Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:39:37 -0500
From: George Gauthier <georgegauthier@verizonmail.com>
Subject: Ferghana

				Ferghana
			 The Sixth Tale of the Daphne Boy
				by GGDC

Author's Note: This is a tale of a unusual young man and those he
encounters in the middle of eighth century AD along the Silk Road in
Central Asia.

This is another in a series of tales about an undying youth named
Alexander, called Iskander and Alexandros in this story. The other stories
in this series so far are 'Antebellum', 'Daphne Boy', 'El Dorado', 'The
Erythraean Sea', and 'Stupor Mundi'.

It contains graphic descriptions of the male human body and of consensual
and non-consenual sexual activity between adult males. If any of this would
offend a reader, read no further. This is not intended for persons younger
than an age where they may freely and legally select their reading matter
in whatever jurisdiction applies.

It is offered for entertainment. If it manages to both intrigue and to
provoke prurient interest, it will have succeeded in its aim.

It is as historically accurate in its setting as I could make it, with only
minor poetic license. This story, after all, is fiction. It is not a
historical monograph. The characters are not intended to resemble any
person living or dead though the governor of Khorasan was a real person.

For the historical and geographical background you could do worse than to
read 'To the Back of Beyond' by Fitzroy Maclean.

Readers who like these stories might want to try my 'Jungle Boy' series of
tales in a modern setting, posted in the Gay/Authoritarian section of the
archive. See also my series 'Naked Prey' in the historical section, and my
'Track and Field' series in Gay/College.

Comments and feedback welcome.

			Chapter 1.  Intrigue in Merv, 750 AD

The soldiers must have had specific orders to hide behind screens in the
boy brothel and to wait till I was in the throes of passion, helpless, eyes
closed, my small body shuddering and spending itself, limbs boneless in
sudden weakness after orgasm. I lay belly down on the bed between two
lovely houri boys who had been pleasuring me at both orifices. With my face
in the lap of a slender boy and his cock in my mouth, my situational
awareness centered on them and the pleasurable feelings that were coursing
through my body.

So I was vulnerable when four of them pounced on me, restraining my limbs
as another punched me in the kidneys. The sharp pain paralyzed me long
enough for the soldiers to bind me tight, arms behind my back. They dragged
me off the bed and threw me naked onto the floor as other soldiers led the
boys off. I hardly had time to see who my attackers were before a dark bag
was drawn over my head. All I could feel was the ropes cutting off my
circulation, the hard floor under my butt, and the pain in my back.

The soldiers dragged me by the arms out of the brothel and into a back
alley. I could hear the clatter of their equipment and boots as the squad
of soldiers hustled me down back streets to the dungeon at the governor's
palace, which wasn't far away. The boy brothel I patronized in Merv was in
the prosperous quarter of the city, as befitted a wealthy merchant like
myself. They took me down to the dungeon and locked my wrists into shackles
overhead, ankles spread wide and shackled to rings set into the floor, my
toes barely touching the stones because of my slight stature. At least they
removed the hood so I could see.

One dungeon looks very much like another, and this was hardly the first
time in my nearly nine centuries of life (to that date) that I was an
unwilling visitor to one. I briefly wondered why they were always damp and
dripping, even in the desert. I found myself confronted by three men, one
in a hood, obviously the torturer, the second the regional governor of
Khorasan, one Nasr ibn-Sayyar, whom I had met and paid the customary bribes
to, and a lean man with an intelligent face and a formidable mustache
though no beard. He introduced himself as Hussein and soon occupied himself
in exploring my helpless body. He reached up to stroke my slender arms from
bound wrists down to my hairless armpits, then the firm pectorals pinching
and tugging my tiny red nipples in their small aureoles. He slid his hands
down my flanks to my hips, weighing my manhood, poking into my cleavage,
emphasizing my nudity and vulnerability. He looked me in the eye and spoke
in an cold even tone.

"No doubt you have many questions. Do not bother to ask. You are here only
to answer questions, our questions, and be assured you will answer us, one
way or another. You should feel complimented on the stratagem we used to
capture you, pretty one. Your extraordinary skill with a sword or in
unarmed combat is well known, and the governor wished to spare his
soldiers. Quite surprising too, such martial skills in a young merchant, a
small hairless lad who looks more like a houri boy than anything else. You
could easily work at that brothel yourself."

"We know that you are a spy for the rebels in Bukhara and Samarqand and for
the Chinese as well in the Ferghana valley. Admit that, and we can proceed
in a civilized manner. Otherwise, I am afraid I shall have to ask Omar here
to assist us in our inquiries."

He was tall and loomed over my short lithe form. Taking me by the chin and
turning my face up to his he kissed me, thrusting his tongue into my mouth
and probing before continuing in a tone of patently insincere regret,
trying to soften me up for the interrogation.

"Omar is quite skilled with hot irons and steel skewers. Picture to
yourself sharp metal rods like those used for shish kebab only smaller. The
tender morsels they impaled would be the two soft orbs contained within the
smooth hairless sac lying in the palm of my hand. How would you use them on
this lad, Omar?"

"Well, sir, I'd pierce both balls front to back. Then, if he still needs
persuasion, I would force a third skewer crossways through both, nailing
them together. Twirling the skewers inflicts unbearable pain though it is
likely to make a subject pass out. If I touch them with a hot iron, I can
cook a boy's balls from the inside out. Or for something milder to start
with, how about fire-hardened splinters forced through his nipples. You
should see how artistically the blood trickles down a boy's ribs."

I shuddered though I realized that such talk was an attempt to intimidate
me at this point with the prospect rather than the actuality of torture. I
suspected they had no real evidence and were proceeding on mere suspicion
that I might be a spy. Even regional governors must be cautious about
abusing and alarming the class of wealthy merchants whose trade was the
foundation for the city's wealth.

I have no illusions that I could hold out forever if I held some secret
they wanted out of me, though in this case I was entirely innocent. I knew
I could be forced to talk like any man. In truth my greatest fear has
always been prolonged torture by fiends too distrustful to accept the truth
as the truth until my body was wrecked. True, I have considerable
recuperative powers thanks to my remarkable vitality. Scars always
disappear with time, but I could hardly expect to recover from all out
torture.

"Not just yet, thank you, Omar." Hussein continued. "You see, my young
friend? Omar would enjoy applying his skills to your delicious body, but it
would be a shame to damage such a lovely youth as yourself, to see those
angelic features screwed up in pain, to make your soft voice hoarse from
screams and howls. You are really the most beautiful boy I have ever laid
eyes upon. So small, and slight of build, yet with a wiry
musculature. Completely hairless too, not just plucked. Your skin is
smooth, and strangely tanned all over. You must spend much time out of
doors in the sun entirely naked to have such a deep color, especially for a
young man of Frankish or perhaps Slavic extraction. We don't see too many
pretty boys around here with sun gold hair and eyes the green of growing
things. Those high cheekbones give you an elven appearance too. I suppose I
shall have to give into temptation at some point and rape you myself before
Omar absolutely ruins you."

I wasn't afraid of rape though I always deplored the indignity and
unfairness of it, not the sex itself. I had much experience of rape and
sexual servitude over the centuries, having spent my true youth as a rich
man's catamite, a slave and a spoil of war. I later worked voluntarily in
boy brothels in ancient Alexandria and Antioch in the first century BC. A
century later I spent a few years in ancient Antioch as a Daphne Boy,
enslaved as a temple prostitute. The cult of the nymph Daphne is allied to
that of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Male acolytes, for that is what
they called us, offered themselves to boy lovers. We were very popular
because we were scrupulous about personal hygiene, trim and fit, and hand
picked for our beauty of face and form. In some ways I still have fond
memories of my time as a Daphne Boy, slave though I then was.

"Tsk, tsk. You are leaking cum from your orifice, no doubt from your
pleasuring earlier in the evening. You are primed and ready, young Iskander
or is it Alexandros? And how old are you now? I have been told twenty-one
but you hardly look it."

"Iskander will do, sir. Alexandros was my Christian name, I was raised a
Nestorian Christian, a dhimmi, and I went by Alexandros among them. I made
the profession of faith when I was sixteen, nearly five years ago. Now I
use the proper Arabic form of my name, Iskander. Yes, I am twenty-one years
of age."

Actually I had been born in the late second century BC. For reasons I have
never understood, I had stopped growing and aging before my eighteenth
birthday. No, there had been no encounter with a sorcerer nor a pact signed
in blood with eldritch powers. It just happened that way. Now in the fourth
decade of the eight century AD, I had lived for about eight and half
centuries, not a mere score of years, though still looking like a boy in
his late teens. I claimed a few more years than my apparent age so as to be
taken seriously in commercial dealings. Iskander the merchant and former
Nestorian was just the latest of many identities I had assumed over the
centuries. My fictitious dhimmi family lived in a village destroyed a few
years earlier in an earthquake.

Hussein took me in his strong arms pressing me to him and kissed me
roughly, stroking my bound limbs, grabbing my taut buttocks, squeezing them
and fingering my hole. He sniffed my body, still perfumed from my bath with
rose petals. He complimented me again on my utterly smooth and hairless
body. I could feel his rigid member through his robes. He wanted to take me
carnally, as so many have over the centuries.

All my life I have been both blessed and cursed by a lovely form and face
that inspire admiration and lust in the heart of any male who appreciates
beautiful boys. I am small and pretty and habitually naked, looking
entirely too obviously like someone's catamite or pleasure boy. With an
almost fawn-like physique and a total lack of body hair, even at the fork
of my legs, I often wasn't taken seriously as a male. Centuries earlier in
Alexandria I had taken up the Roman habit of having all my body hair,
little as there was, plucked with tweezers. After several decades of
plucking it stopped sprouting. Now I was completely hairless forever. Also,
I had no facial hair at all. My beard simply never came in before I stopped
aging. (I have found that quite inconvenient when I wanted to disguise my
appearance.)

Hussein took my ball sac in his fist and squeezed, elicting a hiss from me,
then pulled back the foreskin of my member and ran his thumb around the
glans and squeezed the slit open with his fingers, nodding appreciatively
and possessively, letting me know that in this dungeon he owned and
controlled every part of me including my manhood. I had retained my
foreskin. Circumcision was not yet required of all Muslims, especially
converts. (The practice is not even mentioned in the Quran.) He stroked my
rump and slapped it lightly, patting it really, like a lover might. His
murmurs indicated that he found my charms pleasing.

"But wait, what are these faint stripes I see on your back and ass. Faded
whip marks, if I don't miss my guess. Little one, are you one of those
perverse creatures who takes pleasure in pain and abuse?" Hussein asked
reproachfully.

"No," I replied, my voice trembling with fury. "It is the perverse
creatures who whipped me in other dungeons who took their pleasure of it. I
am an unfortunate innocent dragged into custody in recent months by the
Chinese in Ferghana and then by the Persians in Samarqand. They were both
convinced I was spying for the other side or for your lord, the governor,
and put me to the question with whips and in painful suspension. And yes
they raped me too. And now it is your turn to commit these outrages. Damn
all of you to hell!"

Suddenly, Hassan stopped and turned to the governor. "See, it is just as I
told you. He is a merchant, no more. Certainly no spy, though undoubtedly
an extraordinarily lovely boy."

"Agreed, and just as well for all of our sakes. Release him." The governor
then turned to leave, saying, "Clean him up then bring him upstairs, though
keep him naked. It is too bad I cannot add him to the harem, but least we
can enjoy looking at him."

Hussein motioned for the torturer to free me and to wipe the grime of the
street off my feet.

"I am sorry, young Iskander, but we had to be sure you weren't already an
agent. You understand, a true interrogator does not need torture to discern
the truth. Liars always give themselves away with small signs they are not
even conscious of. I have learned to read such signs. That is one reason I
am useful to my lord, the governor here in Merv. Though Omar does have his
uses when a man will not tell what he knows. You understand that if a
prisoner is silent and refuses to lie, then my own skill is useless."

I was escorted to the governor's cabinet where we could talk freely,
sitting on comfortable pillows and sipping cooled and watered wine. Hussein
insisted on sitting right beside me as we talked, taking considerable
liberties with my nude body: running his fingers along the bumps of my
spine, stroking my rump, slipping the blade of a hand into my cleavage,
running his hands over my ribs, tweaking my tiny red nipples even fondling
my manhood, the governor looking on eagerly. It was only when he sought to
steal a sweet kiss that the governor reminded Hussein that this was
business. Hussein could seek his pleasure of me later.

"I can see that the boy is not entirely unwilling" the governor remarked,
an eyebrow lifted sardonically.

Indeed, Hussein was very attractive, tall, dark, and masculine, and his
attentions were not entirely unwelcome nor without their effect. My own
member had plumped up and lay thick on my thigh, a drop of fluid glistening
at the tip. The fact is that I was and am a bottom boy, a sexual
submissive, as Hussein had clearly guessed, responsive then to the
aggressive approach he took. Also, the danger I had just escaped in the
dungeon and my interrupted romp with the boys in the brothel left me
unfulfilled and randy. You have no idea what it is like to have a young
male's body and inclinations combined with centuries of sexual indulgence
and experience.

In truth I like sex with boys who look like me but I also crave sex with
powerful older males. The difference is that sex with another pretty boy is
fun with an equal and an absolute delight. Sex with an older male,
especially one taller and powerfully built, is a need, a craving. With a
boy, I feel energized when we jump into bed and roll around kissing and
laughing and touching. With a man I go all weak and submissive, ready to
drop to my knees and worship as a supplicant or to bend over and let myself
be taken.

"Later," Hussein assured me, tweaking my nipples one final time, then sat
back as the governor described the strategic situation as he saw it.

None of what he said was unfamiliar, given my wealth of life experience,
but I settled back and listened. The man clearly liked the sound of his own
voice, and, to give him his due, going over the whole situation helped him
organize his thoughts and gave me a good understanding of his outlook on
it. He explained that they had wanted to be sure I was not already a spy
before asking me to become their agent in the Ferghana valley and along the
trade routes in between, reporting back to them regularly in Merv.

The city of Merv in Khorasan (just north east of the corner of Iran) lies
in a large desert oasis on the southern edge of the inland delta of the
Murghab River, a large well-watered zone in the midst of the Qara Qum
desert (literally Black Sand). The Qara Qum is just east of the salty
Caspian Sea and occupies most of modern day Turkmenistan. The Murghab delta
serves as a natural stopping-point for the routes heading northeast from
Iran towards Transoxiana Ð the Silk Roads to Bukhara and Samarqand and on
to Khujand then east to China. Another road running at right angles,
southeast to northwest, provides an easy route from the Afghan highlands
and the historic cities of Herat and Balk towards the Oxus River valley and
Khwarazm south of the Aral Sea.

Khujand is situated at a strategic spot, at the mouth of the Ferghana
Valley, the most fertile and densely-populated region in the whole of
Central Asia, a valley 200 miles east to west, 100 north to south
surrounded by upthrust mountains. Though no rain falls for five months each
year, the valley is well watered by two rivers which unite in the valley to
form the Jaxartes. These streams, and their numerous mountain effluents,
supply water for irrigation and for the towns.

These were the regions being contested by the rising power of the Islamic
Caliphate, the local tribes and states and the resurgent Chinese Empire of
the Tang Dynasty. Till then the region had maintained a wonderful hybrid
civilization, a mix of Greek, Persian, Chinese, and Buddhist cultures with
a leavening of Nestorian Christianity. Many Persian nobles and landlords
had escaped to this region after the Muslim conquest of Iran proper.

As the governor droned on, Hussein, who knew all this background as well as
anyone, grew impatient, even bored. He pulled me belly down across his lap
and played with me openly, stroking my rump, spreading my cleavage with his
fingers, pulling my manhood back between my legs, taking it into his fist,
squeezing to show his total mastery of my sexuality, tweaking and
teasing. I could not help responding, spreading my legs apart, moving my
ass appealingly. With my face buried in a pillow I reached back with both
hands and spread my ass cheeks for Hussein, displaying my crinkly brown
hole, shamelessly eager to be penetrated by fingers and then by cock.

The only problem was the governor and his lecture. I knew where the
governor was going with this so I cut him short by simply saying.

"Yes governor, I will be your agent, for a consideration, as long as I can
work for Hussein, please, let me spend some time with him now. He has set
me on fire. I would serve him as his houri boy."

"In that case, we shall install you with the harem boys, as a perfect cover
for your presence in the palace for the next few days. Hussein, why don't
you take him there now?  We shall fix our bargain with him on the morrow."

Chuckling and appreciative of my sudden capitulation, the governor left me
with Hussein who now had license from both of us to play with me as he
would.

			Chapter 2. Ulterior Motives

Hussein escorted me to the male harem. I aroused smiles and smirks but no
suspicion as we walked through the halls of the palace, just a small naked
youth and a pretty one at that, cock tumescent and sticking out from his
belly, obviously the latest addition to the harem, in the custody of a
trusted servant of the governor. I looked very much like the other boys. My
small stature, angelic features, and hairless body meant I could easily
pass for 15 or 16, especially when I put on air of shy embarrassed
innocence.

We found a pleasant alcove with a soft couch and Hussein pulled me up into
his lap and kissed me, saying.

"A good spy knows how to use his charms to disarm a man with
pleasure. Let's see how good you are in that department, Iskander."

The hours and then days that followed more than made up for my interrupted
evening at the brothel. Hussein was tall and lean, a hand's breadth over
six feet (193 cm). I am only five and one half feet tall (165 cm), and my
frame carried only 122 pounds (56 kg). Though I had a strong upper storey
with a wiry musculature, I was totally overpowered by a man like Hussein, a
virtual toy in his hands. A large man like him can almost engulf my small
physique, braced on all fours as he covered me like a stallion does a
filly, penetrating me, pinching my nipples and slapping my butt.

I admit that I loved it when his alarmingly large virile member addressed
my cleavage, the head tracking its length then poking at the inside of my
thighs, prodding and playing with the anal ring. Fingers pushed a
lubricating oil into the hole, preparing me for the fuck. I felt the
monster stretch the anal ring as the head penetrated the first sphincter
then the next. The shaft slid inside, pushing into me, prodding and
probing.

Then came the moment I lusted for when his cock touched my joy spot. As the
invading shaft stimulated my prostate, my whole body shuddered
helplessly. My lithe torso rippled in a wave that started at my ass and
traveled up past the hips and back and shoulders to my head cause it to
shake rapidly in a reflex action indicative of the overwhelming lust that
filled my body. I felt my guts clutch in an internal orgasm. As the shaft
fell into a rhythm of penetration and withdrawal, the sensation became
overwhelming. I lost the ability for rational thought as long as it
lasted. My body was tempest tossed on a sea of sensation, the blood
pounding at my temples, my boy cock as hard as if carved of wood.

These internal ass orgasms did not involve ejaculation and could go on
almost forever. My partners always said my green eyes rolled sightlessly
and lost focus as I surrendered himself to the good feelings coursing
through me. I was one bottom boy whose randy body responded totally to a
fuck as a male member worked away at my hole, finally filling it with its
warm wetness. So it was with Hussein.

The man liked to prolong these sessions and the sensations they caused in
me, easing off just before he came, then resuming his screwing. Even after
he himself was spent, he would probe my orifice with substitutes, including
his favorite, long cucumbers. I pleaded with him, complaining that the
rough skin would tear my tender hole, making the anal ring bleed.  He
dismissed the possibility of virgin's blood for someone with so well
trafficked a hole such as myself.

"Then that if you lose your grip and let the whole thing slip into me
entirely? What if I could not expel it? You would have to send for a
physician to open me up, spread my asslips with some brass instrument and
probe my rectum for it, with all the other boys looking on and witnessing
my shame. I would be utterly humiliated: the boy with a cucumber stuck up
his ass."

Though I shuddered theatrically, and, I thought, quite convincingly, it did
not change his mind.

In truth these little scenes turned us both on: he, the stern master,
though occasionally indulgent of his wanton boy, I, the wayward shameless
houri boy.

The male harem was not so tightly guarded as the female quarters, so I had
some liberty to come and go during the days I spent there, even into the
gardens. I liked to sun myself in the gardens, entirely naked, swimming in
a branch of the river that ran through them and supplied water, reading or
conversing with anyone who passed by without any concern that I was a
small, nude, beardless and hairless male, a shameless boy of the harem who
gave himself to other males for their pleasure. Couldn't I at least wear
the diaphanous trousers many of the other boys did. It was quite a contrast
with the warriors and court officials, their own bodies decently covered in
concealing robes.

On several occasions the governor called me to his chambers. He liked to
fuck a a boy's mouth, so he set me kneeling on a pillow while he stood over
me, clubbing my face with his massive member, making me reach for it, to
kiss and smooch his purple helmet and lick around the flange. His was one
of the largest cocks I had seen up to that time. I was afraid I might choke
on it, be unable to breathe. He told me how exciting it was for him to have
a boy with such delicate features to play with, how pretty I looked down
there so small and submissive with my pouty lips around his cock, sucking
and slurping. He was glad I kept my golden locks long enough for a good
grab so he could control the pace of the face fuck. Though he was never too
rough with me, I was always glad to get back to Hussein.

Of course my relationship with Hussein was purely physical. It was never
love. We did not spend all that much time together in the harem, just a few
days, nor did we get to know one another socially, nor were we especially
compatible intellectually. I am even sure I really liked the man, although
I would credit him with shrewdness and physical courage.

In between all the fun, we settled our bargain for my services as a spy. I
did not want money so much as immunities from taxes and exactions in
kind. I also get a through grounding in procedures to keep in touch with
Hussein, how to get messages through in dummy shipments of spices and the
like. They did not expect skullduggery of me. My mission was a passive one,
to keep my eyes and ears open for anything noteworthy that came me way,
then pass it along.

I was admirably situated to gather commercial, military, and political
intelligence. I made my home in Kokand, the main transportation junction in
the Fergana Valley in the southwestern corner of the valley, the junction
of two main routes into the Fergana Valley. One lead northwest over the
mountains to Tashkent, and the other west through Khujand.

Central Asia was historically the theater for the first major interaction
between Chinese civilization and another urbanized culture. In the first
century BC the Empire of the Han was gratified to break out of its
isolation in East Asia and find that, beyond the lands of the horse
barbarians to the west of China proper, there were cultures with cities and
writing and valuable commodities to trade for Chinese silks. This lead to
the opening of the Silk Road from the 1st century BC.

The lands of Central Asia on the near side of knot of mountains in the
center of the continent were only intermittently under Chinese
control. Culturally part of the Persia, they were a hodgepodge of peoples
and cultures and religions: Zoroastrian, Nestorian, Buddist,
animist. Periodically a strong Chinese dynasty roused itself to penetrate
to the region to control the silk trade and the source of fine cavalry
mounts, the 'blood sweating' horses of Ferghana.

In the early eighth century AD, Ferghana was once again the focus of fierce
rivalry between the Tang Dynasty of China and an expanding Muslim
power. The Chinese had won two earlier battles in 715 and 717 against Arab
forces. The Ferghana valley really was the garden spot of Central Asia. The
climate is dry and warm rising to quite hot in summer. Light snow fell only
in December and January.

The warm weather at 40 degrees north latitude in the middle of the
continent is why I loved the summers at my country villa with its orchards
of peaches and pistachios, the gardens I had expanded from the previous
owner, the pool I had created in the small stream that ran through my
property where I could swim daily in the warm weather. Except for business
hours in the town or when I went on caravan, I usually spent the summer
naked, eating on the patio, talking with friends or disporting myself with
intimate companions, reading or tinkering away on minor inventions. Of
course I regularly practiced archery and sword fighting and unarmed combat,
preferably naked.

I will admit to a degree of vanity. Yes I do like to display myself, to let
people see how terribly pretty and well-formed and sexy I am. If that is a
fault, surely it is a minor one, and I plead my physical beauty in my own
defense. I really am a comely youth, well worth looking at, like a classic
statue come alive.

Even in the spring and fall I liked to run nude and barefoot around the
property for exercise, much as I used to in the Greek and Roman cultural
sphere. The folk thereabouts retained some folk memory of the old gymnasium
of the past, but I was one of the few who cared to exercise entirely
unclothed, though usually discreetly, in private. I longed for the days of
old when I lived in ancient Damascus, then culturally a Greek town, one of
the cities of the Decapolis in Roman Syria.

I frequented the gymnasium there daily. Once a week, my friends and I went
out of the city to swim and dive in the river above the town. We swam back
and forth in the cool waters or splashed and played the grab ass games
typical of youth. Afterwards we picnicked nude and talked and joked and
sang songs and then paired off for lovemaking. It was all quite casual and
carefree, an excuse to get together with friends, a chance to be naked in
public, to show off our hard bodies, clean limbs, and youthful faces. It
had been a wonderful age to live in, when naked young men could mingle
publicly without anyone raising an eyebrow much less a hand in
opposition. Alas, all this ended with the rise of puritanical creeds.

I decided to throw my lot in with the Muslims for several reasons. First
off, they discriminated against those not of their faith. Although Muslims
usually tolerated Christians and Jews as People of the Book, they laid many
burdens upon them: extra taxes, distinctive dress, legal disabilities, and
most distasteful to me, mandatory disarmament leaving one defenseless. A
Christian could be killed for striking a Muslim, not matter what the
circumstances. That is why I had professed Islam. Certainly not out of
conviction. I held to no creed in any event and was appalled at how the
rise of Islam had destroyed the world I had known for seven centuries, the
world of Antiquity, of Greece and Rome and Persia, when the Arabs were
merely a congeries of barbaric tribes isolated on their subcontinent.

I also believed the Muslims would win the contest for control of Central
Asia. Chinese power was great but they had to project it so far from their
centers of power and population across vast deserts and mountains. The
Arabs held the river valleys and oases and great cities Central Asia and
could draw on their wealth and manpower to buttress their control. Many
Arabs had settled in Merv recently. In the long run, the Chinese must lose
their grip and retreat beyond the mountains.

Too bad really. I admired Chinese civilization, especially that of the Tang
which combined vigor with refinement. I had travelled there half a century
earlier and marveled at the wealth and technology of the empire, especially
the use of paper, unknown outside China, for documents and books. Poetry
and sculpture and painting were of a very high order. Arabs make much of
their calligraphy, and indeed it is beautiful, but the Chinese have made it
into an art form of its own. Their thousands of ideographs allow greater
variety of shape and stroke than the Arabic alphabet restricted to a few
dozen letters.

The Chinese were enthusiastic in adopting Buddhism but were not religiously
intolerant the way the Arabs were. I despise few things more than religious
intolerance, especially when it leads to forced conversions and religious
warfare. Islam divides the world into the House of Submission (Islam) and
the House of War (everyone else). This world view is inherent in its creed.

It is not just because I got caught up in them and enslaved that I have
always regretted the fratricidal wars that the Byzantine and Sassanian
empires fought in the early seventh century that fatally weakened them just
before the onslaught of the Arab armies. They would otherwise have been
able to contain Islam in a much smaller compass, letting the Zoroastrians
prevail in the Persian cultural sphere and the Christians around the
Mediterranean. If you must have religions, then let there be many of them
rather than one dominating so much of the world.

Muslim power now extended from the Atlantic Ocean in Morocco and Spain to
beyond the Oxus, though blocked to the north at the Caucasus where the
Khazars had stopped their advance. Otherwise the Muslims were advancing on
all fronts, across North Africa into Spain by 711 and into Central
Asia. They had nearly conquered Constantinople itself in 718. Only the last
minute invention of an incendiary substance called Greek Fire, akin to
modern napalm, allowed the Byzantine Navy to turn back the challenge and
restore control of their Anatolian heartland to the Byzantines. Much of the
world I had known was now in Muslim hands, and I must come to terms with
it, especially with so much of Europe impoverished and semi-barbric.

Yes, there was always India and China, but I don't blend in so well in
those regions. In those days we knew nothing of Australia or of the
Americas, and Russia hadn't even been founded by the Vikings.

			Chapter 3. Kokand

After three days in the harem I finally got to put on clothing and returned
to the caravanserai where I had been taken lodging. To cover my absence,
Hussein had sent a message that I was ill and being cared for at the house
of a certain nobleman in town. Now fully 'recovered', I finished my
business in Merv and joined a caravan bound for Kujand.

"You outfit yourself like a soldier." the caravan chief Ibrahim remarked as
I settled my weapons about me.

"Sometimes you have to fight like one to protect yourself." I pointed
out. This was my first journey with him. I was gratified to be part of his
caravan. He had a reputation for competence and honesty and getting his
caravans through unscathed.

Along the Silk Road I habitually carried a straight double edged sabre in a
scabbard on my back with the hilt protruding over my right shoulder. The
scabbard moves with the motion of the rider's body and does not let the
sword slap about like one hung from a baldric. It is also more convenient
dismounted since it does not trip you up when you run, or get in your way
when you climb or fight with hands and feet. I have always preferred
straight blades to curved ones, even when mounted, and never cared much for
the scimitar or tulwar, popular though such blades were in those regions.

My goods travelled on camels in the care of camel drivers I had engaged,
guarded by four of my own men, all professionals who did favor curved
blades. We used twin humped Bactrian camels, much larger than the single
humped dromedaries of Arabia. I myself was mounted on a horse as the route
was well marked and provided with wells at convenient stopping points. I
also had a remount with me to spare my horse. A short recurved bow with a
quiver of arrows hung from the saddle along with a round helmet I could don
at need and a circular shield against arrows. Otherwise I did not care for
armor. Stirrups had come into use in the last two hundred years so my seat
was much more secure than in the past when I had had to ride bareback or
else wedge myself into a Roman style cavalry saddle. I also carried a
parrying dagger at my belt and throwing knife up my left sleeve plus a
sling with lead bullets in a pouch.

I wore light weight garments, close fitting trousers and a loose silk shirt
with a light colored cloak with a hood to ward off the sun. I rather
disliked the long robes of the Arabs and avoided them when I could. Why
cover your body so completely? So confining and unflattering to the male
physique. Sometimes I would get off my horse and walk or trot along with it
to maintain my own physical conditioning. You cannot do that in robes.

We soon crossed the broad Oxus River into Transoxiana which literally means
the land across the Oxus River. It is the longest river in Central Asia, at
1500 miles (2400 km), half again the length of the Ohio in North America,
and is itself an avenue of commerce, navigable for half its length from its
mouth at the Aral Sea. The region extends to the Jaxartes River, a stream
fully 1,400 miles long (2,200 km) though with only half the flow of the
southern river and not navigable anywhere along its length.

Alexander the Great extended Greek culture into the region with his
conquests of the 4th century BC, making Transoxiana the most northeastern
point of the Hellenistic culture. The great southern bend of the Jaxartes
River is where, in 329 BC, the conqueror founded the garrison city of
Alexandria Eschate ("Alexandria the Furthest"), the city now known as
Khujand and our destination. I had visited it myself twice in preceding
centuries before settling in the region just two years earlier.

All went well for three days. We made good progress across the stretches of
desert pavement that alternated with others of loose sand. (Desert pavement
is a surface covered with closely packed and interlocking angular or
rounded rock fragments the size of pebbles or cobbles.) Then a thunderstorm
that started out with heavy rain abruptly turned into a sandstorm, a
phenomenon known as haboob. More common in the Sahara than in Central Asia,
it caught our caravan by surprise. One moment our faces were turned up in
delight as the cooling waters fell from the sky. The next we were wrapping
our faces in sodden cloths so we could breathe. Our horses and camels
suffered terribly till be got them into the lee of a huge rock formation
where we all hunkered down to wait it out.

The sandstorm passed and with it most of our good luck. Split hooves, sour
water, cranky mounts, poorly tied retaining ropes that let cargo slip to
the ground, all slowed us down. Once we had to stare down an armed party,
obviously bandits, who finally decided we looked too tough to handle. I
knew then why Ibrahim had such a good reputation. He quite cooly had men
working as drovers throw off their concealing robes to reveal their armor,
with weapons brandished in their hands. I had my bow at the ready. I shoot
in the manner of the Huns holding extra arrows in two fingers of the bow
hand. That let's me fire off six arrows in ten seconds and put them all
into a different target, to create a breach in an attacker's lines,
allowing me and mine to break out of an encirclement.

The next day, we reported the encounter to troops patrolling from
Samarqand, and later heard they had tracked down and killed the
outlaws. Good riddance. Bandits rank along with pirates as the kind of
people I most despise. Vermin who contribute nothing. All they do is take,
kill, and destroy.

"Good news, true," Ibrahim allowed, "but bandits are like cockroaches. You
are never rid of them entirely."

I was anxious to get back to my villa with my precious cuttings of a new
variety of apple. Apples do not breed true from seed. You must propagate
them from cuttings. Half my cargo was apple cuttings, kept alive by careful
watering as we crossed first the Qara Qum and then the Qyzyl Qum, (Red
Sand) Deserts. I wanted to graft them to the trees in my orchard in
Kokand. I am not exaggerating when I say I had stumbled upon the Golden
Delicious apple or something very close to it in an abandoned orchard in
Persia. When we finally arrived in Kujand, I wasted no time and broke off
from the caravan and negotiated the road to the Ferghana Valley.

My villa outside Kokand had a large staff to take care of my fields and
gardens and orchards, to provide artisans for the household and to help
with my tinkering, for security, and to support my comfortable life
style. That included a very pretty lad named Qasm. Only seventeen and a
half, he was small and dark haired and slender and incredibly cute and
personable with a fine singing voice too. Also very talented in bed, in
part the benefit of my training. Yet he was a nice kid too. He never gave
my majordomo Ali any real trouble though he did like to tease him. He had a
good situation for an orphan, and he knew it. He was shy at first, but soon
blossomed and got used to the habitual nudity I insisted on for him indoors
and out, weather permitting. I was teaching him to read and write and
figure and had promised him a place in my establishment when he succeeded.

He greeted me enthusiastically but understood my distraction with my
cuttings. Over the next few days, I spent most of my waking hours grafting
the cuttings to my apple trees. He sometimes laughed that my gardens and
orchards were his only rival. In truth I do like making things grow,
especially tree crops and perennials, both long lived like me. As a
gentleman farmer I could enjoy agriculture and horticulture in a way a
peasant cannot, leaving unwanted drudgery to others. I was thinking of
putting in a vineyard the following year. I had just the spot picked out
for it too.

Qasm was a town boy, an orphan from the streets, but he liked to work
beside me in the gardens. My majordomo Ali would often find us naked,
likely on hands and knees, planting, gathering, checking for bugs, mounding
earth around celery stalks to make them turn white. I did not look much
like a master on those occasions, just one of two bare lads kneeling on the
ground, brown cheeks resting on bare feet, lithe torsos bent over, genitals
dangling between slender thighs, ribs and spinal bumps prominent as, trowel
or knife or short handled hoe in hand, we bent to our mundane tasks, firm
muscles playing under our skin. We exuded vitality, two fine specimens of
the human animal, bare and bronzed.

Afterwards we washed up with the water from a hot spring on my
property. The spring itself was too small and much too hot to bathe in, but
I conducted the outflow in a pottery pipeline laid into the ground, mixing
it with cool stream water into a small pool beside the house, enclosed by
movable screens. We sometimes did not wait to get to the sleeping chamber
but made love right there in the bathing pool, our small wiry bodies slick
with soap and soaking wet, laughing like children. Sometime he hopped up
with his butt on the edge of the pool offering his cock to me while I
stayed in the water. Sometime, we reversed the positions. We were quite
shameless and vocal in our lovemaking. My servants were discreet, but we
never made any attempt to hide what was going on. We were lovers, as anyone
could see for themselves.

We always shared a bed. Even if I was tired and just wanted to sleep, I
liked to have his youthful body next to mine. His body warmth and aroma of
boy were pleasing, soothing when I was tired or exciting when I was
randy. He learned to recognize my moods, whether I wanted to simply hold
him or to make love. I liked to sleep with him spooned into me. He was a
most delightful companion.

I should add that Qasm had the most beautiful brown eyes, very large for
his small face, giving him an impish look that was exceedingly cute. He
knew it too, trading shamelessly on it when he had been naughty. I was
gentle with him; spankings were just foreplay with us, never a real
punishment. If needs be Ali would take a strap to the lad for a major
infraction. Alas, sometimes the only path to enlightenment of the male
teenager is through a firm application of leather to rump. To his credit,
the boy took that philosophically. He knew that he wasn't always the
innocent angel his youthful beauty might make one suppose.

We both had a position to maintain, so I never took Ali to bed or let him
take me. I did not mind sharing Qasm if the boy was willing, as he
was. Ours was a cheerful and prosperous household, everyone drew fair
wages, no slaves among them; all were fed and well dressed and the guards
well armed. I had no family to spend my wealth on and spurned extravagance
and ostentation. It cost nothing to run around naked as I did so often. I
would dress well but not extravagantly and I never had expensive hobbies,
collecting art or the like. Let others be patrons of the arts if they
would. Even when I entertained at home it was never extravagantly.

Now my years in Kokand was one of those periods in my life when I was not
looking for real love, just entertainment and companionship. Qasm served my
needs well. Love is wonderful when it happens, but for someone like me the
price is very high. At times the centuries lay heavily on my soul. The
saddest thing about never growing older is that you must eventually lose
everyone you ever loved or befriended. Gods know many of them were more
worthy of my gift than I.

There haven't been many true loves in my long life though many casual
lovers. My last real love before settling in Kokand was a century before,
an 'older' man named Peroz who had purchased me as a slave, rescuing me
from a really bad situation, and later given me his love, his friendship,
his trust, and my freedom. He was shrewd in business, kind in his personal
dealings, brave when he had to be but never belligerent. To this day I
follow his example of quiet charity for orphans. A sea merchant himself, he
had supported a small orphanage for children whose fathers were lost at
sea.

			Chapter 4. Intrigue in Ferghana

I sent reports to Merv every month or so, whenever I had something worth
writing about. I did not see Hussein till the following spring in
Khujand. We met secretly. I think he was sounding me out more than anything
else, to make sure my allegiance had not shifted.

"You are not known for your piety, young Iskander though you are careful to
go through the motions. I sometimes wonder how committed you really are."

"Were you ever noted for piety yourself, at my age?" I countered. "I take
the world as I find it. If I indulge in pleasures I also pay taxes, give
alms, and do my part to improve agriculture in these regions. I don't make
trouble for anyone. I have a good reputation among my fellow merchants. But
you must know all this."

"Yes, but matters are coming to a crisis. Are you sure of those Chinese
cooks in your household?"

"Of course," I assured him.  I supposed Hussein was just too much the spy
master to appreciate that most people go about their lives with never a
thought of intrigue.

Two of my cooks were young Chinese chefs, hired from Hsian as I had come to
appreciate the cuisine of the Middle Kingdom during my last stay
there. Chinese food combined novelty with great variety. Szechuan cuisine
was as different from Hunan then as it is now.  My sojurn in China was one
of the best periods of my life. I was impressed with how advanced their
civilization was in the natural sciences and technology especially
metallurgy, paper making, wood block printing, silks, etc. (The compass
came a bit later.) I had made no secret of my admiration for things
Chinese.

The Chinese were well versed in other arts too. Their boy lovers had
techniques I had never encountered before, and that was saying
something. What they could do with a silk cord wound in a variety of ways
around a young male's genitals was little short of wondrous. They
heightened the sensation by binding the boy spread-eagled on his back,
helpless to reach or to protect his manhood, totally exposed to whatever
they would do with him. At first it was simply tickling and teasing,
dragging the silk cord across nipples and belly or using the cord as a
light whip. I had never felt so helpless and aroused as when they went to
work on me, happy to play with a young male of such unusual looks: blond
hair, green eyes, straight nose, utterly hairless everywhere including a
completely bare groin. The used yellow cords to match my hair, binding and
winding, separating the balls and winding them separately. Sometimes they
wove a braid around my rigid member or slipped a noose around the glans to
control my cock, letting the head turn purple from the infusion of blood.

Then they brought out their acupuncture needles. No it was not to inflict
pain, though there was a bit of that, but to stimulate and to control
arousal, inserting needles carefully into the base of the cock or behind
the balls and elsewhere. The sight of needles poking into my flesh me down
there was both frightening and exciting. They also pushed needles through
my nipples. The acupuncturist would twirl a needle to simulate the various
channels they imagined connected the different parts of the human
body. (Their chart looks like nothing in nature, not the nervous system,
the circulatory system, or the lymph system.) For whatever reason, it
works. I cannot remember when I have ejaculated so long and hard. It was
awesome, a geyser.

I was drawn from my reminiscences by a theatrical clearing of the throat.

"Have you heard anything about the new Chinese commander, General Gao
Xianzhi? How well does he get along with the commanders of his Qarluq
mercenaries?"

"Not too well, from what General Li Siye let slip when he visited me last
month."

I had written Hussein that General Li, though of princely blood, was
another gentleman farmer, and had sought me out about my golden apples. He
was impressed by the color and taste of the few fruit I still had in cold
storage, and I promised him cuttings once my own trees were well along.

"General Li himself is incorruptible, but you might work on the
mercenaries, who are always ready to change coats for the right price."

I pointed out that some of the local allies in the Ferghana might switch
allegiance too. I named names, but refused Hussein's request to suborn them
myself. Too risky. I insisted that our bargain was that I would watch and
listen and report, and that was all. I knew he must have other agents in
the valley, if only to compare our reports. Let them stick their necks
out. I wasn't doing this for money but to be on the winning side. He was
cross at my refusal and excess of caution but had to accept my limits. I
had the satisfaction of startling him as I remarked ever so casually:

"Do tell Ibrahim to be careful. I rather like the old fellow."

He proposed that, for old times sake, we spend the night together. I agreed
if only to placate the man. As the governor's spy master, he had great
influence. With a war in the offing, I wanted to stay on his good side,
especially after our disagreement. I attended him at his safe house where
he had his guards strip me and carry my clothing away then bind me tight
with my wrists behind my back and hobbles on my ankles.

That night in bed he was more energetic than usual and much rougher than
ever before. My bonds recalled our meeting in the dungeon in Merv. He took
advantage of my helplessness, slapping my face, mocking me for being so
small and unmanly, girlishly pretty and hairless even at the fork of my
legs, a submissive boy so easily placed on his knees or with his rump in
the air, bunghole twitching, anxious for penetration by a real man. Now I
expected some of that as foreplay, as any bottom boy must, but he was
especially vehement about it that night.

He pulled my ballsac back between my legs, circling the root with thumb and
fingers, pulling the orbs to the bottom of their sac, running his thumb
over the smooth skin, likening it in shape to a plum, indeed reddened much
like one from his ministrations and my arousal. He offered his opinion that
I was very lucky indeed that the governor had not ordered them cut off, to
enroll me as a castrato in his harem. That would have ensured that I
remained youthful and hairless and beardless for years of sexual servitude.

"The governor told me that when you pleasured him with your mouth, there
wasn't the least bit of stubble on your face or chin. He likes his boys
smooth, and your face was the smoothest of any boy ever. We realized you
could not really be 21 then, nor nearly 22 years of age now. You must must
have lied simply to be taken more seriously, as a young man rather than the
beardless boy you are."

"I think the governor still regrets that for the good of the realm he had
to let you go. He loves submissive teenage males, and your coloring is
unique and exciting." Hussein explained.

I took Hussein's mockery and strapping and slapping, and rough penetrations
well enough because I must, trussed up as I was, though I was quite
relieved when he decided not to fist me after all, as he had threatened
to. I do not want a man's hand and arm shoved into me, especially small as
I am. It is too much aggression and pain and too little sensuality and
pleasure, as far as I was concerned. He used, indeed abused me, all night
and then the next morning, leaving me sore and bruised and worn out, riding
off with a smirk on his face, leaving me to get ready for the storm that
was approaching. I guess he thought I had no option but to accept such
treatment since the governor really did not need my services as an
intelligence agent, now that war was imminent. Damn the man.

This was not the first time Central Asia was the battle ground of military
forces from the Far East and Southwest Asia. During the Han Dynasty in 97
AD a General Ban Chao led a a force of 70,000 men, all light cavalry and
mounted infantry, through Merv itself, during a military expedition against
barbarians harassing the trade routes along the Silk Road. Allied to local
rulers, he established a camp on the southwest coast of the Caspian
Sea. His army eventually forced the exodus of the ancient XiongNu tribes
who then migrated further west into Europe proper. Their descendants became
known as the Huns, and their king Atilla was called by Christians of the
fifth century the Scourge of God for his depredations on the late Roman
Empire.

This new clash looked to be of equal historical significance.

I readied my villa for defense as best we could. A villa after all is
basically a farmhouse and its outbuildings, not a military fortress. The
purpose of its defenses, such as they were, was to discourage raiders, not
to thwart an army or hold off a siege, though we had emergency stores to
last for several months, mostly against a bad harvest or other disaster
like a plague. The farmstead was easily approached, on gently sloping land
along a stream. A military fortress would have been perched on a crag.

The enclosing wall was ten feet high (3 m) with a wooden walkway all the
way around about six feet (2 m) off the ground, leaving a chest-high
parapet. The wall was roughly circular to enclose the largest area within
the smallest perimeter. With barracks for the guards and quarters for
servants and farmers and artisans, workrooms, smithy, storerooms, barns,
stables, etc. it amounted to a walled hamlet with a population of nearly
one hundred. Some of its defenses were not exactly obvious like the plank
road in front of the gate that could be pulled up to uncover 'gopher holes'
to trip horses in a mounted charge.

At the last minute, we would also spread caltrops to either side. On my
orders, the blacksmith had been making them whenever he had an idle
moment. A caltrop is like a child's toy jack, made of two large nails,
pointed at both ends, and twisted together so the points formed a
tetrahedron. No matter how it was tossed on the ground, it always lands
with three points braced to the ground with the fourth point up, ready to
impale the soft hoof of a horse, shod or not or the boot of a man for that
matter. A hand pump could take boiling water from the hot spring and shoot
it through a tube from nozzles on either side of the main gate.

No matter how well defended, the gate is always the weakest point in any
fortification because it is basically a hole in the wall whose whole
purpose is to let things through, not to keep them out, like the wall
does. Now a castle could improve a gate with outer fortifications, a T
shaped or L shaped double entrance, murder holes, and the like. All we had
were farm buildings with loopholes for bowmen in their thick walls and a
curtain wall joining them with crenellations to shield our archers. Our
gate was just a set of iron bound wooden doors, with a swivel bar to lock
them shut, though I had provided for braces between their center beams and
holes in the ground behind them.

Our rear gate next to the stables opened onto a narrow strip of land
between the wall and the stream as it exited the enclosure. Only a
footbridge crossed it near the villa, though there was a ford half a mile
downstream. The stretch of stream just outside the wall acted like a moat
with a steep bank and hidden pools of quicksand just under the
surface. That would stop any mounted or infantry charge in its tracks,
letting our archers pick off the attackers at leisure.

Both our main gates were normally left open, except at night. We were on
good terms with our neighbors so we had little to fear, yet it seemed a
sensible precaution to lock up after dark.  I really hoped the contending
armies would pick some place else to fight than my immediate
neighborhood. We would lose, no matter what the outcome.

Our little army consisted of seventeen professional guards, from which I
drew a detail of four when I went on caravan, plus twenty-odd farmers and
artisans, and a little over a dozen domestic servants including those who
served the rest of the household. I had drilled the guards intensively and
given decent weapons and some training to the others, so I had a force of
some two and one half score, though I rather wished we had more archers
among them. The women and children could help too, preparing food, tending
the wounded, carrying water, putting out fires, and such. These folk were
grateful and loyal to me and would be stout in defense of their lives and
homes.

Of course the fields and orchards were completely outside the walls. Only
my personal garden and the kitchen garden plus the stable yard and village
square were within our perimeter. I had dug a well and a cistern to
supplement the water we usually drew from the stream. It was across the
compound and up slope of the stables and the popular Roman style garderobes
I had had constructed to replace the original more primitive
arrangements. An enemy could not use thirst as a weapon. (The hot water
from the spring was not potable for its bad taste.)

"Do you really think we can hold off an attack, lord." Ali asked.

"A raid yes, certainly. An army, certainly not." He had to be satisfied
with that ambiguous answer.

We went about our business as usual though now with a watcher always on the
high tower next to the gate. Ali, as majordomo, helped organize our
preparations with Qasm acting as his runner, relaying oral messages and
orders to our staff. I also sent him with written messages to our neighbors
warning that they would do well to look to their defenses. Some of the
locals rather enjoyed the sight of his lithe physique as he ran along the
trails in only a very brief loincloth and a sheen of sweat. Whatever his
flightiness in normal times, Qasm was conscientious and diligent in his new
duties. He wanted to prove to everyone that he was not just a pretty face
and his master's bum boy, but a reliable member of our little community. I
was quite proud of the lad, now eighteen, growing into manhood.

			Chapter 5. The Talas River

The war broke out in May. Armies on both sides mobilized their allies. The
fighting pitted Arab, Kyrqyz, and Nepali forces fighting for the Abbasid
Caliphate, against the regular Chinese army, Qarluq mercenaries, and local
forces from the Ferghana valley.

Hussein and Ibrahim had done their work well, At the critical battle of the
Talas River, just across the mountains from Ferghana, the Qarluq withdrew
from the fighting. That and the hesitation of the local levies led to
disaster for the Tang forces. The Chinese regulars were cut off, defeated,
and slaughtered, and would have been annihilated but for the courage of the
rear guard lead by General Li Siye. He lead charge after charge armed only
with a staff, which he used to good effect.

Historians and legend have made much of the battle of the Talas River in
751. Some call it one of the decisive battles in history. Thereafter China
withdrew from Central Asia, yielding political control to the newly
established Abbasid Caliphate with its capital in Baghdad. Indeed that is
what ultimately happened but not just from that one battle.  Actually the
Tang struck back in the next year or two. By 753, with their armies
reconstituted the Chinese ranged as far as Gilgit in northern Pakistan. The
Qarluq returned to their allegiance.

What really finished the Chinese in Central Asia was the fatal weakening of
the Tang Dynasty as the result of the rebellion of An LuShan. A military
commander of turkic descent, he tried to set up a new dynasty. Little known
in the West, this immense struggle is imprinted in popular memory in China
with larger than life figures including the imperial concubine Yang Guifei,
one of the four great beauties of Chinese history, very roughly a
combination of Lady Macbeth, Lucrezia Borgia, and Madame de Pompadour.

China fell apart. Provinces asserted their autonomy. Warlords waged civil
war. Loyal forces struck back. All sides enlisted barbarian soliders.  Vast
numbers perished from slaughter and starvation and disease. The chaos
produced a death toll as high as 36 million, over one in ten humans living
on the planet at the time. The Tang dynasty shrank to just a shadow of its
former self. Never again would a native Chinese dynasty control Central
Asia.

For my folk at the villa, the main impact of the war was from a raid by
Nepali auxiliaries returning to their own land through the Ferghana
valley. They saw no reason why, along the way, they shouldn't raid what had
been lands owing allegiance to the Chinese. A rather disorganized force of
several hundred attacked our villa early that fall.

Our watchman banged the iron triangle to signal their approach. We pulled
up the planks in front of the gates and let their impetuous initial charge
dissolve into chaos as their horses broke their legs in the gopher holes or
stepped on caltrops, throwing their riders. Their own dead animals formed a
barrier to further charges. A second charge at the rear gate ending
ignominiously as the quicksand trapped the riders and the near bank of the
stream broke the charge as horses struggled to get over it.

The next day, our discharge of hot water from the spring stopped an
infantry assault at the gates. The Nepalis had better archers than we
did. A man can learn to use a crossbow in days, but the recurved bow takes
years of practice to master. Half our archers used cross bows lacking the
range of the recurved bow used by the enemy, but our men were effective
enough since they could take cover behind the parapet. The Nepalis were out
in the open.

I directed the military operations of the defense, wearing my helmet,
carrying my small shield to fend off arrows and with a breastplate
too. Qasm fought at my side, armed with a sword, dressed in a handsome new
tunic and bearing a large shield to protect my rear and himself. Occupied
with the overall defense, I could not always pay attention to the immediate
threat of an enemy soldier trying to scale the wall.

At one point the boy yelled and cursed. I turned to find an arrow had
transfixed his shield penetrating the meat of his shoulder. We ducked
behind a creneallation and extracted the arrowhead, binding his wound. He
stayed loyally at my side, fending off first one and then another of the
enemy who had boosted themselves from their saddles across the wall. Who
says pretty boys don't make good fighters?

Ali organized the logistics, keeping everyone fed, making sure our wounded
were tended to. We lost a few good people including one of only two
blacksmiths, but the enemy withdrew after two fruitless days of fighting,
riding on to look for easier prey. They took petty revenge setting fire to
the fields and orchards. I lost my golden apples to their fires, damn them.

"We won, we won!

Qasm called out happily as the enemy withdrew. I put my arm around his
waist and squeezed to show my own happiness, careful of his shoulder
wound. Ali contented himself with a weary smile. We stayed buttoned up till
the next day, then went forth to salvage what we could. Not all of my
orchards had burned, but all of the trees with the golden apples had. I
sent a letter to General Li explaining why I would not be able to supply
him with cuttings after all.

Qasm traded shamelessly on his war wound, insisting on being babied for the
next week. Indeed we had to modify our lovemaking to spare him pain, which
was real enough. I was happy to indulge him. I let him lie back on the
cushions while I did my level best to pleasure him. After all, he might
well have saved my life. In later years he grew quite proud of the scar
left by the arrow, as well he should have been. The boy had proved
himself. He might still be physically a small smooth pretty boy, but Qasm
had become a man.

I put him to work assisting Ali in managing the estate, dressed decently
now in a tunic (admittedly a skimpy one). In time he became Ali's right
hand man. One of their first joint projects was a schoolroom for the
children and any adults who wanted to learn to read and write. I should
have thought of it myself.

The Arabs enticed two captured Chinese prisoners to show them the secret of
paper manufacture. The first paper mill in the Arab world opened in
Samarqand a few years later. The manufacture of paper spread rapidly across
the Muslim world and eventually to benighted Europe.

The triumphant Caliphate, in gratitude for my work as a spy, awarded my
villa a tax exemption and immunity from military levies of manpower and
goods for thirty years. Hussein delivered it personally, smiling
sardonically at my household arrangements especially my young lover.  My
commercial interests were quite successful in their own right so I let the
extra income flow through my hands to my people, setting aside only annual
contributions to a contingency fund and to a fund for capital
improvements. As long as the villa broke even after all expenses and
contributions to reserves, I was satisfied to leave to my workers the
fruits of their labors. My people were conscious of the rapacity of some
other landlords in the area toward their dependents. Their gratitude at my
forbearance helped cement our bond.

I spent nearly two decades in the Ferghana, one of the most pleasant
periods in my existence. I can seldom stay very long in any one place since
I do not age as others do. Through theatrical tricks I can give the
impression of getting older over the years, even without makeup. I change
my style of clothing, from the casual dress of of a youth to the flashy
dress of a young man and later the more sober raiment of a mature man. I
speak differently, first with the shaky unsure voice of a youth, then the
confident voice of a young man full of himself, later in the more cautious
and thoughtful speech of a man in his thirties.

Like Qasm himself as he grew older, though one step ahead, I changed my
hair styles, from that of a tousled twink to the carefully groomed locks of
a young man, to the shorter and more sober cut of a man no longer in his
twenties. If I had had facial hair, I might have grown first a mustache and
then a full beard, though I really do not like facial hair. Qasm himself
did affect a thin mustache in his early twenties but he spared me the sight
of a scraggly beard which would have been the best he could ever have
managed. He remained slim and pretty even into his thirties.

All of such subterfuges can be effective for only so long. I do not like to
rely on makeup except for very short term disguise. I spend far too much
time in the nude exercising, sweating and swimming, cleaning my body in
shower or bath to rely on such trickery as false crows' feet put on with
ink or powders to make the hair at the temples gray. In my sleep my relaxed
body looks especially youthful, as my lovers could plainly see.

After a while, even the people at the villa, well disposed though they were
towards me, began to wonder. The danger was not from them but that men of
power would suspect me and torture me for the secret of immortality. I have
no such secret to reveal. Indeed I am not truly immortal; I simply do not
age. I am not invulnerable. Someday I will die from foul play or
misadventure: a gun, a knife, an accident, a war, and earthquake, or
shipwreck. Something will kill me.

When it grew impossible to conceal my continued youthfulness, I went on
Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Two months later, I ensured that word
reached the villa of the unfortunate demise of Iskander from disease. Ali
and Qasm took over the villa, as I had provided in my will. Neither had the
talent or interest to keep up my commercial endeavors, but those were
already hollowed out, much of the capital sent abroad to myself under a new
identity in Constantinople.

				Epilogue

My villa served as the kernel for the growth of a full fledged village and
in modern times a suburb of Kokand. To this day, the autumn festival there
features songs and stories about how a namesake and descendent of Iskander
of Makedon and his close friend Qasm held off the barbarian hordes. I
actually visited it during festival time in Soviet days. It left me with a
good feeling about my people and myself.

It would be so easy for me to yield to hedonism and cynicism, and to
disregard the needs and aspirations of my fellow man. I couldn't give you a
reason why I don't, at least one that would satisfy a philosopher. All I
know is that I sleep easier at night knowing that I am one of those people
who, in modern parlance, adds value. There are far too many on this small
planet of ours who only subtract.

Bless Luther Burbank for rediscovering the Golden Delicious Apple in the
twentieth century. It and the Granny Smith from New Zealand are my all time
favorite varieties, much more so than the bland and rather misnamed Red
Delicious variety.

Only recently could I write of these things, choosing, from caution, to
cast them as fiction, a series of fanciful tales of an immortal youth
written under a pseudonym. My secret is safe for no one in these days of
modern science will believe it. In this tale, all of the names are
real. The events described really did happen just as I have written.