Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 04:31:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Pete Brown <petebrownuk@yahoo.com>
Subject: The Spoils Of War, Part 25 (MM NC BDSM FANT)

THE SPOILS OF WAR  by Pete Brown.  petebrownuk @ yahoo.com

Read all of Pete's stories in
groups.yahoo.com/group/petebrownseroticstories

Part 25

The next few weeks weren't easy.  I had to integrate
myself into the "underclass" that inhabits the fringe
of all great cities.  I found a pedicab company that
in addition to hiring out its cabs for the day to the
pullers also had a small number of grubby, stained and
well-worn ID cards for rent where the photo was almost
indistinguishable:  of course the "rent" they then
charged for the day was absolutely exorbitant, and I
had to work twelve hours to even end up with a
"profit" from my fares.  There's a popular belief that
Manhattan is flat, but you try puling a pedicab up and
down some of the avenues, and you'll soon see that
that's far from true.

Once I was "in", though, recognised as an illegal
worker at the pedicab company,  some of my fellow
pullers showed me the places where you could get a
meal without an ID card - at high prices again - and
the rooming houses where you could flop down for a
night in a shared room, paying almost as much as you'd
pay in a proper hotel.  It didn't seem to matter how
hard I worked, at the end of the day I never had any
spare money, and sometimes the amount of energy I was
using was so great that I had to go to sleep hungry,
as I couldn't afford the food.

Mind you, the incredibly hard work was good for me.
My leg muscles strengthened even more, and my heart
and lung capacity was tested constantly as I toiled up
and down the avenues.  I'd wondered how I was going to
retain my fighting fitness when I was no longer
fighting, but this certainly solved the problem!  I
could see, though, that I was trapped in a hopeless
spiral of deprivation:  even when customers were
inclined to be generous with their tips, for example
when it was raining hard and a lot of the pedicabs
vanished from the streets and those who, like me,
struggled on were prized and valued, I hardly profited
at all.  The first time this happened and I had a big
"surplus" on my day's work from my tips - albeit I was
shivering from the cold, as the T and shorts I wore
were soaked through, and my running shoes were
squelching as I trudged back to the "garage" - the guy
in charge demanded another fifty for the day's rent.
When I at first refused to pay, saying I couldn't
afford it, he just said callously "You illegals always
have to work, even in the storms, and you'll have been
creaming it from the tips.  I want my share, so pay up
or get out - and leave your ID card behind....."  I'd
already been stopped a couple of times in random
police checks, and I knew I didn't dare be  without
ID, so I just had to hand over most of my money,
gritting my teeth as  I did so.

As I lay on my tiny bed one night, listening to the
other guys in the room snoring away, I wondered how
the fuck  I was ever going to break out of this.  It
was almost as bad as being a slave anyway:  I had to
work so many hours, seven days a week, just to have
food and shelter, and I had no relaxation, no fun.  I
didn't even have any buddies to at least shoot the
breeze with, as there was a constant turnover of guys
at the flop house, and at the pedicab garage.  I
reckoned that as a "premium" slave I'd always been
treated better than that - although the work schedule
at Gleeson's Gladiators had been hard, harder even
than in the marines, I had at least had a warm bed,
enough food (even if it was only slave chow), and guys
to fuck when I wanted to.  Sure, no one was caning me
or threatening me with whipping, but I had to drive
myself just as hard, if not harder, to keep going now.
 I almost believe that I'd have turned myself in, and
gone back to being a slave, had it not been for the
certain knowledge that this meant the end of my
manhood.

I'd made some attempts to  contact my folks, too:  I'd
called our number  in the small town in Maine where
they lived - although long distance calls were again
amazingly expensive - but had just got some fucking
voice saying they were unable to connect my call.
Listening to the odd snatches of conversation from
passengers, I began to build up a picture about
exactly how bad things had been when the war was on
and the oil ran out (and such oil as there was was all
taken by the military in order to carry on the war).
The things I heard about the food riots in Chicago and
other places, and the way that millions had died in
the cold, unable to heat their homes or to travel
away, made me feel that my folks were all dead - but I
had no real way of finding out, as I had no time to go
to the library or anywhere and try to research what
had gone on in our town.

There was only one way I could break this cycle, I
decided.  Using the tiny hoard of spare cash I'd
managed to laboriously collect after a week of toil, I
paid the entrance fee to a sauna:  man it was good to
be able to get really clean again, as bathing
facilities were sorely lacking in the places I was
forced to stay in;  and once I was just wearing a tiny
towel draped around my hips, I was just like all the
other guys - almost naked, without my worn, grubby T
and shorts, you couldn't tell that I was not a banker
or something, rather than an illegal worker!
Actually, that's not correct, really:  you could tell
who was in "proper" work as they were flabby and out
of shape, whereas I was lean and muscled, my belly
taut, and with that "hungry" look that made me seem to
be both dangerous and yet exciting.

After I'd luxuriated in the sauna and the plunge pool,
I started to cruise around the booths, just standing
there provocatively, allowing my dick to tent out the
towel.  It wasn't long before I started to get
"offers" - the touch of a hand on my arm, the
inclination of a head as a guy walked past, and all
those other little signals that showed that a large
number of the other patrons were very interested
indeed in me - or, rather, were interested in my body,
as like in so many of those places, almost no-one
spoke.

I finally let a guy a few years older than me who  was
in reasonable shape and who had one of those class
rings on that suggested he had been expensively
educated, pick me up.  We went into one of the tiny
cubicles and he at once began to fondle me very
strongly - he was clearly used to being in charge, and
he started to jerk my dick without so much as a
request of any kind - well, I mean, you don't expect
guys to say "can I jerk you off", do you?  But there
are ways of doing these things, and just grabbing a
guy roughly and starting to jerk them isn't one!  He
didn't seem to like it when I started to do the same
thing to him, and he pushed me backwards, quite
roughly, on to the padded floor.  Of course I could
have stopped him - although he was a big guy, I don't
think he really appreciated the power in my body, and
of course he didn't know that I was a trained fighter
- but  I wanted to see how far he'd go.

He grinned with satisfaction when my cum shot out, but
carried on jerking at me, in spite of the fact that I
moaned (as quietly as I could, as I didn't want to
cause a scene at the place) and tried to pull my body
away from him.  Then, again quite roughly, he flipped
me over on to my belly, and I felt his hands pulling
at my butt cheeks, to be followed by a shaft of pain
as he thrust a finger up into me with absolutely no
finesse.  I could feel his body shuffling around
between my legs as he got ready to fuck me, and now I
took action - I flipped over on to my back, grabbed
his wrist in my hand and held it so that he could
start to appreciate the power I had, and smiled at
him.  "No, not here...", I whispered.  "I want you to
fuck me - I like a powerful man taking control - but
not here.  I want to be able to shout as your big dick
rams into me...."

"No - I only do it here..."

"Oh, please... Don't leave me like this.....  I need
to feel that dick of yours up inside me....  A big,
powerful man like you, fucking me until my brain
hurts.   I want to feel you riding me, those thighs of
yours crushing my legs, your body slamming in to my
butt as you fuck me.... "

"I don't take guys home... Unless.... "

"Unless what?", I whispered.

"I only take guys home if they'll let me tie them
down.  Can I cuff you to the bed head, and then fuck
you?"

"Hey, I'm not sure..... I'm not really into stuff like
that..."

"Well that's it then...."

"No, please, fuck me.... I need to feel a powerful
dick rammed up into me.  You're the sort of guy I
dream about, a real man, a man who takes charge...."

He looked down at me and I found it hard to read him.
Was he wondering if I was bullshitting him?  Or did I
see the glitter of pure lust in his eyes, as he
thought a big tough guy like me was pleading to be
fucked by him?  With surprising agility he leaped
astride me as I lay there, and pinioned my shoulders
to the floor with his knees.  He rose up, and pushed
his dick towards my mouth.  "Show me how much you want
my dick then, boy", he commanded.

I knew I had him then!  He wanted my body more than I
wanted him to take me back to his place.  I was in
control, even though to a casual observer he seemed to
be making all the running.    I raised my head to
reach out for his dick, even before he could push it
down towards my lips, and began to suck at it as if I
was starving, making a lot of slobbering noises and
giving deep moans of appreciation.

He pulled out, and in that way that a lot of guys do
who want to show their domination and control, he
started to slap my cheeks with his solid dick, and I
wriggled and squirmed under him - deliberately toning
down my power so that I couldn't "escape" - all the
time giving little cries and moans.

"So, boy, you do want my dick, don't you...?"

"Oh yes, sir, please, sir...."

He knelt there, above me, his dick beginning to drip
pre-cum, and I pushed my head up as far as I could
again in an effort to lick it off his dick head.

"You are hungry for it, aren't you. Boy!  But this
dick is going up your ass, you know that, don't you?
Can you take it, boy?"  "Sir, please, sir, I want your
dick, sir.  I don't care where, sir, I need to feel
it, sir, inside me, fucking me, sir....  Show me how
you can use that dick, sir....."

I almost  breathed a sign of relief when he got off
me, and backed out of the tiny cubicle.  Giving me a
nod of the head , I meekly followed him down to the
changing area, and watched as he pulled on his
expensive silk shirt and dark suit.  This was the one
part of my plan where there was a potential problem -
having snared him, would he become alarmed when he saw
how I was dressed?  I'd done everything  I could to
mitigate the problem, wearing my cleanest T, my most
decent shorts, and cleaning up my running shoes as
best I could.  Nevertheless, I could see him looking
at me, and I said, as calmly and as conversationally
as I could, "Hey, I don't envy you that suit on a
night like this - when I got home I just pulled this
stuff on as it's fucking hot today.... Did you come
straight from the office?"

That seemed to reassure him, as he looked at me,
appraising my body again, which did look good as the T
and shorts did, if anything, emphasise my lean hard
muscles.  "Yes.  The idiots in Europe had fucked
something up, and I had to stay on the phone for
hours.... Now, let's get going..."

It was a change to be in a pedicab as a passenger, I
can tell you!  We sat there close together, watching
the asses of the two pullers as they toiled away.  He
pressed his body close to mine, and rested his hand on
the inside of my bare thigh, and I could almost feel
him itching to let his fingers stray higher to rest on
my crotch.  But you are a bit exposed in a pedicab as
you probably know, and I guess she wanted to remain
looking "respectable" as far as the people on the
sidewalks were concerned.  He wasn't a particularly
nice guy, though, as every time we slowed as we were
on a hill, or had to wait at a cross street, he almost
seethed with impatience and shouted at the guys who
were pulling us to get a move on!  And when we got to
his expensive-looking building on the Upper East Side,
he hardly gave the guys any tip at all - I hated
passengers like that myself, and if I'd had any spare
cash, would probably have given them some of my own to
compensate.  Still, as it was a warm evening, I
suppose the pullers had been lucky to get any work at
all - not so many people ate out any longer, the
theatres were mostly closed, and if you were going out
to a movie, you now went to a local one rather than
downtown:  there were often many more pedicabs than
potential passengers, and most days you were glad to
take what  you could get.

He might have got away with just a good fucking from
me, but once we were in his apartment he started to
treat me like a piece of dirt, continuing to call me
"boy", just ordering me to strip, and then commanding
me to get down on my knees, get out his dick, and suck
it.  I played along with him so far, but once his dick
was in my mouth he started to piss, at the same time
as he started to tell me that I was just a cheap piece
of shit who deserved to be used as a toilet for a real
man.

I simply beat him up.  Really badly.  I left him lying
there in a pool of blood, moaning, on the expensive
white carpets in his apartment.  I helped myself to
the considerable pile of cash he had in his wallet,
got an expensive watch and camera out of his
cupboards, and found some nice designer clothes in his
closets which I carried away in a real leather case.
I was worried all the next day that the cops would
come looking for me or something, but of course he had
no idea where I lived, or even what my name was.  I
began to wonder if he had even reported the beating I
gave him - he was "respectable" after all, and
probably wouldn't want to tell anyone he'd been beaten
up by a guy who he'd taken back to his place for sex.

That was to be the pattern of my life for the next
year - I toiled away, almost like a slave, throughout
the day, and then about once a week I trawled the gay
clubs and bars looking for "victims".  If they were
reasonable guys who treated me like a proper man, we
had great sex.  But if they were arrogant rich
bastards who thought they could just treat me like
dirt because I seemed to be poorer than them, then
they got an unpleasant surprise as they found out just
how hard my fists could be.

It wasn't a bad life, I suppose - I had enough money
now from these robberies for proper food,  and I even
found enough to take a trip out of the city to go up
north to see what had happened to my folks.  I knew
there would be problems when I got off the bus and
found the side road leading down to our community all
potholed and mostly grown over.  I trudged the four
miles down towards the sea, and once the town came
into view I saw it was devastated - most of the houses
had holes in them, there were no people around at all,
and there seem to have been several fires raging in
some of the streets.  I found our old house, and it
was eerie:  inside there was not a stick of furniture
left, and a whole lot of stuff like doors had been
torn off, although there was no trace of them.

There was only one inhabitant remaining - a solitary
fisherman down on the beach who was still catching
lobster from his pots that he managed from his row
boat, and he shared a supper with me that night.  I
learned that after the oil went and the power failed,
there were real problems in our town - the road
blocked with snow, as it did most years, but it wasn't
ploughed.  The news was anyway that there were food
riots in the cities, and so folk decided to stay put -
but as the winter got worse and worse, the food
gradually ran out and people started to burn
furniture, old lumber, anything, in a desperate
attempt to keep warm in the Maine winter.    Finally,
the flu struck, and with no access to hospitals or
medicines, in their weakened, cold state, most people
succumbed.

So now I knew I was alone in the world.  I'd kind of
had some hope that my folks might still be alive, that
somehow I could return to "normal" life at home -
well, at least for a while, as I didn't think my mom
or dad would take kindly to me vigorously fucking guys
in my bedroom, next to theirs!  It wasn't a total
shock, I suppose, as I'd kind of guessed that this
might be the case: I doubted that my dad would have
left any stone unturned to get me free if he'd still
been around.  In fact, as I appeared on the gladiators
shows on TV, I always held out the hope that they
might see me (in spite of getting a bit of a shock
when their son fucked another guy in public) and would
then "do something".  I had no idea exactly what, but
in my dreams it hadn't been beyond the bounds of
probability that my dad would get a visa, come to the
South, and actually buy me!

I really ought to have done something positive about
my life then.  Knowing it was me, just me, for the
rest of my life, I should have given up the life of a
pedicab puller with the occasional robberies and tried
to make something of myself.  I'd heard that out west
they were more relaxed about returning slaves, and
that it was rumoured that there were whole groups in
Northern California (the south of the state was firmly
in the South) who fought legal battles, protested, and
gave "safe houses" to escaped slaves.  And there was
always the possibility of smuggling myself, or of
bribing the border guards, to get across into Canada .
 But  I thought to myself that I'd go back to New
York, do two or three more robberies to build up a
little store of cash, and then do it.

The blow fell when I was jogging up Sixth Avenue with
a fare.  Suddenly a whole lot of cops materialised
around me and threw me into a police wagon, leaving my
fare sitting there in the pedicab looking rather
alarmed.  At the precinct there were a lot of guys
like me, and we were lined up and finger printed
quickly.  Some of the guys were just common criminals
and were let go relatively quickly, but there were
about twenty of us who were just thrown into a holding
cell, all together.  I heard the custody sergeant and
another cop talking about the gross overcrowding in
this area, which was designed for a maximum of eight,
and the general consensus was that it didn't matter as
we "were only slaves who were going to be shipped out
the next day, and our treatment there would be far,
far worse."

Overnight one of the cops seemed to be quite chatty,
and told us that the orders had come down directly
from the government to round up all the escaped slaves
simultaneously.  It seems that those fucking
Southerners had somehow scraped up the fuel to put a
new satellite into orbit, and that the footprint of
the slave trackers now covered the whole of the
continental USA.  They had at once demanded that the
North return all the escaped slaves, on pain of losing
their oil, and had given details of where we were all
located.  The northern government had ordered the
simultaneous roundup up over two hundred from the
eastern seaboard, including me, and we were all being
shipped back down South - they'd struck suddenly,
without warning, so that word wouldn't spread and we
might have tried some of the escape routes I'd been
thinking of.  I began to wonder if the government
wasn't actually somehow glad to get rid of us.

"It's inhuman!", I'd told the cop.  "You know what
they do to us??"

"Yes - I've seen it on TV.  It's pretty spectacular,
the way they tie you down, then, as the camera zooms
in, they pull your balls through the hole in that
giant cigar cutter, and then the guy squeezes the
handles closed..... I'm never sure whether you slaves
scream loudest then, or when they bring that whit-hot
cauterising thing down on where your balls were....."

I'd seen this on TV, too - the popularity of "real"
fighting, that I'd done, had declined sharply as the
audience found the sight of captured Arabs hacking
away at each other more thrilling.  But in turn this
had got to be "normal", rather than "exciting", and so
the Second Channel had started to show the slave
geldings in real time.  You couldn't help seeing it in
bars and places, as the show was really popular, and
every time I saw some poor guys losing their nuts, I
had the unpleasant thought that this could be me, one
day.

"Look", I went on, "It's not right, cutting a guy's
balls off.... You don't want to be a part of it...."

"You're right", the cop replied.  "You seem like a
decent enough guy.  And I guess you were in the
forces, right?  Trapped down there when the civil war
broke out?  We're not so very different,  as I only
joined the cops after I was discharged, and if my unit
had been down there, I might have been where you are
now.  But there's nothing I can do, sorry, buddy...
Orders are orders.  And it is for the best, you know -
if we don't go along with the South, they'll  cut the
oil, and then even more millions will die of the cold,
or starvation, or both."

They didn't bother to feed us or anything, as they
said it was "pointless" given that we were going to be
gelded when we arrived, and if we hadn't been fed,
we'd be less likely to vomit or anything, to spoil the
TV show!  So by the time the truck with all of us in
it had made its way back across the border, I was
pretty famished and feeling really down.  Those lucky
enough to be at the sides - we were really squashed
in, as they said we were "only slaves" -  managed to
see out of cracks and holes in the truck and told us
that we were heading towards Raleigh.  And I was
totally surprised when we were unloaded, stumbling
around as we all tried to stretch our limbs, and
blinking in the sunlight, to find that we were on the
exercise ground at Gleeson's Gladiators - but a
Gleeson's Gladiators that was sadly changed from when
I was last there.

Gone were the good-looking fit slaves exercising and
drilling;  gone was the ordered, crisp neatness of the
place that had been run like a military camp; gone
were the guards in their fresh, smart uniforms.  Now
the whole place was overgrown and looked very run
down, and we were the only slaves in sight.   And the
guards, instead of being basically firm, but fair,
looked like the scum of the earth who just relished
causing pain and suffering to us slaves.

The guards herded us into the old gymnasium building,
and inside, where I'd once worked out under the
watchful eyes of the instructors, they'd built a giant
cage into which we were pushed.  They did feed us then
- throwing bars of compressed slave chow into us, and
there was a water pipe in one corner for us to drink
from, and a crap hole in the other.  But that was all
- they otherwise just left us, except that a couple of
hours later a set of eight big burly guards came along
and just pulled the four guys nearest the door out of
the cage.

I'd been in there for three days, and each day they
came and pulled four of us out, who we never saw
again.  We'd learned that there were so many escaped
slaves returned under the current scheme that they
were being  "rationed" - they were just using up four
of us each day for that evening's gelding show on the
Second Channel, as they needed to continue to amuse
the public and didn't want to run out of slaves!  It
seems they'd considered doing a mass gelding of the
whole lot of us, but this would then have set
unrealistic expectations in the minds of the audience,
so it was deemed better to ration us out.  I'd kind of
got resigned to it, I suppose - there didn't seem to
be any way of escape, and I think I might even have
been feeling vaguely guilty about all the guys I'd
beaten up in New York.  But the lack of exercise was
totally frustrating - I tried doing press-ups and
stuff, but it just wasn't enough.  And most of us were
do dispirited that even though we were all together
naked, there wasn't a whole lot of sex going on.  It
was terrible, though, waiting there in the cage,
wondering if we would be amongst the next four taken
for that day's show.  At one level you felt sorry for
the guys dragged out, and at another, you were just
grateful that it wasn't you.

I'd estimated that I had about three or four days
before they'd take me for the gelding, and cruelly, we
all got to see it every night as there was a TV screen
on the wall opposite the cage.  We saw the guys who'd
been with us only an hour or so before being tied
down, and then the unbelievable cruelty of the actual
gelding itself:  why the fuck couldn't they at least
give the guys a shot of anaesthetic?  We noted though
that there was one difference - when they were dragged
out on to the floor of the arena to the screams and
shouts of the audience, the guys were now all clean
shaved:  they'd not only shaved away the growth of
beard we all now had, but had completely striped their
pubes, too.  One of the other slaves in the cage with
me pointed out that this was all part of the show - it
made the guys look more humiliated as their dicks and
balls were surrounded by a patch of white skin , and
it also meant that there weren't unfortunate
"accidents":  another slave recounted how he'd watched
one show on TV where the white-hot cauterising iron
had set the slave's pubes on fire, and it had quite
ruined it!

I knew there was no hope for me, as it was only a
matter of time before they took me.  I'd been
partially lucky to escape so far, and my strength had
also helped as I'd pushed other guys to the front when
the selection squad came (I hadn't liked doing this,
as  we were basically all in the same boat, but I'm
not really the heroic type who sacrifices himself for
others.  And, anyway, what would be the point?). But I
was standing at the bars of the cage the next day when
the Colonel walked past!  Like Gleeson's Gladiators,
the Colonel himself no longer looked the crisp, sharp
person he had when  I was there:  he seemed to have
put on weight, his clothes were no longer smartly
pressed, and there was even the hint of a food stain
on his tie!

"Sir, Colonel, sir...", I called out.

He stopped and came over, and stared at me for a
moment.  "Spike.... Yes, it is you."

"Sir, help me, sir, please...."  It was all I could
think of to say.

"You were a good fighter, Spike.  The best we ever
produced here.  And then you went and threw it in my
face, by escaping like that.  And from the White
House!"

"Sir, it was only natural, sir.  You trained us to be
tough and resourceful...."

"Quite.  But you were a slave, and slaves don't
escape.  And now you're paying the price... It's a
pity, as you've still got an excellent body, and you
always had a good personality that came over on TV -
it wasn't just your handsome face the audience were
reacting to, I think, or the way that you
single-mindedly went about fucking:  real passion
there.  No, it was a pity it all ended that way."

"Still", he went on, "As I turns out there wasn't much
of a career left for you..."

"What happened, sir?"

"Oh, the cheap imports!  All those Arab fighters they
captured who were just stripped and thrown into the
arena. The public liked seeing their shame and their
embarrassment, as much as the fighting,  I think.  It
just got too expensive to keep all this place on, all
the guards, the trainers... And all you gladiators,
eating their heads off.  And the capital tied up in
you... Once the TV contract was dropped ,we couldn't
just keep going on the public shows for the locals so
I sold off the slaves and generally closed the
operation down.  I'm lucky to have picked up this
one-off thing:   they're filling the arena every night
with the crowds who want to see the gelding, and with
the TV here, it's quite like old times..."

"Sir, please help me, sir... Don't you need a slave,
sir, a personal slave?  I swear I'll never try to
escape again...."

He reached out his hand, palm upwards, in a gesture
I've seen so many times before that men who are used
to handling slaves use.  I stood closer to the bar,
and made it easy for him to cup my balls.

His "inspection" of me was clinical and thorough - I
felt him separating my balls and rolling each one
around in turn to make sure it was still there:  I
tried my best not to flinch as he did this, but it's
hard, isn't it, when another man has you in his grip
like that?  And then he moved on to hold my dick in
his sweaty hand, and rubbed his thumb back and forward
over it to make me erect.

"You've still got your balls, at least for the time
being, anyway, he commented.  "Some of the slaves
we've been getting through here recently have had them
replaced with prosthetics!  And that dick of ours is
still as exciting as ever.  But there's nothing  I can
do for you, Spike, I'm sorry to say - as an escaped
slave you're forfeit to the state and you now belong
to the government, and my insurers paid out long ago
on your loss."

"Colonel, please, sir..."

"Sorry, Spike!  You should have thought through your
actions before you escaped, and then you might now be
living in a good home, like all your fellow gladiators
are... They all fetched very high prices, and when a
man had paid a lot for a slave, he takes care of him."

He marched off then, and I sank to the floor in
despair.

It was Lewis who saved me!  That night, when those of
us who remained were trying to sleep after we'd lost
four more guys earlier and seen and heard their
agonies on TV, he came up to the bars.  None of us was
sleeping well, and in addition to the normal snorts
and whiffles  that a group of guys always makes in a
barracks room or dorm, there were lots of isolated
cries as the nightmares that most of were having
played themselves out.  I was prodded awake by a stick
poked through the bars, and there was Lewis!  It was
almost as if I was dreaming, as I'd never expected to
see him again.

He pushed his finger to his lis to caution me against
making any noise, then came to the gate of the cage
and unlocked it and helped me out.  He led me outside,
and there, his body cramped into a small travelling
cage, was another naked slave - an Arab, I guessed, as
he was jabbering away and looking really angry.

"OK, Spike - this is your only chance", Lewis
whispered.  "He's one of the new prisoners being
processed on the other side of this place.  I can't
get you out of here, as they'll simply track you down
again and drag you back.  But we can throw this guy
into the gelding holding cage in place of you, and you
can join the new prisoners.  There's a slave in
records who owes me a few favours, and I can get him
to switch the IDs of your tracking chips...."

"But he'll be gelded..."

"Spike, I'm taking a real risk here for you.  The
Colonel told me he'd seen you, and because of what we
were in the old days, I'm risking everything:  now,
don't be the same headstrong young fucker you always
were - think, man!  What's it to be - your balls, or
his?"

"Why are you still here, Lewis?"

"The Colonel kept me on as his personal slave when he
sold the rest... I'm his personal servant, his only
slave now...."

"No,  I can't let another guy take my place... He may
be a captured Arab, but he's got a s much right to his
balls as any other slave has...."

"Spike, you are a fucking idiot, you know that, don't
you?  But I've still got some regard for you... You
were one of the gladiators who I liked the most, there
was always something about you, from the very first
moment.....  I'm sorry....."

I woke up with a splitting headache.  Tentatively, I
felt my head, and there was a huge bump on it.  As my
eyes gradually focussed, I found myself  in a cage
with a whole lot of other guys who, like me, were all
wearing what I guess you might describe as "Arab"
dress.  I felt all over myself, and there was a note
in the pocket of the robe  I was wearing.  In small,
precise letters it said "Sorry, Spike.  It's in your
own best interests.  Hope I didn't crack our skull
when I hit you.  Good luck. Lewis."

End Of Part 25