In the Cell

XII

Barbath does not send guards. He herself comes for Ferdinando, a hound flanked by blood-eyed goons and the wild flare of torches that streak the corridor with greasy light. He is already shackled; still, Barbath brings the hammer, and uses it on his ankles when he stumbles, taking the stairs in a tangle of numb limbs. He wants him to crawl.

“Bring him,” Barbath commands, and the men seize him under the armpits, haul him upright. He surveys Ferdinando’s ruined feet, his tongue pinched between his teeth, as if relishing the taste of Ferdinando’s surrender. The doors of the stone keep are open; they drag him across the flagstones and into the city air, down to the old jail by the river, where the air is humid and already thick with the odor of copper, offal, and mold.

They strip him to the skin in the vestibule, pausing only to jeer at the thick, heavy cock that slaps his thigh as they rip away the last shreds of uniform. One of the goons prods him with the butt of a torch. “Should leave that one on him, Barbath. Bastard’s hung like a minotaur.” The laughter is as warm as the torch-flame, and just as hungry.

But Barbath’s attention is elsewhere. He steps close, grabs Ferdinando’s chin in a hand that smells of lard and gunpowder, and yanks his face up. His eyes, so small in the lantern light, are brimming with possibility.

“You’ll die on the stake,” he says. “Like you deserve. Tomorrow at dusk.” He flicks Ferdinando’s chin, lets his head drop. “Let the river hear what happens to its wolves.” He turns on his heel, boots echoing. “Toss him with the other pig.”

The cell is black stone, slashed with damp streaks of green and white and darker, rustier red. There is one window, but only a strip of sky and the suggestion of stars, nearly suffocated by the city’s midnight smoke. It is cold; there is not even straw. Ferdinando sinks onto his knees and tries to exhale. The pain in his feet radiates like fire; he cannot move his toes.

For a while he is alone. He cannot tell how long—the light never changes. But after an hour, or a day, a face appears in the dark. A second man, taller, with hair shorn almost to the scalp, a nose that has been broken and reset at least twice, and shoulders as wide as the cell itself.

“You’re awake,” the stranger says. His voice is rough, but not unkind. “They hurt you bad?” The stranger stands, unfolds, comes over. He is barefoot, but moves with a certain feline care, even grace. He is naked as well.

“They broke my feet,” Ferdinando says, surprised at how even his voice sounds.

The man snorts. “Could be worse. You’ll only need them for a little while.” He sits across from Ferdinando, leans back against the wall, arms draped loosely over his knees. “Name’s Madhi.”

Ferdinando, through a grimace, gives his own.

Madhi grins, teeth sharp in the gloom. “Barbath’s little showpiece. The famous rebel. They’ve been looking for you.” He stretches, runs a hand down his belly to his crotch, and idly scratches the base of his cock—a formidable specimen, thick and long, resting atop his thigh like an accusation. His balls are nearly as large as Ferdinando’s own. “They’ll want to make it slow. Show people you’re only meat after all.”

Ferdinando cannot look away. “You’ve seen it?”

“I’ve done it.” Madhi shrugs, not bragging, just reporting. “That’s why they keep me alive down here. I’m the only one who knows how to do the staking. I’ve put a dozen up for Barbath. Men, women, even a kid once.” He spits, wipes his mouth. “Don’t worry. I never let them suffer more than they want.”

“They want me to suffer,” Ferdinando says, “as much as possible.”

Madhi regards him, thoughtful. Then, very quietly, “Do you want to die that way?”

He tries to imagine it. The horror, the embarrassment, the agony: the pole forced up his ass, through his bowels, shattering his ribs from inside as it burrows up toward the throat; left to scream while the city watches and Barbath laughs. It is less the pain that terrifies him than the loss of dignity—the surrender to spectacle, being turned into a joke, a cautionary tale, a story whispered to children in the markets.

“I don’t,” Ferdinando says. The truth of it surprises him.

Madhi’s eyes, in the dark, are impossible to read. “There’s another way. I can help you. But there’s a price.”

Ferdinando stares at him. He is not naïve, and the currency here is always the same. “You want me to fuck you?”

Madhi’s laugh is enormous, echoing off the damp stone. “No, no. I want to fuck you. Once. Before I end you. Or—if you like—while I end you. Your choice.”

The next breath catches in Ferdinando’s throat. His history is a parade of anonymous fucks, all of them on top, most of them drunk or desperate, all of them searching for some lost connection. Never has he let himself be used. Never even allowed himself to wonder what it might feel like.

He says, “Why do you want this from me?”

Madhi shrugs again, the movement fluid and strange. “When you’re down here, it’s the only thing that’s real. The only thing that feels good, even for a second. And I’ve never had anyone like you. Not just the body, though I won’t complain about that. But you—” and here he leans in, the heat of his body suddenly present, almost overwhelming. “You’re the last. If I fuck you, I fuck the whole city. I fuck Barbath himself. I spit in his face while I shoot inside you.” He leans back, eyes glittering. “Or maybe I just want to see you come while you die. That’s what I really want, I think.”

Ferdinando tries to stand. His feet, pulped and purple, betray him; he collapses against the wall, gasping. The pain is spectacular. The thought of being split open by this man is enough to nearly undo him. And yet, the alternative is worse.

Madhi reaches for him, slow, careful. His hand is enormous; it cradles Ferdinando’s neck, not roughly, but in a way that offers no argument. “I’ll do it gentle. If you want. I know how. Or, I can make it like you need.”

Ferdinando looks up at the window, at the dark tongue of sky, the nothing waiting beyond the bricks. He wonders, briefly, whether his soldiers would have chosen this, whether his king would have cared. He decides, finally, that it is his own life, his own body, and that he can die in whatever fashion he likes.

“Do it,” he says.

Madhi wastes no time. He settles Ferdinando onto his back, pulls him up so that his hips rest in the cup of his own lap, and runs his hands along Ferdinando’s thighs with a kind of reverence. Madhi’s cock is already hard, bobbing against Ferdinando’s belly. For a moment, Ferdinando is sure he cannot take it, that it will tear him in half, that this is an execution after all.

But then Madhi leans over him, pressing their chests together, and kisses his mouth with a shock of tongue and teeth, rough and wet and warm. It is not the violence that surprises Ferdinando, but the longing.

“I’ll make it good,” Madhi promises, mouth still brushing his cheek. He spits in his hand, works it up and down the shaft, then brings the head to Ferdinando’s asshole, circling, waiting, patient.

It is not as bad as he fears. At first it is only pressure, then a sharp and sickening pop, then the hot fullness of Madhi inside him, so deep and so wide that he cannot breathe for a second. He yells, and Madhi grins against his jaw.

“There you are,” he says, and begins to move.

Each thrust is a shock; the pain ripples up Ferdinando’s spine, but there is pleasure in it, too, in the surrender, in the knowledge that his body is being used for something, even if it is only to give a dying man a last moment of joy. Madhi’s cock finds a rhythm, slamming into him, and Ferdinando can feel his own cock growing hard, pushed and jostled by the violence of the act.

Madhi’s hands are everywhere—on his chest, his face, his throat. He is not choking him, not yet, but Ferdinando senses the promise in those fingers, the inevitability of it.

“Tell me when,” Madhi says.

“When what?” Ferdinando pants.

“When you want to go. I can make you black out in a second. You won’t feel the end.”

He doesn’t answer. The pleasure, or the agony, or both, is surging now. Ferdinando lets his hands wander down, finds his own cock, and begins to stroke. The friction makes him moan. Madhi watches him, eyes wild, and picks up speed.

The end comes suddenly. A hot, electric pressure builds in Ferdinando’s guts, then erupts; he paints his own chest, his own mouth, with a spray of semen so thick that it almost drowns his gasp. At the same time, Madhi closes his hands around Ferdinando’s throat, squeezing, squeezing, and the world goes silent except for the pulse in his ears and the taste of iron in his teeth.

He comes again, or maybe it is only the same orgasm, looping in on itself, as the blood drains from his brain. Madhi fucks him through it, pistoning in and out, until at last the stars behind Ferdinando’s eyes explode, and everything goes cold.

He sees that Ferdinando is dead. Furious, he orders the corpse castrated and impaled. Mahdi is also impaled.

XIII

The Saracens strip them before the crowd, down to sweat-stained linen, and then rip even that off their bodies. The audience—an orgy of men, young and old, warriors and farmers, artisans and merchants, servants and slaves- howls as the knights’ balls and cocks swing between their hairy legs, defiant in the sunlight. When the spittle dries on their faces and the rocks stop coming, the guards herd them to the jail. They laugh, too, especially when Bertrand spits out a broken tooth and Ferdinando, ever the showman, pisses on the guard’s boot.

It’s a proper dungeon: three walls hewn from shit-brown rock, fourth wall of old iron bars, the ground a mixture of sand and blood. Maybe two arm-spans wide. They toss Bertrand in first, and Ferdinando gets a bonus kick to the kidneys before he’s shoved in after. Door slams, bolt clicks, and the men are alone.

Ferdinando spends a minute on all fours, coughing and cursing. The Templar just sits cross-legged, a fat wet line of blood dripping down his chin. The fucking Templar. “Bertrand, you smug bastard,” Ferdinando says. “You look like a dead calf.”

Bertrand grins, lips gory, showing off the new hole in his mouth. “Better a calf than a cockroach, Ferd.”

Ferdinando snorts, tries to roll his shoulder, but the joint is shot from when the guards yanked his arm behind his back. He collapses onto his side. The floor is freezing, but at least it’s not crawling with lice—yet. “You think they’ll just kill us? Or will they make a show?” Ferdinando asks. He closes his eyes and imagines the city: gold domes, muezzins, merchant scum. The air stinks of cinnamon and goats. He hates it.

Bertrand doesn’t answer. He’s picking at the crust of blood near his eye, pinching it until it comes off in a perfect red crescent.

Ferdinando waits. He’s always hated Bertrand. Not because he’s a Templar, but because he’s a better Templar. Bertrand is the kind of monk-knight who outdrinks the cavalry, fucks every innkeeper’s daughter, and then spends sunrise on his knees whispering to God. If Ferdinando is an ox—brute, stubborn—Bertrand is the wolf, always eating first and shitting on the bones. It galls him.

The door at the end of the corridor grinds open. Some guards—five, maybe six—walk down the corridor. They jostle to the bars, giggling. One throws a stone at Bertrand’s face. He doesn’t flinch.

“The day after tomorrow,” one of the guards says in a weird French, “you go on stick. Tall stick. Up your ass, out your mouth.”

Ferdinando barks a laugh. “That all? Thought you’d chop my cock first, show it to your mother.”

The men laugh. Bertrand just watches.

When the men grow bored and went away, Ferdinando sits up. He rests his head on his knees. “Impaled. I hear it takes three days to die.”

Bertrand, still with blood on his lips, says: “Less if you struggle. The weight helps. They pull it out of you at the end, if it’s not all the way through.”

“Pull what out?”

“The pole,” Bertrand says. “It tears through your throat. That’s when they cut your head off.”

Ferdinando says, “Shit.”

He stares at the wall. There’s a groove worn into the stone, a shallow trench from years of shackled men rubbing their wrists against it. He runs his finger along it. Cold, hard, hopeless. He considers breaking his own neck on the bars, but that would give Bertrand the last laugh.

“Bertrand. Are you afraid?”

The Templar looks at him with dead calm. “No.”

“Bullshit,” Ferdinando says. “You’re pissing yourself. I can smell it.”

“You’re the one who pissed yourself, Ferd.”

Ferdinando looks down. True enough, there’s a growing puddle near his thigh. He laughs, shrugs. “Can’t get me twice.”

Bertrand leans back against the wall. He looks like he could sleep. “Did I ever tell you,” he says, “about the time I saw an infidel scribe impaled at Ascalon?”

“I don’t need a bedtime story, Bertrand.”

“He was a child,” Bertrand says. “Maybe twelve. They didn’t strip him. He pissed himself so much the sand was black with it. He screamed for an hour. Then he screamed for his mother. That’s the part I remember. All the men laughed. I watched until I stopped feeling sick.”

Ferdinando grunts. “You’ve got a gift for making me feel better, friend.”

Bertrand closes his eyes. “You never feel better. You just stop feeling.”

A moment passes. The torches sputter outside, and distant drums throb. Ferdinando can’t help but think: the men were right. They’ll both be meat on sticks by tomorrow.

He feels a hand on his ankle. Bertrand’s hand, surprisingly gentle.

Ferdinando says, “If you’re going to try something, make it count.”

Bertrand smiles. “If I was going to try something, you’d be dead already.”

Ferdinando huffs. He tries to sleep, but the chill seeps into his bones. He wraps his arms around himself and closes his eyes. The city noises fade to nothing, and all he can think of is Bertrand, naked and calm, waiting for the end.

In the dark, he dreams of the pole: splintered, greasy with old blood, and all the way through him, out his mouth. He wakes up biting his fist.

Bertrand’s snoring, but only just. The man’s like a goddamn dog, always half awake.

Ferdinando shifts, lies on his back, stares at the crumbling ceiling. “When they come for us,” he says, “do you want to go first?”

Bertrand doesn’t answer, but his chest rises and falls in slow, even waves. Ferdinando waits, but there’s nothing else to do. The cell is shrinking with every minute, like the walls want to crush them flat. He grits his teeth, stares at the crack in the stone, and counts the seconds.

He’s never been afraid of dying, but he’s never been in a cell with a man who isn’t afraid at all.

That’s what scares him.

It’s the middle of the night when Bertrand starts acting strange. Not the piss-yourself-and-cry kind of strange, but the calm, plotting kind. Ferdinando, drifting in and out of sleep, notices Bertrand crouched in the far corner, grunting.

Ferdinando watches with one eye open. The Templar’s got his knees pulled up to his chest, hands working behind his ass. “What,” Ferdinando grumbles, “too holy for your own fingers now?”

Bertrand glances over his shoulder. “Shut up and let me concentrate.”

Ferdinando snickers, rolls over to get a better view. “If you need help, I’ve got two working hands. Three if you count my cock.”

Bertrand ignores him, but the effort gets more intense. There’s a wet slap, a whimper, and then—something small and metallic clatters onto the stone. Bertrand gives a sigh of relief and sits back, prize in hand.

Even by torchlight, Ferdinando sees the glint. “What the fuck is that?”

Bertrand holds it up: a bullet-sized tube of blackened metal, capped tight. “My insurance,” he says.

Ferdinando squints. “You smuggled that up your ass?”

“Up my ass,” Bertrand agrees. “A pain, but worth it.”

Ferdinando laughs, genuinely. “You’re an animal.”

Bertrand rolls the tube between his fingers. “It’s poison. It would kill a horse. We saw a man drink it in Acre once—he coughed for a minute, then pissed out his insides and died.”

Ferdinando sits up. “So you plan to kill yourself? You’re not even going to put on a show?”

Bertrand shrugs. “I’d rather die in a puddle than on a pole. And I don’t intend to scream.”

Ferdinando can’t decide if he’s impressed or disgusted. “Is there enough for two?”

“No.”

He should’ve known.

Bertrand wipes the tube on his thigh, then hides it under his leg. “But if you want, I can kill you. Before morning. Quick, clean. You don’t have to suffer.”

Ferdinando barks a laugh. “You’d do that for me? Christ’s mercy, Templar.”

Bertrand shrugs, but there’s an edge in his eyes. “Not for free.”

Ferdinando leans back against the wall, lets his gaze wander down Bertrand’s filthy, scarred body. He tries to imagine what Bertrand wants. The Templar isn’t the type to beg for coins or prayers. That only leaves pain, or pleasure.

“What’s the price?” Ferdinando says, his voice low.

Bertrand just grins, teeth red from old blood.

Ferdinando thinks of the pole, the way the guards looked at them like two prize bulls. He’s not afraid, but he is curious.

He stands and walks to Bertrand, their knees brushing. The stink is overwhelming—shit, sweat, iron—but that’s been true for days.

“Tell me,” Ferdinando says.

Bertrand leans in, lips brushing his ear. “Let me do it my way.”

Ferdinando can’t help but laugh, even as he feels a knot in his gut. “You’re a sick bastard.”

Bertrand’s hand is on his thigh now, squeezing. “Yes.”

Ferdinando slaps it away, hard, but Bertrand just smiles, taking it as permission.

They sit in silence, the offer hanging between them like a rope.

Ferdinando eventually rolls over, back to the wall, and tries to sleep.

He can’t.

He keeps thinking of the tube, the poison, the way Bertrand’s fingers felt on his skin.

When morning comes, he knows what answer he’ll give.

The sky outside their hole is a livid red by the time Ferdinando sits up. The city is waking up to a massacre; in here, the stench alone is enough to kill hope.

Bertrand’s awake too, palming the little vial like it’s a dice for God. “So?” he says, not looking at Ferdinando. “Have you made up your mind?”

Ferdinando rubs his jaw, then his temples. He spits, and the loogie lands in Bertrand’s lap. “What’s your fucking price?” he growls.

Bertrand grins, all teeth. “It’s simple. Let me fuck you before I kill you.”

Ferdinando freezes, then barks out a scornful laugh. “You want to mount me? That’s your last wish?”

Bertrand shrugs. “It’s not about wishing. It’s about symmetry.”

Ferdinando glares at him. “You’re out of your mind. We’ve fucked every kind of man—Arabs, Greeks, even priests. You want to die a sodomite?”

“Better that than a circus act.” Bertrand’s voice is flat, dead serious. “I want to know how it feels, at the end. Before I go. I want you to know too.”

Ferdinando sneers. “You think you’re going to convert me before you snuff me?”

Bertrand rolls the vial in his palm. “You’ve raped a hundred men, Ferdinando. Maybe more. But you’ve never felt what it’s like to be taken. Don’t you want to know?”

“No,” Ferdinando spits. “Not even if the devil himself—”

“Devil’s not coming. Just me.” Bertrand’s voice is a snarl now. “You want it fast and painless? I’ll do it. But you’ve got to give me something. Not gold, not a confession. Just this. Let me fuck you. Then I’ll strangle you myself, quick and clean.”

Ferdinando stands up, fists clenched. “You’re not a monk, you’re a fucking dog.”

Bertrand stands too, barely a pace apart. “Say it again. Louder. Maybe they’ll let you keep your mouth when they chop off your balls.”

They lock eyes, sweating, barely breathing. Ferdinando can feel his own cock stirring, traitor that it is, and sees the same in Bertrand. He thinks of the hundreds of times he’d taken a man, forced him, watched the tears and the terror. But this is different. Bertrand isn’t afraid. Bertrand is hungry.

“You’re a sick bastard,” Ferdinando says, but his voice is softer now.

Bertrand leans in. “You’re afraid you’ll like it.”

“Fuck you,” Ferdinando says.

“Exactly,” Bertrand says, and the smile comes back.

The cell is charged with it, animal and ugly. Ferdinando slams his back against the wall, trying to kill the urge, but it grows.

“You’ll have to take it from me,” Ferdinando says. “You always liked a fight.”

Bertrand grins. “I don’t want it if you don’t fight. That’s the point.”

A silence. Bertrand’s cock is rising, ugly and veined, the size of a butcher’s bratwurst. Ferdinando can’t help but look, can’t help but imagine it splitting him open.

They pace, circle. Ferdinando thinks of the pole, of dying for days, of the guards laughing. He wonders if it’s better to be conquered by a man than by a stick. The thought disgusts him and makes his heart pound.

“I’ll never beg you,” Ferdinando says.

“I wouldn’t want you to,” Bertrand replies.

They stand there, both half-hard and quivering, and wait for who moves first.

It’s only a matter of time.

They don’t speak for an hour, maybe more. Time is hard to measure when you’re waiting for a new kind of death.

Bertrand leans against the bars, watching the sunlight bleed in through the high window. Ferdinando lies on the floor, legs sprawled, trying to focus on anything except the ache in his balls and the memory of Bertrand’s words.

Eventually, Bertrand says, “You know, most of the men we fucked didn’t cry the whole time. A few of them even liked it. Sometimes you could feel it, the moment they stopped fighting.”

Ferdinando snorts. “You want me to swoon like a damsel? You think I’ll thank you after?”

Bertrand grins. “No. I think you’ll fight me the whole way. But I think you’ll come, too.”

Ferdinando spits, but the saliva dries in the dust. He rolls over, faces the wall. “If I agree, you promise to kill me? No games?”

Bertrand nods, solemn. “Quick, clean. I swear it.”

Ferdinando shivers, but not from cold. “You’ll have to work for it. You’re not pretty.”

Bertrand laughs, a filthy sound. “Neither are you, my friend. But you’ve got an ass like a bull, and a cock to match. I bet the guards even talk about it.”

Ferdinando can’t help but laugh, then curses himself for it. “If you split me open, I’ll haunt you.”

Bertrand moves closer, until they’re thigh to thigh. He leans in, voice low. “I won’t split you. I’ll go slow. You’ll like it. Even the whores at Antioch liked it, remember?”

Ferdinando closes his eyes, remembering a night with five Turkish men in a stable, all of them begging to be fucked. He’s never been on the other end. He never wanted to.

“Tell you what,” Bertrand says, voice almost gentle. “If you don’t get hard while I’m fucking you, you win. I’ll drink the poison myself and you can have whatever’s left.”

Ferdinando laughs. “You think I’ll get hard with your cock in me?”

Bertrand shrugs. “I know you. Your body doesn’t lie.”

Ferdinando rolls the idea in his mind. There’s no dignity in dying, not here. At least he could win something.

“All right,” Ferdinando says. “You fuck me, then kill me. But if you fail, you die first.”

Bertrand smiles. “Deal.”

They clasp wrists, like men before a duel.

There is no ceremony. They both know what comes next.

Bertrand spits in his palm, strokes his cock, and positions himself behind Ferdinando. Ferdinando braces against the wall, muscles tight as bowstrings. He can feel Bertrand’s cock pressing at his ass, hot and pulsing.

“Relax,” Bertrand whispers.

“Go to hell,” Ferdinando snarls.

Bertrand laughs, then pushes in.

Ferdinando bites his forearm to keep from screaming. The pain is sharp, but it fades fast, replaced by a weird, shameful heat. Bertrand is slow, steady, careful in a way that’s almost tender.

“You’re tighter than any boy,” Bertrand grunts, voice raw.

“Fuck you,” Ferdinando says, but there’s no anger behind it.

Bertrand’s hands are on his hips, pulling him back, deeper each time. The pain becomes a rhythm, then a pleasure, and Ferdinando is horrified to feel his own cock swelling.

“See?” Bertrand breathes, “I told you.”

Ferdinando tries to think of the pole, the guards, anything but the cock inside him. But it’s impossible. Bertrand fucks him, hard and deep, and Ferdinando’s cock is harder than it’s ever been.

When Bertrand finally comes, he bites Ferdinando’s shoulder, muffling his own howl. The semen is hot, and Ferdinando feels himself spasming, spilling onto the dirty floor.

Bertrand pulls out, lies next to him, panting. “You owe me.”

Ferdinando can’t speak. He just stares at the ceiling, waiting for the hands on his throat.

But Bertrand only laughs, wraps an arm around Ferdinando’s chest, and holds him.

They lie there, sticky and spent, and Ferdinando realizes he’s not afraid anymore.

He’s just angry he lost the bet.

Another night. Their last night.

When they wake, the morning sun is a sick yellow smear through the window. The heat is already building, sweat beads on their skin. Ferdinando’s ass aches, not just from the pounding but from the shame. Bertrand sits up, hard cock already leaking, and looks down at Ferdinando with a wolf’s smile.

“Ready?” Bertrand asks, voice hoarse from the night.

Ferdinando just grunts. He hates himself for how hard he is, how much his body wants it again. Maybe it’s the promise of death, or maybe it’s just Bertrand’s cocky sneer.

Bertrand flips Ferdinando over, spits on his hole, and lines himself up. There’s no preamble—he shoves in, rougher this time. Ferdinando’s eyes water, but he won’t give Bertrand the satisfaction of a scream. He bites the back of his hand, jaw locked.

“You like it,” Bertrand says, voice thick.

“Fuck you,” Ferdinando growls.

Bertrand fucks him mercilessly, setting a brutal pace. Ferdinando can’t help but push back, matching him. The cell is filled with the slap of skin and their animal grunts. There’s nothing but pain, pleasure, and the pounding in Ferdinando’s skull.

Bertrand reaches under and grabs Ferdinando’s cock, milking it as he thrusts. The touch makes Ferdinando see stars, and he feels his climax building, white-hot and unstoppable.

“Come for me, Ferd,” Bertrand grunts. “Die with my cock in you.”

Ferdinando fights it, but it’s hopeless. His body betrays him. He spurts all over the cell floor, groaning, ass tightening around Bertrand’s cock. Bertrand follows, biting Ferdinando’s shoulder as he empties himself deep inside.

For a long time, they just lie there, Bertrand still lodged in Ferdinando, both of them panting like beasts.

The cell reeks of sex, shit, and victory.

Ferdinando thinks he should feel rage or regret, but mostly he just feels alive.

There are worse ways to die.

Bertrand doesn’t pull out. He slumps onto Ferdinando’s back, sweaty chest matted to hairy flesh. For a moment, they don’t say a word.

Ferdinando grins into the dust. “This isn’t what I imagined for my last confession.”

Bertrand laughs, soft. “You want absolution? You’re in the wrong line.”

They stay like that, Bertrand’s cock softening but still inside, a final claim.

Ferdinando shifts, feels the ache and the sticky warmth leaking from his ass. “You always were a greedy fucker.”

“Comes with the order,” Bertrand mutters.

Ferdinando twists his neck to look up at him. “You think they’ll parade our corpses through the street?”

Bertrand considers it. “If they do, I hope they see the stains. I hope they know what we did.”

Ferdinando cackles. “I’d die happy if I could see their faces.”

Bertrand nuzzles into Ferdinando’s neck, almost tender. “You want to do it now? Or wait?”

Ferdinando closes his eyes, letting the other man’s weight press him flat. “Now’s as good as any. You owe me a quick one, remember.”

Bertrand lifts himself up, shifts his grip. He wraps a thick arm around Ferdinando’s throat.

Ferdinando feels the pressure, the world narrowing to a tunnel. His cock is hard again, even as the air cuts off. He could break Bertrand’s hold if he tried, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to see how it feels, at the end.

Bertrand’s breath is hot in his ear. “Goodbye, Ferdinando.”

Ferdinando tries to say something clever, but his tongue is swollen and the darkness is swallowing him.

He comes just as the world goes black.

He doesn’t feel the piss leaking from his dick, or the way his body jerks when Bertrand finally lets go.

Bertrand cradles Ferdinando’s corpse for a moment, rocking him like a lover. Then he pulls out, wipes the blood and come off his cock, and stands.

He uncaps the vial, sniffs the contents. It smells like almonds and rot. He raises it in a mock salute to Ferdinando, then downs it in one gulp.

The poison works fast. Bertrand drops to his knees, choking, guts twisting. He falls beside Ferdinando, face to face, and grabs his dead friend’s hand.

When the end comes, Bertrand doesn’t scream. He just smiles through the pain, knowing he beat the pole and the world.

They die together, naked, filthy, and victorious.

Outside, the city bells is waiting for the execution.

The guards find them a few hours later, after the morning prayers and the public wailing.

Two naked Crusaders, locked together in a mess of blood and come. The commander spits on the bodies and says, “Even in death, the infidel dogs fuck each other.”

They haul the corpses into the courtyard, drop them in the dirt like sacks of meat. By now, Bertrand’s cock is stiff as old wood, and Ferdinando’s balls are swollen and purple.

The commander barks at his men: “Castrate them. Put their shame on display.”

The guards go to work, knives flashing, slicing off cocks and balls in a matter of seconds. They shove Bertrand’s cock—still slick with shit and blood—into Ferdinando’s mouth, packing it in with his balls for good measure. Then they stuff Ferdinando’s meat into Bertrand’s mouth, until both faces are obscene masks of what they were in life.

Ferdinando and Bertrand, as inseparable in death as they were in the cell, are hauled to the highest parapet. The commander orders them hung upside down by their heels, arms flopping like broken wings, cocks and balls displayed for the whole city to see. The heat is savage; the day’s sun turns their skin to blistered wax, draws out the stench of rot and shit. The blood that seeps from their cuts bakes black in the dust.

Men amass below to jeer at dead enemies.

As the day drags, the bodies swell. The heat turns the soft bits to soup; the castration wounds ooze and attract a cloud of yellowjackets. The severed cocks, still lodged in the dead men’s mouths, become a feast for the city’s flies. By late afternoon, the faces have lost all resemblance to men—they are swollen, purple, lips peeled back in death grins, teeth locked around the flesh that once made them famous.

No one in the city can ignore the spectacle. Even the muezzin, calling the faithful to prayer, can’t keep from glancing at the contorted shapes squirming with insects above the gate. The city’s stray dogs gather beneath, hoping for a scrap to drop. When the viscera start to drip, the dogs lap it up, tongues long and slavering.

All night, the air is filled with the sound of laughter and the buzzing of flies. The corpses turn darker, skin splitting in patches, revealing the marbled fat beneath. By the next morning, there are maggots bursting from Ferdinando’s nostrils, writhing in the holes where his eyes have liquefied. Bertrand fares no better..

By the end of the second day, the city is in festival mode. Old men make rude jokes about Crusader balls and even the guards relax their discipline, watching the spectacle with unguarded glee. The commander, satisfied with his work, orders a scribe to paint the scene for posterity. The scribe, a sly-eyed bastard, embellishes: in his version, the corpses are locked in a lover’s embrace, cock and mouth and ass all one endless circle.

By the third day, what’s left of Bertrand and Ferdinando is barely human. The flesh slips off in pale strips, the insects have colonized every orifice. Still, the legend of the dead Crusader fuckers spreads across the quarter, repeated in every tavern and whispered after every evening prayer.

When the first rain comes, it washes the blood and come down the stones, painting the wall with streaks of red and white.

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