Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 12:30:01 -0500
From: George Gauthier <georgegauthier@verizonmail.com>
Subject: Gupta

				Gupta
			 	The Tenth Tale of the Daphne Boy
				by George Gauthier

Author's Note: This is a tale of an eternally youthful young man and those
he encounters on the Indian subcontinent during the mid Vth century AD,
toward the end of India's Golden Age.

This is another in a series of tales about an undying youth named
Alexander, called Sikandar or Alexandros in this story. The other stories
in this series so far are 'Antebellum', set in the American South just
before the Civil War, 'Daphne Boy', set in Roman Syria, 'El Dorado', about
the conquistadors, 'The Erythraean Sea', set in Arabia just before the rise
of Islam, 'Stupor Mundi', about the Sixth Crusade, 'Ferghana', a tale of
the Silk Road in Central Asia, 'Zulu' set mostly in Southern Africa during
the Anglo-Zulu War, 'Sol Invictus' set in the Roman Empire during the reign
of the dissolute androgynous and sexually insatiable gay emperor Elagabalus
and 'Reniassance' set in Italy around 1500.

It contains graphic descriptions of the male human body, of consensual and
non-consenual sexual activity between adult males, and considerable
non-sexual violence including combat. 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 for the sake of the story. This tale, after all, is
fiction. It is not a historical monograph. None of the major characters are
actual historical persons and are not intended to resemble any person
living or dead. My apologies to the reader for consistently misstating
Alexander's height in all previous stories. I gave inconsistent
measurements in inches and centimeters. I meant to write that he was one
inch short of five and a half feet. That makes his height five foot five
not five six. The metric measurement is still 165 centimeters as stated in
all the stories.

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, my 'Mer
Boy' series in Gay/Beginnings, and the 'Track and Field' series in
Gay/College. For links to my stories, look on the list of Prolific Authors
on the Archive.

Comments and feedback welcome.

			Chapter 1. Northern India 453 AD

I heard the tiger cough about two hours after dusk. The tethered goat below
must have heard too, because she started to pull at the cord that tethered
her under the tree where I waited, an arrow strung in my composite bow. A
notorious maneater had plagued the district for months, killing at least
thirty times, including women and children. I had volunteered to hunt the
animal. I could not abide the thought of a mere beast preying on human
beings. It seemed to me against the proper order of nature. Besides, I had
seen what the tiger had left of several victims. It was ghastly, leaving
survivors with horrible memories of the very last time they got to see
their loved ones.

Others had tried before to kill the maneater, but this was too wily a beast
to allow itself to be driven by noisy beaters toward a party of hunters
lying in wait. Instead he had turned on the beaters, men armed only with
drums and cymbals and clappers and the occasional spear, and killed two of
them to break through their line and escape.

Deadfalls and poison bait had been tried and failed. The maneater may have
sniffed the scent of humans around the deadfall, a pit with spears set in
the bottom point upwards with a pair of chickens tied to the middle of the
flimsy covering of interwoven branches and leaves. The idea was that his
weight would break through the cover and plunge him onto the spear
points. Instead he ignored the bait and went on to the nearby village to
kill a child. As for the poisoned pig carcass, perhaps he detected a
suspicious odor. He had twice got away from expert trackers, once even
turning back on his trail and ambushing the men following his spoor. The
natives were starting to think of the tiger as a forest demon rather than a
wild animal with a taste for human flesh.

My tethered goat was alive and untainted by poison. I hoped its frightened
bleating would induce the tiger to pounce on her as he had on so many
humans. What I really needed to do was to find a half consumed human corpse
and lie in wait over that for the tiger to return for a second meal, but
the villagers would have none of it. Their custom was to cremate their dead
within a day. Actually in the hot climate of India, that was usually a good
idea.

The short recurved bow in my hands was powerful enough to drive an arrow
right through him close up. I had smeared cobra venom on the arrowhead, a
wickedly barbed hunting point, and the first part of the shaft. Even a
minor wound would finish the killer cat and end his reign of terror.

Nothing else but its actual corpse would lift the specter hanging over the
district. A local boy was up in the tree was with me. His job would be to
carry word to the nearest village in case of success. We would need a gang
of men to carry the heavy corpse back with us to prove the monster dead. A
big Bengal tiger might weigh 500 pounds (225 kg), four times my own mass. I
carry only 122 pounds (56 kg) on my small frame and stand a mere five foot
five and a whisker (165 cm).

My compound bow was made of horn and bone cleverly glued together. It was
newly captured from a soldier of the Huna, the so-called White Huns,
enemies of the Gupta Empire that ruled Northern India. The Gupta favored
longbows firing cane arrows with metal heads. Bows of that design were less
prone to warping than a composite bow in the damp and moist conditions
prevalent to the region. I knew my bow would not last very long in the
climate, but it would serve me well enough in the short term. Up in the
trees, hemmed in by branches, I needed the short double recurved bow of the
Huna to get off a good shot.

The wait that night was a long one. I crouched for hours on a branch thirty
feet in the air, the muscles of my nude body cramping painfully. Patel was
a plucky lad of some ten or twelve years. For his safety, I had asked him
to climb even higher in the branches.

I am not sure what gave us away. Perhaps it was the scent of the boy's
urine from when he had emptied his bladder around midnight. It was a
mistake I had cautioned him against. Still I could hardly expect a child to
have the discipline that I had learned in nearly six centuries of living
and surviving up to that point. The tiger ignored the bait and charged
across the clearing trying to get up our tree to kill us. Now tigers are
not the best of climbers, but the big branches on this tree combined with
its thick bark might allow it to scramble high enough. Its jump alone
carried it up the first ten feet.

I fired my poison arrow but the shot was off by a little. All right I
missed it clean. In my defense I offer that I was aiming at a fast moving
target, one bounding the way a cat does, in the darkness before morning
twilight, my own muscles cramped from the long night in the tree, and
shooting downward to boot. You try it sometime. I did have another arrow,
but I knew I could never get a shot off between the branches as the tiger
clawed its way up to me. Instead I grabbed my sword, and pointed it
straight down at the cat and slipped off the branch, timing my move for
when the claws on its front paws had just reached up to dig into the
bark. That meant that, for a second or so, the tiger could not use its
claws against me. I kept the point of my sword aimed straight at his chest
relying on the momentum from my fall to drive it in. As luck would have it,
my blade cut deep into its body cavity, piercing heart and lungs.

We fell to the ground together, but the tiger was dead before he hit the
ground. I was unscathed. His large body had cushioned my own much smaller
one from the impact.

"Sikandar, you did it!" the boy cried joyously. He had joined me on the
ground. "I must run and tell the village."

"No, Patel. Not yet. You must get back up in the tree and stay there till
dawn. Tigers are not the only danger that prowls the jungle at night. I'll
not send you off till full daylight."

Disappointed at having to wait, but recognizing the good sense of it, Patel
manged to curb his impatience till I gave him leave to carry his message to
the villagers. Meanwhile I examined the dead tiger. I soon realize that
though this was a big tiger indeed, it was not our mankiller. It had all
its front claws and our demon tiger only nine, having lost one in some
mishap.

The joyous villagers showed up with Patel leading them proudly, strutting
in fact. I smiled; the boy had a right to strut, plucky lad that he
was. The villagers crowded around me and the dead tiger, most of them
topping me by half a head. A tall handsome looking people, the men were
dressed in loose pants or simple wraps around the hips.

My sunbronzed hide made me nearly as dark as the villagers, but I was a
blond with green eyes and they were all raven haired with dark brown
eyes. They were puzzled by my sober expression as I stood over the dead
cat. I explained, but they did not want to accept to truth of it.

"No saddhu," the village headman insisted. "This is the demon tiger. He
must be!" he added, desperation in his voice.

I could understand why he needed to believe the reign of terror was over,
but in the end he had to face reality. His own trackers confirmed that this
tiger could not be the one who had done the killings, or at least not all
of them. Some suggested that maybe there were two mankillers operating in
the area. I doubted that. We returned to the village for a subdued
celebration. Even if it was the wrong cat, I had killed a big tiger that
might have preyed on their livestock, after all.

Word came to the village some two weeks later that the maneater was
dead. He had made the mistake of getting between a mother elephant and her
calf and got trampled for his trouble. His body was identified by his nine
toes, just about the only part of him that the outraged elephant had not
stamped into the soft earth.

Life returned to normal in our village. For me that meant the lifestyle of
an ascetic saddhu (monk) of the Digambara sect. Although Digambar monks
wore no clothes, they did not consider themselves to be nude. Rather, they
were clothed in the environment itself ("sky clad"), symbolic of a refusal
of private property or of bodily comforts. Not that renouncing clothing had
been much of a hardship for me. I am not the least bit body shy, something
of an exhibitionist in fact. So I would just as soon have gone entirely
naked because of the heat alone.

Just over a year earlier I had settled in this area about two days' ride
from from the city of Mathura on the River Yamuna, the main tributary of
the Ganges. Monks usually begged for everything, but I could not bring
myself to beg, not while able bodied. I had to earn my keep. It is simply
foreign to my character to sponge off others, to live as a dependent or a
parasite, hence the hunting I undertook for the village, shooting antelope
and other game to share with everyone.

As a saddhu I literally owned nothing, not the borrowed hut I lived in, not
even my weapons. Nothing. I could follow the way of the ascetic easily
enough if not that of a beggar. I lived without creature comforts in a hut
with a grass roof and a dirt floor and ate the plainest of food. I had no
possessions whatsoever. As a saddhu I could own nothing except maybe a
water bottle made from a gourd.

This was life simplified. That did not mean that I was deliberately trying
to mortify the flesh, as in the Western monastic tradition. I did not fast
nor keep vigils nor flay myself with a whip. No hair shirt for me either. I
regard such notions as immoral and entirely alien to my character, not to
mention useless as a means to enlightenment. How can hurting oneself ever
lead to self knowledge, true knowledge? Should we cultivate fever dreams
next? No, it was one thing to get rid of distractions and to reject
materialism, quite another to take up practices like those that consume
entirely too much time, energy, and commitment, becoming very distracting
in their own right.

So why had I chosen the life of an ascetic? I was on a spiritual retreat
and a quest for self realization, exploring the mental disciplines that
India had to offer. As a philosopher once said, the unexamined life is
hardly worth living, and I had many lifetimes to examine. Also I was
intensely lonely in the way that only an immortal can be lonely. The
calendar kept separating me from friends and lovers and colleagues. The
saddest thing about never growing older is that you must eventually lose
everyone you ever loved or befriended. The gods know many of them were more
worthy of my gift than I. Also I can seldom stay for even twenty years with
one identity or in one place since I do not age as others do. So I have to
give up neighbors, colleagues, the whole population of cities where I had
forged a comfortable existence and move on. It gets to you eventually. It
got to me, hence my spiritual journey via asceticism.

This was not the first time I had lived a life of privation, totally naked
for years at a time, but those times were when I was enslaved because of
the misfortunes of war or for bad debts. Of course, my privation in India
was voluntary and intended to be temporary, five years at most. I had
placed a large fortune in safe hands with friends in Persia. One day I
would return there and take up my usual profession of a merchant.

As to what accounts for my near immortality, I have no real answer, except
to suggest some fluke of genetics, maybe something to do with
self-repairing telomeres in the chromosomes of my cells. I was born in
Germany in the late second century BC. For reasons I can only speculate on,
I had stopped growing and aging after reaching seventeen. Now, more than
five hundred years later, I still looked like a boy in his late teens. No,
there had been no encounter with a sorcerer nor a pact signed in blood with
eldritch powers. It just happened that way.

I wrote "near immortality" advisedly since I know that I am not
invulnerable. Someday I must die whether in war, by accident, by foul play,
even by disease though my immune system is extraordinarily resistant. I
have no special powers. I cannot read minds or teleport or fly. I am not a
wizard, just a boy who never grew up. My advantages over other men derive
from my longevity, centuries of life experience being the most
valuable. Also I have had many lifetimes to hone all sorts of skills
whether occupational or for survival.

Practice makes perfect, and after nearly six centuries of training,
practice, and combat, there was no one on the planet who stood the
slightest chance with me face to face, one to one. I am deadly with long
bow, compound bow, and crossbow. (I became a dead shot too after the
development of firearms), I have studied many schools of unarmed combat,
integrating them into an eclectic style that suited my physique and
capabilities.

Some of my neighbors thought me a strange sort of saddhu. For one thing I
practiced constantly with sword and bow and knife. I sought training at
schools of the martial arts, exchanging lessons in the western techniques I
had mastered like the pankration of the Greeks. Sometimes I simply bartered
my charms for lessons. My version of asceticism went only so far. Yes I
lived in a hut, utterly naked. I owned nothing. I ate simply and did not
drink or use drugs. Yet I was meticulous about my toilette, bathing daily
upstream of the village, near the outlet of the spring that fed the stream
for maximum cleanliness. I used a split twig twice a day to brush my
teeth. I swept the dirt floor of my hut and got rid of any leftovers that
might attract vermin.

Also I had not given up sex. I might be centuries old by the calendar, but
physiologically I was a teenager with a sex drive to match. Chastity was
out of the question, even if I were of a mind to try it. I had no trouble
finding partners. Young men in the district were happy to take me to bed,
and I was happy to oblige them. I was a welcome alternative to years of
enforced chastity until they mustered the price of a bride. Typically men
married in their mid to late twenties to women in their late teens. What to
do in the meanwhile. Well in their village at least, there I was, pretty as
any girl around, exotic looking with my long blond hair and green eyes,
absolutely uninhibited about sex, and available to any nice looking young
male, at no charge. Some of the local whores resented me for that. Well you
cannot please everyone.

Still I was serious about learning Indian mental disciplines. I had rid
myself of all distractions especially the cares of managing a business and
a large household, not to mention worrying about how I would be clothed and
housed and fed. I wanted to delve into the existential questions, to
understand how we humans are motivated so much by emotion yet are capable
of the most abstruse of reasoning in mathematics and philosophy. Why do we
create poetry and music and tell stories?

I was looking into the phenomenon of consciousness itself. For instance,
consider this question. What does it mean to say that we are fully
conscious, when we don't even know what words we will use at the end of a
sentence when we start to speak. It is not like we first form a sentence in
our minds, parse it, visualize the words, then read them off as from a
script. Unless you are quoting from memory, you literally do not know the
next word that is going to come out of your mouth. Think about it. Try
saying a few sentences aloud yourself.

Why not? How can the words we speak flow so easily, so unconsciously if you
will, through our supposedly conscious minds. What does that say about
consciousness itself? You might not see that as much of a philosophical
problem, but then you haven't thought about it the way Indian sages
have. Make no mistake, what I was studying was logic and reasoning and
psychology, not any of that South Asian mumbo jumbo about gods and
goddesses, mythology, rituals, transmigration of souls, etc. As a
rationalist, I had no use for any of that. As a near immortal, I had no
immediate need of the consolations of religion for my mortality.

			Chapter 2. Summons

A few weeks after I slew the tiger, a troop of cavalry rode up into the
village to seek me out, asking after the yellow haired saddhu who had
fought the tiger.

"So you are the strange ascetic we have heard of even in Mathura. Sikandar
is it not?"

At my nod he went on.

My name is Chanakya. My master, the provincial governor Bindusara
Khadphises, would have you visit him at his seat at the palace in
Mathura. You are to accompany us there at once."

"What does your master want with a Digambar monk, a naked saddhu?"

"That he did not say. He does not often take me into his
confidence. Perhaps he wants the benefit of your wisdom. Then again,
looking at you now, I would not be surprised it he wants to add you to his
harem of pretty boys."

I flushed, dismayed at being summoned by a high official, taken away from
my own pursuits just to suit some whim of his. Was it his wish to conscript
me into his harem? I could not think of any other reason a man in his
position would want to see a nobody like me. Not that it mattered. I had no
choice. The invitation was come as you are, and I had nothing to pack
anyway.

"Very well, do you have a horse for me? I can ride bareback if necessary."

"You would have to ride bareass of necessity too, little one, but no, it
would be unseemly to deprive a saddhu of a chance to practice humility. You
are to run with us on foot back to the city. Since we are starting in the
afternoon, we won't get there before noon the day after tomorrow. Sorry
about the leash, but we would not want to run off or to get lost on the
way, now would we? Now stand still there like a good lad while my man fits
you with a leash. And don't touch the knot for any reason. Understood?"

I stood there as one of the riders looped a leather thong around my neck,
typing it with intricate knots that could not be easily undone. The cavalry
set off to the southwest, toward the provincial capital with me in tow. At
first they went at a walk but then eased into a trot. Now I am a natural
long distance runner with my light frame and slow twitch musculature. The
pace was one I could keep up all day, but even I was hard pressed to keep
up with the riders when they broke into a slow canter.

A horse in a canter covers ground at the rate of 10 to 15 miles per hour
(16 to 24 kph). 10 miles an hours is a pace of six minutes a mile. I can do
that for some time but not all day. My usual time for a marathon is just
about two and and a half hours, just under a six minute mile. Top
marathoners run five minute miles. (So can I, very nearly, but I have to
train full time to get to that level of fitness.) No man can run 15 miles
an hour for any distance. That is a pace of four minutes a mile, mile after
mile after mile. It is impossible. So they had to slow down when I lagged,
grumbling as if it were my fault I was on foot.

The total distance to the city was something like 40 miles (65
km). Understand that in the very short run, say a fifty meter sprint, a man
can outrun a horse which has so much more inertia to overcome. At very long
distances of days or even weeks, men can outrun horses too. Men are
omnivores so we can replenish our energy far faster than a horse which must
graze for hours every day. At the middle distances, a horse excels, and his
rider does not arrive exhausted either, which is why men ride horses in the
first place.

Sometimes I was ordered to run in front of the rider who had the other end
of my leash, sometimes I trailed him. These men liked to watch my taut body
as I ran along, admiring the dimpling of my butt cheeks or the rhythmic
expansion and contraction of my chest, or the metronomic action of my legs
as my stride ate up the miles. They enjoyed speaking about me as if I were
not there or perhaps were a horse they were judging. One man said I had
good wind and a fine stance. Another admired the smoothness of my stride
and the set of my shoulders. Another credited me with a good set of
withers, meaning my rump.

"What a fine looking colt the lad is, captain, one man called out."

"Actually from what I have heard, he deports himself more like a filly than
any colt. All the young stallions in that village where we found him are
said to mount him regularly, if you take my meaning."

That led to further ribaldry at my expense, as you can imagine. Some
pretended to admire the long blond mane on the filly who managed to keep
pace with their own mares and geldings. Others mocked me for my small size
or for my lack of body hair even at the fork of my legs. My bare ass
attracted much comment. There were even those who wondered whether I could
take a real horse cock up my fundament. One soldier mocked the way my
genitals bounced about as I ran down the narrow road. Would he look any
more dignified if he were running starkers at the end of a leash?

"So tell us, little one. How did you manage to slay that tiger?" one
soldier sergeant asked.

"I heard he threw himself out of a tree, driving a sword right through it."
another soldier offered, but the sergeant corrected him.

"Fell out of the tree from sheer fright is more like it. And they say the
blade was poisoned. The only way he could have killed it. By the gods, just
look at the puny thing. Does the lamb slay the lion? I don't think so."

No point in arguing that it was my arrows that were poisoned, and I missed
with them. You don't poison a blade unless you need to cheat in a
duel. Even then you take the risk of cutting yourself.

They let me stop to drink once in a while. Without water I would soon have
collapsed in the heat of an Indian spring, the way the sweat poured off me
making my whole body glisten with perspiration. When I asked for a time out
to take a dump, the sergeant wondered out loud, why I did not simply whinny
like the little filly I was. Like a dog on the end of leash I evacuated my
bowels under the watchful eyes of my escort. Once again I confronted the
contempt of straight men to those like me who respond to other males. In
this case their attitude was overlaid with the traditional hostility of
macho men toward pretty boys like me. Why is it that masculine men always
think the worst of us pretty young things when we get into a jam? Is it
jealousy or what?

It looked like once again my physical beauty was the cause of a serious
predicament. The truth is that all my long 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 a beautiful boy. I am small and
pretty and uniformly bronzed from habitual nudity looking entirely too
obviously like someone's catamite or pleasure boy. With my androgynous if
wiry physique and fine-boned features I fell far short of normal male
standards in height, muscular development, and secondary sexual
characteristics like beard and body hair. I was smooth even at the fork of
my legs. Since I had stopped aging before my beard grew in I have never had
to shave. The upshot of it all was I often wasn't taken seriously as a
male, often with dire consequences.

I have had much experience of rape and sexual servitude over the
centuries. Enslaved at fourteen by a Roman tribune as a spoil of war, I
became my captor's catamite and body slave until sold on to a merchant in
Massalia, modern Marseille. My new master also kept me nude and used me as
a pleasure boy but later put me to work as a scribe as well. Set free by
his will when he died suddenly of a fall from a horse, I traveled to the
East and made my first fortune in Alexandria, working in a boy brothel
while investing in mercantile ventures on the side. That is where I took up
the Roman habit of having all my body hair, little as it was, plucked with
tweezers. After several decades of plucking it stopped sprouting. Now I was
completely hairless and would stay that way forever.

In the early first century AD I spent a few years in ancient Antioch as a
Daphne Boy, enslaved for and unjust debt 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. Although we could not chose our clients, the life was pleasant
enough, with bright airy accommodations, good food, and decent
treatment. The priests let us keep tips from our clients so we had a bit of
coin to spend on our two days off per month.

I made friends among the other boys and even some of my clients, though I
was glad enough when circumstances freed me before my unchanging youth
could be noticed. In some ways I still have fond memories of my time as a
Daphne Boy, slave though I then was. Other periods of slavery before and
since were not so pleasant. I had spent a year in the Colosseum as a
gladiator, forced to fight for my life before the crowd. I became quite the
favorite, fighting naked and armed with two knives. They called me the
killer catamite because I was regularly given to my fellow gladiators as
well as to rich spectators who paid gold for the chance to fuck me fresh
from my latest combat, still covered with sweat, the dust of the arena, and
the blood of my foe.

My future would hold other stints of sexual slavery that were not so
pleasant. In the seventh century I spent three years working at the
dangerous trade of pearl diver in the Persian Gulf. I was kept perpetually
nude, set to dangerous work, taken sexually by guards and fellow divers
regardless of my wishes. Our masters were strict about segregation from
females. It was 'common knowledge' at the time that sexual activity
increased buoyancy, so we divers were prohibited any contact with
women. Slave owners kept slaves in male-only quarters, with the inevitable
result that same sex relations were nearly universal among slave pearl
divers. Our masters punished us for fighting and would have punished me
even worse if all I was fighting about was protecting my non-existent
virtue.

Then there were the recurrent gang rapes by bullies, soldiers, sailors, or
bandits -- at least till I mastered the arts of unarmed and armed
combat. It is not that I object to male sex or to taking the passive
role. I am by nature a bottom boy, a sexual submissive. That is why, even
though I usually earn my living as a merchant my next most usual
occupation, by choice or not, was catamite, sex slave, pleasure boy, joy
boy, rent boy, call it what you will.

I was well equipped for that role certainly: a comely youth, apparently of
no more than seventeen or eighteen summers and pretty as a girl with as
flawless a complexion. I did not have the classic muscular physique of the
Discus Thrower. I was quite slender and boyish -- almost skinny, with
narrow shoulders and a flat but corrugated chest and stomach sporting
well-defined abdominals, prominent ribs and sharp hip bones. The tracery of
veins on my forearms, calves, and belly showed how very little body fat I
carried. I like to think my manhood is more than adequate but I wouldn't be
scaring the horses. It takes both my small hands to cover an erection, but
only one when it was soft.

With fine-boned almost elfin features: a straight nose, high cheekbones,
and large green eyes, I turned heads. Sometimes passersby would blurt out
what they were thinking: "How can anyone be that good looking." I found
that gratifying, of course, but knew that, like my longevity, it was
nothing I had done anything to deserve. My genetic heritage was an accident
of birth, or more exactly of conception, as is true of all of us.

During our first overnight stop at a rough camp I was set to drawing water
and gathering wood for a fire. After I finished the sergeant brought me
over to his officer.

"At least you had enough sense not to try to steal a horse and ride away,"
Captain Chanakya observed. "Now get down here on your knees and get your
sweet mouth working on this."

One of his men used part of the leash to bind my arms behind my back and
then to the loop around my neck. He pulled my balls back between my legs
and tied the next section of slack around my ballsac, handing the end up to
Chanakya. That let the captain used the leash to yank on my balls while I
pleasured his cock. I pleasured him as commanded, probably giving him the
best blow job of his life. I knew better than to stint on the effort. He
was completely indifferent to my needs. With his large endowment shoved
down my throat, I had to gasp for air as best I could, spit and drool
leaking out of the corners of his mouth. All the while Chanakya face fucked
me, he bad mouthed me with the crudest and vilest of language.

"You silly fool, a beauty like you should not be living in obscurity as a
naked saddhu. What a waste when you could live well in the city, in one of
the upscale boy brothels, if not in a palace, enjoying comfort not
deprivation. What good has it done you living without possessions, without
money and powerless. Look at you, kneeling here helpless at my feet like
any slave, a small naked hairless western boy, cringing before his
betters. Isn't it that, even in your own mind, you know that this is where
you belong? You were made to be used by strong men as a suck toy and a fuck
toy too, you little cocksucking pansy faggot. Look at you, cum leaking out
of your bottom hole, a souvenir of your latest couplings in your
village. Hungry at both ends for more cock. No doubt about it. A cock crazy
youth like you needs to be fucked hard and often and by men who know how. I
expect the governor will take care that task."

At our stopover the second night, he even passed me around to his men. They
did leave my ass untouched or at least unprobed, probably under orders from
the governor, but their hands were all over me, proprietarily. as it
were. Some shoved fingers up my ass till a warning finger shake from the
captain reminded them my hole was off limits.

Why is it that when you give some men a little power they use it so
arbitrarily. Why did their own lusts carry so much more weight compared to
my own desires, my rights to bodily integrity and to choose my sex
partners. In the circumstances, I could not resist them, alone as I was,
unarmed, small, naked, barefoot, lead about on a leash like an animal, but
did their slight degree of authority and their deadly weapons give them the
right to use me like a sex slave? All right, I was already naked when they
found me, but was that really an invitation to one and all to stick their
cocks into my mouth, treating me like any boy of the streets? Why cannot
such men be satisfied with what is on offer rather than what they can take?
Another existential question for me, I suppose.

It galled me that with my skills I could have killed the nasty captain with
a single blow of my hand. I briefly considered taking a horse and making a
break for it, but decided not to. Where would I go? A naked blond boy
mounted on an imperial mount could hardly ride around unnoticed. Indeed how
many blonds frequented Northern India at all. Then there was the
governor. What did he want we me, beyond the obvious. Perhaps I might
someday settle accounts with the captain for forcing his attentions on
me. Meanwhile I had to wait and see.

			Chapter 3. Rudi

Eventually we reached the provincial capital, Mathura, once the winter
capital of the mighty Kushan Empire that stretched from the Aral Sea in
Central Asia down the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges in India. Old
inscriptions on tombs lining the approach roads were in their script, a
modified version of the Greek alphabet. In their day, the Kushans had
promoted urbanization and trade and had made the countryside safe for the
caravans that passed through places like Mathura. The city was on the edge
of the lands the Gupta Empire ruled directly. Its location was strategic,
astride the saddle of land between the Indus and Ganges valleys, the very
reason the Mughals and the British after them ruled from Delhi which lay
about 100 miles (150 km) northwest.

I did not see the governor the day of my arrival. A palace intendant showed
me to modest but comfortable quarters. After a bath and a good meal, I felt
reasonably restored from my long run. As the globe of the sun touched the
horizon, I decided to explore the palace and grounds having been told that
I might walk anywhere not restricted by the guards. I was pleased by the
wonderfully laid out garden in the Persian style, with delightful fountains
and pools and trellises for shade, all surrounded by greenery and
flowers. I sprawled out on the grass, eyes closed, reasonably content for
the first time in three days.

Some time later I felt something lightly brushing my right hand. It was
replaced by small wet nose and then a pink raspy tongue. A light grey cat
was checking me out, looking me over. We locked eyes for a moment, and I
blinked my eyes slowly and what I hoped was reassuringly. It worked. She
stepped up on my belly and walked her way up to my face, sniffing and
licking. I stroked her head a bit. Taking that as consent, she curled up on
my belly, eyes closed purring softly. What a lovely sound that is. No other
sound signifies contentment as much as a cat's purr. Then a voice spoke.

"I thought I would find you in the garden, Dankil."

I looked up into the eyes of a boy of about sixteen years. He was simply
exquisite, his body slender but well formed and blessed with delicate
androgynous features: raven haired, pert nose, large brown eyes accented
with kohl, and gold rings in his ears. He wore only loose pants hung low on
his narrow hips plus a shy smile on his face.

"Hi, my name is Rudrasena, Rudi to my friends, and I see you have already
met Dankil. What is your name?"

"I am Sikandar ... Rudi.

"You know Dankil is rather choosy about her friends, and she is a good
judge of character too. The fact that she took to you right away means you
come highly recommended. As for myself, I know that I am being terribly
forward on such short acquaintance, but may I kiss you, Sikandar. You look
absolutely scrumptious spread out on the grass like that, naked and
smelling good from the bath."

He flashed white teeth at me in a big smile. I nodded, unable to resist his
beauty, good humor, and directness. As our lips met, I wondered what this
seemingly guileless boy were doing in the garden of the governor's palace.

"So, Sikandar, I suppose you must be the governor's new boy. Very exotic
you are too with hair the color of gold and eyes the green of growing
things. Laid out naked in the garden for his delectation. I wonder why he
never mentioned he had found a new lad for his harem."

"That's because I am not in his harem. Or at least I don't think
so. Actually I don't know why he summoned me here."

I explained how I had arrived. Rudi was pensive as he remarked.

"No, since he hasn't seen you yet, you are not destined for the harem. He
always does the choosing personally. Though once he gets a look at you, he
won't be able to resist you, any more than I could. You are gorgeous
Sikandar."

"You are not so bad looking yourself Rudi. How long have you been one of
his boys?"

A look of surprise passed over his features then he started to laugh.

Just then, another voice spoke up. I looked into the face of a handsome man
who looked like a lot like Rudi with seven or eight years on him.

"Bindu!" Rudi exclaimed bouncing up. "Look what I found in the
garden. Isn't he adorable?"

As I got to my feet and gave a polite bow, the man smiled at what was I now
understood was his younger brother.

"I am Bindusara Khadphises, governor of this province, and you must be the
saddhu I sent for. I see you have already met my brother Rudrasena."

"And Dankil too," the boy piped up to add, bringing a fond nod from the
older man who clearly indulged his younger brother.

"I am told you have sworn off clothing. I can see that the tailor's loss is
everyone else's gain. I had intended to explain things tomorrow, but since
we are met here in this comfortable spot, I might as well get down to
business."

He signaled to servants to bring wine and sweets as he settled himself
cross legged on the grass, his hand signaling me to do the same.

"We shall dispense with formalities in this private setting. I find them
tiresome and time wasting in any event, all that bowing and scraping,
flowery language, courtiers jostling for advantage. It is why I normally
conduct official business in my office rather than the throne room. Why
should a man in charge of important government departments like taxation,
roads, irrigation, or religious affairs prostrate himself like a slave
before me or anyone, except the emperor, of course. How can I expect my
generals to lead men, if I do not respect them enough to let them stay on
their own two feet when they report."

I was impressed by the no-nonsense attitude of this man, the governor of a
strategic province, westernmost of those ruled directly by the emperor from
Pataliputra. I wondered why he thought he should explain himself to a bare
assed foreign youth like myself. What could this man need with me?

"No doubt you are wondering why you are here. The reason is simple enough
to speak of, though your task will not be easy to carry out."

"My task?"

"I want you to infiltrate the circle of certain men of influence here in
Mathura and report to me what you discover about their intrigues."

Of course I raised the obvious objections: what qualified me for a job as a
spy. How could he trust me, a complete stranger and a foreigner to boot,
with such a delicate mission. Why should I put my life at risk for him in
the first place? He countered with a strange reference to my recent
exploits.

"Do you know why that tiger turned maneater? It took a wound from a hunter
who could not be bothered to track it down and finish it off. Not for him
the dirty job of climbing down from his elephant and following a spoor in
the jungle on foot. With its injury, the tiger could not hunt its normal
prey and turned to preying on humans. Hence all those women and children
killed, some from your own village. That man is your prime target, or at
least main suspect."

Again I objected. Much as I might despise such a man, it was hardly up to
me to avenge the dead. The maneater had died after all. The governor then
played his trump card.

"Your choice is to act as my secret agent here in the palace and city or I
shall have to officially take cognizance of your presence here. I wonder
what answers an interrogator might get out of you to explain why you, a
wealthy merchant in Qandahar until a year ago, suddenly gave up everything,
even clothing, to dwell in my province as a saddhu. Some might believe you
truly are on a spiritual journey. Others, more hard headed perhaps, might
look for a mundane motivation, connected perhaps to ongoing tensions along
our western borders with our great rival the Persian empire of the
Sassanids."

"What! Maybe I did give up a merchant's life in Persia, but I'm not working
for the Persians as a spy. What mischief could I get up to in the obscure
village where I live?"

"That is precisely what a torturer, er interrogator, would like to
know. You understand my meaning and your position? For my part, I might be
inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you are a very strange
kind of saddhu. You train constantly with sword and bow; you hunt and kill
animals and eat their meat; you travel around my province ostensibly to
study at schools of the martial arts. You are sexually promiscuous, though
only with males. What does all that make you, saddhu or spy or a strange
sort of libertine.

Glumly I concluded that the man had me. If only to protect myself, I must
get involved in his intrigues. Only that would deflect unfounded
suspicions. Bindusara was a wily one. I could tell he knew the suspicions
were groundless but they gave him a handle on me. Nothing personal there. A
ruler must use what tools come to hand, and I was drafted for this job. Oh
he promised suitable rewards for loyal service, sincerely meant, I am sure,
but there was still an iron fist inside the velvet glove.

My cover identity was already established. I was a minor celebrity. As the
saddhu who had slain the tiger I would be able to move freely around the
palace and the city. As the saddhu who spread his charms widely, I would
wind up not only in the governor's bed but also those of his enemies. That
would give them the chance to pump me for what he might have said in
confidence as pillow talk. I would continue my ostensibly ascetic way life,
naked and with a simple diet.

"You know that you can continue your spiritual development right here in
the city Sikander. Here you will have access to philosophers, priests, and
wise men. One word of warning. I can see that my brother is very much taken
with you. Do not toy with his affections. I have no objection to an affair
with a boy his own age or very nearly, as you are, though I would not let
an older man take advantage of his youth and naivete. Treat him
decently. He is utterly without guile, and I love him dearly. Now since he
saw you first, I am going to let him have first crack at you. Does that
please you Rudi?"

Rudi blushed at this frank talk but took my hand in his and led me to his
rooms. We passed the guarded door of the boy harem. Rudi explained.

"The guard is not there to keep the harem boys in but to keep intruders
out. My brother does not lock his boys behind gates and walls. Those are
for his own protection when he visits, to forestall assassins."

Rudi's own suite was just beyond his brother's apartment. Further on was
the suite of his brother's wife. Theirs was a diplomatic and dynastic
marriage only. Bindu had little use for women and did not keep a female
harem. Rudi's rooms were airy and comfortable without being
ostentatious. Unselfconsciously the boy dropped his trousers and lay down
on the bed, reaching an arm toward me. Already naked, I reclined next to
him. He smelled of attar of roses and of good clean boy.

Our first kisses were tentative, even shy, but our hormones soon took over
and we went at it with a will. I love sex with boys of our sort, small and
slender and preciously cute. It is an absolute delight. I feel energized as
we jump into bed and roll around kissing and laughing and touching. It is
easy to breathe no matter what the position, since the small bodies of
boyish lovers do press down so much. When I have sex with another pretty
boy, we pleasure each other equally and in much the same way as we are
pleasured, trading off taking the more active role or sixty-nining. Both of
us liked the taste of a boy's cum or just having it splash us in the
face. That made us feel very sexy and desired. You know you have connected
with a boy when he splooges on your face and then you kiss, tongues probing
deep, tasting him while dueling with his tongue.

(I also respond to powerful males who use their size and strength to
dominate me. Sex with an older male, especially one taller and powerfully
built is a need and a craving. With a man I go all weak in the knees and
submissive, ready to drop to my knees and worship as a supplicant. The fact
is that I am a bottom boy at heart, a natural submissive. That is what I
looked forward to in a relationship with Bindusara.)

Rudi had a long member somewhat darker than his skin, smooth and not gnarly
with veins, very like my own except for the shade. He was formidably
equipped for a small youth. Despite his prior dalliances with other males,
I dare say no one had ever played with him as I did that evening. As I
licked him, his smooth cock started to plump up and straighten out, as the
head emerged from the foreskin, to point toward his deep belly button. Then
the cock lifted completely off the boy's belly, cantilevered out from the
root, twitching with the throb and beat of his heart, as a clear fluid
leaked from the tiny slit at the end.

My hands and lips caressed this exquisite boy. I stroked the length of his
legs, cupped his small buttocks, slid my hands along his flanks, and delved
into his cleavage, making love to his body with my hands but touching the
boy's proud cock only with lips and tongue. I swallowed him to the root,
noting that he had plucked his pubes, bobbing my head up and down his
length. I pulled off just in time. The ball sac pulled tight against the
fork of his legs, its globularity standing out below the cylinder of his
virile member. The head turned purple, its tiny lips spreading
open. Abruptly, with a quick intake of breath, his proud cock engorged
beyond its previous impressive girth and began spurting and spitting his
white seed onto his belly. After several strong spurts, the gism continued
to drain from the softening shaft but slowly, creating a pool in the hollow
of his hairless belly.

I used the tip of my finger to gather some of his chrism and brought it to
my lips and then to his, coating his lips like a gloss, and spreading more
just above his lip, so his nostrils would take in the scent of his own
seed. He reached out with his tongue as I offered more of it to him. I
lapped some of it up and took him back into my mouth, sucking and tugging
on a cock that the moment before has spit his essence onto his belly. He
whimpered bewitchingly, inarticulate sounds indicative of the combination
of pleasure and pain he felt at the head of his cock, especially when I
tongued his sweet spot. He put both hands to my head to still its
movements, but my tongue continued to torture him deliciously. He finally
begged me to stop. It felt so good, it hurt. He shuddered as I drew back
from his softening member, belly twitching as I kissed it repeatedly,
practically sobbing with pleasure. I was happy too. I lay my head on his
belly, content myself that I had given him such joy. I had so wanted his
first experience with me to be memorable.

After we caught our breath, Rudi reciprocated. He was quite talented, a
natural then. Over the next few days we explored each other's bodies and
got acquainted. I found out that Rudi and Bindusara had different mothers
who were sisters, so they were actually closer than half-brothers in
blood. Rudi had no interest in politics, but he was keen on learning about
managing the family's agricultural estates. He hoped someday to take over
that burden from his brother. So he spent much of his time in the gardens,
creating new varieties of plants by selection of favorable varieties and by
cross-breeding. I have always liked horticulture myself, especially with
perennials and trees. We first worked together with cuttings and graftings
of fruit trees. In a gesture of solidarity with me, Rudi worked in the
nude. We could often be seen together, kneeling on the ground, brown cheeks
resting on bare feet, lithe torsos bent over, ribs and spinal bumps
prominent as, smudged with dirt and trowels in hand, we worked at our
humble tasks while the sun warmed our bare butts. I love to feel the heat
of the sun kissing my ass.

Sometimes we boys threw clods of earth at each other as in a snowball fight
except we were all hot and sweaty and naked instead of cold and bundled
up. A little more dirt was no bother to us naked as we were anyway --
nothing a quick bath would not take care of. We also liked to play with
Dankil the cat, dragging a toy tied to a string along the ground and
watching her pounce. Or we threw tidbits to her, or rolled a ball along the
ground. Dankil actually had six toes on her front paws, two "thumbs" with
dew claws, one on either side. That gave her almost prehensile paws, great
for catching the ball and manipulating small objects. Her rear paws were
normal with just four toes each.

Sometimes we engaged in sex right there in the garden. It felt so natural,
like a primeval fertility rite to lie belly down, naked body fully in
contact with the earth, legs spread wide, offering yourself to a male lover
primed to plow your ass. Rudi liked the way I always traded off, giving him
as much a chance to be in the saddle as on the bottom. With his slender
form pumping away at my rump, my own rigid cock would dig into the earth,
plowing it, preparing a furrow for my spurting seed. Afterwards, we would
lie together, breathing heavily, pasted together with sweat and dirt. Even
after he shot into me, his teenaged cock stayed hard. In the afterglow, I
liked him to keep it there for a while, as we lay locked together, the
entire length of our now languid bodies in contact. Dankil liked to make it
a threesome, rubbing her chin to mark us, licking with her pink tongue,
purring softly as she curled up with us.

As we got back our second wind he might start in again entirely or get to
work preparing himself for me to mount him. His preferred position for that
was to kneel and bend over to put his head in his arms, bracing his rump
high off the ground. Outdoor sex in the garden brought the two of us
together like nothing else. No hiding away indoors as if in shame. Whatever
gods existed could watch or not as they wished. We were lovers and we were
proud of it. Afterwards, we went into the bath to scrub the earth from back
and rump, yet more reason for our hands to explore each other's trim bodies
everywhere. Dankil sometimes watched but could never be persuaded to join
us in the bath.

			Chapter 4. Intrigues

After a briefing from the governor's spy master to fill me in on who the
players were, I started snooping, circulating around the palace, getting to
know people, giving intriguers a chance to approach me, to befriend the
governor's brother's lover. I might sit in the garden and listen to the
musicians who played there in the afternoons and evenings. I was always
open to a challenge to play a very early version of chess. Some encounters
were quite intellectual. At other times men just wanted to chat me up prior
to getting me into their beds. I often accepted their invitations if I
thought their pillow talk might prove enlightening. That included the tiger
hunter whose cowardice or laziness had unleashed a maneater on my district.
One link in the chain led to another, not hard to follow since such men
like to show off their conquests and even pass them around in a show of
magnanimity. I managed to learn a lot about the different factions and
interests at stake.

It was fairly easy too. These men were not on their guard against a naked
saddhu, a promiscuous foreign pretty boy. What loyalty could such a wanton
lad feel toward the imperial Gupta? And mostly I had a good time in the
social whirl thanks to my eternally hormone charged teenage sex
drive. Sometimes I ventured out into the city though almost always in
company, allowing suitors and acquaintances to pay for food and drink at
teashops and taverns. I had no funds of my own, after all. Others took me
to their homes, though often via the back door reserved for servants and
entertainers and whores.

The palace was a lively and busy place with officials, courtiers,
petitioners, servants, and soldiers always going about on their respective
errands. They wore such colorful clothing and uniforms too, often accented
with plumes and precious or semi-precious stones. I was rather conspicuous
in their company totally nude as I was, my trim little body completely free
of hair even at the fork of my legs. As something of an exhibitionist I
admit that I enjoyed the chance to display myself nude while everyone else
about me was clothed. It made me feel even more naked. I know that is
naughty, even perverse, but that is what I am, for better or for worse. At
least in that century my perpetual nudity was socially acceptable in my
role as a saddhu.

Still, ofttimes even during the most prosaic of conversations I had the
distinct impression that my interlocutors were paying less attention to
what I was saying than wondering what my pouty lips would look like locked
around their cocks. Just a feeling, but there it was.

And why not. To them I was a walking wet dream, a boy lodged conveniently
to hand right there in the palace, shamelessly promiscuous, available free
of charge, already unwrapped so to speak, and supremely practiced in the
amorous arts. There were many who wanted the chance to clutch my pretty
body to their chests, to feel it all slick with sweat, tugging, pulling,
and squirming, orifices plugged and at work, pleasuring them better than
any boy had ever done before.

Despite my active social life, I did resume my exploration of Indian
psychology and philosophy. I talked with leading scholars. This was a
golden age in (Northern) India. The long peace, the rule of law and order,
and impressive cultural achievements of the period crystallized the
elements of Hindu culture with all its variety, contradictions, and
syntheses. The most significant achievements of this period were in
religion, education, mathematics, the arts, and in Sanskrit literature
particularly drama. The Kama Sutra dates from this period. In religion the
pattern was set for Hinduism with consensus on the major sectarian deities,
the worship of images, devotionalism, and the importance of the temple
cults.

Indian education was suprisingly broad in focus covering subjects like
grammar, composition, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, medicine, and
astronomy. The range compares well with the trivium and quadrivium taught
in medieval universities in the west. Grammar, logic (or dialectic), and
rhetoric made up the trivium. Arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy
made up the quadrivium. Hindus invented the decimal system of notation we
use today. By viewing lunar eclipses, Indian astronomers concluded,
correctly, that the earth was round and rotated on its axis.

Maybe this was not my usual mercantile activity, but in my early centuries
I spent much time and energy trying to understand my place in the world. I
explored metaphysics, epistemology, linguistics, psychology, and other
disciplines. I have never neglected the intellectual side of my nature, not
when I had any choice in the matter. If that sort of endeavor seems strange
for a naked monk, a pretty boy, a lover of others of his gender, a
shameless show off, then so be it. I am as I am. I like to think I have a
good head on my shoulders too. I am not just a pretty face and a sexy body.

I also spent much time with soldiers, guards, and young bravos in the
training yards and salles, training and practicing with sword and bow. Nor
did I neglect the various schools of unarmed combat, of which there were
many in India, several domiciled in Mathura. I still use some of their
techniques combined into an eclectic system that suits my physique and
capabilities.

"Wasn't that you I saw on the stable roof this morning, Sikandar? Quite the
nimble monkey, you were. Trying to get away from an outraged husband, were
you?" one of my sparring partners asked with a twinkle in his eye, probably
from his own memories of such escapades in his youth.

"More likely to be from an outraged wife or father, with pretty little
Sikandar here." another rejoined. That provoked a general chuckle.

Actually I was just engaged in an acrobatic game similar to running an
obstacle course. In modern times the name of the sport of parkour, derived
from the French word for obstacle course.  I used the palace complex as an
obstacle course, a training ground for a form of applied acrobatics, really
survival training in escape and evasion.

The idea was to use obstacles as a way to shake off pursuit. Far better
than soldiers or guards in arms and armor, an agile lightly encumbered man
can scale walls, scramble along rooftops, jump across alleys, and swarm up
the facades of buildings, taking advantage of drain pipes, construction
scaffolding, porticos, awnings, trellises, etc. The game also gave me a
chance to test my nimbleness and strength not against others but against
the limits of my own body as I overcame obstacles like walls, fences,
buildings, towers, trees, and ditches. I always feel exuberant after a good
scramble, it appeals to the boy in me, and what boy does not like to climb
trees?

My skills came in handy too for my job as spy. Unsuspected, I could trail
someone along the rooftops, then climb down a facade spider-man style to a
convenient window to listen in on what was being said. The decorative
elements in period architecture left many projections that were just right
for handholds and footholds. Sometimes I squirmed my way into attics or
haylofts or even between iron bars. It is the width of the head that is the
critical measure. Once you get your head and one arm and shoulder through
bars, you can wriggle the rest of you all the way, unless you have a hell
of a paunch. With my flat tummy, it was no problem at all. And no, I did
not get hung up on my pert rump either. Sure they jut out appealingly, firm
and round, but petite, like the rest of me.

Mostly I simply kept my eyes and ears open for anything that did not look
right or sound right. I have a gift for languages and knew the local Hindi
plus Persian, Punjabi, and Kashmiri, and I could recognize though not speak
the language of the Hephthalites, the so-called White Huns or Huna
(apparently no relation to the people ruled by Attila from its center in
Hungary).

Based on leads from the Gupta spymaster and my own investigations, I soon
uncovered an intrigue centered around an ambassador from the Tribal
Republics which lay to the west. The geopolitics of a past era is often
boring to those with nothing at stake, so let me just say the the tribes
were tributary to the empire though nearly autonomous in internal
affairs. They wanted to regain their total independence. (So they could
make war on their civilized neighbors and loot and despoil them). They were
even prepared to use the Huna to tip the balance of power. The Huna had
their own game afoot, to carve out an empire from the western territories
of the Gupta and the eastern territories of the Persians. In the process,
they would betray and subjugate the tribal republics. For their part, the
Persians just wanted to divert Huna attentions away from their empire and
keep the Gupta too busy to think of further expansion. In other words the
worst sort of power politics, each side looking out for itself in the short
term.

I gradually pieced together a plot to assassinate Bindusara as a prelude to
a general tribal uprising, leading to Huna incursions, followed by Persian
intervention to "restore order". Conveniently the governor's death would
sever the personal ties and pledges that bound the tribes to the Gupta
through their regional governor in Mathura and the wife he had taken from
the tribes. Unfortunately, the plot was already in motion when I tried to
get to the governor to warn him. The guard on the door of the harem told me
Bindusara was with the harem boys but would not let me in to speak with
him. Suspecting the guard might even be part of the plot, I went to Rudi
who got me in to see his brother.

I don't know quite what I expected to find inside, some exotic den of
unbridled sexuality, I suppose, but it was nothing of the sort. The decor
was simple though comfortable, masculine in a boyish sort of way, sort of
like a college dorm with luxury appointments. The shelves of books and
student slates showed this to be a school as well a pleasure palace. There
were six resident boys, only one as young as fifteen. All were fit and
tanned and very healthy looking. When we entered, Bindusara was reading
poetry to a very pretty lad blessed with violet eyes. Though the boy was
naked, the scene was not lascivious at all, more like an uncle with a
favorite nephew at his knee.

At the governor's signal, the boys barred the door from the inside, just in
time too, as assassins launched their assault, trying to break the door
down. I could tell from the lack of fighting outside that I had been right
about the disloyalty of the guards. The nine of us were locked inside the
harem, safe but only for the moment. Though the door was stout enough, in
time the thugs outside would break through and succeed in decapitating the
imperial government in Mathura.

Bidusara was sure that the plot was not widespread. He was a popular
governor with a reputation for moderate levels of taxation and fair
decisions in legal cases. If only we could get word to the army
barracks. The army could be relied upon, unlike the palace guard.

"I'll go." I said. "Only someone like me can fit through the iron bars set
in the windows and then scramble up to the roof. Once there I can make my
way across the city to the barracks. By keeping off the streets I can avoid
whatever forces might block the way."

"Good plan, and thank you, Sikandar, for your loyalty. Rudi and I and the
boys will defend the door here, retreating to the inner chambers if
necessary which have an iron grate to bar that entrance. That should buy us
enough time for you to bring help. These boys of mine may look like palace
strumpets, but they are all trained in arms. Come lads, are you with me?"

They all responded enthusiastically, cheering wildly and unhooking weapons
and shields from the walls. These implements of war were not the
decorations they had seemed but an armory hidden in plain sight: spears and
swords and and bows. I realized that this was part of the governor's
security measures, probably known only to those in these rooms. His enemies
might have him trapped for the moment, but he was not defenseless nor
without an army, even if it were only seven pretty lads in houri boy pants
or less.

I saw the boys stand the low tables upright, sliding their bottom edges
into deep grooves in the floor that had been concealed by carpets, then
locking them together. In short order they had rigged a box, a defensive
position just a foot or two deep in front of the narrow doorway. Anyone
breaking through would find themselves in a killing ground, hemmed in by a
chest high wall defended by the boys on three sides, their own comrades
shoving in from behind. Unable to maneuver and pressed close, they would be
cut to pieces. Once killed their dead bodies would continue to hinder their
comrades' efforts. It was fiendishly simple. Another example of the
governor's attention to security.

Dankil, the boy with the violet eyes, (not the cat named for him) spoke up,
pointing out how close set the iron bars were.

"Let's coat these two bars and your torso with this lotion, Sikandar, that
will help you get slip them. Sire, why don't you and some of the boys first
try to pull the bars apart as far as you may."

With a nod, Bindusara braced a powerful leg on one bar and pulled with all
his might, three of the other boys doing the same. Their efforts bent the
adjoining bars far enough apart that with my body slicked up I could just
slip through. Dankil coated the bars with the lotion. Next he went to work
on me, explaining that I needed to keep my hands, arms, and legs dry. He
worked at his task with more enthusiasm than perhaps strictly necessary to
the purpose. Not that I minded. Little Dankil was very cute, small and
smooth and naked. He wore a mischievous look on his face as he spread the
lotion onto my skin. I could not help but respond.

"That's enough Dankil", Rudi observed dryly. "If your hands play with him
any more, he will only hook himself on the bar as he exits, if you take my
meaning." That brought a chuckle from all of us.  As the other boys took
positions at the door, Dankil and Rudi helped me slip through the window
bars.

It was not as easy to reach the army barracks as I thought. Someone spotted
me as I escaped the harem up to the roof and sent word ahead. Maybe armored
men could not scramble along the rooftops, but even if they themselves
could not reach me, their arrows could. I twice had to dodge around areas
overlooked by men in towers. Circling that way made the route far longer
than I expected.

Some men did come up after me. Mostly I lost them by vaulting alleys,
hiding in awnings rolled up for the night, or just climbing where only
someone with my slight weight could trust a trellis not to pull loose. One
man armed with a knife tried to gut me, but my centuries of training and
experience stood me in good stead. There are any number of ways to deal
with a knife wielder, especially one whose footing was unsure. I tricked
him into a grapple, then step aside to let his own momentum do the rest. He
made a satisfying crunch on the paving stones below.

In the end I reached the barracks, swinging Tarzan style across the open
space in front of it on a rope secured to the tower of the temple that
faced the main gate. At first the soldiers on guard took me for an intruder
and rushed to secure me. Some of the soldiers were men I had practiced with
in the salle and who vouched for me. I got in to see their commander and
gave him the code phrase Bindusara Khadphises had given me to authenticate
my report. The regiment mobilized immediately.

The army had to fight its way not only through much of the suborned palace
guard, but tribesmen who had infiltrated the city as traders and even a few
Huna. I kept out of the close fighting. Street fighting is hard work,
shoulder to shoulder, best left for men armed and armored for the job. That
meant infantry with helmets and shields and breastplates for armor and
longswords and javelins for weapons. I was naked. Also the narrow streets
and the press of soldiers would negate my advantages in speed and
agility. Sheer size and strength and stamina and numbers mattered
most. Fortunately we had the numbers. I did what I could with a borrowed
bow and quiver, picking off enemy archers and anyone who looked like an
officer.

We reached the palace within two hours and found the governor and the
embattled harem boys still holding out in the inner chamber, even though
that wing of the palace had caught fire. Our cavalry had men climb up and
fix ropes to the bars in the windows of the harem and rip them out, freeing
the governor and his little army of pleasure boys.

All had survived though two bore wounds on shoulder or thigh. They would
leave clean scars, a white line that would do little to detract from their
good looks. The governor hastened to assure the two wounded boys that he
would not set them aside. They were his little heroes, after all. War
wounds gave a male a manly air, don't they?

I could see the harem boys were just bursting with pride over what they had
accomplished, protecting the life of governor Khadphises. They had trained
for more than two years, enjoying the secrecy and intrigue of it all, much
as modern boys enjoy passwords, secret handshakes, and decoder rings. The
enemy had left more than a dozen dead in the harem itself. Even more dead
or dying men were found in the corridor outside. Harem boys they might be
but they were now battle tested soldiers. From now on, they would train in
the open, respected by soldiers and guards who might previously have
scorned them as mere bum boys. Maybe they still were, but they had shown
that they had grit too.

Once the plotters knew they had failed to kill the governor, resistance
crumbled as their alliance fell apart. It was every man for himself. Over
the next week, investigations and torture rooted out all the conspirators
and they met the fate they deserved, including nasty captain Chanakya, my
escort to Mathura months earlier. The sponsoring powers of course denied
all knowledge of the affair, attributing it to misunderstandings, unruly
elements, or unauthorized actions by rogue officials. Right.

Bindusara had previously kept me separate from his boys not out of any
jealously but strictly for security reasons. Once their cover was blown, I
was welcome to join him and Rudi with the other boys. Lovely Dankil was
unmarked. I later learned that Rudi had named his cat after him, for the
boys were good friends. They were a delightful bunch and not just in
bed. They all seemed to share a lively curiosity. It seemed that Bindusara
recruited only bright boys from the Kshatriya (warrior caste) with a thirst
for knowledge. The plan was that, once they grew too old for harem duty,
they would form a cadre of officials farmed out to the various departments
but personally loyal to him. That was why the harem was as much a school as
anything else.

I was mightily impressed by this aspect of Bindusara's character, his
concern for his pleasure boys, their future. How many men of power think
only of themselves and not what they can do for those who serve them. Here
the governor had come up with an innovative solution as to what to do with
an overage harem boy, transforming him from a problem into an asset. He
would prepare them for a new life as officials seeing to the building of
roads, irrigation works, or to the administration of justice. Meanwhile he
ensured their trust by freeing all the boys, even those purchased in the
slave market and giving them access to arms. Trust engenders trust as it
did with these boys. Such fair minded and clear headed men in positions of
power are alas all too rare in my experience. Quite a remarkable man in any
age was Bindusara Khadphises.

			Epilogue

I lived in Mathura for the next four years, returning to my studies in
philosophy and psychology, though I did not neglect either weapons training
or the martial arts. I stayed at the palace, strange quarters you might
think for a nude ascetic, but my presence there was a convenient one. I
visited the harem boys often, helping out with foreign language lessons and
filling in blanks on their maps in geography. And yes I cavorted with them
too, especially in threesomes with Rudi and Dankil. Bindusara was not the
least bit jealous. He could be lusty enough with his boys when he took them
to bed (judging from the harem boy gossip and my own assignations with
him). Otherwise he behaved more like a favorite uncle, firm when he had to
be but indulgent otherwise. I don't think I have ever seen harem boys more
at ease around their principal.

Rudi's departure to manage the family's estates triggered my own decision
to leave and to reclaim my fortune in Qandahar. It felt very strange
wearing clothing again, at least at first. I had tried the ascetic life for
five years, and I was a better man for it. Oh I did not have all the
answers I had sought. I still don't, but I understood the questions
better. Life is a journey, not a destination.

Like their western namesakes the White Huns gradually encroached on their
civilized neighbors, even building a shortlived empire between Persia and
the Gupta Empire. A generation later that empire began a century long
decline. The peoples of India still count it as a golden age.

These days I live in New York City where I still make a game of practicing
escape and evasion, recently popularized as French inspired parkour. A
modern city presents even more opportunities than in the past. The
structures are more varied ranging from tunnels and bridges and cranes to
utility towers, parking garages, factories, subways, elevated railways,
what have you. The police and security guards seldom bother me as I run
about town, scrambling up towers and utility poles, running along abandoned
railroad rights of way or across train yards. You would not believe how
many old orphanages, hospitals, asylums, rail stations, abandoned piers,
schools, industrial sites, overgrown cemeteries, and swampy areas have been
abandoned or left to go to seed in the five boroughs. As my guide book to
new adventures, I consult the web site forgotten-ny.com.

Of course, I cannot run around the Big Apple in the nude. Aside from
problems with the law, the cityscape is almost all pavement and hard
surfaces, with much broken glass underfoot and all sorts of grime and grit
like the rubber particles that wear off tires. Hence I go about in soft
running shoes -- no sox. In warm weather, I wear nothing more than a pair
of skimpy, ultra lightweight, low rise, skin-tight, nearly sheer tan-thru
shorts -- the next thing to being naked, really. It was enough to preserve
my modesty or rather to preclude arrest. In cooler weather I switch to
colorful tights and a form fitting top in space age fabrics that hug my
trim torso and flatter my tight buns.

Even in warm weather, New York City offers fewer opportunities for public
nudity than ancient India. Oh there are a couple of clothing optional
beaches and some out of the way sunning spots, but these days even the Y
has cleaned up its act. Males used to be able to swim there bare ass as in
a Roman palestra, but then the Y went co-ed, and that was that. The US does
not have the network of naturist sites and nude bathing spots found in
Central Europe, certainly nothing like the nude sunbathing area in Munich's
Englischer Garten. Imagine trying to walk around nude in the Sheep Meadow
in Central Park.

It is true that partial nudity is more socially acceptable than say half a
century ago, when Bermuda shorts were still considered daring, and the
Jersey beaches banned Speedos for men (sure to be gay, or so they
thought). In those day, men could get stopped by a cop for walking down the
street barechested. Nowadays you can toss around a frisbee wearing short
shorts, aka hot pants, or even a thong in a public park.

Then you have those low sagger kids with the waistband of their pants about
the level of their groins. However much that is titillating as a courtship
display, I find it totally impractical. You simply cannot run or fight when
your pants are threatening to slide off your hips at any moment to pool
around your ankles like hobbles. I mean, what are these kids thinking? Such
is the youth of today!

Curmudgeonly grumbles aside, that is the much same reason I never wear flip
flops to get about in public. They are too flimsy to kick with, to run in,
or to climb with. Save them for the shower at the gym or the club.

I do what I can to indulge the exhibitionist side of my nature. I like
skiing nude on sunny slopes in the winter. There is nothing like spending
several hours on the slopes of a gay friendly resort wearing nothing more
ski boots and a fine tan. Fellow skiers cannot help being titillated by the
contrast between the white powder on the slopes and the tawny gold of an
all over suntan on a sexy nude youth. My lover Jeffrey also works on his
tan as he skies with me, though in his case wearing a pair of shorts made
of a tan-thru fabric.

The trick to enjoying skiing with no clothes on is to stay in the sun and
out of the snow. Don't wipe out on the descents and get back to the lodge
for apres ski before the sun drops behind the mountains. That is when we
adjourn to the hot tub or the heated outdoor pool, like the slopes
themselves clothing optional. Afterwards we dress for dinner. You might not
think that a sarong is appropriate attire at a ski lodge, but I certainly
do, as long as no one challenges me to step out onto the deck for a
snowball fight. Jeffrey is more conventional in his dress.

I did find myself the butt of a practical joke the day I tried to sleep in,
tired from a late night. Jeffrey and three ski buddies would have none of
it. This was no time to snuggle under the covers, not on a bright sunny
morning with no wind, the best skiing weather in days. As Jeffrey threw off
the bedclothes, the others dragged me by my ankles to the french windows
which Jeffrey had already flung open. I could hardly use my fighting skills
in such a situation, good sport that I am, so I merely protested
vociferously and kicked my legs ineffectually, as all four of them picked
my up bodily and stepped out onto the balcony. I really expected them to
stop short of actually pitching me over the side. Alas, the mischief was
upon them and they slung me into space. I wailed in surprise as I dropped
into a deep snow drift below.

Onlookers later told me that I sank so far as to disappear from view. The
drift was at least ten feet deep. Cameras were already rolling as I
surfaced, yelling wildly, floundering in the loose powder, trying to swim
through the snow to the shoveled path. As you can imagine, in the
circumstances I hardly knew which way to turn. Never mind I was suddenly
naked in public. That snow was cold! Onlookers were laughing so hard they
could not have lent a hand even if they had been so minded. Someone later
asked why I had slapped at my butt cheeks as I raced to the hot tub and
jumped in. When I admitted that I was trying to dislodge the snow packed
into my ass crack, I only provoked more hilarity. I am glad everyone else
had a good time, and I admit the video is funny enough in a Keystone Cops
kinds of way. I have gotten to the point where I can laugh at it too.

I also enjoy slumming as a go-go boy at the naughtiest of gay bars,
dancing, if that is really the word for it, in the tiniest of
G-strings. Some nights I wear a pouch of white silk instead. From the back,
it leaves me totally exposed, my sweet cheeks bare for anyone to ogle
at. The only support the pouch has is the weak elastic band at the top. I
am afraid that in the course of my gyrations, the darned thing tends to
slip down enough to show the base of my cock -- where it sprouts from my
groin. Alas some patrons are ill bred enough to pull it right off me,
though that is against the rules about touching. Well, I did say that I was
a shameless exhibitionist.

How contradictory human nature is. On any given evening, I might be found
gyrating my bare booty in front of a hundred sweaty gay men. The next day
might find me engrossed in the latest exhibit or lecture at the New York
Public Library or the American Museum of Natural History, just about my
favorite indoor pubic space in the city. The next afternoon might combine
both those sides of my personality as I bury my nose in a book, say a
volume of history or popularized science all the while stretched out on the
grass in Central Park wearing a minimal swim thong with just enough
coverage in front to keep the police from taking me in. They have long
since given up on expecting me to cover my butt cheeks.

My penthouse sun deck does let me avoid tan lines, but what is the fun of
sunbathing alone? My lover Jeffrey's visits are all too infrequent given
his heavy schedule at Pratt and the slow commute by subway from Brooklyn to
my building on Central Park West. The boy just won't take money from me or
even the loan of one of my leased cars. Inconvenient, yes, but I respect
him for his integrity and the boundaries he has set.

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.