Bred by the Spartans (9 page)

She found the knot at the front and loosed it, and Leontes’ codpiece dropped away and allowed his cock to spring forth. Thaleia gasped at the sight.

Theoleon laughed gently, next to Leontes, as he undid his own codpiece. “Haven’t seen its like, have you, sweet girl?” Leontes asked.

“No, sir,” Thaleia said, “and… and I have seen cocks that their owners think the mightiest in the cosmos.”

“Kiss them, Thaleia,” said Leontes, “and tell us, as you please us, from whence you have come to be our ward.”

Thaleia took a Spartan cock in each hand, and kissed the head of Theoleon’s, and then the head of Leontes’. Then she gave each one a little lingering lick of her tongue, underneath the head.

“First, though,” groaned Leontes, putting his hands on his hips and setting his feet wide apart to steady himself against the extremity of the pleasure Thaleia gave him, “tell us how you have learned already to treat men’s cocks so.”

To Leontes’ surprise, Thaleia giggled at that. Her light laughter did not seem to him to speak of a giddiness of soul, but of a heart relaxing as she realized that the men into whose power she had come at last wished to protect her despite the urgency of their need also to take their pleasure in using her irresistible body. “I am very glad I please you, sir. Though I have been in the lands of men for less than a day, I have been made to suck eight cocks already, before yours, if I count correctly. My father always said I was a quick study, but I think even if I were dim-witted I should now have learned at least the rudiments.” As she spoke, she pumped her masters’ cocks gently, and made their breathing come faster and faster. She suckled Theoleon’s massive spear of flesh for long moments, while she held Leontes’ stones below, and then moved her mouth to Leontes’ cock while she moved Theoleon’s wrinkled pouch gently and enticingly. Thaleia sat back again upon her heels, so that she could speak. “I have found that there are certain places, and certain touches that I may use upon those places, that seem to make the bliss come more quickly.” The girl looked up at them bewitchingly and yet, despite the lewdness of her words and of her touches, somehow still so very innocently that Leontes almost wanted to spare her the ordeal of bringing the Spartans off, light though that ordeal was in comparison to what he truly wanted to do with her, and could tell Theoleon did as well.

Leontes felt himself shiver, almost unmanfully, at the way Thaleia caressed him, and he knew he would never be able to spare her anything, as painful and humiliating as it might be for her.

What had Lord Apollo said in the dream? “The curse upon the girl may not be resisted, even by such as you Spartans. Indeed, the lustiness of your natures will make it even more difficult. You will wish to ravish her, and you will ravish her, but all the while you will preserve her and make her happy, and guard her high destiny.”

The dream had begun from the nowhere of sleep, as dreams do. Leontes had found himself standing at the bottom of the steps of a great temple. He had never been to Delphi, but he knew immediately that this temple must be Lord Apollo’s, at the navel of the world; the holiest place in the cosmos. He looked to his right, where Theoleon should stand in the line of battle, and there he stood, looking back at Leontes.

Theoleon and Leontes had grown up together as spear-brothers, in the Spartan
agoge
: the system of training that all Spartiates must undertake. From the age of eight they had learned to trust one another in everything, and in combat above all. Bereft of their fathers at a very early age, taken from their mothers when the
agoge
began and to see them only once a month when they rotated off duty, the spear-brothers had become each other’s true family. Talkative Leontes felt love for no one as he did for taciturn Theoleon.

Their habits of speech were not the only thing that made them different, though often it seemed to them that way, more even than most of their fellow pairs of Spartiate spear-brothers, Theoleon and Leontes finished each other’s sentences—or, rather, usually Leontes’ finished Theoleon’s—and, when called upon to contribute to a discussion of strategy or tactics, had exactly the same ideas and raised exactly the same objections.

Nevertheless, Leontes tended to take the lead, and tended to express what he thought and felt more readily than Theoleon did. Theoleon, for his part, would hold his emotions inside his mind longer, trying to think them through until he could voice some definite opinion to Leontes. As they had grown together in the
agoge
and in the five years of military service that had followed it, thus far, the spear-brothers had learned to temper one another’s more violent emotions, so that when Leontes spoke without thinking, or Theoleon held a slight inside until he became angrier than he should, they could at last sit down together and, though using still the laconic, clipped way of speaking their training masters had taught them along with their warrior’s skills (for Leontes could be brief when the matter required brevity), come to their old understanding once again.

So, standing in a dream together with Leontes felt entirely normal to Theoleon. Who else would be in a Spartiate’s dream but his spear-brother?

As one, they turned their faces to look up at the temple, and saw that there was a god there. They knew the figure at once to be a god, and to be Lord Apollo, not merely because he glowed with golden light, but because the knowledge in divine dreams needs no seeking.

Lord Apollo came down the steps toward them, fair of face and golden of hair. When he stood two steps above them, he said, “Theoleon and Leontes, Spartiates, I have a task for you.”

“Yes, lord,” the Spartiates replied, as one.

“Go to the crossroads where the North road meets the West road, and rescue a girl named Thaleia. She is dear to me, and I watch over her. She bears a great destiny, and, aided by you, with that destiny she will save all Greece. You will bring her to me at Delphi, and the Pythia shall proclaim her fate.”

“Yes, lord,” they chorused.

“Know, my Spartiates, though, that she bears the curse of Eros,” Apollo had continued. Then he had told them of the way they would not be able to help ravishing Thaleia, though they wished in all sincerity only to protect her. Finally, Apollo had said, “And yet that very curse shall prove the salvation of many: of her, and of you, and of generations yet unborn. For in it you shall at the last be blessed. Farewell.” The god turned and walked back up the steps, and the brothers-in-arms had awoken next to one another, the way they always slept as spear-brothers.

Without a word they rose, girded themselves, and set off northward.

And now here they were, having their cocks sucked by the most desirable girl upon whom they had ever laid eyes. He watched Thaleia try to take Theoleon’s huge member deeper than she had yet managed. The fall of her lovely hair hid her face and her mouth from him, and Leontes could not resist bending down to gather that hair in his left hand, so he could see the way the girl’s eyes were watering, and the way that pretty mouth was full of his spear-brother’s amazing length and thickness.

Suddenly Leontes felt himself overcome with envy, and he said, “Brother, I cannot help it…” Theoleon looked into his eyes, and acted instantly and silently: he took Thaleia’s head off his own cock and thrust her mouth onto Leontes’ aching length. Yes, they had truly meant to be gentle, but the curse of Eros held them as well as her, and Leontes found that he was holding the girl’s head firmly by her hair and thrusting brutally into her mouth, murmuring, “Just hold still and take it, girl. Just hold still,” though she had no choice, for the need was on him and he was going to give her his seed, down her throat and into her belly, even if Lord Zeus himself should strike him dead with a lightning bolt as he found bliss. He watched his cock enter the innocent face of his beautiful new ward, and withdraw, over and over, faster and faster, just as he pleased to make her take him. He heard Thaleia gag, and then he was holding her face against his loins and crying out as if he had indeed been struck by lightning, and giving his seed down her throat in what he knew was a torrent, since Theoleon and Leontes had gone long without enjoying a girl.

“Take her,” he growled to his spear-brother, and Theoleon needed no further urging, but ripped Thaleia’s head from Leontes’ hands, as she whimpered, and gave her the same brutal treatment Leontes had until, only a few moments later, he too had shot his essence into her belly.

“Swallow it all, girl,” Leontes said. “The seed of the Spartans is a precious gift. If a girl spills a drop, we punish her.” He saw Thaleia’s eyes go wide at that, but at the same time he thought her expression held more complexity than he would have imagined. Did she
want
to be punished? Was that part of the curse that lay upon her?

Thaleia faithfully swallowed, and only a little trickle of moisture escaped her lips. Leontes’ wits seemed in danger of deserting him as he looked down at the girl he had just had. Could it be that he was already stirring to have her again, but even more brutally, at the thought that he and Theoleon would probably have to punish her very frequently, as they trained her up to be their little plaything? He looked at Theoleon and thought he saw the same thought flitting across those brown eyes.

As one then, the spear-brothers knelt next to Thaleia. The need had not come upon them quite so urgently; they would be able to bear her to safety at least before they had her as they really wished to have her. They gathered their girl into their chests, laid her cheek against their twinned shoulders, and kissed her hair, holding her close.

“Am I yours, my Spartans?” she whispered.

“You are, Thaleia,” they answered.

Leontes murmured, “Should we not taste her, and show her that Spartiates can bring a girl to bliss?”

Without a word in answer, but in complete accord, Theoleon disengaged himself from the embrace and rose. He gently lifted Thaleia to her feet, making soothing noises to assure her that only pleasure lay in store. Then he lifted her as easily as a kitten, and Leontes took her knees firmly but gently in his hands and placed them upon his shoulders while Theoleon held her firmly upright, and watched his spear-brother bring his mouth down to the luscious pink lips that just peeped out from her tender furrow.

“No… oh, no…” Thaleia was saying, but then she had no words at all, as Leontes’ expert tongue drove her up a mountain of pleasure.

“Watch,” Leontes commanded, as he saw Theoleon playing gently with her tiny nipples, and making her scream. “Watch,” he said again, “or your bottom will pay later.”

Thaleia could watch, but only for a few moments, it seemed, before her shame got the better of her. By the time she had found bliss under Leontes’ lapping, searching tongue, with a sob of joy, she had given them ample reason for her first punishment, when they stopped for the night.

Chapter Ten

Going over the world, driving the chariot of the sun, Apollo saw the lewd, but also touching scene, unfold. His powers of perception, essentially infinite, let him watch as many events in the lands of men as he wished, all at the same time, while also allowing him to maintain perfect control of the four fiery steeds who pulled him through the sky. Watching the Spartans enjoy Thaleia made him think of the night with Argeia to come, but also made him happy in the knowledge that he would bear the nymph good news: he had already become quite fond of her.

Musing on his affection for Argeia, and on the fate of Thaleia, he finished his drive in the utmost West, and with the help of his attendants there unharnessed the horses and got them into the boat for the journey under the earth.

His father Zeus was waiting for him on Olympus, when Apollo emerged from the lift just next to the stables, still thinking of Argeia. “You sent those Spartans, I imagine,” the sky father said to his glowing son once the Muses’ song of welcome had ended.

Apollo looked at Zeus. Thankfully, his father did not seem angry. As he began to stable the horses, he said, “I did.”

“And your price was the sister.”

Apollo laughed. “Yes.”

Zeus laughed too. “Though you knew her lot was with me, o god of prophecy.”

“Father, do I have to go over with you again the difference between the lots you and your brothers’ cast and the threads the Fates weave for mortals?” Before the birth of Apollo, the elder Olympians had thought that they could shape the fate of the cosmos by casting lots, but in fact they had merely been making arbitrary decisions and then forcing them to come true. They still cast lots for every nymph on Olympus, though, and pretended—in particular with the nymphs themselves—that those lots meant that the nymphs belonged to them, and were to be deflowered and, if the gods wished, bred by the god to whom each fell.

Mortals had fates. Gods were free. That was the sum total, really, of what the young Apollo had declared to his father and his uncles when he was just ten years old. The gods could take the nymphs they wished, of course, but they had to give enough free will to their fellow immortals that the fates of mortal men—above all of the heroes whom the gods bred in the nymphs and goddesses—could operate properly. Most important, Apollo had told them, they must let nymphs and goddesses choose to be broken, and to go to earth to be bred by mortals there.

“No, son. No need. I am here only to say that it was well done. I was sorry that Thaleia chose breaking.”

“They are charming, are they not, those sisters?”

“Indeed.”

Apollo could tell that Zeus had something else to say, so he waited patiently, though the horses were now stabled and he longed to go to Argeia.

“What can you tell me,” the father of gods and men finally said, “of Thaleia’s fate?”

Apollo was sure his puzzlement showed on his face. “She passes out of the tapestry after she has her hero.” Apollo could see only the most important people and events in the tapestry of history that always lay before his mind’s eye.

“So she could return to Olympus?”