Chapter 1

It must have been after four miles of walking that Boy began limping. I called him Boy at the time, since he never talked. He would grunt, shrug and roll his eyes, but in the two days I'd known him by then, he had said not a word. So, he was Boy, just like Dog was the dog who trotted along on the other side of me, occasionally giving Boy a suspicious side glance. It seemed right. I wasn't going to put too much effort into this new relationship.

Our association was recent. I'd wandered away from my usual circuit and when night came, since I was unsure where exactly my feet had taken me, I'd scouted out a large house nestling in a fold of country. Breaking in wasn't much of a danger, though even in those days you had to be careful. But I'd not ever seen any human activity in this part of my country. The nearest pockets of habitation were far away to the west, where I rarely went. The door was closed, which usually meant it hadn't been looted, just abandoned. Dog alerted me however. He sniffed, cocked his head and gave a low whine. I always took him seriously. I kept him with me for a reason.

I first tried out the kitchen, since I was low on supplies. There I found some reason to believe Dog. There was a wood burning stove, and it was warm, so I went on to alert. As far as food went, there was only half a jar of dried beans on the counter. All the cupboards turned up empty. Food was a never ending problem, as I suppose it always had been for humans, even in the Old Days if you were poor. So my father had said. I added the beans to my bag. As I turned I saw a small figure staring at me from the kitchen door. It was Boy. He was maybe ten or eleven. He was a pale child, his hair was a blond sheaf shooting in every direction. He was wearing bits of clothing too big for him and a pair of rubber shoes.

"Yours?" I said, holding up the jar of beans. I got an accusatory glare in reply. "Sorry, no offence," I added, putting the jar back on the counter. It had been a while since I'd talked to anyone but Dog, who, it had to be said, was not much of a conversationalist. We stared at each other.

"You got parents, kid?" I eventually asked. The reply was a shake of the head. I didn't need the sad look to know why. The last pandemic had culled most of the remaining adult human population, as it had taken my own father. Some survived, but usually only the youngest rode it out; something to do with the resilience of our immune system, our village doctor had theorised to me before it too took him. The human need to live in communities killed him along with most of the other adults he could not help. I was just fourteen at the time and after three months all twenty of the houses were silent and empty apart from the smell of rotting corpses. My father was the last to go. Him I buried. The rest I left to nature to dispose of. That's when my wanderings began.

I gave a sharp look at the silent kid. He and whoever had cared for him may have rode out the pandemic for a while in this isolated farmhouse. But by the look of him, he had been alone for some time, long enough to outgrow his boy clothes in his latest growth spurt and have to do with what he could scavenge from wardrobes. His upper garment was a woman's sweater gathered round his waist with a belt. He wore a man's shorts that on him came well below his knees.

Clothing was not a problem I cared to deal with. During that first summer of wandering I had got caught in a cloudburst of monsoon proportions away from any possible shelter. Standing there dripping, frustrated and utterly soaked the obvious solution occurred to me. I struggled out of the drenched clothes and taking nothing but my shoulder sack left them behind me in the middle of the road, even my ragged trainers. Since then I'd travelled naked. My feet got used to walking unshod and my body became brown in the sun. It solved a lot of problems apart from in the depth of what passed for winter these days, but I found ways round that. Travelling bare-assed felt very right to me. It reminded me of what the books had said about early human life. I was a 'hunter-gatherer'.

Since Boy was uncommunicative, I raised my arms palms outward in an unthreatening way and told him I'd be moving on, but I'd sleep under his roof that night. I didn't ask his permission. He hesitated a moment and then disappeared, back I supposed to his own nest somewhere else in the house. I snuggled on a sofa in the living room, Dog curled up on the floor beside me. It was getting dark by then. It was early summer and the nights were getting shorter. So, I slept through and woke with the dawn. Birdsong was loud outside. The kitchen turned up no more food. Maybe Boy had a stash in his nest, but I hadn't the heart to go looking, especially as I was still well-provided with jerky and dried fruit.

When I looked round, he was again in the doorway, wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

"Here kid!" I offered him a couple of strips of dried meat. With a cautious look at Dog, he came over and took it. He sat on a chair and chewed it down rapidly. He was certainly hungry. Now here was a moral dilemma. Was I responsible for this small kid, staring at me with his large blue eyes through a wild veil of straw like hair. No, actually it was my dick he was staring at. It had grown heavy and thick over winter in its dense dark bush, from which it now reared at full morning erection, the purple head shining in the sunlight. I felt no urge to cover up. It felt fine to flaunt it, and there was an undeniable buzz from the child seeing it in all its male glory. But I did restrain my hand from bringing it off, as I normally would first thing.

"That's my cock," I told him. "You got one too. It'll get hard if you wank it." I made the universal gesture with my fist. Possibly it was wasted on him. I focused. "Look kid, I'm moving on. Thanks for the hospitality." I hesitated. "There's people to take care of you, but they're a way off to the west. But if you like, you can walk with me for a while. Sooner or later we'll run into settlements. OK?"

At this point my eyes caught my reflection in a mirror on the wall opposite. I was briefly startled. I hadn't seem myself recently. What I saw was a brown face surrounded by wild dark hair, which I knew by now went down my back to my shoulder blades. I had no beard as yet, though there was fuzz appearing on my upper lip. It was not a threatening face. Some would say, and often did in later days, that I was more than good-looking. Maybe it was the looks and the dazzling smile, that made the kid think about the proposal. A small furrow appeared in his brow.

"You think about it," I said with what I hoped was an encouraging smile. "But I'm going pretty soon. Just one condition. You don't bring anything with you. We're walking and we travel light. I have enough food to get us where we need to go." I hefted my shoulder sack. "That's all we need. So you got half an hour."

Calling Dog, who came clicking across the tiles after me, I exited the front door. Outside was what had been a lawn, but was now rough pasture. A rusted child's swing was to one side. I sat on it, still enough of a boy myself to set it going, and as my motion sent me up to the level of the bar, I whooped. I had no idea if a half hour had passed, obviously. Possibly it was longer when I finally got tired of the swing and waiting for a response. So I shrugged, shouldered my sack and, clicking my fingers to Dog, we headed off down to the house's access lane. I turned for one last look backward. Boy had emerged and was following slowly after me. He hadn't listened to me. He had a back pack. I waited for him to catch up.

"What did I say about bringing stuff?" I said. I held out my hand and he handed over the pack. I emptied it on the ground. There was a couple of fluffy toys, some food packs, which must have been the last of his store, and a framed family picture.

"OK," I conceded. "The food and the picture can go in my sack. The rest stays here." I gave him a hard stare. "And I said you bring nothing. That includes clothes. I travel without them, and so do you. So take them off, those shoes too. We're hunter-gatherers," I added, rather pointlessly in his case.

The kid hesitated, looking at me and the house, then slowly he pulled the sweater over his head, and the tee shirt under it. He pushed down the shorts and kicked off the Crocs. There were no socks beneath. What was left was a yellow-stained pair of underpants. Clearly laundry had not been a concern of his.

"Definitely take that smelly rag off!" I ordered. Though clearly conflicted he hooked his thumbs under the waistband and pushed them down and stood up naked, or would have been but his hands convulsively covered his groin. He blushed red down to his shoulders.

"You'll get used to it," I said nonchalantly, but I scanned the child with some emerging interest. He was pale and smooth. His torso was lightly muscled, pinkish nipples standing erect in the morning chill on his high pectoral muscles. His arms and legs were boy thin of course. His knees were pronounced though his feet were rather small compared to those of other boys. His belly was tight with a pronounced furrow down the centre out of which stood a jewel of a navel. About his genitals, I could not comment at the time. But there was an air of elegance about this child's body which affected me with a certain poignancy.

"Off we go then," I declared, and took to the lane, Dog alongside me. Boy padded behind, keeping up easily with our leisurely pace. Me and Dog hurried nowhere. There was no point. Boy was still cupping his crotch with his hands a mile later when I cast a look behind. I shrugged. He'd get used to permanent nudity soon enough, for he would need his hands for other purposes.

I knew roughly where we were, and it was about twelve miles to my nearest outpost. You see, I had staked a claim to quite a large area, which I called my circuit. It was my home territory and must have been well over a hundred square miles. It was empty of habitation. One former main road crossed it from north to south linking two abandoned towns. One of them had been a port, for the southern end of the circuit was defined by the coast. To the east was an old city, a place to which I rarely went, though its suburbs were within my self-defined realm.

Out to the west I knew there still survived some small and scattered communities, and I had spent some time last year spying on the nearest of them to my circuit from the woods surrounding a farm. There proved to be a few surviving adults who like me had chosen to settle at a cautious distance from the city, from which perhaps their parents had in their day been refugees. They had their hands full with the children of all ages who had survived the latest viral visitation.

It was a sunny day, and rapidly warmed up. My father told me than when he was young the climate had been cooler, but it had been heating up for generations due to what he called 'global warming', for which he blamed humanity, along with much else. He was not a fan of our species. We had long conversations as to humanity's wrong turnings in its history, and how it could be put right. Our formerly temperate part of the world was now hotter and moister. Winters were warmer than they had been, though wetter and stormier. This was one reason I'd abandoned clothing. It was only in the deepest midwinter that nudity became problematic, and that's when I went to ground in one of my carefully selected outposts.

I noticed Boy begin limping after four miles. I called a halt. "Sit down," I ordered. When he did I cocked an eyebrow at him and took his right foot and lifted it. At that his hands went to the grass to steady himself and his interesting little boy cock was unveiled. I took a moment to survey his pale, bare groin. His penis was a small tube raised on two well defined balls. The foreskin clasped a thicker glans leaving a neat little hole though which his purple sex skin could bud and his pee to shoot. Giving a troubled Boy my best warm and reassuring smile, I went on to scrutinise the sole of his right foot, on which he had been limping. The skin of the sole was reddish but didn't look damaged as such but, unused to walking any distance barefoot, Boy was feeling the scuffing and scrapes from the dusty paths we were keeping to.

"It'll toughen up soon, kid," I said to the troubled little face, as I chafed the soft, warm skin. "Look at mine." I raised my sole so he could see it. "Go on, feel it."

He did, gingerly, touching the ridged and horny skin at the heel. It was a little exciting to be touched by someone else, and my cock reared promptly in response. I wasn't embarrassed by it, he'd see a lot of my stiffie in future. Boy's eyes were now glued to the show between my legs.

"It's called a hard on, kid. All boys get them. Do you?"

Boy shrugged, and his hands began to stray to cover himself again. I took his right hand firmly and pulled it back. "Don't do that," I ordered. "Your cock is nothing to be ashamed of. It's there to enjoy." To his raised eyebrow, I replied. "You'll find out. It's natural." I let go his hand and sat up, draping my arms over my knees. Boy did the same. "We'll take a rest. It's a bit early to eat. In the meantime, I need to shit."

Shitting I've always found something of a pleasure. It was an event usually every two days when I was on the road. My stone age diet produced firm turds which dropped out cleanly, rather than curling wet coils.

"Here we go," I informed Boy. Dog's ears went up. Boy stared as I got up in a squat. My anus opened easily and two firm logs simply dropped out on the grass under me with thuds while my cock responded by relaxing and hosing the grass beneath me with a strong stream of urine.

"Mmm, that was good," I informed the staring child. Then I got on all fours and Dog did what I'd trained him to. He loved excrement, like all canines. His snout buried itself in my ass and his rough tongue licked around my anus, cleaning it of any remaining shit. Since it was still wide open after dropping the turds Dog's tongue was able to probe quite deep inside me.

"Oooh!" I sighed as my cock reared again with the erotic stimulus to my anal nerves. Dog carried on slathering up and down my taint, licking my balls for good measure. Usually I'd wank at this point, but I thought I'd taxed Boy enough for now. Kicking an over-eager Dog off, I moved away from my waste and, taking Boy's hand, led him further along the path and we sat under a wide and spreading oak where we watched Dog scoff down my shit pile.

"Dog'll probably want to do that with yours too, kid," I suggested. Boy stared over at the animal. "Dogs like crap of all sorts. If we ever come across a pile of droppings you gotta watch him. He'll roll in them like it was a shit bath, and he'll be noxious for days. I made sure he never did that with mine when he tried it, even if my turds don't smell too bad to me. Need to take a dump?"

Boy shook his head decidedly. I handed him the water bottle from my sack, and explained where we were headed. When our rest was over, and we got up he stood gingerly, his little face troubled.

"OK," I said, taking him under the armpits before he could object. I lifted him high over my head and settled him on my shoulders. He was no heavy burden, and I now had the interesting sensation of the warm skin of his inner thighs clasping my head, while his genitals were squashed into the back of my neck. I took him by his ankles and started off. He soon got comfortable, resting his forearms on my head. Boy had a nice smell, even though he clearly made little effort with hygiene. But his natural boy smell wasn't in any way offensive, despite being mingled with the scent of his dried urine. So, we walked on, and after a while Boy began humming to himself. It was touching.

I must have walked five miles with Boy on my shoulders, and eventually it got tiring with the weight of the sack too. So, in mid afternoon, I called a rest stop. Putting him down I told him to test his foot. The break from walking had done some good. He gave me his first smile when I asked him how it was. I'd stopped next to a small, clear lake. I waded in up to my dick and filled the plastic bottle, musing that I'd better find a second one for Boy's sake. I threw the bottle to shore and washed away the cheese that was always thick around my dickhead, scrubbed at my asshole and under my armpits.

Then I heard Dog growling and a sharp cry of "No!" from Boy. I sloshed out and found him squatting in some bushes and trying to ward off Dog, who was taking a great interest in the shit that was dropping out of his ass and snuffling to get closer. I called off Dog while Boy finished his business.

"On all fours," I ordered Boy. He shook his head firmly. The time had come to take him in hand. I got him by the scruff and forced him to adopt the position, his sharp shoulder blades pointed up and his anus exposed as his ass cheeks opened. The anus was still open from his dump, and I was surprised at how far.

"Here boy!" Dog rushed up wagging his tail and happily buried his snout in Boy's asshole. The child squirmed in my grip, but eventually the tonguing and slathering of his anus and genitals began to interest him despite himself.

"That's right, kid. Good, innit? Enjoy it. Fun time!" I encouraged him. He was quiet in my grip when Dog finally lost interest in his shithole.

"No! Down!" I said as Dog found another source of fascination with Boy. He made to spring on the child's back to mount him. I cuffed him off. Dog knew better. I'd been stern with him any time he tried to penetrate me after the tonguing.

Boy sat staring up at me. "Don't ever let him go too far, kid." I instructed him. "How was the tongue bath?" A tentative shrug was his reply. "From now on, it's a rule. Dog licks your asshole clean after you take a dump. It's his privilege." I led him down to the lake and told him to wade out and wash himself. "You do stink a bit, kid. OK, I know I do too. More than you probably. Go in the water and splash around."

I lay under a tree by the track side, the afternoon sun flickering through the leaves above me, resting my head on my sack. Lazy insects buzzed past above me; pigeons and doves softly cooed in the trees south of us, across an abandoned field, which was beginning to seed again as woodland. It was warm and I dozed off, which I would not normally do, for my world is not a safe one in more ways than one.

I started up, half dazed, as Dog gave a growl and then a sharp warning bark. I grabbed his snout and shushed him. I looked round. Boy had stretched out next to me and joined me in my nap. He blearily struggled to sit up. I put my finger to my lips. He blinked and nodded.

Far away, but not far away enough, came the sound of distant howling and barking. Dog growled again. When the human race had been overthrown, and declined in numbers to what it had been in its infancy, the biosphere naturally readjusted. Lush woodland was recolonising abandoned farms and fields, and other species had begun to rise to take our place. In my part of the world that meant the deer population surged and wild cattle and swine, descended from our former livestock, now roamed the woodlands. My father had heard reports of herds of horses being seen, I'd have liked to have seen them. There had to be predators in this new world and that vacancy had been taken by packs of feral dogs, growing increasingly wolvish, and alien from the domestic variety generation by generation.

"It's a wild dog pack," I told Boy, "some way off, but hopefully on the trail of something which'll distract them from us. Fuck. They usually only turn up around here in the winter." I stood and hauled Boy up beside me. "We need to move fast along this track, kid."

I began to stride out, trying to work out in which direction the pack was heading. Boy trotted after me, his little face anxious. It seemed he understood the danger. The track climbed a slope up from the lake, and at the top we met the remains of a tarmacked lane between overgrown hedges. "Good," I told Boy. "This gives us cover and the thing about lanes is that they lead somewhere. I don't recognise this one but sooner or later I'll get my bearings."

Boy was soon hobbling again, as the hard road cut into his soft little feet, so I swept him up on to my shoulders again. Dog was trained for this sort of crisis, as most remaining domestic dogs were. There was a reason they were bred large, muscular and tough. They were not simply pets any more. He padded ahead, his nose up and scenting the air.

"The thing is," I said to Boy, settling comfortably now into his warm seat, his hands around my forehead, "wild dogs are relentless once they're on the trail. But there are things that put them off. They don't like fire, unlike our Dog here. They're pretty dumb too. They're not patient enough to besiege human houses. And if worse comes to worst, you can climb trees to get away from a pack on the hunt, though the bastards hang around quite a while underneath as long as they can see you. There are other tricks I have too. So no need to worry, kid." Boy hugged my head in reply. I was quite touched. It appeared that despite my insisting he submit to Dog's ass-licking we were bonding. I stroked up and down his lower legs reassuringly and massaged his pretty little feet.

The road dipped up and down, and I realised we were getting into the hills in the north of my circuit. At the third hill I realised where we were. I had strayed into the farthest east of my little domain.

"Look!" I pointed over the treetops below us. "That's the old city. Ever seen it? No?"

Several towers reared up on the near horizon out of a wide jumble of fallen roofs and gutted walls. I had yet to go far within the ruins, but I was drawn to them. Who knows what you might find there? The problem was that it still had hostile inhabitants. It's where the wild dogs often holed up and ventured out from in winter. Maybe there were still humans there too. My father thought so. As if on cue there was an outbreak of baying and howling uncomfortably close. Fuck. We'd been scented. Dog growled and bared his teeth. That confirmed it for me.

I knew where we were now, fortunately. I picked up our pace fast enough that Boy began bouncing on my shoulders. Just down the hill was an ancient signpost pointing to a short overgrown lane. It said 'Dellchurch. Ancient Monument.' Father had made sure I was literate. I wondered absently if Boy was. At the end of the lane past an old gate was an overgrown churchyard and a small stone chapel. It was not one of my outposts but I'd used it for shelter in the past, for it was sound and a place to sleep over in safety. Another outbreak of barking broke out even closer. The fuckers were excited at the prospect of boy meat on their menu. I put Boy down in the church porch, and scanned the lane behind us. Skulking dark figures appeared under the trees. Boy clutched my waist, trembling. I caressed his messy blonde hair and grinned down at him. Then I gave the finger to the pack as it cautiously approached the churchyard gate.

"Fuck you, bitches!" I yelled. Then with a clank and clash, we all three were safe inside the church and a thick ancient door was between us and them.

I led Boy over to the nest I'd made last time I was there, quite undisturbed from when I'd left it. Dusty old church fabrics made for quite comfortable bedding, if musty. I pulled Boy down on my lap, and hugged him as the hunting pack ventured snarling into the porch and scratched at the door. A waste of time. Dog knew it too. He sat and scratched his ears, contemptuous of his murderous cousins outside. I put Boy down in the nest and went into the old vestry. I knew that the tap still worked, for its cistern was fed by rainwater. So I got a mug of water for Boy and pulled him back into my lap as he sipped it.

"OK, little one?" I asked. He nodded in reply. Then I surprised myself by kissing his messy hair and hugging him tight. He nestled into me and gave a sweet little sigh.

He stayed there as the light faded and the pack snuffled, scratched and snarled in the porch. Boy's hammering little heart slowed. As the sun went down, the pack gave up and went off looking for more vulnerable prey. The twilight was their preferred time to hunt and they weren't going to waste it, which made me wonder why they'd been out so early in the afternoon. I opened my sack and distributed jerky to Dog and dried fruit to Boy. They sat silently chewing as I went and took a piss in the most distant corner of the chapel. I wasn't going to risk it outside.

When Boy had shaken his head on being asked if he needed to pee, I lay down in the nest and pulled him into me, surrounding him with my body. Dog stretched out beside us, recognising the signs. Cuddling up to Boy's warm little body as the night fell was a new experience for me. Boy stiffened at first but soon relaxed into me.

"OK, little one?" I whispered into his perfect ear. He made a noise between a grunt and a sigh. I let my hands explore his chest and belly as we settled. It seemed he didn't mind, for he pushed his little bum back into my groin in response.

I knew what he was feeling. I'd shared father's bed and often I'd wake to find he'd removed his clothes, pushed down my pyjama bottoms and raised the top, and was caressing my nipples and belly, wanking me gently and kissing my neck. I never let on I was awake, enjoying his attentions silently and intrigued by the thick object that grew and rubbed along my ass crack until he gasped and I found my back all wet. He would wipe me off and then we'd be asleep. If nothing else, it taught me the enjoyment to be had from my little stalk of a cocklet.

Soon my hand reached to his groin and I took the little tube I found there between thumb and forefinger and began to manipulate it. It remained flaccid, but my own cock firmed up fast against Boy's lower back.

"Fuck," I murmured. I sat up, as did Boy next to me. "Gotta wank," I told him.

He sat cross-legged, staring wide-eyed as I gave him a ten-minute master class in masturbation. There was still light enough for him to have a chance to marvel at the fountain of white cum that blasted four arching spurts some distance on to the flagstones around our nest. Dog too sat up, shook his ears and padded over to lick up from the floor the spatter of my semen, another of his occasional treats.

I slumped back into the bedding and took time to recover from my high. Boy was still watching me as I invited him to resume his position. He nestled cautiously back into me, but he did not resist when I began masturbating him again. This time his little cock responded in the dark, and he began purring at what I assume was a new sensation for him as my fingers fondled the hardening little nail. I wet my index finger with saliva and teased the emerging bud of sex flesh, and that got an even more enthusiastic response as his little bottom pushed even harder back into my groin.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he murmured under his breath. Slowly he abandoned himself to the sensations, and he was twisting in my arms as he was hit by, what was likely, his first orgasm.

"Yes! Yes!" he cried out aloud as he shuddered and arched in my arms.

It took a while for his breathing to settle down and his body to relax. So Boy wasn't a mute, I though to myself as I subsided into sleep. He just didn't want to talk. I could guess why.

Chapter 2

I awoke as the dawn light filtered through the dusty windows of the chapel, as did Dog, who got up, shook himself and did a wide dog yawn, almost humanlike. He knew not to piss and shit indoors, and was soon scratching at the door to go out. Reluctantly, I abandoned the small and warm body that was still in my embrace when I woke, and settled him into the warm place I had occupied. He unconsciously burrowed down into it. Boy slept on.

Since Dog was happy to go out, I was pretty sure that last night's predators were long gone. I stood in the porch as he sniffed around the churchyard, cocked his leg against a mossy gravestone, sniffed around some more and then did a shit, scratching grass and soil over it with his back legs as he turned away. It was an ancient canine reflex, the point of which I could these days see. Dog wouldn't have shat if he hadn't been sure there was no danger, so I squatted out on the path and dropped my morning turds. I put my ass up and soon was enjoying Dog's devoted attentions to my anus and taint. This time I wanked myself while I enjoyed the sensation in my ass, and had a thick mess of cum on my hand when I turned to see Boy watching me from the porch. I grinned, held up my hand to show him and winked, and to my pleasure, I was answered in kind with an exaggerated boy wink and a little grin.

I went over to him, and pulled him down next to me on the stone bench inside the porch. I showed him my emission.

"This is cum," I told him. "Big boys squirt it out of their cocks, but little boys don't. So there's nothing wrong with you when nothing comes out of yours. It will eventually when you're bigger. Want a taste?" Boy shook his head decidedly. I grinned and licked at the slime, and then held out my hand for Dog to finish off.

"Go and have your shit." I told Boy. He frowned, but made a faint shrug and then squatted in a space between two tombstones. Catching my eye he obediently put his bum in the air and submitted to Dog's enthusiastic attentions, making sure to scoot out from under him and stand, before Dog could try to mount him.

I got my sack and investigated the food packs Boy had contributed. There was a very welcome bag of sugar and some biscuit, stale but still edible. I wondered where he or his former carer had found that. Maybe it was home-made. I also checked the photo. It was Boy with a young couple, who had to have been his parents. Since Boy was maybe eight years at the time it was taken, his parents must have died in the last plague, and he might have been alone in that farmhouse for a while. I wondered how he had dealt with the bodies. Maybe one had survived long enough to bury the first to go. Probably Boy had shut up the other in the room where he or she had died and then did his best to survive in the rest of the house. Poor little kid. His dad or mum rotting away in the family bed upstairs. I was glad I hadn't gone to look. I could see why he was no longer that keen to speak.

He was still sitting out in the sunlit porch as I brought him his breakfast. I knelt between his thin legs as he was scoffing biscuit.

"Want more fun?" I asked.

The grin appeared again, so I introduced him to fellatio, a development he met with decided enthusiasm. He tensed and his legs straightened, his little toes curling, as I took him in my mouth and began massaging his cock and cock head with my tongue. It was the first time I'd done it to anyone else. But one night, in the boredom of last winter, I'd managed to bend enough to suck my own cock head into my mouth. It hadn't been a very successful experiment, but I imagined having someone else do it to me would be a lot more fun. Boy confirmed that by his reactions.

I spent the next twenty minutes or so lavishing attention on his stiff purple-headed spike, which when fully erect stood up a very straight three inches [7.5 cm], angled diagonally away from his groin. His immature penis was fascinating to me. Every now and again I took it out of my mouth and made him lift his legs. I sucked his small nuts and licked his wrinkled brown anus, still wet with dog saliva. It was open enough to get the tip of my tongue inside and tease his sphincter. That was something he definitely liked. He giggled, squirmed and cooed in response to my ministrations. It took a while for him to build up to his orgasm, which happened when I switched to wanking him fast between thumb and forefinger. His bum lifted, and as I let it go, his cock definitely twitched and pulsed. Breathing heavily, Boy slumped back on the bench.

I scrutinised his cock. "Well, look at that, Boy! You've made a little cum." The cock head was wet with something thicker and filmier than my saliva. "Really! See? You're a growing kid."

Boy stared down wide-eyed at his member.

Later on I'd see if he had been taking notes about what I'd done to him, because I intended him to be my very own cocksucker. The idea of that little pink mouth wrapped round my own cock head made me very hard once more.

But it was time to get on. I was still hanging long and thick as we left the churchyard. I wanked myself to keep it hard as we walked back up the lane, and was amused to see from the corner of my eye Boy doing the same to himself as he walked by my side, idly feeling himself. We were getting on to the same frequency sexually, so it seemed. He'd discovered the greatest pleasure nature provided for a boy and I doubted that his hand would ever be long away from his cock from now onwards.

"We're heading to Outpost East," I told him as we reached the head of the lane. "That's my base in these parts, and about two hours walk for you, kid. How're your sore little feet?"

Astonishingly he replied, if hesitantly, and said his first words directed at me. "O…kay." It was a sweet little piping voice, and set off some odd feelings in my gut.

"Good," I responded briskly. "If it gets bad, I'll just put you on my shoulders again. You liked that, didn't you?" He smiled and nodded. Then I looked closer at his body now we were in full sunlight on the old road. His hair had grown well below his nape, but where they were exposed his shoulders were now an angry red. I pressed the right one at his collar bone and the skin where I had, was white, when I took my finger away. Shit. I should have remembered from my own experience.

"Did that sting?" I asked.

"A little," he replied.

"You got sunburn, Boy. Sorry, I should have thought. Your lower back, your bum and the front and back of your legs are red too. It's going to be uncomfortable for you, for a week maybe, before you peel and the skin grows back brown. Do you want to be brown like me?'

He nodded, paused and then observed under his own volition.

"Even your … willie … is dark brown. Only under your feet is pink. I saw it."

"In a couple of months you'll be as brown as me, you'll see Boy. And your soles will be as tough as mine. Then we'll both be proper hunter-gatherers. OK?" A firm nod was his reply. It seemed I had a convert to my stone age life.

***

Outpost East was a large but well-hidden cottage I had, by great good luck, found the very next day after I quit my desolate and haunted home village, and struck out on my own. I had been anxious to get as far from it as I possibly could that day. I made quite a distance before I could go no further. It was a very long way for a thirteen-year-old to walk.

I had headed in the general direction of the city, for reasons I can't now recall. Outpost East was at the point where I knew I couldn't go any further that day, over twenty miles from where I started, the home to which I had not returned since.

The cottage became the most valuable of my four eventual nominated outposts. I kept stores or food reserves in all my outposts, but East was for me the key one. It had a large orchard adjacent and a brick-walled garden with pear trees trained against the sunnier sides. Its outhouses had several barrels, in which I stored the fallen apples and pears. It had been a big harvest. Fruit trees thrived in the modern climate.

There was also a potato patch gone wild, which I knew enough from my father to get back into some sort of cultivation when I first found the place. So, by the first summer's end I was pretty well stocked up for the winter, and Outpost East was where I had spent it. Its late owners had left a lot of books behind them, and I spent the winter browsing the ones on gardening.

In spring, I had begun a recovery programme in the overgrown vegetable patch. Beans seem to have been a failure, but root crops appeared to be shooting up in the lines I'd planted and banked.

In the end, we stayed two weeks at Outpost East as Boy reddened, peeled and emerged as a healthily brown boy, his little toenails and his pretty cock head lighter than the skin surrounding them. His wild shock of hair became more or less white as the sun bleached it.

He proved to be an enthusiast both giving and taking oral sex, though the first time he had been a little reluctant. I made him kneel between my thighs and introduced him to his big new friend and got him to feel the length, then stroke it.

The piss slit at the tip of my glans was quite a large one, large enough to push the tip of my pinkie finger a little way inside it. I could make it open wide like a mouth by squeezing it. So as he was staring close up at it I made a squeeze with my fist and said in a funny high voice without opening my lips.

"Hullo! I'm Big Fat Cock! Who are you?"

Boy's jaw dropped and then he burst into laughter. When he got control of himself, I repeated the charade, and between giggles he got up close to my cock and replied

"I'm a boy!" Then he was incoherent with laughter again.

The odd conversation continued, and Big Fat Cock gave Boy some very good tips about fellatio. Pretty soon, my erection was in his two-handed grip and the glans was inside his mouth, where I got him to swirl his tongue around the very sensitive ridge. His pointed little tongue was actually capable of pushing some way down the slit, a feeling which made my asshole tingle and my erection rear. My cock wept copiously with precum as a result, and as soon he tasted the salty excretion he removed my glans from his mouth and stared questioningly at my member.

"Don't let me go!" I made the ventriloqual penis wail. "Look! You made me cry."

A squeeze from my fist got a pulse of clear fluid to appear and run down the length. Boy was persuaded to lick it off, and then he got back to business. It took a few sessions, but in a couple of days I was looking at the awesome sight of my thick brown member disappear deep into Boy's sweet little mouth, so far in the end that his nose was pressed into the skin behind my pubic bush. I came hard in his mouth the second time, so hard that he coughed it up and my sperm jetted out of his nostrils, like snot. Fortunately he found it all very funny. By the end of the first week he'd suck me without prompting, and he especially liked doing it kneeling on the grass in daylight as I stood in the open air, playing with himself as he did it.

When I asked why he liked it so much, he smiled shyly and said "Dirty!"

'Being dirty' was our big game. When we cuddled before we slept I'd murmur the filthiest words I knew to him as I played with his cocklet, his nipples or even pulled back his legs and tickled his bumhole, all of which he would happily permit.

"Mmm … suck my sweet pink little titties," whispered in his little shell of an ear would send him into paroxysms of giggles. They were very sensitive in him by the way, though I have no idea if that's normal for a boy of ten or eleven. I've had sex with enough of them since to think it isn't. He'd try to squirm away when I sucked or tweaked on them, so it was usually done with him pinned down under me screaming with laughter and struggling to escape.

The climax of the Dirty Game came after two weeks at Outpost East. I went off for an afternoon shit in the designated corner of the overgrown garden, and having dropped my turds in the hole dug for the purpose, I realised that I'd been followed by Boy, not Dog. He was in a dangerously playful mood. He was crawling towards me on all fours, bum high.

"Woof! Woof!" he barked and growled, sniffing the air in quite a good imitation of Dog.

"I'm Dog," he told me, unnecessarily. I stuck my ass out.

"Clean me up, Dog!" I instructed, wondering how far the game would go. He crept closer and sniffed my anus. Then he astonished me. He licked my buttocks and slowly nosed closer to the heart of darkness.

"Mmmm … Dog eats Man's poo," the child growled and to my astonishment engaged with my anus with his angelic little mouth and pink worm of a tongue. He was at my asshole for a good five minutes as I flogged my cock, and I could feel his tongue swiping my inner flesh. I spurted on the ground well before I wanted to, I just couldn't keep back.

"That was super dirty," I told him as we hugged. I stood and lifted him upside down by both ankles, separated his legs and gave his own anus a good licking as a repayment, while he laughed and thrashed around, me finding the scent of boy sweat and the gritty bitterness of the traces of his shit around his rim so exciting. My cock was as hard as ever I could remember it, straining in a curve upwards from my bush and glistening with runnels of precum that ran down to soak my hairy balls.

***

Slowly Boy distanced himself from whatever trauma had silenced him and settled into the new security of being my plaything and little brother. He would follow me around chatting fitfully about the garden, the plants and the birds singing overhead or anything really, and otherwise singing to his little self, picking his nose, scratching his increasingly brown little butt and as often as not masturbating openly with his favourite and only toy, though not often climaxing unaided. For that, he usually needed 'Man'. Me, that is.

He would piss wherever he was outdoors without holding himself and squat and drop shit out of his asshole as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which of course, it is. In other words, he took me as the model for his new life.

He was still not sure about Dog, though after the encounter with the wild pack he realised how important to us Dog was. He no longer resisted Dog's right and due, and stuck his ass up after a shit without a thought if Dog was in the vicinity. Perhaps he got too resigned to it.

The day before I had decided we would travel up to Outpost North I was in the outhouse doing an inventory of supplies. Suddenly there was a piercing yell from ouside. Heart hammering I ran to the door and looked around for Boy, of whom there was no immediate sign, but his sobbing wail came from beyond the vegetable garden, where the midden was and repeated cries of, "Bad doggie! Get off me!"

I loped over and found the pair of them on a grass patch. Dog was not just on Boy's back, he was in the throes of successfully penetrating him, his back legs in a frantic tremble, as he forced his cock up through the child's turd-opened anus, which he must have been tonguing before developing further ambitions. His front legs were planted on either side of Boy. Dog's weight and power would not be gainsaid. Boy was pinned under him. So I just stood and stared. Separating them would probably do more damage than not. So I sat my butt down near them and shook my head.

"Get him off me Man! He's hurting me!" Boy wailed at me, his cheeks red and wet with tears.

I reached over and caressed his face as his little body shook with the powerful thrusts that were stuffing Dog's purple balloon of a cock into a sphincter not meant to accommodate such a size.

"It'll be over soon, kid," was all I could say. I looked under his belly and saw the worst. A big bulb of flesh was in the process of stretching Boy's anus even further under the remorseless pressure of Dog's thrusts.

Then with a scream from Boy, it was sucked inside him. He sobbed and wailed with despair. I stroked his lower belly above his hanging cocklet and could feel the big knot inside pressing it outwards in a lump.

Dog went still, his red tongue lolling out and dripping saliva on the child's hair below him. It was obvious to me from his movements he was spurting hard up inside Boy. I thought they would separate once Dog had ejaculated, but not so it seemed. Once he'd bred the child he lost interest in him and turned so he and Boy were ass to ass. I think he was still cumming at that point. Boy wailed again as the swollen ball of cock twisted inside his squelching sphincter, then Dog tugged at him testing the tie between them. Boy yelped but had no choice other than to crawl backwards as he was dragged by his lower gut across the grass. I began to get concerned. What if Dog pulled Boy inside out? I grabbed the animal by the neck and held him still, rubbing Boy's lower back and trying to soothe the sobbing child.

It was a long time before Dog's cock fell out of Boy, which it did in a sudden slither and a cataract of sperm. The child had long subsided by the time it did, as I cradled him in my arms. I was quite impressed that Boy had the spirit before they separated to reach back and smack Dog hard on his hairy rump.

"Bad doggie!" he said sternly.

Dog appeared to me to give the canine equivalent of a shrug. He'd got what he wanted and what I'd never allow him.

"Let Man see your asshole, Boy," I said.

He snuffled and displayed his ass for me. His wet anus was still open, and a stream of dog cum had coursed down both thighs. His taint and buttocks were red with the friction of a hard fucking and there was some dark bruising around the crater of his anus.

"I have to feel up inside you, OK kid?" I got a cautious nod. I could easily fit two fingers inside his gaping asshole. He didn't resist me, just squirmed a little as I felt around. The fingers came out wet but with only some few streaks of blood evident. They came from where his anal muscle had been stretched too far, abraded and split.

I cradled the child and kissed his damp hair. "You'll be alright, little one," I soothed. "He's not done any permanent damage to you." I picked him up and carried him back into the outhouse, where there was a metal sink with a working tap, and I ran it full. Then I sat him in the sink where his pulverised asshole seemed to get relief from the chill of the water.

"It'll be better in a couple of days, don't you worry, and then we're going back on the road."

***

It was two days before I was confident about leaving for Outpost North, even though I had business there. I wanted to be sure Boy was fit for it. Inspecting his anus became a frequent thing. I found ways of making him want it. I made a medical performance of it, sitting out in the sunlit garden.

"You see, Boy," I said seriously. "Your bumhole needs a lot of attention before we can leave."

I invented spit therapy. I put him across my thighs bum upwards, hawked copiously on his torn ring, spread my saliva round the crater and massaged it in, assuring him that it'd help the cure. Coupling it with long sessions of masturbation was another part of the therapy. You see, watching Dog fuck his little bitch had given me quite an erotic charge, and I was coming to the conclusion that mine ought to be the next cock inside Boy's ass. Mine was hard under him as I imagined what it would be like to penetrate that slim and beautiful little body. So I teased his anal ring and made a much closer acquaintance with his entry point. I discovered that whatever he felt about being fucked, he adored it when I lightly stroked his small tight buttocks as well as massaging his hole while tugging at his cocklet with my other hand. He shuddered and arched in orgasm three times one after another, the second afternoon of 'spit therapy' and protested when I stopped.

On the third day after his dog rape, Boy managed a shit without whimpering. I roughed up his mane of hair as he smiled up at me from his squat.

"Ready to go, kid?" I got a nod in reply. I had my shoulder sack. I looked around. I didn't lock up the outpost, for I didn't have much fear it would be pillaged in my absences. I just made sure animals and birds couldn't get inside.

Then we were off on my perpetual circuit, keeping as usual to the paths and tracks I knew so well now. It was ten easy miles to Outpost North, and I didn't push the pace. Boy's little feet had toughened in the past couple of weeks, but I didn't want to put too much strain on him, and ten miles was a lot more for him than for me. So, we ambled under the trees, the sun warming our brown backs and butts. Boy pulled a stick from a hedgerow and amused himself by swatting at nettles as we walked.

"Man?" he said in his sweet high voice.

"Yes, my little one?"

"What's at this North place?"

This was the first evidence of his curiosity at the organisation of my little world.

"It's up in the hills. There. The ones you can see through those trees. You like the jerky strips don't you? Well, that's where I make them. We're going hunting."

The track we were following began to rise, and we were now between hills. The trees thinned and the terrain gave way to grass and heathland. Dog lifted up his snout and sniffed. He recognised where we were. I led Boy up a path off the track which climbed to the top of a bare hill on our left. He huffed and puffed as he struggled up the last stretch, but he stood, jaw slack at the wide prospect we now had.

It was cooler up there than in the sultry fields and lanes below, and a breeze caused our hair to blow backwards. I squatted down next to Boy and put my arm round his waist. I pointed out for him the distant glint of the sea far to the south, and the approximate location of Outpost East, though it couldn't be seen from where we were. Boy was impressed at the distance we'd come. I got him to show me his soles, and they were a little scuffed but the skin had thickened and toughened, so he didn't complain at any pain. It was his legs which were weary. He noticed and identified the distant towers of the abandoned city, and I was pleased that he was showing some familiarity with his new homeland.

We lay back on the turf as we rested, and after a while he turned on his tummy, pulling his buttocks apart for his 'therapy'. I spat copiously into his crater and began a massage around his ring. He cooed under the treatment. I spat a lot more saliva into it, and began to put some pressure on his hole. There was give now in his relaxed anus, and I got the tip of my forefinger inside him. He seemed OK about the intrusion. I kept up the pressure and I had it in to the second knuckle feeling about the spongy interior before he lazily protested. I stroked my finger gently in an out for a while, and his dozy complaints subsided. I think he dropped off. I lay back for a while looking up at the hot blue sky. There was a brassiness to it that I didn't like. Eventually I slapped Boy's bum lightly.

"Time to go, angel! Still a couple more miles, and I think a storm's coming."

The sky began to darken as we came back down into the valley and followed its course north. The heavens opened and Boy got a lesson why we were living naked. Torrents beat down on us from the grey sky and ran off our skin. Our hair was plastered to our skulls and backs. The path below us was soon ankle deep with muddy water. Dog trudged behind us, head down and unhappy, but I stood in the deluge, arms extended, and whooped as my body was battered by the first burst of the storm. Boy stared at my performance. I grinned at him, took him by the hand and walked him onwards.

"Cold!" he shouted up at me through the storm.

Indeed his smaller body was shivering in the deluge. So I picked him up. He clasped me with his arms round my neck and his legs round my waist, burying his head in the space between jaw and collar bone, getting some warmth and protection as I pulled him into me.

And on we walked.

"Gotta wee," Boy said after a while.

"So pee," I replied, and he let loose his own warm, yellow torrent between us, down my belly and legs, washed away rapidly by nature's greater flood.

The rain barely slackened and was still pouring down when we finally reached my northern base. It was a well-built stone barn and cottage, both with sound slate roofs, all concealed within a small conifer wood in the valley bottom. It was above a mountain stream, foaming and gushing now in the storm as it rushed though the wood down into the valley.

It was a relief to get out of the rain drumming down on my head. I put down Boy, as the water dripped off us and pooled round my feet on the stone flags. I pushed the soaking hair out of my eyes, and did the same for Boy. Dog just shook himself and sprayed the whole room.

I sat Boy down in my bed nest, and chafed him with the bedding. The wetness never bothered me much, but it occurred to me his little body was maybe more vulnerable to cold. So, I lit a wood fire in the hearth with the materials I kept stacked ready and soon there was a good blaze going.

Dog very much approved and he adopted his winter mode, stretched out with his belly towards the heat, tongue lolling. Soon Boy was there too, sitting in my lap basking in the warmth.

"I like this place," he pronounced. His cocklet was as usual hard and jutting upward. He sighed happily as I began wanking him.

"Rub my little pink titties too, Man," he demanded.

I laughed and told him to say please.

The storm carried on for longer than I expected. So, I had to put off business till the next morning. Business was to begin the training of Boy as a hunter-gatherer. I still intended to take him west, and give him the opportunity to join the settlements there, but if he stayed with me, even little boys had to contribute to the tribe, and it was time to discover what Boy could offer to our small tribe, other than a willing mouth and hopefully available bumhole, important though these had become to me.

The next morning, we went out to take a shit together, and I put my ass high for Dog to have his usual treat. Boy had terminated that privilege for Dog after he took an opportunity for an unlicensed fuck. I wanked myself while Dog went at it as usual, and Boy squirmed underneath me to suck down the result. He had got the idea that my cum was good for him. Perhaps it was. What I loved was to see his pretty little mouth spattered with my sperm, with his little tongue scooping it off. That morning, for the first time, I took Dog's place and ate out Boy's gritty asshole. But, I had to slap his bum sharply when he had the nerve to call me 'Dog Man' and giggle over it.

It was a sticky and muggy morning after yesterday's tropical deluge, the sort of morning that made human clothing a really stupid idea. Steam rose and curled off the sunlit roofs of the outpost. I took Boy into the cottage and introduced him to some new equipment I kept there.

One of the few things I has taken away from my home village with me was my father's crossbow.

"Not for you to play with," I told Boy sternly, "or not till you're a bit older."

I showed him how it was loaded, how to sight it and eventually how it fired. He whooped when I fired a bolt at the barn door, which, as the saying goes, was hard to miss. I sent him to recover the bolt buried in the door, which he did with a struggle.

"Now, kid," I said, "you need a travel sack since we're a tribe and have things to carry, and this is how us tribesmen do it." I produced a small canvas bag on a sling, which I had used myself for a while before I found I needed a bigger one for my travels.

Boy was delighted at the gift, and beamed as he slung it round his neck. I placed a sheaf of bolts inside it, that and a large knife, some wire and sticks. Then, shouldering my bow, I led Boy out of the trees and down the stream a way.

I pointed out a hill side covered in gorse bushes between which were a large number of dark scrapes.

"Here you are," I said. "Bunny city."

Then I gave him a lesson in how to make and set rabbit snares in the trees along the stream banks. It was a thing I'd been doing for my father since I'd been nine years old, and if Boy stayed with me, it would be his job.

We climbed up the valley side and sat on the ridge above Outpost North. The view was clouded with thick haze and mist but the air was a bit fresher up there. Dog went off sniffing out along the ridge; he knew why we were there. Eventually he found what we were looking for and gave a signal bark. I told Boy to keep it quiet. We crept up to where Dog was standing in a patch of ferns, looking back over his shoulder, tongue out and tail wagging.

I pulled Boy down beside me in the ferns. I pointed. A herd of deer were at a distance on the ridgeline.

"That's where jerky comes from, kid. We're here to make some more."

"You're good luck, Boy!" I beamed at him an hour later.

"Usually it takes a couple of days to make a kill."

Boy was looking curiously and uncertainly at a dead fat doe, already bled out with a slash to her throat. I'd laid her on her side and scooped out a trench alongside her belly.

"Sit over there and watch, Boy. If you don't like it, just walk away."

I took my sharp skinning knife and opened the belly. The animal's guts slid steaming into the trench without much encouragement and I quickly slit them free. My father had made quite an efficient butcher of me.

After that, I made quick work of trimming the carcass, and as I finished I looked up to find Boy still sitting watching, eyes wide. So was an eager Dog, waiting his turn at the remains, as also were a gathering crowd of vocal crows. I clicked my bloodied fingers at Dog and he happily jumped in after the choicer organs. I let him gorge himself for five minutes, then hoisted the headless carcass on my shoulders and walked off back to the outpost, to be relucantly followed by Dog.

Boy was quiet on the way back to base, still taking in what he'd seen I'd guess. He had a lot more to see and listen to that afternoon. After washing myself, I skinned the carcass, jointed it and then began the long process of cutting strips of meat, rolling them in a salt tray and hanging them on racks to dry in an outhouse. He tried to help, which was good.

Tomorrow I'd begin the smoking of the meat and before we moved on we'd have more than a months-worth of dried meat in store.

Boy's job was to resharpen the knife, while I spitted a joint for our dinner over the cottage's hearth.

Whatever he may have thought about the process of getting it, Boy wolfed down the venison, following which he lay back and gave several theatrical burps, while Dog worried and cracked at the bones he was given.

Before sleep, we went out in the cool of the evening to check the snares, but found no rabbits had been dumb enough to run into them. The sun was going down over the shoulder of the hills as we got back to the cottage door.

Before nature turned the lights off, I decided on a new tactic with Boy. I suggested a variant of 'spit therapy', got him on his back with his legs back to his chest and thickly lathered his anus and my fingers with the copious grease from the roast.

"Tell me how this feels?" I asked and began work on his hole.

With great ease my middle finger now slid deep into him, and I could feel around his warm and soft insides. Boy's eyes widened as I felt and pressed some sort of nubbin inside him, right behind his cock, which reared straight up in obvious response to the stimulus.

"Nice?" I asked.

He nodded and adopted a preoccupied look. I carried on massaging the nubbin and was intrigued to see wetness pulse out onto his swollen glans. This was quite a discovery. Boy's little fingers would soon be repeating the experiment on me, I decided. I only hoped they'd be long enough to reach in me whatever it was I'd just found in him. But the main job was to find how flexible his ring was. Enough to get two fingers inside him without strain it turned out, and I found some give yet in his anus, enough to believe that fucking his little ass was a possibility, with care.

"One last thing, angel," I said. "I'm going to squeeze some of my special love juice on to your bumhole, to help make it better."

My cock was already weeping, and I placed it at his slightly open anus, fisted a spurt out of it and massaged the precum into his anal lips.

"'Nice?" He nodded in reply.

Then I couldn't any longer resist, raising myself on my arms on either side of him and placing my cock head at his upturned entrance.

"Let me squeeze some more juice into you, angel," I whispered.

I pushed, and my shining head actually squashed some way up into him, though not as far as the flange. I thought if I really put some pressure on him, it might well slip all the way into him at this point. But eager though I was to do it, I had rather he knew I was going to do it first. Instead I stooped down and kissed his soft lips. I'd not ever kissed anyone on the mouth before, but it seemed very right in the situation, and as I clumsily massaged his lips with mine I was rewarded by the awesome experience of my tongue slipping into his wet, warm mouth. It was so erotic I almost came into his crack. It became our big new thing for the next week. Boy loved doing it as much as I did, as it turned out.

***

A promise was a promise, so eight days later, Boy, Dog and I were making our way cautiously along a path in a wood big enough to call a forest, miles beyond the western edge of my circuit, over thirty miles from Outpost North.

I was navigating by the 150-foot tower of a hilltop radio mast near the foot of which I knew was the nearest human settlement to my little realm. You could actually see the mast in the far distance from my old home village, many miles to the north of where we now were. I knew it was a 'radio mast' because that was what my village called it, though I can't recall anyone ever explaining to me what it was or had been, or what it might have done. I still don't know.

Apart from a distant yelping of a dog pack just after we started our trek, the journey had been trouble free, though we'd run into a large herd of wild swine yesterday. But, if you didn't bother them they'd leave you alone, I had learned. The closer we got to the human settlements, the less likely we were to encounter predators or grazing herds. Humanity's grim reputation still lingered among the species memory of the wild animal population.

Eventually the trees thinned and all of a sudden the mast reared up quite close on its hill. I paused at a rickety ancient fence and sagging gate and surveyed the landscape, looking for signs of human activity. I spotted a rotating windmill about half a mile away, and pointed it out to Boy.

"That'll be a settlement of people," I said putting my hand on his shoulder.

"We're going to get closer and see, then I'm going to leave you to walk the rest of the way, OK?"

The closer we got the less keen I was about delivering Boy to the adults personally. The solitary independent life suited me and one thing I remembered about human adults is that they expect to be in control. Boy was a child and needed the care, but I most certainly did not. I may have only seen fifteen summers, but I was a hunter and warrior in full control of my own life and world. Independent I may have been, but when I contemplated watching Boy's little brown butt walking off towards strangers, a gulf opened up inside my stomach. But a promise was a promise.

The sound of a distant voice calling brought me up short. Across a cultivated field of vegetables was a brick house. It was occupied, as a coil of blue smoke rose from its chimney. This was it.

"Now angel," I said, "across that patch are people who'll take care of you. Do me a favour and don't tell them anything about me and our … my … outposts. Off you go."

Then my heart brimmed over as I held and squeezed his bum and gave him a push towards the house. Tears misted my eyes. I couldn't watch him walk away, and clicking to Dog turned and headed back the way we'd come. Dog on the other hand gave a puzzled look up at me and several backward glances.

Heavy of heart I re-entered the western forest, took a seat on a fallen tree and found my water bottle. And as I took a swig a small figure dawdled into view. Boy. He hesitated when he saw he'd been spotted, uncertain as to his reception. The uncertainly was soon dispelled as I opened my arms and he ran and leapt into them, kissing me frantically, we fell to the ground as I hugged and caressed his slim little body.

When I broke off he said in my ear.

"I didn't want to go to them people, Man. I'm your Boy. I want to be with you for ever and ever.'"

I laughed.

"That, and play the Dirty game all day long, yes?"

He gurgled and chuckled.

"Let's be dirty," he pleaded.

Nothing like the present I thought. I draped him stomach down over the fallen tree trunk, and got to work on his anus. He had learned to relax it under the 'therapy' he'd been getting, and it didn't take long before I had two fingers inside him, aided by copious saliva.

"Now angel, we're going to do the dirtiest thing. I'm going to put my cock in you, but not like Dog did. I'm going to fuck my little angel the way he should be fucked. Do you want me to?"

"Oh yes, Man!" he said.

I squeezed out precum and slicked my cock with the result. It was more rigid than I could remember as I set its shining curve at his bumhole. Pushing with its hardness popped the wet cock head inside him.

He gasped and shifted under me as he felt the first intrusion. I had daydreamed about how this would play out. As I covered him, I said in his little ear, "Push back on my cock, angel, and take it inside you."

So he did, and with some grunting and one or two gasps I eventually found myself embedded in his butt up to my bush, my hanging balls draped down his taint. Awesome was not in it. And as I slowly began the fucking motion, he began to enjoy himself, moaning and sighing as he lost his virginity to my thrusting in that clearing under a canopy of rustling leaves.

Man and Boy joined together in an act of abandoned passion that would be repeated to our endless satisfaction and the beginning of new life for both of us and, as it happened, a new chapter in human history.

Chapter 3

My Boy returned to Outpost East triumphantly, a string of rabbits dangling from his hand. I gave him a cheery wave from the vegetable garden. This was a Boy who was no longer my little angel, though in the heat of fucking him I'd still call him that, and in some moods he liked me to do it.

Puberty had arrived and now in his thirteenth year Boy's active life was adding muscle to his arms, shoulders and legs. He was up to my nose in height. His ridged belly and high pectorals were perfection itself. He was a flawlessly beautiful young male animal. His huge mane of white-blond hair was bright against his dark brown skin. He had no beard and for some reason I didn't think he ever would have much of one. There was also still no more than a hint of pubic fuzz above his large dick, already proportionally longer than mine. I on the other hand had begun scraping away with my knife at my chin and upper lip. Boy otherwise complained about my beard's scratchiness when I fucked him face to face. It was our favourite position as he moaned out his ecstasy, his knees back to his chest, clasping me with his arms and legs and gnawing away at my nipples in his raging passion for the thick cock plunging in and out of his hole.

Winter had turned to spring, and though we had survived well enough it had brought up questions. As we picked at our spit-roasted rabbit that evening I announced that we were on the move.

Boy perked up. "North again, Chief?" He'd stopped calling me Man when he had decided that we were a tribe and since he was well on the way to being a man himself now, I was promoted to Chief Man, or just the Chief. He was the Warrior, and Dog was just Dog, the lowliest of the tribe, as he said. He still kept a grudge against our poor loyal Dog.

"Not this time. It's time to get a bit more adventurous. You're growing and we need to do some scavenging for things we could have done with last winter."

"Like what, Chief?"

"A bow of your own, for one thing."

"Really? You know where we can get one? Couldn't we make one?"

"I guess we could, but for firepower, we need the ones made in the Olden Days, so much better than a stick and some string. As for where we might get one, we'll need to scavenge Seatown and the City."

Boy punched the air with joy. "At last!"

I grunted. He might well be delighted, but I at least knew the dangers involved. So, we geared up carefully for our foray the next morning. Checking the stores were secure, we took the twelve-mile [c 19.5 km] trail for Outpost South.

It was not a supply base like East and North, just a way station, a roadside cottage on the hill above Seatown. But it had a hearth and a functioning water supply. I had done some salvaging there in the past, and it had a store of materials I'd found.

After we had entered and checked the place, Boy slumped into my nest and stretched, absently fondling his perpetual erection.

I looked over the stores and extracted two pairs of flipflops, dropping one with a slap on Boy's flat brown belly. He looked a question.

"You'll find out, Boy. You've never yet been in one of the old towns, and when you do these are essential, as I discovered."

After a rest, we took up our sacks and left for the downhill walk into the town. I had shouldered my crossbow and he had a makeshift lance in hand, a metal pole to which was stoutly fixed a long knife as a blade.

"This is weird!" Boy remarked when he paused at the roadside and slotted footwear on wide splayed feet that had not known any for two years.

"Aagh! They're so annoying," he added when he started walking in them.

"They're not safe, honestly Chief. They'll have me over."

The view of the straight horizon of twinkling blue sea distracted him from his complaints.

"Nobody lives here do they?" Boy asked as we began to get among the houses.

"Maybe, but if so, they're only passing through like us. This place was abandoned back when my parents were kids, some time after the old City was deserted. So my father said. Up till then, there were quite a few people here still, refugees from the Great Plague. Maybe they thought towns by the sea were healthier. But, the second pandemic came through here like a storm. It was the one which wiped out whole families in the space of a day. Not like the third one which only killed adults … like my father."

Boy caught my eye, then looked away quickly. It was unspoken that his own adults had probably died because of that same outbreak. He'd never yet talked of what happened in that isolated farmhouse before I found him. His privilege in my opinion.

I carried on. "Anyway, the result was that people dropped in the streets where they stood and its population went down to zero in the space of a week. The good thing for us is that the place has been empty ever since, and there really was nobody left to salvage or loot it, so there are things to find. The bad thing is that the wild dogs then found a great supply of carrion just lying about, and though that's long gone, this town is still part of what they regard as their territory. Which is why I don't come here unless I have to. No point looking for trouble. That right Dog?" Dog sniffed the air. He was on high alert.

Seatown had what must have been a commercial street running behind the seafront buildings. Over the years the weather had rapidly brought the buildings into decay, and many of the shop fronts had collapsed. The roadway was as a result scattered with shards of shattered glass. Boy quirked an eyebrow.

"So that's why the shoes," he observed.

"These were called flip-flops or sandals," I corrected him. It was the only sort of schooling Boy ever got. I never tried to educate him in letters or in anything other than survival and sex, in both of which he was an avid student. I had my reasons for the course of study, as maybe I'll explain.

"It's why I tied Dog up at the street end," I replied. "No point in him getting his pads carved up." I looked around us.

"There's not much here for us, I think. This road had food shops and others selling rubbish stuff I can't see the point of or any use for. But I may have missed things, things that can be used as weapons maybe. I was in a hurry the only time I gave this road a proper search, and Dog was nervous that day. There were fresh wild dog droppings everywhere."

We began poking around, disappearing into doorways or through smashed shopfronts, calling out to each other from time to time. I took the sunlit north side and Boy the south side towards the sea. As I was about to give up, I heard his throaty bellow.

His voice had changed last year after his balls had swelled and dropped in their sac and his cock had thickened and lengthened, almost overnight it seemed to me. Now he sounded more like a man than a boy when he yelled out. I was in the fortunate position of being able to explain puberty and adolescence to him. I had felt that human anatomy was an important thing for me to know about so I'd made a point of reading it up, and I'd observed closely its effect on me. Boy as a result had a peculiarly extensive command of technical terms relating to his genitals and male sex acts.

I looked out into the street. Boy was signalling from the other end.

"Here's a place that's interesting," he called. "It's full of stuff that looks useful."

At first the dark and trashed interior just looked like a jumble of racks, with mildewed fallen clothing on the floor beneath. That's probably why I'd given it a miss. Boy however was grinning as he went to the rear and held up shiny plastic sheets.

"'Look!" he draped one over his head, which popped through the space provided. "Useful in a storm?"

I shook my head decidedly. "Clothing is a waste of effort, and our tribe doesn't use it. Your skin is all you need."

Boy shrugged. "I thought you'd say that, Chief. But here's bigger versions of them."

Right at the back of the shop was something I recognised, an assembled pup tent, with a dozen more still in their wrappings. I explained them, and he pursed his lips.

"So Tribes have these don't they? Shelters to put up at night when we're on our travels. We could do with them."

"OK," I agreed. "Pick up two of them and we'll add them to the stores in our outpost up the hill. Now what else have we here?"

Behind the shop counter were interesting things. Most of them were useless in a world without electricity, but there were untouched boxes of lighters and matches, both of which were always welcome to wandering tribesmen. If they'd kept dry – and these were still wrapped in film – they'd still work despite the years.

I grinned at Boy.

"Jackpot!" I said, he looked uncomprehending.

"What's that mean?" he asked.

I realised I didn't know, so replied with a shrug.

"Just something my father used to say. Glad we found these. We were running low. These'll keep our fires lit for ages." I picked up a dirty old plastic bag off the floor and stashed the lot in it.

So we released a resentful Dog and headed to the seafront. It had ancient signs telling us we were on the Promenade. It might once have been pretty with gardens, but now it was a jungle of bushes with leaning and rusted lamp posts. But the beach along the shoreline was the same as it ever had been, I imagine. Boy was delighted at our trudge along the warm sands, stopping every now and then to skim pebbles across the wave tops. Neither of us could swim, but we waded out nipple-deep and did all the stupid things boys do in the sea, including piss. Dog also enjoyed himself, frolicking in the shallows and occasionally swimming out to join us in the deeper water, cresting the waves, tail wagging.

Eventually we recovered our bags and strolled on to the end of the beach where there was a small harbour, with a mole jutting out to sea in a long curve. Two large boats still sagged against the wall, rusted chains securing them to the side. A few other smaller vessels, no more than wrecks, were sunk in the harbour waters, with snapped masts. Nothing much to salvage there. But near the end of the harbour, where there was a muddy creek, we found something else I'd previously given a miss.

There was a big blue shed made of corrugated iron sheets, with a runway down into the creek. It seemed still sound and secure. SEATOWN SHIPBUILDERS AND CHANDLERS was painted in large white letters on its roof. I had no idea what a 'chandler' might be, but I soon got the idea it had something to do with provisioning boats.

"Fuck me," I said when we pushed open the side door on its rusty, screaming hinges. It took the two of us to do it. Inside was a wonderland. Most of the items racked and stacked within were incomprehensible to me, but if ever we needed ropes of any description, we'd found a supply. Boy held up with a grin what I recognised as a boat hook.

"My favourite new lance," he declared, hefting a large axe in his other hand. But the real treasures were in a partitioned-off room with a counter at the back.

"A gun!" Boy cried, as he pulled something that looked very like one off a display board. I scrutinised the tag and shook my head.

"No, not a gun. It's called a '37mm flare pistol' according to this. And … oh wow … boxes of the right cartridges just stacked here."

Boy caught my eye.

"We have to do this, Chief!" I laughed.

"Fucking right we do."

So out we went, me with my fingers crossed that the cartridges were still usable after all these years.

"Fuck and shit," Boy swore as the first one I loaded and fired was a dud.

"I'm bad luck," I said, "you try."

Boy braced himself and pointed the pistol out over the creek. And the next attempt was so successful it left us shocked. With a flat bang that echoed back to us from the hills around the creek the pistol jumped in his hand to send a red smoking projectile arching over the creek where it struck a beached boat and exploded with an even bigger bang and a cloud of red smoke.

Boy was grinning so wide you'd think his face would have split. "Can't wait to meet the next dog pack."

***

We spent the next day ferrying armloads of our finds from the town up to our outpost, and we filled a room with a mass of materials which maybe we might find a use for. We took from the chandlers a half dozen of the signal pistols and dozens of boxes of cartridges. And when we left the next morning we each had one in our travel sacks. Boy was right. They might well change the balance of power in our favour against the dog packs.

"So how do we manage in the city?" Boy asked, as we strolled inland along a wide highway, lines painted white still visible down its centre. I didn't usually take main roads, as you'll have noticed. I'd learned that side lanes or, best of all, dirt tracks, were safer and much less hard on the soles of my feet. They also offered concealment. But I wanted to get this part of the mission over with, and we had a whole city to somehow search.

A few times we passed abandoned rusted vehicles at the roadside. One still had occupants. It must have come off the road and crashed a tree, though not at any speed I thought. A desiccated corpse lay draped over the driving wheel, and a jumble of skeletal remains were on the back seat, but the front was not badly smashed, and all the doors and windows were intact and closed. Boy pointed at the doors. He had a delight in the macabre.

'"Look, Chief! Scratched badly. Wild dogs might have found this by the carrion stench, but they couldn't get at the meat maybe. Bastards. So what d'you think? Worst case. Man driving his sick family for help only to die at the wheel? Then the rest besieged by a howling dog pack till they too succumbed, but at least the fucking dogs didn't get their snack."

It was ten miles along the coast road to the city outskirts and we reached its outermost buildings well before midday. I'd given a lot of thought to how we were to carry out the mission. We sat in an overgrown shelter which still had faded notices behind a plastic shield on its side which satisfied my curiosity as to its mysterious purpose.

"This was where people waited to catch 'buses' half a century ago," I remarked.

"What were they?" Boy asked, ancient vehicles always sparked his interest.

I shrugged and replied, "Giant cars taller than houses which carried hundreds of people into the city to work or to scavenge, what they called 'shopping'."

Boy was hopeful of seeing one, he said, then reflected it was time we got on with our own 'shopping'. I laughed and hugged him close, kissing his cheek. Boy had made my life a joy ever since I'd first met him.

"My plan is this, my Warrior. This city is over two miles from end to end: thousands upon thousands of houses of all sorts: also feral packs of dogs and maybe other dangers, not least people. So, we have to find a way of searching for the weapons we need without wasting the rest of our lives at it or risk losing them to a dog pack. But we have an advantage."

"We do, Chief? What's that?"

"Me, idiot. I have skills. Reading their ancient language being one."

Boy surprised me. He gripped my hand and squeezed. I turned to find him gazing earnestly into my eyes.

"It's true," he said. "You're amazing Chief! So wise and clever. Nobody has ever been so brilliant."

Then I was gripped hard in his brown arms as he kissed me with passion. He broke off and burst out fervently.

"I'll follow my Chief anywhere. You're my king." We stayed that way for a long moment. I knew Boy had come to adore me from many signs he gave off, but this passionate avowal of his love took me aback. It occurred to me that we were no longer just two boys struggling to survive in a forsaken wilderness. We were truly lovers, for I felt much the same about him: his happiness, passion and strength.

Finally, I let go his hand with a final squeeze.

"My beautiful Warrior and Prince," I said with a shake in my voice. Then I gathered myself.

"OK. This city has lots of shops. Not far from here is a small town of them, it was called the 'mall'. It looks huge but we won't find anything there. I think it was falling into ruin even before the plagues hit. Then there's another big area called the 'High Street'. It's where I went on my one and only exploration here when I was only a little older than you are now, me thinking I was so clever. But it had been looted and burned years and years ago. It was a scary trip, flitting from shelter to shelter. And in the night I spent in hiding there, I heard things which made me reluctant to go back."

Boy was intrigued. "Noises like what?"

"Not hunting dogs, but I heard faraway shrieks and later the rattle of harsh laughter in the blackness much closer to me. I caught sight of distant red lights, not steady like those of a fire but floating. I spent the night shivering, and not from the cold. Not sure what I'd have done without Dog by my side. He was unhappy too, restless and whining as he does when he's worried."

Boy's eyes were now wide. "Ghosts?" he whispered.

I shrugged. "Who can say. But this is no safe place, and we won't be staying in the city overnight for sure, if I can help it. So, we need a shortcut. Now my thinking is this. The main shops have been looted and burned long ago, but the ones we're looking for wouldn't have been in the centre or the mall. They'd be special shops for hunters or people who competed in sports. How do we find them? Well, in olden days they had lists of shops and houses and maps."

"Maps? What are they?" Boy was puzzled.

"I can only show you. This was the one useful thing I found in my first expedition."

I dug to the bottom of my sack and pulled out a large folded sheet of paper, unfolded it and spread it out on the ground at our bare feet.

"See, Boy? It's sort of like a picture you'd make of the city below you if you were a bird flying high above it, and just happened to have paper and pen tucked under your wing. Look here. This blue line is the road we're on and we're on it here just at the edge of the city, as you can see. The grey block not far away to south is the old mall. Now if we follow this road we'll end up in the High Street which is just on this side of the river that cuts through the city to the sea. But we're not going to do that. What we're going to do is find a building called 'Library'."

"Library, Chief?"

"Another special building, one full of useful information, which may just still be there for us to find. Now I have studied this map often, so often I don't really need to look at it now. On it, I've found five of these "libraries" marked. One is right in the centre and the biggest of them, but probably it's been gutted long ago, so it's the last to look at, and only if we don't find what we need elsewhere. There are two smaller ones on the west side, this side I mean. And that's where we're starting, one's about ten streets away, no more than a half mile. So. Ready?"

All was quiet as we navigated our way through this former hub of human life, now just a vast field of ruin and decay. Many houses were lost amongst the riotous trees surging up in abandoned parks and gardens. Roofs were fallen, doors sagging, windows empty. Wildfires, or maybe arson, had eliminated whole blocks. Boy cheerfully remarked that at least there weren't glass splinters everywhere here.

We found the first library at a big crossroads where two broad avenues came together. We approached the crossing with caution. But all was quiet. There was a number of tall buildings at this hub, but fire had swept through it decades ago. We found where the library had been, but it was an empty gutted shell.

It was now well past midday, so we sat and rested at the roadside chewing at jerky and my speciality, dried apple flakes. Dog sniffed around, but found nothing suspicious. So then we carried on northwards to the second site I'd identified. This library had once been in a green block that was marked as parkland. It was now a dense and large wood of young trees, thick with undergrowth between them. Paths of a sort still crossed it, and we took one that seemed to be going through the trees in the direction we wanted. Patches of concrete were to be seen amongst the moss and grass clumps below our feet, which told us this was once an ornamental walkway. We even found the remains of a couple of old rusted benches along the path's edge.

We almost missed the library, so dense was the undergrowth in this part of the wood. It was Boy who hollered and called me back. He'd glimpsed a wall of brick through the trees. Brambles and thorns made the approach difficult, and in the end, we had to hack a path with our long knives. When we got to the building we found just a blank wall, and we had a further struggle to slash a way round a corner where we found an open flagged space, and steps to a double door, intact and shut. Above it was carved in stone CARNEGIE LIBRARY : WESTSIDE.

***

I looked up from stacks of likely books I'd piled in front of me. Boy was watching me patiently from a chair opposite, while Dog was on the floor at my feet fast asleep, his snout between his stretched out paws. It was as if we had travelled back in time. The ruin of the city had passed this building by. It was dusty and the floor was covered in trash. Some of its upper windows were shattered, and vegetation was creeping in, but even so, you could easily imagine we were in a building of the Olden Days, sitting on leather chairs whose upholstery still carried the impress of ancient human butts.

Everywhere were shelves of books, protected here still from the ravages of weather. There were more of them than I ever thought possible. My curiosity was at war with our deadline, and was already losing the battle.

"We're not going to finish here before sunset," I remarked to Boy.

He shrugged. "This seems a safe space to hole up for the night. Nothing could get near those doors, not even a hungry dog pack would be that determined. Look at these fucking scratches I got, one on my fucking dick too. If I go hard it might split."

I laughingly offered to bandage it.

"No Chief. But I'd fancy some spit therapy before we sleep."

We both laughed and I went back to the books.

A search had located a stack of printed town directories, not on the shelves where I first wasted a lot of time looking, but in a back office. Maybe they had been culled for disposal, but then forgotten. My father had told me about the way people had used to number years, but admitted that he had lost track, though other adults in my village had maintained my thirteenth year was the year 2080 by the old system. I suppose that it must now be 2084 or 2085. The latest of these directories carried the date 2030, a few years before the Great Plague by my rough calculation. From them I had discovered dozens of sports equipment shops and a few 'gunsmiths' trading that year. As the sun went down, I plotted their locations on my city map, ignoring the ones that were in the ravaged city centre and concentrating on those in what they called Westside, where we were.

The light disappeared from the library's upper windows, and the empty silent city seemed to became quieter, if that were possible, but not for long. Dog's ears went up, as suddenly there came the distant howling of a rallying dog pack. It was hunting time on the streets outside. I could imagine that there might well be a lot of wildlife to prey on out on those empty streets and in the growing woodland: we'd seen enough squirrels, rabbits and foxes that day, and sighted several feral cats, though I doubt there'd be any larger beasts within the city, other possibly than stray humans like us. As the howling died away, me and Boy fucked hard and long on the floor, falling asleep soundly in the security of each other's arms.

"Little angel," I whispered in his ear.

"My king," he whispered back before we slept.

The sun in its seasons dictated our day. We woke together smartly with the dawn, as we always did, smelling still of sex. We pulled back our foreskins and compared dick cheese, then sucked each other clean of it. If we didn't our cocks got irritated and red, and I didn't find the stuff unpleasant to my tongue, though the same could not be said of my nose's reaction. But saliva worked better on cleaning our cocks than plain water, we had found. A swig of water and a handful of fruit were our breakfast. We geared up, crossbow on its strap over my shoulder and lance in Boy's hand, as both his weapon and walking staff.

We worked our way northwards and then eastwards through the empty streets of Westside. The first address was gutted, and the next three may have once been the shops I was looking for, but may have gone bust before the first Plague. They were shuttered and empty. Nothing daunted, Boy and Dog ambled cheerfully onwards on either side of me. The fifth target we struck lucky. It was a shopfront in a small row, none of which was a food store, which may explain how it had been overlooked by looters and scavengers. The faded sign above the shuttered front read: FIELD AND RIVER. The front entrance was actually padlocked still.

Boy grinned. "This looks good! But how do we get in?"

"Watch," I said. I shinned up a drainpipe and on to a ledge above the shop sign, grinning down at my companions and telling them to stand back. Boy pulled Dog to a safe distance. Then I took the haft of my knife and smashed in a window, whose shards fell inwards or tinkled on the pavement below, with quite a loud noise. I knocked in the fragments clinging to the frame, then gingerly climbed into the interior of the upper floor.

Like the store in Seatown, this one was full of racks of useless outdoor clothing and boots, though in much better condition. I padded across the carpeted floor and down steps at the rear, which creaked under my weight. And there, behind a counter, was a display of exactly what I was looking for: a wall to which many bows and crossbows were fixed, as well as a rack of fishing rods. I went through a rear door and discovered more treasures: weapons still boxed, assorted bowstrings and other cartons of bolts and bundles of arrows.

I found and unlocked a side door that opened into an alley and I called down it to Boy and Dog, who came racing up. Boy saw my grin.

"Jackpot!" he crowed.

"You now have your crossbow, kid!" I declared.

An hour later, we'd thoroughly looted the shop and selected the weaponry of choice we would carry away. Boy had his crossbow now on a strap and ready to carry across his shoulder, while I had a longbow as well. Our sacks were crammed with all the accessories we could carry, including two sophisticated sighting mechanisms.

"Can't wait to try these babies out," Boy said happily.

I looked at the large mound of weaponry and other goodies we had stacked on the floor but would have to leave for future collection.

"I guess we'll have to open a new City Outpost somewhere on the edge, in the direction of Outpost East. It can be a storehouse, just like the one at the edge of Seatown. We can't give up these treasures."

Boy was proficient with a crossbow already, though he had to accustom himself to the different design of his new weapon, and longbows were unfamiliar to both of us. When we finally emerged back on to the street we debated what to do next, as I was anxious to get out of this haunted place as soon as possible. Boy disagreed.

"Look Chief, we've had a long search and the afternoon's getting late. If we pushed it we could get out into the country by sundown maybe, but it'd be better to use what's left of the day to get used to our new weapons, and then rest up over night and head back tomorrow. We've had no trouble so far have we?"

"There are the dog packs," I observed.

He shrugged. "We could just as well meet them out in the country as on the streets. Let's use this time to gear up just in case we do."

"Is that your advice, my Warrior Prince?"

"Sure is, Lord Chief."

"Then that is what we will do. Let's see, according to the map if we walk on a short way down this street we come to the river and a bridge over to the east side of the city. We have time to find a space for archery practice and then a safe place to hole up. Refuge first."

We approached the bridge cautiously. It was a swing bridge to allow shipping to pass up the river, as I explained to Boy, the little cabin set up high next to it was for the bridgemaster.

"Perfect" he muttered.

He leaped a gate and climbed up the flights of metal steps beyond. I followed, leaving Dog fretting outside, and helped Boy lever open the door at the top. Inside was a large room with windows opening in every direction, it was hot there from the sun blazing through the glass. There was a mass of controls too, but they were of no interest. There was a fine view upriver and downriver but also of the bridge approaches from east and west and over the rooftops and jungle of the deserted and ruined city.

"Couldn't be better, Chief. No pack can get at us, and no one can take us by surprise. Ready supply of water too: if you can drink from that river. Now then, where do we go for our fun?" Dropping our bags we scanned the surroundings.

"Down there!" said Boy. "It's a walled-in yard across the road next to that long building. Pretty secure."

Longbows, I discovered, were not easy. Stringing the bow took real strength, more than Boy's teenage body had, for all his growing muscle and sturdiness. It was a long task learning how to use my upper body to muster up sufficient pull to fire the arrow, though when I began to master it, despite my aching shoulders, the power of the bow proved phenomenal, burying the head deep in the wooden door that was our target. The range was less than my beloved crossbow, but with four arrows stuck ready in the ground in front of me, I found that I could stoop and loose three shots to the crossbow's one, even though Boy had a lever to help in reloading his new weapon. As the sun began to sink behind the roofs, I called a halt. We were both tired out, and the slapping of the string against my left wrist had raised welts there. We returned for the evening to the bridge cabin, and watched the sun setting over the city from our eyrie.

Chapter 4

The howling of the city dogs began again at dusk, sounding a lot closer than it had been in the library the previous evening. Dog growled and barked his disdain for his wild cousins. This time it went on for longer.

"Sounds to me like they're stalking," Boy pronounced. "A frenzy of barks to rally the pack and then silence as they scent and pursue."

"The city's good hunting country for them, now I think of it," I replied. "Lots of cover for them, but prey has to expose itself crossing empty streets. No wonder the pack here seems active, their country cousins around Seatown have to spread out over more open territory."

"So what are they scenting?" Boy pondered.

"Something bigger than ferrets, I'd have thought by the noise. Surely won't be people? They'd hunker down for the night like us."

"We'll never know," I replied. "We're out of here tomorrow, early in the morning while the pack sleeps it off."

We didn't have sex before sleep and neither of us dropped off easily. It was still the dark of night when Boy shook me awake. The full moon had risen, the 'Dog Moon' as we called it, because the packs hunted under its light later. Boy was standing above me.

"Lights!" he hissed. "Down across the bridge."

I joined him by the windows, blinking. Boy had taken up his crossbow. There was a fire lit in a yard further down the river, not far from a riverside quay.

"Fires mean people," I observed.

Boy gripped my arm. "Look! At the river. A boat's been drawn up."

Quite clear under the bright moonlight was indeed a dark vessel tied up to the dock which hadn't been there when we'd returned to the bridge cabin in the late afternoon.

"I want to go and look," Boy announced. "Can I, chief?"

I was as curious as Boy, so I consented and armed up, I slung my crossbow over my shoulder and took my long knife in hand. Boy had his new bow and his lance too. We were quickly and silently down to the bridge and stealthily across it. Dog trotted behind us. He recognised our hunting mode, and there'd be no more noise out of him than a low growl.

We padded to the quayside and moved quickly towards the ship. It was not that big a vessel. It had a cabin at the back, but an open deck. It had a mast and furled sail, and oars were laid on the deck. No motor, of course. Had it had one, we'd have heard it come up the river.

"Must have a crew of at least four if it gets round by oars," Boy the Warrior whispered in my ear. "They've come to shore for the night, and camped in that yard. That's what set the wild dogs off. I wonder who they are? Travellers? Traders?"

I looked carefully around, then squatted down next to Boy and gave my assessment. "The only approach is through that gate they've barricaded. They know about the dog packs I'd guess. We can't treat them as friendly. We need to know more." Boy sniggered, reached under me, grasping and massaging my hanging testicles.

"Ooh, you've definitely got the balls for this mission, Chief." I'd noticed before how real danger brought out a merry and facetious streak in my Boy.

"I'm glad you think so, idiot. Stay here with Dog and keep him quiet. I'm going to shin up on that scaffolding behind us. I might be able to see down into the yard. Hang on to my bow."

A leaning ladder allowed me to get well up into the scaffolding pipes. I tested them cautiously as I leaned on them, but they seemed firm and well braced still against the wall. I climbed another stage and looked out. I could see down into the yard. There were a lot more than four people there. Sleeping forms were bundled up, lying against the inner wall of the building. I couldn't make much of them as they were in shadow. But there were four full grown males sitting around the blaze, awake and passing a bottle around. I could see them clearly, and I didn't like what I saw.

One of them got up at that point, strolled over to the huddled forms, kicked one and hauled her up. It was a teenage girl wrapped in a blanket and she was marched awkwardly over to the fire. There the blanket was unceremoniously stripped from her, and her nakedness underneath was painted a dramatic orange by the firelight. I could hear her begging, but nothing was going to stop what happened next, as she was placed on all fours and used by the man who had pulled her out. I watched him till he finished, her rape being ignored by his companions. The girl was hauled up by her hair and slapped hard across her buttocks, to drive her back to the other huddled figures, who must have been fellow captives. The blanket was thrown back to her, as she returned.

I swarmed silently back to Boy, and quickly whispered to him what I'd seen.

"They must be raiders and slave traders," I concluded. Boy was deeply troubled.

"What will we do?"

"That's my own warrior, you want to get stuck in don't you," I said, despite deep inner qualms as to the decision.

Boy pursed his lips. He knew me too well. "Four full grown men and just two of us."

"Three, with Dog," I corrected.

"Even so," Boy said. "But we do have surprise on our side, even if they're armed. We'll take the bastards."

His steady and cool brain began to plan a campaign. It would not be the last one in his career as a warrior by many a mile.

"We'll hit them in the dark before dawn. One of them will be on sentry and most likely awake. You take him out with a bolt, you're the best shot. Can't be much different from taking down a deer and you never miss these days. Then we go in to kill, take them sleeping if we can and deal with the situation as it develops. This way the captives won't get in the line of fire. In the meantime, Chief, let's go check out this boat of theirs and hope there's not more of them sleeping on board." I was impressed by his forethought.

We padded across the quay to the boat, making no more noise than the night breeze. It was getting on for low tide on the river, so it was a drop down on to the deck. Boy scouted the cabin at the stern. He found the door closed, then straightened with relief.

"It's padlocked shut from the outside. So there won't be any more raiders in there, it must be where they keep the captives when they're at sea. Sailing at night is too dangerous, so they must have come to shore in the evening so they could do a shit and stretch their legs. Any idea what weapons the raiders had, Chief?"

"I have a nasty feeling that one of them was holding a rifle." I said as I was checking the deck.

"What's under these covers in the middle?" I murmured. The moonlight was still bright, though the moon was getting lower in the sky, and would have set before dawn. Under the covers I found several barrels and many boxes, one of which was full of provisions.

"Biscuit!" I hissed, and crammed one into my mouth. It was hard but eatable, and quite a change for my gut to digest. I passed another to Boy.

***

The first military campaign of my Tribe was as chaotic as they usually turn out to be. Our victory was maybe not so surprising after the experience of years of hunting and being hunted. Unleashing weapons against living bodies caused no qualms in us, and we were masters of bow and knife. We had learned to fight as a team without even noticing it.

As the moon set, we silently moved the ladder from the scaffolding and propped it against the wall of the yard. I took station up on its coping, Boy ready to swarm up and follow me, and Dog uneasy below. The new bow sight made it much easier to use in the dark. One raider was sitting up at by the dying fire, leaning on his rifle, bottle still in hand. He may have been dozing. If so, he never awoke. A bolt took him in his temple and he collapsed to the side, falling against one of his gang, who stirred and dozily protested. A second bolt from my bow took this one in the eye socket.

"Bull's eye," Boy sniggered beside me. His coolness in danger was impressive. I've seen it since in a lot of boys his age.

But the second raider had not gone down quietly. We were over the wall and dropped to the cobbled yard in an instant, but at this point I lost my crossbow, and the two survivors were up and grappling for weapons. Boy however had his crossbow cocked and though he was not so secure a shot as I am, still his bolt took one in the shoulder. I closed with the other and found myself hand to hand as I tried to strike him with my long knife and he tried to wrestle it off me. The struggle lasted longer than I liked and the bastard stamped on my naked right foot as we fought. Boy in the meantime had run through the gut with his lance the one he'd shot. Then he turned, grabbed my opponent by the hair and slit his exposed throat. Hot salty blood sprayed in my face and down my chest.

Breathing heavily, we scanned the battlefield, as dawn lightened the sky and filled the yard with grey light, birdsong burst out all round us. The captives were only now realising that their captors were down or dead. Only one still lived in fact, the one Boy had run through. He was on his back, his bloodied hands over his abdomen. I surveyed my enemy. He was an older man, his red face bristling with stubble, gasping loudly, his eyes wide in shock.

Boy ignored him and strolled over to the captives. He carefully put down his weapons and raised his hands palm outwards. A score of faces stared warily up from out of their huddle at this handsome, naked and bronzed teenage warrior.

"It's OK!" Boy called. "We're friends. We've done for them bastards. You're free. Can you understand me?"

"Who're you?" One of them had got to his feet, a youth maybe my age or a bit older. He was barefoot but had some ragged clothing.

I joined Boy, my blood-spattered body not perhaps the most reassuring sight for them.

"We're hunters," I called out, thinking fast. "I'm the Chief. This is my Warrior. Who were these people?" I gestured at the fallen men.

"Slavers and pirates from overseas," the youth said. "Part of a fleet that invaded our island a week ago."

"An island?" I asked.

"It was our home. Out east. We had got things back together there and escaped the last pandemic. But these pirates finished what the plagues couldn't. They've been raiding us off and on for the past few years, then they arrived in force a week ago, a fleet of maybe a hundred boats. They burned our town, killed the men they could find, and the rest of us were chained together and driven to the beach, women and children. They divided us up among their ships and left, all our houses and fields burning behind us as we sailed, two days ago." He paused and looked sick at a memory. "They roasted and ate some of our men they killed in a great feast. They're cannibals too. They made us eat the meat."

Boy in the meantime had squatted down and was inspecting the other captives. He looked up at me.

"Twenty of them in total, Chief. Mostly our age and younger. Hang on." He got up and trotted out of the yard, admitting a frantic Dog who raced up to me, tail wagging and tongue lolling. He jumped up to lick my face. His appearance turned out to be the thing that settled things in our favour with the captives. He was a happy dog, and went over to the children, tail wagging. A couple of them reached out to stroke his big flat head.

In the meantime, Boy returned from the boat with a provision box on his shoulder.

"Breakfast!" he called out cheerfully. And that was it. The famished slaves decided that incredibly their luck had turned and we really were their friends. They sat around the box scoffing, staring up at us but smiling nervously.

I stood looking down on them. The older boy didn't join them despite what must have been his own hunger. He was staring at me. It's something that happens a lot. As Boy loyally says, "Good looking ain't in it." It gives me an instant advantage in any encounter, especially with boys who like sex with other boys.

"Look, I gotta wash this blood off," I said. "Come with me. We should talk."

He shook out of whatever was preoccupying him.

"OK, but first I need to see to my sister."

She turned out to be last night's rape victim. He pulled her up and wrapped the blanket tightly round her nakedness, but not before I had my first sight of a girl's sex parts, her bulbous hanging tits and the hairy puffy slit between her legs. I've never found it attractive. They hugged. She looked over at me and murmured what might have been thanks.

At that point, the wounded raider raised his voice "Wasser! Wasser!" he croaked loudly. With a venomous glance down at him, the girl dropped the blanket, straddled him naked, squatted over his head, and a yellow stream of piss shot out of her slit into his open mouth and over his face.

"There's your water," she snarled. Boy looked both impressed and intrigued at her performance.

The island boy hastened to cover her up again, and both of them accompanied me out of the yard to the quayside. We climbed into the boat and I broke open more supply boxes. We talked as we ate. He wanted to know my name, the one I'd not used since my father died.

"I only answer to Chief," I insisted. Then he wanted to know why we wore no clothes.

"We're hunter-gatherers," I said. "Clothes are pointless. We don't have so much as a sock between us."

He laughed. He didn't need to be told what a hunter-gatherer was, which alerted me that this was no ordinary boy. He was Marcus and his sister was Margrit. As we talked I began to realise I was dealing with a boy whose mind worked like mine. He planned and prioritised.

"So what do you plan to do now?" I asked.

"I'm taking back this boat. The cunts stole it from our island. I can manage it with some help, and I plan to sail it back home. I doubt many survived the raid, but some might have. They culled all they captured and the women too old to be bred. To be honest I don't know how I survived, I'm eighteen and full grown, but I expect they wanted some male slaves capable of harder work. They spent three days raping the children – boys and girls alike, even the small ones. It's the way they enslave their minds. After that they'll accept any humiliation."

"You too?"

Marcus nodded and scowled. "Naked and on all fours on the beach in front of my friends. They did me four times, 'cos I tried to fight them off. I'm still bleeding down there. At least they left me with my balls. Two of my friends weren't so lucky. Human testicles are a delicacy for these monsters." He shook his head to try to clear the trauma. "I'll take sis with me, and offer a chance to the older ones you've saved to take ship and go back with me. I'm pretty sure that though they scoured our island, some survivors will have hid and escaped them. If I can rally them, the island may rise again." He shot me a meditative look. "Look Chief, it's asking a lot, but I'll have no chance of rebuilding our home if I take all the smaller ones with me. We couldn't feed them, and they'd be a drag on us until they grow old enough to help the effort. What are the chances that you and your tribe can feed and keep them safe for now? I may be able to send for them in a year or three if we succeed, or if by some miracle a parent has survived and joins us and wants his kid back."

I stared. Marcus was way ahead of me. Then the possibilities began to occur to me. He was assuming that we were just a hunting party of a larger tribe, instead of being all the tribe there was. But why not? Just like Marcus, I was searching for a future. My tribe might be it.

"Let me think about it," I said.

We returned to the yard. Two smaller boys had their little dicks out and were pissing on the dying slaver's face and grinning. I pondered whether I should slit his throat and put him out of his agony, but something angry in me decided he didn't deserve that much mercy.

I called out to the captives and invited them to follow me out on to the quay for a meeting. They tailed out. I surveyed them as they went. All were barefoot, and all they had to wear were rags and blankets they'd scavenged. Two young boys and a girl didn't even have that, and walked awkwardly, cupping their groins with one hand, and shielding their nipples with the other arm. I grinned to myself, remembering Boy's first day on the road with me.

Boy got them to sit themselves on some steps, and Marcus and I stood in front of them. The Islander began briskly, setting out their situation and thanking me and Boy profusely. Boy actually blushed, something I'd not seen for years. He told his Islanders his plan, and called out the six oldest teenagers there, three boys and three girls, including Margrit. These he explained would crew the boat and return with him to try and recover the island. He paused, and invited me to continue.

"Islanders," I began, getting my first taste of public speaking, "I'm glad we could help free you, but Chief Marcus has asked for an even bigger favour. He can't feed you all and can't take you back to the island. He wants me to adopt you into our tribe for now."

I caught Boy's eye.

"This we will do. It'll be a different life than you're used to, and I will not take anyone who won't swear to follow me as their chief and lord, and to abide by our ways. But my Warrior here will tell you it's a good life, freer than any other humans enjoy. And in a way you'll be doing the same as Chief Marcus and his islanders: building a new way of life in which you'll all be loved and valued. In return you'll work for your tribe to feed and protect each other."

The thirteen children still sitting on the steps exchanged looks. One of the nominated ship's crew, an older boy of about my Boy's age, also objected.

"Marcus! I can't leave Fiona. She'll have to come with us."

One of the girls sprang up from the steps and ran to his side, hugging him. She was maybe closer to thirteen than twelve. Marcus shook his head.

"Then I'll stay with her," said the boy.

"She's your sister, so if that's what you want, Gregory," Marcus said, then turned to the rest. "All the boys left on the steps, stand up," he ordered. They complied, puzzled.

"Who's got hair around his cock?" One slowly put up his hand.

"Join my crew, Philip. Gregory, strip off and join the Chief's tribe."

"What?" The boy Gregory cried.

"You follow our ways," I added. "We're a naked tribe of hunter gatherers. So either strip off, or leave your sister to us. I think Chief Marcus will one day let you collect her when your island tribe is safe and settled, if that's what you want."

I picked up something odd here in Gregory's hesitation and in the look he gave down at his sister, her swelling tits exposed to the world. Her brother swore to himself and discarded all his rags, exposing quite a handsome cock, which he quickly covered with his hands. I was impressed that as he did so, his sister dropped to the ground the shawl tied round her waist, her only covering, and took one of his hands, pulling it away from his genitals and holding it. I caught her eyes and she gave me a shy smile as she led her naked brother back to the steps.

***

Marcus and I spent the rest of the morning organising our tribes. He grinned at me.

"I like the idea," he said. "We're the Island Tribe. They'll learn to call me Chief."

All my new recruits were naked now and, as I told them, they'd never wear clothing again so they might as well get used to it. In fact, Boy ceremoniously made a bonfire of their discarded rags in the yard. It stank as it burned.

Marcus shrugged off his own clothes and made his crew strip off as they worked to ready their boat, though as he said, it wasn't going to be a future requirement.

"It's just to make the ones we're leaving with you feel less abandoned."

I was charmed with the cocks on display, big and small, and the tight butts. I complimented Marcus on his; rounded, firm and muscular. He went red and said, "Really?" I think he was flattered, that or shocked. He was not at that point used to boys who openly loved boys.

As the Islanders and Gregory worked on the boat, I spent time getting to know my new tribesmen and letting them get used to my direction. The three smallest of them were between seven and nine years of age. These I let play and skip about, but made them stay close to the boat where they could be watched, Dog was with them, being petted and loving it. I sat the four older boys, all eleven or twelve, crosslegged on the cobbles and began teaching them our lore, telling them they were my selected warriors, and Lord Boy was their commander. Boy grinned down at them. He went into the yard and came back with his right hand wet with blood.

"This is our enemy's blood," he said, holding up his hand. "The blood of those apes who killed the ones you loved and tried to enslave you. Now. Each of you stand before me."

The four boys stood seriously in front of their commander as he smeared lines of red on their cheeks. One of them, a black-haired boy called Stephen, stood proud and grinned as he did it. The others were less happy about it.

"Now your first mission," I began. "Lord Boy and Dog are going to collect some supplies from a stash we have back up the road here. Lord Boy will need some help. Who'll you take?"

Boy grinned. "Warrior Stephen, step forward!" The dark boy almost burst with pride.

"It's not the most dangerous mission you'll be given, warrior, but these streets are the territory of a wild dog pack. You won't have met these beasts, but they're clever and ferocious. So take my lance. It's still red with our enemies' blood. May it bring you good luck!"

Boy winked at me as he and his small disciple trotted off back westward to the shop we'd scavenged, where the large pile of weaponry and supplies was stacked for transport inland, something that was now going to happen sooner than I had expected.

By midday, all was prepared. Marcus had made a big stack of provisions scavenged from the boat on the quayside, and we made a division of them. The boat also contributed sacks and bags which we filled for my tribespeople to carry.

Boy and Stephen loped up at this point, returning with their own bags. I had the two tribes gather seated in front of me and Marcus. I stood facing Marcus, reached out and gripped his bare shoulder.

"Tribesmen of the Island! I want to swear alliance with you. But first, swear your allegiance to your Lord Marcus, Chief of the Islanders and my good friend."

The older teenagers punched their fists in the air and chanted "Marcus! Marcus!"

"Now, my own hunters and warriors, swear allegiance to me, your Lord Chief!" In higher trebles, the younger boys and girls chanted after Boy's prompting,

"Our Chief! Our Chief!" "… and Lord Boy!" added Stephen in a high voice, then blushed hard. I was encouraged when the kids around him patted his back and smiled at him.

"Now, as we part, I'm giving Lord Marcus gifts from our tribe to his." Boy's sense of the dramatic emerged again. He extracted four crossbows and two longbows from a bag and went to his knees to present them gracefully to Marcus.

Marcus beamed. "Lord Chief of the Hunters, we thank you. These are way better than the knives and axes of those bastards you killed. That rifle they had turned out to have no bullets. It was just for show. This'll make a real difference."

"Bolts and arrows included!" Boy yelled, and both the tribes laughed. The Islanders got up, hugged and kissed the smaller children, then swarmed aboard their boat. The tide was turning and the ebb had begun. I took Marcus by both hands.

"I really meant that about being friends and allies," I said to him.

"I know," he replied, "and I'm so glad we met. You're a great chief and warrior. I hope I can be half as good. Till we meet again, my lord."

We hugged hard and long as I savoured his firm, warm body, almost designed to fit into mine as we embraced.

I held his shoulders as we separated. Then I leaned in and whispered in his ear.

"David. My name was David."

"Great name for a king!" he replied with a grin. Then he was aboard his boat. Two of his crew cast off the ropes, leaping for the side and pulling the cables aboard after them. They fended off from the quayside with poles, as the vessel caught the tide and moved off steadily into the ebb stream that would take them down to the river mouth and the sea. The sail was spread and the southerly breeze added further speed to the boat. The Islanders waved and shouted their goodbyes as their boat slid down the river till a turn took them out of our view.

"Now, Tribe of the Hunt, we need to begin our travels!" I announced to my people. "It's midday and we're exposed here. We have other enemies than raiders, and the worst of them are the dog packs. You might have heard them last night. We have to be out of their territory, and that'll take a few hours. We're not near any of our outposts, so tonight we'll have no shelter and must be on our guard. You're not yet used to naked living, and for a few weeks it'll be hard on your feet, especially the little ones. So me, Boy and Gregory will take the three youngest on our shoulders. I expect my warrior band to do their duty and march without complaining."

Just before we left, I returned to the yard, and recovered the bolts from the bodies of the men we'd killed, wiping off the blood and brains on their clothing. The wounded man had by now expired. Boy shrugged.

"The fucker got the end he deserved. Now him and his friends will be dogmeat. The pack must already be scenting this feast. It'll make them less interested in following us. Leave the gate open when we go."

We walked back to the hunting shop, and picked up the bags Boy and Stephen had stacked ready for us. Then we trudged west, the first stage of our perpetual tribal trek. Those old enough, even the two nine-year-olds, April and Jack, had burdens. Boy amused himself by putting his warrior boys in marching order, Stephen with the lance at his shoulder; he and his friend Paul acted as an advance party, running forward and reporting back at Boy's orders. They took it all with a touching seriousness.

I made a point of walking alongside Gregory and tried drawing him out. I noticed he didn't readily call me 'Lord Chief' and 'my Lord', like all the youngsters did. He confirmed he was fifteen. Though they were much the same stage of development, comparing him to Boy was like comparing an eagle to a duck. His ass was pale and flabby and his waist bulged. I envied his cock though, It was long and more or less swung between his legs.

"You stare at my junk a lot," he commented with a nervous grimace.

"It's worth a look, Gregory. I've not seen many other boys' cocks. I didn't know they grew that long. Mine and Boy's are smaller even when they're at their hardest."

"Six inches [15 cm] is supposed to be average," he commented.

"Then we're just about over the line," I said. "While you … How big does it get when you go hard." I gripped my own and steadily wanked myself to full erection, which was easy enough with all the pretty boy butts on display around me.

"What the fuck!" Gregory said. "You don't do that."

"Why not?"

"It's fucking perverted."

"You serious? Gregory, we're naked. Your dick's going to go up and down publicly like it or not, so why not enjoy it?"

"Do you fuck Boy?" he asked straight out.

'Of course. Gregory, I get the feeling some of our ways aren't to your liking. Get used to them. Our cocks are there to be shared and enjoyed. Don't fight it."

"Or what?" There was undeniable truculence in his tone.

"Or you'll find out why I'm your chief. I think your sister gets it."

"What about girls? Does your tribe fuck their twats when they like too?"

I considered this. It was in fact something I was already thinking about.

"Boys live together and play together," I declared. "The same goes for girls. They have their quarters and we have ours. There's no mixing unless I say so. I was thinking of putting your sister in charge of our girls when we have our tribal assembly back at Outpost East. Do you think she'll agree?"

"Oh yes," he sneered. "She thinks you're a god … lord Chief." It clicked. Gregory was jealous, and I could think of one explanation.

Chapter 5

I found out why hunter gatherers lived a nomadic life. Food supply. With thirteen of us, we burned through our food stocks at Outpost East. I'd have liked longer there so I could consolidate the tribe, but after three weeks we needed to become hunters to increase the meat supply.

On the other side of the coin more hands made a difference to the gathering part of our job description. The little ones and the girls could be relied on to collect wild fruits, mushrooms and eatable seeds. We discovered Fiona knew her gardens and loved tending the vegetable patch. She agreed to take control of our girls and she also mothered our smallest boys, Jack and Georgie, though they proudly declared they slept with 'the men'.

At Outpost East, the girl's quarters were in one of the outhouses, while the more numerous boys slept in the cottage with us. The newcomers soon registered that I and 'Lord Boy' were a couple; we didn't hide it. Boy delighted in publicly fondling and sucking me off and the very first night I fucked him before sleep in the darkening room, with seven boys watching Boy's enthusiastic performance wide-eyed.

Boy was ready for the questions. He took his warrior cadets off into the woods the next morning and gave them a graphic tutorial in boy sex, though the way he described it to me it sounded like a circle jerk. They came back giggling and comparing their orgasms. After that you might find them walking around masturbating without giving it a second thought, sometimes each other. The girls just giggled when they saw one of them frigging their little cocks.

The first frenzy of wanking subsided after a week, though it remained their favourite recreation. Interested, I watched the boys pair off. Stephen and Paul snuggled together at night and bonded tightly; they were as near lovers as I'd ever seen boys of that age. They would walk around the woods, their fingers interlaced just smiling at each other. Carl and little Georgie were cousins so they bedded together, and Georgie frequently had his lips round Carl's pencil thin erection. Tony and little Jack were a sort of couple, the little boy gratefully servicing his bigger friend. But all of them adored Lord Boy and any one of them could be found between his thighs slurping on his cock, and if they brought him off proudly showing off to the others the mouthful of cum he deposited behind their pearly teeth.

Boy had never fucked me, and I wondered if he just didn't like the idea. Maybe he picked up that I was uncertain about it. I never invited it, for sure. But after a week it was clear that he had designs on Stephen and Paul, the twelve-year-olds. He came up to me one morning and said he was taking them 'exploring'. The main target of the exploring was to be their anal sphincters he confessed. They returned deflowered and proud of taking Lord Boy's cock deep in their bums. The others envied them and I found Tony and Carl examining Stephen's raised asshole to see the effects.

"So, how was it?" I asked.

"Stephen is born for cock." Boy had a fixed grin at the memory. "He was hard all the way through it and claimed he cummed from the friction in his asshole. He took me on his back and he copied what he saw me doing with you, even sucking my nipples, which sends me crazy, as you know. Paul has a tight little cunt, and it was hard work to get inside even with the help of the grease pot and the fact that he desperately wanted it, but he was pretty vocal once I was inside him. We did it like Dog would have. But it's me you wanted to know about, isn't it, Chief. I can see why you like fucking so much. It's way different from wanking; your pleasure isn't just your own, you have this warm little body passive and moaning under you and you're making it your own. It's more personal."

"Positive verdict then?"

"Oh yes, I'll give all my boy warriors the chance of a good fucking by their commander."

Intrigued, I took Stephen into my nest that night and took my turn of fucking him before sleep. It was very easy to slide into him, as Boy had found. He slept in my arms, with my cock still lodged deep in his bum when we woke. He proved a fantastic kisser, heart and soul into our sex. It was like rediscovering what I had with Boy at Stephen's age. He had that same boy smell too. No wonder my hard on wouldn't go down.

The reaction of the others to my taking of Stephen's ass intrigued me that morning. Jack and Georgie, the little ones, were all over me and Stephen once we stirred, like wriggling puppies. Jack felt around where my cock was still embedded in Stephen, and giggled. I smacked their little bottoms to send them off. They needed to learn respect.

It was no coincidence that it was that day that made the first serious demand on my tribal leadership. As I lazed in the sunlight outside the boys' quarters and discussed the food supply and other questions with Boy, Fiona strolled over. I still found the female body disconcerting, and my gaze was drawn to the slit where a cock should be, not so much to her hanging tits. Her belly was different too, it was rounded and hung lower than those of the younger girls. Fiona squatted in front of us, and looked serious.

"Chief," she began, "I found Tony and Carl trying to fuck the twins, Auburn and Lara, in the woods earlier this morning."

"Er … what?'"

"The boys haven't properly worked it out yet. They were trying to get their stiffies inside my girls' bums, and fuck them the same way Boy fucked Stephen and Paul. I gave all four of their little asses a good smacking and sent them crying into the trees. Look. You made me leader of the girls and I'm telling you as our chief, we need rules. We know the possible result if they ever do it successfully. Auburn's had her first bleed. She can get pregnant."

"What do you suggest?"

"Sex between boys and girls should be off limits. Boys can fuck boys and girls can do girls, each in our quarters. I can see no problem there if it's done in front of everybody else. But outside the way those four did it, no. Too dangerous. Full boy-girl sex can only be done according to rules we set down."

"Agreed," I said after a pause for thought, "we'll light a fire when we gather before the sun goes down and lay down the law to the assembly. That work for you, Boy?" He gave a thumbs up and went off to get his warrior cadets to stack a bonfire. As Fiona was heading off, I called her back.

"There's a thing I want to talk to you about, which is related to the fucking question. Fee," I began. "The point is, sooner rather than later, we'll be seeing pregnancies. They're going to happen, and we need to breed anyway to keep the human race going. But it can't just be chaotic. You're a clever girl, Fiona, and you've had some education on your island. We can't just have our kids form breeding pairs of humans or pretty soon our tribe will be made up of congenital inbred idiots.'

Fiona gave me a sharp look, behind which I could see apprehension. "What are you saying, Chief?"

"I'm saying that all of our boys need to breed the wombs we have available. So a girl will have to accept that she must take the sperm of more than one boy, and her second, third, fourth baby, and so on, has to have a different father from its siblings. You see my point?"

"Yes, chief."

"Does this bother you?"

She thought it over. "No," she said, "it's logical, though it won't be easy in practice."

"So, I'm handing the question over to the possessors of the wombs to manage. You girls work out a plan to administrate our breeding fairly and kindly. Auburn will be your first case. She's ready to be bred soon, you think? Then her twin sister will likely be too. In that case find an acceptable way of choosing who'll take their virginity and carry on with them till they conceive." Then I looked hard at her. "But in your case of course, it's too late. You were having sex with your brother before the raiders came, weren't you?"

Fiona stared and went bright red, before nodding mutely.

"You're beginning to show unmistakable signs of pregnancy, Fee," I said.

"But … how did you know it was Gregory?"

"His behaviour around you is one reason. He's jealous of me and Boy, 'cos he sees us as his rivals, the twat. Even though he must know we're not interested in girls for sex, we still challenge his masculinity."

"It's true," she confessed, looking down. "You and Boy are five times the man he is and he knows it," she added fiercely.

"He raped you, didn't he?"

She shook her head. "He talked me into it, and the first time I allowed him in; it was the times after that I'd rather he wouldn't but I couldn't say no, because by then it was too late. At least our mother never knew."

"Fee, I have no problem with the fact you and your brother have been having sex. Just remember that the next cock up you has to be someone else's. And at the moment there's a limited choice."

She looked at me, relaxed into a smile and took her delicate revenge.

"You'll find all the girls are agreed on whose that will be, Chief," she confided, and leaned in close to say "the one whose cock we all want … it's Boy's!"

***

I looked behind me as we entered the valley of Outpost North. It was target of our second trek as a tribe. Stephen and Paul, our advance scouts, would already be there, escorted by Dog. Boy and his young warriors brought up the rear. The girls and the little ones were trailing behind me. I called a halt till the two scouts came loping back with their report, Dog cantering alongside them.

The life of a nomad was good for the two twelve-year-olds. They were bronzed now, lithe, handsome and fit. Both Stephen and Paul were at home in their bodies and blissfully happy in their new way of life. The slavers had taken a lot away from them, but the tribe was giving them a lot back. Paul's groin had recently sprouted hairs and his cock and balls had swelled. Stephen had come over to my nest before we left Outpost East to proudly show me a mouthful of pearly white cum his partner had just deposited on his tongue. A debate had immediately begun amongst the warrior cadets as to whether this changed Paul's status.

"OK, OK!" their commander had finally conceded. "Paul is Deputy Boy!" Across Paul's shoulder was now strapped a crossbow of his own, which Boy had ceremonially awarded him to mark his promotion.

The two boys stood to attention in front of me, gave cute salutes to their chief and reported all was clear up ahead. Then they fell in beside me as we walked on, little Georgie riding high up on my shoulders, as Boy had once done. He had a thing of pushing his little fingers inside my earholes that sent a lightning bolt up my spine. I hadn't known about that particular source of sexual excitement till then. My cock had reared and wept as I walked. Flies kept settling on my sticky member as a result and the buggers were difficult to get rid of.

It took a while for me and Fiona to sort out the tribe's arrangements that evening. New supplies were distributed and we ate well. It had been a hard day's travel, and for the first time I had pushed the pace. Their soles had toughened, but there was a lot more to carry with us now. As we sat around our fire the girls began to sing a song of their own making, and we lay back to listen to their clear voices, as the stars opened above. Then the warrior boys got up and followed Boy's lead in a dance he devised to accompany the girls' voices, and we clapped the time as they moved. It seemed my tribe had gifts I had never expected.

Next morning began with the first serious training session in our armaments. Our warriors needed to be brought on with the crossbow. I was determined Gregory must contribute in some way, so I resigned my crossbow to him. I had the upper body strength to use the longbow, so I armed myself with that instead. He proved reasonably competent, if not enthusiastic about following Boy's orders.

We then marched up into the hills to introduce the boys to the art of stalking, and the variety of prey that was there to be found. A deer herd was far away on a hillside opposite, too far to reach without revealing ourselves. So I sat them down and told them what I knew about the ways of deer and how we must learn to hunt them as a tribe.

"Kids, we have to increase our kills if we're to eat, and that means more hunting parties need to be formed, and range further than we have till now. All we can do today is lay snares. So Boy, you take your warriors back down the valley and teach them how it's done. Roast rabbit tomorrow, I hope. But we'll have something better in a few days."

I detained Gregory and sat him down in the ferns. I looked him over. He'd changed colour and his body had lost some of its flab, but the younger boys had adapted better to our way of life. None of them complained of the demands the tribe made on them, but Gregory couldn't let anything pass.

"What is it?" he grumbled.

"Gregory, I know you got Fee pregnant."

"Er … so … so, what? Whatever she may have said, she's my sister, she loves me and liked my cock in her. You stick your cock in any little boy's mouth or arsehole and make them think they want it. I don't see what the difference between us is."

"Believe me Gregory, fucking your sister back then was your business if she was willing and she tells me she was. I really couldn't care less. But now, I'm your lord and chief and it's different."

"Lord and chief? Come off it. You and your boyfriend are playing savages with these kids and fucking their little bottoms till they're sore, but don't expect me to go along with the game. And now you've made my Fee believe in you too. You'll be fucking her next."

"So you tried it on with her again did you? Bad decision. From now on, it's the girls of our tribe who decide which boy can have the privilege of breeding them. I'm sure that's what Fee told you when you cornered her.'"

"Just keep out of it, boy-fucker."

I was on him because he could finish his sneer. We rolled grappling in the ferns until I had him where I wanted him, in an armlock with my right hand squeezing his low-hanging balls. As Gregory squealed and swore I tightened my grip further, till he howled for release.

"I'm pissed off with you, Gregory," I growled in his ear. "I can't allow this to continue. So I will give you a choice. Either follow my rules. or you leave the tribe. Whatever you think, I don't believe Fee will be too unhappy to see your ass disappear. I'll give you food and a weapon, but if I see you again in our lands, I'll hunt you down and feed your balls to Dog. The survival of my tribe is no game. It's deadly serious, and at the moment you're a danger to us all. So what'll it be?"

"Let me go! OK. I'll be good. I will, I will!"

I stood, and as Gregory began to struggle up. I planted my foot on his back and pushed him flat again.

"You'll swear, Gregory. Swear to obey me as chief in everything and never argue the toss."

"I swear I'll be good."

"No, fucker," I insisted. "You swear to me as your lord and chief. And swear by your balls, which you'll lose if you break your word. Then take my right foot and make a good job of kissing it."

I had gone very hard as I brought home to Gregory the reality of being in the tribe. After he'd slobbered over my foot I grabbed his greasy hair and pulled him up to the level of my erection.

"First job for you, Gregory," I said. "Learn to be a good cocksucker. If any of us asks for a blow job in future, you'll deliver. After all, you've been happy to get little Jack and Georgie to suck yours when you thought I wasn't looking. Life in our tribe is about give and take. So now you'll take my cum and love it."

***

I had our boy warriors scout daily for a couple of miles round the outpost. They went in pairs, with Boy riding herd on Gregory. It was Tony and Carl, the eleven-year-olds, who came racing up the valley into the camp with news on the third day of our stay.

"Big beasts down the valley, chief!" Carl gasped out. "They're in the deep woods where the streams meet, dozens of them."

I smiled at the eager boy. Carl was a red-head, and his pale skin had given him problems as his body came to terms with permanent nudity, but the end result was the most beautiful amber tan. I could rarely resist pulling Carl down into my lap, stroking the swells and contours of his tight amber belly and getting him to giggle by massaging his navel, which always got him hard. He and Tony weren't lovers, the way Stephen and Paul were and they'd already proved they were more interested in the girls than the older pair, but the pair were happy enough to offer a home to each other's cock, and so, were regarded by us all as a steady couple as much as Stephen and Paul were. Boy for one, was as keen on Carl's perfect, rounded little ass as he was on Stephen's. Carl had been under him last night, taking Boy's thrusts with no complaint and ecstatic high-pitched moans.

"So … what sort of beasts?"

"Like cows," Tony chipped in, "but different."

"They had big horns sticking forward, and they weren't fat and lazy like the cows we had on the Island," Carl contributed.

"Wild cattle," I concluded. "They're moving westwards into our woods. That's good news, boys. Beef is suddenly on our menu."

A hunters' meeting followed the return of the scouts. Boy and I agreed the time had come to try for bigger game. "But something tells me that cattle are going to be harder to hunt than deer," he cautioned.

"Why's that, Lord Boy?" Paul asked in the formal way I required in tribal councils. He ranked second now among our warriors, and had begun to speak up for himself.

For the first time Gregory chipped in, and without a sneer on his lips. "They fight back," he offered. "The bulls are quick to band together and drive off attackers. If they run you down, they'll rip you to pieces with their horns and toss and trample on what's left."

"As Greg said," I agreed. "So we treat them with respect."

I caught Gregory's eye as I shortened his name. He looked momentarily grateful at the attention. I still despised the boy, but I had concluded this ruling business meant keeping people you don't necessarily like happy.

Boy pondered this. "Another thing is that we're not the only predators who'll be interested in them. The city packs may have picked up on them and be trailing after them, looking to pick off the sick and young beasts, just like they'd do with us if they caught us on one of our treks."

We determined that we'd make our first attempt on the herd that afternoon. I calculated the cattle would be dozier in the afternoon, having browsed their fill in the morning as they moved through our woods, while any dog pack tracking them wouldn't be active till later as the evening cool began. So all seven of our older males stealthily closed in on them downwind, led by the Chief in person. I recognised this was a big departure in our tribal life and I needed to direct it, not Boy. All the warrior boys had crossbows, and Gregory and I had longbows.

We encountered the herd on the edges of a copse taking advantage of the shade. Their dark hides made it difficult to count them, but there could have been as many as forty of them spread out under the trees. A large standing bull seemed to be the leader, his massive horned head swinging from side to side. He looked enormous to me, and I sent Boy to instruct his warriors as to how we were to make an emergency retreat, which involved climbable trees in the near vicinity.

Tony was lying next to me in the undergrowth, as I spied out the herd. He gave an awed whisper at the size of the lead bull. "Cor! … totally fucking massive. How're we gonna bring that thing down, Chief?"

I smiled over at him and squeezed his tight little rear. "He's not the target, kid," I responded. I sized up the lay of the land and called over Boy. "You and Paul are going to bring down that cow, the one grazing just outside the trees. That means creeping round past their flank and not being seen. Can you do that? Good. Once in range, shoot for the head. Tricky, I know, but these aren't deer. I think they might take quite a few hits to the body to bring down, and we haven't time to waste waiting for her to die. Odds are she won't go down quietly and that'll spook the herd. Then all hell will break loose as they scatter."

"So how do we manage?" he asked.

"Send the other hunters up into the trees and safety. I have this little surprise." I pulled out from my bag one of the flare guns we acquired in Seatown.

"Hah! Good one, chief. I get it." After I briefed him, Boy silently took off and I saw him and Paul squirming on their bellies through the long grass and undergrowth to our left. The rest of the warriors slunk off silently south into the trees where they climbed up and out of harm's way. Which left me in the post of danger, as was right and proper in a chief, I thought nervously.

I counted to 200 in my head, and as we'd agreed they let off their first bolts on that number. I distinctly heard the bolts strike the beast, and saw the cow's head jerk as one of them buried itself in her. It let off a huge bellow of surprise. At that, I sprang to my feet as fast as the cattle herd did. I fired the flare right at the foot of the lead bull who roared in shock, leaping and dancing away from the great burst of red flame, retreating south with his herd hard behind him.

It went according to plan, but the sheer thunder and power of the stampede I'd began stunned me. The warriors later told me that they only just grabbed Stephen and saved him from falling under their hooves as some of those heavy bodies crashed into a tree they were sheltering in. The surprise meant that none of the hunters were able to take further shots at the cattle flooding past them to bring down a second beast, as I'd hoped they might.

Still, I and my warriors returned in triumph to our outpost that evening, bodies red with the butchering of the cow and heavily burdened with its meat. Boy led the way, holding high the decapitated horned head of the cow. They were intoxicated with success, which had led to an act of near-fatal stupidity. I'd detailed three of them to guard the perimeter while I was supervising the butchery after the kill, but they proved to be more interested in watching the carcass carved up and divided.

"You fucking little morons!" I roared at them when I turned and noticed the dereliction of duty. "A dog pack could be in amongst us, and we'd never know till it was too late. You could get us all killed!"

I was still furious when we got back to the camp. For the first time I took disciplinary action. I put Stephen, Tony and Carl over a fallen tree truck, and in the presence of the whole tribe unceremoniously flogged their little asses with a cane till welts were raised on them and they pissed down their legs. I didn't hold back both in my rebukes and strokes, and they went crying down the valley to set their flaming, bloodied buttocks in the cold water of a pond for relief. They were not allowed to join the tribe's first roast beef meal that evening, and slept out in the woods that night.

They crawled back in the morning on all fours to kiss my feet as I awaited them at the outpost gate, grabbing my ankles and begging the forgiveness of the tribe. Boy took them away and put them on toilet pit duty. It turned out he'd gone out to check on them in the dark, and left Dog to keep them company that night. It was he who gave them instructions as to how they were to return. It took a few days for the three to regain their spirits, but they never forgot their duty again, and I never afterwards had to punish my warriors in that way.

Chapter 6

Three years later, the nomad tribe on the road trailing behind me looked very different. The scouts reporting back to me were the same pair, Stephen and Paul, but they were now muscular late teens, seasoned hunters and deadly warriors. In one way, they were the same: devoted and now almost legendary lovers, of whose love our tribe sang songs. For them we had begun a new tradition. Though my tribe has forbidden breeding in pairs Fee, our Tribe Mother, devised something new. Stephen and Paul were declared Mates, pledged lovers. In their fourteenth year, they had pledged their love before the tribe, decked in flowers, in a glorious ceremony of which there had since been several … but more of that later. Mates could be the same sex or mixed, but if mixed they could only have one child together and never slept in the same quarters. Otherwise, we bred as the women's council determined, even me, their Chief.

It was a much longer nomad band that now followed me. Children had come, as we knew they would. Fee had dropped the first one squatting outside in a rainstorm at Dellchurch, screaming out the pain as the other girls panicked around her. The baby splashed down into the bloody mud beneath her ass. I at least knew what was to follow. I cut the cord and then delivered the disgusting placenta that followed. It wasn't planned, but the slimy thing was seized by Dog, who ran off with it into the church woods and feasted on it.

"Recycling," Boy had laughed. "Does that make Dog a cannibal?"

The child, a boy the women called Billie, walked along beside his father Gregory, who carried the little elf when the child was tired. Fee was now nursing another boy, this one mine, as the women had declared that Fee's womb was the appropriate one for carrying the child who might be next chief, if ever we came to a conclusion as to whether we were a monarchy. It was an ongoing debate at the time, and not one I was willing to settle. The people must decide. His name is David, and he is the light of my life. As chief, I was given the privilege of naming him, one reserved otherwise to the women.

Boy had a daughter, now nestled into the crook of his arm as he walked, crossbow over shoulder. The girls had given Lara's womb to him to seed, and the pair had made their first fuck on a bed of flowers as the tribe watched. Alongside him, Paul had fucked the other twin, Auburn. Boy had made Lara pregnant probably on that first public occasion, and the females with a sense of fun had named her Girl when the baby arrived.

"Seems logical, David," laughed Fee, my good friend and with Boy one of my two chief councillors. She alone in the tribe knows my secret name and that I had in fact given it to our son. Considering how much of a homo and boy lover I am, it was surprisingly easy and fun to mate with her, and if ever our turn comes round again, I'll happily seed her for a second time.

Paul was not able to seed Auburn and, when next she bled, it was Carl to whom the girls awarded her womb. They produced twins of her own, a boy and a girl, Jake and Lily. The delivery was terrifying, and the babies scarily small. But they came through, and the little pair were now walking behind her, hand in hand, both with Carl's amber skin and red hair. Stephen was to seed her next. April, the youngest of our first four girls, was now heavily pregnant by Jack, her long-time friend, toiling along with wet tits and a huge belly straining her back. Fee expected her to give birth at our next camp.

But the tribe did not just expand by copulation. Two years ago, after the winter rains had ended, I appointed Boy as Regent of the tribe, and went on an exploratory expedition. It was, I suppose my second, if you counted the first to the City, where Boy and I had liberated Marcus and the Islanders. I took Stephen and Paul, by now in their fourteenth year, because if ever I encountered dog packs on the march, these would be the two warriors I'd want to keep my back. They were so much in sync on the hunt that I would have believed they were telepathically attuned to each other. Also I adored sex with them as a threesome. They were very imaginative in what they did, and at their age they wanted to do it all the time. We skirted north of the city with the aim of heading further east, and maybe getting as far as the coast opposite Marcus's island. We had no word of him and his people, though I had not expected any. But I missed the man and worried about the fate of him and his little tribe, our brothers and sisters.

The expedition had not been a success as far as finding a trace of the islanders was concerned, though we learned a lot of the lay of the lands to the east far beyond the city. We found scattered and isolated pockets of settlement; lights glimpsed far off, and occasional signs of human activity. We did not go looking for contact however.

It was in the year after that I had made my third expedition, the one that transformed my tribe. Beyond Outpost North the land rose into high and barren moorlands. I wanted to see how far they stretched and what was beyond them. I marched this time with Carl and Tony, and also Dog, for luck. I might not have been able to enjoy those two teens' bodies the way I had Stephen and Paul's, but they now were past fourteen and I was beginning to think an adventure like this was a suitable rite for our warriors as they matured into their later teens and left childhood behind them. I would discuss it with Fee, the Tribe Mother.

So, we waved goodbye to the rest of our people and struck out north without much expectation on my part. The march across the tops of the moors was exhilarating however, and we marked sites for future outposts if the time came when we wanted to extend our little realm as its population grew. Tony had an exceptional memory for places, directions and distances. Just as well, as we had no paper or pens. I had no intention of cursing our children with the burden of literacy and have them take humanity's wrong turns once more.

After two days' march, we crested a bracken ridge and a new world opened out below us, fields and hills stretching far away north into a hazy distance. The ridge marched east and west of where we stood, like a barrier. We sat and wondered.

"I vote for carrying on down, to the lowlands, for as long as our supplies last," Carl pronounced.

"OK with that," I said. "Let's head down that defile there."

Then Carl called out. "Look, Chief! Smoke to the north east, and lots of it."

He was right. A tall column of white smoke hung in the air many miles away, perhaps two whole days' journey. Just beyond it a dimmer and similar column could be glimpsed further off again.

"There's no way we could get there and discover anything useful." I said. "It might be no more than a woodland fire. It's that time of year, and it's not rained for three weeks now. We'll follow that defile downwards as we agreed."

So we did, pausing to wash in a tumbling waterfall pool and fill our bottles. The deer track we were following along the scarp turned east round a bluff at that point and we stared. I pulled both my warriors down, as Dog growled behind me.

A trail of people were toiling up a climbing track a quarter mile opposite; men, women and children, some carrying bundles. They looked beaten down. The oldest were being supported by the younger ones. It occurred to me I'd not seen an old human since I abandoned my home village now seven years ago.

"Refugees," I said, recognising the signs. "They're running from whatever's following, and it must be terrifying them."

"Raiders?" Carl wondered.

"Most likely," I replied. "They must be desperate to look for refuge on these empty hills though. Can any of you see pursuers? No? I can't see any of them armed."

Dog growled again and this time I heard the distant yelping. These refugees from human cruelty were now being pursued by nature's merciless predators. It was a big pack, maybe thirty black shapes loping up from the lowlands. A group of four men were facing them in a narrow point of the way as a rearguard, seeking to give the rest time to escape, but there was nowhere to escape to, and sticks and stones were their only weapons.

"We can help," I decided. "Tool up, warriors."

We dropped our sacks, drew and slung our bows, checking the strings. Carl had a lance, Tony an axe. I had my knife and flare pistol. We loped easily and quickly down towards the besieged men holding the track. But we were not in range before they went down under the savage assault of the pack screaming as they were ripped apart. But the dogs were too excited and too numerous be satisfied with gorging on these first few victims. The pack leader howled and rallied his dogs, and then in quiet they swarmed on up the track, across which I and my warriors were now lined up.

I had six arrows in front of me and plenty of range. Four found marks, and wild dogs went down yelping. The crossbows of my warriors accounted for another four. Dog was beside me bristling and growling, ready to rip the throat out of any adversary who got close enough to lunge at me. But I raised the pistol and fired its flare down the track, right into their path, and that caused the pack to falter. A second cartridge exploded right among them, and at that point a group of refugee males ran down the track from behind us, yelling and waving sticks. We yelled too, and joined their charge down the hill. With that the pack dispersed, yelping and running for their lives. We found a couple of them still tearing at the fallen rearguard, but crossbow bolts in the head ended their enjoyment.

I paused and looked around. Four youths had joined us. I took in that they were older teenagers, the oldest maybe my age. He looked me up and down and stared at my erect dick.

"You got no clothes!" he said, superfluously.

The refugees toiled up to the hill top and sat to recover, staring up at the naked warriors who had saved them.

"They don't seem that grateful, Chief," Tony observed. There were about forty survivors, most of them children. The few adults left now were elderly. I unpacked my rations, and started distributing them amongst the kids. Carl and Tony did the same. They were gratefully accepted. The refugees were famished.

As I straightened I found the older teen at my side.

"Sorry, all gone," I smiled at him.

"How're you going to eat?" he asked.

Filling his own stomach didn't seem to concern him. I approved. He was Chief material, if leading that charge on the dogs unarmed was not enough evidence. He was also blonde and open faced. Not as gorgeous as my Boy, but pretty looking.

I sat and invited him to sit next to me. I put out my hand. "You're a brave man, what's your name?"

"Ricky … Ricky Wilson. Who are you?"

"I'm the chief of my tribe, and you've just entered our lands. As well for you, we were patrolling our frontier." OK, I know that wasn't the whole truth, but I thought it politic to big us up in the circumstances. "What drove you up here from the lowlands?" I asked.

He gestured at the distant columns of smoke. "Raiders from the sea are burning their way across our land. They landed on the coast by night. Our chief town was taken by surprise and stormed. The villages had little warning, but those who can get away are fleeing. They're not just after pillage, they're enslaving those they capture."

I looked grim. "I've heard of them," I said. "They've raided my people and our allies too."

"They've come before, just before the last virus hit. That time we drove them off, but the pandemic weakened our defences. How many troops have you got? Can you help us?"

I looked at the youth. "I can help you, but not to stand off a pillaging army, Ricky. I can give your people refuge for a while and feed you. It's over twenty miles to my people's camp from here however, and it'll be a hard trek if you're not used to it, as your little ones aren't."

"Any help will be appreciated … sorry, did you say your name?"

"They just call me Chief or Lord Chief. So Ricky, we'll rest, and I'll send one of my warriors running south to alert the tribe we're coming. I … er … hope you don't expect what you had in your villages. We live as hunter gatherers. But we eat well and we live by our own ways."

"Er … naked?"

"That's a part of it. Weird to you? You don't miss clothes. I can't imagine what it's be like to wear them these days. I bet it's uncomfortable in the humidity and the sweat. You stink, by the way."

He smiled. "I've been wearing this lot for a week. You on the other hand …"

"Are you going to be rude?"

Ricky laughed. "I was just going to say you smell of grass and the open air, well that and a faint aroma of hormones. Tell me more of your ways, chief. You have all my attention."

So I did, as we made our slow way back to Outpost North, his friends listening eagerly as we talked. My tribe greeted the refugees with food, kindness and tents from our store, for the children and the elderly to sleep under. But Ricky and his three friends slept with the warriors in the boys' quarters and that next morning walked out naked to join the tribe round the fire pit, into which they threw their superfluous clothing. Then they sat among my people to be hugged and become ours.

Ricky and I went over to the four older people. They stared as I and a bare-assed Ricky sat and explained that there was nothing for him or the other younger ones anywhere else, and return north was impossible, so they were joining my tribe. I explained that my warriors would safely escort them into the west, where we knew there were still settlements beyond the radio mast. There they could seek refuge. But the younger children would stay with the tribe, a point on which there was no debate. They were the siblings of the older teens and their friends. With us they would be cared for and loved, and trained to meet the challenges of the new world. The old ones weren't taking them to strange villages which would likely get sacked in turn. My tribe could fight back.

So behind me walked and rode a tribe over eighty strong now, with thirty proud young warriors who looked to Boy as their unofficial captain, and beside him his adored and sworn mate, Ricky of the North, his pledged lover and lieutenant. Oh yes, I said 'rode'. And that's another story.

***

Boy and Ricky fell in love almost as soon as they saw each other. Boy was then in his eighteenth year and as handsome as a god, his golden aureole of hair lit up by the sunlight. And though anyone male or female would be smitten hard by Boy in his glory, there was something in Ricky that appealed just as strongly to Boy.

The two had sat together in our dark quarters late into that first night murmuring in a corner of the room, nestled face to face, as Boy answered every question Ricky might have about our ways. I think it was during that night that Ricky's strength, humour and kindness conquered Boy's mind. Apart from me, Boy had not lived alongside any mature male and had presided over growing adolescents, none of whom were his match in any sense. Suddenly he was dealing with a desirable and clever man who he could meet on his terms. They had stood together in the dawn light in our quarters that first day, and Ricky had stripped to his pale skin as Boy watched. Then the other three teens, Ricky's friends and disciples, followed their leader. Boy took Ricky around the waist as he walked out to begin his new life of freedom under the sun and trees.

As the four old people left to begin their slow trek west under the escort of Stephen, Paul and Carl, we called the remainder of the newcomers together, younger teens and small ones. Those under their eighth year and all the females were taken by the hand by our own women and led off by Fee. By the end of the day the little children were playing naked together on the grass with our own, and the new female teens dispensed with clothing that night. The dozen younger teen boys, between twelve and fifteen, had not quarelled with the decision that they should stay to be trained as warriors and hunters. So I placed them in teams with mentors from our tribe, Tony, Jack and Georgie, the last two not so little these days. Within a week they were enjoying all the sex games their mentors loved.

It was in those days that our tribe found its final shape. Women and all children up to seven now lived together. From eight to fourteen the boy children lived together in their own quarters in training as hunters and warriors, cadets under the supervision of Boy and Ricky, who took no shit from them. At fourteen the boys came of age and joined the men in the warriors' hall. The Chief ruled all but in consultation with the Tribe Mother. As a result we began to replan our outposts and established the three required halls in each: for the women, the boys and the warriors.

Ricky had a lot to tell us about life in his land north of the moorlands and south of the arm of the sea that was beyond it. Another great and abandoned city lay to its east. A lot of the land was under the water where the sea had broken in over the past three generations. In his own lifetime Ricky had seen the surviving human settlements decline.

"The thing is, Chief," he told our council. "The old ways don't work in this new world. Our way of life in our tribe is how humans can survive and flourish these days. If you live in a fixed settlement like we did, you just become a target for raiders. But we in our tribe can't be pinned down."

"Yeah," I agreed. "And we don't destroy the land the way our ancestors used to, and set off the heating up of our world. Being nomads and hunter gatherers is the only way humanity can survive now. The foreign raiders are just parasites, destroying themselves as they destroy the towns and villages they pillage. They're doomed, they can't survive living that."

It was in that same council that Ricky brought up the question of scouting our land and protecting its borders. "It's a big territory, Chief. Had you thought of mounting our warriors?"

"What!" cried a startled Boy, "but horses don't exist anymore!"

"Yes they do, or they did till recently. The village next to mine, in the uplands only a few miles west of where we met, still breeds them and they pasture them on the moorlands. The village may have gone up in flames and the villagers are now dead or in chains. But the horses will still be there. Can you call over Wendy and Alice from the girl's house? They were from that village."

The two girls were summoned to the council, sisters of thirteen and fifteen. Alice the elder had taken her first cock a few days ago as we celebrated her breeding by Henry, an eager new warrior boy of fourteen. So eager he had ejaculated over her thighs before he could even insert his cock in her cunt, so Alice had a long wait before he was able to mount her again and cum inside her. It turned out that she had helped out round one of the stables, whose owner was a relative. She knew a considerable amount about the subject of horse husbandry.

Boy frowned with concentration as he listened and eventually urged that we acquire mounts.

"Think of it, chief. We could extend the range of our scouts and come down like a storm on any enemy, animal or human."

"I can see the advantages, Lord Boy," I agreed. "But it'll be a big investment of time and resources."

Ricky took Boy's hand and kissed it, for they were already deeply in love. "I suggest we equip an expedition, and with Alice as our guide go north and locate the herd before the dog packs get to them."

Alice too was excited. "The horses are domesticated and some have been broken for riding, even though they wander the moors without saddle or tack. They'll follow the lead mare if we can get to her and I can get her to submit to me. Geoffrey and Henry are able to ride too. They should come."

"Yes, we know Henry can cum," Boy laughed. "We all saw him do it. You two can have a happy honeymoon on the way north."

So quite a large column left for the north, Boy and Ricky in command. There were eight well-armed teen warriors, Alice and Wendy marching with them. I wasn't taking any chances after the last expedition and the encounter with the dog pack.

Eight days later, an excited child came haring up behind me.

"Lord Chief! Lord Chief! They're back and with big horses!"

The tribe was gathering, dancing and cheering as the expedition came down off the hills. I hoped the noisy humans wouldn't spook the horses. Leading them was Alice and Henry riding the same horse, Alice in front. A string of twenty other beasts, black, white, or mottled black and white, ambled after the leader, our warriors walking alongside and encouraging them. It seemed friends had been made between the tribe and the horse herd.

Boy and Ricky came up and took their congratulations. "I tried riding a tame one," Boy confessed. "Talk about saddle sore, except we don't have saddles. Wendy put me to shame with her skills, and she's just thirteen."

"It was pretty straightforward, Chief," reported Ricky. The main problem was finding where the horses got to. The dog packs have been driving them higher into the hills, but I think the dogs are down in the lowlands now, hunting the remnants of my people. Talking of which, can I introduce some new recruits." He called out and five pale and naked late teens unknown to me walked up.

"These are friends. They were caught by the slavers, but escaped and we found them hiding out at the stables. They want to join up. Chief … they had it hard. All of them raped repeatedly while they were captured, boys as well as girls. They're naked because that's how we found them."

"That's the way the raiders enslave their captives, Ricky. They strip them of everything, clothes, dignity and self respect. I'm surprised the boys have their balls left, the raiders we met treat them as a delicacy."

I went over and welcomed the newcomers. There was a haunted look in their eyes, which I know our tribe could help cure. I called over Fee, who knew exactly what they'd suffered. She hugged them all and took them over to the women's quarters.

I named Alice to be 'Herdmaster' of the tribe and she did a fantastic job in training our warriors and herdsmen to be riders, as well as presenting Henry with a son the women called Wolf. That summer the warriors raised a strong timber stockade around the entire conifer copse in which Outpost North was situated, then we went looking for materials in abandoned houses nearby to construct proper halls within it for the women, boys and warrriors. I stood looking down, with a certain satisfaction on the result, one day from the hillside above the outpost, in company with Boy and Ricky.

A great stone firepit was dug now in a central court, as a site for our assemblies and for cooking. The neighbouring stream was channeled around it, in part as a defensive moat, but Ricky had also devised a culverted water course, into which we could sit and shit through holes in wooden seats, at the south end of the precinct, instead of just squatting over the old toilet pits, which with our present numbers were bad neighbours to us in the heat of the summer. The little ones were now being constantly smacked, to stop them squatting anywhere in the outpost to empty themselves. The sewer was carefully channeled away from our drinking water and washing pools. A smokehouse had been erected for drying meat, and Fee had marked out and embanked a vegetable garden area like the one we had in East, but I had my doubts the local rabbits would let it be when we moved on. They'd have their revenge on us.

Moving on was in my mind that day as I surveyed our new fortified base.

"We go tomorrow," I instructed Boy and Ricky.

"Where to, Lord Chief?" Ricky asked, "East?"

"Eventually," I said, "but I think we should go back to Outpost South above Seatown. It's time to upgrade it and it's also time to exterminate the Seatown dog pack. It's too dangerous to let the dogs stake a claim to any part of our territory. I want our little ones able to roam our woods freely. You can begin designing a hill top fortress in which the tribe can camp as we move on our circuit. At the moment, it's just a cottage and storehouse which can only accommodate overnight stays by hunting parties. I want to extend our range as a full tribe."

So, for the first time, our new recruits experienced my nomad tribe on its progress, and I looked back at them with pride as we marched south, myself leading the column on foot, crossbow over my shoulder and Dog at my side. But a file of mounted warriors armed with lances and bows was now riding on our flank, with some delighted smaller children allowed the privilege of sitting in front of the riders. And so, we came down to the coast one afternoon and greeted the sight of the sparkling sea.

"Lord Chief!" yelled Stephen. "Ships!"

Chapter 7

I paused the march. Ricky and Boy came cantering up. I squinted against the shining sea to try to work out more of the dark crablike shapes.

"Just two boats," I concluded. "Not a major raid, I think. What d'you think, Lord Boy?"

"They're coming to land, Chief. This could be good. I want their asses. I suggest you let me loose with my warriors. We'll hunt them through the town, and when I have them, they'll tell us everything they can about their people and their plans. After that …"

"Kill them?" I queried.

Ricky said fiercely. "That's what they do to their victims, and in horrible ways."

"Yes, but we aren't them," I replied. "We'll see what we turn up. Take your warriors, Lord Boy. I want prisoners, not corpses."

Both men knelt in front of me, Boy crying, "As you command, Lord Chief!" They saluted me and remounted. Boy called his troopers to follow as he cantered down the road to the town, his cavalry not far behind him. I rallied the rest of the tribe and led them to the existing outpost, around which we raised our tents.

After a couple of hours I was thinking of leading the rest of our warriors down to the town, when the little crowd of smaller children staring down the road started dancing and shouting,

"They're back! They're coming back!"

Up the road returned our warriors, I counted them and was relieved to account for all fifteen of our riders, but alongside them strode naked warriors I did not recognise, a dozen of them, spears over their shoulders and bows and painted blue and white shields on their backs. As they came closer, those of our people who had been Islanders started jumping and cheering, and then were running down the hill to hurl themselves at the strangers, Gregory in the lead.

I turned to Fee whose face was alight. "Is it who I think it is?"

"Yes, lord," she said. "I recognise Charlie and … d'you know I think that's little Philip, but he's all grown up!"

The strangers formed two ranks when they reached our camp, then at their leader's sharp command, they went to their knees at my feet, lay down their weapons and shouted out as one, "Hail to the Lord Chief of the Hunter Tribe!" Then they touched their foreheads to the ground, as my people applauded and cheered them.

I stared at the leader. "Fucking hell! Margrit!"

It was Marcus's sister: bronzed, athletic and her hair done in a strange style, long thick braids falling as low down her back as her butt. She carried spear, shield and bow and looked quite as deadly a warrior as my Boy. Around her throat was a very odd looking necklace of what I took at first to be dozens of grey stones. She grinned at me.

"Tell them they have your permission to get up, Chief."

I grabbed her in a hug. "Margrit! This is amazing! Where's Marcus! Is he OK? Get up noble Warriors of the Island and welcome to our land!"

Then everyone was hugging and our children danced and sang around the group. A bonfire was raised and a feast prepared. The Islanders had their own warrior style it seemed. For one thing, three were women, and Margrit was their war chief and captain. A number of the males wore the same necklace as she did. Our warriors did not cut or braid their hair, but all the Islanders did and had dyed their braids blue and white. Ours highlighted their eyes with a charcoal band across their upper face, shaved their groins and asses bare and coated their genitals white for the hunt (and in later days, red for war). The Islanders grew their pubic hair thick and dyed it blue. They had a blue handprint slapped on their right breast or pectoral and a white one on the left. Margrit's breast prints were both red however, for she was the War Chief of the Island.

My council and Margrit sat apart from the feast as we questioned our old friend. She told us Marcus was Lord Chief of the Islanders and quite as much venerated by his people as I was by mine. He too had built up a flourishing territory with the same mix of luck I had, and indeed more of it. The Islanders now numbered well over three hundred men, women and children, providing 160 warriors.

"How did that happen?"

"Well, lord," replied Margrit, "the luck you gave us carried on and on. We sailed downriver that morning after you and Lord Boy saved us, and out into the estuary. Marcus beached that night up the coast. Before we landed we threw our remaining clothes overboard and in memory of those we had left behind we pledged to live as they now did. That evening we got used to naked living and learned to use the great gifts you made to us, because of which we are now safe, secure and growing as a people. Marcus asked me to tell you that we cannot repay the generosity and courage the Hunter clan showed us, and so the clan alliance he swore to you is eternal. The Hunters are forever our brothers and sisters.

The second day we sailed cautiously onward and with the following wind came in sight of the island before dusk. Smoke was still spiralling up into the air from a dozen places. I think we almost despaired when we saw the gutted ruins of Cowes – that was what our chief town was called. It could never be rebuilt. Then as we coasted south we saw three raider ships beached in a bay. I think we were so mad at that point all we thought of was killing as many of the bastards as we could until they killed us, and ending our pain that way.

We came to shore unobserved. It seems that we'd found the last of their fleet loading loot and slaves before leaving. There were scores of them chained naked and coffled together in the valley running up from the beach. There were seven of us and twelve raiders. But with the state of the tide and night coming on, Marcus realised they were planning to stay overnight in that defile before sailing with the dawn, and that was our chance. Just like when you found us, the slavers spent a couple of hours boozing around a fire, and pulling out children to rape. When we crept up on them they had little chance, they weren't sober enough to react. We killed five as they lay confused and drunk, wounded four and captured two.'

I gasped with relief. "Wow Margrit! That was some victory! And you recruited the freed slaves to your tribe?"

She nodded. "We did. And what choice did they have, naked as they were? We at least were armed and Marcus had a plan for a new society that gave them hope as he explained it. He's like you, Lord Chief. He can mobilise people and inspire them. Few of the captives had much argument in them. The oldest of them was only my age."

"What about the slavers?" Boy asked.

Margrit scowled. "With the dawn, we saw what they'd done to their parents and some older boys. They'd raised a dozen stakes at the head of the defile and rammed them up their victims' arses, heaving them upwards and leaving them spiked there to die slowly, speeding the process eventually by disembowelling the women and cutting off the balls and cocks of the men. The sobbing kids said the victims had spent the morning and most of the afternoon dying horribly, begging and crying to be killed. So we took the victims down and buried them with decency. In their place we put the slavers on the same stakes, both those we killed and those we captured alive. And there, what's left of them still is, or at least most of it."

Boy grinned. "Let me guess." He reached over and took her necklace and looked hard at the shrivelled grey stones. "You cut off their balls first and you've dried and threaded them on leather cords. Nice accessory. I should get one."

"What?" I said, "You have a necklace of slaver testicles?" Then I did a quick count. "That wasn't your only battle then, Margrit, as you have at least twenty human balls on that one necklace, and others of your warriors have necklaces too."

She grinned. "I hope to add another loop or two to it yet. Lord Marcus was quickly accepted as ruler of our island and we found other recruits. There were kids who escaped the slavers on the march to the coast and others who had managed to hide out. There were very few adult survivors, male or female. They were always tortured, raped and killed as soon as they were captured. Those few older people that did survive would not join us, but they're pretty much irrelevant. We ignore them and they us. The kids and teens took Marcus as their lord, for it was pretty soon obvious to them he knew what he was doing and had a plan to offer everyone food, protection and security, while the dissenting adults just wanted to pretend it hadn't happened. Fools. Their sort of cowardice had made victims of us in the first place.

One of the first things Marcus did was to gather a small fleet, and send boats to explore the mainland opposite. He found that the raiders had been there too even though it was not as rich a target as our island, but we also found isolated groups of survivors, some starving and hopeless and others who just hid from us. But we recruited as many as a hundred new tribespeople that way, even a few adults, and brought them to the island. So when the raiders came again last year, they found a very different island and a very different enemy."

I brooded on this. "Last year, eh? We've learned that other raiders just descended on the seacoast north of our territory. Some of the survivors have now joined us. I bet there's a connection."

Margrit nodded. "Seems likely. Lord Marcus trained and armed our warriors well over those two years we had to prepare, and he had some new warriors with very useful skills."

She hefted her crossbow and Boy took it. "Wow, chief! This is some piece of work. Light but powerful. It can fire two bolts at a time. Double trigger! Who made it?"

"There was a family of Island craftsmen in Cowes, and two younger apprentices survived. We liberated them and they joined our tribe. Now they work tirelessly to arm our people and increase our fleet. You must come and look at the two ships we just tied up in your harbour."

"Hah!" I said, "then you need to visit the chandlers down in Seatown, you'll find its stock interesting. So tell us what happened."

"Well," Margrit continued, "Marcus prepared well. We knew they'd come back one day. So we kept lookouts and patrols along the southern coast. Marcus realised that the raiders are parasites, they need our food supplies. They're more likely to come in the early summer when their stocks are depleted by the winter. True enough, end of last summer the signal fires went up in the south, and the warriors and people rallied to our new fortress in the centre of the island. There were less than forty ships this time, but that's still well over 300 raiders.

They landed on the east coast and began their march across the island to the ruins of Cowes, which gave them such rich pickings in food and slaves the last time. Apart from those idiots who'd refused to listen to us and tried to keep their heads down, they found few houses to pillage. Then they came to our refuge of Tribehold on its hill, behind its deep ditches and walls, banks and lines of stakes. That's where the tribe had gathered and manned the walls. The bastards sat outside for a day doing nothing. They had no idea what they were facing. Eventually they tried an assault on the gates.

Big mistake. It was designed as a killing zone. Scores of them went down under bow fire and none got anywhere near the walls. They made a second assault the next day on a stretch of wall, with just as disastrous a result for them. What they didn't know was that only half our warriors were inside the fortress. The rest were on our own fleet that sailed round the island and descended on their beached vessels at dawn of the second day. The few guards were killed or captured and we burned their ships."

Boy clapped and whooped. "It was you led that attack, Margrit! How many of those testicles came from that action."

Margrit grinned and put up six fingers, before continuing. "I led my warriors back overland to Tribehold and we found the raiders in a camp below the fortress, licking their wounds. As the sun went down on the third day of the siege, I sent up a signal flare – from the gun you gave us, Lord Chief! Then I took them in the rear as the garrison burst out. The raiders were already demoralised, few fought and most ran. But there was nowhere to run. Those that got back to their boats just found blackened hulls and our own ships sitting off the coast. In the end they lost over 150, and the rest captured."

I frowned. "That was quite a problem for Marcus then."

"They were all stripped and placed in their own iron chains and coffles, then they were marched to face the justice of the Islanders in our assembly. It was not pretty. The seriously wounded were put down on the spot, as there was nothing to be done for them. The others were difficult to deal with. It turned out the raiders had many boys and teenagers on board, some who were their own people and some slaves conscripted into their fleet, about sixty in all. We took the slaves aside and questioned them closely, which was not easy as they came from many different places and most did not know our language, but one was from these lands, and he knew the raiders' tongue. His name's Owain, and he's now one of my best warriors. He's with us. You two should talk. We sorted these out by offering the worthy ones freedom and a place in our tribe. None of them refused, and they've mostly been an asset since. The ones that had bought into the slaver life and their cruelties shared the fate of their masters.

The raiders' own children and surviving adolescents were even more of a problem. There were twenty boys. Nobody had the stomach to murder children even if their parents didn't have that compunction, but the tribe would not receive them. So, Marcus decreed that they were now slaves themselves. They've been left with their balls and collared in leather as a sign that they're not tribe and don't deserve to enjoy the full purity of nakedness. They live on the edge of our camps, but Lord Marcus's mercy is that once they're sixteen they are given the chance at our great festival to prove their worthiness to enter our society. Five already have and are tribe. So far they've not been a problem, one's even been allowed to breed one of our girls."

"And the men?"

Margrit looked grim. "They were given no mercy, as they deserved none. We slit their throats and then cut off their balls, every one of them. We stacked and burned the corpses on the island's highest point, sending up a huge column of black smoke as a warning to anyone who might have seen it."

I pondered this, and was glad I'd never yet had to make the decisions Marcus had. "So the fleet the raiders sent out last year never returned," I mused. "They must have realised that raiding along this coast now is too dangerous. Which would be why they struck north instead this summer."

That evening the male Islanders slept with ours in the warriors hall, or the old cottage if you prefer. Margrit and her two female warriors joined our girls in a nearby bungalow we had designated to be the women's hall within our new Seatown precinct. The small kids were with them, but our junior warriors cuddled in with the men.

I found a quiet corner and settled next to Owain, the ex-slave. He proved a cheery sort, though a scarred back spoke of years of abuse at the hands of his captors. He sported a dozen slaver testicles on a long necklace, evidence that he had been able to take good vengeance on his sometime masters. He told me his story, how he was born beyond the hills and sea to our north, in a mountainous land he called Cumree, and had been taken by the slavers when he was fourteen. He endured a brutal youth overseas in their homeland, working their fields and keeping their livestock. He sketched out for me the geography of their territory: a chain of large islands which had once been the hills of a now submerged land. East of the slaver islands, he said, was a vast dark continent peopled by even worse barbarians and cannibals, with whom the slavers traded slaves but of whom they lived in fear. That was one reason the slavers headed west to pillage us. But, he winked, those days were ending. I was impressed by the optimism and purpose of these Islanders, a testimony to the passion and inspiration of Marcus.

A couple of our kids were sitting listening avidly as we talked, brothers called Liam and Alan. The younger one was Alan who had only just left the women's quarters for the cadet warriors. Liam was approaching the age of graduation into the warrior's hall and had sprouted the first wisps around his thickening penis. Alan cuddled into his brother's lap where Liam idly masturbated his stiff little cocklet. I noticed Owain's stare. Eventually he said. "Your kids love their cocks."

I laughed. "They love warriors' cocks too. Come on over boys!" Liam got on his knees between my thighs speedily, for an invitation to suck off the chief was something no cadet turned down. Alan ducked down to take Owain's erection into his mouth, but the man stopped him. "Problem?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Is it OK to do this here? I've just never done it yet with smaller kids. Fucked a few of my fellow warriors, but not small ones."

"But you want to?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Our kids fuck and wank as they want and with whom they want," I informed him. "Taking a full grown warrior cock in mouth or asshole is an honour for them, even more so if their friends are watching." I pulled Liam's mouth off my cock and stood both him and his brother between my thighs, stroking their taut, warm bellies and fondling their stiffies. "Liam," I asked as I excited him, "have you fucked Alan yet?" He cooed, nodded and grinned. "Can he take warrior cock?"

"Yes, Chief," the boy replied, then he giggled. "He let Dog fuck him in the woods when we were back in North. Little show-off. He took all of Dog's knot, so he's got a slack hole." I sent Liam over to scoop up some grease from the meat tray, and he obligingly oiled his brother's asshole for us, holding up the three bunched fingers he used and winking at Owain. Alan went on all fours, pulled his bum cheeks apart and grinned back over his shoulder.

"All yours Owain," I said.

"I love this place," Owain sighed as he mounted and thrust smooth and deep into the eager child. I sat Liam on my erection and he worked it with his anus as I wanked him until Owain satisfied himself and came inside Alan. The younger boy slept in his arms that night and had a crusted asshole to show his friends the next morning. He was not alone. The tribe's boys giggled all the next day about what they called 'blue bum', the staining of their well-fucked boys' asses by the dyed pubes of the male Island warriors.

***

The Islanders stayed with us two days. We offered them the marine stores we'd found in the harbour, and they were delighted as we helped to load them onto their galleys. When I remarked to Margrit on the amazing luck that we'd both arrived at Seatown at the same time she shook her head.

"This is the third mission Marcus has sent out to find news of you. He'll be so delighted we succeeded this time. He wants to open up regular communication between our tribes. How about this for an idea. We'll send a ship here to Seatown every second new moon. We can exchange news and trade stuff too maybe. We have too much dried and smoked fish for our own use. But you people have more access to meat than we do and we're short on leather."

"Brilliant!" I agreed with enthusiasm. "Our tribe or our envoys will be here at Seatown every second new moon from now on. There's something else, Margrit. Owain wants to stay with us when you leave, and I've offered him a place for now in our warrior band until he decides whether he wants to stay and become tribe or go north and find his own people if he can. But Gregory has told me he wants to return to the Island with you."

"Really?" Margrit replied. "I can understand Owain's choice … but Gregory?" The look she gave told me we shared an opinion of the man. "Fee's not going to want to go, and she'll keep their Billie with her. He must know that."

"I have to say we won't miss him. If there's grumbles or trouble he's usually at the root of it. It's time Marcus had a turn with him. At least Gregory is actually an Islander."

"He'll not recognise the place these days. OK, we'll take him in Owain's place, though you're getting by far the better of the swap. Just wait till he's asked to ship an oar." She sighed theatrically.

We hugged and she and her warriors boarded. Gregory slunk after them. Fiona and Billie were not there to wave him off. Our warriors sang a song of farewell from the shore to our friends and we watched and waved till their white sails disappeared eastward round the coast.

The next three weeks saw us begin the fortification of Outpost South. When we left, our three tribal houses sat within a ditch and stockaded bank on the hilltop above Seatown. I inspected the result as the tribe departed for Outpost East, our next job.

"It's a good beginning," Boy declared. "But it's just a beginning. What Marcus and Margrit have done on their island is way ahead of us. A powerful refuge fortress for when the tribal lands come under threat is sheer genius. The raiders were defeated before they even arrived. The people and their valuables were out of their reach, and in attacking its walls they were committing suicide, despite their numbers."

I agreed with him, but shrugged. "This is the first stage. We'll put up enclosures around all our outposts, making sure they each have the three tribal halls, a clean water supply and vegetable fields we can tend as we travel around. After East is done we'll move to make a new one in the west towards the great mast. It's time we staked our claim in that direction now the Settled People know of us. We can't assume they'll be friendly."

"And after that, Chief?" Ricky asked.

"Then we think of our own Tribehold and where we'll raise it. I want it in defense by next summer."

"Why next summer, Chief?"

"Owain has given me a lot to think about. The raiders have a way of life that means they have to raid into the West or perish. They'll be back again next year, and they take captives who can be interrogated about the lie of our land. They've devastated the lands north of the moors, and they'll never go near the Island again. If there's anyone with intelligence in charge of them, the logic is that they have to attack west of the old city and down the south coast where they'll know there are as yet untouched settlements. They may even know about us, which is not a comfortable thought."

***

I returned to Outpost South the day before the new moon. I came with a small band of our mounted warriors, leaving the rest of the tribe moving north with Fiona for the first time as Regent. Alice, our Horsemaster, was to lead an expedition on up and over the moors to find more strays to try to double our herd. She had so far managed to get a stallion to breed a few of the mares we had, and now three gangly little colts trotted alongside their mothers with the tribe, being adored and petted by our tribe's children.

Fee was charged with enclosing paddocks and finding shelter for our herd around the North Outpost when the great rains came in winter. Owain was proving a master of raising timber buildings and stockades, and was training a crew of select warrior engineers to increase our skills. I fully expected to see results when we rejoined the tribe.

For the first time I was riding a horse and finding that keeping a seat just by gripping my mount's barrel of a chest with my legs and the help of a rope bridle took more skill than I possessed. I fell off twice, even though we were just ambling at an easy pace, and my ass and thighs were rubbed raw by my mare's hide. Boy and Ricky went easy on me and forbore to scoff.

"Learning experience, Chief," Boy commented as I landed cursing on my butt the second time I slid off. Dog trotted up to sniff at me, checking I was still alive no doubt. The confident skills of young Henry, a warrior of but fifteen years of age, humiliated me. He seemed to be in a telepathic link with his stallion and controlled him with the clicking of his tongue and the merest nudge of his ankles into the flanks.

We stabled the mounts at our outpost and scanned the empty sea from our vantage point. We checked the stores and lit up the hearth in the warrior hall. We'd brought bales of skins we had taken off the deer and wild cattle my hunters had brought down; there were even some dog skins from my warriors' massacre of the Seatown pack. There would no longer be any howling into the evening sky in that part of our realm.

Morning found us on the beach, with my young warriors laughing and tumbling in the waves as I kept a restless watch from the harbour mole. I had my hopes, and when I sighted the galley coming down the coast out of the east, I think I knew what the great blue banner billowing from the mast meant. The skilful Islanders swept their craft around the harbour mouth without oars, just managing by the sail, and docked neatly, blue painted naked sailors leaping to the quay with ropes in hand to tie up.

My warriors lined up at my side. Boy didn't need my instructions to bring himself and his men to their knees.

"Hail to Lord Marcus, Chief of the Island Clan!" they shouted, "Hail to the Scourge of the Slavers!" Then they prostrated themselves, laying down their lances. As Boy knelt up with a grin after making his obeisance he declared, "I'm very happy to kiss your cock too, y'know, Lord!" Marcus ruffled his mane of golden hair, then bent down and kissed him fully on the mouth.

Dog was at my side while all this was going on. He seemed uneasy about something, whining and restless. When Marcus straightened he came over, knelt down and ruffled Dog's big head. He looked up at me.

"The Islanders wanted to thank the third member of your little tribe who saved us back in the day." He let out a sharp whistle and my Dog stood up and barked as another large, dark canine leapt on to the quay from the boat. "It's a gift for your noble Dog; you can call her Bitch." Then we both laughed as Dog and his prospective mate began a romantic courtship of sniffing each other's genitals and assholes.

I caught Marcus's eyes, and we took each other's hand. He was more beautiful to me than any man I'd ever met, not from his taut and lean body, or his big blue-painted cock. It was just his eyes and the tenderness and wisdom of a face, which had captured my soul when first I saw the brave and noble boy he was, and he proved to me I was not alone, for a twin soul was fighting alongside me in the chaos that was our world, and which we were between us beginning to tame.

We kissed. "David," he breathed into my ear. "You're even more beautiful than I remembered." Then he gave my hand a tight squeeze. We walked together down to the beach, our warriors forming up behind us. We stood together on the sand, hand in hand, and as the breeze whipped at the long braids of his hair, he turned his gaze from the horizon to my face and said. "We have a lot to talk about."

Chapter 8

Mercifully, I didn't fall off my mount in the march with Marcus and the Islanders to Outpost North to rejoin my people. Not only that, but on the way Boy and his warriors impressed them with a master class in the hunting of wild pigs when we encountered a herd of swine in the great woods west of Dellchurch. Three carcasses were swinging on poles carried between pairs of the Islanders, as we entered our northern home to the cheers of the people and happy reunions of our Islanders with their friends and kin from over the sea. The pork helped fuel a two-day festival of song, dance and eager homosex. It was further helped by the gift of skin bottles of fruit wine that the Islanders had learned to ferment. The secret of its making was given to an intent and deeply interested Fiona. I foresaw a future of festive hangovers ahead for my tribe.

For me and Marcus however, it was more about talking and intense planning than drinking, singing, dancing and fucking amongst the men and boys, with a lot of cases of 'blue bum' appearing amongst our cadet warriors. Once the partying was over, the Island warriors generously added their efforts to those of our people. A disappointed Alice returned to the north outpost after a few days with only a half dozen new mounts trotting after her scouting party. Not much compensation for missing the greatest feast we had yet had.

After a week, Fiona once again led the tribe off south to the Seatown outpost, taking the Island warriors with her, to complete our trades and use their help to raise further fortifications above the town. Marcus, Boy, Ricky, Owain and myself, not to mention Dog and Bitch, headed west, still in search of a site for our Tribehold.

On our first overnight camp we sat around the fire and debated things.

"I don't see the problem," Ricky pronounced, "there's all sorts of decent hilltops in the hills to the north. Build our fort there and no one could get to us. Also it's where we can set up a stud and mark out our horse pastures." Ricky was the keenest of our council when it came to the potential of a tribal cavalry.

"True," Owain replied, "but on the Island, their Tribehold is smack bang in the centre, and whenever the tribe comes under attack it can rally to the fortress from all sides. Put ours up high on our northern frontier it'll be difficult for our scattered folk to retreat to it fast enough when we come under attack. We have a bigger territory than the Islanders. The other problem is a water supply. So I think we need somewhere in the lowlands east of the mast. Weren't you saying we need to stake our territory westward towards the Settled People, Lord Chief?"

"I did," I confessed. "I was always intending to find a site for an Outpost West, and just never did find a good place, not that I often went that way. OK, well, the time has come to have proper look. Boy knows this area best. Where do you suggest?"

Boy shrugged. "Keep heading west with the moorlands on our right and the land opens out, small hills, big woods with little rivers running down from the moors till the land rises again. It's all empty: great hunting territory, wild cattle and pigs, and no dog packs. Then the mast appears on its ridge, with the big river winding round the foot of it. Me and our boys've sneaked into the settled lands a few times, avoiding their houses – I know, Chief, against orders, but my younger teens like an adventure. We've never been spotted. We're too skilful for that. They don't have a town, just scattered houses and farms which are easy to slip past. They carry on as if there weren't any raiders out there just waiting to rape and murder them. Crazy."

So we subsided towards sleep. I cuddled up to the warmth of Marcus's back and once again I had that strange feeling that our bodies were actually designed to fit together, more so than I ever felt with another lover, not even Boy. My cock hardened and rested in his crack, and my right hand reached round to find and grip his own big cock, something I'd been aching to do. I just knew he would not object. He shifted and sighed. Marcus and I had done nothing sexual together during the festival, silently concluding that the chiefs of the tribes publicly having sex together would raise some awkward questions. Marcus had however been offered our choicest boys to choose for his bed partners, and he had fucked both Liam and Henry, who boasted afterwards at the hugeness of what he put inside their bumholes and of course their heroism in taking it. Feats of anal endurance were the sort of thing our boy warriors boasted of and made lewd songs about.

I asked no permission but placed my cock at his hole as Marcus pushed back, sighing as I manipulated his considerable length. I penetrated his anus and my cock head lodged within the tight ring of muscle. Marcus's sigh became a groan.

"David! Oh God. Take it!"

"Take what?" I gasped. "You mean … you're an ass virgin?"

He turned and engaged passionately with my mouth. "My cherry was for you alone," he whispered. "I love you, my king. From the first moment we met. Now make my wet dreams come true and fuck the ass off of me."

***

Boy and Ricky kept giving me amused sidelong glances as we marched west the next morning. I more than half imagined Dog was doing it too. None of them actually said anything, though I suspected Dog had an opinion. I kept catching Marcus's eye and neither of us could stop grinning when we did.

We ambled at a tribal pace, which was basically a stroll, into the western parts of the Hunters' realm. Like any good chief, I did not think of it as my realm. I was not a king. That and many other matters were what I discussed with my Marcus as we walked. For all I loved Boy deeply, he lived in the moment for the pleasure of sex, war and the hunt, but Marcus was a man of visions and dreams, my true partner in body, mind and devotion. I often return in my mind to those conversations in the three days we ambled though the woods between Outpost North and the Mast ridge, and how they were to form the future of our tribes and of humanity.

On the third day, we arrived at the great river, the furthest west I'd yet come. We had already skirted scattered houses of the Settled People who lived to the east of the river. Crossing the river was something I had no intention of doing. The Settled People knew we existed but the less we had to do with each other the better in my opinion. I was pretty sure that to them we would be 'savages' and so feared as a threat, for all that they had some proof we were well-disposed by our saving and protecting the northern refugees we'd escorted to their lands.

We struck north up the river and away from the houses. After a few miles we found a great viaduct and bridge still intact. I resisted the temptation to cross it and climb up to the mast, now towering over us on the other side. The bridge was likely to be used by the Settled People to communicate with their houses on the eastern banks. We camped in a hillside copse several miles further north where the land was rising towards the moorlands, which as far as I was concerned was our tribal territory. When we rose the next morning, it was to a clear dawn with a fine view south. We climbed to the hilltop to take advantage of it.

Owain looked around. "No houses hereabouts to plan an outpost around, Chief," he commented. "On the other hand this is a great site, defensible and with convenient springs on the southward face. Across that valley our own moors begin, and it must be maybe twenty miles east to Outpost North, the usual two days' march for the tribe."

"Still too close to them house-dwellers," Ricky grunted. "Wouldn't do to invest in constructing an outpost here and then leave them free to trespass in it."

We wandered back eastwards, again skirting the houses on the north. We were back in the extensive woodlands. "Here's a thing, Chief," commented Boy, "why is it that we need to put our fortress on a hilltop?"

I shrugged. "It's common knowledge that castles look good on hills, it makes the banners flutter in the breeze."

Marcus slapped my backside. "He's kidding you, Boy. Why d'you ask?"

"Well, thing is, there are a couple of small rivers that run down from our moors and twist through these woods. I was thinking. When me and Ricky hunted these woods once we came across a stretch of one which was colonised by beavers."

"What, seriously?" Marcus remarked. "You have beavers in your territory? Always wanted to see some of them. Aren't any on the Island or the lands opposite. Hey! You don't hunt them do you?"

Boy shook his head firmly. "They're way too cute and funny. But I like watching them, and you have to admire their dams. Now the things is this. About a mile from here a little river loops around a rise, not quite big enough to call it a hill, and the beavers have built two dams which have created a series of lakes on one side of it. What's to stop us adding to the dams and surrounding this entire rise with water. How about that for a defence!"

Owain looked at me, mouth open. Then he gave a firm nod. "That is one damned good idea, Boy! How far away is it?"

It was getting on in the afternoon by then. So we decided on a halt, and kicked Boy's idea round. Marcus raised one difficulty. "We have a similar place on the Island: low lying and wooded with wide stagnant pools. In summer it's rife with mosquitoes, and a malaria plague spot. It's off limits to our kids."

Boy shrugged. "I've not seen or heard those pesky insects there, Lord Marcus, and Beaver Lake is not what you'd call stagnant. Water flows though it right enough, if slowly."

As I lay back on the grass under the trees, listening absently to the desultory debate above me, Dog came over and slumped next to me, rolling so his head was laid on my belly. I ruffled his ears. Bitch came over and snuffled about my face. I don't think she ever could work out whether I was a rival for Dog's affections or not. She had nothing to complain of, she was in heat and Dog had been frantically servicing her for the past two days on the march. A new generation of domestic canines might very well be incubating in her womb. I hoped so. It would be wonderful to see our tribe's children rolling around and romping with their puppies.

I was beginning to doze when Dog's head went up and he gave a familiar low growl. I sat up and grabbed for my bow.

"What's up?" asked a startled Boy.

"Dog's heard something," I hissed. I leapt to my feet and clicked my fingers. Dog barked and loped at speed into the trees followed by Bitch. I ran after them at full speed. There was a crashing up ahead of bodies running through bushes, a shriek and a yell.

I broke into a clearing. Up above in the leaves two scared faces were looking down from their perches and a boy was hanging on to a branch trying to pull himself up to join them, as Dog and Bitch leaped up to try to get at him. "Heel!" I shouted, and the dogs pulled back.

"Whoever you are," I shouted, "you're in a bad position. We're armed and there's no escape, so drop down here."

There was a silence and an adolescent voice called down. "How do we know you won't set those animals on us?"

"You are in no position to make conditions. Get down here."

There was a muttered conversation, and three youths climbed down. There were two boys and a girl all in their early teens. They were fully clothed and spoke our language, so they were from among the Settled People. This was the first close up view of their folk I'd seen. The clothing was a mixture of scavenged old shirts, trousers or shorts, with some knitted items. The shoes I'd guess were homemade. The older boy was a redhead quite as striking as our own beautiful Carl, though paler. The girl was dark-haired and dark-skinned and about his age. The younger boy resembled her closely, so I assumed he was her younger brother. The older boy returned the inspection open mouthed: it was their first close up of the naked savages they must have heard of. He stared at my white-painted cock rising from my bare groin. The girl looked anywhere but at us.

"You were spying on us," I stated. "What's your name, kid?"

"I'm Martin."

"And your companions in crime?"

"He's Idris, she's Asma. You can't keep us here. People will miss us."

"No doubt," I said. "But before we part, there's a lot I need to know. What do you think you heard?"

"Enough," Martin said truculently.

"And what does that mean?"

"You savages are planning an attack on our people! We heard you talking about your forts and warriors. You'll never get away with it."

"If that were true we wouldn't be having this civilised conversation would we?" I scoffed, rolling my eyes. "Bring them, and tie their wrists," I ordered Boy and Ricky. Protesting, the three were cuffed and pushed to our temporary camp. They were sat down and their tied wrists were secured together so they sat back to back. Dog and Bitch sniffed around them, while we sat at a distance.

"Well," I observed to Marcus. "A full blown diplomatic incident. What's your advice, Lord Marcus?"

"Let them go, and they'll end up mobilising the house-dwellers against you. Hold them captive and when they eventually have to be freed, it'll be just as bad."

"We can't hang around here, Chief," Ricky urged. "We need to join the people at Seatown, and Lord Marcus and his warrior-sailors need to return home."

"So," grinned Boy happily, "the three have to come with us. Time they learned about the savages, isn't it? Bit of education for them. Then they might realise they got the wrong end of the stick."

"OK. So they travel with us tomorrow," I decreed. I went over to the three teens and delivered the bad news. Over the protests, I told them it was their own fault. Then we stripped them naked as they cried and struggled in their bonds. We stashed the discarded garments under a bush telling them they could reclaim them on their return if they came back this way. I smiled down at them, all blushing red as I assessed their forcibly exposed genitalia.

"You're in for the full tribal experience, and you won't need those if you're going to be among the 'naked savages'. Though you can wear your shoes on the march, which will begin at dawn."

Chapter 9

Dawn proved the first challenges for our naked captives as we released them, and let them walk around. Me and Marcus squatted together and evacuated our bowels on the spot. I put my ass up for Dog to clean. Three horror-stricken faces stared at the performance.

"Need to crap?" I said with a crooked smile. "Do it now and do it here. No sneaking off into the bushes." Martin shook his head decisively. The two siblings, Idris and Asma, looked around wildly, but there was no escape. Asma squatted and pissed copiously out of her hairy purple slit, head down and face flaming even under her dark complexion as the foaming stream trickled past her toes. Idris on the other hand had to crap, and a long yellow turd coiled out of his asshole dropping as he farted wetly, expelling some smaller nodules. I grabbed him by the scruff as he tried to distance himself from his messy shit pile, and held him so Dog could slurp and feast on his soiled ass crack and taint. The boy wailed with humiliation and squirmed as the sensations from his asshole overwhelmed him. His thirteen year old cock nonetheless hardened into a downward-pointing spike as it happened. I inspected the result between his cheeks and noted how pink was the exposed inner skin of his anal flower against his dark asshole, the crinkled rim almost black, gaping open after his evacuation and the working of Dog's insistent tongue. It was all I could do not to feel around inside him. I let him go, and he leaped away, hands over his groin and its embarrassing erection.

The boy Martin spat at me. "You people are animals!"

I shrugged as I walked over to him and took the pale shrinking boy around the shoulder.

"People are animals, Martin," I replied. "They've forgotten it for too long, and we're rediscovering it. So will you. I look forward to your performances. Or, you could follow Boy and Ricky's example. They drop their hard clean turds out of their asses as they walk."

"We learned it from the horses," commented Ricky. "Dog hates us for it."

"Nice morning wood, Martin," Boy commented. The boy's cock had been erect out of his flaming bush when he awoke and stubbornly refused to soften. It was one of those that curved tightly up. The foreskin was retracted right back from the corona and the big red bulb of his glans was slick with its unavoidable morning emissions.

"Want a hand with that?" Boy grinned devilishly.

"Keep your filthy hands to yourself, homo!" Martin shouted in panic.

Boy was enjoying the teasing, and I felt no need to curb him. "Who said I wanted to use my hands? My bum's available to you if you think that's less of a challenge to your masculinity. That really is some fine cock you've got. It'll get a lot of admiration in the warriors' hall. Hey Ricky, ready for my morning attentions?"

"Sure am, lover," Ricky replied and dropped to his knees to swallow his sworn mate's erection, wanking himself to completion as he brought off his Boy.

As the two young men groaned out their orgasms, all the stronger from being so very public, Marcus and I placed food into the hands of the three captives. They were hungry enough to eat it despite two men having sex in front of their eyes. Asma couldn't look away. After that, we tied their hands behind their backs and in this way our little column stumbled off and headed for Beaver Lake.

***

We found Boy's site. Owain and Marcus paced it out and carefully assessed the elevation of the adjacent rise while the rest of us watched the beavers at work or, in the case of our captives, squatted and sulked.

"The terrain's not marshy," Owain concluded. "The beavers channels don't allow for water to stand. Still, I have concerns about sewage disposal."

Ricky grumbled that it was all very well staking a claim to the site, but it'd drive the beavers away from their home, which he personally couldn't stomach. But he helped with the pacing and the staking out of a possible stockade. I hurried them along. I'd no doubt that a search would by now have gotten under way for the missing three. I wanted to be out of the place before any confrontation could happen.

It was a two day march to the Seatown outpost. As we sighted the sea I cut our captives' bonds and removed and threw away their shoes.

Marcus cocked an eyebrow at me, saying "We wouldn't let them parade around in pure nudity on the Island. They're not part of the People and don't have the right."

"What would you do?"

"Collar them, like the raiders do to their naked slaves."

"I'll put it to the tribe," I said.

Things had been happening at Seatown, and Fiona had gone further with the works than I'd expected or asked for. She'd used the resource and abilities of the Island warriors to construct a more formidable precinct on which several teams were hard at work. The three halls were now encircled by a much more extensive ringwork in which new outbuildings were under construction, including stabling. Teams of our people were hauling building materials from the ruined town below using our horses for draught. The gate was now fortified by outworks and a sturdy tower that could serve as a lookout to sea.

"Fuck!" declared Boy, as we viewed the works. "This is as good a Tribehold as we could hope for, even if it's in the wrong place."

An assembly was called, and that evening the tribe gathered round the blazing firepit as meat was roasted and heaped baskets of cooked vegetables and fruit circulated. Well over a hundred adults and adolescents now face me across the flames, as I took one of the two high seats that were set out, one for me and the other for Marcus.

The three captives were placed before the tribe. I explained why they had been taken and the tribe agreed that they were unworthy of being naked, and three leather collars were strapped around their necks. Martin was placed among the warriors, Idris with the cadets and Asma with the women. Carl took responsibility for his fellow redhead and the boy Alan was to protect and help train Idris while they were with us.

Singing began among the women and children, and a drumming from the cadets. Boy stood before Marcus and I, and he bowed low. "Lords!" he cried. "Our warriors and those of the Island have created a dance to perform before the tribes, in your honour and in friendship."

The pace of the drumming changed and became loud. The cadets had been rehearsing a new beat, insistent and ferocious. Our men and the Islanders had assumed full paint, slathering their cocks red or blue for war, then they formed up against each other with spears. I was moved by the sight of our warriors, no longer children but full-grown men, lean, virile and beautiful. What followed was mesmerising, as they stamped, gyrated and defied each other. Boy and his opposite number from the Island leapt forward and danced a single combat, closed with each other and separated. Then both lines joined and circled the fire as one brandishing their weapons, praising the rule of their chiefs, our deep friendship and the destruction of the sea raiders.

Cheers and loud acclamations followed the performance. I rose.

"My people and people of the Island!" I cried. "We have sworn eternal alliance, but Lord Marcus and I have found that is not enough for us. Before he leaves for his home we wish you all to know that we two chiefs will become sworn lovers before you: mated in the sight of our tribes. He will swear our bond as Marcus, Lord of the Island, and I … I now claim my own name back from my past, for I will swear as David, Lord of the Hunters."

***

I'll pass over the festivities for Marcus and my bonding which happened the next day.

The day after that the Islanders left for their home, our children throwing flowers in front of their feet as they marched out of our growing fortress. All my warriors marched down to the harbour as an escort of honour, our cadets at the head of the column singing in their higher voices praise of the courage and loyalty of the Islanders and their lord, Marcus, Sworn Mate of David their own lord.

Returning back up the hill slowly and feeling gloomy after my husband had sailed away, we returned to our tribehold. I called over Carl as we walked and asked how Martin was coping.

"Well Chief, it didn't take him long to settle. I don't think he notices he's naked any more, except when the lads compliment him on his fiery red pubes and his great cock. He still blushes at that. He's melted towards me, with being a redhead an' all and being a woman fucker by preference. Also, I know a few helpful tricks about pale skin, freckles and sunburn. He sleeps with me, and he's stop protesting when I get hard behind him, since he's no longer scared I'll fuck him in the night. But I will wheedle him into a hand job one day. His cock is really handsome. He needs to loosen up. None of our kids are so uptight. It's not healthy. He won't look at it directly when our boys have sex in the hall, though I see him sneaking glances. He's begun questioning me about how you get to fuck a woman in the tribe."

"Obviously he assumes we rape our women daily, as we're naked savages."

"Picked up the sarcasm there, Chief. Actually, I think it's the girl Asma that's the cause. He has the red-hot hots for her. He was keen to confide in me as a fellow non-homo how far their mutual fumbling has gone to date: which is basically hand jobs. But she once blew him and let him suck her sweet tits, an episode which he relives daily. He was so hard when he told me, he actually began masturbating himself before he remembered he wasn't a naked savage. He's that age I suppose. It was bad news for him when I told him that our council of women decide when a fanny gets fucked, and by whom. With Asma walking around with her very nice little tits, tight brown bum and hairy slit open to his view, he's all but frantic."

"Pity," I laughed. "Hasn't his little mate Idris told him about the top 'n tail club?"

Fiona had clued me in years ago about female sexuality, and to my surprise informed me that girls love sex quite as much as boys, which I still find difficult to believe. But as she explained it, I was brought to agree that though we had to licence and monitor breeding in the tribe and the use of wombs, it was pointless to try to stop the boys and girls from otherwise trying to have sex together. For many of our kids of both sexes, homosex might be enjoyable but it was not enough. So, a blind eye was turned to when the younger and older teens sneaked off to the woods and explored the many ways heterosex could happen, without a penis ejaculating inside a girl's cunt. This was the "top n'tail club" as at the beginning one of its most popular activities was mutual fellatio, when the boy slurped the girl's slit while she gobbled him down. The older teens go more for anal penetration and clitoris stimulation, I've been told. I've never had the urge to find out for myself.

So though unlicensed sex between boys and girls was technically forbidden in the tribe, anything other than vaginal sex might well happen amongst our teens from pubescence onwards in their secret dens. We didn't talk about it. It was a subculture and in some ways reinforced the tribal way. Exclusive relationships between a boy and girl were frowned on amongst our kids and any sex act they performed was usually done to an audience. All the kids knew that if any couple was stupid enough to impregnate a girl without a breeding licence from the women's hall, the boy would lose his balls, and there was no mercy or appeal from that brutal sentence, though it had not been carried out up to that date.

The boy Alan was walking ahead of me, hand in hand with my own son, David, or as the tribe awas already calling him, Little David, or David Davidson. I caught up with them, kissed and then lifted my little angel on to my shoulders. I asked Alan about Idris. Alan giggled, he was a perky and pretty boy, legendary as a cock hound among the warrior cadets. In the end, he would go on to mate with his big brother, who continued to fuck him enthusiastically even after he had graduated to the warriors' hall.

"He didn't know which way to turn, Chief. You know what the cadets' hall is like, boys slurping cock and taking it up the chute in every direction. The sun's made us all dark, but Idris is darker than everyone and his pink cockhead is so cute peeping out of his skin. Me and my mates spent the first night inspecting his junk and asshole, then we shaved off his pubes to make him look more tribe. He didn't protest much. I think he really wants to fit in. He huddled between me and Timmy when we slept, and cuddled nicely. I pushed myself on to his morning wood, so he fucked his first ass as everyone was waking up around us. He's had me twice since, and Colin, as chief cadet, took his cherry last night before sleep with everyone cheering them on and Idris more than willing: he was so excited and vocal. But what he really liked was when I ate Colin's cum out of his asshole when he'd pulled out. So he's got a lot of respect, apart from urging everybody not to tell his friend Martin and his sister what he was doing. That was a bit chicken, I thought."

I ruffled the little pervert's hair and slapped his butt to send him on his way. I had some thinking to do, and so I found a quiet corner with a sea view and pulled my son into my lap. Like all tribe toddlers, he had no hesitation with seizing and playing with adult cock, and he treated mine as a toy, he especially loved it when it went hard. In the end, I placed my erection between his legs so he rested on it and it poked out from between his thighs. He reached down and played with the knob.

"Sticky, Daddy!" he chuckled as he held up his hand and licked the oozing precum off it. The tribe had no age limit on sex play and as far as I was concerned, a father had the best right to introduce his boy to its joys.

As I sat there and watched the gulls wheeling above the glittering sea, while my son pleasured me, I got drowsy and eventually I lay back and curled on the grass with my little one still tight in my arms so he couldn't walk off. My brain wasn't quite so drowsy as the rest of me. One thing I was convinced of was that the following year was going to be fateful for me and Marcus and our growing tribes.

Chapter 10

I put my hand on the shoulder of young Martin of the Settled People as the ship lurched again when the Island sailors turned it into the wind. We were rounding the Great White Spikes on an afternoon of brilliant sunshine, but of an unluckily strong breeze, unlucky that is for Martin, who has no stomach for the roll of the waves under us. He vomited once again over the side as I held on to him.

Two months with the tribe had changed him a lot. His body was lean and lithe and his skin was a glowing tawny. I'd removed his collar a month before, as I had also those of his fellow villagers.

"I have to," I told him when I did it, "or you'll have this weird white band around your neck." But actually, all three had by then adapted incredibly well to the tribe. Carl's hair was now the wild aureole of the rest of my people and he had shaved off his body hair, so his magnificent cock was properly displayed and painted. Liam, the youngest of the warriors, giggled as he told me it was extremely popular with the girls of the clandestine top n'tail sessions, where few days passed when he wasn't buried up to his fat balls in some girl's ass. There was too much tail willing to take him for his ferocious sexuality to be satisfied with just Asma, though the availability there of her body was what had led him to joining the sessions. But she too had learned from our girls, that her sex was not a thing that happened just between two, but was the property of the whole tribe.

The warriors had petitioned me that Martin be taken into the tribe, after he willingly accepted their ways. They painted Martin as one of their own and awarded him a bow. His cock was still crusted with white from the ceremony and his bright green eyes were ringed with black. Carl was principally responsible for the conversion. Martin looked up to him more and more, and he and his partner Tony had taken the boy in hand, training him with horse and bow, finding him very capable and willing. So I'd named him as one of my warrior escort on this my first visit to Marcus's Island, along with Carl and Tony, who made up a happy threesome now in other ways, with Martin the past three nights on his back in warrior hall before sleep, his legs back to his chest, under the two older men. The ability to take two cocks simultaneously was a thing a warrior of the Hunters prided himself on, and Martin's eagerness to emulate his comrades in doing it proved more than anything how much he wanted to be true tribe.

The invitation to the Island had came from Marcus, carried by the next ship to visit us after his departure. It was getting on for winter, and the stormy weather would soon be with us, but at present, we were in that warm tranquil part of the year, the time of picking seeds, berries and nuts in the woodlands, the harvesting of our orchards and vegetable patches, and the preparation of jerky, as we stocked up for the wet and cold season. The tribe under Fiona's regency was currently migrating from outpost to outpost readying them for the winter season, while Owain and a select crew were laying out a new Outpost West by Beaver Lake, though it wouldn't be complete by the onset of winter, which we would spend in our well-provisioned and weatherproof new Tribehold by the sea.

The sailors brought us to land on a shingle beach under white cliffs.

"Not our usual landing point, Lord David," said their young skipper, Wim, one of the former raider children raised to be Island, and still speaking with a trace of a foreign accent. "But it's a quicker walk from here to our southern outpost than it is from our harbour round the point where we keep a battle squadron and our fishing fleet. Lord Marcus and Lady Margrit told us they'd meet you up there."

So we jumped down on the shingle, Martin theatrically going to his knees and kissing the firm land. He exposed his anus as he did, and I observed that there was an open black hole there, the result of slackness in the muscle from repeated double penetration by his mentors.

Most of the Island tribe was gathered at their outpost, and it brought home how much larger it was than my own Hunters. They were gathered to witness the repeat of Marcus and my vows of mating and make a great feast of it. Mating was a practice that the Islanders were adopting from us, and three young couples, one same sex, took the oath after us, the first in their tribe to do so. We moved on then to their great tribehold, a long procession of men, women and children behind us on the march. I hadn't quite realised how imposing and powerful their fortress was until I glimpsed it on its rounded hill. It was double the size of ours, many roofs and tall carved totems visible over the walls.

The Island tribe was now well over five hundred strong, both from its own breeding programme and from a steady influx of refugees and strays. As me, Marcus and Margrit sat in a private council in the fortress's tall Chief's House it turned out this was why I was wanted there. I rather admired the idea of a Chief's House for myself, and maybe it might make a nice addition to our own tribehold. Knowing my people, they would be eager to build one if they knew the Islanders had.

"The point is, David, there'll be too many of us for the Island to sustain if we carry on like this," said Margrit meditatively. "It's a problem. Sure, it's a sign of the success of our way of life, but if the plagues return it'll be as bad amongst our packed halls as in the old days in the towns and cities."

Marcus heaved a sigh. "The people get it, so we've been debating what to do. Our council has come up with the idea of forming a new tribe out of our numbers. There are easily enough of us now to make a go of one. They wanted you here to sanction it."

"Me? I'm not their lord," I said in surprise.

Margrit laughed. "No, but you invented this way of life, so they want your opinion and – it has to be said – your permission. They look up to you, David. For us you're our great saviour."

I thought about this. I liked the easy and friendly relationship that had grown up between Islanders and Hunters, and I saw it as a partnership of equals, symbolised by the mating of Marcus and me, their chiefs. But then, it occurred to me that though I fucked my Marcus in the hall amongst the warriors that he had never taken my ass, which was still virgin. Maybe that expressed something bigger than just our sexual preferences.

"So," I eventually said, "there are a number of things to consider. First, who's to lead the new tribe, and second, where will it establish itself?"

Marcus grinned. "That's my David. The second question is easiest. The land across from the Island and eastward up the seacoast is thinly populated and would be exposed to raiders if we weren't here. We've already absorbed a couple of dozen starving and desperate folk from there, adults and children, over the past year, approaching our ships and begging to be admitted to our tribe and willing to change their lives to ours. There's no viable settled people there. It's a big territory, between the downs and the sea, with plenty of room to expand. And as for who will rule the new tribe, the favourite candidate is my dear sister, War Chief of the Island and Mistress of the galleys," he laughed. "But there has to be an election, and first we have to divide the people. Now that you're here, you can preside over the process, which will begin in two days when all the tribe is called to assemble."

It was a gigantic feast, the like of which none of us Hunters had ever seen. The firepit blazed in the fortress's broad central square, as well as several bonfires, and the air was full of the smell of roasting carcasses the Islanders' hunting parties had taken from the mainland opposite. There was dancing and singing, which Martin, quite a singer himself, declared was good, but not as good as the music of our own tribe. The turn of phrase brought a tear to my eyes. I looked at this confident, beautiful and virile naked warrior and it occurred to me he had no intention of returning to the Settled People, which I'd always assumed he would. He had found us and in finding us had found himself.

Speaker after speaker stood and made speeches to the throng, but it seemed that there was no candidate with as much support as Margrit. I stood, for the time had come to divide the people. I asked all who wished to join the new tribe of Downlanders, as I decided to call them, to stand. Around 200 of them did, which struck me as a viable number, a little more than my own Hunters. I then parted them to my left where paint and dye was prepared. Their braids, genitals and breasts were rendered anew in their tribal colour of green. Then a green banner was put in my hand. I called for them to acclaim their chief, and the name 'Margrit!' was bellowed out by the new tribe without any dissent. I handed her the banner and embraced her to great cheers and shouts. Then the partying began again.

Marcus and I made love to our fill that night, the grunting and sounds of orgasm from boys and men and the smell of sex torrid around us in the warriors' hall. I slept well with only a mild headache when I awoke. Marcus and I walked down to the bathing cisterns and washed ourselves in the dawn light. There was the first autumn chill in the air. I looked at some red spots which had appeared on my lower legs.

"Fuck!" I exclaimed. "Are these flea bites?"

Marcus shrugged. "Our dirty secret on the Island. Now you know another reason why we need to drop our numbers. When the halls get this overpopulated it's what happens. Fleas and lice shouldn't thrive on clean naked bodies, but when we are so many of us in close quarters, they find homes in our pubes and braids. You people don't allow pubic hair to grow and it's a good policy. I'm going to enforce shaving of groins and armpits amongst the Islanders from now on, once we're deloused."

That morning the Downlanders assembled in the square. There were affecting scenes of farewell, and the men, women and children shouldered their weapons and bags and marched north to the coast and the fleet, which would take them across the straits to their new home. A provident Marcus had already loaded the waiting ships with a magazine of supplies and munitions, so the burdens the new tribe carried were only personal items.

Margrit hugged me goodbye.

"I'll visit as soon as I can," she said. "I so want to see Fiona. Marcus is lending us a couple of ships till we find our own, so I can sail down the coast to Seatown on one of the new moon days. What I really want though is to discuss the business of horses and riding with you. A tribe on the mainland needs mobility. You Hunters are lucky and have a lot to teach us. One of my first priorities is to track down any surviving domestic horses in our territory."

***

We landed at Seatown, with young Martin happy that the return voyage was less choppy. Our Tribehold had a tiny permanent garrison, and the two boy warriors who had the run of the place were on the alert for us. They hailed us from the gate tower where they were on the watch for any shipping that might turn out to be sea raiders. They had horses with them so as to spread the alarm as quickly as they could if anything happened.

"Lord Chief! Lord Boy left a message to go to Dellchurch where the tribe is now and will be tomorrow."

"That sounded urgent," I remarked to my escort, as we began our tramp to the old church in its valley, a good twelve miles to the north east of Seatown. I had plenty of time to recall my trip there with Boy on my shoulders, pursued by wild dogs, all of eight years ago. How things had changed since then. We reached the deep valley late in the afternoon. The tribe was encamped around the old church. Though it was not a proper outpost, Dellchurch was used for overnight stops, and we had invested time over the years in surrounding it with weatherproof shelters, digging a firepit and constructing sanitary privies, flushed by a fast and deep stream. The women were stacking the fire as we arrived, and the tribe rose to hail us. But there was tension in the air, which was unmistakable.

Boy came striding towards us. "Glad you're back, Chief. How was the Island?" He didn't wait for the answer. "We have a bit of a crisis. Er … Carl and Tony, take Martin into custody and Martin, surrender your weapons."

"What the fuck!" I said. Carl and Tony just looked bewildered.

"Sorry, Chief. But that's Fiona's orders. You'd better go find her. She's in the church."

I turned to my escort. "Better do as Lord Boy says, sorry about this Martin."

I found the senior women in the middle of some sort of discussion. I joined their circle. They were too agitated to offer the expected pleasantries, so I asked what was up.

Fiona gave me a grim look and sketched out the crisis in two words. "Asma's pregnant."

"Are you telling me some boy bred her, without licence from the women's hall? Who was it?"

"She says it was Martin."

My heart sank. If this was true, tribal law was unchallengeable. Martin would be castrated. I knew that one day that law would come back to haunt me. But its severity had now for some time put limits on the libido of our males, maybe sooner or later some fool would cross the line … but Martin? The boy was as randy as a ferret on heat, but I had also found him controlled and sensible in everything else he did.

Fiona looked at me unhappily. She was not enjoying this. I sighed. "There'll have to be a trial," I stated. "We'd better do it tomorrow. Tonight I want to question the offending parties, and the witnesses, if any."

Asma sat cross-legged at my feet, head down and ashamed. She had missed her bleed and her belly was noticeably expanding as the foetus grew. Her story was that once they were walking round naked Martin became eager for her exposed cunt and they got carried away as they were fumbling and kissing while hiding away from the tribe. He penetrated and then shot inside her. She wasn't sure but she thought it was just after her first bleed in the tribe.

"I don't think he meant to, Lord Chief. There wasn't any thrusting. He just broke my cunt skin and couldn't stop himself spurting."

The women had verified that she had been penetrated and had lost her virginity. I explained the consequences for Martin if this was true.

"No!" she shouted. "That's not right. You can't do that! We were still collared at the time. We weren't yet tribe!" Her eyes were wide with shock.

I had to explain that the tribe would be the judge of that. Martin was manhandled in by two warriors, his hands tied behind his back. I explained the charges, and he looked up stunned.

"But that's bollocks, Lord Chief," he said. "Sure we messed around, and I've taken her in her asshole once, but the girls all douche their crack to make sure the cum stays away from their slit. I'm pretty sure that's what Asma did. I couldn't have seeded her. There were two other girls squatting in the stream with her, scrubbing away at their back entrance. I never fucked her cunt, ever. It's a lie."

I went to sleep with Boy. I needed the reassurance. I murmured in his ear as I reached around and took his big cock in my hand.

"Remember the first time I did this to you the day we met?"

He gave a low laugh. "You rubbed your cock on my asshole and gave me my first ever orgasm. It was fucking awesome. I never wanted to sleep anywhere else again but in your arms with your cock hard against my ass. You made me feel so safe and warm. Fuck. You'd only have been fourteen at the time, but you were a big, warm god to me. I so loved the running round in the nude. And … I remember 'Mr Big Fat Cock' and his lessons in boy sex. You twat. But I loved it all, David."

"So, what do you reckon? Did Martin do it and if not, why would Asma lie? Everyone knows he came here with the hots for her, and he's certainly had sex with her in the usual way cadets often do with our girls, in secret under the bushes."

"That's part of the problem isn't it? No witnesses. But it's not like Martin to lie, in fact he's the most straight up kid I've met. Whereas Asma …"

"You've got any reason to doubt her story?" I asked.

"Nope, but it's a matter of he-said, she-said, and her growing bump does tend to prove there was sex."

"But who, with if not Martin?"

Boy was quiet for a while, and I almost thought he'd dropped off, but he quietly suggested "Talk to April."

So, at that hint, I quietly got up and left the church and went through the dusk to the shelter where the women slept who were currently being bred. I'd been allotted April by the women's council as the mother for my second child. April was one of the prettiest of our girls, who had joined us at the age of ten. Fiona had chosen her for me because, she laughed, April was the most boylike of the girl teens. She'd already had one child by the boy Jack, who had been her close friend even before they were taken by the raiders and joined the tribe. The two were close enough that they planned to swear mating once I successfully impregnated her and she gave birth to my second child.

I found April among them, the women and their toddlers murmuring as they prepared for sleep. My arrival set off some laughter, as they made space for me. She was nursing Jack's boy, who was two-years-old and still suckling on her. The women had called the baby Falcon. They were dropping the meaningless old names and giving our children names drawn from noble animals if boys, and from flowers if girls.

I picked up Falcon and handed him over to another lactating girl, who put him to her vacant breast while I fucked his mother. Then I knelt between April's open thighs and began exciting her, massaging her wet slit and rubbing her hard twig of a clit. She was soon squirming and pushing into my hand. I went down on her with my tongue and she produced two loud and bucking orgasms. I was ramrod hard, not so much from the idea of sex with a woman but knowing I was rutting amongst a herd of excited females like a potent and dominant stallion, it was a male power trip. They were all of them sitting up in the dim light and craning to see the action, several masturbating themselves. I put April on all fours and mounted her like the horny animal I was and pleasured her for as long as I could hold on to my seed. She orgasmed three more times before I came hard inside her, manipulating her clitoris roughly, the way she liked. The women around us murmured their approval. I gloried in their adulation like the proud and rampant male I was, my cock rearing high and slick with her juices and my semen.

We slumped together, spent and stinking of sex. Falcon toddled over, climbed over me and cuddled between us, sucking on April's breasts before announcing, "Gotta shit, mummy!" Tribe children called a spade a fucking shovel. Fiona frowned on stupid baby words like 'wee wee' and 'poo'.

"Great." April sighed. "I'll take him out."

I went with her. Tribe babies and toddlers were easy to deal with in the matter of bodily wastes, especially when they reached the age when they could tell you evacuation was imminent. Naked living meant that when they wanted to shit, you just held them over the required latrine or sat them on it. Our older kids would pause in their running about if they were outside the camp and piss away, or squat and drop their turds, while carrying on chattering to their friends. The problem was getting them to remember the importance of washing their hands.

We weren't stone age people: we remembered the devastation that bowel fluxes and cholera had done to the human race. Knowing this, I made sure the sanitary arrangements in our dwellings would have done credit to an ancient city, with wash pits, piping, settling tanks, cisterns and well-maintained and flushed privies which channeled waste well away from our drinking water. Marcus made sure the Islanders were carefully copying our arrangements.

While Falcon was dropping his turds into the latrine, I asked April about the Asma scandal. She rolled her eyes.

"There's something funny there, David," she observed. The private use of my given name was reserved only for my mate Marcus, for Boy and for those women whose wombs I had seeded, in other words, Fiona and April, the mother and possible mother-to-be of the chief's children. It was quite a privilege and April relished it. It put her on a level with Fiona, the Tribe Mother and Regent.

"How's that?" I had to ask.

"Martin's been pretty careful about sexing with the girls. We really do adore his cock. There can't be any of the girl teens he hasn't screwed up her ass. I had to try out that dick of his once I'd returned to a more normal shape. Jack took little shit bunny here off my hands for a day and I rode Martin's cock couple of weeks ago in the East camp. Now there's this. Once he'd come he was very careful about douching my crotch. He sat me in a stream and washed my asshole personally, scooping his cum out of me with his fingers. It was quite sexy the way he did it. I know he's had sex with Asma, though I didn't see it, but Jack did, and he noticed Martin's nervousness about where his cum might have got to then. He mentioned it when I went to get Falcon off him afterwards. He's a lot more casual, is Jack. But I love him. I think he knows more than he's telling."

I gave her a hug and kissed Falcon, who might very well become my little David's half sibling if my breeding of April had been a success. She was expecting her period next week, so I'd find out soon. There was some status in getting your breeding partner pregnant the first go, though I wasn't letting the prospect of failure with April stress me out even though Jack had seeded her on the first go, as he smugly told me.

I found the boy in question curled up alone in the dark of the chapel and shook him out of his sleep, clamping my hand over his mouth, then leading him out into the yard outside, lit by the rising full moon and seated him next to me on an ancient stone tomb. A fox barked loudly in the woods around our camp.

"Wassup Chief?" he said blearily.

"I'm worried about tomorrow, and April hinted you might have something to tell me."

He chuckled. "Fucked April did you, Lord Chief? She's always chatty after sex. We're both hoping you'll seed her. It'll be great for my Falcon and your David to have a little prince or princess to grow up with. So what do you want to know?"

"You've fucked Asma, she said."

Jack giggled. "More like she fucked me. Joining naked tribe has sent her wild for cock."

"How wild? Did she want you in her cunt?"

"Er … not that mad, Chief. Besides there were others around us. She knows the law."

I pondered this. "So she's basically fucked around with every available male in the place? So much for the Settled People's morality. Still, that's not illegal with us, is it? So what do you know about any private one-on-one where she might have gone over the top with some boy?"

Jack went quiet for awhile. "Look chief, this is just gossip, but she may have been looking for fucks where you don't usually … there's the little ones and then there's Idris, her brother. The Idris thing's the sort of rumour you get in camp, though they were spotted skulking round the ruined houses down in Seatown together, scavenging they said. I did see her chasing little Ian and romping with him in the woods here, his cocklet was hard as a nail, and he got his pubes shaved for the first time last week."

"You think she talked the kid into inserting his stiff little rod into her fanny?"

"Could have done, in the expectation that he couldn't yet shoot cum, but maybe he took them both by surprise," Jack scowled. "Bad business if that's so."

***

The day of the trial dawned gloomy and overclouded, which matched the tribe's mood. All the warriors and mature women sat round the firepit, while the kids stood in knots and looked on, some sitting up in the surrounding trees to get a good view. Martin was stood in front of me and Fiona, occupying together an old pew brought out of the church. His hand were tied behind his back.

I summoned Asma to stand and recite her version of events, that she and Martin had fucked and he had spurted inside her cunt accidentally. Martin got angry at this, denying it absolutely and giving the same story that April had. They'd had sex a couple of times for sure, but always in a group and never vaginal. Several of the tribe called out in support of him at this point. I got Jack to stand and give his witness to Martin's activities. He burst out at the end.

"Marty's good tribe, lord! He knows the rules."

"Are you accusing Asma of lying, Jack?" Fiona said.

"Someone is, Fee!" he cried, and there was a rumble of approval at that from the assembly. I called out Ian, and there was a murmur in the assembly as the cadet nervously stood, and came before me, looking around as though he wanted to run. He was a stripling, getting past boyhood and into full adolescence. His cock was thin and had lengthened so its purple head hung past his balls. Jack's theory that he was able to ejaculate sperm rather than just clear fluid might well be right.

"Tell me, Ian," I began, "how many girls have you had sex with?"

He shuffled his feet. "A few, lord Chief," he replied non-commitally, which led me to suspect that Jack had been on to something.

"Was Asma amongst them?"

He started, reddened and nodded silently. When I asked him to describe the experience, he became nervous. But he confessed it hadn't been in the club, they had been alone together in the woods. But he swore it had only been oral.

"I can get my tongue way up inside girls' cunts!" he declared, to general amusement.

"Is this true, Asma?" I asked.

Distracted, she answered the wrong question. "His tongue is very long, lord." This got some laughter, and deepened Ian's blush.

"But you had sex with Ian in secret and away from the tribe, didn't you. You do a lot of that, and it complicates matters." I stated. She nodded slowly.

"So did Ian penetrate you with his cock?"

"Oh no, lord," she protested.

"Well, here's the problem," I began.

"You've had sex with almost every boy in the tribe, and even a couple of the men, which perhaps doesn't make you unusual amongst us. But you have chosen to do it privately and done it away from the tribe with more than one of them. You get off on it."

I called on the boys to put up their hands if they'd fooled around with Asma in private. Four arms slowly crept up in the assembly. Idris's was not among them, I noticed. He was head down amongst the cadets. I called him out. His head shot up, he was undeniably scared. He took Ian's place before the assembly.

"Let me tell you what will happen to Martin when he's found guilty. He'll be tied tight up against that tree, his face and body to the trunk and his legs staked wide apart. I'll get a sharp clean knife from our butchers' tools, and grasp his hanging balls. I'll cut a line down the back of his sac, and open it wide, like I sometimes do with our dead prey, but Martin will be experiencing this alive, screaming and begging maybe, and blood will be streaming down his legs. I'll hook out a testicle and cut its cords, then throw it to our dogs as a treat. Then I'll pull out and sever his other ball, and he'll be neutered, a eunuch. He'll be collared as a tribe slave, which he'll be for the rest of his life unless he chooses to end it, which frankly I'd be tempted to do in his place."

Idris and quite a few others looked sick at this, for though Martin may have been a latecomer to our tribe, he had become a popular addition and was developing into a fine warrior loved by his comrades. A protesting murmur grew from the assembly, which I halted with a raised hand.

"But as it happens, I have no desire to do this. Asma's your sister, so it seems to me that you're the one with the right to carry out this sentence. So Martin's castration will be done by you, Idris. A bit hard on him, as I don't think you have much experience in cutting up bodies, but justice has to be done on him, or the law will fail."

"No! NO!" yelled Idris. "You can't make me do that! It's horrible!"

"Oh, but I can," I snarled. "Or is there some reason why you shouldn't, other than your humanitarian objections?"

He was staring at his sister and it was to her he spoke.

"You said it wouldn't come to this! You said he wasn't tribe at the time, so they'd let Martin off if we blamed him!"

Then he burst into tears.

"So who fucked Asma's cunt, Idris?"

Gulping back a sob he said, "It was me! I knew it was wrong but she said it didn't apply to us, and anyway I could pull out before I shot. But once I began I couldn't stop. Then she missed her bleed."

He fell to his knees and crawled towards me, clasping my ankles.

"Don't take my balls, please Chief!"

At my orders brother and sister were taken and their hands tied. Martin was released, looking bewildered. He was welcomed back amongst the warriors with slaps to his back and hugs. I had a quick conversation with Fiona, who stood and declared that the women's council had no case against the warrior Martin. They now presented to the assembly Asma and Idris charged with false slander and an unlicensed pregnancy.

I declared the case proven by their own confession.

"The point is," I observed to Asma, "it was the fact that your brother impregnated you that sparked this. But that is no offence in the tribe. It's already happened here, and Fiona's precious boy Billie is sitting proudly amongst our cadets, whose father is Gregory, a warrior of the Island, and Fiona's brother. No shame attaches to any of them. But you two aren't tribe in your hearts. And to that extent, Asma is right: we can't apply the law of castration to Idris, since this all proves he's never been tribe. But the poisonous and treacherous way you tried to shift blame on to an innocent warrior, our true brother Martin, is a different matter. The women's council will allot punishment, following which you are expelled from the tribe as unworthy, and you'll be sent back into the west. Go find your people and tell them a pack of lies about the savagery of the tribe to escape their condemnation for what you've done that they regard as unnatural, but you won't contaminate the people here any more. Collar the pair of them. They can't be pure tribe and allowed to be naked among us."

Chapter 11

I led the entire tribal cavalry into the west after we celebrated the Spring Festival and vacated the tribehold after our long winter stay. Forty riders now ambled behind me on the trail, full grown warriors and a few older cadets mounted on the yearling colts. We were armed with lances, bows and over our shoulders were leather shields the women had made over the winter, painted in red, our tribal colour. Some had galloping horses in white picked out on them. The cocks of the warriors and cadets alike were painted red, and handprints of the same colour were slapped on the adults' pectoral muscles. A black band was painted around our eyes from temple to temple, and our wild hair was bound up tight into a knot, retained by a red band. The bridles and reins of our mounts were newly made in rope and red leather, and their withers too were adorned with red handprints, their manes braided and dyed the same colour.

Looking back down the squadron I was impressed by how warlike we looked, though war was not on our minds that day. It was a mission of peace we went on, but the display was necessary to make a point, as were the three tall feathers stuck in my topknot. Fiona assured me they made me look more chieflike.

Alongside me was riding Martin, for several reasons. He was very popular in the tribe after his trial, and in compensation the women had promptly awarded him Auburn to breed from, which the pair had done enthusiastically, frequently and publicly, in part because private sex had become unpopular in the tribe, and in part because both he and Auburn just got off on it. Her belly was now swelling with their child, and girls were clamouring for Martin's potent cock in the kids' sex clubs, anywhere of course but in their slits.

Martin had been drafted on to my council along with Boy, Owain and Ricky. He had a lot to offer: his good sense, loyalty to the tribe and growing personal devotion to me. Apart from Tony's and Carl's, mine was one of the few cocks he wanted in his ass, and I was delighted to oblige. Like Boy, he clung to me tightly with his arms and legs when I took him on his back, and I was the only man he ever chose to tongue kiss deeply in the throes of sex.

Martin's advice was needed as the tribe looked westward. Work was resuming on the outpost at Beaver Lake, though being over thirty miles away from the Seatown tribehold and twenty from Outpost North, its remoteness made the project difficult. We learned a lot from Martin, who had opened up about the Settled People who had brought him up, now his total loyalty was given to the tribe.

Martin's story was a not uncommon one amongst the survivors. He had been born in a small town north beyond the moorlands, but it had been depopulated by the last pandemic. His mother had survived and taken him for refuge to a cousin in the westlands, where she had found a new partner and given birth to two half siblings. He did not get on with his stepfather and at fourteen he had moved to work on a farm near the great river under the Mast, where we came into his story. 'To be honest, Chief,' he had confided to me after our sex, 'I was hankering for a different life, and you and the tribe have given me everything that was missing. Now I have challenge, all the willing tail I could possibly want, excellent comrades and adventure, and we're building a fantastic new world together.'

The lands west of the Mast had no surviving towns and the people were scattered widely, he told us, which was why it had escaped the worst of the last pandemic, but even so there had been many deaths and there were more surviving kids than adults. The Settled People lived in scattered houses and smallholdings for fifty miles west of the river and were governed by elders, who he said based their power on some sort of religion. The way Martin summed it up was that it preached every human being was corrupt and degraded and tended to evil, especially females; that sex was disgusting and animal-like and their invisible male God gave men over the age of fifty a right to rule according to words in a book he had given humanity, despite being invisible. Because people disobeyed these rules he had sent the plagues to destroy the unworthy, so the people were to follow them strictly or be struck down in their turn.

Martin couldn't explain this in any way that made sense to me. I got the impression he had already become pretty much disenchanted with the Settled People when we captured him. No wonder he took heart and soul to our guilt-free life in the tribe. Now we were going to talk to these elders, and warn them of the danger they were in with the next raiding season. I had no great hopes of success, but it had to be done.

We trotted up to the new stockade at Beaver Lake the second evening after leaving Seatown and found Owain and his crew just finishing work on an imposing gatehouse, built to the pattern the Islanders had devised. So we followed a lane that led us up to the fort, but which suddenly took a turn into a deep cutting between two steep banks before we could arrive at the fortified gate itself. Overlooked by stockades with firing loops, it was in such a place that scores of raiders had died, trapped, in the siege of the Island's tribehold two years ago. Inside the banks we dismounted and led our mounts into a temporary paddock. There was not much else within the outpost walls, other than a firepit and the pup tents in which our engineers slept. But as I looked around I could tell Owain in all honesty that it was a great start.

Owain had some news of Idris and Asma. They had come to Beaver Lake after they were driven out of the Tribehold, savagely beaten about the back and buttocks by the tribe's women. They had been offered no escort or food for the journey, but they had limped into Outpost West three days later. Owain had got some version of their exile out of them. He charitably fed them and gave them a couple of days in his camp to recover. He retrieved for the pair their clothes from where we had discarded them, then he sent them off in the direction of the bridge beneath the mast.

The next morning early we rode out through the gate and headed west, accompanied on foot by Owain and his crew, who were keen to witness the encounter. At midday we reached the great river and for the first time climbed up on to the viaduct below the mast. The view from the bridge was surprisingly wide, the shining river looping away below us southwards through woods which went on to the horizon. I could see one or two occupied houses on the east side of the river, including the farm Martin had worked on before he encountered us, its windmill rotating. Taking Martin and Boy, I rode across and followed the ancient road, leaving the rest of the warriors and our weapons behind with orders to give us a headstart. They were to follow slowly and not approach any of the houses.

About a mile on Martin led us down a lane to a small collection of houses in which he said one of the elders lived. We slowed the horses to a walk. This was going to be a difficult encounter in many senses, not least because Martin had told us that the Settled People still disposed of some shotguns and rifles from the old days. We soon had confirmation of that as a small knot of men emerged, two of them with guns in hand.

Martin called out. "Mister Williams! It's me! Martin Craven! We come in peace! No need for rifles. We're unarmed." I dismounted and walked a few steps forward slowly, hands palm outwards.

A white-haired bulky man with hard eyes and a square jaw seemed to be in charge. He stared at the naked savage in the road, but addressed Martin.

"What in the name of God have they done to you, young Craven! Cover your nakedness. The women can see you from the house. Are you mad?"

"I joined the tribe of my own free will, Mister Williams. This is our Chief. We've come to warn you. Please listen to him."

I spoke carefully and politely, as my father had taught me. "Mister Williams, I'm the chief of the Hunter tribe. We live far to the east. I know you've heard of us. A few years ago we saved a band of refugees from the north, when the sea raiders pillaged their coast, and we helped some of them reach your land in safety. They will have told you we aren't a danger to you. But the raiders certainly are. We've learned that they're massing a new fleet, and it's you they're going to attack. They will come in the late spring or early summer. You have time to prepare to defend yourselves, and we offer you an alliance."

The man stared at me as if he was watching a dog get up on its hind legs and talk. He shook his head. "Son, I'd be more likely to believe you if you hadn't kidnapped the Craven boy and the Patel kids. The state they came back in, wild and corrupt, told me all I needed to know. You people raped and brutalised the Patels, boy and girl, and she's pregnant by one of your bucks. In God's name, look at what you've done to Martin! Sure you helped those refugees, but you dragged their children into your life of vile perversity, sodomy and sin. We need no help from the likes of you, so clear out of our land. I give you fair warning that if any of you trespass beyond the bridge, we'll hunt you down like the filthy animals you are."

"I'm sorry you think that, Mister Williams, I really am," I replied, keeping my cool with an effort. "The danger is real and the raiders are more than you can cope with, believe me. I've seen their work. If you want to see vile perversity and sin, they'll show you its real meaning, for the hours of agony left to you if they capture you alive. The offer is still open."

I'd delivered my message and I turned to go, but he had not finished.

"You stay there, savage. You'll hand over the Craven boy you kidnapped or it'll be the worse for you."

"Hey now, old man!" Boy angrily called out. "You heard Martin. He's tribe now. We didn't hold him against his will. He's our comrade and brother!"

The men unshipped their guns and pointed. One of them spat on the ground and called out.

"Get down here Martin! Don't try and stop us, you savages, or we'll shoot you down like mad dogs."

Things had got out of hand, as I feared they might. The sound of a man clearing his throat ostentatiously in the tense silence got everyone's attention. Owain sauntered out from a neighbouring field, crossbow over his shoulder.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, friend!" he calmly declared. "Take a look back up that lane."

The men did and then hesitated. My riders were lined up across it in force, weapons also levelled.

I shook my head. "If we were the savages you claim we are, you'd all be dead now, your houses looted and in flames. But there's no talking to closed minds. We've made our offer and it's not withdrawn. We'll steer clear of your lands all right, but we'll come if you call. You've been warned of what's going to happen. If our help isn't welcome, you'd better hope your deity is listening when you call out to him." I mounted up and turned my horse's head, and we walked off back to the bridge and our own land, Owain strolling at my side, "Well done," I said down to him with a smile.

"Henry and I tailed you down behind the hedges like good scouts, and when we saw the way it was going he hared off and brought down the cavalry."

Martin sighed. "Sorry, Chief. I'd forgotten quite how deranged they can be."

Boy snarled. "Seems Asma and Idris are sharpening their talent for creative lying. Maybe they are in the right place after all. Victims? Hah! I wish I'd never fucked the pair of them. My cum was way too good for their assholes."

***

The next New Moon meeting, I made sure I was at the Tribehold. I rode there alone, apart from Dog loping alongside. He was glad as I was to be away from the tribe, then at the North outpost for the foaling of our herd. Alice was sure we might get as many as a dozen foals that season. Our hunters were out on the moorland, not so much looking for deer but out to suppress any predators. Alice wanted the uplands free for our herd to graze and increase naturally, and had asked for a horseherder to be based there. She'd brought our numbers of horses up to over a hundred beasts now. In the meantime Bitch had produced her first litter and was having to be tolerant of starry-eyed tribal children adoring and petting the seven puppies she'd brought into the world. Dog as a result would rather be elsewhere and we were in sympathy on that.

I was deeply worried. But I hoped the new moon would bring news even though it was unlikely to be good. I made good time to the coast, being a lot more confident on horseback these days. The two young warriors on duty gave me a delighted greeting. I inspected the place, finding they'd taken their term of duty seriously. The place was in perfect order. I'd brought a bale of skins with me for any ship that might turn up to add to the bales already waiting barter with the Islanders. As it happened three ships did appear, one with green sails and two with blue, arriving separately. No blue banner floated over the Island ships, so I was disappointed of a meeting with Marcus, but a green one spread from the mast of the Downlander vessel. It was Margrit.

My two warriors and I were ready for the ships at the quayside, where my boys had already shifted the skins for trading. The pair earnestly prostrated themselves at Margrit's feet in honour of the Downlander Chief and saluted her with great respect, for she was a legend among our warriors. The Islander ships brought the usual cargo of smoked fish, salt and skins of wine. Margrit's crew of six warriors helped my two lads get it all up to the tribehold storerooms. She had brought four men, as well as two women of her Amazon Guard of twelve, which had naturally joined her in the Downland tribe when the call came. The guard had foresworn sex apart from with each other until they had passed thirty years, dedicating all their years of youth and vigour to the defence of the tribe. As we walked back up the hill behind the warriors, Margrit and I caught up. She admired our tribehold.

"It's more impressive from below than when you're close up," I confessed. "It's only half the size of Marcus's fortress."

"Even so, David," she said ominously, "it's businesslike, and it may need to be soon. Marcus has done a daring thing. Once the spring calms settled the sea he led a squadron of twelve warships across to the raider coast and made a surprise attack on one of their islands, burning the ships he found there, taking prisoners and liberating slaves. He brought back sixty new recruits who wanted to flee the slavers and were ready to join his tribe; some from very strange and faraway lands. A third of them are skilled sailors and fighters who've pledged undying loyalty to him. They literally kiss the ground on which he walks."

"What about the slavers he captured?"

"He sent a few of them over the straits to me. He knows I'll never forgive the bastards for their gang rape of me back in the day. There were ten males taken prisoner. Two had been stripped and mutilated by their own slaves, before Marcus's warriors could get to them, and made to eat their own balls. Though they survived the castration, they'll never be good for much. They're collared slaves now themselves, working for me on the construction of our own Downland Tribehold with empty skin flaps between their legs. But at least they're treated well.

The other eight captives Marcus took included youngsters. Marcus kept them on the Island. Though he collared them as slaves he gave them a promise of being taken into the tribe if they make the grade and prove they can be trusted. Skipper Wim has convinced the boys that it would be safer to stay with us than go back to their own island. He speaks their language. But one captive is different. He was lord of the island we raided and one of their chiefs, a dangerous man. Marcus mastered him in a single combat during the attack and brought him down. He went by the name of Jeroen the Black. Ominous, yeah? You should hear the song Marcus's tribe has made about the battle. It's epic. His sailors taught it to my own crew. I'll have them sing it for you and your boys round the pit tonight.

So he sent me this Jeroen as a captive, and I still have what's left of him. Seeing what he'd done to innocent children I had no compunction in asking his former slaves to extract everything they can from him, which they have done with some savage enjoyment. They lodged a sturdy knobbed pole right up his asshole and impaled him on it standing, his arms tied to a roof beam above him. He'd done it to several of them. They spent a couple of days flogging his back and legs bloody and beating his balls till they were purple and swollen – made me glad I'm not a man. They took out his fingernails and broke his toes with a hammer, one by one. For all his savagery and bravado, he didn't hold out long under that treatment once he realised they could and would keep doing it to him for weeks and for as long as they could keep him alive. So here I am with a detailed knowledge of the strength of the raiders and their plans for the coming season. Marcus offers it to you as a gift and a token of his love for his David. He told me to tell you that in those very words, dear brother-in-law." She grinned, took me round the shoulder and kissed me on the cheek.

"And Jeroen the Black?"

"I castrated him personally, before they took him off his impaling post, and I've added his balls to my war necklace. I may have done him a favour. His testicles were too bruised and smashed to work again. He'll never walk properly either. His mind as well as his body is broken. He heaves himself around the camp naked apart from a slave collar, being thrown scraps to eat from the dirt, and sleeping in the latrine sheds, which he cleans in return for food. And I feel no sympathy for the creature at all. He's lower than an animal, a mass-murderer, rapist and cannibal."

I kept my opinion to myself. Margrit had a savage streak for which the slavers were themselves responsible. What goes around comes around as far as I was concerned.

It was a fun night around the firepit under the stars with wine circulating and the promised songs from the Island sailors sung repeatedly, to be avidly memorised by my two youngsters, who then paired off with the Island sailors in happy expectation of a case of 'green bum' in the morning.

Afterwards, Margrit and I went up on to the battlements and looked out over the dark sea, the thin crescent of the new moon leaving a meagre trail across the wave tops below. She was in a meditative mood.

"The good news from Marcus's raid is that the slavers won't come near the tribal lands. The massacre inflicted on them the last time they tried convinced them that there are easier targets. So they plan to sail west down the coast and pillage the settled people, and in great force. The bad news is that their fleet will be bigger than the one that sacked the Island when we were kids, and they won't stop at the Westlands. They're going to sail round the Horn and ravage the lands north of you, even planning to cross over to pillage the land of Cumree."

"Any idea when this fleet will assemble and sail?" I asked.

"We extracted from Jeroen that it was to be the full moon after next, though their plans might well change after Marcus's raid, so let's not be too confident. My advice, Lord David of the Hunters, is that you increase your garrison here, ready the tribe for war and move it in reach of this fortress. The great fleet might just take the opportunity to raid your land too on their way down the coast. How many warriors have you got?"

The available strength among the Hunters was not as great as I'd have liked, but we had fifty skilled mounted archers, and as many crossbowmen, full-grown warriors and older cadets. Boy had been drilling them in tactics he had devised. Before I'd left for Seatown, I'd created him War Chief of the Hunters, my second-in-command. He'd stuck two feathers in his golden topknot with a laugh to celebrate his promotion to real authority in the tribe. His mate Ricky had been awarded a single feather as his deputy and cavalry leader. It had been a very popular decision in the tribe, which was excellent for morale in the troubled time that was coming. I didn't mention to Margrit that a score of our own women had volunteered to train as archers to help garrison the battlements of Tribehold.

"Horse warriors! You've got an ace there," Margrit commented as her eyes lit up. "What I could do with mounted bowmen! That's part of why I'm here. I hear you have a Herdmaster called Alice, and I'd like to talk to her. We've managed to gather a small herd of twelve together from my Downlands, but none of my people have the skills to manage them. But one of the girls I've brought with me is very keen and I'm going to ask your permission to leave her with the Hunters and learn Alice's craft. Is that OK, David?"

It was fine by me. It was nice to be envied by a war leader as magnificent as Margrit. She was welcomed at Outpost North by her old friends with great celebrations and stayed for seven days. She did however have some sad news to communicate. Gregory, Fiona's brother, had been a casualty in the raid, speared to death during the sack of the Slaver town. The two siblings were estranged, but Fiona was still affected, unlike Billie, their son, who had little memory of his father. Billie had just moved from the women's hall into the cadets, and his new status as a boy warrior was all that really concerned him.

In a young and healthy tribe, death and disease were rare visitors, but it happened. Our women experienced the occasional still birth and miscarriage. They determined that the sad remains should be buried under the floor of the women's hall in a corner over which a stone table was raised, the altar stone brought from Dellchurch, as it happened. Flowers were placed on it for the lost ones in their memory by their mothers, and Fiona and Billie stacked flowers on it that evening in memory of Gregory. His body had been weighted with stones and buried at sea on the return voyage to the Island. It occurred to me gloomily that in the coming war, there'd be a need for our young tribe to give more thought to that sort of thing than we had till now.

Chapter 12

I moved the tribe back to the fortress above Seatown after Margrit's departure. But I stationed our horse archers under Boy's independent command at Outpost East. It was his advice that if a big raider army descended on our lands, our cavalry should be in the field, ready to raid the enemy at will while the rest of the tribe was safe behind the walls of our tribehold. A small team was to complete the works at Beaver Lake while we awaited the onslaught, and stock up on provisions there. A couple of the most skilful riders among the older cadets at Seatown were mounted to act as scouts and messengers. Then we waited.

When the call came, I was in the brand-new Chief's house, my cock balls deep inside young Alan the tribal cock-hound, who I always selected from among our cadets when I felt like giving my erection a vigorous workout in a boy's anal sphincter. His enthusiasm was inexhaustible when it came to man cock and it made for fantastic sex. To have a boy his age squirming and moaning under you with nothing but raging lust for your cock could not be beaten in my view, short only of the sex that came with the bond of love for the man you were on top of. Alan was indifferent to sex with other boys his age, who were definitely second best when it came to satisfying his itchy anus.

The door banged open without ceremony, letting in the evening light and a loud exclamation.

"Chief!" Outlined in the doorway was Stephen, one of Boy's most trusted lieutenants, who had been twelve when he joined to tribe. Now he was a full grown man, impressively muscled and endowed. He had been a handsome dark-headed boy then, and was unusual in forming at so young an age a passionate love match with another boy, Paul. They had been the first pair in all the tribe to take each other as mates. They were now senior warriors under Boy and Ricky, who were currently with the cavalry. So Stephen and Paul commanded the garrison of the tribehold that day and had been permitted to place a feather in their topknots.

Alan groaned with frustration as I pulled out of him and sat back on my butt. I knew Stephen was grinning, even though he was only a black shape against the pale evening sky.

"So … what is it" I said, unable quite to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

"Raider ships coming down the coast, Chief. You're needed on the ramparts," then he added for Alan's benefit, "You too, cock-hound."

We scrambled to our feet and followed the crowd heading to the walls. As we went, Stephen briefed me that a cadet on horseback was already galloping through the dusk to alert Boy and his cavalry. The sky was darkening towards sunset and the surface of the sea below us was covered with the dark shapes of a fleet heading to shore.

Paul was marshalling archers and stacking bundles of arrows and bolts at the battlements. Children still playing outside the fort were being hurried inside by the women. Spearmen were keeping the gates, as the children scampered within. I saw my little David among them. He turned before entering the gates, the last of them, and gave an ostentatious middle finger to the oncoming fleet. I smiled. My boy was a promising lad, on the verge of cadethood.

"How many would you say they were?" I asked Stephen.

"Well over a hundred ships, and it seems to me they're coming to land." He replied, as cool-headed as usual. "The question is, are they aware of our Tribehold here up on the hill, or had they simply chosen the harbour below as their overnight anchorage unawares?"

I pondered this. On the answer to that question depended a lot. It was possible the raiders knew of the tribe's existence and we were under direct invasion, but if so they had picked an odd time of day to descend on our coasts. Whether or not, they must have observed the tower and walls of our fortress by now. But, if they were unprepared for a siege and if they were simply coming to shore for the night, then our chances were considerably better.

Stephen collared Alan and told him to go and get his friend Billie and jump in the cold firepit.

"What?" I asked.

Alan grinned. "Part of our cadet training, Lord Chief. Night exercises." He skipped off.

Stephen explained that he and Paul had long been preparing the boy warriors to act independently as scouts. He pointed over to where Alan and Billie were standing in the wood ash and charcoal of the pit and scrubbing each other black.

"Alan is our best. They don't come any stealthier. He and Billie play down in the old town. They know every wall, lane and blade of grass there." The two blackened boys came bounding back. Paul brought over sheathed long knives to strap around their waists, to help the boys' confidence more than for self-defence.

"OK you two. As soon as the sun is down, scout out their camps. Your mum taught you to count didn't she Billie? They'll light fires, so take care you don't expose yourself in the glare. We want to know where they've beached their ships and if they're preparing to come up the hill at us."

The two boys slipped silently out of the fort and crept down the hill into the dusk. They were already invisible within a bowshot of the gate. I paced the ramparts. Paul had placed dozens of burning torches at intervals along the opposite bank. The moon would not rise till later, and they would give some indication of an approach towards the wall by the enemy. In the meantime, Stephen had his archers and crossbowmen preparing their positions, with a sleepless night ahead for many of them.

As the moon edged up over the eastern horizon and the night sky lightened, I paced the ramparts anxiously with my eyes on the fort perimeter, worrying about Alan and Billie. Camp fires clustered down the hill and out along the beach to the west as the pirates settled in for the night. They must have sent pickets up towards us, but we saw no sign of them.

As the moon reached its zenith the garrison along the ramparts stirred. There was an unmistakable glitter of moonlight on spear tips as a body of raiders massing below us on the road up from the ruins of Seatown. On the other side of the tribehold, there was a stir as two blackened boys shinned up a rope left for them on the landward side.

Alan and Billie came loping up to Stephen and me as we were assessing the danger and the likelihood of an imminent attack.

"Lord Chief!" Alan gasped out. "there's a squad of them coming up the hill!"

"180 of them!" cried Billie triumphantly.

"We see them," Stephen said. "What's going on down in the town and on the beach?"

"They've filled the harbour with their ships and the rest of them are beached on the shingle towards the cliffs, where they've made camps and lit bonfires," Alan declared.

"There are 122 ships," Billie added, proud of his numerical skills.

"Like as not this translates to around 700 raiders, maybe more," Paul speculated. "Question is, are they willing to take the time and casualties to try their strength against the tribehold? Anything else, boys?"

"Yeah!" replied Alan. "We think a party of them followed us round to the land side, sneaking to check out the back of our fort, I bet." Paul ruffled his hair, kissed his cheek and whispered something in Alan's ear. I suspected his asshole was in for an epic workout afterwards as a reward for his efforts. Paul mustered one of the biggest and thickest erections in the tribe, so heavy that it never got beyond the horizontal even when fully engorged.

I mused on the problem. "Looks to me as though they intend testing our strength before making the decision." As I said that, a rattle of gunshots broke out along the enemy line, no doubt calculated to intimidate us with their firepower. But Marcus had told me that his interrogations of captives and former raiders in his ranks revealed the enemy had only a limited number of guns, and no capacity to manufacture reliable cartridges. So nobody on our side of the walls was impressed by the fusillade, and other than taking chips out of our sturdy stone and timber stockade, no damage or casualties were reported along the line.

As our line of torches along the bank guttered, black figures crept nearer to the walls, but some of our crossbowmen had weapons with working nightsights we'd scavenged from the city store long ago, and the best of them were deadly snipers. Yelps and one scream out of the night told us they were picking off the most foolhardy. Stephen had expected what came next and was ready to meet it. As young Alan had indicated, the raiders were going to try a surprise attack on the rear side of the tribehold when they thought we were distracted at the front. Lit torches were hurled over the walls and among the attackers by our men, and a storm of arrows was unleashed which cut down a number of the raiders, even in the uncertain light. The attack collapsed rapidly before the enemy had even climbed out of the ditch.

Having tested the defences, the raiders withdrew down the hill, leaving me pretty certain that they wouldn't make another attempt before dawn. I suspected that they'd not even try then. They were headed back to their fleet. We weren't their main business and a full-scale siege of our tribehold was a distraction and quite possibly would lead to serious losses for not much benefit.

The question now was the arrival of our mounted warriors, and what they'd do when they got to the Tribehold. Knowing Boy, it was likely he'd ride out directly our messenger reached them, but though they knew the roads and tracks well, they couldn't make much speed at night. I calculated that the earliest they could arrive would be around dawn. So it was a busy night for Alan. He was sent once more over the wall, this time to race as far and as fast as he could inland, along the track Boy and his warriors would have to take to reach us. He was to warn him of the situation. Recoated in charcoal he disappeared silently once more into the dark, the white flash of his grinning teeth the only thing visible about him as he cast a look back at the walls. His reward was to be a serious workout of his asshole from the long member that swung between Paul's legs.

In the meantime Stephen and Paul were standing down half of the garrison, so that they could have some rest for what might be a very active new day. I went over to them.

"Chief," Paul began, "we can do more than just sit here. I know they're too strong to attack directly, but Alan and Billie may have told us one place the raiders are exposed."

"Where's that?"

"They made the mistake of beaching many of their ships on the exposed shore under the cliff."

***

In the hour before dawn, Paul led a file of his best archers, male and female, over the walls on the landward side, where they knew they could not be observed. They headed cautiously eastwards and in the light of the waning moon sped across the grey-cropped grass of the cliff tops. They came to a defile overgrown with brush and cautiously crept down it. There they paused to view the rippling sea below and the dark shapes of ships drawn up in the shingle and pebbles fifty feet below, dying campfires on the beach around them.

Quickly sorting their arrows our troops planted a score of wadded missiles in front of each of the twelve bowmen. Fire bloomed on four oil-soaked torches made ready and stuck in the ground in front of them. From these they lit their arrows and in moments the ships below them were caught in a cascade of scores of flaming arrows. A dozen or so volleys rained down from the cliff side like meteor showers. Not all of them caught light on the ships below but if the canvas of the sails was hit, they went up like torches. When the archers returned up the cliff they left behind shrieks and panic, and nine burning raider vessels.

So black smoke was spiralling into the dawn sky to our south as the sun rose. With the sun came an alert from inland, where a rider was approaching the fort with a dirty blackened boy riding in front of him. It was Ricky and Alan. On hailing the walls, Ricky cantered round to the main gate and entered to the cheers of our people. I called down to him.

"Where's Boy and the rest?"

The pair dismounted, Alan running off to the washpit. Ricky's chest and belly were smeared liberally with charcoal from holding the boy. Ricky saluted me as his chief and then looked around.

"You've had some fun," he observed. "Any casualties, lord?"

"Nothing serious," I confirmed. "We seem to have inflicted some damage on them though, and we've burned some of their ships. We wounded a few when they tested the strength of the gates, and then our archers shot dead five when they attempted the walls. We must have wounded more, but they hauled them away. Their dead they left behind. One was not quite dead when we found him, but we soon put that right. We've stripped the bodies and I'm going to castrate the corpses. The women are going to boil the balls and hang them in their hairy sacs from a post at our gate. Their heads are going to be spiked on poles set up on the harbour wall below, and the rest of the remains are going into a pit down the hill. So where's Boy and the rest of our riders?"

"That's why he sent me, lord. When he got Alan's news, we were about three miles away from Seatown. Boy decided the tribehold was secure and turned the horses west as speedily as he can. He's going to ride for Beaver Lake and reinforce the workers there. The raiders will be keener than ever to get to the westlands since you've bloodied their noses. Their leaders desperately need a victory, slaves and loot. You've just done us a favour by reminding them what happened to their fellow-raiders on the Island. Any news of the other tribes?"

"Not a thing." I responded, as a cry came from out sentries on the gate tower. They pointed out to sea, where the black ships were in full sail and leaving our coast, sailing westward.

"What's your plan, lord?" Ricky asked.

"I think Boy's right, the strength of the tribe needs to march west. So ride after him and tell him we'll meet at Beaver Lake, day after next. He should send scouts on and up to the Mast once he's occupied the camp there. But first, get yourself some breakfast and take a nap." I slapped Ricky's back and sent him on his way, then turned to the dispositions of the rest of my people.

***

I reached Beaver Lake with forty warriors. There could have been more, but Paul had to be left with a few warriors at the tribehold to support our women archers and defend the fortress and our children, as well as to watch the sea.

The place had seen a lot of work and the defences were sound, quite as good as the tribehold, though the other facilities needed work. Still, there was at least a warriors' hall, a firepit, a good water supply and sanitation. Supplies and munitions had been stockpiled in anticipation of the crisis. A paddock accommodated our horses, and there was an abundance of forage. Boy was patrolling westward across the bridge, I was told.

Ricky summed up the situation. The raiders were doing their worst. They'd not found any coordinated resistance. Knots of the settled people were defending their houses, but were being picked off one by one.

"The usual, chief," Ricky said. "The raiders are way too strong. Best we can hope is that they'll follow their pattern and scatter across the westlands looting, raping and enslaving. Then we may have options."

I detailed a company of foot soldiers to occupy a position across the bridge. Boy returned at midday with a tail of a dozen refugees toiling in his wake.

"Found these fleeing north, Chief," he observed. "They're less cocky now than old man Williams was back last year. I'll get them fed." The refugees were women and children, and seemed very grateful to find the naked savages were friendly, despite what they'd been told. The question was what to do with them.

Boy reported that he'd not yet engaged with the raiders, but the time was coming when we must. He briefly sketched his tactics, which I endorsed. So that afternoon, a strong company marched to the bridge below the mast, and I led our mounted warriors across it and up to the ridge. I sat my horse and stared gloomily over the westlands, from which spires of black smoke were ascending as far as I could see.

"They're beginning to scatter in slaving parties across the land," I observed. "Time for action, Boy. Let's see what our cavalry can do."

We headed west along the ridge, and down after a couple of miles or so to the nearest column of smoke, which proved to be a small group of houses which around fifty raiders were besieging. They were intent on their task, so the volley of arrows that arched into them from their rear took them by complete surprise. By the time they rallied and turned their weapons on us, we had wheeled out of range. They tried to make a stand, but Boy's tactics of hit and run with mounted archers steadily depleted their numbers and after an hour, I led a charge into the demoralised remainder. Cutting them down with lances, my men used the few running survivors as target practice. Not one lived. I watched my men at work, efficiently stripping and slicing the genitals off the corpses, which we left piled and butchered on the edge of the settlement. The cost was three wounded warriors.

The surviving Westlanders emerged to stare at the bloody-handed savages at work. I rode over. There were three adults and a dozen adolescents and children. What to do? The adults were in shock, so I took control. There was no safety on this side of the bridge, so I sent them under a small escort towards the fort at Beaver Lake. I didn't give them any choice in the matter.

"Time to move on," Boy said. "Others will come. I've put a screen of scouts to south and west. Odds are they'll concentrate on this evidence of resistance. So we'll withdraw to the bridge, and this little display will enrage them, I hope."

Boy had spiked several emasculated raider corpses on stakes along the approaches. I looked at one held upright by a stake through his asshole deep into his guts, his nerveless arms and legs hanging limp, his head fallen back, once perhaps a handsome blonde youth, his beauty now desecrated by our knives, his own severed penis and balls bulging out of his crammed mouth.

"Now they'll know the cost of their sort of warfare," I observed dispassionately. "Move out!"

My column marshalled into a battle line on the west side of the bridge. I rode with Boy and Ricky to the ridge above. Scouts returned reporting raider groups heading to the site of the massacre, though since there had been no survivors it couldn't be because they'd been alerted to our attack. That was odd. I then rode down to check out the settlement of the hostile Elder Williams. It was deserted. Pity. I fancied a good gloat.

As I was returning to our troops at the bridge end, I was startled by shouts of alarm. As I emerged form the trees I saw our troops clashing spears on shield and yelling in defiance. Rowing up the broad tidal river, riding the incoming flood was a large fleet, dark against the shining waters. Fuck. We'd been over-confident and now we were outflanked. That explained the enemy moving in force by land this way. I turned to Boy ready to order a fighting retreat to Beaver Lake, only to find him grinning fit to split his face. He pointed. Green and blue banners were flying from the ships. The other tribes had come.

***

The need for the pirates to spread out to find and gather loot, stores and most importantly slaves, was their undoing. The arrival of a naval force from the tribes found them scattered already over miles of countryside, and though the raiding bands nearest the Mast ridge moved to try to drive away the Islanders and Downlanders, they found an army of three tribes concentrated at the bridge, and one disposing of a formidable mounted force, more than equal to the numbers that had hastily moved eastwards. It was a brutal massacre. Their frantic and savage assault was mowed down by our bowmen and our first ever cavalry charge took them in the rear to devastating effect. 250 raiders lay dead on the bloody field, and 140 were captive. We did not escape unscathed unfortunately. My beautiful Carl, his golden body desecrated, was cut down, as his comrade Martin fought above him.

We castrated and burned the raider corpses, and buried Carl and a dozen other of our warriors high upon the ridge under a great mound of earth, his weapons by his side, and a pile of raider heads and severed genitals at his feet. The raider prisoners were assessed. The old and seriously wounded were killed without mercy, the young and fit stripped and collared as slaves, placed in their own chains and shackled, then marched in a long column to Beaver Lake.

That was by no means the end of the incursion, but with over half their strength cut down and their ships in our hands, the remainder scattered across the westlands and became prey to our roving cavalry and hunting bands. After a week quite a few of our warriors had the makings of long necklaces of testicles. The raider threat was over for ever.

Myself, Marcus and Margrit sat in council before elders of the three tribes under a pavilion at Beaver Lake. Bewildered survivors of the settled people had been gathered there, as many as a hundred of them, there were a lot more yet to find, but they were the first problem the three chiefs discussed.

I called out two of their surviving elders. I was not in a forgiving mood. They'd lost as many as half their people by their blind faith in their invisible god. One of them was the man Williams, saved by Boy ironically as he was being chased having abandoned his family. He looked around nervously at the large naked throng. We had stripped all his people and burned their clothing. Now they were all conscripted into our tribes without any choice on their part.

His grandson, a pretty child of nine was on my lap, blushing but not in any way reluctant as I played with his erect cocklet with hundreds looking on and Williams himself watching, horrified and powerless. The child's genitals had been daubed red as a sign he had been conscripted into the Hunter tribe. Other conscripts sitting in front of us had their crotches painted green or blue, depending on their destination, but those older boys and girls who were pubescent and adolescent, whether of the settled people or the few captured raider children, of whom there were a dozen, had their cocks and balls, or their budding tits and cunts smeared in orange. They sat apart, a group of well over a hundred.

The Williams boy was a redhead and I had renamed him Carl in memory of my fallen lover. He had my erection pressed against his smooth warm back. It had been hard up inside his ass the previous night, though it had not been me who had bust his cherry. He was the youngest of three boys I'd been awarded in tribute, as a harem by the tribes, whose job was to serve my bodily needs, the other two were a singular pair of enslaved raider twins of twelve. The twins thought of nothing but where the next fuck was coming from; they now lay back against my legs, idly feeling themselves and very erect, though one was caressing, kissing and nibbling the pretty left foot of little Carl hanging next to his face. They had energetically fucked the smaller boy last night for my entertainment, and had baptised both his holes with their cum, lubricating the way for my adult dick to follow on inside the boy. It had been the most intense boy sex I could remember. Marcus, who had followed me inside the child's anal sphincter, said to put it down to the danger of the past days and the feeling of loss for our beloved Carl, who now lay cold under his barrow on the ridge top.

Another of the Williams grandchildren, a girl of thirteen, was on Margrit's lap, her cunt being gently masturbated, squirming with the sensation, seeming to love it being done to her publicly, her legs set wide to display her interior to the hundreds of eyes observing her exposed sex flesh. She sneered at her grandfather as she gave herself to the skilled fingers of Margrit. She and other children revealed her grandfather had raped her and any other girl who caught his fancy among her family and people. Margrit whispered in her ear, and she giggled and shuddered as she was made to come.

Like the three boys offered me, Margrit's gift girl had a leather strap tied round her right ankle, making them not fully tribe but chattels of the people. There were several others present with those same tags. One pair was Asma and Idris. They had thrown off their clothes and fled naked to Beaver Lake with their newborn baby as soon as they knew the raiders were in the Westland, begging us for refuge. The Hunters had determined not to have them back except as slaves. Their boy child had been taken from them and given to Fiona to be brought up as a free warrior. The women had named him Panther, from his dark skin. He was suckling on Fiona's tit as she sat next to us.

"So Mister Williams," I called out, "the raiders came and destroyed your people. Now those that are left will become ours, and they will be naked savages, as you call us. The hundreds of mutilated, raped and impaled westlanders who looked to you for leadership have paid the price. So you and your elders have three days to leave these lands. If we find you in them after three sunsets, you'll suffer the same fate as the raiders we capture. Go!"

With a jeering and hooting from the assembled tribes, the men stumbled off and were driven out of the camp. I stood, still holding little Carl, my hand under his butt.

"People of the tribes! We claim all the Westlands for ourselves. Lord Boy! We the council of chiefs make you lord and chief of the Westlands, and orange is the colour of your tribe."

Boy stood proud before me. I dipped my hand in a pot of saffron and lathered his handsome and boldly erect cock. Margrit slapped orange handprints on his pectorals and added a feather to his topknot, then we did the same to Ricky, Boy's nominated war chief.

The boys, girls and young men assigned to the new Westlander tribe, whatever their origin, shouted in acclaim of their gloriously handsome chief. I was surprised at the enthusiasm from the newcomers, but Boy had a way with people, and he and his mate Ricky had been earnestly charming and inspiring the young people who had been confided to them for training and breeding. Even the ex-raider youths seem to have found hope in the new life the tribe was offering them.

Postscript

So here we are, thirty years after the battle of the Westlands. Today is a great day, for it is the Midsummer Festival of the Tribes and thousands of warriors and tribal mothers are flocking from all over the Islands to the Great Stone Circle in the heart of the territory of the Hunter tribe, my own beloved people. My Hunters are the leaders of the Great Horde, and we dispose of a thousand riders in alliance with the people of the Sea. Their great fleets under my consort, the Sea King Marcus, range along the coasts of Europe where now a dozen tributary tribes have been established under my overlordship and his protection. My Horde is extending the tribal lands deeper yet into the interior, and wherever they go, naked tribes rise, abandon their farms and establish the hunter-gatherer life. The prestige and fear my Horde inspires does most of the work. Cities, farms and towns are no longer part of human life, and if I have my way, they will never rise again.

I ride with an escort of red-painted riders, my four sons, the princes of the People, at my side. A crown of feathers is placed on my head, a diadem which will one day rest on my eldest son's, for the people have acclaimed my blood line as their lords for ever. I am David, called by my people High Chief of all Tribes and King of all Peoples. A grand title for a man who like all his people is but a naked and painted savage.

All the Islands in the western seas are now tribal. Boy is Lord of the Westlands of the Horn and a tribe of over five hundred feared warriors. My Hunters have now extended our lands north beyond the moorlands to the great inlet of the sea and the lands of the Cumree, but my capital is still the tribehold above Seatown, three times now the size it was in my youth. I command 1,000 mounted warriors and the lands up to the Island and Downlands are all ours. Marcus's realm now includes the former raider islands across the sea opposite his coast, which he has taken into his lordship, and resettled with the former raiders he took and educated within his tribe. Queen Margrit his sister rules all the downs and the land beyond as far as the Waste of London. North of my land is the four tribes of the Cumree, whose king is my old friend Owain. His son Ieuan has passed the sea into the far west to conquer the great island of the Gaels, and rules his own four tribes there as king of the Eireis. The ten tribes of the midlands and the north acknowledge my overlordship and send tributes of horses. This is the new world I have established.

A huge crowd acclaimed my arrival. I looked across the grounds. Tents spread out in every direction, spires of grey smoke go up from a dozen firepits, warriors dance and children sing. I dismounted with the assistance of my son and the heir of our empire, the Great Prince David, who rules the Valley tribe, which he had himself created in the first campaign he led into the midlands to our north. Beside him is my grandson, the third David, a handsome boy of fourteen now and a painted warrior, his cock daubed in bright purple as also are those of the select company of boy warriors he captains, my bodyguard and boy lovers. Each boy is sent as a tribute from the tribes under my dominion, selected for his outstanding beauty. He is sent to serve and be educated in my household from the age of twelve to fifteen. These boys are coming to form the elite of our society and a way of keeping our peoples united. They never take a tribal colour even after they've left to return home to their peoples. They're always painted thereafter in the magenta with which their genitals are anointed after I ceremonially take their virginity before the warriors.

As I walk through the lane of prostrated warriors to ascend my high throne, I hold in my head the new laws that the tribes will accept at this festival. From this cycle onwards the women's councils will lose their power to select and mate couples for breeding, though they will still give names to the babies. Our breeding programme has restored the human race to viability after the plagues, but the population must now settle into a balance. I have six children and thirty grandchildren. But their children will be allowed to mate and breed as they wish, not as the council determines. Marcus, Fiona and I calculate that two or three children will be the usual rate of reproduction when men and women are left to their own devices. Overpopulation would mean disease and warfare over resources again.

In all the thousands of tribespeople in the assembly before my face, I doubt that there are more than a score who still have some smattering of the ability to read. This vast throng is illiterate and I'm glad they are. Long ago, my own father discussed this with me. His view was that humanity needed what he called a 'reset'. The civilization he saw in its last days was overpopulated, grotesquely unequal, rapacious of its own world and corrupt in its sexuality. He convinced me that the natural state of humanity was that of the tribal hunter-gatherer, living in harmony with its world, open and free in its sexualities and naked of all possessions. And that is what I have created in the ruins of what was once called civilization.

Of course, humanity is as curious and clever as it ever has been. But taking away from them written language will set them free of the past. Already language and the word stock amongst the tribes is mutating. The English we all spoke when I was a child is changing so rapidly that it's sometimes difficult to understand what a Downlander child is saying, let alone the northern tribes from far away. The Cumree and Ereis never spoke English in the first place. One day it may well be that some clever human will try to recover the skill of reading and find ways to break the code. So be it. But it will be many many years before that will happen and by then the world will have changed irrevocably.

So I have written this account of the early days of tribal society in my own hand in this book, so that the story may one day be fully understood. Today it will be borne into the depths of the huge green mound we have erected a mile from the Great Stone Circle. It is where I and the future chiefs of the Hunter tribe will be laid after we die, in the stone tunnels and houses that await them below the ground. And in the central cavern where my body is one day to be deposited, this book will be placed in a great steel cabinet, the sort once called a 'safe', which I had brought from the ruined city and sunk in the dry and sandy floor of my tomb beneath my final bed. It is to be my testament to the future, if it ever cares to look for and find it.

The End