Pretender's Fate

"They are still going to be there in the morning, Willy. Come back to the bed."

"Do you think that Roxburgh can be saved if I just walk out there and surrender to them?" the young William Howard mused.

It was the year 1314 in the northeast of Scotland, and Robert the Bruce had been king of Scots for eight years. He had been using that time to cajole or burn the English occupiers out of all of the strongholds they held north of Hadrian's Wall. Having been burned out of Ayr on the Firth of Clyde in 1297, William's father, Thomas, had been holding the castle of Roxburgh first for Edward I and then for his namesake son. But Thomas was dead now, having died—through well-deserved assassination by a stable boy he had debauched, some felt—during the early days of the siege of the castle by the forces of Robert's lieutenant, John Douglas, under the command of the legendary bloodthirsty Scottish warrior James Young while Douglas was investing the walls of the English-held Stirling Castle with the Scottish king, Robert the Bruce.

Not knowing that Sir Thomas was dead, which was a primary purpose of his mission, Young still invested the walls of Roxburgh for the forces of Douglas. He was out there tonight on the plain below the castle, riding his sturdy horse, dressed only in the kilt of the Young clan and wielding his sword—brandishing it under torch light at the castle walls, daring any and all to come out and fight him for the mastery of the castle.

William looked down on the giant Highland Scot outside the castle, just out of arrow range, and he felt arousal go through his body. The man was built like an oak. The horse had to be sturdy to hold him. His chest was massive and covered in battle scars. His biceps were thick as oaks in their own right. The red hair on his head cascaded to his shoulders. His face was ugly—but manly in a way that moved William. The tartan was a soft blue in background color, but the stripes of red, bordered by purple that streaked through the pattern reminded William of the bloodlust and cruelty of James Young. William shuddered, knowing he would get no quarter from that man and, in one respect, not wanting to.

Seeing him also sparked some slight sense of familiarity. As if he'd seen the man before. He'd certainly heard of him, but seeing him now registered something in the back of William's mind that he couldn't quite reach. It caused him to move his hand down his body and to his balls, which he cupped, moving his thumb to the underside of his cock and rubbing himself. This was a favorite arousal means for him in his frequent turns to masturbation. Thanks to his father, William had discovered that he reveled in his sexuality. His moments of ecstasy—and there were many of them—were, he had found, his escape from the realities of the hard life he had led since he had returned home from the London court.

"It's the English out of the castle and out of Scotland altogether that John Douglas and his sport hound, James Young, wants, Willy. Not you. Although he would certainly see you dead as well. It's just not the main goal of the English here."

"Sport hound?" William asked, turning his naked body from the slit window in the rock wall of the high castle keep and looking at Guy deClerq, the French knight from the Howard holdings in Normandy.

"There is talk of a relationship between this Douglas and Young," Guy said, with a shrug.

William took another look at the powerful figure of James Young's naked torso as he pranced back and forth on his horse below the castle walls and taunted the besieged garrison. "I don't believe it," he said. "The warrior down there looks too much the man to lie under John Douglas."

"Who said that it was Young lying under Douglas?" Guy asked with a soft laugh.

William took another look to the plain below and gave a little shudder. The man looked massive and dangerous. Just in the kilt, William knowing what traditionally wasn't worn underneath it—and fantasizing the size of the man's staff to go with the massiveness of his torso. His free hand went to his chest, and he rubbed at his nipples.

"Come to the bed," Guy repeated. "I wish to do to you what you are doing to yourself. And more. Much more. You are teasing me, and you know that makes me angry." William was the nominal commander of the castle, but Guy needed to remind him now and then who the master in this relationship was. And he knew that William wanted to be mastered.

William turned slightly and looked toward the bed. The Frenchman too was arousing, and William did not have to imagine what was under a kilt to know that the lover in his own chamber was built huge. Having lain eagerly under Thomas, who was well endowed, William sought men with huge cocks. The man was a decade older than the young William Howard. But he was solidly built, handsome to a fault—the fault being that he knew he was and reveled in it—and he was a masterful lover, having moved in to take Thomas Howard's place in William's bed the night that Thomas had died.

Guy had asked William's permission to do so no more than Thomas had done when he told William, in the forest of Roxburgh as he was moving his cock up William's channel, that there was no way he was his father and that he could not deny himself of William's sweet charms for another minute.

Guy's possession of him had been no less dramatic. William was informed of his father's gruesome death in the Great Hall of Roxburgh Castle at the banquet table. Thomas had not appeared as they began to eat. But as the server—a stable boy by day—also wasn't in the hall, no one—at least openly—remarked on the master's absence. When the captain of the guard came into the room and approached the high table with the news of Thomas's death, though, he spoke in a loud enough voice for the news to ripple through the hall. Using the pandemonium as a cover, the strong Guy deClerq had swept the young William up in his arms, carried him to Thomas's chamber, ripped away his tunic, pressed him down on his belly on the bed, and put him to his prodigious personal sword. Once thoroughly dominated and fucked, William had been informed that he was Guy's now by right.

William had not challenged the claim, loving every thrust of the rough fucking, because Guy was every bit as handsome and every bit as capable as a forceful lover as he thought himself to be. And beyond that, Guy deClerq had a position among the men of the garrison that William did not have. The men would follow Guy into battle as they had followed Thomas. But William was too unseasoned and soft to command the men. Several of them had known him carnally—Thomas having liked to share him and William not minding the sharing—and would still do so if they could. William was too intelligent to think that he could rule on his own after his father. He needed a strong supporter. If Guy had not chosen him, he very likely would have chosen Guy.

It was just fortunate that Guy had the biggest cock in the castle.

So, what had once been Thomas and frequently William's bed was now Guy and William's bed. And Guy's member was at high staff and he wanted William to stop moping and playing with himself at the window slit and to come back to the bed and ride the cock. William might be master of the Castle Roxburgh now, but Guy was the master of William.

"Come away from there," Guy said more insistently. "I will have you again. And why would you think they would be satisfied with you alone? They could not know that you are the Scottish king's eldest surviving son, albeit a by-blow."

"Assuming there were not bastard sons before me during his Irish exile," William answered in a low voice.

"There were," DeClerq answered, "but Sir Thomas kept a close check, no doubt keeping the possibilities of how he could use your prospects to his advantage, and the Scottish king's by-blow sons older than you did not survive well. I am sure that Douglas's forces are here because this English-held castle stands in their way, not because you have as good a pretender case as most who are making the claim."

"Perhaps; but perhaps not. The king knows. Robert deBruce knows," William whispered, not loud enough for Guy to hear. "My father told me that my mother told deBruce as well—and that the son that killed her at his birthing was also deBruce's."

"I have heard talk that your mother, in that birthing—"

"Yes, I too have heard that."

"And yet Thomas let you live."

"I was the heir—his heir. His only male issue. He was afraid for his life if there was no succession."

"I have heard too. About Sir Thomas's death. That perhaps you—"

"If those foul rumors were true, would anyone blame me?" William knew they weren't true but he also knew that his actions following his father's death—in helping to spirit the stable boy who had murdered Sir Thomas away to safety rather than dispatching him for his crime—would be marked against William in that regard. Having had received similar treatment from Sir Thomas that the stable boy had, though, William was not prepared to blame the young man.

The look in William's eyes signaled Guy to change the subject. His control over the young man had its limits.

"Will you make me come for you? If you make me come for you, I will take you hard, on the cold stone floor." Guy needed to reassert his control.

William contemplated that. It angered Guy for William not to come immediately when called. The Frenchman was insecure that way. He knew that the extent of his control only went as far as William not finding a stronger, more satisfying master in the garrison. But what Guy didn't know was that William had enjoyed the angry fucking on the stone floor when he had not responded fast enough for Guy. He had enjoyed it, bruises and all. He took one more look down at the posturing James Young below before he turned and moved to the bed.

He bet that James Young gave a rough cocking. The thought made him shudder with arousal.

"Yes, yes, take me like a dog," William cried out when Guy had gathered him in on the bed and sucked his cock until the young man was panting for attention. And Guy gave the young head of the Howard clan what he wanted. He was always careful to balance control with satisfaction for his young conquest.

"Pull back on it," Guy growled as he crouched over William's hips on the bed. "Fuck yourself on it." He slapped each of William's bare butt cheeks hard.

With a whimper, William complied, pumping his channel on Guy's deeply seated staff and digging his soft fists into the thick fleece of the bear rug covering the bed.

It was a little bit of cruelty that kept the young man under control, Guy knew. He knew exactly what would maintain his dominance of the soft, young pup. And he had learned this night that perhaps it was not good to ask the pup too much about the demise of his sire. He only hoped that he hadn't said too much already.

* * * *

The stronger men of the Roxburgh Castle garrison were circling in the hall, moving their eyes from William Howard, sitting at high table, to each other. Most had hands gripping the hilts of their sheath knives. Each was waiting for someone else to make a move while scheming when would be the most advantageous time for them to make their own move.

Guy deClerq had been missing for three days. Some said he had been murdered and was even now moldering at the bottom of some dry cistern cut into the rock below the castle. Others were saying that he had deserted to the Scottish army investing the castle walls. Still others said that he was merely waiting in hiding somewhere and watching what others would do if they sensed the power vacuum of his absence—that he was trying to ferret out the most daring of those who would replace him in William's bed and thus in control of the castle. It was only the possibility that the last of these explanations might be true that had kept the would-be supplanters of deClerq from taking action. And the longer deClerq was missing the more daring the stronger of the knights in the hall were becoming.

William sat at the high table on this night of Summer Solstice, 1314, trying to show calm and control. But he was as worried and wary as any of the others in the hall. He had no idea where Guy had gone—or why. But he knew what none of the others did—that Guy had taken his sword and armor with him. That tended to negate a silent assassination in a deserted hallway of the castle and tended to favor, William feared, a defection to the Scots.

Without revealing as best he could that he was doing it, William was eyeing the various knights in the hall who were circling around him and each other. If he himself did not make a move soon to select a successor to deClerq himself—and was not wise in his choice of a man who could cow all takers immediately upon being designated—the decision would be taken out of his hands.

Which was the strongest and the best endowed? he was thinking. What was the balance of someone who could face off the rest but who also could fill and make him shudder in bed? Thomas had always told him that at the root of his weakness for leadership was his weakness for the cock. But hadn't Thomas himself trained William to the cock? And William fully understood how grim his prospects in this world were. What good would the few days he knew he had be if the man he picked couldn't—or wouldn't—expertly cock him in bed?

The high holidays—the night of the Summer Solstice into the next morrow—would take the edge off the tension in the besieged castle. These were days for celebration and William had ordered extra spirits all around. The men were taking their carousing seriously. They had been penned up in this smelly castle entirely too long. No less than William, to a man, each was numbering his continued existence to the day, rather than the year. Edward, the English king, had promised relief troops that should have been here more than a fortnight ago but that had not materialized. Few in the castle counted their days beyond Christmastide. Each was doing what he could to lose himself in the drink—for at least tonight.

"Sir Hugh," William called out across the boisterous hall. "I would like to consult with you on the siege dispositions in my chamber, if you please."

All eyes in the hall of those vying for control turned toward Hugh Stanton. He was a worthy choice, standing more than six feet and solidly built. He was well past forty, but this in itself spoke of his guile and military prowess. He had managed to survive and thrive to an older age than most. Many were surprised, assuming that the fickle, unseasoned William Howard would go for one of the younger, more handsome of the contenders. Stanton was neither young nor handsome. What he was, however, was one of the strongest among them—and dangerous enough and enough of a surprise of a pick that he managed to stride across the hall, offer William his arm, and depart with his prize before any of the other contenders could voice an objection or mount an attack.

The contenders thought they understood the foibles of the young William—and to some extent they did. They just didn't understand how deeply his foibles were rooted or that he was as clever as the next man. Truth be told, though, William had selected Hugh from among the more likely contenders because he had suddenly remembered seeing the knight with a young soldier in the hay of the stables and of having observed that Hugh had both the disposition and the cock of a bull. He also liked to tie his lovers up and treat them roughly. Too many of the others would be too delicate with William, fearing his power as lord of the castle. Hugh would be like Guy was—he would defer to William in public and master him in private.

* * * *

Hands stretched out on the rock wall of his chamber and leaning into the wall and staring down into the plain below the castle walls through the slit window, William's eyes picked out the black splotches on the surface of the undulating meadow below. They were unfamiliar. Sheep? Did sheep often graze this close to the castle walls, between the fortress and the tents of the besieging Scottish troops of that magnificently formed James Young, astride his steed with only a kilt clothing his heavily muscled body?

William was already moaning. The powerful body of Hugh Stanton was closely pressed into his from behind. The grizzled knight had already tied William's wrists off at the base of the torch brackets on the wall at either side of the window.

William had groaned as, while the knight stroked the underside of his bull's cock up and down in the crease between William's naked buttocks cheeks, Hugh whispered in William's ear what he was going to do to his body.

"Yes, yes. That's what I want from you," William answered with a moan. "In this chamber you are master."

One after the other, Hugh lifted William's legs and also bound the younger man's bent knees to the shutter brackets on either side of the window, folding the young man's body up and exposing and spreading his rump for ready assault.

"Yes, yes," William whimpered.

Looking down into the dark plain below in the window slit beside where he was bound, William decided, his mind mostly occupied with what was happening to him—and what was going to happen to him in short order—that they must be sheep. They were moving toward the castle walls—hundreds of them, moving silently toward the base of the castle walls.

He cried out his yeses as Hugh began penetrating him with that bull's cock. A calloused hand was cupping William's chin, forcing his face up and away from the slit window and the back of his head into the hollow of Hugh's shoulder. Hugh's other broad hand was palming William's flat belly starting to push and release, guiding the movement of William's channel on the shaft of the huge, hard cock.

"We will rule long and well together, little one," Sir Hugh Stanton hissed in William's ear. "I will make you a king, and you will make me very happy every time I enter you. I will master and use you as Thomas and Guy never did."

William was crying out at the hard, rough taking. Thus, he didn't hear the scrape of the assault ladders on the stone wall of the castle.

All of the garrison soldiers were in the great hall, floating in the extra rations of beer and wine that William had laid on. Thus, they didn't hear the strangled gurglings of the few young, unseasoned soldiers who had been assigned to watch the walls and who had been driven to inattention by resentment for not being included in the celebrations in the hall.

Watching the castle walls from a distance, astride his heavy steed, dressed only in his kilt in Young tartan colors, James Young spoke not a word until he saw his men scrambling off the ladders and onto the battlements of Roxburgh Castle. And when he spoke to the messenger he was dispatching to the officer in charge of the assault, what he said was, "I want William Howard brought to me alive, if possible. I want all men to see how we dispense with pretenders to the Scottish throne."