. Her associate, who faced her across his body, gripped her firmly by the shoulders for balance as she rode.

Cassandra's face was empty of expression. No lust showed there, no interest. Her eyes moved over the heaving, grunting tableau in front of her emotionlessly. I saw her glance downward at the junction of the two slapping bellies and then up again at the other woman's breasts and the hands that gripped them and as I looked, the woman supporting Uther's shoulders opened her mouth and lolled out her tongue like a thick, pink snake glistening with saliva. The sight of it must have triggered the peaking lust of her companion, for she went into a paroxysm, jerking the other toward her and sucking the jutting tongue into her mouth. But the movement pulled her free of the meat that pierced her just at the wrong time and there was a frantic scramble to reinsert the already spitting object before the moment was lost forever. I found myself laughing at the unconscious buffoonery of the sight as my eyes returned to Cassandra.