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LeSeigneur

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The Labours of Hugh

 

By Chip Masterson

 

For the Seigneur de M.

 

 

“My God, what is that beast?”

 

My master and I stood in awe as we watched a lone man carry an entire butt of beer on his back and gently drop it in place.  You could hear it slosh - a thousand pounds of beer carried as lightly as a side of beef!  But what looked like a man – or the absolute ideal of what a man could be – had the face of boy no older than I.  His downy face looked untouched by a razor, yet the width of his shoulders rivaled every champion assembled here, with helmet-sized shoulders and chest muscles as thick as a man’s torso.  His bare arms dwarfed my skinny legs, yet his waist, carved into grooves like a cathedral column, was flatter than mine.  His legs were covered with several boar-hides stitched together, and with calves pushing them up like a giant’s fists.  As he turned to leave, I could see he was so thick from the front edge of his chest to the highest peaks on his back, that if I were to stand with my back against his arm, his torso breadth would my shoulder-width.  That back!  A dozen crevices zigzagged among the humped cobbles and stony plateaus, undulating and transforming like a landscape in a dream.  I pinched myself – I was awake.

 

My master, Sir Alain, a knight of the royal court, had come to Chateaulin bearing the king’s congratulations to Count Houel on the birth of his second son.  The Count was throwing a birth festival before hosting the folkmoot, and my master had entered the lists.  He was speaking with the Marshal of the castle, Sir Geoff.  Sir Geoff looked amused by our gawking.

 

“That’s Hugh, one of my boys,” Sir Geoff explained.  “He’s about the age of your boy here.”

 

“Impossible!” Sir Alain sputtered.  “I’ve seen quarry workers who couldn’t rival him for size!”

 

“I rescued him after his parents exposed him in the woods,” Sir Geoff continued.  “I soon discovered why – when he became impatient for food or cleaning, he smashed his crib to splinters with his tiny newborn fists.  They feared raising a prodigy, but in some way, I felt commanded to care for him – I guessed then it was the voice of God, but now….”  He paused, and changed course.  “He’s very lonely – the other boys avoid him.  He spends a great deal of time hunting alone in the forest.”

 

“The Count allows a boy in the chase?”  Sir Alain sustained shock after shock, and he hadn’t even mounted his steed yet.

 

“The Count and all the farmers are grateful,” Sir Geoff explained.  “Since he began entering the forest, we haven’t seen or heard a single wolf – it’s been years now.  He eats like several men, and I can hardly increase his rations in front of the other boys, so he supplements his hunger with boars and other things he catches with his hands.  The husbandmen even give him a portion of meat at every slaughter in thanks for his protection.  It’s almost pagan,” Geoff added with a wry smile.

 

“What a remarkable warrior he would be,” Sir Alain marveled, “if only he had a better station, and not born for the front line.  Robert Guiscard could take all of Italy and drive Emperor Constantine into the arms of the Turks.  But perhaps the work of a beast is a more fitting utilization of his unique – talents – after all.  Providence is never wrong.”

 

Sir Geoff looked at him sideways with his arms crossed, and said nothing.  Soon we were preparing for the joust, a new form where, instead of a mass charge around the field, two knights face each other one-on-one and try not to get killed.  I was nervous as a girl, though only King Philip could beat my master (though “beat” might not be a completely accurate description of what actually happened).

 

My master was called against Sir Geoff and the knights rode out, the sunlight dancing off their shiny mail hauberks.  They leveled their lances, and at the signal, charged.  Almost immediately a strap on Sir Geoff’s saddle broke and he wobbled – but through his narrow visor, my master must not have noticed.  Geoff couldn’t brace himself for a thrust and my master glanced a blow off his shoulder that sent Geoff spinning through the air and landing with a hearty smack.  Everyone rose in silent suspense.

 

My master had already turned about, still not realizing what had happened, not seeing see Geoff’s boys rush to his aid, .  He began his parade – but a spur only jostled him in his saddle – his horse neighed but didn’t move.  He kicked again but his mount’s effort to spring only resulting in it being pulled back into the air.  My master dropped onto his back in the mud.  Stunned, Alain looked up and saw Hugh holding his horse by the tail, fury etched into his handsome young face. 

 

“A strap broke – it wasn’t far, you should have stopped!” Hugh yelled – a shocking breach of order.

 

My master flailed but couldn’t rise.  My fellow knaves hesitated at the sight of Hugh – only I had quickly sprinted over – so Hugh cheekily slid his arm underneath my masters and effortlessly pulled him to his feet.  They were the same height – maybe Hugh was my age, but he was easily a foot taller.  “Apologize at once!” Hugh demanded, pressing his chest forward and making my master step awkwardly back. 

 

The audience gasped again at these unprecedented offenses, the Count himself shocked speechless.  Instinctively raising his shield against Hugh’s “well-armed” aggression, Alain glared past him, glaring at a helmetless Geoff, who winced as boys removed his armor.  “Sir, control your boy before his unseemly pride proves fatal!”

 

Whether the threat irked Hugh more than being ignored, I’ll never know, but I saw Hugh’s jaw clench.  In a blur, his arm sprang into the air, parallel with the ground, and punched my master’s shield in a quick, efficiently lethal motion – as if my master were livestock for slaughtering.  Alain stumbled backward, sucking for air – the blow had split his shield and the horribly dented steel boss had torn the leather hide, sliced through the mail and sunk into Alain’s chest.  The leather hide covering the shield trapped his strapped arms – he couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t pull it off.  He fell on his knees, stunned and bleeding.  The boys huddled in terror so I pleaded with Hugh, “Help him!  He’s dying!”

 

Rage melted from Hugh’s face like a passing storm and he realized with alarm what his immeasurable power had done – and to a man ostensibly his “better.”  Hugh grabbed each side of the shield and wrenched them apart, shredding the hide covering and exposing the boss.  He pulled that out and blood spurted against his face.  He put his fingers into the mail and ripped it open like rotten cloth, pressing on the wound to staunch the flow until my fellows braved his proximity and aided our master.

 

The doctor rushed forward, relieved that he could bind the wound without having the remove the mail shirt first.  Count Houel rose imperiously and called for Geoff.  I couldn’t hear what they said, but Geoff kept nodding and Houel furiously pounded his fist in his palm.  Hugh stood a few feet from me with his head down.  I smelled something sweet and salty I couldn’t quite place – I closed my eyes and it tickled the back of my mind.  Like a memory I haven’t lived yet.

 

I’d secretly taken the twisted and torn boss, and now surreptitiously fingered it behind my back – feeling the shape of his knuckles where they turned it inside-out, the warped edge that had torn and hurt him it should be protecting.  Fortunately it missed his heart and lungs – but it’s the kind of scar you want from battle – not from a boy’s fist.

 

Geoff went to Alain first, confirming the punishment, then came over and placed his hand on Hugh’s shoulder.  His hand rose and fell like a rowboat at sea as Hugh breathed.  Hugh nodded and walked around the center rail.  A riffle disturbed the female stands, back and forth like a cauldron being stirred.

 

Two big yoked draft horses were brought out and I understood what Hugh faced.  I dropped to my knee beside my master and said, “Please, my lord, please spare his life!  I’m sure he can be reformed!  I believe he can do anything, anything he sets his mind to.”

 

Alain patted my arm.  “We’re only frightening him with what will happen if he doesn’t learn his place.  The ostlers won’t let him get hurt.  Too badly.”  As I helped him into chair, I heard Hugh say, “What about my other arm?”

 

My balls tingled.  I shifted from foot to foot as a strange irritation grew in my groin.

 

Two more horses were brought up from the stable.  Hugh stuck out his arms, releasing feral tangles of reddish-gold curls sprouting beneath them and spraying a mist of sweat.  With ropes, the ostlers lashed Hugh’s wrists to the yokes.  Then, to guarantee the horses wouldn’t bolt and kill him, their bridles were lashed to the corners of the court, with enough slack that they could apply a torturous pressure that would remind Hugh of his place in the future. 

 

The horses fidgeted nervously, nostrils flaring and hooves kneading the dirt.  Houel made an angry speech about honor and respect, but sensing a universal impatience, yielded Alain the field.  Alain lifted his hand, and dropped it wearily.  The ostlers promptly goaded the horses forward.

 

The ropes leading from Hugh’s wrists twisted, but so did the ropes between his wrists and shoulders – his arms that almost dwarfed the haunches of the horses themselves.  Each horse took several steps before its hooves slid against the dirt.  Alain nodded again and the ostlers urged the horses harder – but the beasts could only lean into their bridles until the effort made them shake.  Hugh stared at a point in the sky, his torso rising and falling, his legs planted like oaks. 

 

The stable boys urged the horses forward, but their legs could only dig grooves in the ground.  Hugh turned his arms slightly, aligning his heaped shoulders with the winglike flare of his back, and refused to move.  A sheen of sweat dappled the burnished golden down covering him, and I caught that sweet, wild scent stirring me – though there was no breeze.  I realized it came from under Hugh’s arms.

 

The horses smelled something different – their nostrils flared and with a single shriek, they bolted – or rather, attempted it.  Hugh panicked at the sound and tensed his arms – two horses stumbled onto their forelegs.  Hugh bolted them all in place.  His hands gripped the ropes with white knuckles and his unexpected restraint multiplied panic into terror.  The horses threw themselves against the ropes, bucking and springing, but only rising straight up instead of forward.  The teams danced side to side, seeking any advantage over the terrible weight that pinned them down – and Hugh, squinting, jerked the ropes tight and stopped their dancing. 

 

Hugh pulled his shoulder blades together, his flesh humping and squeezing together.  This dragged the horses backwards, and they screamed and stamped the ground in fear and fury.  Hugh bent his elbows, tightening his arm muscles, and sixteen hooves skidded toward him half a metre.  His hands twisted and he gripped the rope farther along, pulling it toward him as his swollen arms turned purple with veins.  Though only half-bent, the meat of his forearms pressed against his bulbous upper arms.

 

The horses’ eyes rolled with panic, their mouths frothing and chomping their bits.  Hugh closed his eyes and, swaying side to side as he absorbed the animals’ combined efforts, raised his fists higher and brought them closer together.  The reins to the court posts tautened and, as the audience gawped in amazement, the horses themselves rose off  the ground and floundered, writhing helplessly in mid-air.

 

Hugh twisted the rope again and drew more into his relentless fingers, his chest rippling with dents and ridges as he fought to bring his fists together, lungs heaving.  The animals twisted as they stretched between the posts and Hugh, their shrieks strangled by the pressure into hoarse gasps of desperation.

 

Urine and shit poured out of each animal as Hugh’s inexorable hands reached for each other.  A shocking crack of splitting timbers shook the stands as the posts gave way – but not enough.  A groan like stretching leather was followed with a horribly wet FWWWWUMMMPPPPP!  Hugh’s fists knocked against each other – because his arms had ripped four horses apart, spewing blood and gore over his rounded masses and into the crowd.  The torn torsos flew towards him and clumped into the dirt while the head-half rebounded into stands.  Some people screamed and ran but some couldn’t move, shaking or trembling. 

 

Flushed with victory, Hugh smiled broadly and quickly shredded his rope.  He opened his eyes and saw with disbelief what carnage his arms had wrought.  His skin glowing and his entire body heaved for air, a weird pride surmounting the grotesquerie.  Young maidens surged from the stands, yammering and gazing devotedly at him.  Pleased (and a little stunned), he flexed his arms and the girls caught their breath – a couple swooned.  The bush-covered, deep round pocket that sank between his back and chest and smelled warm and inviting.   One bold lass reached out to touch him, giggling, her fingers flying back as if burned.

 

“It’s okay,” Hugh said.  “I can make it bigger.”

 

Hugh began pumping his arms, and muscles still swollen from the struggle turned from red to violet, with blue veins snaking under the skin.  Each pump expanded his arms got bigger, until their round shape changed and a second peaked cap rose above the bulk.  The maidens were all modestly attired – not a bosom in sight – and yet his presence, his heat, his scent compelled their hands to reach for him, regardless of propriety.  Several of the girls swarmed around him, their fingers exploring his physique as they might a statue of Hercules. 

 

With a huge smile, Hugh dropped his arms and thrust out his chest, letting them uselessly poke their fingers into its obdurate surface, feel its edges and contours.  I could see it dawning on their astonished faces how Hugh’s living flesh mocked the so-called armor of the knights.  As their fingertips traced the arabesque of ridges in his back, I could also see a single pulse along one leg of his trousers.  Hugh’s own eyes now brightened as the fawning girls sparked pleasure in his man-parts, which in turn shadowed his handsome face with anxiety. 

 

Despite his advance development, I guessed he’d always used his arms and legs as tools, never experienced a rush of triumphant potency flooding his limbs, then reaching beyond them and enthralling the opposite sex.  The girls’ desire sparked lightning which flowed through his muscles to his manhood, forever fusing sexual arousal with displaying his body and exerting his strength.  As if he were entirely a living erection.

 

A savage bellow erupted from suddenly jostling shrubbery and in a cloud of dust, a massive bull appeared, its nose bloody where it ripped away from its ring.  The girls shrieked and fled, many simply crouching behind Hugh.  The bull faced Hugh and pawed the ground, challenging him.  I heard my master say, “There’s something in Hugh’s sweat that disturbs stallions and bulls alike.  It maddened those horses, and now our bull senses his dominance threatened.”

 

Before anyone could move, the bull lowered its broad head and charged, lance-sharp horns swinging wildly.  Hugh growled back and actually ran at the bull, bulging arms cocked and ready to spring.  They met in a thunderclap of bone striking bone-hard muscle as Hugh slammed his chest against the bull’s skull.  Each animal bounced back from the impact, the bull staggering with its tongue out.  Hugh recovered first and grabbed the horns low.  Digging his mighty legs into the soft earth, he shoved the bull’s skidding hooves back, away from the stands. 

 

But the bull seemed locked on his enemy – it swung and shook its huge head – or attempted to.  Hugh grunted and rocked sideways; his shoulders turning ominously toward the beast, each like a head sprouting a thicker horn.  The bull bucked his head until Hugh slowly, steadily, unmercifully slowed it into immobility.  The bull pulled back and twisted its thick neck the other way – but Hugh twisted his wrists and raised his elbows, checking its progress and holding it tight.  With a strained groan, Hugh forced the shuddering head back up.  The bull tried to toss Hugh up into the air but Hugh’s grip held it like tar.  With a war cry, Hugh exploded and slammed the bull’s head down against the ground. 

 

Angered, stunned, the bull leaped forward – but didn’t get far.  Hugh’s shoulders sank back, soaking up the bull’s strength and then driving it back out against the animal with greater force. In quick bursts Hugh thrust the bull back; its set hooves trenched the earth which could not withstand Hugh’s power. 

 

Trapped in superior hands – Hugh utterly controlled the head, defying the animal’s every twitch – the animal’s eyes rolled and its bellows rose in broken cries of disbelief.  The crowd cheered to see this boy-man tame a bull bare-handed – so Hugh grinned and raised one fist into the air … and contained the bestial violence with one hand!  The crowd’s deafening praise drowned out the bull’s chest-rumbling fury, its rippling shoulder and haunches quivering, shaking – impotent.

 

Squealing with rage, the bull jabbed its free horn a few centimetres at Hugh.  The boy brought his free fist down on the bull’s head.  A crack like lightning splitting a tree shocked everyone to silence.  Hugh struck the bull again, his knuckles smacking into the densest part between the horns.  The bull’s knees buckled and drool looped out of its mouth.  One more THWOKKK and the bull dropped flat. 

 

Shaking out his hand while the crowd cheered, Hugh walked around and stuck his arms under the bull’s belly.  In one swift move he lifted the enormous beast up against his chest … and then his arms pressed it up over his head.  He dropped it once against his own stony shoulders and the bull guttered an exhausted wheeze.  He lifted the pull again and repeated the drop, the impact making the bull’s head loll.  Finally Hugh lifted the bull over his head and carried it around the arena, giving everyone a close look before he SLAMMED it against the ground, its legs splayed out like petals.

 

The impact clattered weapons in their racks, and some of the ladies lost their balance.  The bull lay perfectly still so Hugh slapped its face several times to see if he had killed it with one fist.  The bull opened its eyes, saw Hugh, licked Hugh’s hand and rolled over on its back, its enormous male-part exposed, red and glistening.  Hugh held both hands over his head again like a champ.  Under the crowd’s cheers I heard my master mutter, “That bull will never stud again.”

 

“Young knave,” announced Houel once ordered was restored, “God and Fortune have placed you in the lowest estate, in which your earlier offenses to Sir Alain are unpardonable.  And yet your manly vigor and dauntless courage indicate a nobler origin, one in which your outburst would not only be unexceptional, but possibly demanded as a point of honor.  With your parentage unknown, we may never know the truth – except through your honorable and obedient actions henceforth.  I bid you to mind your tongue and temper, obey my vassal Sir Geoff in all things, and your God-thewn limbs may one day raise you to an estate commensurate with your valor.”

 

The Count then turned to the events planned for after noon dinner, but my eyes were drawn to his left arm, which had disappeared behind his back.  It appeared to be rhythmically twisting back and forth – or rather, in and out – as he spoke of Hugh.  I doubt anyone else noticed – all eyes remained on the smiling hero, his cowed bull; Hugh’s innocent freckles belied a ferocity lurking underneath. 

 

I had to see to my master’s horse.  Hugh led me to the stable, saying eagerly, “You need to clean the hooves, right?” he asked me.  Before I could so much as unstrap the saddle, Hugh ducked underneath the stallion and lifted him over his head – this after so many exertions already!  The horse panicked at first, but Hugh’s deep voice and commanding presence calmed it – I even saw the head of its maleness peeking out, as with the bull.  My own trousers felt heavy and tight and I stood riveted before the column of living power before me.  “Well, go on!” he said.  “I’m hungry!”

 

I grabbed a pick and indulged in cleaning each hoof without bending over – I barely had to move the stallion’s legs.  When I indicated I was done – I had no voice – Hugh gently put the horse down and deftly unbuckled the tack, which he effortlessly carried, saddle in one hand and all the dressings in the other, to a bench and rack against the wall. 

 

When he came back, he asked if he could brush the animal instead.  “I didn’t like hurting those horses before, or the bull,” he said sheepishly.  “Something just came over me I can’t put into words – like when I’m hunting.  I’m usually gentle here.”  He wielded the brush like a pro, the stallion responding with shivers and affectionate nudges – one animal acknowledging the superior protection and care of another.  I marveled, not for the first time, how some animals sense danger in his aroma, while others are soothed … and aroused.

 

Hugh ate separately from the other boys, who swarmed around the young squire.  The noble boy kept looking at Hugh with jealousy, but managed to captivate the other boys with tales of court love affairs and adventures.  Only one boy looked our way … and he too looked jealous when he caught my eye.

 

Hugh finished his portion of stew before I had barely begun, and fetched a bag full of preserved meats from his stash.  The rough burlap had his name crudely embroidered on it, and while I finished my plate, the boy-man devoured several hunks of dried meat, teeth ripping the hard flesh apart with animal hunger. 

 

The morning’s excitement, and being both full and so near Hugh’s humid heat, made me long for a nap.  But Hugh jumped up and dragged me with an iron grip out to watch the afternoon events.  When prizes were awarded, everyone looked at Hugh as if they knew he deserved not only the top prize, but the whole array of jewelry.  The winners too seemed abashed, even my master, who came in third overall and got a beautiful golden torque with three emeralds.  I noted that, though decorative, it could fit his neck – but not Hugh’s.

 

I had to attend my master at dinner and eat with the other boys, but when we were dismissed, I left them and went back to the stable.  He brightened like dawn when he saw me – his new friend – and we went outside and sat on a stone in the cool evening.  Without a word, he draped his heavy arm around my shoulders and I stiffened to support its weight.  After watching the stars come out in companionable silence, he yawned like a lion and guided me to his lonely straw pallet, away from the boys on the other side of the animal stalls.

 

Hugh dropped his trousers pulled off his loin cloth, sniffed it, nodded and put it back on.  His virile member swung away like a pendulum – but most remarkably, it was utterly smooth.  I had thought, given the maturity of his armpits, that he’d be woolly below as well – but that growth had not yet started, it seemed, no more than his beard.  How poised between two worlds he seemed, striding them both like the Colossus of Rhodes.

 

Unexpectedly, I felt fear sleeping next to a creature so powerful and, worried he might crush me in his sleep (or in a bear-hugging dream), I curled into a tight ball on the edge of the mat.  The night turned frigid and a howling wind whipped around the stable.  But Hugh burned like a fully-stoked furnace, his pale skin radiant.  I heard him say, “Are you afraid of me too?”

 

I rolled over and, shivering, told him, “I didn’t think I was, but suddenly I felt very tiny.”

 

He looked hurt and said, “I never hurt little creatures.  That would be terrible.  I don’t even step on worms after it rains.”  He extended his arm and I wormed closer, his heat like a heavy woolen blanket embracing me.  My head was smaller than the pillow of his arm, not stony at all but firm and, in some way, compelling and safe.  He saw the arch in my loincloth and looked around excitedly – “Did girls sneak in?”  When he realized we were alone, he sighed and said, “Oh, you’re like Ralph.  Ralph was my friend until the others turned him against me.”

 

“Nothing could ever turn me against you!” I blurted out.  “I would pledge myself to you as your vassal forever, here and now, if you could take me.”

 

He giggled at the ridiculous thought but nestled happily against me.  “You can touch them, if you want,” he said quietly.  “I never used to like it when Ralph did it, but today it felt different – all those girls’ hands.  I don’t know what I felt.  I sure liked it though.”

 

“You’ve never been with a girl?” I asked in amazement, assuming he’d plowed wide and deep.  He shook his head.

 

“My master told me the story of Samson, but the truth was, his hair was a symbol of the other thing that grows out of a man.  And when he lay with Delilah, she took his essence – so he became weak, her weak slave.”

 

I realized Geoff must have been afraid of what Hugh’s youthful exuberance might do to a tender girl – or grown woman, or sheep or cow.  I said nothing and placed my hand on his belly, which ran beneath my fingers like hot bricks on a cooking hearth.  I explored the heavy bulk beneath his smooth skin, not clench into stones but full of rumbling threat, rising and falling with his breath.  It felt like a city street brought to life, the cobbles able to yield or harden at will.  My hand crept up to where his chest rose up like an escarpment – though he lay flat on his back! – and spread like wings to either side.  I could barely reach over his chest and rub the solid mound of his shoulder, and stroke the junction where his chest and arm came together like the stanchion of a rope bridge.

 

He raised his forearm and drew my face in his humid armpit.  Though I wasn’t nearly finished exploring his manly terrain, the heat and sweet pit-fumes and soft tickling hairs overwhelmed me and I shot my seed in several fierce spurts, my whole being jerking and one foot cramping up.  I don’t know if he noticed, but he didn’t let me go – I think he’d already fallen asleep.  My release, after the day’s events, left me empty and I too slept in his dark musky chamber. 

 

I awoke before dawn – Hugh was already at his chores.  Duke Conan would be arriving this morning to begin the folkmoot (there’s quite a queue of gripers this time around, I hear), and the great entertainments would continue, including a troupe of acrobatic Prussian dwarves said to be astounding and funny.  

 

A post rider ripped by us and headed straight into the castle.  Word went around that we were to assemble, and soon Count Houel mounted the rampart along with by Sir Geoff and the seneschal, an old man, called for everyone’s attention.

 

“My esteemed brother-in-law, Conan Duke of Bretagne,” Houel announced, “shall arrive presently – yes, yay, quiet, quiet! – and he sends ahead not only his salutations – please, quiet! – but also a demand:  William, Duke of Normandy, has taken Maine - yes, an outrage! – and our lord expects Normandy shall enter our lands as well, with or without invitation.  Every able-bodied man of service age is to immediately prepare for a dress inspection with what weapons and armor he is able to supply, so that we may assess the state of our defense and prepare accordingly.  We shall gather again an hour before dinner ready for war and our lord’s review.”

 

He clapped his gauntlets and hell erupted as everyone leapt pall-mall to get home and dust/shine what rusty pieces of tin may decorate their mantels.  The Bretons hadn’t seen much action in recent years other than border skirmishes here and there.  Now local politics had now thrown Bretagne’s scent under William’s nose and he was chasing it down like the dog of war he is. 

 

For armor, the knaves generally tussled over left-overs and scraps from the smithies, but nothing fit Hugh.  An older boy remembered an unusually stout squire many years ago who had left mail behind.  It was out of style but I doubt anyone would notice that, if it fit.

 

Hugh had to borrow a tunic from the blacksmith – he rarely wore a shirt of any sort.  I spread tallow over the arms and shoulders of the borrowed tunic, trying not to linger in the all the rippling valleys and crests which thrummed like volcanos even while relaxed.  I and three other boys then lowered the hauberk over his head.

 

We could have restyled the hauberk, repositioning the giant belly links to Hugh’s shoulders where they were needed, but we hadn’t time.  We jerked and yanked hung our entire weight off the armor, squeezing it around the outcroppings his his chest, shoulders and back.  It hung loose halfway down his midsection and when he put down his arms, the sleeves didn’t quite reach the elbow.  The coif fit fine over his head but was tight around his neck, and spread only partly as far over his upper torso as it was designed to.  

 

He started breathing fast in the constricting armor, the clinking links rattling with each breath oddly disturbing, if musical.  He could barely move in any direction and looked as stiff as a giant wearing a doll’s costume.  We watched in awe as the many war machines were wheeled out and lined up for demonstrations.  Somehow, I thought Hugh more impressive than they.

 

By the time Duke Conan arrived, all the pomp and ritual left us sweating in the sun, knees trembling from the weight of unaccustomed armor.  A couple boys passed out, clattering to the ground, but Hugh looked fine – confined, sweatily pungeant, but unaffected by the heat.  While reviewing us, Conan blinked several times when he came to Hugh.

 

“You there, come forward,” Conan ordered.  Hugh walked stiffly forward.  “How can you fight?  It looks like you can barely move.”

 

Knowing he had erred in not previously providing Hugh with suitable armor in case of war – so rare was fighting in these parts – Geoff piped up and said, “He’s had a growth spurt recently and his armor is actually at the blacksmith’s for alterations--”

 

Duke Conan silenced him, eyes glued to Hugh, and said, “I was speaking to the … boy.”  He walked around Hugh, suppressing a sigh at the span from side to side, and front to back.  He actually ran his fingers across Hugh’s upper back to test if this was some kind of prank. I don’t think he could tell where the steel stopped and Hugh began.

 

Suspicious, perhaps, that beneath the tunic was steel casing of some kind – perhaps plated armor  (Houel could hardly afford to fit his entire levy in plate – no one could), Conan came around and ordered Hugh to raise his arms.  Then he cocked his ear, listening closely.

 

Hugh raised his arms straight out the side.  The links squirmed noisily as the hard surface below changed shape.  The entire hauberk rode up several inches. 

 

“Now throw your arm back and bend it as if you were going to throw a spear.”

 

Hugh got his arm half-way back when he got stuck.  Conan exchanged a dark look with Count Houel and Hugh wiggled his torso, shifting several more belly inches up around his chest so he could move his arm all the way back.  As he half-bent his arm, the links twisted and flattened around it. 
 

“Make a muscle,” Conan ordered.  Hugh obliged.

 

Hugh tightened his fist made his sinews expand, higher and wider.  The mail exploded, shooting fragments of steel in both directions.  The other warriors yelled and shielded themselves from the painful missiles.  The Duke blinked and saw the pale reddened mound surmounting through the shattered mail, splitting the tunic as Hugh made it bigger … and bigger … and bigger still … and with a final straining grin, created two peaks and peppered us with several more links.

 

Hugh looked eagerly at Conan for approval, but Conan simply stood there with his mouth open.  So Hugh, thinking the Duke wanted to see more, held out his other arm and flexed it fully-extended.  The chain mail tightened noisily while the meat of his back-arm jutted out … getting rounder … bigger … until it shamed the upper arms of most men and held the links at maximum tautness. 

 

His front-arm resembled rose in a long arch, trembling a moment against the links until they popped in the middle and ripped open, exposing the deep crevice between the two halves.  Hugh then flexed his arm to match, possibly outdo, his other arm – and the mail and tunic obediently tore apart deep into the pit and over the dragon-claw undulations of his shoulder.  He stood there, showing off his two beauties, and several women fainted.

 

Female sighs and moans (or I should say, high-pitched sounds – not limited to females) sang through the assembly as he put his hands on his hips.  At the same time, he moved his elbows out and widened his back in stages, left to right, left to right, so you could see his it from the front!  The links chinked and jumped, the bottom rising higher and higher up his torso … and then Hugh bounced his chest muscles back and forth. 

 

Twisted steel shards blew off his chest and showered down on the crowd, often drawing blood.  Even the Duke was not immune but nobody stopped him, watching him in rapt awe.  Pulling his shoulders forward, he split the hauberk down the sides, tearing steel like old cloth.  Strips of unhinged metal flowed off his body like oil.  He kept on popping all his muscles until he reduced the tattered armor to old fringe hanging off the coif.  For a moment, I felt a communal urge to spontaneously kneel.

 

But Conan’s eyes shone avidly, and he clapped his hands together.  He turned toward a pavilion set up for dinner and ordered, “Clear away the food and bring that banquet table up onto the dais.   Right up there,” Conan pointed.  As servants scurried, I heard him say to Houel, “I think we have a secret weapon against Normandy right here.  I will test of his capacities.”  Turning to Hugh, he intoned, “Young knave, come forward and show us your pith.”

 

“Please, sire,” Hugh said, bowing and coloring deeply, “I’ve done enough lately, and it makes the other boys – they’re scared of me.  I don’t want to scare people anymore.”

 

“It’s not a request, boy!” Conan thundered.  “You will do as commanded or face the consequences.”  A nod from Geoff removed his objection and he nodded his obedience.  Obviously the Duke hadn’t been informed about the bloodbath yesterday’s “consequences” turned into.

 

It took four straining, huffing servants to trundle over the enormous oak-plank table over the uneven ground.  While they struggled with the empty table, Hugh pulled off the coif, his arm nearly pressing against his face, and stripped off the remnants of mail and tunic.  A flock of girls surrounded him, rubbing shreds of tallow-covered tunic into his white, perfect skin with a fervid devotion that would make the saints jealous. 

 

Others caressed his chest and several explored his back.  Three or four of them gripped his arms and he suddenly raised them to his sides, the girls hanging off like pennants and giggling with feverish delight.  He showed off how his arms charged shape, raising and lowering the girls with only the granite peaks.  They swung back and forth but he stood solid as a Maypole.  A couple dropped to caress his legs through the boar hides but that alarmed the ancient seneschal, who hobbled over with a loud bell and shooed them all away.

 

The table arrived at the said, but the servants were too exhausted to lift it up the step, so four fresh servants came and heaved, fumbling, with all their might.  Duke Conan grinned and commanded, “Everyone - remove your armor and pile it onto the table!” 

 

Geoff sent the dwarf troupe over to help, and as boys helped free their masters and shucked their own hauberks, the dwarves made a clever show of passing it along and, climbing upon each other’s shoulders, layering the mail and helmets with exaggerated artistry.  The boards of the platform groaned and popped as the weight increased, and increased further.  Just when I thought I heard the table complain as well, Conan called a halt, and ordered two goblets to be filled with wine and set at either end of the table. 

 

Reaching into a pocket inside his sleeve, Conan pulled out a small cross, gold with garnets and pearls.  “If young … young …” (a servant whispered to him) “young knave Hugh can lift this table into the air without spilling so much as a drop of wine from either goblet, I will entrust his master with this, my own devotional cross, to secure his education and his future needs.”

 

A collective gasp went up – knaves were not allowed to own gold.  To have a small treasure in trust for the future was unheard of.  Conan either doubted Hugh could combine vigor with dexterity and endurance … or he prayed for it with all his soul.

 

Geoff caught Hugh’s shoulder and whispered, “Remember – when you move things quickly then stop, anything not tied down will keep moving.  Slow and steady.”  I could see Hugh reining his enthusiasm by the set of his jaw.  He leapt onto the dais from a stand and surveyed he table from various angles.

 

The platform cricked underneath Hugh’s feet as he circled – the links of armor tinkled and flared in the sun.  His additional weight severely stressed a dais constructed to hold a dozen men.  The table sported a pair of stout columns carved with spiraling grooves at each end, braced by an inconvenient trestle running the nearly three-metre length of the bankette.  And undulating terrain of steel rose in layers above his head.  The goblets were nearly brimful. 

 

The trestle would get caught between his legs if he straddled it – he’d never get it all the way.  I saw now Conan’s strategy – not simply testing Hugh’s brawn, but his strategic thinking and adaptability.  And any solution would require more than simple pith. 

 

He went around to the back so all we could see was Hugh’s bent, boar-hide covered legs under the table – the armor pile fully obscured him.  He squatted and extended his arms at angles underneath.  Then he straightened his legs:  and the table rose steadily off the platform.  Cries of awe and disbelief rifled through the crowd.  The platform sank beneath his feet, the wood barking loudly.  Widening his stance, Hugh seemed to drop his shoulders and press up from underneath – the towering steel swayed and flashed in the sun.  He edged one foot in front of the other, boards sagging loudly from the concentrated weight.  Finally, the bottom of his chest-shelf caught against the trestle.  He took several deep breaths while everyone else held theirs.

 

In one smooth movement, he powered the creaking table out and up into the air, slipped his head underneath it and shifting his hands to align with the corners for stability.  A loud POPPPP! burst from the platform, which bounced dangerously beneath him.  One of the builders caught his attention with a glinting knife, and pointed out where the joists were.  With a grateful smile (me: jealous), Hugh slowly spread his legs until they rested on the cross-supports.  Thicker trusses protested at such punishment – when it was covered with chairs and people, the platform had been silent, solid as the earth – but they took the stress.

 

He whipped his back leg forward and the swirl of interlocking sinews that rose from his waist and twisted around each other to brace the expanse of his upper torso made the carved pillars at the table’s ends look puny.  Plus, how such a narrow, flat and tightly-coiled abdomen could rise and moor the broad clustered beef that anchored his oak-branch arms … it defied belief.  No blubbery “strongman” rival such power, such beauty.

 

Sweat trickled down the gullies and trenches of his man-flesh, and his groiny-salted scent wafted insensibly through the crowd.  Men stirred unwittingly, uncomfortably, some angrily, while girls and women both undulated, their own bodies responding to Hugh’s proximity by lubricating their gyrations and stirring their desires.  I felt my own ass and cock discharge an oily moisture as I wiped drool off my chin.

 

Hugh turned his hands backwards and pressed the table high.  The mountains of armor shifted slightly but the tremoring goblets stayed dry.   As the trestle scraped against his belly – I half-expected to see shavings fall away as Hugh’s serrations carved the wood as it rose.  But of course, the ladies had massaged enough cow fat into his skin that it slid easily past them. 

 

With his arms extending above his head, his chest bulged out so far out that Hugh pressed his his chin against the top of one to brace his neck.  It did not dent.  With a final grunt, he thrust and locked his elbows, the bole-thick knotted arms fitting into his shoulder and chest musculature like a complex war machine. The trestle caught on his overhanging chest and bent like a bow in that final thrust – I dug my nails into my legs, afraid the wood would crack.  But the squawking wood held and a cheer went up all around.

 

All except Conan, who’s intent face sweated as profusely as Hugh’s, and whose hips jerked violently, his entire body rigid.  But Hugh wasn’t done defying our imaginations.

 

Carefully, Hugh stepped to the end of the dais and dropped down onto the first step, bending his arms to keep the table level as he descended.  The stair steps squeaked until he got nearly to the bottom, when one snapped with a BANG!  Everyone jumped and yelled in fear for him.

 

But Hugh took it in stride, smoothly following the drop while scrunching his body to keep the table level.  He dropped his other foot onto the ground, and walked through the last, splintering steps and risers as if they were made of straw.  He carried the table directly to Conan himself.  Tension gripped the crowd – what was he going to do?

 

For a moment, I felt a flash of panic - he would hurl the table and its contents onto the Duke and pronounce himself King, defying all challengers.  I even saw Conan flinch, his guards fidgeting between the call of duty and the sudden will to flee.  But Hugh merely lowered the table back down so that it hovered above the ground, and turned it sideways so Conan could observe, and remove, the first unspilled goblet without having to move himself.  Then he kept turning, showing Conan and the audience the rippling contours of this back, which tremored in a rapid tattoo from the strain but never flagged from their labors. 

 

My eyes were drawn to the perfect globes capping his hide-clad legs - I wanted to grab them and pull him against me – or hang on while he pressed himself into me.  But I shook those thoughts out of my head.  Hugh stopped again so Conan could take the second goblet and verify that not a drop had spilled from it either.  The he completed his circle and, his arms and shoulders beginning to quiver, he lowered the table to the ground as if presenting it as a gift to his lord.

 

Hugh came around, issuing a hot wind of deep breaths and looking as though he could defy Samson and Hercules together.  He dropped down on one knee before Conan, his head sinking beneath the rising plateaus of his back.  Hugh could barely control his quavering musculature as he recovered from the punishing victory – he vibrated with effort and stilled himself, as he had the bull.

 

In a cracked, hollow voice, Conan said, “Riiii--”  He coughed drily, drank half a goblet down and sputtered, half-choking.  With wine staining his chin, he said in a tight voice, “Rise, s- … m-my boy.  Where is your m-m-master?”

 

Geoff stepped forward, beaming with pride and relief.  Conan gave Geoff the golden jeweled cross, and made him swear an oath on the blood of the Savior that that treasure should be used only to secure a future fit for man who will doubtless perform feats of great renown in the service of his lord and land.  Again he crowd cheered and Hugh disappeared beneath a roiling female sea.  Water, oil, food passed hand to hand through the crowd to care for him where he knelt, and Conan, feeling singularly ignored, stepped over the Houel and called Geoff and Alain to them. 

 

“I had thought to test your war machines against one of the menhirs in that field over there – but I think that, once he has fed and rested, we should test them against young Hugh.  That will give us a greater idea of how we could deploy him against the machines of our enemies.”

 

Geoff clearly wanted to protest – both the test and the “use” of Hugh in place of a giant rock simply went too far.  But it was not his place, and turned away and prepared to speak with Hugh about what he still must do to fully earn the jeweled cross. 

 

Myself, I felt Hugh would love dominating the biggest, mightiest mechanisms created by man – if he were fresh.  The last few days, he expended more puissance than a dozen or more grown men.  Any failure due to fatigue could make him very angry.  And I’d seen him angry – Hugh nearly killed an armored knight with one controlled half-punch through his shield.  Even a days’ delay would restore him sufficiently.

 

Worried for him, and the rest of us, I tried to tote up how many men would have to pool their strength to accomplish Hugh’s many feats – the horses followed by the bull, then lifting a horse, then chores chores chores; and chores the next morning before bursting armor and slowly lifting a weight that nearly destroyed the dais he stood on.  I could see men falling in exhausting, others rushing to sustain an enterprise for which Hugh required no assistance.  I felt dizzy – such potency in one boy-man violated every sense of reason and nature.  It was a breach in the world, some supremacy stepping down from the world beyond and stretching human belief to its breaking point.

 

I remembered Jacob had wrestled with an angel, and held it helpless in his arms for three solid days before the angel was able to treacherously injure Jacob’s hip, and escape ignominiously the patriarch’s iron grasp.  If men have lived before who could dominate even the angels of God, then perhaps such a man could exist again – not a pagan mythical Hercules, but real man, created by God … perhaps to test our faith.  See if we would worship the miracle worker or the one true God who made him.  I prayed for guidance through this confusion … but my hands weren’t the only part of me pointing towards heaven.

 

“Jealous?” Alain said, coming up behind me, making me jump.

 

“Ah!  Sir, uh, n-no…” I stuttered. 

 

He gently cuffed my head and gestured to where Hugh had moved to a couch and was being fed and massaged (or groped) by a hundred hands. 

 

“Someday you’ll have the girls pawing over you too,” he told me.  “But I’m afraid today, no man here can compete with this shining prodigy.” 

 

Relief flooded me – he never suspected who I was jealous of….

 

Mid-afternoon, people stretching from naps re-assembled for the siege-engine demonstration.  The first to be wheeled forward was a new battering ram.  “In battle,” Geoff explained, “the roof would be covered with wet hides.  Thirty metres long, it weighs over a tonne thanks to the iron head.  We can fit thirty men on each side.”

 

“That doesn’t look like a ram to me,” Conan said, peering at the head.  “It looks like … a fist.”

 

Houel glowed with pride.  “That was my innovation.  It’s more frightening, isn’t it?  Like the fist of God knocking on the door.”

 

Conan rolled his eyes and said sourly, “I think if Hugh stands on that rise over there, he’ll be in a position to test this … fingered thing.”

 

While the engine was wheeled into place, Hugh eagerly ran over and put his hands on his hips.  The shadows his wide shoulders and prominent chest cast over his stomach made the cobbles look truly like a stone wall … except that, while he waited, Hugh flexed and relaxed the individual cobbles and rolled his stomach like sea swells.  Stone walls can’t do that.

 

Geoff instructed the soldiers, “Let’s start slow – just you ten.”  They positions and began swinging the chains faster, and faster, and faster.  The heavy SWOOOOOSH through the air conveyed the speed and weight of the ram and for a moment, I seriously feared for Hugh:  that ram could knock a bull out more efficiently than Hugh had.  It could kill the bull at one blow.  Had Hugh met his match?

 

Soldiers swiftly pulled the brakes away while others shove and the machine lurched forward with its thick capped member extending obscenely.  An ear-splitting SMAKKKKK! made us wince as the iron fist struck Hugh dead center in his belly.  Hugh flew off his feet and the machine lurched backward, shoulders yelling from the shock that rattled their arms.  Hugh landed on his shield-tough back several metres away and rutted the turf landing.  He immediately sat up and waved he was unhurt, shaking his golden curls to clear his head.  The soldiers however hobbled off the platform, gripping their forearms in each hand, faced carved in pain. 

 

“That was fun!” Hugh laughed before leaping straight up onto his feet.  His stomach blazed angry scarlet beneath his pale freckled chest.  He mock-punched himself and clowned like it really hurt, but then he grinned and, stretching side to side and back and forward, assumed his stance for round two.

 

The crowd bubbled with murmuring like a pot nearing the boil – particularly on the ladies’ side.  The men gave each other dirty looks at how openly their women displayed such rampant desires – an impotent rage, given their rival.  Two dozen new soldiers replaced the first crew and exchanged nervous glances.  Once again, the chains swung back and forth, gathering force.  It seemed to gather the crowd as well – people swayed back and forth in rhythm, their excitement building along with the ram’s speed.  They unleashed the engine with a violent rush and I hid behind my hands.

 

A thunderclap braced the air as Hugh flew higher and faster and farther than before.  The log shuddered to an astonished stop and many of the soldiers screamed and fell to the floor from an impact their joints weren’t designed to sustain. 

 

Hugh cut a trench through the field and he sank from view.  Yet he hooted merrily and we knew that the ram had failed to hurt him again.  Yet Conan frowned – I don’t think he expected Hugh to sail into the air, however unhurt he may be.  Had he imagined an impossible spectacle?  Had he hoped to insert Hugh between a ram and a besieged gate in the hopes of protecting the fortress with Hugh’s stronger build?  Clearly that wouldn’t work.  I looked at Geoff, who wore the same worried look as my master: an unhappy lord is more dangerous than any war engine.

 

Yet I saw clearly what Conan overlooked: a ram’s force is transferred into the gate or wall, which cracks and weakens as that force flows through it.  Hugh did not absorb that force – he repelled it.  That’s why the shock surprised the soldiers and why the ram wobbled backwards.  It was that repulsion, force being echoed away from Hugh, that propulsed him through the air.

A gate made of such material would be impregnable.  Hugh alone possessed such material.  Again, I shivered, thinking of a living man who could harden himself beyond any other rock or metal in creation.  A living man who let me touch him.

 

Cheers and guffs of awe rose from the crowd as Hugh marched back to the frustrated machine, clods of soil falling off the harder bedrock of his back.  Geoff rushed over, whispering urgently to him - Hugh smiled like the sun and nodded happily.  The soldiers looked frightened.  And this time, the ram was fully crowded with men.

 

The crowd mirrored the swinging ram with their bodies, thrusting themselves forward and back in unwitting unison and urging some maximum test which could release their pent-up excitement.  The huge log sliced through the air with a deepening WHOOOSH that beat fast and faster until the moment of its release: it sped forward and Hugh unexpectedly leaped at the iron head with his chest.  The KKRRRAKKKKK! rang like a church bell breaking apart.  Hugh dropped straight down while the entire engine bounce swiftly away from him, the men behind it jumping out of the way and the rowers flying off the sides.  Hugh didn’t move.

 

A frozen silence held the crowd until, as a single being, it raced forward.  Hugh looked up and sucked in a mighty draught of air, shook his head and looked around, blinking.  The crowd stopped, as if the living thing might become a dragon or griffin.  A stunned look clouded his eyes – then they focused on the engine rolling to a slow stop, listed to the side where something broke, and all the men crawling away in pain.  He remained crouching, catching his wind.  Conan himself inspected the state of the ram.

 

A split ran the entire length of the log – it slumped unevenly in its chain sling.  Even more amazing, the top two “knuckles” of the fist had flattened slightly, deformed to the sides.  “That’s solid iron,” Geoff said, mouth gaping.

 

He turned back to Hugh.  Some soldiers were helping him to his feet – he was so heavy it took three to a side and one in back, and they braced their legs jointly against him like buttresses until he steadied himself.  He kept jerking his head, the death-knell of the fist still ringing.  Geoff kept waving his fingers in front of Hugh’s eyes but the boy batted them gently away and said, in a firm voice I hadn’t heard him use before, “I’m done with having things run into me for a couple of days.”

 

“The trebuchet is next,” Geoff said worriedly.  “Shall I--”

 

Hugh shook his head again with a sly grin.  “I have different plans for it.”  Geoff stepped back, momentarily alarmed by the forthright assurance Hugh now assumed.  He walked around in circles, stretching and massaging his crimson chest.  I pined to do it for him … and would have done, in front of everyone, had my master not sent me on an errand.  His order felt like a dagger in my stomach.

 

I ran quickly, gave a dispatch to a courier, and by the time I got back, the battered-ram had been trundled away and the trebuchet wheeled forward.  Two men on each side grunted as they turned the wheels that ran the tackle and slowly raised the mass of iron-bound oak blocks into the air.  Hugh wasted no time.

 

“What are we going to do to this?” Conan asked eagerly.

 

“You’ll see,” Hugh answered arrogantly - which seemed to excite Conan rather than offend him.   Conan stepped back as Hugh walked behind it, put one foot on the arm resting on the ground, and signaled the drop.

 

The weight crashed to the platform and Hugh roared like a bear as he bore down with his foot.  A legging seam burst open, exposing a bovine thigh – and the pivot rod cracked.  The entire beam smashed through the machine with an explosion of splinters.  Hugh picked up the end and wrested it free, jostling and battering the entire machine.  He placed the end of the arm across his shoulders behind his neck and, draping his outside arm over the top, raised the entire thing up parallel to the ground.  Then he wrapped his other arm over it . . . snorted like a bull . . .  and pulled.

 

His back opened wide like angel wings, his stomach muscles meshed like the gears of the apparatus itself, and his arms filled every space with their compressed, pulsing meat.  We heard him breathing heavily in the silence.  Hugh’s face contorted in angry concentration, and his elbows dipped.  The short length behind his neck actually bent, issuing a CREEEAAAK SNIK-SNIK-SNIK SNIK SNIK FRACCCKK!  The heavy bar split open like a monster’s toothy maw.  His outside arm pulled and then twisted the broken as Hugh broken bole until it tore away. 

 

He pulled more of the bar across his implacable back.  One deep breath and again his face strained, pitting the obdurate ridges of his vein-studded neck.  His arms too snaked with blue veins nearly tearing through his buttery red-splotched skin.  The solid oak held out as long as it could until Hugh’s arms compelled it to shiver, quake and surrender. 

 

He kept going, snapping the bar into pieces without rest, his breathing hoarse, his tender boy’s face a mask of resolute destruction.  By the time he fractured the last bit, his grimace bore a terrifying resemblance to some fairy-tale demon.  Slivers and chips of wood dusted his hair and body from oak exploding under unbearable pressure.  Beside him, a stack of logs ready for the fire. 

 

“Magnificent!” Conan declared, unable or unwilling to stop the gushing females who pawed his dauntless, bloated arms and reverently dusted splinters from the many crevices in his back and lodged in his hair.  I got a tingling sensation in my groin that he’d tear the engine apart with his bare hands with so much admiration – and indeed, he jumped onto the counter-weight and, clinging to a cross-bar with his toes, grabbed an iron strap in each hand and pulled.

 

The iron bent up a bit but stopped.  Hugh jerked them hard and broke them free, happily bending them up and back.  He dropped to the ground, dragging the tortured iron with him.  Then, inspired, he dragged the freed lengths toward each other and began wrapping them around each other in a giant knot.  Then he yanked two fresh sections loose, working the cold metal like it was toughened leather.  Showing off, he held an arm rigid and folded the metal back over itself by simply turning his wrist, zig-zagging in with tight switchbacks.  At the same time, his other arm rippled as it twisted the flat iron into a spiral.   

 

Conan coughed loudly and Hugh turned, glowing in the sun and gleaming with sweat.  He had saved the most trying test for last.  Hugh slugged down goblets of water and gnawed on some fragrant apples, which mixed a sweetness into his rapturous he-sweat as secretions from different body areas ran and mingling together. 

 

“In war, we have not time to rest, no time for refreshment,” Conan declared.  “When our enemies lay siege to our cities and hurl boulders into our walls and through our houses, how shall we respond?  I want to crush them – literally.”

 

He turned to Hugh, his bony arm outstretched toward the sacred grove.  “These standing stones have weathered every winter, every storm, since time immemorial.  Centuries of raging wars have neither injured nor moved them.  Some say they were planted in the time before men, by Titans or Giants.  Some say only Druid magic could have raised and sunk them into the fields where they mystify us to this day.  Surely no mortal men could have moved such behemoths.

 

“Young Hugh, your task is to do what neither man nor nature has ever done before you.  Uproot one of those ancient monuments so it may be used to smash our enemies and their war machines.  You may choose your victim – but your choice will be noted.”  Conan led the way; a crowd of men tried to raise and carry Hugh on their shoulders, but the ponderous hulk proved impossible to lift and manage, so they simply surged around him like a pack of hunting dogs.  Hugh scooped up the nearest two damsels and carried them like bouquets of flowers in the crook of each arm.  Their dainty hands tried to squeeze the unyielding marble of those arms, twisting their hips as they did so.

 

None of our stones are as big as the ones up north, but the field still looks strikes me as a giants’ graveyard.  Hugh naturally went to the largest one, shoulder-height but a little wider than he.  I wondered which weighed more, and nearly laughed out loud at the absurdity – an absurdity only to someone who had never met Hugh.  While Hugh walked around the stone, inspecting clefts and lichen, Conan whispered to Houel, “even if he can only loosen it, we should be able to pull it free with a team of oxen.  And he could easily build a gigantic trebuchet to launch these stones.  Perhaps even a conveyance to move to them.”

 

I shuddered.  Hugh carried the focused, appraising air of a land agent, factoring dimensions, materials and weights that hobbled the imagination.  Without ceremony, he dug his feet in and fell upon the weathered stone, oppressing it with focused forces beyond anything nature herself could muster.  After so many efforts, Hugh drew from a deep well of virility that seemed never to run dry.  The crowd tensed along with him as we waited for the monolith to give.  No one doubted it could outlast the onslaught of Hugh. 

 

Never relenting the pressure he built up, Hugh managed to slip his hands, his shoulders, his legs into different positions, seeking a stronger purchase, groping with his senses toward the spot already growing weak under his duress.  Worrying the monument from every angle, wearing out its grip on the earth, Hugh bullied the half-buried boulder until he found the place where Creation would buckle beneath his will

 

A breeze ruffled through the grass … but when it passed, the grass still shivered.  “Look!”  I pointed.  As every eye turned away from the hero and toward the ground, it humped and split.  The stone listed slightly into the breach and several people fainted along with it.  Hugh didn’t let up but churched the ground behind him plowing into the monolith.  A hump broke upward between his legs as Hugh silently commanded the monument to lie prostrate before him.  Conan choked as the yawning field disgorged waves of loam displaced by the foot of the stone being impelled up into the light.

 

Hugh stepped back for the first time, shaking his throbbing limbs so the muscles tossed back and forth like small animals.  He spent a few seconds catching his breath, and the swung himself under the leaning side, grappled for a hold, and pulled with a heavy grunt. 

 

The earth vomited in distress as Hugh dragged the stone towards the level and mashed its face toward his feet.  The menhir listed drunkenly now but something deep intruded on his progress and held the stone.  Hugh vigorously tugged and wiggled the tonnage, breaking the obstruction and relinquishing its hold on the monolith once again.

 

Hugh’s arms engorged in undulating ridges, spurs and peaks.  His shoulders bulged nearly as big as his head, their carved fingers digging like claws onto his arms and back.  His concave belly shifted right and left, directing dominance from his legs into his arms and rippling around his frame like wind-blown sheaves of wheat.  Finally, with one crippling shove, Hugh wrenched the monolith free of the earth, crammed its face into the dirt as the entombed end blasted through in an eruption of soil and small rocks. 

 

When I shook the grit out of my eyes, I could barely believe what I saw – nearly as much had been buried as stuck up from the earth.  It was twice as big as it had looked, the unearthed portion was dark and wet, with clumps of mud sticking to it like the lichen huddled all over the exposed half.  Nearly twice as big as Hugh, it seemed impossible to move it any further, except – maybe – to roll it down a hill (were the ground not flat). 

 

Wasting no time, Hugh walked around the far side, knelt and reached one arm over the width of the fallen warrior of time.  With a HUP and a HRRRGGGGHH, Hugh leaned backward, bending like a bow.  His stomach clenched in sharp relief and long rods rippled in his extended forearm.  The rock rose a few centimeters but then fell back into the turf.  Undeterred, Hugh nearly bounced it back up into the air – but this time, the side closest to him slipped and fell.

 

The fact that he could lift it at all froze everyone in a tableau of wonder.  He wrapped his rock-strewn arms around it and pulled, his neck bulging and face purple, but only managed to lever it off the ground and shift it sideways a bit, farther away from its empty grave.  He reached underneath and drove his legs down as he raised the end as far as his knees, kneading the ground to press an advantage – but again the weight proved too much, and he had to drop it.

 

He called for water and wide-eyed, trembling girls brought him several bowls, along with fruit and a hunk of roasted beef.  He gorged himself, allowing the girls to lick the grease off his fingers.  He rubbed them against the surface of the stone, peeling off layer of flint and coating them with dust. 

 

He walked around to the middle and tried to raise it laterally – it hinged up half a metre or more before it slipped free.  Hugh’s face clouded with annoyance and I feared his angry fist might turn it into more manageable pieces – but he redirected his impatience into his arms.  Reaching one arm over the top, he grunted and craned it a metre into the air – several people experienced spasms of a certain kind – and held it teetering while he tried to shift the weight for the next stage.  But the tonnage resisted his power and bobbed toward the earth.  With a strangled scream, Hugh stopped it for a moment – held it – but had to let it go.

 

Setting his feet farther apart, he heaved yet again, grappled the monolith higher, his lower arm bursting its skin as it braced the burden, dragged his shoulders back and, staggering once, wrestled it onto thighs – where it balanced, its immensity sinking him into the soil.  Hugh took three breaths, rocking back and forth with each one, then leaned further back and levitated the stone onto his chest, tottering around as the menhir fought his dominance.  He sidled to a halt and paused a moment, dwarfing mass trapped by his inexorable arms. 

 

His face screwed tight with strain, Hugh pressed the under arm up, its sinews bunching and trembling, while the arm over the top actually flipped the rock over – a move that almost went wrong, had his legs not danced and buttressed him to stop it.  Then his legs began to shake violently and he sank beneath the stone which pressed against his face.    

 

The crowd burst with burbling concern that he might be smashed under the giant rock, his hubris leading to a predictable end – and I was afraid if it brought him to his knees, he’d but unable to continue.  But … it didn’t.  He didn’t kneel.  He waddled toward stonier ground, looking like an ant carrying not a crumb but the entire loaf. 

 

Hugh’s knees began knocking as he fought to stand, the perfect globes of his ass quivering in time – but he worked his hands around to the underside even as he fought to discipline his rebelling limbs.

 

Taking advantage of what inertia he’d created, Hugh wasted no time resting but pressed the rock above him – his body near parallel to the ground.  Barking ferocious groans I could feel in my breastbone, he manipulated the granite giant up as he straightened his back and fought mightily against his own shaking arms.  With hoarse, whistling war-cry, the god-man-boy straightened up and pressed the menhir up until his elbows locked and framed his terrible visage.

 

He continued bellowing as he trapped the stone mountain in the air above him, mocking its desire to reunite with the earth.  He lurched several steps before stopping at the end of the softer ground and sought Conan – rooting the Duke to the spot with his eyes.  He stayed that way until Conan buckled at his hips and dropped his mouth in something like awe.  With a snarl, Hugh then let it drop behind him and flexed his bloated arms until the cramping made him shake them out.

Once more the crowd poured over him, massaging and rubbing him – a crush Hugh might not have been able to sustain had not circumstances turned against us.  His sweet odor took on a pungeant manly stink, which the air caught and carried back into the forest.  Before long, a grisly roar answered Hugh’s call from the forest.

 

My master said to Geoff, “I thought you said Hugh had scared off all the predatory animals.”

 

“He has,” Geoff replied.  “There must be a migration.”

 

“Bears don’t migrate,” Alain said, “And that was a very angry bear.  Again, a mere whiff of Hugh’s scent has driven some beast to fury.”

 

We got a first glimpse of the foaming, shambling beast, and Geoff said with restrained panic, “Not fury, but madness,” Geoff concluded.  “That bear is mad.  Its bite is deadly – even a scratch can afflict a man with madness.”

 

People stampeded for the city walls once the bear blundered sideways out of the grove and shook deadly froth from its drooling maw.  Despite being clearly spent, Hugh immediately strode to face the monster – and we all felt riveted by the same thoughts – if he were too exhausted, Hugh would be no match for the bear – killed or, worse, infected.  A rabid Hugh could lay waste to the entire county.  The afflicted are routinely strangled before the madness takes hold, but who, or what, could constrict Hugh’s throat?

 

The archers ran back to the castle to fetch weapons but Hugh advanced alone.  “No!  Hugh, I forbid it!” Geoff ordered, but Hugh responded only to a higher calling, his fatigue replaced by renewed vigor.  He ripped the shredded remains of his leggings and codpiece and tore away even his undercloth, one naked beast facing another.  Women tried to turn away and close their eyes, but they had lost the will to resist the sight of Hugh's golden glory.

 

Palming two large stones, he bounced their weight – likely as much as a strong man could struggle up to his chest – and then hurled first one, then the other, in quick succession, his arms like trebuchets – only more powerful.  The bear fell, struck on the head and shoulder … but rose up on two legs, now truly angry.  Slinging ropes of poisonous slobber across the field, it roared and fell clumsily to all fours, lighting into a lopsided charge on legs it seemed unable to fully control.  As if it were under the spell of a sorcerer’s apprentice.

 

Hugh ranged from side to side but the bear turned and faced him, always advancing.  The hero crouched on titanic legs and launched himself into the air, rising for several metres and sailing over the bear like a bird of prey.  The animal stood and swatted at him but Hugh flew too far and too fast, causing the unsteady creature to fall onto its back.  As it struggled back to its feet, it turned so Hugh could leap and plant himself like a spear onto its vast shaggy back.

 

Hugh tried to wrap his arms around the giant’s chest but could barely reach – his fingers touched but couldn’t grip.  The bear roared and shook violently, but Hugh’s fingers pierced the dense fur and his legs clamped over its waist.  Then Hugh shook back.

 

Savagely throwing his body from side to side, Hugh forced the bear to stumble sideways several paces before it plant its claws and hold onto the ground.  He shook the bear again but it lowered itself to the ground – so Hugh threw his shoulders back with a strained grimace.  And overcoming the bear’s fury, bent its spine back and its forelegs off the ground.  Hugh cinched his arms and legs – the bear bellowed in pain and confusion, outmuscled by something small yet heavy and brutally irresistible.  Hugh shook the bear again until its head wove back and forth, and then he arched his back and slammed that head into the ground.

 

A look appeared in the bear’s crazed eyes – a moment of clarity, a primitive instinct for escape. The beast fought against Hugh’s strength with the renewed energies of something now fighting for its life.  As Hugh’s shoulders tensed, prying the bear’s up again, it fought him, bucking and shaking, matching him strength for strength.  Feeling the iron spine defy him, Hugh squeezed until the bear screamed.  Every move Hugh made in directing the bear one way, the bear countered, twisting and scratching the other way. 

 

Hugh’s face contorted as his arms labored against the sturdy ribs, his fingers grappling for a link.  The bear writhed violently but Hugh closed his eyes and with a hissing sound, linked his middle fingers.  The beast wore stark fear on its face, its chest compressed, its hips being wrench by the horrible contortions of Hugh’s legs.  I held my breath – I couldn’t tell what Hugh was trying to do, besides hang on. 

 

Slowly, by pitching his back fiercely, Hugh guided the bear to the stone he had just conquered.  His eyes sharpened frightfully, and with his teeth bared and an almost-evil smile, he arched his back again and clumped the bear forward with his own indomitable torso.  With claws clutching helplessly at the soil, the bear realized – as much as it could – it was losing.

 

When Hugh coerced his captive abreast of his trophy, he flexed his entire body, lifting the bear off the ground and slamming it back down.  He did it again, and again, each time gaining a greater bounce until with clenched grunt, Hugh actually flipped himself onto his back on the stone’s surface, the quarter-tonne bulk pronged above him.  The animal’s legs waved in the air but Hugh’s back spread out beneath him, bracing against each terrorized thrust of the mindless brute.  The boy-man had even crushed its roar down to a steady wheezing moan frothed out with its spittle. 

 

Hugh’s legs trapped the bear’s hind limbs and pulled them out and away, immobilizing them.  He arched up onto his shoulders and bent that iron spine – and squeezed.  Hugh shook the bear to the left and clamped his hands more tightly to its chest.  He jarred it to the right and a sickening pop came out of the bear’s lower quarters.  The wheeze now carried a bone-chilling whine of fear.  Hugh tensed ferociously trembling with impossible effort, bending the bear's steely ribs in on themselves. 

 

Hugh’s rising growls drowned out the animal’s eerie whistling.  Now gripping his wrists, he shrank the bear’s chest further through barbaric will.  His arms, buried deep in the fur, rubbed slightly back and forth: their knots, harder than bone, fractured ribs.  He rattled the bear like a doll, draining the dregs of its vitality with relentless determination.  Its swimming forelegs slowed, and slowed further, and then merely waved as if blown by the wind.  Once the bear’s legs stopped moving (though still twitching), Hugh’s legs straightened out, further disjointing its hind legs and hips.  The trapped victim emitted a thin, high wail, its tongue lolled out of its mouth, a harsh gurgling sound coming with it.

 

Hugh could have finished the bear off right there, but something terrible had been ignited in the man-boy’s chest – and further below.  Hugh rolled off the stone and plopped the weakened beast onto the ground.  Arching his own back, Hugh brought his legs forward and clamped them against the stove-in ribs. 

 

Pulling the bear backward again and trapping its lower torso with his own, Hugh gyrated up, his ass dimpling and clenching, his manroot thrusting through the densely matted fur.  It seemed to pulse with every sharp crack echoing through the circle.  His eyes feverish, the shocking obscenity of the tableau held everyone in a merciless grip. 

 

Hugh wrangled his arms up, never releasing their unbearable pressures, hands reaching for the animal's head.  Gripping the rocklike skull, Hugh's chest rose like twin peaks as he stopped the bear's thrashing.  His hands crept down, his bulbous forearms immobilizing the bear's head.   

 

The entire crowd buzzed with tension that ratcheted higher as Hugh linked his hands underneath its head.  With a grim frown, Hugh straightened back up, fighting the bear's final desperate spasms.  With a final choking splutter, the bear’s head rose in Hugh's puissant grip, its long long neck tremoring.  Stretching.  Tearing.

 

Hugh’s invincible lance jousted with the arched neck, his hips slowly digging up and down.  But the bear's neck was too long - even with the skull pressed into the valley of his chest, the neck did not break.  He'd either have to be work his way backwards ...

 

or ...

 

My knees gave way weakly as Hugh's sculpted arms sprouted veins along their extreme curves.  Hugh pushed the head up in a harrowing repeat of his menhir feat.  A thin shrill shriek bubbled out of the gaping maw, big eyes suddenly blank with a resignation more terrible than its death throes.  Hugh's elbows inched up, his hands rising to stomach-curdling wet PWOPP sounds.  Hugh stretched the neck unnaturally longer even as the bear's tongue seemed to crawl out of its throat. 

 

Blood sprayed from tears in the victim’s hide, the skin rending in garish jagged slashes.  Hugh grimaced as he grappled the bear's body down – down and away.  Hugh pushed his arms towards the sky with renewed gristle.   Through the ragged flaps of skin, I could see thick cables of muscle stretching and then rolling up into tight knots.  Soon I could see the white bones floating like beads on a broken chain washed in red.

 

His virile member erupted, spewing ropes of viscous pearlescence through the hot fur and into the ragged wounds.  His legs gripped the body firmly, riding it with bucking hips and plowing himself violently against the dying beast. 

 

Finally, with a triumphant bellow that shook the stones themselves, Hugh extended his arms all the way up and sheared the bear's head off its jerking, dying torso.  The torn neck fountained blood, mired with Hugh's own jetting essence streaming up through the coat like grappling ropes.  Hugh’s seed-fountain continued even as the blood slowly ebbed, soaking the coat in his milky pith.  He shuddered, his naked muscles rippling and drumming fleetly beneath his papery white skin, and making a final grunting cry, Hugh stubbed himself out in eye-flickering bliss.

 

Hugh paused a moment, chest heaving with deep satisfaction, until the echoing pleasures slowly Faded.  Shaking sense and awareness back into his golden-curled, blood and semen-caked head, carried the still-lethal skull, dripping blood and froth of Hugh, to the gaping pit that once housed a menhir, and dropped it in.  He went back to the corpse, grabbed a loose hind-leg, and pulled it over to the grave, kicking it in.  Then, in desperation or derision, I couldn’t tell, Hugh tugged the stone, bit by exhausted bit, until its immeasurable tonnes covered the tomb.

 

Hugh turned and raised his fists over his head, his heavy arms bent and throbbing like the empurpled mast rising above his navel, shaking its own glistening fist.  But only briefly - he sank down, hands on his knees his shoulders sinking and his back sagging.  Then he was lost as cheering soldiers surrounded him and, in a joint effort, raised him to his feet and half-carried him away from the slung saliva and gore, to a grassy rise shaded by the setting sun.

 

The women broke through the soldiers with kettles and bowls of cool and steaming water, shouldering them away like an invading army.  Over their heads I heard him mutter “meat,” and platters passed hand to hand from the high table directly to him.  Sating himself, he fell into a deep slumber, oblivious of the hands massaging oils into his muscles.  Soon the jealous guards rallied and drove the women away, circling him and facing out to keep so many hungry eyes and hands at bay.

 

Geoff had excused Hugh from the rest of his chores that afternoon, so after I finished mine and got something to eat, I returned to his pallet.  He was fast asleep on his back, lying flat on his back with only a modest cloth around his loins.  The air near him shimmered torridly, and sweat beaded on my forehead and under my arms.  I quickly doffed my togs and draped myself over his mounded form.  He stirred slightly, his barrel chest rising, but otherwise I may as well have been a light blanket. 

 

Arousal chases my fatigue away, and take advantage of last night’s offer and stretch my limbs, pressing my body against his muscles – firm yet pliable at rest, their density defied my penetrating fingers, but I could press and caress them, trace the expansive flesh as it narrows and gathers into steely tendons.  His blood pulsed slowly through them, perfectly balancing his other humors and restoring his incalculable vitality.  My own loin covering stirred as I rubbed against the serpent sleeping between the pillows of its generative nest. 

 

The serpent rose slightly, stirring waves through Hugh’s body which undulated and stretched in sleep.  His mouth pursed and opened slightly and, overcome with desire, I gripped his upper arms and slid myself up onto his chest.  My own member lay erect in the alley that ran down the center of his cobbled abdomen – it fit perfectly, caressed and massaged as those muscles rose and fell as he breathed.  From the barrel-crest of his chest, I reached down and placed a daring kiss on his thick, languid lips. 

 

Still asleep, his mouth accepted mine, rubbing against my lips.  I nuzzled the down around his chin and let my tongue slip out, seeking his.  His tongue also sought mine and they caressed one another and explored each other’s hot, wet den.  My own drool flowed strongly, lubricating our fun, and a distant, dreamy smile invited me to display greater passion.  I sucked his lips and licked his teeth, and when I felt his hands land lightly on my ass, I shuddered in anticipation and a little fear:  if he rolled over and didn’t wake up, could I support his weight or would I be crushed or suffocated by Hugh’s ponderous magnitude?

 

I stretched my arms over his and wrapped my legs over his thighs, encouraging him to stay put but offering my nether orifice for his rising python.  He gripped me tighter, so tightly I winced and bit his lip by mistake – his eyes opened drowsily and for a moment, we gazed at each other with his hands clasping hindside.

 

Just then a sharp laugh startled us both (and several of the horses).  Hugh raised his head as I turned and saw a buxom young maid with a startled look on her face.  “You boys are incorrigible!” she said a little loudly.  Hugh rose up on his elbows and sloughed me off to the side, where I adjusted my loin cloth and blazed bright red.  She paid me no mind.

 

“All rested, hero?” she said saucily, tugging coyly at the lace that held her bodice together.  “How would you like a real woman to satisfy you.  I promise it’ll be better than some smelly bear.”  She spread her knees and pressed a palm into her skirt with an open mouth.  Heat kindled in Hugh’s eyes and his groin snake bobbed up through the folds of his cloth. 

 

She walked backward toward a stack of hay bales in the shadows.  Forgetting me, Hugh rose – like a mountain growing before my eyes, or a dragon taking off from its lair, his body simply kept going and going and going until he was up and around the corner.

 

But Hugh stopped short, looking uncertain.  “Come on,” she cooed.  “No one will care.  You’re a man now.  You do what you want.”

 

Hugh fidgeted against the cloth restraint binding his eagerness.   “My master said I would grow weak if I did it.  I don’t even, you know, do myself.  Not as often as other boys.”

 

“You’re no boy, and no man is your master,” she chided.  “Not even the king can rival you.  Besides, we all saw what you did to that bear.  Are you weak now?”  She threw a horseshoe, which he caught.  Spreading the fingers of that one hand around the prongs but not taking his eyes off her, Hugh squeezed – and crushed the metal shoe as if it were clay, until it snapped in two.  Yet he didn’t let it go – gathering both parts into his palm, he folded them in half – both at the same time – until the outmatched steel could bend no further and broke again.  His clenched the pieces in his fist and mashed it again, his forearm filling with rocks that scrubbed against each other.  A metallic tinkling seeped out between his white-knuckled fingers.  When he opened his fist, shattered fragments of steel rained to the floor, unidentifiable as having ever been a forged horse shoe. 

 

“Guess not,” he replied with sheepish excitement.   The maid had watched wide-eyed, bosom heaving and mouth opening and semi-closing in excitement of her own.  Though she massaged both her breasts and released them, she stiffened and shivered as if fulfillment had ignited without any external stimulation.  Her eyes hooded with breathless hunger.

 

“Then, what are you waiting for?”  she half-dared, half-begged him huskily.

 

That was it.  His loin cloth ripped around his vibrant erection has he flung it away and pulled her to him, immediately entering her.  She gasped as his girth stretched her open more than ever before, but he didn’t rush to the finish line. 

 

Hugh’s natural instinct for lovemaking took over – building, teasing, pulling back, slowing down then racing, all the while withholding his essence.  His manfunk wafted through the stable with a delirious mixture of wild musk and protective warmth.  Her eyes rolled up into her head – however vigorously he slid in and out, he was gentler, more controlled – stronger – than any man she’d been with. 

 

And … he made her wetter than ever before.  Mixed with the leakage from his powerful organ, they slid against each other like eels.  She clutched at the hay behind her, her nipples like craters as another pleasure wave washed through her.  Again, instinctively, Hugh let her subside and then whipped her up until the storm broke in her several times before he unleashed his own deluge. 

 

Hugh’s arm shot out and grabbed a shovel, the blade warping in his grip.  He shot into her with such force she instantly came again, biting her lip to stay quiet.  His ass dimpled and writhed for so long I realized I would get no sleep tonight – perhaps never again.  My own midsection rocked as I spurted in envious sympathy.  I massaged myself dry with my under cloth and was about to return to the pallet, when I saw it – he wasn’t pulling out. 

 

He was clearly still turgid.  Still filling her.

 

Still thrusting.

 

She smiled hungrily, grabbing his ass and pulling herself against him.  He slammed into her hard this time, again and again, jiggling her breasts and body, shattering her composure and driving her to wild abandon.  She thrashed and ground herself against in rhythm against him, whipping her loosened hair from side to side and moaning gutterally like a cow in calving.  In full control and awareness of their danger, Hugh smoothly grabbed a leather work glove and gently shoved it into her mouth.  She chewed it like it was dinner.

 

He came again, dimpling longer than before but sluicing in and out and spilling long tendrils of cock drool.  I stayed crouching, hardening again and barely aware of the pain.  And as I suspected, he didn’t quit.  More like he was still getting warmed up.

 

But the maid began to flag, endless pleasure addling her brain.  She shuddered periodically, ranging between an empty smile and a tense incomprehension that only Hugh’s persistence could dismiss.  Her sopping hair lay lank over her shoulders, her breathing hitching from his power and then siking into a heavy, coarse wheeze.

 

He came a fourth time and she moaned in mindless pleasure and pain.  His seed spurted down and ricocheted off his pendulous ball sac … as if she were full.   For the first time, he pulled out completely, his knob painted her belly and breasts with his man-lime.  A steady stream ran down her legs slowly, like freshly-rendered glue. 

 

His sword waved challengingly, throbbing with purple ardor.  His exhales came fast and heavy and his red eyes burned with feverish intensity.  For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to do but then, face enlivening, he lifted her into the air, spun her around and did what I had so longed for:  took her bunghole like a rutting beast.

 

The pain shocked her awake and she screamed into the glove.  Her torso impulsively clenched around him but hadn’t the strength to expel the invader.   Sliding her up and down on his breed shaft with one hand, he pulled out the glove stuck his fingers in her mouth, attacking her defenses on two fronts.  Her panic retreated and as they joined into a single oscillating being, his body commanded hers to banish pain and feed greedily on pleasure alone.  Obediently, her body obeyed and her tension fell away like the tattered remnants of her clothing.  He bobbed her up and down endlessly before clenching his ass and releasing another eruption of manly lava. 

 

Feeling his own control fight for command against greedy, voluptuous gluttony, he wrapped one arm around a stud and squeezed.  His arm crunched into the wood – splinters broke out around it.  He squeezed pitilessly as the ecstasy of another tidal wave rolled out of him and utterly submerged her.  Solid oak creaked and split loudly.  Finally he eased down, left the poor oak post alone, and rested his back against a high stack of hay, holding her up with one hand and simply staying still.

 

But staying within her. 

 

Not softening.

 

 

 

Not at all.

 

The crippled beam groaned as the weight of the roof shifted into its weakness.  The groaning excited Hugh and he slowly began plumbing her for a sixth time. 

 

Something broke in my mind – a relaxation, an acceptance of such unbelievable strength and stamina.  A kind of faith moved my heart that I never felt at mass.  My body responded by releasing another white libation, globs of it billowing forth before the ecstacy could catch up – it rushed in late and quaked me to my soul, submitting my life to this thundering, earth-shaking deity before me.

 

Hugh focused intently on her, careful not to bruise or injure her as he ground her back and forth in semi-circles.  Her limbs flopped randomly, their motions aimless and simply sparking off stray bolts of joy her weaker frame could not contain.  She shuddered again as another convulsion gripped her, and her seizure gripped him and undammed yet another flood of his virility into her guts. 

 

Not only the stream down her legs increase, now from two willsprings within her, but her belly began to bloat.  Hugh looked as though this premature release – stimulated by her and not commanded by him – had cheated him.  He stayed in and bucked her a little roughly, making her jaw chatter loosely, until he pasted her insides a seventh time.

 

Ignoring how her rib cage expanded in his grip, Hugh plunged deeper with an urgency he hadn’t shown before.  His bull-balls slapped the back of her ass as he chased the shimmering bliss he caught so easily again and again.  His back stiffened and spread apart and the overflow of another cascade splattered his nutsack and thighs.  Her eyes opened with bemused surprise as she belched and … smelled Hugh in it.

 

The maid passed out completely and slumped on him, twitching and jerking like a dreaming dog.  His face glowing with greed for a vein of gold that ran deeper and deeper into the mountain, he kept excavating for it.  A series of short hard rams made her burp his salty musk, made her breasts flop along with her arms and nodding head.  The hammering sped faster and faster until his cheeks became a blur.  Then suddenly he stopped and mashed her down as if he were trying to snap his manhood off.

 

But that prong stood up to him defiantly and rebuffed his efforts.  Within the frenzy of his ninth fusillade, a heavenly smile pierced his face like a sunbeam after a storm eliciting a heavenly smile to spread across his face.  The sun banished the storm and he slowed down to a steady strum.  Pinning her against a wall of hay with only his horn of plenty, he put his hands on his hips and wiggled them, watching her bob like a puppet. 

 

Hugh didn’t like her leaving him alone like that - so he leaned forward, placing one fist on either side of the hay beside, and supported her with It while staring intently into her face.  His presence penetrated her dazed mind and dragged her back to consciousness – while he stayed still, spreading and pulsing with her, her own grinding movement down below betrayed her return to paradise.

 

He began slow rotations, lazy figure eights that hardened him until his balls hitched.  Then, again, he became … perfectly … still….   But she shook with warring tensions and seized with unhinged rapture.  He grinned with masterly hauteur and withheld himself until she scratched violently at him and seemed she’d shake herself apart if he did not feed her.  Still he waited until her panting desperation opened her eyes – he locked them to his – and she seemed to wither and bloom at the same time within his gaze, her mind turning inside out beneath the fullness of his revelation. 

 

Still he waited.  Still he grinned.  Finally, drool spilled in rivulets out of her mouth, followed by a plaintive mewling bordering on despair.  He nodded, slowly, over and over as he felt her identity disintegrate – and then he released the hounds of war.  Her chest inflated from the inside, a strangled cry of incredulous surrender rose from her gaping mouth, and her breath, redolent of his salt, filled the air and made the horses rustle and neigh. 

 

His own fecund odor returning to him from inside her kept his demonic prick sharp as he tunneled even deeper into the mountain for that skein of gold.  His muscles flinched - he had ridden himself raw – and now every motion exploded in his brain.  A mere normal man would pull away, flee, his brain melting.  But Hugh was made better.    

 

He carried her gingerly to a worktable, sweeping clean its surface with his arm, and laid her down.  He stood upright so that the pressure bore down on his virility, and though it bounced her up a little, it soon settled down. 

 

Standing there, hands on his hips, his massive chest rising and sinking like storm billows on the open see, he defied every extreme sensation – he refused to withdraw, he would not pass out.  Hugh willed every impulse into submission, and wrung the savor out of each moment.  They could not gang up on him.  They could not overcome his control.  His chest rolled triumphantly as he disciplined his own rebellious passions and directed them to serve him one more time.

 

The lightning from this battle shot into her.  She twitched wildly, arms and legs spasming and battering his ram inside her.  He conducted the unbearable pleasures until he chose to let them go.  Throwing his head back, he barked and howled, reached up and grabbed a roof joist: and each time her leg kicked or her hand flicked, his fingers sank deeper into the splintering oak. 

 

He swayed there, his head shaking slowly back and forth and veins pounding in his neck.  With a moan of pure satisfaction, his shoulders twitched and his hips swiped her back and forth across the table.  He froze and braced his legs and ass.

 

An eleventh milking surged into the maid.  Her body swelled, her neck fattened – and his puissance gushed out of her moaning mouth in driving bursts.  My body wrenched a third helpless time together with gripping alarm.  I felt immobilized but somehow I shouted, “Sir!” as his seed trickled out of her nose and not only from her ears, but also her eyes, like pearly tears. 

 

Hugh’s eyes whipped open and he turned and glared in mad fury.  I fell back, my cock now heaving drily, and mustered all my courage.  “She needs a doctor!”

 

He looked back and for the first time saw the swollen main, his viscous ichor still seeping from her head.  He pulled out suddenly and a bucket’s worth of slime whooshed out and all over his legs.  He lifted her in one arm and, with the other, battered a hole in the side of the stable.  He ran into the village, naked and not only erect but still foaming like … like a mad bear.

 

He woke the doctor by breaking his door in half.  The doctor clutched his blanket in terror, then saw the girl and jumped up so Hugh could place her on the bed.  Though he was no longer in her, the overflow continued to leak out, spreading slowly over her body.  All the time, though her eyes fluttered pure white, the smile never left her lips.

 

The doctor pushed gently on her belly and semen oozed from several openings at both ends.  He turned around and, seeing Hugh’s still-drooling plowshare, started in amazement before recovering himself.  “Young man, I’ll take it from here.”

 

Tears stained Hugh’s beautiful features.  “I didn’t mean to … will she be all right?”

 

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the old man confessed.  “So long as nothing inside her has burst, she should pull through.  Though I doubt she’ll ever be the same.  You should prepare yourself however:  I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a father, several times over.  Such prodigious … vigor … might likely plant a prodigy of seedlings in this young girl.”  Turning away, he muttered again, “Like an Irish rabbit.”

 

Hugh seemed stricken so I gripped his unyielding arm tight as I could.  “Come, you should rest again.  And I can’t carry you if you fall asleep stark naked in the street.”

 

Hugh shuffled out and embarrassedly propped the shattered boards door back in the doorway.  Overcome with a surge of relief or joy or something, he grabbed and lifted me high into the air, shook me wildly with an ecstatic grin on his face, and draped me over his shoulder like a potato sack.

 

I could feel the slimy slap of his dick against my feet as he trotted down the moonlit street.  My hands explored the battlements of his back under the guise of holding on:  the central pennant-poles, the squarish berms of annealed flesh over each shoulder blade, and the ramparts that spread to either side.  The feeling his shoulder rippling back and forth against my belly made me come again but, having nothing left, it hurt more than anything.  I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.

 

Back in the stable reeking of fornication, he flung me onto his pallet and stared down proudly.  “My friend!” he said, beaming, chest flaring.  Then, treating me more like a pet than a friend, he lay down beside me, enclosed me with his irresistible arm-mass and tucked my face into the deep pit of foggy musk between his chest and back.  He fell to sleep immediately but my heart raced like a hunting hound.  His bushy hairs tickled my forehead and soon his peace encompassed me.  I dreamed I was running beside him and wagging my tale forever and ever.

 

 

THE END

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Wow! Being a huge fan of Chip Masterson's work, I'm surprised to see something under his name here.

 

LeSeigneur, do you know when and where this story was originally published? I don't remember reading it before.

 

Really love this story... thanks for sharing it with us!

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