In Battle

X

Count Ferdinando’s final ride as lord of Arram is not one sung in drinking-halls or daubed in goldleaf upon the crypt walls; it is a song of shrieking hooves and splintered armor, a dirge whose verses gnaw the bone. Here the ground runs slick with the waste of two armies—Crusaders and Arabs churning in an undertow of red, frothing at the feet of the fallen. Above it all the cloudless sky, as pitiless and arid as the day’s reckoning, blisters the world beneath.

They say the Arabian champion called Barbath is not a man but a famine in the shape of one, his face all cheekbone and shadow, his beard twisted to a point like a goat’s. He rides his piebald stallion with a laziness that shames the furious gallop of Arram’s banners, and his spear is so long and black it seems conjured from midnight itself. “Ferdinando the Indomitable!” he howls, when the Count’s troops break ranks to let their count surge forth. “Come taste my greeting, you armored whore’s son.”

And Ferdinando, drunk on the prospect of his own legend, answers with a shout to shake the marrow in every peasant on the plain. He rides a destrier built of stone and muscle, snorting steam, armored tip to fetlock, its barding wet with spatter and the stink of half a day’s deathwork. “Barbath!” Ferdinando bellows. “Come show your mettle, you desert dog, and see how a northern Lord takes his meat!”

It is supposed to be a dance, the dueling of champions—touch, riposte, withdrawal. The two converge with the deliberate slowness of men who know they are being watched, watched not only by the ranks but by history’s unseen scribes. Barbath reins his horse and cocks his spear low, making a pantomime of idleness, so that all might see how little he fears Ferdinando’s charge. Ferdinando, with his jaw clenched tight, raises his own lance and spurs his mount to a killing fury.

The ground shudders beneath the collision, lance on shield, armor shrieking as each tries to puncture the other’s myth. Barbath’s spear glances off Ferdinando’s pauldron, leaving a notch deep as a thumbprint, while the Arramite’s lance smacks against the Arabian’s cuirass and splinters, the tip burrowing harmlessly into layered leather. The two horses wheel and circle, snorting, teeth bared as if the animals themselves were eager to savage.

“You ride like a priestess,” Barbath taunts, circling. “Did your mother teach you the saddle?” He rears his horse theatrically, spinning dust in a golden cloud.

Ferdinando bares his teeth. “Keep talking, goat-humper. I’ll decorate your tent with your own balls before the sun is down.”

A second pass: faster, closer, fury rising in the cut of their words and the grip on their weapons. Barbath’s spear licks out in a blur—this time, not for Ferdinando, but for the horse beneath him. The black haft shatters the destrier’s eye socket with a wet, hollow pop, then buries itself a span deep in the animal’s skull. The destrier screams, its scream an unholy concatenation of pain and confusion, and Ferdinando finds himself suddenly airborne, catapulted over the animal’s shoulder as it topples sideways.

The count lands badly, the weight of his own armor turning his ankle and flinging him sideways into the mud, but worse is to come. The dying horse crashes down atop Ferdinando’s right leg with the force of a toppled statue, splintering bone and pinning him like a beetle on display. Pain detonates in his thigh, then floods upward—he tries to scream, but finds the breath pressed from his lungs by the dead weight of the destrier.

Barbath circles, lazy again, spear resting across his saddle. He watches with the patience of a man certain of his next move. Around them, the battle continues in widening gyres, the clash of steel and bodies intensifying, but for Ferdinando and Barbath the world has narrowed to the trampled patch of mud beneath the dying sun.

Ferdinando claws at the ground, trying to lever himself free, but every twitch sends a barbed current of pain through his hip and into his belly. He spits earth, cursing, trying to wedge his shield beneath the horse’s flank. It is hopeless. The dead beast will not be moved by man or God.

Barbath dismounts with the catlike grace of a man used to killing up close. He approaches with the spear couched under his arm, tip glistening with the same syrupy blackness that now pools under Ferdinando’s horse. “Stand up and die like a nobleman, Count,” Barbath says, smiling with only half his mouth.

Ferdinando writhes, then snarls up at his enemy. “Fuck your mother’s grave, you sand-licking cur.”

Barbath shrugs, as if to say, What can one do with such? He prods the horse, shifting its carcass just enough to expose Ferdinando’s groin and the fork of his thighs. Then, with a quickness that belies his casual demeanor, Barbath plants the spear’s tip in the steel mesh between the count’s leg and his codpiece.

The sound is wet, like the rip of raw poultry. The spearhead passes through the links, then through the thick white flesh beneath, and out the other side. Ferdinando’s scream is a child’s shriek, high and almost girlish, the sort of scream that undoes all the years of cultivated terror and command. Blood sheets instantly, soaking the links and sluicing into the mud.

Barbath yanks the spear free. “There it is,” he says softly. “See, you can bleed like the rest of us.” He squats, the spear still aimed for a second strike. “How does it feel, noble Count? Not as good as fucking a peasant boy, I wager.”

Ferdinando sobs with rage, tries to spit in Barbath’s face, but the Arabian only leans back, examining the wound. He seems genuinely curious, as if observing an experiment. “Is it true, what they say?” Barbath muses, voice pitched low for Ferdinando’s ears alone. “That you take it from behind, from the stableboys and the pretty squires? That the only maidenhead you’ve ever breached is your own?” He prods the wound with a finger, twisting. “No matter. I think I will keep your cock as a trophy, Count of Arram. For my camel.”

The second thrust is slower, more deliberate, and Ferdinando feels every fraction of the spear’s passage: through bruised flesh, through the rigid stalk of his cock, splitting it like a butcher’s cleaver splits a sausage. The agony is so bright it eclipses thought, eclipses memory and pride; there is only this, the absolute indignity of being fucked open by an enemy’s spear. He screams again, but this time it is a strangled, gurgling sound, as if the pain has collapsed his trachea.

Barbath holds the spear vertical, letting the weight of the count’s lower body slide down the haft. “Not so loud, Lord,” he whispers. “Wouldn’t want your men to remember you as a howler.” He grips Ferdinando’s chin in a bloody hand, forcing the count to look up. “Tell me, did you ever imagine it would end like this? Pinned like a pig, squealing?”

Ferdinando, choking, manages a final curse. “You’ll...die on shit, Barbath. I’ll...haunt your seed.”

Barbath laughs, almost kindly. “There will be no haunting from the likes of you.” He rams the spear down with a savage, final thrust, the iron point exiting through Ferdinando’s lower back, scouring the spine on its way. The count’s body spasms, legs bucking, then goes slack. Barbath watches for a time, waiting for the dying to finish.

It is not quick. Even with the mortal wound, Ferdinando’s heart is a stubborn, battering thing, spraying blood in wet, rhythmic convulsions. Barbath waits, tilting his head in study. Finally, the shudders slow, then cease altogether.

The Arabian withdraws his spear and wipes it on the count’s tattered blue tabard. Then he does something that silences even the nearest soldiers—he bends down and, with a sawing motion, hacks open the count’s trousers. The genitals are a ruin, but Barbath is undeterred; he slices cleanly, severing the balls and a generous length of purpled cock, then wraps the mess in a strip of Arramite silk torn from the count’s own sleeve. “For my camel,” he repeats, to no one in particular.

Wordless, the rest of Barbath’s retinue descend upon the corpse. They strip it of armor, rings, boots, anything of value. Ferdinando’s body, naked and gashed and gouting, is left face-up in the mud. In death, the count’s lips are fixed in a sneer, a look of indignation so intense it borders on comic.

By evening, the battle is over. The field is a stinking mattress of bodies, trampled to indistinguishable pulp by the scavengers and the hoofed victors. Ferdinando’s remains are already swelling in the heat, his skin turning a livid blue beneath the torn banners and trampling feet. Somewhere, a crow lands on the count’s ruined thigh and picks at it experimentally. No one intervenes.

Above, the sky purples into night, and the air thrums with the click and whine of the insects. The legend of Ferdinando, Count of Arram, ends not in triumph or martyrdom but in decay—an afterthought for the worms, a crude joke for the men who had once feasted on his command.

XI

The night is a swollen thing, pressing down on Ferdinando’s tent, filling it with the heat of men’s sweat and the stench of old blood. The war is camped outside, a thousand cinders dotting the black field, each one a little furnace for murderers and martyrs. Inside the tent, Ferdinando sits hunched on his sleeping pallet, goblet in hand, his bare chest streaked with drying wine and scars old enough to have grown their own stories. The lamplight catches the edge of his smile, thin and white as a knife.

Bertrand stands at the flap, his huge arms crossed over his belly, body bristling with hair and impatience. He’s been pacing all night, eyeing Ferdinando and waiting for an order, a request. For once, he wants it to be something ugly, something to remind him that their holy war is just another excuse to break men in half and fuck what’s left. His lips twitch when Ferdinando finally speaks.

“Bring the Arab,” Ferdinando says, voice flat as a grave. “The pretty one. The one with the blue bastard eyes.”

Bertrand’s laugh is a chunk of rock in the air. “You mean the one who gutted those three Italian pups before they got his sword arm? Thought you’d want to kill him slow, boss.”

Ferdinando shrugs, drains his goblet. “I’ll have him before the crows do. Go on.”

Bertrand grins and ducks out, shouting for the guards. A minute later he’s back, hauling the prisoner by the hair. Qais, they called him—tall for his breed, muscled, still elegant even with his nose broken and his wrists lashed behind his back. Sweat and blood slick the lines of his face, but his eyes are sharp and watching, even when Bertrand throws him face-first onto the rug.

Ferdinando gets up slow, sets the goblet down. He walks a circle around Qais, toeing at the torn robe, the bruises crawling up the man’s ribs. He presses the heel of his boot between Qais’s shoulders, pushing him down until the warrior’s face grinds into the dirty cloth.

“Thought you bastards liked it rough,” Ferdinando says, leaning in so Qais can feel his breath. “How does it feel, blue eyes? Knowing you’re gonna die with your mouth full of Frankish cock?”

Qais says nothing. His teeth are red, lips split from the march, but he doesn’t spit or beg. He stares at the candle instead, as if memorizing the shape of the light. Bertrand shoves Qais’s head up, forcing his mouth open.

“Here’s how it goes, Saracen,” Bertrand says. “If you bite me, I’ll tear out your tongue and stuff it in your ass before I fuck you. Got it?”

Qais’s answer is to clamp his jaw shut, but Bertrand just laughs again and hitches up his surcoat, pulling out a cock thick enough to terrify horses. He smacks Qais across the cheek with it, hard, and the Arab’s head jerks sideways.

Ferdinando watches, fascinated, until the urge becomes physical. He walks to the sideboard, pours himself another goblet of wine, then comes back and squats next to the pair. Qais is gagging now, but Bertrand’s got him by the scalp, ramming into his mouth with ugly rhythm. The sounds are wet and raw, echoing in the canvas dark. Ferdinando slides a hand over Qais’s bare thigh, up to where the prisoner’s own cock dangles, limp but oddly noble.

“You were famous, weren’t you?” Ferdinando asks, addressing Qais’s crotch. “Your men said you never lost a fight. They lied.”

He digs his thumb into the root of Qais’s cock, making the man buck. Bertrand’s pace is getting faster, more savage, and he’s cursing in four languages, strings of filth spat between thrusts. Qais makes a choked, gurgling noise, tries to pull back, but Bertrand just jams deeper, holding him down until the body goes slack.

With a groan, Bertrand comes, wrenching Qais’s head up to spill it across the warrior’s face and beard. He wipes his dick on Qais’s cheek, then stands up and steps away, panting, grinning at Ferdinando.

“Your turn, boss,” he says, licking sweat from his lips. “Bet he’s tight as a nun.”

Ferdinando unlaces his breeches, his cock already hard, the head flushed purple. He rolls Qais over, ignoring the shudder and the dribble of blood from the man’s nose. He tears open the rags at Qais’s ass, spits, and rams in without a warning. Qais screams this time—a real noise, not just pain but shock, like he can’t believe the world could get this bad. Ferdinando laughs and leans over him, biting at the back of Qais’s neck, rutting like a dog.

Bertrand pours himself a goblet, watches, hand idly stroking his balls. He’s seen Ferdinando fuck before, but never with this much hunger. The two of them have shared hundreds of bodies—women, men, anything that squealed—but tonight Ferdinando is on fire. The tent shakes with every thrust, the lamp flickers, wine sloshes from the goblet as Bertrand drinks. Qais is pinned, face mashed into the rug, fingers twitching behind his back.

“Give it to him, boss,” Bertrand cheers. “Fuck the sand out of him.”

Ferdinando grunts, drives harder, yanking Qais up by the hair so he can see the man’s face in the lamplight. The prisoner’s eyes are glassy but defiant, mouth working like he wants to spit.

“You want to say something?” Ferdinando growls.

Qais spits blood at his face. It splatters across Ferdinando’s teeth, metallic and hot. He licks it, smiles wider, and slaps Qais across the head.

Bertrand steps in, grabs Qais’s jaw, forces it open again. “You’re not done with his mouth, boss,” Bertrand says, voice rough. “He’s got good teeth, but they break easy.”

Ferdinando yanks out, flips Qais back onto his knees. His cock is still hard, shining with blood and spit. He shoves it into Qais’s mouth, both hands on the man’s head, face-to-face now, staring into each other’s eyes as the thrusts start anew. The rhythm is brutal, desperate.

Bertrand watches, his own cock swelling again. There’s a moment where the two knights meet eyes over Qais’s head. An unspoken dare. A joke, maybe, or just animal glee. Bertrand wonders what it would be like to trade places—to fuck Ferdinando instead, to see him on his knees. He knows the feeling is mutual. They’ve circled each other for years, always on the edge of something neither can admit.

But tonight, it’s the Arab between them. Bertrand grabs Qais by the hips, splits his cheeks with thick fingers, and spits, then shoves in beside Ferdinando’s cock. Qais’s body bucks, the scream muffled, eyes wide and blind. Both men are inside him now—one at the mouth, one at the ass, meeting in the middle, grunting and howling.

They keep going until Qais goes limp again, finally sobbing, snot and blood pooling under his face. Ferdinando cums with a howl, yanking Qais off his cock and spraying across the man’s lips and beard. Bertrand finishes a second later, pulling out and leaving a trail down Qais’s thighs.

They slump back, breathing hard. Qais flops to the side, twitching but alive. Ferdinando stands, wipes himself with a bit of cloth, then pours more wine for both of them.

Bertrand takes his goblet, raises it in salute. “To conquest,” he says.

Ferdinando clinks his goblet, laughing. “And to the losers. May they always be this pretty.”

They drink, standing over the ruined man. The taste is blood and wine and victory, and neither one is willing to look away first.

The tent is quieter now, the air thick with spent sex and the reek of sweat. Qais lies crumpled on the rug, mouth open, drool mingling with the frothy spill of come and blood. His eyes, though, are still open—still alive, burning with the kind of hate that makes Ferdinando’s skin tingle. He pours more wine, gulps it, and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.

Bertrand is already half-hard again, swaying as he stands over the wrecked captive. His cock, still smeared with blood, swings heavy between his thighs. He grins at Ferdinando, eyes bright with a dare. “He’s still got some fight in him, boss. Want another go?”

Ferdinando narrows his eyes. He wonders if Bertrand is talking about Qais, or about himself. He wonders which of the two of them will admit first that watching the other rape and ruin is more arousing than the act itself.

He crouches next to Qais, pushes the man’s hair out of his face. “Look at that. Still beautiful,” he says, almost to himself. “Almost a shame.”

Bertrand laughs. “You getting soft?”

Ferdinando jerks Qais upright, forcing him to kneel. Qais sways, eyes rolling, but Ferdinando holds him steady. “Open your mouth,” Ferdinando orders, slapping Qais’s cheek. The Arab’s lips part, slow, sticky with gore.

Bertrand kneels behind Qais, spreading the man’s ass wide with his hands. He spits, aims, and slides his cock in again. Qais’s body convulses, a shudder rolling up his back. Bertrand leans forward, grabs Qais by the shoulders, and pounds him with rhythmic, deliberate thrusts.

Ferdinando pulls his own cock free, guides it to Qais’s mouth. He leans in so close he can feel the heat coming off Bertrand, the brush of their hands as they both grip Qais’s hair. As Ferdinando begins to thrust, he meets Bertrand’s gaze over the top of Qais’s head. The look that passes between them is pure challenge: I can break him better than you can.

They fuck in tandem, pistoning through Qais like a shared engine. The tent rattles. The sound of their bodies is meat and violence, echoing through the close air. Qais tries to twist away, but the knights hold him fast. His face is streaked with tears and snot, but he keeps his eyes open, glaring hatred at Ferdinando even as he gags.

Bertrand reaches around, grabs Ferdinando’s wrist, and for a moment it’s not Qais they’re hurting, but each other—crushing fingers, nails digging in, a contest of grip and muscle. Ferdinando bares his teeth, shoves harder, and bites Qais’s cheek, hard enough to draw blood. Bertrand answers with a slap to the prisoner’s hip, his thrusts growing erratic.

Inside his head, Ferdinando imagines turning around, shoving Bertrand to the rug and taking him, pinning that great hairy body and fucking him raw. Or, in the darker corners, he imagines Bertrand overpowering him, holding him down, making him beg for it. Either thought is enough to make his balls ache. He wonders if Bertrand’s thinking the same thing.

He pulls out, panting, and yanks Qais’s face up to look at Bertrand. “You like that, don’t you?” he says, voice hoarse. “You like watching me fuck him while you fuck him.”

Bertrand’s eyes are slitted, focused. “You got a better idea?”

“Yeah,” Ferdinando says. “I want to see him choke.”

Bertrand laughs, slaps Qais’s ass. “Then hold him still, boss. I’ll finish the job.”

He fucks Qais harder, hands gripping like iron. Ferdinando circles behind Qais, wraps an arm around the man’s neck, and pulls tight. Qais’s body flails, but Ferdinando is stronger—his bicep bulging, his other hand locked in Qais’s hair, yanking the head back.

Qais’s face turns a wild shade, eyes bugging, mouth opening wide on a silent scream. Ferdinando leans close, pressing his lips to Qais’s ear, whispering things in Latin and French and words with no language at all.

Bertrand is grunting, sweat pouring down his back, his cock slamming in and out. He meets Ferdinando’s eyes again, and the look is raw, almost pleading. It’s like there’s no Qais at all, just a vessel, a conduit between the two of them.

Ferdinando tightens his arm, cutting off the air. Qais’s body spasms, feet kicking at the rug. Bertrand fucks harder, and at the moment Ferdinando feels the final pulse of life shuddering out of Qais, Bertrand roars and comes, hips jerking, driving in to the root.

Qais’s bladder gives out, a dark puddle soaking the rug beneath. His legs go limp, twitching. Ferdinando holds the choke a few seconds longer, savoring the way the heat ebbs from the body. Then he lets go, and Qais slumps forward, face-first into the mess.

Bertrand collapses backward, gasping, and wipes his cock off on Qais’s calf. He sits there, watching Ferdinando. “You’re a cold bastard, Ferdinando,” he says, not without admiration.

Ferdinando shrugs, wipes the spit from his lips. “You didn’t mind it.”

Bertrand grins, raising his goblet in salute. “Neither did you.”

They sit for a moment, catching their breath, the corpse steaming gently on the tent floor between them. The only sounds are the war outside, and the slow drip of piss from the dead man’s body.

The tent stinks of sweat, blood, and the thick iron reek of dried semen. Inside, Ferdinando from Siracusa sprawls across a pile of soiled blankets, huge and naked as a slaughtered bull, the mess of his body glistening in the fug of predawn. He snores loud enough to make the tent canvas shudder, a lowing rumble that vibrates through the chest of anyone unfortunate enough to be inside with him. Bertrand lies beside him, rolled onto his side and curled around his sword like a whore's child. The third body in the tent—a dark-skinned, young Arab—lies limp on his stomach, head twisted at an unnatural angle, a necklace of purple bruises garroting his throat. His backside is a ruined thing, red-rimmed and weeping, leaking the residue of last night's festivities down his thighs.

Ferdinando dreams of drowning in wine. He dreams of Saint Agatha, her tits hacked off and offered on a golden platter, and he howls at her in Latin, calls her a cunt, tells her he's coming to fuck her in paradise. Then the dream explodes in fire and brass. There is a horn. The Saracen war-horn, that infernal braying, a beast's mating call and the bellow of a thousand skulls being split. Ferdinando wakes at once, rage already at full boil.

“Motherfuckers,” he croaks, voice like a rasp through gravel. He kicks at the dead Arab, rolling the corpse off the mat. Its head makes a wet thump against the tent post.

Bertrand is up, already fumbling for his hauberk, and then laughs when he remembers it got torn to shreds last week, during that goat-blooded ambush outside the village. Instead, he grabs his sword and straps on his belt, nothing else. Naked except for his boots and weapon, he stands up, chest heaving, cock swaying like a war club.

“You hear that, Ferdi?” Bertrand spits. “We’ve got company.”

Ferdinando grins, his teeth huge and filthy and chipped at the edges. He lumbers to his feet, balls swinging, hair matted to his belly and groin. He stoops to grab his mace—the spiked morningstar, flecked with the dried brains of three different nations.

The horn sounds again, closer. The tent city of the Crusaders is already a shouting, thundering, tangled knot of confusion. Hooves pounding, blades ringing, the meaty rip of tent canvas splitting, the war-screams in five languages. Fire spits out of a neighboring tent, black smoke blooming up in seconds. Arrows scythe through the early morning, thudding into the dirt and the necks of men who haven’t even had the chance to curse.

Ferdinando shoves his way out of the tent, Bertrand at his side, both bellowing. They're a sight—two monsters, thick and veiny and insane, both over forty but built like stone towers. The Crusaders are scrambling, half-dressed, pissing themselves in terror or running for the palisade.

A Saracen on a black horse looms into view, his mouth a red hole as he screams Allahu akbar, saber raised. The man is quick, but he doesn't expect what he sees: Ferdinando, naked and foaming at the mouth, charging straight at him with the morningstar. The Saracen hesitates, confused by the white devil's nudity, and that's all the time Ferdinando needs. He swings the morningstar underhand, crushing the man's kneecap in one blow. The Saracen tumbles off the horse, shrieking, and Ferdinando plants his foot on the man's chest and smashes his skull to a red pulp.

“Move, you limp-dicked shits!” Ferdinando roars at his own men, who flinch away from him as much as from the enemy.

Bertrand is right behind him, hacking a bearded Mamluk in the arm. The blade gets stuck in bone. Bertrand leaves it there, rips the scimitar from the Mamluk's own hand and opens the man's belly with it, intestines unspooling like a length of greasy rope. “Saint Michael take your mother’s cunt!” Bertrand howls, spit flying.

The Saracens see them now—the two naked giants, covered in old scars and new gore, and they hesitate. Then the reinforcements arrive. Three at once, spear-men, lean and quick, faces covered in black veils. They flank Ferdinando, shouting, driving forward.

Ferdinando grins, his cock hardening from the thrill. He slams the morningstar into the first one’s face, caving it in so that the spear-man's head is nothing but a bag of bone chips. He grabs the next one barehanded, breaking the man’s spear in half over his own knee, then jamming the splintered shaft through the Saracen’s eye, all the way to the back of his skull.

But the third one is smarter. He ducks low, spins behind Ferdinando, and jams his spear into the small of Ferdinando’s back. Pain explodes down his spine, white-hot. Ferdinando bellows in outrage, spins, but another spear is already driving in, through his flank, the tip scraping against his pelvic bone.

It takes three men to finally bring him down. One spear jams under his ribcage, lifts, and Ferdinando feels his organs shift inside him. Another drives up through the soft meat of his ass, splitting sphincter and colon and up, up, up, until it bursts out the front of his lower belly, right under his hard, jutting cock. Blood fountains out, hot and sticky, splashing down his thighs.

He staggers, looks down at the horror of his own body. His own guts bulge out from the three wounds, like obscene bouquets. He laughs, spitting blood, and manages to crush the skull of the last spear-man with one final, two-handed swing of the morningstar. The handle is slick with blood, hard to grip, but Ferdinando has hands like shovels and won't let go.

Then his knees buckle, and he goes down. But the spears in his body keep him upright, planted in the mud like a Saint Sebastian for the damned.

Behind him, Bertrand is in trouble. A pair of Saracens close in on him, one with a scimitar, the other a short, curved dagger. Bertrand roars curses, calls them “goat-fucker,” “shit-breathed whore,” “diseased bastard of a pig.” He kicks one in the kneecap, snapping it sideways, then grabs the other by the neck and bites out his throat, spraying hot arterial blood everywhere.

But there are more Saracens than Crusaders, and they know how to use numbers. As Bertrand fights, a third enemy slides in behind, silent as a tomb, and buries his scimitar in the small of Bertrand’s back. The tip juts out from Bertrand’s belly, pink and shiny. Bertrand screams, turns, punches the man in the eye so hard the eyeball pops, but he can’t stand. He goes to his knees, still hacking at the Saracens, blood pouring from his ruined body.

Ferdinando sees all of this, every flash of steel, every arterial spray. He wants to go to his friend, help him, but his body won’t obey. He’s stuck, impaled on the spears, blood sluicing out in rhythm with his heart. He can’t breathe. He roars in fury, in pain, in some desperate need to fuck the world one last time.

A Saracen with a patchy beard steps up to him, looks Ferdinando in the eye, and spits on his face. Ferdinando laughs, spits right back, gets blood and mucus all over the Saracen’s cheek.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he snarls. “Your mother takes it deeper than that!”

The Saracen shoves his spear deeper, grinding the shaft and turning it, twisting Ferdinando’s insides into a red slurry. The pain is beyond pain, an electric hurricane, but Ferdinando just keeps laughing.

Even as the world tilts sideways, even as the ground comes up to meet him, even as darkness eats at the edges of his vision, he won’t stop. Not until every one of these fuckers is dead, or he is.

The last thing he sees before he blacks out is Bertrand, still on his knees, screaming his name.

“Ferdinando! You fat bastard, don’t you dare fucking die first—!”

But that’s another scene, another moment. For now, Ferdinando hangs on the spears, a naked, bleeding monument to the worst of all crusaders, and even the Saracens pause to stare at him, wondering what manner of demon they’ve finally managed to bring down.

A spear in the gut hurts less than a spear in the ass. Ferdinando learns this as the three Saracens manhandle him, their veiled faces slicked with sweat and hate. He’s not dead. He should be, but he isn’t. His body refuses. His heart pounds, pumping blood in great, obscene spurts from the wounds, splattering the three men as they work.

They don’t pull the spears out. They plant the butts in the churned-up mud, angle them like siege poles, and heave, using all their weight and leverage. The world tilts. His toes drag furrows in the dirt. Then, with a grunt and a shove, they jerk Ferdinando upright. He jerks and twitches, his skin shrieking with torn muscle and shredded nerves, but the worst is the shame: he’s naked, balls swinging, his cock shriveling and blue, flopped over the wound where the spear juts out right under it.

The whole battlefield seems to stop. Even the dying turn their heads. The Saracens howl and jeer. The few Crusaders still standing look away in disgust or terror, their faith crushed by the sight of their own champion hanging like a butchered hog.

Ferdinando tries to say something. All that comes out is blood and a wet gurgle. The pain is lightning. He manages to clench his hands around the shaft of one spear, but his grip is slick and weak. The world starts to go white at the edges. Still, he tries to spit on them, and when the blood drools down his chin, he bares his teeth, a challenge even now.

The Saracens drag him through the mud, the spears bending but not snapping. They carry him toward the heart of the camp, toward the Crusaders’ banner, now trampled and half-burning in the muck. They plant the three spears in a triangle, and Ferdinando hangs there, a grotesque monument to Crusader hubris.

Behind him, Bertrand is crawling. Blood pours from the hole in his side, but he claws at the ground, the mud, the bodies, dragging himself after his friend. He has a dagger in one hand, slick with gore. He’s not thinking anymore, just pure animal fury, nothing but red and the need to kill. Every move tears something inside him, but pain is an old friend.

The Saracens spot him, of course. But they don’t rush. They watch, and when Bertrand gets close enough—close enough to see Ferdinando’s face, mouth gaping, eyes rolling—one of them steps forward. The man is a head shorter than Bertrand, thin as a whip, but his eyes are murder. He grins, says something in Arabic, then jams his sword straight through Bertrand’s back, the point punching out through his belly.

Bertrand roars. He twists, tries to grab at the man, but his arm is lead, his hand numb. He falls onto his side, guts oozing around the blade. The Saracen yanks the sword out and kicks Bertrand over.

Bertrand’s vision is going black, but he sees the next move, like watching from underwater: the same Saracen steps up, raises the sword with both hands, and drives it down into Bertrand’s chest. There’s a crack, a gush of dark blood. Bertrand gasps, manages to bark out a last word:

“Ferdinando—!”

He spits blood and teeth, grinning even as he dies. The Saracens laugh. The sound echoes across the field, bouncing off the burning tents, off the dead and the dying.

Ferdinando sees it all. His vision is fucked, swaying, but he watches his friend go down, sees the light go out of Bertrand’s eyes. He tries to move, to break free, but he’s stuck, nailed to the world.

He wants to scream. He does, and it’s a raw animal howl, nothing human left in it. The Saracens answer him, shouting their victory, slapping the spears, mocking the great white beast they’ve finally brought down.

The humiliation is almost worse than the pain.

There’s no more battle. Just the aftermath. The living loot the dead. The Saracens swarm through the camp, setting fire to everything, dragging off the wounded for whatever comes next. Some of them dance around the spear-triangle, flinging curses and rotten food at Ferdinando’s body. Others use the dead Crusaders for target practice, pushing spears through their mouths and bellies, giggling like children.

Ferdinando’s world narrows. He can feel himself dying. There’s no light, no tunnel, no god. Just the stink of his own shit and blood, the memory of Bertrand’s laugh, and the chorus of jackal voices celebrating his ruin.

The last thing he sees before the blackness closes is a Saracen with a dagger, moving toward him, grinning wide. The man holds up three fingers, then points at Ferdinando’s balls, as if making a promise.

Ferdinando tries to curse him. All that comes out is a bubbling laugh, wet and choking. It doesn’t matter. He’ll see Bertrand soon enough.

The Saracen’s eyes are the last thing he ever really sees. Then, nothing.

Death is not enough. The Saracens want annihilation—of flesh, of memory, of myth.

After the last breath rattles out of Ferdinando, after his body slackens and the spears stop their trembling, they get to work. The first thing is to make sure he’s dead. Three more men come, each with a spear, and they take turns punching the iron heads through his body. The first goes in through his armpit, puncturing lung and heart; the second pierces his thigh, splitting bone and scrotum; the third is the cruelest, hammered straight through the mouth, breaking teeth and jaw, up into the brainpan.

Ferdinando’s head lolls. His tongue is a thick, bloody worm, twitching as the last nerve signals stutter and fail. His cock is flaccid now, but still huge, blackening as the blood congeals. The Saracens jeer at it, call it “dog’s meat,” slap it back and forth for their own amusement. One of them draws a knife and saws through it in two quick strokes, the blade hacking through root and sack, then throws the mass onto the ground, where it twitches, spurting pale pink for a moment before going still.

Bertrand’s corpse is dragged next to his friend. His death-grin is still frozen on his face, but the rest of him is a ruin: belly split, chest caved, arms twisted under him. A Saracen kneels on his back, grabs his hair, and cuts off his cock and balls with the same knife. The balls are tossed from hand to hand like dice.

The Saracens are not finished.

They bend Ferdinando’s head back, jaw slack and ruined, and force Bertrand’s severed cock and balls into his mouth. They stuff it deep, packing it in so that the shaft juts out obscenely, a blasphemous parody of the priest’s tongue at Eucharist. Next, they prize open Bertrand’s jaws—his lips cracked, gums bleeding—and shove Ferdinando’s dick and scrotum into the dead man’s mouth, jamming it so far the tip pokes through the slit where Bertrand’s cheek is split.

They pose the bodies, side by side, arms outstretched, fingers knotted together as if they’re praying or blessing the crowd.

The heads come last.

They use a scimitar, heavy and dull, to saw through the necks. It takes effort, bones and sinews grinding, but the Saracens are patient. When the heads are free, they hold them up for the survivors to see—Ferdinando’s eyes rolled back, lips parted around his friend’s cock; Bertrand’s jaw unhinged, stuffed to the gills with Ferdinando’s mutilated manhood. The Saracens cheer. The Crusaders who still breathe try not to look.

They fix the heads on pikes, one at either end of the camp. Sometimes, when the mood strikes, the victors use the heads for target practice. Sometimes, they piss in the mouths, laughing as the urine dribbles out the severed windpipes.

The sun rises and falls. The heads rot. First, the skin bubbles, peels. The tongues turn black and swell. Flies come, millions of them, laying eggs in the eye sockets, the open wounds, the ragged lips. Maggots erupt, wriggling in sheets, chewing through cartilage and meat, until all that’s left is two hollowed, yellowed skulls—one still crammed with the remains of another man’s cock.

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