Thief! - WordPress.com · Web viewAnd the captain looked like he meant every word. 2. Darkness of...

Episodes from a life

lived on the edge

Thief

2

Thief!

Thief!Contents

Thief! 2Contents 2

1. Punishment 31a. 31b. 31c. 41d. 61e. 6

2. Darkness of the soul 9

2a. 92b. 10

3. Betrayal 124. Interrogation 14

4a. 144b. 154c. 16

5. Khotan 185a. 185b. 20

6. Burn 226a. 226b. 246c. 26

7. Powers of persuasion 29

7a. 297b. 31

8. Fateful night 338a. 338b. 348c. 35

9. Seated 379a. 379b. 38

10. Tree of woe 4010a. 4010b. 4110c. 4210d. 43

11.`Future dream 45The end. 45

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1. Punishment

1a.He’d never been known for his sweet temper. It went with the image. A hard murderous rabble-rouser who’d slit your throat without a thought. Today he hurt, he hurt like hell, it didn’t make his temper any sweeter. And he wasn’t in the mood for some old git coming around to make conversation.

His back was on fire from their punishment, he was hungry. Exhausted but pain stopped him from sleep in this stinking hell-hole of a cell. And some old git in his rags plonks himself down beside you and says, “I knows you, don’ I?”

He fixed the old fool with a glare. His eyes blazed through the darkness of their dungeon. A glower that had silenced many a fighter in his time. He hurt, he hurt like crazy and this senile idiot was just making things worse.The blithering cretin must have been blind as well as an idiot. Or he had a death wish. He carried on regardless.“I met you ….”He silenced the old dickhead with a growl. His teeth bared like a wolf’s fangs. He hurt, his back was ablaze from that whipping. And this

numbskull was making things much worse. “You’re …”. His hand slashed out, seized the idiot by his throat and squeezed. When the eyes were popping out of his head, when the old git was gurgling like a dying fish for air, he shoved. He smacked the ancient git hard back against the wall. And snarled at him to get lost. In so many words. Only better. The last thing he needed right now was some arsehole telling him he had fucked his daughter shitless and left her with some snotty-nosed brat to fend for. His curses rang out into the darkness as the old shithead scuttled away. His gasping mixed with a sobbing at being so brutally used. The others in the dungeons looked across the darkness of their shithole. Surprised, aghast at an old man being so maltreated. But the shoulders on the attacker held back any comment. The scowl that took in the room silenced any objection.

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1b.He’d been told it before. Experience told him he could almost believe it, he was his own worst enemy. But today his blood had simply boiled. OK, he knew he had a short fuse but this treatment today had just made him flip. After all, he’d ruled a country. He’d been in charge of people, squeezed them for taxes. Then the wheel of fortune turned but at least he’d still been in command of his own ship. But things only seemed to get worse, he’d lost that too. Now, he’d been caught red-handed stealing from some petty treasury. But he had been desperate, he’d needed the gold. Caught and condemned as a thief. Sentenced to life on the galleys. He’d done his stint in galleys, twice already. He’d get out of that, he seemed to spend his life getting out of tight corners. It took some time Page

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sometimes but he’d always found some way out. He could kick himself for getting caught, though. Especially after today, parading him like that. More than his bad-temper could endure. Being paraded for the jeering mob had got through to him, he had thoroughly snapped.

He’d learned on landing here that this kingship was harsh. Life for the ordinary people here was tough. But was he going to consent to being turned into today’s entertainment? Was he hell! Seemingly, though, the rulers gave their criminals to the mob here to keep them amused, to distract them from the harshness of their life. Entertainment, he was today’s circus. Bad enough to be caught stealing. Bad enough to hear he’d been condemned to time at the oars. But to be pelted with horse shit! What the fuck!

The leg irons had scuffed at his ankle flesh as ignominiously he shuffled along. To make things worse a noose snaked from the man in front around his own neck and back to the man behind. Their hands were fettered to a chain around the waist. Unable to fend off the missiles. With these other scumbags destined to amuse the rabble, he had been paraded out for a public beating. These people had it hard. Their king demanded their all, taxed them to the hilt. So, criminals were paraded out, to give the rabble some fun, like some kind of reminder that others had a worse deal in life. Like some kind of recompense, the rabble were invited to pelt the scum. Take it out on others worse off. The way of the world as far as he was concerned. The mob could scream for their pain. Stones thudded at his body out of the mob. He could not defend himself, his hands were chained to his waist. A lump of horse shit splattered against his chest. Sliding off but leaving his nose full of the stench. No one could defend themselves, some in their line stumbled. Yanking on the noose around their neck. Others swerved with their bodies out of the way of the missiles. Throttling the neighbours bound to them uncaringly. He was getting pissed off. By the time they’d made the market place, his blood was boiling. With the jeering crowd, with the other jerking idiots bound with him by the neck. He snarled into the crowd, his mouth slashed to bared fangs. But that only seemed to encourage the mob. They jeered back at him, making him shout back abuse. Which earned him another lump of stinking dung in the face. Defiant he did not to twist out the way. Being the man he was he left its stench clinging to his cheek. Goading the mob, getting them really worked up, laughing, mocking, pelting him even harder, horse-shit mixed with stones. Trying anything out to get him worked up more. Making him seethe. Leaving his pride bristling at the indignity of their jeering. Scorned, mocked. Spat upon, stoned, the shuffling mob of convicts ducked and dived towards the market place for the amusement of the mob.

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1c.The captain of the guard watched the prisoners enter the market square. He smiled to himself at the roar from the mob that greeted their victims’ arrival. This was a dog-eat-dog world, it was his job to entertain the rabble, keep them amused, give them something to remember that day. Keep the mob happy for a day. And it was obvious where to start. His eyes fixed on the third-in-line. Big, heavy-muscled. And as arrogant as hell. They loved the big ones. There was something special about seeing the big ones going under the lash. The mob went wild at the sight of all that muscle taking it, all that arrogance ripped apart as the leather stung across broad manly backs. Got the men in the groin, the women going wet between their legs. The crowd egging the whippers on, getting hot under the collar till they heard the big ones cry out. Getting hot in the crutch till they heard the big ones giving it up. Writhing and squirming. Begging, pleading. Brought down to size by the sting of the lash.Page

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That one third-in-line would go up first. He was just made for the part. Not only his size. You could miss the haughtiness of his stance. He stood a head over the other miserable scumbags in the line. But it was in the way he carried himself that he seemed to tower over this stinking humanity like a giant. Every muscle in his thick shoulders dared anyone to take him on, but this scum didn’t know this crowd, without knowing it he was just playing to their lusts. His look spoke defiance to the howling mob, they loved it, they were drooling for it. Feigning not to look intimidated. Not cowed by this rabble who sang for his pain. The bastard was just built for the job, he’d go down a treat, just the way to start the spectacle. The stinking rabble would love him.

As luck would have it, he found he was first up. Once in the market place, he was the one singled out and bound to the frame for a public whipping. He was used to it, supposed it was his height. It was hard for him to move unnoticed through a crowd when you towered a head above everyone else. Could have been his size too. It seemed when your shoulders scarcely got you through a doorway, it brought out the worst in some men. He was used to standing out in a crowd, hardly surprising that they’d want to take on the big one first.

Some companions had sometimes dared tell him he was his own worst enemy. When his temper was up, there was no stopping him. And he temper was up. After being pelted like that, with stinking egg still clinging to his hair, he was no mood to take this lying down. His blood was boiling by the time they got to the square. Others in the line looked intimidated by the mob howling for the pain. Not him. Hearing these animals screaming for him to be whipped within an inch of his life pushed him over the top. Pride dictated he show they what they had on their hands. Jostled into place under the frame with the cries of the howling rabble lighting up the air, he couldn’t stop himself, he was determined to let them know what he was made of. He could sense how the sight of a giant having his strong arms raised to the crossbar above his head got them in the groin. He heard them howling for the pain in his magnificent back, he gave them back a view of the field of muscle about to take the heat of their lash. He’d show them the kind of man they’d got on their hands. Shit! That’s all they’d get from him. Their fangs drooled for his blood, their guts ached for the sharpness of his cries. But they’d get shit, he swore! That’s all they’d hear from him.

And when that captain of the guard had come up close, when he had gripped him by the chin and spat in his face, it all snapped. The sneering bastard trailed a whip around the back of his neck and yanked him forward. Nose-to-nose, chests nearly touching. All show for the crowd. All to let the crowd this bastard was in charge. A snigger filled his face, laughing. As if telling him he did not matter, he was convict-scum. Pulling him forward by the whip until their foreheads touched. A sneer illuminating the captain’s eyes.

Lightning fast, a knee came up. The captain’s look of shock fired the second kick too. The shout of shock thundered as a third knee of fury smacked into the guard’s nuts. He was splattered against his attacker’s heaving muscled chest, unable out of pain to save himself. Taking yet another nut-crunching blow, one so crunchingly hard it lifted the captain’s body up under the force. Agony slumped the guard down to his attacker’s feet. But their was no let-up. A heel caught him on the chest. Another kick from his prisoner stomped the captain in the guts till other guards dragged their mate out of reach. Suddenly, the captain heard the jeering. For him. He caught the sound of mocking laughter from the crowd. They were cheering the prisoner on. They were jeering at the soldier dropped in the dirt. Laughing at the captain who lay clutching at his

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aching nuts. This mob did not care who took the hits, they were out to enjoy themselves. At anyone’s expense.But then the cheering changed. Just as abruptly. Switching sides again. As the prisoner took a punishing blow across his back. The other guards went for him. In retribution. Clubs out. As punishment for their friend. They went for the prisoner. The rabble were roaring them on again. As long as someone was getting it. Pain threw the prisoner rigid. Shock froze every muscle in his huge frame when a club caught him across the back.

“Stop!”Reeling from the intensity of pain in his neck, he still heard an angry voice thunder up from the earth. Ordering his attackers to stop. A final blow from a club smacked him into his guts and swept his feet out from under him. He hung, gasping raggedly, trying to recover, panting hard, shaking the pain out of his head, clearing the cobwebs. Still giving back the fury from the captain who was glowering up at him from the dirt. The captain’s face was a picture. Red with rage. He knew he was going to pay for that attack. But his blood still boiled, it had not been satisfaction enough. Even the jeers of the crowd mocking this prick clutching at his burning balls down could placate his need to dish out more.

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1d.The captain dared get up close now. Now that the scum had his legs widespread and his feet roped out to the upright. He was going to pay for that – and the shithead knew it. But still the scum dared stare down from his massive height, a sneer across his leery face. A sneer that was going to be wiped across his pig-shit lips. An arrogance that would paint pain across that huge expanse of chest. A leeriness that was going to get stuck right up this dickhead’s arse.

He held the scum’s chin in a tight squeeze. Nearly nose-to-nose. The captain could feel the heat of his anger burning off that bare chest. His glower of rage that was powered by the burning that still raged in his crutch. A long glare of silence, The rabble around was screaming for action, jeering them to get on with it. Stick it to him. Make the scumbag pay! The mob demanding the scum’s pain. But that was his to command, the captain decided. His were this scumbag’s screams. Without breaking eye-contact with this shithead who was going to pay with blistering pain, he ordered his men. “Get the first two. Up against the upright. Twenty each”His eyes bored into his attacker’s face”Scumbag here can see what he’s got coming”.The squeeze on the chin tightened, the fingers turned into talons. A bit disappointed that he couldn’t get the giant to grimace at the pain. But he could wait, he’d heat up all that arrogant muscle, he’d have every sinew squirming, buckling. He’d shoot fingers of pain into every writhing muscle.

They stood glowering into each other as the eight others took their lashes. A pair at a time, tied to the uprights because some scumbag was spread-eagled in-between. Getting it harder, taking the guards’ fury out on the prisoners’ backs. Whistling leather tearing through the air. The cries of pain cutting off the prisoners’ bleeding backs. Their screams promising the shitbag all of this - and more. But the whistle of the lash could not break the intensity of the protagonists’ glares. The howls from the pack could not drown out the unspoken hate that screamed between captain and captive. The sharp cries of the other whiplashed victims did not for one moment distract this war for male superiority Page

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between captain and convict. This was a battle for the mind. Just as much a war as the fight for his cries was going to be.

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1e.He watched the captain pick out the best of the bunch. And man, did they look happy at getting the job! They stood next to their captain, a pair of the biggest guards in this crew. Arms bulging out of their tunics. Uniforms stretched by the reach of their broad chests. Not as huge as the scumbag himself. But impressive. Especially when wielding whips.“Double the number!” the captain announced to the mob.They howled, they screamed. The mob had been waiting for just that commans.“Double the lashes!”The rabble called out for more. More scum-bag blood. Eight men already. But the captain had saved the best for last.“Double the lashes! Doubled. Front and back”.The mob went mad. Foaming at the mouth like wild dogs. Shrieking for pain, baying for muscled blood.The captain had walked up close again. He wrapped the blood-streaked whip around the back of his prisoner’s neck and yanked him forward into his own face. Just like before. But knowing his legs could do nothing. The mockery in his eyes made the prisoner’s blood boil. The sneer on the guard’s lips had the prisoner clenching his fingernails into his palms out of sheer frustration that his fists could not wipe the smirk off that face.“Eat shit, scum!” the captain threw in his face. The burning in his balls reminded him. This was personal.

He spat, a great glob of venom-spiked spit splattered on the captain’s face. True-to-form, the captain did not move. His hand never made a twitch to wipe it off. The offending weapon hung on his cheek as he announced to the crowd,“Another five!”He yanked the prisoner’s face right into his own, the jeers of the mob feeding the satisfaction growing in the captain’s own groin. “Front and back”.Eyes-to-eyes, nose-to-nose. Anger-heaving chests defiantly brushing.

“Got anything else to say?” he sneered.The pair of them were frozen in a war of hateful glares. A smirk seemed to light up the captain’s eyes. A slight nod as if he had said, I didn’t think so.At which point his temper got the better of him, he head-butted the captain. The prisoner’s head cracked forward and caught his guard in the face. Right on the nose. Blood spurted almost as quick as shock splattered over his fade. Wiping off that sneer in an instant. Sending the captain reeling back. Hand to his bleeding nose, the blood-streaked whip simply hanging off the prisoner’s glistening chest.

The other two guards rushed to help but the captain thrust them away.“Get on with it!” he commanded angrily. And he smiled. The captain sneered.

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“Give it to the bastard. No holding back”. He sneered into the seething anger in his prisoner’s eyes.“And another ten. Ten more, front and back”.

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The captain didn’t even bother to staunch the flow of blood. He let it dribble down his face, his tongue licked it off his lips. The metallic tang tasted sweet, nothing was going to staunch his craving for this scumbag’s screams. Blood was dribbling from his nose and trickled off his chin onto the tunic over his chest as eagerly he watched and waited. On edge for that moment when the shitbag broke into his first cry. The scum was trying to stop himself. The muscled freak was setting his jaw determined not to give in. He was biting so hard into every smarting pain that soon his lips would draw blood. In-between the sting of the lash, he was somehow managing to find himself. Fury burned off him like an open furnace. This piece of shit’s eyes were still sneering at his guards, showing them the man he was, he was gonna take every thing they threw at him.

Just you wait, scum, the captain thought to himself. You’re getting over 70 lashes. You’ll shout. Mark my words, you’ll cry out, we’ll hear you beg. You’ll sing like a stuck-pig. I’m gonna wipe that look out of your eyes. You’re a loser, none bigger. His heart lifted at the sight of eyes popping wide with another vicious smart searing across burning skin. Think all that muscle can stop the sting of the lash, do you, the captain smiled to himself? Grit your teeth if you think it’ll do you any good. It won’t. Low-life have got it coming – and none more so than you.

Arms crossed enjoying this duel, the captain grinned sadistically to himself at another clench of the overhead arms, trying to crush the pain inside the body, in some desperate final effort not to give them any satisfaction. Leather again stung him across burning flesh. Shitface had to force his chin down onto his chest, Crushing the scream, impossible to stop the trembling scoring across his muscled shoulders. Goading the guards in greater efforts, getting them in the crutch, craving his first unstoppable cry. Still finding the resolve, feeding off the hate that was still burning in the scumbag’s eyes. Like shooting metal arrow heads into the captain’s sneering face. But the sweat was flowing, the whiplashed skin was a fiery-red. Keep it up, scum, the captain thought relishing the hardness this prisoner’s fight was giving him. Listen to the crowd, they know better than you. They know you’re gonna break. They’ve seen it all before, muscle-freaks like you who think they can beat the lash. 70 lashes. This mob knows better. They can feel it in their piss. A few more slashed across your back and you’ll give them what they’ve come for. You’ll cry out. You’ll scream. A few more lashes lighting up that red-raw flesh and you’ll break into song. And once the tune has started, there’ll be no stopping.

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They cut through the wrist bonds first. The shock as his arms fell down to his sides nearly up-ended him, so weak from the pain. But the shove from behind did topple him. Down to his knees, collapsed onto all fours, while they sliced away the ropes from his legs. He was on fire. His back felt like white-hot embers were pressed into his flesh. His whole torso shook with him heaving for air. He couldn’t move, he was so weak. His hair fell down over his face. Dank, stinking of his pain and his sweat.

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He could only groan in response when someone yanked on his legs. Flattening him onto his whiplashed front in the dirt. Trembling with the pain, he had to let them shackle his ankles in leg irons again, no strength to fight back. He felt sick at the pit of his stomach, dimly aware in his feverish mind of his body-crippling feebleness, hating himself for it. But he could not do a thing about it. He was drunk with pain, intoxicated with the stench of blood and torture. He blinked hard, the dirt below his face swirled in a fiery vortex of blurred pain, ignoring the efforts being made to fetter his wrists in the chains. A hard knee-kick in his side made him cry out in protest. Another sharper one tumbled him over on his side. A kick rolled him forcibly over on his back. Pain arched his screeching back off the dirt. The whiplashed flesh screamed out in protest. Bitter acid burned in his throat. Suddenly a hand had him by the hair. A tug that tore tears to his bleary eyes. Sounds attacked his ears but his swirling head could take nothing in.

“Get him up!”The captain ordered his men to get the scumbag to his feet. With satisfaction, he watched as the muscle-freak shuffled over to the other convicts, barely able to put on foot in front of the other. Done-in. Taught a lesson. Brought down by the burden of their pain. Who could count in this shit-hole anyway? So what if the scumbag had taken another ten? The captain didn’t hear any complaints. And the captain meant what he had said. When they’d cut the bastard down and he’d collapsed to all fours. Down on one knee sneering over the scumbag. Yanking pain into the scumbag’s scalp and as tugged up his face. Down in the shit where he belonged, the captain had promised his prisoner, “You and me, you lump of shit, - we’re not finished yet”.And he meant it. Three more days before the galley ship arrived. Shit-face would spend another three days in his company. The captain’s balls still ached, the whipping hadn’t healed that pain. Nor the indignity of the jeering mob. His pride still smarted at the way the crowd had dis-respected him when scumbag had dropped him to the dirt. This bastard hadn’t seen anything yet.“We’re not finished!” And the captain looked like he meant every word.

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2. Darkness of the soul

2a.Conan had taken the lash before. When his crew had been overwhelmed by pirates, he’d done his stint as galley slave. And as ringleader, he took the brunt . How better to keep the rowers up-to-the-mark than make the man in charge take it across the back. But never like this. The pirates had lashed him for discipline, this had been vicious savagery. 70 lashes. In no time at all, all his flesh had been stung into action. He’d managed to keep back his cries even when his flesh was on fire. And then they laid on the cross-hatching.

He’d set himself dead against giving these brutes any satisfaction. Maybe the whippers looked like they could handle themselves but Conan had a reputation to maintain, to himself. It didn’t matter they didn’t know his name, had no idea of the reputation they were lashing at the stake. He had pride. And he was raging angry.Before they started, the captain had stood up close. He had run the blood-stained whip-end slowing through his fingers. As if caressing it. Then eyes full on the troublemaker, he tied several tight knots in the end. Chewing on his lips, but eyes full on the face of his victim he demonstratively knotted the thin strand of leather into a torture tool. To maximise the pain, to pock-mark muscle that thought it could win. The crowd howled their approval, they jeered at that expanse of muscled flesh that thought it had the right to make trouble.

At the first cracks of biting leather on bare flesh, he knew what he was in for. The very first bite could have had him gasping for breath. His eyes widened in surprise, breath left him. As if with those first blows they’d laid a red-hot branding iron across his back. They were holding nothing back, Conan was getting their all. Conan fed off the screams of the howling beasts craving for his cries. Strengthening his resolve to give them shit. As the pressure to fight the pain increased, his body was all tension, he was forced up on his toes. The pain was building, every slash of leather into his solid muscled flesh tore into his guts, slashed through his resolve. A crack across his waist threw his hips forward, arched his back. That was first time he’d had to fight with all his strength the urge to cry out. He pressed his chin hard into his chest to kill off the cry. Breath escaped in a sharp hiss between tight-clenched teeth. Every muscle in his raised arms joined in the fight, palms crunched into fighting fists, battling out this clash of wills and might. He screamed at himself, he was not going to cry out. Precisely because that was just what these tormentors craved. It was just what that shrieking mob craved. His strength of mind was fuelled by the look of eager anticipation on the captain’s blood-streaked face. Getting hot in the groin to hear Conan scream. Conan fed off the baying wolves bawling for his pain from out the surrounding mob. He’d make them all work for it, make them sweat for his shouts.

He was a man, a man-above-other-men, respected by many, feared by more. He’d been a chief. Above all, he was a fighter. But he was clad only in muscle and flesh. He was strong, he was stronger than most. His will was made of iron, his strength of will was carved in stone. But housed in a human frame. Such strength would not last for ever. His body glowed first with sweat. Human flesh started sizzling under the sting of the unforgiving lash. A red curtain of pain dropped before his eyes. Molten liquid flowed down his back. His chest, his front burned. A firestorm was raging through his body.

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He let the first shout escape. Cursed himself for that weakness. Bit at his lip in the effort to suppress his next cry, drew blood. But his flesh was human, they were animals. There was no holding back, not for ever. The roars of snarling monsters greeted his first cries. But after that, Conan no longer heard their shrieks. He had cried out once, he screamed again and again.

They’d varied their tempo so he could not predict the next blow. Front and back. High and low. A blow across his chest threw him back, the force of the sting on livid flesh twisting him off the leather. Straight into the path of a knotted lash. Jerking him to a sudden pained halt. Brutalised flesh shocked and bursting into agonised life. As the lash tore across pain-rigid muscle. Conan bucked, he thrashed. Sweat burst in droplets off his hair. Barely catching his breath before the leather in his front tore across the livid flesh on his stomach and pain shot up the length of him into his tortured brain. After a while, all sight was swamped with the fiery red haze of pain. There’d be pauses, moments when he thought it was over. Until the rain of stinging needles stabbed at his bare flesh again. Tension was the thing, uncertainty part of their torment. Desperately he fought to control his thrashing, his biceps bulging as he tore at his bonds. The torture had built up, after a dozen body-slamming blows there seemed no holding back. A pain so intense suddenly had him in his grip. He yanked at the restraints, hauling his feet off the ground. Conan hung there trembling, torture snapped his body into an arc. Till he was revived by liquid splashed into his face. His own blood, his own flesh splashed by the whip into his face. Tormented pain thrust his hips violently forward, agony cracked his head sharp back. Sinking irrevocably under the relentless whip-lashing into a sea of red pain. Burning him up. Tossed on the flaming waves, pounded by the fiery surf. Sweat that could never dowse the flames. He was shaken by pain, Conan was convulsed with agony. Till the unbearable agonies released him, he collapsed back down. Feet thudding into the hard earth, legs and knees giving way. Shockwaves sizzling through every tortured muscle. Conan bawled. He bawled out in shock. He hollered in uncontrollable torment. A lash of leather cut across his shoulders. Like the stab of a dagger heated red-hot. Every sense was shocked into shrieking agonies as he drowned under the blazing waves. Totally engulfed in an inferno of sweltering pain. His guts sizzled, his brain fried. A barrage of savagery was unleashed. It seemed his agonies only injected new determination into his whipmasters, his cries only fuelled their spirit. Conan’s chest glowed incandescent like hard fiery globes. His back and thighs churned through continuous cycles of explosive agony and flesh-stinging pain.

The public whipping was meant to humiliate. Conan’s punishment was meant to break him. To break the scum who dared strike back. It did, it had. And afterwards still the torment went on. The mob pelted them all again with shit and eggs. No better target than the muscled giant who had made trouble. As if the heat in the loins had to find some release. The prisoners were shuffled back to their dungeon, with whiplashed backs the path seemed much longer than before. Rocks and refuse showered the scum as they shuffled in their leg irons back to their cells. But Conan noticed nothing. The long walk down the dungeon steps for the whipped men was never-ending. But Conan descended in an inane trance. Burning up. The airless heat in their windowless cell had every one of them sweating before they collapsed into the dirt. But Conan lay spread out and comatose in the stench of their puddles of piss, unaware of anything except the molten lava coursing through his veins. Every pump of blood was a jolt of fiery pain through his body. A putrefying side of beef, he lay butchered and battered, abused and abandoned in the shit of this fetid humanity.

Surrounded by the others who had taken the lash. But they avoided him. This stranger was a trouble-maker. Best give him a wide berth. Conan lay in the sweltering gloom on the stinking earth. Trembling with his agonies. Consumed

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by pain. Scalded with pain. Every thought in his body burned from him. Every sense ablaze. Seeing nothing, nothing except the yellow-red curtain of fire that flooded his sight. Hearing nothing, nothing except the cacophony of pain that roared in his head. Feeling nothing, nothing but for the raw pain that his whole body had become.And then some old git had come along twittering on about knowing who he was.

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2b.

It had been risky, a huge mistake with hindsight. But Conan had been desperate, he’d lost everything. They had been transporting everything they had gained when the pirates attacked. Everything they had looted for months was on the ship, Conan was taking his plunder to a safer hiding place. Somewhere he’d searched out for several months. And then the black pirates attacked. Conan had put together a good crew, they’d have taken anyone on. They’d proven themselves ransacking every ship they had ever boarded. But sickness had devastated the ship. Drifting out at sea for days with scarcely anyone capable of steering , he and his men had been vulnerably in the grip of fever for days when the pirates had attacked.

They’d done what they could, they had fought like cats. But not even Conan himself had not found the strength for a sustained fight. Overwhelmed by sickness, his men had not the stomach for a fight. Finishing up chained to the oars, galley-slaves. Lashed into action when their new masters went into attack. And Conan knowing all the gold and jewels he had stashed safely away were now lost to him. He was penniless again. Later Conan had managed his escape. He’d fought his way to freedom from that ship. But he had nothing. Conan had nothing to his name. No ship, no crew, no money, nothing.

Temptation had been just too great. Seducing the servant girl into letting him into the palace at night had not been hard. This petty monarch taxed his people, sweated every bit of wealth out of them. The gold was there for the thieving. Lying there in his treasury, just for the thieving. There’d been a few chancy moments when Conan had

been slipping through the shadows towards the chancellery. A few servants got their throats slit. But most soldiers were deep in their sleep. Too greedy maybe. Conan had been burdened down with large sacks of gold plate and jewels when he’d turned the corner and come face-to-face with armed guards. As surprised as him. But they knew the lay-of-the-land in these vaults, he didn’t. They raised hell, brought dozens running. Conan laid a few low with his sword. But in the narrowness of the hallways, they came at him from both sides.

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No need for a trial, caught red-handed. Condemned for life to row the king’s galleys. Back to square one. Galley slave again. After forced into a public whipping. Jeered at by the mob. Condemned to the oars again. That is, until they found out who he was.

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3. Betrayal

A burning delirium had Conan in its grip. Shaking in fever, twitching, feverish. Convulsing in his anguish. Suddenly he was pulling on the oars. Unaccountably he was burning under the noon-tide sun, heaving at the oars on the pirate ship. The crack of the whip ever-present. The sting of the lash across shoulders scorched by the brutality of the glare off the sea.

He’d been a chief. True, only leader of a band of brigands that he kept together by greed and threats. At first ignored by neighbouring rulers, struggling to survive on the far edge of nowhere. But he had galvanised their greed, honed their fighting skills.

They had plundered, they robbed. They had their stash. They had become a thorn in the flesh of other rulers around. Warring constantly. One day it was inevitable. Unexpectedly overrun. Unexpectedly overwhelmed. Conan had been away. Returning to find his army dead, his friends hung off trees, frozen to death in the bleak winter days. Conan had gone wild with rage. Grief for his friends. Yet filled too with a sense of the unreal. One day a chief with an army, robbing and thieving, a stash of wealth. The next day a pauper. No friends, no army. Defenceless, unable to strike back and knowing he too was going to be hunted down, Conan had fled.

Driving himself on. Changing his fortunes. Improving his lot, from beggar to thief. Made a living out of stealing from the rich, keeping everything for himself. Conan excelled at being a thieving. A pain to every rich merchant moving goods. Accumulating their wealth. Keeping it for himself.Conan had stolen a boat, he’d become a pirate. Attacking the richness of princes, the kind who had robbed him of everything. Getting his own back. Robbing their galleons of their amassed wealth, making their gold his own. Building stashes of Conan’s good fortune. Hiding it away against future disaster.

Till misfortune struck first. Hit him in the middle of his stupid plan to consolidate his wealth into one safe place. His crew gone down with sickness for days. Barely able to stand. Attacked by pirates, easy pickings. All of them taken, condemned as galley-slaves to bend the back to the lash of pirate-masters.

He’d done the same thing himself in the past. Pick out the ringleader and make an example of him to his men. Make the one in charge the scapegoat for any indiscipline. It was Conan’s broad shoulders that had taken the brunt. Cracking the lash into his tanned hide when the oarsmen were to be prompted into racing to

attack. The thud of the drum accompanied by the jerk of his flesh as the strap tore across bronzed shoulders. His mouth wincing to their increased rhythm, his eyes flaring with his anger.

He knew he had to conserve his strength, no point in giving these pirates some excuse to take him apart. Not if he was going to have any chance of escape. Only once did they have to whip him at the mast. When again his temper had got the better of him. But he would have done the same if some galley-slave had

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turned on him and knocked him senseless to the ground. Gone down on one knee and strangled a pirate with his own bare hands. The man was dead by the time the half-dozen pirates had forced him off. Punches to his neck, clubs to his back, nothing worked against Conan’s murderous grip till life had been crushed out of the pirate.

They forced him to the mast, bound him there to take his punishment. Bound him there for his crew to see his punishment. Lined up in their leg irons, seeing their leader still struggling against his ropes. Hands up around the back of the thick mast, facing front. Looking in their eyes, seeing his crew watching as they lashed their captain to the mast. Conan’s legs had thrashed out, refusing to take his punishment. A loop of thick rope now bound his ankles in place as the whipmaster cracked his strap in intimidation. The sight of his crew watching only incensed Conan, seeing them grateful for the rest from rowing. His whipping at the mast was giving them a welcome break. Conan cursed his crew to every torment in hell, his anger promised everyone of the pirates his vengeance. There was no silencing him. As if his over-sized manly pride offered some protection to his muscled flesh against the pain of the lash.

His clothes were cut to pieces. An act of vindictiveness, they thought. Thrashing him at the mast, naked before his own men. To shame him, to humiliate him when fear got him hard. No shame, though, in that. They’d shared their women, often not enough coinage to go round they’d often had to wait their turn in the brothels. No shame in being naked before his men. But rain and shine, from then on Conan braved the elements at the oars without a rag to his name.They tried silencing his ranting, they did try hard. Thick leather tore across his front. Making Conan roar. Not just with pain, with his seething anger. Like weeks of pent-up fury were now breaking free. Weeks of resentment at enforced labour at the oars burned in his roars of defiance. The whipmaster bent his broad shoulders to the task of silencing the slave. A grim look of determination cracked his weapon hard across the out-turned muscled chest. The giant bellowed back, cursing him to hell, promising he’d end up dead like the pirate that had just been cast overboard. The thick leather strap bludgeoned across Conan’s thick muscled stomach. The handle, gripped two-handed, powered by a twist of powerful shoulders, growled intimidating through the noonday air and smashed like an iron bar into the hard-muscled chest. Pain fuelled the bawl of cursing that tore off the mast. He had to be silenced, no cur could defy their authority before the other slaves. After ten hard lashes, a big thug of a man was pushed forward. Nearly as tall as the bellowing defiant slave pinned to the mast, yet also all brawn, all brute force. The pain from his blow forced a high-pitched bellow out of the slave. Every muscle was pinned to the mast, shuddering, rigid. But before the next blow landed, the defiance had filled his eyes again. Only to be crippled by the force of the leather slamming again into his chest.

Conan was silenced. Conan was bludgeoned into shutting his mouth. The brute rendered him senseless. Pain so intense gripped his torso, his mind collapsed. The rest of the day, for the whole of the night they left him hungry standing there. Roasting in the heat of the sun, shivering with fever for the length of the night. Hungry. Thirsty. An object lesson to his crew.But not to him. It happened once and once only. Not because Conan was any man’s slave. He wised-up. Back at the oars he bent his broad back, unwillingly

he gave the pirates the strength of his mighty chest. But deep-down he never

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gave them his will. He just got wiser, he managed to keep his temper under control. So they were no longer watching, Conan knew that day would come. His opportunity came one day, he escaped. Leaving his crew to fend for themselves, leaving his stash of stolen gold behind. Stolen by the pirates. A free man again. A beggar again.

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4. Interrogation

4a.The guards kicked him out of his pain-mad stupor, rekindling his groaning, his consciousness threatening to break out in a blazing scream that started in his back. After the savage beating, down in the stench of the dungeons, anger and pain hadn’t allowed him the peace of unconsciousness but Conan had found a dark place somewhere between torture and hell where his body had to survive.

Then they came back with their hard kicks, then his body snapped into a painful arc of reality. Everything hurt, every move awoke the demons of hell. At their orders Conan struggled to his knees. To avoid further pain from their boots. Tortured into exhaustion, unfed for a couple of days now, weakness was understandable but he couldn’t give into to it, not in front of these guards. Digging deep in search of that inner strength, he gritted his teeth and with support of a hand on the hot stone wall, Conan forced himself to his feet. Pulling himself up tall to show them the man. His back screamed in protest. His rock-stone stomach felt like a sharp knife had slit him open. But his body managed not to give in

to agony’s insanity, he kept a grip on himself. He turned his face to stone, impassive. But only just.

Breathing deep and strong into his pain, he glowered in defiance at two of the guards, the self-same pair who had ripped his muscled flesh apart before the mob. Cutting leather into his human frame. Setting him ablaze. Knowing that given the chance, he’d only need one free hand. Clenched on a neck, steely fingers ripping a throat out. He’d have thought that once the whipping ceased, so would the pain. But it didn’t. It grew, it sizzled. Worryingly Conan was aware that the intensity of that pain had worn his strength down.Submitting - because he had no choice, because he could not yet find any strength - the rough leg irons scuffing at his ankle flesh. The killer in him noticed, though, the length of chain between the cuffs on his wrists. Long enough to get around a neck and throttle one of these whippers to death. It would be the last thing he did. But death or the galleys - what was the choice?

But he was thwarted, they had another trick up their sleeve. A further chain. Clipped between wrist chains and leg-irons. Pulling his wrists down. Holding his murderous hands down. No chance for a throttling to exact revenge. He’d have to wait, there’d be no fight for freedom yet but his time would come, he promised himself. Cruel shoves into his brutalised back sent Conan hissing on his way. Through the catacombs of darkness. Sweltering into a pit of the dread unknown.

They stood him there in a cavernous gloom, just left with the same two guards, their uniforms now shed. The reason was gradually becoming clear to Conan why they had jostled him here as his eyes adjusted to the gloom and the sights around. They hadn’t had enough. His whipping before the mob had not been enough to pay for the jeering from the crowd. Instruments of torture lined the dripping walls. He was in for some more, more of the same. One of the big built guards was stoking at a brazier. The coals illuminated his thick hairy arms, glowed off a sweat-glistening muscled gut. Conan’s front had felt to his own cost what that physique could muster. Now it was bare to the waist, stripped for further action. Pumping air from the bellows, the coals roared into life. Lighting up a hard broad chest, light glistening on thick muscled shoulders.

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The light of the coals lit up the chamber too. Hanging off nails on the walls, chains, whips, clubs. The other guard was holding a torch to the flames, stuck it in the holder on the wall. Revealing in the corner, a rack. A torture chamber. They’d brought Conan to a torture chamber. For more of the same, they hadn’t got enough. The burning in his whiplashed back came to life at this chill thought. The pain in the butchered muscle of his broad chest shuddered at the idea. He was already shattered. Physically, mentally. But he vowed he’d dig deep to find the strength to endure this night.His eyes were distracted upwards. The guard was turning a wheel. From above the rattle of chain against the thick column. From the gloominess overhead down came a pair of chains. Thick rusty links that no man’s strength could break. And on the end rough metal cuffs. Cuffs to hold his wrists, chains to contain his strength.

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4b.

Suddenly his head was yanked back, the surprised nearly toppling Conan backwards. A hand behind twisted in Conan’s hair and pulled his head to one side. The captain of the guard. His face right up close, Conan could see his nose swollen and ugly.“Been hearing things about you”.A kick into the back of Conan’s knee sank him unwilling to his knees, he resisted but the twist in his scalp kept him on the dirt. The soldier’s breath stank of garlic. Conan’s stomach gave a heave, he had not eaten for days.“Someone’s been telling on you, shithole”.The old man, Conan guessed. “I know you”, he had said. True enough, he probably had. In his pain, Conan had seen him off, threatened him, frightened him. The old shit-head had sold Conan out.

“Seems you’ve got quite a history, shithole”.Despite the tearing pain in his scalp, Conan stared into his face, giving nothing. His neck was twisted back, the tearing at his scalp just one more pain for his butchered body to endure.“Murder. Rape. Quite a story you have to tell”.Conan glared back. What more could they do to him? He already had a life sentence at the oars. A living death.“Seems thieving is a way of life for some. Conan”.So the old man had known who he was. The old git had sold out Conan’s identity for a piece of bread. But so what? What did it matter to them now?

“You’re talking shit”, Conan answered back without flinching.“That’s a pity”. The captain mocked. “’Cause our prince here thinks you do. He thinks that there’s some criminal hereabout called Conan. A right arse-hole of a thief. A pirate who’s built up a stash of gold somewhere”.There was, Conan thought. Gone now, though.“This Conan’s been robbing pack trains for years. Pirating and stealing ships. Must have built up quite a hoard. Gold, plate, jewels. Somewhere”.True, Conan thought to himself. But gone, all gone. Stolen, pirated away.“Not me. Can’t help you”, was all he said. With bitterness.

The breath was right on his face. The captain’s breath stank foul. The leer on his mouth was full in his eyes. Conan ached to have just one hand not burdened down with chain, just one hand free for a few seconds. A brief few seconds to smash this skull to pulp.

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“The name’s Drax. Who’s this Conan?”Music to the captain’s ears. Scumbag’s face was throwing back a look full of disdain. The captain could still remember the burning in his balls. The thought was still aching from the audacity of that attack. His eyes sneered into the prisoner. Intense. Burning – not with anger - with the anticipation of pleasure. He’d squeeze the truth out. The pleasure of torture. “Ya say?”, the captain eventually drooled. His eyes set hard. Salivating.The whoosh of the bellows suddenly caught the captain’s ears. His eyes flashed to the blaze of light. Conan’s trapped gaze took in a glint off the rusty chains hanging down from above.“’Cause, ya see, I’ve got my orders. Orders to make this scumbag Conan sing. Make Conan tells us where he’s hidden his gold. The prince plans to be a rich man”.Conan was breathing heavy, barely holding on to his frustration, annoyed by this intimidation he could not smash to bits.“Drax. The name’s Drax”, Conan hissed.The captain chortled.“Then Drax it is”. The soldier tugged back on the scalp. “… And Drax, my friend, is in for a hard time”.The brazier whooshed loudly again. Intimidating. A trickle of sweat dribbled down the captain’s brow. It was hot down in these dungeons, no need for a fire.“Maybe ya mate Conan can come to Drax’s rescue. Stop the pain”.Face turned up to the ceiling, Conan heard another guard stoking the coals. Instinct told him what he held in his hand. A branding iron.

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4c.

They had backed him up against this thick pillar supporting the dungeon roof. He would have resisted any such moves to shackle him like this but the white hot end of a branding iron stabbed towards his face was persuasion enough to shuffle him backwards in his leg irons. He didn’t fight them back either when it was held right in front of his nose as they trapped his wrists on the overhead cuffs.

With hindsight he had let himself to be trapped, his situation was probably worse. But feeling the heat puckering the skin on his cheek was convincing enough. He was panting in deep regular breaths at the thought of that pain being pressed down on his flesh as the chain between his feet was clamped to the earth. There’s be no recurrence of any kicking to the groin.

“See the shape?”Conan held his head back against the pillar as the searing heat was again pressed towards his face. In-between the eye-watering glare, he could make out a circle, about the size of a man’s fist. Squinting into the glaring heat, Conan made out two bars crossed over in the shape of a X.“Any guesses where the middle goes?” the captain gloated.Conan glowered back, uncertain, confused. But instinctively knowing it was a mistake to show any fear.

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But he could not hold back the jump when the white-hot end shot across the breadth of his chest and hovered just above his nipple. Self-preservation shot his back into the pillar. Ignoring the searing pains into his tortured back, he pulled himself up in an effort to avoid the heat. His instincts forgetting his resolve not to show his fears. He’d been brandied before. Under his covering he still bore the vicious scars. His body reacted whatever his courage had resolved. The white-hot weapon hovered threatening. His nub of his nipple was beginning to frizzle under the heat. It would take just one small move to stab it at him, jamming him back yelling into the stonework behind. Tension grabbed him, every muscle rigid with anticipation, blood pounded with the instincts of fear. Fear of an unstoppable pain. The soldier didn’t stab him, though, that evil menace didn’t fry his flesh. But the heat was intense, Conan felt nipple-flesh beginning to singe. Sweat started to flow off his hairline, blood pounded in his veins.“Right on the middle of your man-tit, Conan”.The captain gloated at the sweat dripping down this shit-hole’s face. The man might think himself tough. But his body knew better, it knew the extent of any manly courage.“Held there”.He gave a slight jab. It didn’t touch but it made the victim twitch. It made the captain sneer in pleasure.“Roast your big tit black, charred meat. How long do you think you can scream? How long before you pass out?Despite himself, despite his head knowing it was a mistake to show them any signs of his fears, Conan’s eyes remained riveted on that flesh-singeing weapon quivering only a few finger’s width from his chest. He remembered, he remembered the pain when it had happened to him before. How far, how quickly pain had swamped his resolve. The ever-present thought that it would take only a slight twitch of the wrist to do the job. His ears thudded with his pulse, his hands trapped overhead were clenched into fists. Packed with the fear of such pain. An annoying trickle of sweat dribble down the side of his eye.“The name’s Drax”, he managed, swallowing down hard on his fears. Convincingly. Although he was barely breathing.

“Or maybe we’ll start here?”Conan yelled out, shocked. The end of the iron touched the sweat-drenched hair in his armpit. The substantial bush of thick black hair smouldered. Sizzled, hissed. Hair caught fire. The smell of burning filled Conan’s nose, burning hair singed painful at his skin. Head back against the pillar, he hissed-in. Shocked. In some nerve-packed pain.

“Just so’s you know, we’re not playing around.The captain returned the iron to the coals, gave them a stoke, send spiralling sparks into the air. The temperature in this torture chamber has shot up. Not with the fires. With the tension, with the fear, with the smell of scorched hair, with the stench of Conan’s sweat.

“So, what d’you say, … Drax, was it? How’s about you go have a look for this man you’ve never met?”.Sparks rose crackling out of the torture flames”“This Conan we want to find. How about you turn the world upside down to find this Conan?”The captain smirked in anticipation.“Before I incinerate your tits. One after the other”.

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5. Khotan

5a.

By the light of the dying brazier, Conan was still trying to work out his options. His guts rumbling with hunger, his back and front burned like an open fire. He’d been left alone in the gloom, his guards had gone off in search of food. The only other things to concentrate on were the instruments of torture dotted around the walls, packed high around the sides. Every castle had its means of persuasion. Conan had himself never been reluctant to make use of such means when the need arose. Especially that time one of his own turned on him and tried to oust him from his power. But this place had it piled high, every imaginable device. All waiting to be brought into use when his three guards had eaten their fill.

They hadn’t branded him. Yet. But from the look of the captain’s face, Conan had no doubt he had that pleasure to come on their return. The dim glow of the coals would take nothing to fan them into an instrument of anguish. He could see in his mind’s eye his tormentor licking his lips as slowly he had lowered that threat of white-hot terror towards Conan’s nipple-flesh like he’d been promised. For the dozenth time, Conan’s fevered mind went over his options. He’d tested the chains. Rusty with the damp but they’d still contain a serpent’s power. Repeatedly he’d started to think things out again, determined to get a grip, to work this out rationally, think things through and find a way out. All her had in his defence was his determination, his wits and his mouth. But every time he tried, with the fever burning in his back befuddling his head, he seemed to lose track of what was the right thing to do. He’d finish up yanking wildly at the chains in frustration.

And when he heard their footsteps echoing down the stone steps into this sweltering subterranean heat, Conan still was no closer to knowing what his best move was going to be. The sweat coursing down his arms was more than the heat. He’d run out of time. He was a fighter, a warrior, not a tactician. But his very life depended on making the next best move. They wanted to know where he’d hidden his gold. A quick and easy way for some prince to make himself rich. Just the way Conan had. By stealing. Trouble was, there was no stash. He’d lost it when the pirates attacked, he was penniless. And they were going to believe him? Right!

So he could pretend, he could lie. He could let them believe he was leading him there. Feeding their greed with the prospect of easy riches for the grabbing. And trusting that on the way, he’d escape. Hoping he’d

somehow shuffle out of his bonds and make for the hills.Just supposing, though, that didn’t happen. If he didn’t escape, if they found him out. Thoroughly pissed off, back here, sweating, heating up the coals. Or worse. What they had promised so far would be just a picnic. A speedy death would be the last thing they’d offer.

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Or he could keep up the pretence. Keep insisting his name was Drax. Just some petty thief who thought he’d try his luck stealing from the treasury. Met a few servants, dispatched them silently. But he was some petty thief out of his depth, Drax had got it wrong. Breaking and entry, taken prisoner. Just some small thief.Who was there to deny him? Just that old man who’d recognised him and sold him for a piece of bread. Drax’s word against some senile git.And they’d believe him? A voice inside his head mocked. Yeah! Too right!

Yet, although he’d gone through these scenes in his head a dozen times when those boots of doom were clattering down the stairs, Conan still had not decided his best move. This time they appeared with another man. In fact, by comparison to the bulk that thrust over the top of their tunics, the stranger looked more a boy. But the way he held himself, this was a man who was tutored to command. The nascent bulges that shot out of his sleeveless top presaged a man who was going to impress later when he’d bulked out. But he was still a young man, not yet in full manly shape. But from the way the others deferred to him, it was this young man who was in charge.

Conan returned hard his stare. He was only a boy, Conan could take him apart with a hand tied behind his back. But his arms were chained overhead. Defiantly he dared come close, Conan stared down at the stripling. Only too aware that he hadn’t got a hand free. Otherwise the brat wouldn’t have dared. So this was the great prince who wanted Conan’s gold, the king’s brat, a kid. He’d have to work harder than that.His eyes raked over Conan’s near-naked torso. Appraisingly he assessed the power in that chest. Taking in what he was up against. Under other circumstances the kid would be pissing himself, up against the power of a mighty giant. All muscle, all man. The gaze took in the strength contained in Conan’s stomach. A smile drifted knowingly over his lips when his eyes caught sight of the scorched skin and frizzled hair marking in Conan’s armpit. Khotan had been informed of what had been going on. How a muscular giant like this had still squirmed under the threat of being branded. How such muscular power had still jerked away from the stab of white-hot heat. All that male-muscled power, much greater than his, yet a human frame that had jumped to the tune of the torturer’s tool. The brat had the confidence to smirk. Chained power, trapped strength.

“They tell me, you think you can take us for a fool”, the young man said. His voice was still light, boyish, it was almost an insult to be pitched against such a foe, this youth was no match.“Drax, they tell me, .. that is the name you pretend”.Conan could already feel himself reacting angrily to this boy’s half-assed sneer.“Drax, Conan. It is all one to me”, the stripling smiled.“You will still tell me where you have hidden the gold”.Over my dead body, Conan swore under his breath. Anyway, he couldn’t. There wasn’t any. But stone-faced, he stared the young man back. Feeling the answer welling up from his guts, make me, brat! The kid’s face impassive, eyebrows arched, as if it was born to command. Just by asking me the question? You reckon, snot-face?. As if it was going to be that easy!

The pair of them stared back at each other. Waiting for the other to make the next move. To tell the truth, Conan did not know which lie was going to be his

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best. Keep up the pretence of the innocent Drax or lead them out the city. So he just glowered back. Knowing that instincts would decide. Through his silence telling this boy-in-charge he had nothing to give. He could just piss-off. The stares went on for ever. The stand-off between a boy and a muscled man-in-his-prime lasted an eternity. Till the boy broke the tension. He grinned.

It was a smile without life. It was a pleasure that did not reach his eyes. Not saying a word, he took a step closer. His hands stretched out. Conan backed away slightly against the pillar when the boy’s fingers splayed out softly across the hardness of Conan’s broad chest. As if admiring such strength, as if about to caress that manly expanse of hard muscle. Conan glowered unused to a man’s hands pawing at the power in his chest. Disliking the touch however admiring the stroking felt. He flinched at the fingertips that flicked over a nipple. His eyes broke into slits of displeasure at the repeated circling over the nub. Glaring at the youth, warning him not to mess with him. But the king’s brat had no eyes for Conan, his gaze was firmly on the flesh that was hardening under his touch. Conan breathed slower, deeper, deliberately to hold down his temper. Knowing it would do him no good. Yet still on-edge. Suspicious Having no good reason to think this mauling was about appreciating the hardness in his chest.

Then suddenly fingers turned to claws. Claws turned to iron. Steely talons. The royal brat jarred his hard finger tips into whip-torn flesh. He squeezed, he kneaded, he compressed the bleeding tissue beneath his claws. Then in a flash of vicious ferocity, a mere-boy raked his fingers down Conan’s chest. Hard talon-like fingers raked through fresh bleeding wounds. Each fingernail scoring pain into seeping flesh like a knife slashed down his chest. Vicious pressure from iron-hard fingers clawed through brutalised open flesh.Conan stiffened at the shock. Raw pain sizzled through his guts. His fists clamped tight into pain-fighting balls. Pain awakened from that day’s whipping sparked into protestation. Fire burned through seeping bleeding wounds. Flesh whipped into screeching torment burst into shrieks of unmanly shock. Conan yelled. In astonishment. He spat out a curse. Instinctively his torso thrashed to escape the grip. Shocked that a mere boy could understand how to inflict such pain. And again. Encouraged by the prisoner’s shocked yell, the boy set his fingers on the peaks of slabbed power. He waited till he had got his victim’s attention. Conan settled, panting hard, eyes on the talons splayed across his chest. In the dread anticipation of the searing pain he had just known. Heart beating, a thudding of expectation hard in his ear. His glare flashed to the youth. Found his eyes waiting, looking at him, menacing him with the threat. A mere boy toyingly delaying till the hard panting lessened. Until this mountain of hard muscle knew there was no way out. Fingers motionless and steely pressed into hot sweating flesh. Waited while enough anticipation of searing pain gathered in the powerful torso under his fingernails. And then viciously he raked his fingers over brutalised muscle. Tore fingernails through bleeding wounds. Sent unwanted tears of pain trickling from Conan’s eyes. Tears that stung at Conan’s pride.

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5b.

With the authority of one born to command, the boy ordered the scum reversed. Conan’s burning chest was pressed into the clammy warm stone work of the pillar. Face hidden, at least he could allow his pride to grimace at the fiery power eating across his chest. Hidden tears of pain were seeping to his eyes. Tears only he would see. He buried his head into the column and tried to suppress the tell-

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tale tremors of pain rippling through his front. From behind, he heard the tutting.“Captain, look at this back”.Conan tensed at the fingers pressed against his whip-raked shoulders. Fully expecting claws to come scraping through the seeping wounds of his whiplashed back.Tut-tut!“This back needs attention. He will die of fever before he pulls on the first oar. Bathe it”.

Conan was a better judge to know those words signified no concern for his well-being. The splatter of water against his tortured back was pure paradise, though. The flow of cooling water down Conan’s sweat-drenched back was better than he could have believed possible.Till the salt got to work, till burn started. The onset of pain was fast. The sea-water seeped into open wounds with the briefest of delays. Conan pressed his torso into the pillar, chin jammed against his chest. Salt-water was gnawing at his open flesh. Not for the first time tortured in this way. But it was still agony every time. His upraised arms went rigid, palms were cut bleeding by fingernails digging into flesh. Every sinew went rigid. Every muscle of Conan’s broad back sizzled in pain. Salt-water, they had dowsed his open wounds with brine. Another bucket smacked him in surprise into the column as he clutched at the chains overhead - as if a column in their precious torture chamber was going to offer any consideration for his plight. Behind he heard the sneering. Laughter mocking his plight. His blood boiled that they thought it was funny, salt viciously eating through his bleeding wounds. He pressed his forehead hard into the stone pillar. Hearing the long pained groan that shook his whole torso and raked its ragged way through his pain-tight throat into the sweaty air. The might of his muscular torso at the same time it shook with pain and it reeled with faintness. A pain was so intense Conan thought he might pass out. He prayed he might pass out. But pain and anger would not allow the peace of unconsciousness.Then he screamed. That brat of a boy had again raked his fingernails down the length of Conan’s tortured shoulders. Sharp fingernails digging through screeching wounds. Another set of claws scraped across the broadness of Conan’s middle back. Forcing him to crush his chest tight into the column, clutch at the stone pillar for support. Seeking an escape route. And finding none. Drowning in burning agonies that spread out from his back and had him shuddering from head to toe.

“This back needs doctoring”.Such words already had the power to turn Conan’s weakening spirit to water. Mock tut-tutting at the damage of day’s whipping.“These wounds will fester. He will die before his sentence begins”.The word were already heavy with threat in Conan’s ears.“Well?”Conan heard the boy speaking with the authority of a man twice his age.“Well, captain, do you intend to incur the royal displeasure for maiming a top-class galley-slave?”The boy sounded intimidating, the son of a king. Used from childhood to having his every whim obeyed.“What do you plan to do about it?”

Rock-salt was the answer. Salt rubbed into seeping wounds. That was the captain’s unspoken answer. Handfuls of coarse rock salt scoured deep into bleeding flesh. Conan burned. Conan suffered. Conan screamed. Despite himself. Pain so unbearable that unconsciousness claimed him and spat him back. Not for one moment spared the torture of salt eating into raw bleeding flesh. His knees went weak, he spluttered and slobbered into the rough stonework against his face. Sweat drenched him. Heat consumed his head in a roaring inferno. Pain ate him up.

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“The gold, scum”.The king’s son had twisted his hand in Conan’s hair. He yanked the head back and spat his demand into Conan’s ear.“Where is the gold hidden?”Conan had no answer for him. He had no stash.

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6. Burn

6a.“You know what it is? Know about the Tree of Woe?”The leg irons were raising dust as they scraped across the hard sun-caked earth of the yard. Conan was stood staring at the frame of crossed timbers, suspecting what they had in mind. Even as they had approached the outside door from the sweltering heat of the dungeons below, the heat had hit him like a body-blow. The sticky heat underground had given way to a dry burning torch. Now outside, he was having to squint against the glare. The heat squeezed at his head like some instrument of torture. His back ran copiously with his sweat.

“Big old tree in the middle of nowhere. It’s where we take our best scumbags to die”.The captain of the guard who’d made Conan into his special project was standing up close, an arm squeezed around Conan powerful shoulders. Talking into his ear like sharing a secret with a close friend. Telling him about the treat the captain had got lined up for him.“The one’s who are no use. Get finished off there. Scum. Just like you”.

Conan had known crosses like this. Beams crossed over into an X. He’d seen the criminal left to die, he knew how long it took, the eternity before death came.“No, better than this little toy here”. The captain’s arm hung heavy against Conan’s whipped shoulder.“ Hung up on the tree looking out onto desert”, the captain went on passing on useful information to an old friend. “Big old desert, takes a day to walk there. Not a chance of a human being anywhere around for days, weeks”.The other guards stood around, wiping the sweat off their brows,“ Rescue? Forget it”.The solder were wishing for the captain to get on with it so they could get out of the punishing sun.

“Nasty looking old tree, too. All gnarled and twisted. Just right for the job Just right for ugly shit-bags like you”.The captain had a squeezing hold on his prisoner’s neck. His nose wrinkled. This prisoner stank. Like the pig-shit he was.“Nailed to it often enough”.This pig-shit was proving obstinate.“Or we use ropes if we want to drag it out”.This shit-hole was proving to be tough. Whatever they had done, to him, this scumbag was keeping up the pretence. Pretending he was some innocent called Drax. A few hours frying his brain might loosen his tongue.“Roasting. Skin burning. Tree of Woe, good name”, he taunted.Conan stood impassive, head-and-shoulders above this tormentor. If only he had one arm free.“The first nail hurts like hell”, the captain smirked, talking into Conan’s ear.“Driven in through the wrist. On fire with the pain. ”.Tough, obstinate, this piece-of-shit was giving nothing up. But obstinacy was good. The captain still remembered that rabble laughing at him, the burning of his battered nuts, that still tasted bitter on his tongue. The prisoner was proving stubborn - and what he was going to get in return - just exorcising more of the captain’s bitterness.“You want to die, you’ll beg to your deaf gods to let you die. Metal cracking through the bones in the first wrist. Pulverising bone. It hurts like nothing else. And there’s another three to go”.

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That old man selling them Conan’s name, it had been a gift from the gods, a good excuse to get his own back. No one questioned it much when soldiers took it out on a prisoner. But doing this one over - well, this was doing the prince’s work. His own vengeful dirty work and the prince’s order. It didn’t get any better, he got what he wanted from this shit-hole– and no questions asked. And they’d been promised they’d get paid well for it if they got the scum to talk. He’d have done it for free. And man, did this scumbag make it fun. Tough stubborn bastard, all the more crutch-grabbing fun.

“Some pass out”, the captain carried on with some glee. “But we always revive ‘em first. Awake for each agonised limb, a nail smashing up through the ankle bone, it drives you nearly insane.Conan through the pains in his back could still hear the snigger of one who thinks he’s won in the captain’s voice.“But you’re gonna be there to feel every single one. I’m gonna make sure of that. Scum, that’s what the likes of you are. Deserve every single sweated drop of agony”.

The captain of the guard nodded to his troops. They forced Conan forward shuffling in his irons towards the cross. He resisted them like he always resisted them. To show he was no push-over, to make them know some respect. Like the soldiers cared, they welcomed the idiot giving them the excuse. Punches to the ribs, a crack across his head. They soon had him overpowered like they always came him. With sheer force of numbers.

Conan glared back at his chief tormentor from between his upraised arms. The strong smell of the sweat of torture assailed his nose as his hands were pulled by rope through the rings scraping his arms along the rough timber.

Stubborn scumbag. Tough nut to crack. They’d worked him over well once the price had gone. But DRAX was still his name. No problem for the three of them, for them this was the kinda pay-back they

enjoyed. But Khotan was going to demand results. They’d see how tough the bastard thought he was after a day hung out in the sun.“Think of this as some kinda trial. DRAX”, the captain had advised. He knew this pig-shit was tough, look at what he’d taken so far. But a bit of a frightener today was not going to do any harm. The sun would drain him of strength, they’d see how tough this pig-shit thought he was when they took him down at the end of the day. Straight back to the dungeons, crack a few ribs, smash up a few bits inside. He’d be singing soon enough.

“So’s ya knows what ya got coming to you”.No one enjoyed the prospect of dying slowly, agonisingly slowly, alone, every second on the downward path to death lasting a lifetime. Abandoned to a lonely death, on the irrevocable Tree of Woe.“’Cos scum like you - DRAX - are gonna finish up where you belong. Staring out at a sea of nothing. Nailed to an old tree. With only the cruel sun frying your skin for company. Pain crippling every bit of your body with every twitch. Dying agonies for every breath you gasp. And not another human being in sight for days”.

Conan kicked out at a guard when the leg irons came off. He took a thumping to his guts for his pains. But he’d taken worse. The feet were being spread out, ropes trailing out to the rings at the foot of the timbers.

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“Wild beasts ‘ll find you, though. Puma can reach up and tear off the meat. Get your balls if we don’t nail you high. And why should we? Not much food for them beasts in a place like that”.Despite the chill in his balls, Conan’s face said it refused to be intimidated.“And you can always rely on an early visit from some friendly vulture”, the captain sneered.

The captain took his chin in his grip and forced Conan to stare into his eyes.“But you could make yourself useful. You could tell us what you know. Where you’ve stashed the gold. Maybe then, - but just maybe”.Conan’s near-naked body was drenched with sweat in this heat. So airless it was hard to breathe.“Maybe the king ‘ll let you off. Kinda reward you” the captain squeezed harder into the jaw trying to force out the signs of pain.“Let you do some good Spend the rest of your miserable existence at the oars. Up to you, Conan. Tree of Woe or the galleys”.

Conan knew he’d never persuade them of his lie but his bad-tempered defiance forced him into playing the part. In his bad mood it seemed the choice of decision was being made for him.“The name’s Drax. Don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got me all wrong”.

The captain smirked.“Shit! I forgot. Drax! Course we have! Suit yaself, though. DRAX. Pity that. Then it’s the Tree of Woe for you”.He turned to the guards.“When the sun’s overhead, lift him. Feet off the ground”.His eyes passed over the muscular frame roped to the cross. Then he glanced up at the sky. Cloudless. The blue deep and hard. This pig-shit was dark-tanned, skin used to the sun. But today was going to be a blinder. He’d fry.“Keep an eye on him. He passes out, revive him”.The captain’s hand swiped off a sheen of sweat off the hard-muscled chest lacerated with his ships, clawed by the prince. His eyes roamed into the burnt armpits, up the tortured arms to the bound wrists raw with his strugglings in the dungeon’s shackles.He eyed his prisoner hard in the face. A smile broke on his lips.

“He’s gonna find out what’s coming to him. Even without the nails.

He gave Conan a pair of gentle slaps to his cheek. Patronising him.“Unless you’ve got anything to say, Conan”.“Drax”, came back the reply. Strong, forceful. Enforced. Probably digging himself deeper into trouble. But showing back this man here was undeterred. By this threat of another day of pain. And the promise of an agonising execution.“As you wish”, the captain grinned. This prisoner’s stubbornness was giving the captain another excuse, gratefully he could feel the prickle of a response glowing down below. Grateful for the stubborn scumbag taking another vengeful day taken out on this piece of shit.He stroked at the trickle of sweat down his victim’s face. Relishing the shake of disgust that threw his hand away.

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Thief!

6b.

He knew the power of the sun. He’d learned at the oars the force that could suck the strength out of a man’s back. Tramping across endless deserts in search of his next mercenary job, he’d once collapsed on his front when the power of those vicious rays had dried out any power even he could raise to keep on walking. Not a tree in sight, not a single hope of shade. Knowing, fearing, that he’d die out there in the wilderness, the brutality of that heat crippling even his prodigious strength. The kind of wilderness that held a Tree of woe. He did not take it lightly being stood to even this cross under the blistering force of that power.It had been early morning when the guards had brought him out but the sun had already been intense. The idea of being up in the light after the stinking gloom of their torture chamber had first. been a welcome thought. But within seconds, the heat had hit him like a thud in the back of the neck. His arms up against the upright of this X-cross were quickly trickling down with his sweat. Irritating tickles were dribbling down his back, his front quickly covered with a thick smelly sheen.

It seemed Conan’s decision was being made for him. This battle with his tormentor was getting personal. The sneering was bastard was so cock-sure of himself, every pore on his skin seemed to ooze with the self-confidence that he was going to force Conan into giving up his name. Over-my-dead-body was the only right response. The more he had thudded a fist into Conan’s guts to make him confess, the more Conan was swearing to himself the creep was going to get nothing. He’d die before letting this smug bastard win.

There was activity to watch in this yard at first. Soldiers going about their business, horses taken out for exercise. A welcome diversion for his mind from concern about the stinging burns that were forming on his skin. He was well tanned, his skin was used to the sun. But this was like standing bound in front of the door of a raging furnace. The signs at first he was able to ignore. But burn built upon burn. Sun roasting open festering wounds, skin cracking, burning black . Sting added to sting. His whiplashed shoulders smarted as his sweat irritated sunburnt flesh. The squared-off slabs of his chest caught the sun and sucked its draining force into his muscled flesh. Burning like they’d really had branded him with the irons.

The morning wore on. The sun rose higher. The heat seemed to suck all the air from the earth. It was getting hard to breathe, Conan was panting lightly into the top of his chest. Higher and higher the sun rose, his upper chest was heaving in fast regular pants, his head rocking up-and-down rhythmically in tune to its pulsing beat. Throbbing. Paining him. Like a metal band had been clamped to his head and was being screwed tight. Like his head was about to explode.

The earth beneath his feet sucked up the heat and gave it back. Dusty clay caked and dried out in the heat released its load from below. Meeting the ferocity of the sun’s rays from above. Encasing his body in-between in an inhuman choking shroud of sweltering heat. Conan struggled to breathe, gasping. Conan struggled to keep his eyes open, the glare of the light so intense. Tears trickling down his cheeks as his vision swirled in the ferocity of the sun’s heat. Yet the ferocity of nature broiled him with vigour. The damaged skin flared brutally in the searing heat. Sweat no longer flowed, his body trembled at the loss of his sweat. His eyes burned, branded by the intensity of light. He was molten lava, Conan was mad with pain, involuntary spasms

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violently shaking his scorched flesh. Blissfully a trance induced by agony swept over him. A trance into which he unknowingly surrendered his will and determination. Not giving up his strength, more sucked like a leech slowly out of his soul by the elemental forces of nature.

He woke with a pained cry. His body lunged forward under the shock. Like the head of a charging bull had rammed him in the guts. Conan gulped in air like it could dowse his pain. But flames burst into life in his throat. He heard mocking laughter from somewhere on the other side of his inferno of a living hell. His guts retched in shock.“Wake up, shitface!”The guard again rammed the end of his club up under the prisoner’s ribcage. His mates burst out laughing when pain threw the prisoner up, only to collapse under sagging knees. Guts needing to retch, nothing to give up.“Wanna drink?”Conan was shaking, his whole body was trembling out of his control. Struggling to find his feet, struggling to find himself, suddenly shocked out of his trance into his confused reality.Water splattered into his face. Precious life-giving water. Beyond himself with weakness and confusion, Conan’s tongue was out, wildly licking at his lips, ignominiously going for the droplets running down his arms, slavering for the remnants of water still dribbling off his shoulders.“Na? Suit yaself then”. The soldiers emptied the precious water wastefully onto the ground.

His breath was coming hard and fast. Anger was trying to show itself, his customary bad-temper was building in his chest. Yet his whole body was swaying in tune to the exhaustion that ate into every muscle of his powerful frame.“Mind ya stay awake now”, the guard sniggered his mock advice.“Or we’ll haveta make ya”.The guard emphasised his good advice with a stinging slap across the prisoner’s cheek, so hard it whipped Conan’s head round to the side. But when Conan slowly turned his face back to the front, the soldier was met by a chilling stare. Intense hatred.“OH! My, are we frightened!” the guard gave back in mock-fear.And rammed the end of his club straight into Conan’s gut.

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6c.Respecting the power of Nature was something Conan had learned from experience. It was a mighty force, not to be played wit, not to be challenged. Like the overpowering force of the sun. Not something to under-estimate, he had found.Getting good at thieving had taken some time. As a young man still learning the trade, things had not always gone to plan. Like that stupid time he had stolen a horse. The woman’s husband had nearly caught them at it, luckily Conan had got away out the back window. In revenge for the frustration burning in his loins, Conan had escaped on the husband’s horse.

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He was proud of that horse, it had spirit, just like himself. They made a good team, temperamentally suited, he saw himself like the warrior he thought himself to be when atop that fiery steed. So much so that Conan had forgotten himself., made a stupid mistake Rode back into the same town a few months later. Spotted, snatched. Spread out on a cross, his tunic ripped away. And the soldiers laid into him. Twenty-or-more lashes across his front. Slowly, letting every sting seep painfully into his flesh. Giving the rabble watching something to laugh at. Getting their rocks off on his proud efforts not to show his pain. And then the soldiers had left. Even the passers-by hadn’t bothered pelting him with any more stinking vegetables and eggs when the sun was at its height. They crept indoors, escaping the intensity of the fiery sun. The heat sucked him dry. He hung, the sweat gone from him. Drying up from the outside in. Blistering, weakening. His head just hung, painfully aware of the power of the sun to reduce him to a husk of his former self. All that youthful vigour and power sucked dry by the power of the sun. Not for the first time but Conan had learned to respect the force of Nature ever since.

In his semi-trance of weakness, that youthful Conan must have been dreaming. Pinned out on that cross, his head sucked dry, his body emptied of strength, suddenly the young Conan had come to with a shout. A body-wrenching cry. He must have been dreaming. In his semi-conscious state he must have been re-living his better times. Times with his girls, times when he was all-man. The lash from the whip that yanked him back to his pains had slashed cruelly across his young man’s hard-on.Made obvious by the sweat-dried heavy material that clung to his loins.“Look at you, hard-man!”The voice barely registered before a near-comatose Conan screamed out in pain. Another hard lash across his manhood.

“”Done ya time”.Conan collapsed to his knees when the bonds were cut through by the knife.“Now, get lost. Get outta here. Scum like you, it’s not welcome”.

The Tree of Woe. Conan had been warned. The place where he’d end-up if he didn’t tell them what they wanted to know. A nail through each limb, spread-eagled on the ancient tree. Left to hang. Left to suffer. Left to die a slow and agonised death. Hours, perhaps days of suffering. In his travels, he’d seen things. He’d heard of things like this. Some passed out with the pain. Some died fast. Others, tough ones, it was said it could take days. Those who wanted to live, those who believed they were not destined yet to die. The fight to live life to the fullest had infused every muscle in Conan’s body since escaping slavery as a boy. Conan was not one to give in to death so easily.

Just like that time he had been attacked by brigands. Everything stolen, stripped and left, hands bound together by a rope hanging down from the branch of a lone tree in the middle of nowhere. Abandoned to die, slowly, starve to death, burning up in the sun. He’d railed against fate, he’d struggled in frustration that a simple piece of rope was going to condemn him to a lingering death. But the sun got to him. Sweat beaded on his shoulders, sweat flowed down his back. With time, sweat dried to a salty powder on his arms. The heat sucked the strength from him. The heat drained the power out of his legs. He slumped, the power in his physique that had stood him so well in good stead now had deserted even him. Assailed by the fearsome might of nature. Attacked by a primordial force not even his mighty physique could resist. Abandoned. Beaten by the power of the sun vaunting its force over his mere mortal frame. Conan never knew when a solitary camel driver passed by and cut him down. Within a hair’s breadth of death. A victim of the power of the elemental force burning him up from above.

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Khotan’s two guards mockingly slapped him back to consciousness before they upped his pain. Laughing at the once-powerful might pinned to the cross. The famed Conan weakened by the heat, drained of strength by the might of the sun. Cruelly beating down on him. Brutally daring his mortal frame to resist the power of Nature. And biting back at his mortal arrogance, stinging at his flesh, burning into his skin. Still dis-oriented, still reeling from the horror that threatened to explode in his reeling head, Conan screwed his eyelids together as the glaring light stabbed him through the eyes. His face grimaced, his chest grabbed hungrily at over-heated air. Giving a sharp intake of breath as the heat stung at the scorched insides of his throat.

Unaware in his suffering that his feet had been released from their bonds. Unaware until hands yanked his feet off the backed clay earth. Unaware until his heavy muscled weight crashed down yanking down into exhausted shoulders. Unaware until his chest lunged forward only to be yanked to a tearing halt by the tug on his raw wrists. Exhaustion released an agonised groan of pain from his throat. His head was reeling, Conan could not take in the fact that his guards had pulled his feet off the ground, spread his legs wide and bound his ankles up to the upright. Off the ground. They had gone for him when he was at his weakest. When dis-oriented with no defence. When physically weakened and drained. Leaving Conan suspended in the air. Leaving him hanging forward off his tortured arms. Leaving him groaning at the sudden attack on his exhausted body. Tortured under the sun. crippled. Depleted of strength. The might of his obstinate resolve swirling in a sickening vortex that he could no longer control. Bile turned to acid in his throat. His stomach threatened to empty. But it was already empty. He hung, torso heaving, shaking with the force of his aching guts. Hung, shaken by his retching, suspended off the earth. Hanging just off his upraised arms. And tears of pain and turmoil streaking his face.

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Yet Conan remembered still as in a trance that day of his youth. When he’d been crucified for stealing that magnificent steed. After they released him from that cross. He’d lurked in the shadows when night turned. He waited outside the tavern where the soldiers stayed after duty. It had been dark when the soldier was going home. Drunk, easy pickings. The man who had whip-lashed young Conan’s still-stinging groin. It

had taken nothing to drag the drunk into the shadows. Knock him out. Beat him senseless. And in payback, with the soldier laid out unconscious on his back, Conan had grabbed his feet. Spread them wide. And with not the slightest hesitation, his foot had hammered into the soldier’s balls. Even out-of-it, the soldier’s body had yelled in pain. Just what Conan had wanted to hear. Just what he needed. To feed his spite. To get him to stomp his heel again into the soldier’s vulnerable balls. A dozen times the body under his heel shot in agony under the revenge of Conan’s heel. Eventually Conan threw the legs dismissively to one side and left the city. Without a further thought. Knowing that soldier who whipped out at his hard-on would ever get it up again.And same thing went for these other bastards too. Conan was a thief, a killer. These guards who had mis-treated him, who even now were back trying it on against him now, - they had also better watch their step. They’d know his wrath, first chance he got.

Thief!

7. Powers of persuasion

7a.

Conan could barely move when they cut up down from the cross. First his exhausted legs were released. Legs thudding uncontrolled to the hard earth shook the shattered prisoner, forcing him into a loud uncontrollable groan. Legs sagged, weight tore at his arms, but he couldn’t help himself, all that famed strength could no longer hold itself up. When the wrists bonds were cut, Conan was down. Down on the earth, down on all fours. Gasping in air noisily, heaving greedily for life-restoring breath, his back lifting massively as Conan’s being tried to re-connect with the earth.“Move it!”The order came with a stinging lash across his bare backside. A cane tore into the exposed flesh to make the scumbag jerk. Like a creature out-of-its-own-head, Conan made to rise to his feet, trying to push

up on his knees.“Crawl, scum!”Conan could do nothing else. Scowling furiously to himself at this indignity, seething down at the hot earth beneath his encrusted eyes, stinging now with his salt. Yet unable to do anything otherwise, giddy with exhaustion. A mocking laugh accompanied the sting of the cane that bit maliciously at his bare thigh. Fury flamed in his blood-red eyes even as, full of futile anger, his weakness forced him to obey. Conan crawled.“Crawl like the dog you are!”One painstakingly slow effort after another, he shuffled forward like a dog they wanted. His knees burning on the overheated earth, his hands singeing as he shuffled forward towards their underground hell. Blood raced in rage through his body, an animalistic need to hurt thudded in his veins. But a weakened-to-death Conan had to crawl, he had no choice, he was drained, sucked dry by a force of Nature he could not match. Back towards his cell, back to sweltering in the stale stench of male tormented sweat underground. He hissed at another slash of the cane into his thigh, his crawling hesitated for his grunt. Mindlessly – angry at being too shattered to fight back - Conan crawled endlessly onwards, jerking at the sting of the cane across his bare sun-burnt back, the overpowering rage at their mis-treatment mixed uncontrollably with the dizzying whirlpool that roared in his head and weakened his once-powerful body.

But it was not to his cell that they brought him. The torture-dungeon loomed again. They could see they were on a roll, the shithead was close to collapse, they could smell it. They were going to keep piling it on. Till Drax meta-morphed into the scumbag Conan and earned them purses of gold. More-and-more their blows fell, no chance to think, no chance to fight them back. He was slapped out of his tortured trance once his hands were bound overhead. Hanging off red-raw wrists in their torture chamber.

Exhausted and starved of food, his brain dried out by the ferocity of the sun, Conan swayed in a neverland of pain and unreality. He couldn’t see straight, his head swam in a sea of befuddled murkiness. Sucked dry by the heat, drowning in weakness. It felt like he was continuously under attack, all the time pain roared

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through his flesh. But he was, the thumping never stopped. Barely aware that the pain only got worse. Tormentors of every shape and size drifted in and out of his existence, the guards, the captain.Conan felt like he was caught on a whirling cross, not knowing when his head was above his chest, when it was below. Befuddled by pain, trapped in a mindless swirl between pain and confusion. Then the captain’s face swam into his sight. The sneer of his tormentor fired up his guts. No matter the thwacks of determination to his guts. No matter how many slaps he took across his face. The sight of his enemy turned Conan’s heart into iron. His resolve became hard like rock. He was fucked how much of this he was supposed to take! Vowing this bastard would never smirk in satisfaction. Swearing he’d die first, he’d never break under the force of this bastard’s fists.

Briefly he came to alone. Rising through the swirling fiery sea to the reality of this dungeon of pain. Arms spread-eagled above his head between the pillars, locked in chains. Had he hung there all night? Or had they brought him straight here from that cross? Conan’s understanding had no idea of how long it had been, how much he had taken. If he had found some moments of rest, he was no better off, he was shattered, his body sobbed in exhaustion. Worryingly Conan kept drifting off aimlessly in a seeming eternity of mindlessness, losing mind-control, losing self-control. Drifting unknowing in some bleak fog of howling horror. Burning agonies gnawed at his red-raw wrists, yet there was no strength in his legs to haul his legs up underneath himself. Sagging off the overhead manacles. Shattered, the totality of his exhaustion claiming him. Suddenly his senses warned him. Voices. Voices were back. Their stinging slaps claimed to bring him back to earth with a shock. But exhaustion was Conan’s master, exhaustion had hold of him. Thuds from the clubs smashed up his guts, canes tore across his back. Grinding agonies bore into his torso. Pains that bit right into the depths of his soul forced him hissing to face the truth. They were battling it out to break him, they’d know no end. This never-ending reality of horror was his fate.

They had left him, he vaguely later remembered. Had they said they were going “to summon the prince”? Surfacing in one of his brief moment of lucid thought, he found himself in a murkiness that reflected this spirits. Torches had gone from the walls, just a dim glow down the distant tunnel, like the timeless gloom burning in torment that filled his guts. He had no sense of time. They had hung him and had left to fetch the royal brat, - but only after beating him senseless.Suddenly a warning brought his senses back to life again, the two soldiers were back. Buckets of stinking water dowsed his mindless frame, bringing him back to a tortured here-and-now in an agonised flash. Straightaway they’d gone for his guts again. To prepare him for the return of the royal brat. Solid punches to wear down any remaining strength he might have left to fend off their blows. Each punch successively getting through, each blow erupting in a more pronounced grunt as slowly, ruthlessly slowly, they smashed up his defences. Legs thrown up in reflex-action as muscles in his midriff burned. Air whooshed out loud as fists sank deep into his agonised belly. His torso hung slumped, defenceless, helplessly wide-open for whatever punishment they wanted to dish out. Greedily

gasping for the air that had just been punched out of him. Knees given in under the never-ending barrage of strength they threw at him.They took turns to catch their breath, turning to clubs when their fists felt red-raw. Yet no such chance for their prisoner. Gone any impressive wall of protection in “DRAX’s” impressive guts, the dungeon echoed to the

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thud-like sounds of brutal fists slamming into once-impenetrable muscle. Smashed through in inhuman bawls and groans.

For an endless eternity in the chamber it seemed Conan had drowned mindlessly in a sea of pain. They had beaten him senseless, they had dowsed him in the bleakness of his suffering. The sting of his sweat burned in open wounds. His brain had been tossed under the thrashing surf of senseless confusion. Anguish and exhaustion had taken possession of him. In some sick delirium his mind returned to play him tricks. Mocking him with memories of his better days. When he was free, when he had money. A chief of men, leading them into forays to rob and plunder. When the girls were free and willing.Only slowly did his agonised being manage to find some strength to pump life back into his knees. In some break when left alone for his guards to take on food, his life-instincts summoned the strength. Only agonisingly painfully did he dig deep to find the reserves that took the strain off his arms, gave some reprieve to his over-straining gut. Yet on his feet still Conan swayed. Arms spread-eagled between two pillars, no strength even to test these chains. His eyes flickering closed, his breathing deep and laboured, barely awake. Barely alive. Wishing almost he wasn’t.

Shaking, twitching, convulsing, his torso was beyond any control. Pain throbbing in every crevice of his flesh. The sound of boots clattering down the tunnel warned him of his tormentors’ approach. Forcing him with growing resentment to twist to face the sounds. Yet wishing to retreat, to flee into the comfort of an agonised death. His tortured being knowing deep-down what their return must mean.

As if to confirm his fears, and in order to impress their master at his return, the pair of guards hammered fists into his screeching gut. Conan was dangerously beyond himself, in an instant, unable to know what he ought to do. On fire with pain, his brain in a fiery whirl. Beyond thought, without a plan. Not knowing how much more he could find, if anything. Yet instinctively his proud warrior instincts did not wish to show them how little that might be.Conan heard dimly the returning sounds echoing off the walls promising more of their efforts, more of their punishing determination to squeeze the truth out of him. The man-in-him felt challenged by their return, their fighter in him wanted to spit in the face of the smugness in their gaze. But the victim-of-their tortures felt a weakening tremble churning in his guts. He felt pain eating up his torso with fire. The battle for supremacy was starting again yet never had he felt less able to respond. An uneven fight, yet one which his last vestiges of pride still dictated he must win.

The sight of their princely brat slowly forming through the fog in his sight filled his throat with sour vomit. As Conan again came slowly to back to the tortured reality of his life. Pain sizzled on his flesh, beatings smashed the strength out of his flesh. And then these attackers swam out of his awareness again, worryingly lost from his awareness. They’d come looking for the brigand Conan. They were seeking out that Conan’s lost hoard of gold. In his exhaustion, struggling through his world of pain, he no longer had any idea whether they had found the man called Conan or not.

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7b.

The boy liked to think he had a special knack for this kind of thing. Not for him the crude ferocity of a good beating. That he left to these brutish guards. He

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could appreciate the effectiveness of a good thrashing, he was not loathe to let his men loose on scum like this. Watching them going for him, themselves looking impressive stripped to the waist, Khotan appreciated what the force in their admirably etched shoulders could unleash on scum like this prisoner. Even on a stubborn beast like this one, brute force had a part to play. Flesh already bruised and blue screamed when their clubs laid into it. And this Conan was a tough one, no point in being soft on scum like him. His defiance was continual , tough, he railed against the forces they putting up against him. Like he thought he could possibly win. There had been moments when the guards thought they had beaten the scum. He looked broken down, he was hurting, he’d sob when the pain became too much. But given a single chance to catch his breath, the swine was back fighting them. He was strong, he was a hard-nut. Physical force was certainly needed to wear him down, everything played a part with a victim like this.Unfortunately time was not completely on Khotan’s side. His father was to be back within hours. Khotan meant to please his father, the king, to impress him with what his son could achieve. So there had to be other means. There was more than one way to skin a cat. To get this scumbag to spill the beans. To do that in he short time remaining, Khotan needed every resource at his disposal, not just brute force. By the time his father was back, Khotan fully intended to greet him with the secret of this Conan’s secret hoard of gold.Khotan was happy to use the crude ferocity of these brutish guards. But just to weaken the brute. His own means would best the brute. His distinctive skills lay elsewhere. He’d re-kindle the groaning ashes of his prisoner’s anguish, inflaming those ashes into a blazing red-hot scream. Khotan’s own bent lay in other “more subtle” directions.

The princely brat just gave a nod. Two of the guards came forward, a sack in hand, one standing in front, the other tormentor had moved behind. Defenceless Conan shook his head to clear the heavy mist of exhaustion closing down his brain. Dimly, resisting the dizzying sickness at the depths of his guts, knowing he needed to understand what they might do, to prepare his mind. He had no defence but the resolve of his manliness to withstand the abuse. Suddenly Conan gasped. Not knowing why. But instinct was writhing out of the way of the hands rubbing at his back. It hurt, the touch hurt like hell. Hands roughly rubbing at sunburnt flesh. The guard in front just stood, grinning at the squirming prisoner, relishing the effect of torture his mate had started. Then lifting demonstratively the sack, he dug another hand into the sack. Holding his hand up high, he let sand trickle from his hand. A steady trickle of fine sand that glistened in the torches’ light. Sand, grit. That sick bastard of a royal brat was having gritty sand scoured into Conan’s back.“Got anything for me?”The royal brat nodded at the trickle of sand dropping finely into the sack. Now, even less than before, Conan snarled to himself. He had no more sweat. But his body rushed with a sudden flush of heat. Like flames scorching up his back. Like coals pressed against his legs. It was insane, it was monstrously insane but Conan was ablaze with a rage for this brat. He couldn’t break free, he couldn’t get his hands on that brat and snap his neck. But he could deny this bastard everything he wished. It might cost him his life, it would cost him pain. But no way was the mighty Conan going to give to a brat like this. His eyes were iron, his

jaw set, fire blazed out of every pore of his skin. Bring it on, you loser. Do your best, you’ll get nothing out of me.

“DRAX!” Scorn lit up the very name.Khotan smirked at the effect of his

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word. These guards could beat the living daylights out of a prisoner like this. Weakening him, hurting him. But it was an ingenuity of this kind of tortures that would eventually break down this scum. Pure pain, mind-crippling agonies. Get the heat to weaken him. Get the sun to scorch and burn his frail human skin. And then rub it raw. Flay off the surface with sand till all the pain centres of his warrior hide were exposed. And rub the fine grit of their precious earth into the screaming flesh of this piece of shit. That was the way to beat a dumb-head like this. Beatings were good. But this shit-bag of a thief thought all that muscle could beat off their beatings. Experience told this scumbag his strength could beat a dozen men.Grit was being rubbed into flesh welted and pock-marked from those lashes to his back. Sand rubbed into skin burned raw under the scorching sun. Conan’s back was being flayed raw by fine grit, sand was being rubbed into his brutalised skin. Conan writhed, he squirmed in his desperation to escape the pains. His eyes filled with salty pain. He thrashed in desperation to throw off those hands. Conan was writhing in the fires of hell.

Rabble wasn’t used to such sophistication. There was indeed more than one way to skin a cat. Pain was burning up every bit of the brigand’s flesh. Agonies like the horrors of hell were crippling him into every crevice of his shit-bag being. Khotan watched the horror of knowledge fire up the scum’s eyes as he shivered at the raw agony of another sweaty hand coated with fine sand tauntingly lowered to his chest. The skin there already reddened from the sun. a layer of skin scraped raw. Wounds from his whipping welted, seeping. Eyes wide-open, squirming the agonies being scraped off him front and back. Eyes clawed wide open with agonies palms rubbed over tenderised flesh. Fingers moved, palms circled over hard plates of agonised muscle. Circled slowly, scoured him raw, flayed him red-raw. Long enduring agonies that scratched torture over his brutalised stomach. Once impenetrable to blows, now crimson-red with his pains. Powerful muscle kept in by skin that would burn and weaken him long after the touch had gone. When alone in this darkness and his bonds, the victim would bite at bleeding lips as burning skin eternally ate him up.

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8. Fateful night

8a.“Come on, captain. Just what sort of leader are you?”. The prince taunted. “You’re not going to let your men show you up? Are you?”Conan took in none of the jibe. He was groaning loudly, he was folded forward at the waist, trying to lift his knees, anything to ease the agony bursting in his groin. Yet his legs were kept separate by a pole across the back of his ankles, opening his crutch up to these monsters for their fun.Head back, eyes closed, growling hard into each and every throb of anguish pounding in his balls. Conan missed the grin on the captain’s face when he turned towards his prince. Grateful. Grateful to Khotan for giving him permission. The go-ahead to knee this convict as hard as he could in the balls. Payback.“Let’s see you squeeze them through the top of his head”, the prince laughed.“Or at least, sick up his knackers out his mouth”.The captain grinned at the encouragement from his men, urging him to go for it. Goading him on, wondering if he had the balls himself.

Conan had come to his senses from his agonies when he was grabbed by the hair in the back of his head. Stinging slaps into his cheek, glaring in frustrated anger through pain-filled tears. Forced to stare into the sneering grin of the captain. Whipped on this man’s orders. Hung out to roast on the cross. And now he had ordered his men to thwack their knees into Conan’s exposed balls. Not one of them held back. Full-on, maximum force. A laugh a minute. He was on fire there, his guts screeched with the pain of over a dozen blows crunched agonisingly into his nuts. He hurt like crazy. Sure they’d never work for him again. But the man he had really come to hate was here now mocking his pain. His smirking mouth right in Conan’s face. No way was Conan going to give this scum that satisfaction. He got a grip, gave him his best think-you-can-beat-me-think-again look. And spat hard into the captain’s face.Cheering broke through the stinking hot air. Laughter at the captain’s expense broke the tension. Laughter, too, at what the scumbag had just bought himself. And the captain was laughing too. His hand went to his eye, wiped the spit away. Looked at it glistening on his fingers by the light of the torch. Then, not taking his eyes off Conan’s defiant glare, his hand slid slow down Conan’s exposed torso. Wanting to smash his fist into that smirking face, Conan pulled hard to free the rope that had his arms trapped useless above his head. Down the deep furrow in the chest, the captain’s fingers trailed Conan’s spit. Through the cobblestones of Conan’s gut, the captain traced the captive’s own spit. At the waistband of the low slung loincloth, his fingers lingered. Pausing. Eyebrows raised. As if saying, think I can beat you? Too right. The fingers cupped the balls. On fire, aching like crazy from an intensive knee bashing. Making eye contact, knowing that sneering gaze that met his was all bravado. Tipping his head slightly to one side, as if saying, want me to prove it?

The grip tightened slowly. Letting the message sink in. Building up the feeling of apprehension as battered balls came under attack. Squeezed together. Already burning, shrieking out their pain, already aching like crazy. Now, a smile illuminating his lips, the captain clenched. Now his fist tightened. Now his grip crushed Conan’s sizeable man-balls tight in his own sadistic fist. Eye contact permanent. Bursting to see the change from defiance to pain ripping the mouth wide-open in a soundless cry.

It was just at that point when the prince challenged the captain to beat the crap out of this scumbag’s balls. A smile lit the soldier’s mouth. He had his orders. As

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he applied pressure. As powerful forearms took up the task. Squeezing, crushing, forcing an unmanly cry out of the scumbag’s balls. Seeing tension write its hand over the hard chest, sensing the stomach pull in tighter, the defiance in the prisoner’s eyes flickering, weakening. Then in one smooth move, the tormentor let go the ball-sack. Following through with a hard punch straight into the prisoner’s balls. To show what sort of leader he was to his men, the captain slammed his knee into the brigand’s balls. Grunting with the effort, he drive his knee upwards, driving the scumbag’s nuts up into his body. Feeling the pain convulse through the torso. Feeling the unstoppable shocks of pain

Conan leapt His upper body lifted, went tense, Pain shuddered the whole of his insides. But pain stayed locked in his throat. The accumulated pain of a dozen knee-kicks and a vicious punch into his balls. Sweat broke instead of a pained shout. His body was shaking unstoppably, struggling in the effort of holding back his cry.

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8b.It wasn’t enough, Conan feared for these men who were determined to break him, there would never been enough. Even when they had won.“Got anything to say, Conan?” the captain challenged.“Or is it still Drax?”Conan’s head was back, his eyes scouring the gloom of the ceiling overhead, glinting weakly in the light of the torches. His guts burned, his groin screamed. But he made this blinding pain strengthen his will to give not one bit of satisfaction to this man. He’d only have to look down at his attacker and his heart would be filled with hate. He’d never give in to this man. But his balls screeched with pain, he wiped the snot on a sweat-drenched arm. Shivering without wanting to.

“Get on with it, soldier”. The prince’s encouragement got a laugh and jeering from the other two.“Well?” Conan heard through the rush of noise in his ears. “Got anything for me?”. The captain’s sneering challenge. Feeling victory was not far away.

Conan steeled himself. This blood was up, his temper raging. They’d get nothing from him, he swore bad-temperedly. Anyway, he had nothing to tell. The gold was all gone. His balls were killing him. But what was there left to him? His pride, they’d not take that as well, his sense of what he was worth, a man above the lice that thought they could take him. Give him a chance, he’d crush them underfoot, he cursed these bastards to hell, he’d go down dying before they broke Conan down.A hand was at his throat. Conan’s head snarled down to see the captain’s hand encircling with windpipe. And squeezing. Squeezing tight. Cutting off his air. Conan glared, he tried twisting with his neck, thrashing with his torso to throw him off. But the hand just crushed harder, the arm held his head tight. His face was beginning to go red, his chest was beginning to burn. He knew the man would not throttle him. He’d not kill him, not without the location of the stash. Conan’s hide had a price. But, not able to breathe, his body feared otherwise, self-preservation was clenching his hands into fists. Fists of fear, fists of steel trying to persuade the body to accept the rational messages coming from the head. He doesn’t want you dead, he won’t kill, he can’t afford that. But Conan felt panic taking over his torso, he couldn’t breathe, his body was thrashing off the chains, thrashing, fighting off the hand, trying to escape. Suddenly it was screaming its fears to the brain, get us out of this. Think! Do something! A shuddering fear was taking Conan’s powerful frame. His head began to swim. His vision was blurring.

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Suddenly the pressure weakened, the crush was gone. Conan’s panic-rising body gulped. It gulped in desperation for air. It sucked in the stinking sweltering air in that cell as if it was mountain-clear.With all the power he could muster, the captain slammed his knee into the proffered balls. In revenge. Shock transformed the look of relief in that strangled body in an instant. Horror popped the eyes open. Paying the captain back. A dozen times over. Force emptied all the wind out of that massive gasping chest. Pain lifted the heavy-muscled body off its feet. The pain bawled out in spit into the captain’s face. Revenge for those kicks in the market place, bursting in a flash of light. Bellows of a wounded bull bounced off the walls and made the torches flicker.

Bawls of pain silenced by the crush of a hand on a raw throat. Crushing down and clenching pain again constricted inside the chest. Squeezing tight on a manly torso riven by shattering agonies on fire in his balls. The body was empty of air. His balls burning in a furnace from hell. It took no time for the face to blow up for lack of air. The blood pounding in veins for fear of dying. A body shuddering in fear of that thudding horror when the pressure on the windpipe was gone. The captain pushed upwards, digging his grip tight into the windpipe, pushing the head backwards, thumb digging deep into the neck. A shuddering started under this fingers in the tight-squeezed throat. A tension-taut shivering in the flesh that reached down into the muscled yet airless chest.He let go. The moment the brain had dreaded. The instant the all-too-human body craved. Bodily need won the battle. All caution thrown to the wind. A huge reckless gasp for air noisily sucked in air. All care for the consequences ignored. Until the volcano burst between his legs. A force so hard it lifted the heavy-muscled weight of the prisoner up in the air. Crushing his man-eggs in between. His own heavy-muscled weight resisting the upward lift of the knee. The victims, his balls, sacrificed in this battle of force against weight. A pair of paining balls crushed by the unrelenting power of a vengeful knee crushing up into Conan’s balls. His agonised bellow filled the room. A loud bawl, a manly yell. Every bit of breath in that manly torso emptied and painted the air. Screaming in agony at hell.

The captain watched, observing with satisfaction the effect of his two knee-kicks. Slumped off the rope, knees giving way, the shitbag’s head drooped and lifeless. Muscle trembling on every part of his muscular torso. Groans and writhings without stopping, the sweat glistening in the flickering lights.The captain’s hand went to the hair, he pulled it up. Into the lifeless open eyes, the captain asked,“Anything to say?”Not even a nod, not even a shake. Just a groan.“Suit yourself”, the captain said.

The head-butt missed the intended nose. But it cracked open the prisoner’s brow. Skin burst, blood flowed. And the prisoner’s mouth gaped open wide, the brave warrior gave up an unmanly bawl.

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8c.

“Go for it, captain”.The prince had clapped at the first solid knee-kick into the reeling prisoner.“He’s never going to need them again”.There had been no let-up. The strangling, the knee-hammering, the head-butting. The captain went for the criminal without stop. But slowly, systematically. Letting every blow sizzle to the maximum. Every blow targeted at the point of

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this muscle-giant’s weakest point, up between his legs. Built, tough, maybe, but the captain had scumbag reeling. With shock, reeling with pain.

Gripping the upraised biceps for support, the captain laid one nut-crunching kick after another into Conan’s crutch. Retribution. The legs kept splayed, he had no defence. Gone too his determination not to show his weakness, unable to do so. Crippled by a pain that had a power over his body Conan could not defeat. His body was riven with insufferable tortures. Not even any fear for the damage to his manliness. Conan was beyond any such thoughts, no others except the demons of hell torturing every crevice in his body. And the shock as another earthquake burst in his balls.

“Tracked down that Conan yet?”The captain held his prisoner’s head up by the hair. The rest of his body was slumped off the overhead chains, his skin drenched in pain. Exhaustion was written in every nook of deep muscled flesh. His suffering was whirl-pooling around and around in a confusing vortex through his guts, like some pulsating crater of excruciating pain. Molten lava that was consuming his balls.“Got in touch with him yet? This mate of yours Conan”The mockery in that voice brought a quick flush of anger to Conan’s guts. But it was quickly overwhelmed by a floodtide of burning pain. Another kick into his bollocks that exploded pain out of his head.“Na?”The captain turned to the other two. The bare torso glistening with sweat in that airless furnace.“Wheel it out, boys”The weakness was so overwhelming, the agonies in his crutch so mind-breaking Conan could not raise the strength to turn his eyes in the direction of the squeaking.“Here’s betting that Conan is gonna turn up real soon”, his tormentor laughed over Conan’s drooping head.

The pole stretching his legs was gone but his ankles were in the grip of his bare-backed guards. Confused, through the haze of his red-yellow pain Conan watched some wooden contraption slid between his splayed legs. The wedge-shaped platform stopped squeaking when it had nearly passed through.“One last chance”, the captain warned with a grin. “Conan?”A confused Conan shook his sweat-matted hair out of his face. And gave the captain his best snarling look. Flames roared between his thighs. No way was he giving in to a bastard like this. If only he had a hand free! Red-hot coals roasted his man-eggs. His body grimaced and trembled outside his control. But he was Conan still, you did not toy with Conan. Let him get just one hand free and he’d show these shitheads what he was made of. Even with his last breath.“You in there, Conan?” The captain’s knuckles drummed on Conan’s skull as he hailed into his prisoner’s ear.“This shit-bag Drax is looking for you”, he echoed.He tugged the face around into his own. No response was coming, no easy giving-in. Good! The captain was ecstatic at this chance to get his own back/“Seems it’s the legs then, boys”.

Suddenly the ankles jerked, his feet were yanked off the earth. Pulled up backwards. Conan bawled. More from confusion than pain. More from a knowledge that they’d not give him any peace. His yelp filled the torture chamber with his pain. His butchered balls crashed down onto a sharp wooden edge. The explosion tore through his being. An earthquake shuddered through his soul. The burst of the volcano spat agonies into every crevice of his muscular frame. He’d been kicked and pummelled there repeatedly. A sharp wooden edge now punched agony up into his brutalised balls.

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Self-preservation had instinctively hauled on deeply-muscled arms to pull himself up. Conan hung in desperation to avoid a pain above the agonising edge that had tortured his balls. But the pain endured, the agonies burned. He was still suspended in the flames from a volcano that raged at the manful centre of his being. His head thrashed wildly from side-to-side. His overhead arms shook powerfully in the grip of his pains. Mouth gaping open, eyes wide with indescribably pain, a soundless shriek welled up from the heart of his agonies, crushed the life out of his chest and ripped red-raw through his throat.Sweat-drenched, shuddering with pain and exhaustion, Conan had met the torture-wedge.

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9. Seated

9a.

There was not the strength to twist round and see why he could not bring his legs into use to avoid this torture between his legs. His body’s need to survive had found an answer, though. Pushing down on his powerful thighs, squeezing inwards with his knees, he could raise his body off that cruel edge. Helping out the arms that were pulling on the rope. But all of him had been tortured, weakened for days. Those muscles that drove feat into his enemies’ guts were not what they were. His shoulders were already trembling with the stain of hauling himself up, the rope scuffed painfully at his raw wrists. But the alternative was much worse.

“That’s the idea”.The captain was giving Conan’s desperation-hardened thigh a stroke. Almost encouraging. A mock-appreciative squeeze that congratulated his prisoner on putting his muscle-solid legs to work. In vain, but …. A futile try but rewarding nevertheless to see that this prize-prisoner had not given up the fight. Proffering more excitement to come. The ring behind the prisoner rattled as the rope took the strain. Each ankle looped with rope was pulled up, the rope over the top of the wedge behind him tipping scumbag’s torso forward onto his swollen balls.“Just one more thing, I think”.The captain’s knife cut through the cord on the prisoner’s waist. Deliberately he scuffed the loincloth backwards over burning balls as he stripped the dog naked. A loincloth offered no protection against the painful edge digging into his tortured nuts. But it was symbolic, one more humiliation for this pig to take. Naked, a nothing. Worth not even a bit of cloth to cover his dignity. As symbolic as the hand squeezing up between the legs, the captain gave to underpin the fact he was boss here.“Man, I could eat a horse!” he told Conan. His sneer full of his victim’s suffering. His hand squeezing tight. Knowing he was winning, knowing it was only a matter of time.“Gonna get me some grub”, knowing nothing had passed Conan’s lips for days.“You coming too, boys?”

They left Conan suspended, taking the torches with them. Leaving their prisoner astride the wedge of pain. Ablaze with the hideous dull fire crippling his balls. Knowing they’d hate that for themselves, knowing that in the same situations they’d give in without a fight. Conan could hide the quivering strain in his burning thighs in the blackness as they left. Just. The gloom of the chamber turning to bitter darkness as the lights flickered out towards the doorway. In the blackness, the shuddering in Conan’s up-stretched arms could be detected by only him. Aching, burning as his exhausted arms fought to save his balls from that agony below. Crying out, screaming, screeching. Conan knew he was looking crushing dismay in the face.“Keep searching. Here’s hoping that Conan turns up soon”.The captain’s voice had mocked Conan from the dying flicker of light behind.“We’ll be back. Soon. Well, might take us a snooze after eating”.In the blackness Conan could afford to let the unseen grimace of these pains slash across his face. Left to himself he allowed the howl of his pain to break.“Hope you come across this Conan real soon”, the captain’s laughter had left with Conan as he exited and threw over his prisoner the gloom. Gloom of the spirit. Gloom of his pains

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Conan felt the darkness engulfing him irrevocably, The dying flickers of their receding torches was locking him in this eternal tomb of his pains. Only when he was buried alive in the blackness did he let the agonies burst. A long burning groan that had been agonisingly-long overwhelming his soul. Head back, his pains filled the blackness around. A groan of agony that emptied his chest with his air. An expression of his suffering that would have lasted his lifetime if, exhausted, he hadn’t run out of breath. Breaking down into a sob. The deep-voiced manly sob that had long crushed at his soul and could be given no voice while those others had been around. His whole torso shook off the rope. His body shuddered like taken by a violent coughing fit. The despair that had filled his guts now flooded the room and stole his air. The warrior Conan broke down into overwhelming despair.

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9b.He knew what he had to do. Through all the pain, battling against these physical agonies, he knew it did not make sense to keep on struggling against the impossible. He’d have to think smart, he could never find the strength to keep resisting tier attacks, he had to work out some other way to carry this through. so he would give in. When they came back, Conan the invincible would capitulate. Drax was dead. Conan would confess. Conan would lead them to his stash of gold. Anything to get off this wedge. n to get his hands on their throats.

His whole torso was trembling. His breath came in hot panted jerks as he struggled to pump strength into his thighs. As his mind battled to ignore the pains burning at his raw wrists. They were taking an eternity to eat, deliberately he supposed, they would take a lifetime over their food. That was part of his torture.And now that he had reached his decision, he too wanted this over with, he burned to get on with it. Confess, beg. It was all pretend anyway, there was no gold. Plead, cringe. Promise them everything. It would hurt, but what was pride against slaughtering these bastards

who thought they could beat him. He might even keep up the pretence and try to negotiate some kind of remission. Not the galleys but sentenced to work the mines, he’d negotiate. Do heavy labour as a slave on land as a reward for handing over the gold. It did not matter they would refuse. The gold that did not exist either.

But time had stood still in this temple to inhumanity. Now he had decided to give way, he wanted this agony to his groin at an end. But where ere the bastards? The blackness that surrounded him was timeless. The suffering that engulfed him from his groin and spread into the deepest crevice of his being seemed destined to last an eternity. He had never before craved the re-appearance of a torturer. He had never welcomed the sound of a tormentor’s returning footstep so much. Pain ate up his wrists, burned in his hands. The pain-mad horror in his brutalised crutch screamed for release. But he had already lifted himself off that torture edge, there was no more he could do. And already the trembling had begun in his arms, already he sensed the strain becoming too much in his shoulder muscles.

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He fought to keep a strong grip on his mind, he battled down the terrors. But the time would come when his strength would give in. When the sharpness of the wedge would swamp the furnace burning between his legs. In terrified dread of that moment, the body went taut, muscles contracted into tough knots. A trickle of sweat ran down his arms to join the flood pooling in his armpits. A determined man forced himself to rise up from deep within his chest, yet Conan shuddered. Out of the dread of his weakness. Biting hard on bleeding lips, he gripped harder on the overhead rope and set his mind. To iron, to rock.

The hiding place was well hidden, he’d tell them, he’d have to lead them there. Not even the locals who knew the caves could ever track it down. He’d killed the man who’d shown him the cave, tossed him off the cliff in order to keep Conan’s gold safe. All the truth so far. Except Conan knew the cave was empty.He felt himself slipping down, he dug deep. His thighs were trembling like leaves in the trees before a storm. Shuddering with the strain of keeping all that heavy muscle and weight off that evil edge. The dread of crushing vulnerable man-eggs underneath. Teeth gritted, a weak attempt at a growl to threaten his strength of will in case it dare let him down. Fingernails dug into his fists with the effort of saving his balls. Again he heaved on trembling arms. Once more he pushed on shaking exhausted thighs.

When the hell were they coming back, these men? How long before he could he torture himself with their smirk of satisfaction, when their smug faces broke at the fact that they’d broken the legendary Conan? He couldn’t think straight. But he was convinced they’d release him, they’d throw him back in a cell. Then, with this torment over, when his mind could focus on more than the agonies crippling him in his groin, Conan would work out how he was going to break free when they took him to the hills. He prayed that these his tormentors would be the ones chosen to keep an eye on him. These losers who got off on reducing him to this humiliation. No greater satisfaction, no better prize. Conan would enjoy daubing the earth of their god-forsaken land with their blood.

But it seemed like they were never coming back. Every ragged pant that broke from his throat was voiced with his strains. Every shudder across his powerful chest was an untimely warning that his strength was leaching away. Every tremble in muscular thighs mocked his efforts and forewarned of his collapse. He craved for the footsteps of his torturer. He begged to greet the man who had broken his will. Conan trembled on the edge of insanity. Dread eating away at his masculine pride. Raging aches in his groin was robbing him of his strength. He longed now for the thing he once feared the most. To beg, to plead. Begging them. Imploring them to believe him. Begging them to hear his story. Pleading with them to believe that they had broken his invincible back.

The captain listened outside in the vault. Standing outside in the corridor, listening. In the blackness listening to the death throes of a warrior’s pride. His hand was silently stroking the sense of power he himself had grown. With every tortured groan, the sense of domination over this criminal had strengthened, the captain knew the time was coming. Soon he expected to hear the scum shout out in the hope someone might come running. The dog was tough, the shit-bag had taken some breaking. The manly weaponry between his legs was probably no longer of any use. But it had worked, working on that piece of his self-worth had done the trick.

Suddenly a bellow burst out of the room. His legs had given in. The dog had crashed down on the wedge. All his own body weight had collapsed and was crushing his inflamed man-nuts underneath, the shit-faces strength had given up. The captain leant his head back against the heat of the wall and nodding smiled

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to himself. All that arrogant muscle had failed him. The cur had slammed down onto the razor edge. Violent shockwaves triggered down his legs. The captain recognised the sound. Devastation. The pitch of agony slicing through the cry as pain through the groin cut the scumbag in half. The groaning went on, the pitch getting higher, it went wild. Bawls of frustration. Cries of tortured pain. The captain smirked to himself. The scum couldn’t do it, for all that manful muscle he couldn’t lift himself, for all his manly pride he had failed. For all that snarling and defiance, the shit-bag had taken it hard in the balls. Conan was torturing himself, his butchered balls were being flattened by his own failed muscular pride. Head back against the wall, stroking at himself in sadistic satisfaction, the captain let the scum’s groans coat his own groin in the blackness. He sucked up the satisfaction of hearing the swine throbbing in rhythm to his own pulsating hurt. A wave of power spread down his arm, he gritted his teeth, feeling himself coming to the tune of the scum’s agonised whines. Biting down on his bottom lips, hips working at every squeeze, tottering on the edge of domination over this conquered swine. Erupting with a sneer with the burst of Conan’s agonised roar.

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10. Tree of woe

10a.He’d been sleeping the sleep of the dead. Like a corpse. Until the moment came when they snatched at him. In a blistering split second, all the agonies of the past days kicked him in the gut. His butchered groin burst into flames. The aches in his over-stretched chest cut like a knife into his consciousness. Explosions burst in his brain. Suddenly his arms were being pulled out to the sides, his wrists twisted forcing him onto his front eating the dirt. Arms yanked high up his back he thought they’d break out of their joints. But he could not move even when he felt the ropes being looped around his wrists. Having secured him, they dropped his arms. A few sharp kicks to his sides and yells encouraged a Conan shocked

into consciousness to struggle to his knees.

They had a deal. He’d give up the gold, he said. He’d lead them to the stash he’d hidden, he promised shivering in his pains. And, at the back of his mind, seeing them all with their throats slit, while he disappeared. A free man again. In return, they let him get some sleep.He had crawled to please the prince, in thanks he’d got something to eat. It was almost more than Conan had been able to do when they threw the mouldy bread at him. His guts ached, he wanted to rip his teeth into the bread like a savage animal. But he’d not give them that. He waited till they left him in this hole of a dungeon, left him thrown into gloom with the departure of the torches. Left him with the blackness of his soul before he seized the food and ripped into it like the

wild starving beast he was. His eyes were closing on him with exhaustion. But he needed to build his strength to see this deceit through. He forced himself only to sip at the water though his body crazed for it. But it might be the last he’d see for some time so he made it work for him. Using every single drop to ease his body back under some control. Then and only then did he let himself go. Sinking into the blackness of the deepest night. Until he was wrenched painfully back to the agonies of his body and his uncertain reality.

The captain of the guard stood in the doorway, torch in hand looking down at his prisoner on his knees. Conan was panting recovering from the shock of being wrenched back to reality, squinting up into the glare of the light.“Know what you wanna say?” he glared.Suddenly Conan’s world went black. He shook wildly with his head trying to shake off the sack that had been dropped over his head. Then his guts exploded. Conan roared out in shock at the boot that kicked him hard in the guts. Doubled up with the pain and the surprise, he shot forward and landed face-down in the dirt.“Remember. In the presence of the king, you speak when spoken to”.Conan groaned. The king. It was the big man today, then. Not his brat.A sharp kick in the side emphasised the order.“Get yourself up”.

Conan struggled to his feet. His shook his head to clear the cobwebs at being shaken so rudely out of his sleep of the dead. He had to have his head straight, he told himself. He could feel his chest heaving, the sweat running off his face inside the sack as he struggled to his feet.

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A hard smack across the back of his head presaged the snapped order.“Shift it, scumbag”.

The climb up the stairs when blinded seemed to take forever. There were no guiding hands, just a slap to move him along. Or a kick to get him to his feet on the many times he stumbled and fell on the steps. Up to face the uncertainty Conan had brought down on himself.

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10b.Up and out they led him blind. Conan felt the heat of the daylight coming to meet him. Stumbling along, the burning heat of the day outside stung at his sunburnt flesh. He was outside again. Not down in some torture cell, not destined for the agonies on that wooden wedge. He steeled his resolve, he clenched his fists to take some control of this situation. He’d worked out his plan. He had created a chance for himself, he had to make it work.

Hands now grabbed at his bound arms and steered him blind through the heat. The sun was high, Conan could feel the burn of the mid-day sun on his bare shoulders as he was manoeuvred into position and left to stand. Stand and await the coming of the king, no doubt. Wait to put his plan into action.

The warmth was starting to work its miracle. Although he was sweating strongly inside this sack, he could feel his spirits lifting as the heat warmed his back. Not the sweltering airlessness of his cell. Not the looming threat that soaked strength from the soul in the torture chamber. The heat of a free sun warming his shoulders. Warming his hopes. His plan was risky, nothing was certain. But standing waiting for the king, Conan felt more confident now than when he had been eating the trapped stench of over-heated men’s sweat down in the bowels of the castle. A smouldering anger knotted up his guts that they kept mis-using him like this. What was the point of this hood? But face-to-face with the king, he’d win his confidence. He play the contrite criminal, he’d pretend gratitude that he might be given a chance. He was going to lead them straight to his stash, he’d promise. Might he then hope for some reprieve? The galleys? Or the mines? Just not be killed for his crimes?

Unbeknown to Conan, though, he was being stalked. A big brute of a man, easily the height of Conan himself. But not muscular and sharply defined. All bulk, all solid brawn. Perusing the whip marks that had cut across this villain’s flesh. Over 70 lashes at his public whipping this shit-head had taken. He was tough, the captain of the guard had told him. A stubborn brute that took his punishment - and then some more. The king had had the full reports. His son had bragged about the agonies this shit-head had endured on the wedge. The king was proud of his son. Khotan had proven himself, he had shown he had what it took to rule harshly over a truculent people. Crucifixion was a very valuable instrument. Khotan had shown he knew how to make it work - even against the tough piece of shit like this Conan.

On silent feet, the king was circling the muscled brute. His son had reported how the scumbag had screeched at the salt-rock ground into open wounds. No sign of infection here now, the boy was proving himself to be good. The criminal’s back was a mess. Criss-crossed by savage livid whiplashes. Muscle cut to the core, flesh flayed. Rubbing salt in the wounds had been just the job. The king had no

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intention of letting this scumbag get off light with dying from these wounds. He had a job to do, he had a duty to perform, responsibilities to fulfil. To lead them to the scum’s hoard of stolen gold.

The king had no doubt this swine was a tricky one, he came with a reputation. Hard as iron, slippery as a snake. They’d keep a close guard on him till they had claimed his gold. Of course, he was planning to escape, why else would he offer to lead them to his stash? But the king had no intention of letting this scum escape, not even with his life.He was right up close. He could smell the stench of degradation on him. The low-life’s sweat of fear. The stink of his tortured efforts thinking he could beat their tricks to make him talk. The king was observing the strength from close quarters. Before that muscle had been slashed by their whips, this man had probably been near-perfection. All male, all definition. But he was not to be fooled, this king was not to be impressed. Every one of those lash marks was deserved, he was scum. Without men like this the world would be a better place.

Conan cried out in shock. Surprised by the fist thudding right into his guts. A punch so hard he thought it would smack right through his backbone. Out of the blue, no warning. His knees crumpled at the force. Doubling him, sending him tottering forward. Shocked. Confused. Hurting.

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10c.Conan would have crumpled to the floor. The power behind that punch smacked right through his own powerful stomach. It came with no warning, he was weak from torture, from starvation, from lack of sleep. His knee had given way, Conan could feel himself falling forward with his arms uselessly tied behind.

He would have smashed awkwardly to the ground if a huge hand had not encircled the scruff of his neck to steady him. And then unload a knee-kick straight into Conan’s shocked guts. A savage kick from the side that emptied his body of wind and made him bellow loudly into his sack.The king kept the scumbag doubled up and thudded three more body-crunching knee-kicks up into the stinking guts. Fast, given no chance to recover, no opportunity for the shit-bag to tense and harden. Kicks so powerful his back lifted up under the thud. Knee-punches so hard his feet left the ground. Then he left the convict go. He left him fall on his front to the dirt. Smash face-front into the dust where he belonged. Rolling onto his side, knees up nursing the pain in his guts. This heap of human stench lay there groaning into the sack. Crunching himself up into a ball to nurse the fires burning in his guts.

All of them watched. The king’s son gave his father an ingratiating nod, congratulating his powerful father on laying the shit-face low. The captain looked down at the man he had broken, squirming in pain at his own feet.“What the …?” Conan expelled when he could catch breath.And bawled out in pain again. A leather-booted stomp into his side silenced his mouth.“Silence in the presence of the king”.Conan cussed that captain. Not for the first time promising to flatten the rest of his face.

“Get him to his knees”.Conan recognised the son’s voice. He was hurting still, shocked by this attack to his guts at blinding speed. Appreciating their need for the hood now.“Let the swine kneel before his betters”.

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Cursing to himself inside his sack, Conan let himself be kicked to his knees by the guards.“We hear you have something to say”.

The royal “we”. The brat deserved a kicking. But Conan compliantly cleared his throat.“You wanted to know ….”The slap across the back of his head silenced Conan’s speech.“You deaf or what?” the captain roared down his ear.“Silence”.Another slap that knocked Conan forward on his knees. Halted by a strangling grab at his hood.“We ask the questions, you nod your stinking head. Got it?”So much for hoping to sweet-talk his way out of this, Conan realised.

“You do not pollute our hearing with your voice”, the king’s brat voiced. “Any more than you have to pollute our air with your stench”.Conan inside the sack could feel his blood beginning to boil. When he had one hand free, that brat would breathe his last breath.“Just as our royal sight is to be spared the appearance of your ugly criminal face”, the brat sneered haughtily.I’ll have your balls yet, Conan swore. If it’s the last thing I do.He realised his chest was heaving with his anger. This was all going wrong, he had to get back in charge.

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10d.“Is your name Conan?”Conan heard the brat’s question. But it rankled to be ordered to answer like this. But he took another hard slap across the back of his skull for his hesitation.“Answer!”The captain bellowed into Conan’s ear. Like some drunken father disciplining a son.Conan nodded. A short stab of the head. Short to show some reluctance at this treatment.

His awkwardness was ignored.“Will you lead us to your gold?”Conan nodded again. This was humiliating, his temper bubbled just below the surface. But maybe they were getting somewhere now. They were back on track. Back to leading them out into the landscape and plotting his eventual escape.“How long will it take to get there?”Conan mysteriously shook his head. Suddenly the brat realised his question needed Conan to talk.“You may speak”, he commanded. “But two or three words is enough”.“On horseback, three”.A deep booming voice broke into the air. As voice as big as the punch that had burst through Conan’s guts. It was the first time the king had spoken. Conan had wondered before whether this might have just another trick, that there was no king here.“Scum don’t get to ride”.

Conan answered, trying to sound conciliatory. In the royal presence. Back to his original plan. Arse-licking at every step. Not rising to the tone of putting him down.“Walking, six days.

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The king’s voice boomed harshly. As hard as the knee-kicks he had delivered. The ruler spat it out the words, full of disdain.“Five. Make him run”.

Conan felt at conflict inside his sack. Clearly this king was calling the shots. On the other hand, when they were on the road, it would be his brat in charge. Then Conan would swing his plan into action. The kid would pay. With his life.“Then we are done!” Inside his sack, Conan heard the king’s voice boom.

Suddenly it was like a battleaxe thwacked him across the chest. Something hit him with ponderous force right across the breadth of his powerful chest. The might of the kick lifted him in the air and threw him on his back in the dust.“Take this stinking scum from my sight”, the king commanded. Gratified to see this criminal brought low under the force of his leg-kick across his stinking chest. Watching the guards dragging such scum away by his feet, painfully dragging his whip-lashed back through the dirt.“Of course, he plans to escape”, the king pronounced to

his son. “Make sure he can’t”.His eyes still following the procession of convict and guards, the king addressed his son,“When you have got the gold, what will you do with him then ?”

The son looked to his father. Hoping for a single word of appreciation. Looking for a small word that said he had done well. But the king had only eyes for the convict being dragged away by laughing guards. The scum hissing in his pains, struggling to lift his stinging back off the dirt.

“He’s big, strong. Plenty of work to be dragged out of a body like that”, the son said. Hoping his father would appreciate he was getting the best out of an asset.“I thought the galleys. Or maybe in chains down the mines”.

The king was silent.“No”, eventually the king said. Definitively. No questions asked.Watching the scum-of-the-earth struggling with the pains to his back, writhing off the sand of the earth biting at his wounds.“That lump of dog-shit is vermin”.The earth was being defiled by his blood as they dragged him away. “Not the mines. Not the galleys”.

His son would have interrupted but his father’s demeanour showed Conan’s fate was fixed.“On the way back. When you have his gold …. “.The king’s eyes did not flicker off the legendary thief being dragged away.“It’s the Tree of Woe for him. The earth is best rid of such scum”.

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11. Future dream

The brat had under-estimated some men’s power to endure. Conan had led them. For three days he had led them towards his promised horde. Forced to walk while the five of them rode. Forced into racing behind a trotting steed. Just for the fun of it. Dragged along when he tripped. Just for a laugh.

Barely fed to keep him weak. Given enough water to keep him alive. Alive long enough to show them the way. Long enough to endure the agony of the Tree. He took their abuse, he had no choice. The crack of a whip across his neck to make him comply. The kick in the gut when their patience was running out. Got him down on the earth and their boots insisted they get to this stash faster.But they got smug. They thought they had Conan beat.

No one ever found the soldiers. Their unconscious bodies tossed over the cliff. To smash on the rocks below. And washed out to sea.Conan sent the brat back. His corpse dragged in the dirt behind his own stallion. His horse found peacefully grazing, the cruel king’s only son butchered and slaughtered. His guts ferociously slashed open by his own trusty sword, his balls hacked away, gone. Conan had hacked them off, as he had promised himself. He’d have the brat’s balls, he’d sworn. And he’d done it while the brat was still alive. Alive and screaming.Conan knew the beauty of a fine sword. The brat’s was now dangling by Conan’s side as he watched the waves crash over the boat and he surveyed the prospect of a new life. Khotan’s heart had been mercifully pierced by his own jewelled dagger. Ten times stabbed in mercy. Then his precious blade had been stolen. Taken and now sold to buy Conan passage on this boat. His whiplashed back now longer pained him like crazy under the new leather tunic.A few coins still remained in his purse. Their chink of gold was muted by the prize of the brat’s balls, coating Conan’s only wealth with his tormentor’s dried-on blood. As Conan coldly surveyed the distant horizon and wished himself a better life.

The end.

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