Chapter Six: The Inner Sea
Magnus and Callixtus reached the Cheskan ship without incident, and were relieved to be away on the morning tide. They both kept to their cabin for the first day. For Callixtus, this was his first time on the open sea, and the rolling motion of the ship - sped along by a strong north wind - made him very seasick. Magnus eased his suffering with some simple incantations, and bound a green stone around his chest, which he said would alleviate the symptoms. So it seemed to, although for some days Callixtus had no appetite, and wanted to do nothing but lie on the bunk and sleep.
Fortunately, Magnus nursed him with care. He was diligent in this and rarely left the boy's side, smoothing his brow, helping him sip warming broth, and speaking to him soft and gentle words of reassurance. If anyone had observed them together they would not have guessed this was a master tending his slave. Magnus kept the boy covered with the cloak he had worn on their escape from the house of Yocasta the healer. They slept together in the bunk, but although they both slept naked, the mage held the boy in a chaste embrace, and they did not have sex. The mage's more youthful appearance persisted, and he kept himself clean shaven.
Now at last, a week later, Callixtus had his sea legs and was ready to explore his surroundings. The ship was a sleek wooden merchant, with a crew of about twenty, all of them Cheskan. She was carrying a cargo of grain with smaller quantities of rarer items such as fine glassware, gilt mirrors, silver candlesticks, enamelled storage chests and richly embroidered tapestries. The Empire had craftsmen of a skill unequalled elsewhere, and such items found a market in the less advanced but agriculturally prosperous country of the Cheskans.
As for the Cheskans themselves, Callixtus did not understand their somewhat guttural language, but he enjoyed watching them at work about the ship and even conversing with some of them in their strongly accented common tongue. They were a lithe and blond race, though some were brown haired, and were generally of middling height and fair of face and limb. Their golden suntanned bodies and their virtual nudity (though at times they wore yellow hooded cloaks when working the ship in the cold wind and rain) showed that they were dwellers in a warm and sunlit land, and uninhibited about their bodies.
Magnus explained that their country was large but not heavily populated, and stretched for hundreds of miles in a great peninsula stretching southwards. The ship was heading for its home port of Karlovar, a long way down the eastern side of the peninsula. Most Cheskans lived along the eastern coast, for the interior was mountainous and not so fertile. The mountains formed a rough T shape, with a near inaccessible frontier with the Empire to the north, and stretching down the western and central side of the peninsula, gradually diminishing in height to the south. This configuration of terrain meant that most contact between Cheskia and the Empire was by sea. The Cheskans acknowledged no king or emperor but were bound by a common cultural tradition and an unwritten legal code, enforced by village elders or urban councillors, elected by all adult males. Slavery was unknown. Women enjoyed property rights and equality in matters such as divorce but were by tradition excluded from political power.
Cheskans girls left home after the onset of their first period, and lived in lodges under the supervision of elder matrons, where they learned homemaking arts. They came of marriageable age at sixteen, and most were married off soon after. Marriages were generally arranged by families, but the wishes of the couple were also carefully consulted, and no-one was forced to marry against their will. All females wore linen shifts - white in the case of unmarried girls, sky blue for the married, dark blue for the separated or divorced, and black for the widows.
Males had a very different style of life. At the age of twelve or thirteen, provided they had begun puberty, they also moved into their own lodges, separate from the girls, and stayed there till the age of twenty. These lodges were run by the lads themselves. They worked on their family farms or were apprenticed to trades, but most also based themselves in their lodges, where they enjoyed a great deal of freedom. At the age of twenty they left the lodge and were permitted to marry, but not before.
In contrast to the long linen shifts of the women and girls, males wore far less. The traditional Cheskan custom for male dress, which was still adhered to in the countryside (though not so much in the towns) was complete nudity until the age of twenty, whereupon the breechcloth was adopted as a symbol of leaving the Youth Lodge and entering on the responsibilities of manhood. When a man married - which sometimes took place quite soon after leaving the lodge - he adopted an unadorned white knee-length cotton kilt as a mark of his new status.
At the age of thirty a man became eligible to be elected to positions of authority, and adopted sandals and a simple tunic of wool or linen. Those who had served at least two years as an elected official and who had reached the age of sixty were considered Elders and adopted a long white gown with a grey cloak, and were held in high honour. Black cloaks, or black trim to the tunic, were worn by those who were widowed.
Most of the sailors on the ship were unmarried young men in their twenties and therefore wore skimpy breechcloths, which were in any case more practical for clambering about the rigging than a kilt. The captain, however, a man in his forties, wore a full tunic. One of the crew went about naked all the time - this was the ship's cabin boy, a small but muscular lad of about fourteen.
Like all Cheskans, their bodies were completely smooth. They did not wear cosmetics or decorations of any kind, which were considered decadent and improper for both sexes . Cheskans naturally had very little body hair, and any which sprouted anywhere except on their heads was carefully depilated.
The freedom with which they spoke to one another and to Callixtus and even the mage was a source of wonder to the slave boy. With no slaves in their own land, and with nudity amongst the young males so common, the Cheskans saw nothing odd about Callixtus's nudity, and saw no reason to distance themselves from him on account of his slave status. They had little understanding of the social gulf between master and slave which had been drilled into Callixtus throughout his life in the Empire.
Callixtus found this very gratifying. They did, however, express a frank curiosity about his circumcised penis, as circumcision was virtually unknown amongst them. Most of them favoured him with a careful scrutiny, which at first he found embarrassing; and he also realised that homo- erotic relations were the norm. The younger sailors especially were quite uninhibited about caressing or kissing each other openly - when it did not interfere with their work - and although Callixtus did not see anyone actually performing any sexual acts, it was quite obvious that most of them enjoyed each others' bodies in the fullest sense. Magnus explained that this was regarded as normal and honourable, and it did not even cease when they were married, although - as in the Empire - it was considered improper for older men to play the passive role in intercourse.
Callixtus also felt his spirits rising with an increasing warmth in the air as the ship sped south. The wind changed quarter and now blew from the east - a gentler and warmer wind. The sun sparkled in the waves as the lithe suntanned bodies of the scantily clad sailors went about their duties on deck or hauled their clean young limbs up through the rigging.
After a pleasant time watching them and conversing with some of them, Callixtus came below, invigorated by the sea breeze on his naked skin, and feeling glad that the last traces of sea-sickness had now left him. He found Magnus writing on a parchment at his desk in the cabin.
"Now then my boy, " said the mage, "as we will be making land in a few more days, I think you may as well adopt a change of style. I do not suggest you wear clothes - you no longer need that cloak of Yocasta's now that we are entering warmer climes - and nor do you need those horrid little sandals you wore on our escape from Avenna, for as you have seen Cheskan lads your age go bare foot and bare arsed. But you still have a tangle of pubic hair about your delicious member which to my mind looks unsightly, especially as the rest of your body is as perfectly glabrous as the lovely bodies of the Cheskan boys. I think it will therefore be appropriate if you adopt this custom of the natives so that you are as smooth down there as they are. Of course, I cannot do anything about your exposed glans; permanently removing the marks of circumcision is, alas, beyond my powers. But in other respects you will soon look like a proper Cheskan, albeit not as blond as most of them. I am going to see the captain, and I will ask him to send his cabin boy to shave you straight away." So saying, he put away his quill and parchment and rose to leave the cabin.
A few minutes the cabin door was flung open and the cabin boy entered. Callixtus thought it was rather rude of the boy not to knock. A couple of weeks ago he would never have expected such courtesy - but, well, he was the property of a powerful mage, and it seemed like a small discourtesy to Magnus as much as to himself.
Be that as it may, the boy stood there with an impudent grin on his pretty face and a towel over one arm, holding a razor, while he held a silver basin in the other hand. "I'm Brenko, the cabin boy, and I'm here to shave you" he announced.
The boy was small, no more than five feet tall, with short blond hair and golden tanned skin so characteristic of the Cheskans. As he was a youngster he was of course completely naked, and being a Cheskan completely unembarrassed about it - there was even a certain swagger about the way he planted his feet wide apart and thrust his body forward a little, his nicely proportioned cock hanging between his totally smooth V. Brenko approached and, falling to his knees, proceeded to lather up Callixtus's pubes with a silver mounted badger hair brush, grinning in a cheeky manner as he did so. He then applied the razor with great care and dexterity, until soon all trace of hair was gone, and Callixtus was completely smooth.
"There you are! Just like a Cheskan!" Brenko's command of the common tongue was better than most on board. He was in fact the captain's nephew, and had already made many voyages to Avenna and other Imperial ports, so was more familiar with the Empire and its ways than many of his compatriots.
Needless to say, the smooth application of the lather and the careful application of the razor induced pleasurable sensations in Callixtus. His cock began to twitch into life, and Brenko's did the same. The cabin boy finished up the shave and dried the slave's groin, then gave a laugh as he grabbed hold of Callixtus's now fully erect cock. With the most impudent of grins, he then popped the cock in his mouth, and proceeded to give the startled slave a most expert and energetic blow job - an entirely new and very pleasurable experience for Callixtus.
Just then the door opened and Callixtus was appalled to see a frowning Magnus standing in the doorway.
"I see you have somewhat exceeded your instructions, young man!" he said to the cabin boy, who got up in alarm.
"I'm sorry friend, he just sticked it in my mouth so what could a poor boy do?!" said the insouciant youth.
"Is that so?" said Magnus, in an icy tone.
Brenko was standing on his feet now, facing the mage, and placed his hands on his hips, which were thrust forward provocatively, displaying his rampant hard on. Quite impressive for such a young lad too, thought Magnus.
"I think, young Brenko, that you need to be taught a lesson. Should I tell your Uncle the Captain what I have just witnessed? I don't think he will be very impressed."
Brenko merely shrugged. "Tell him what you like. Where's the harm in sucking another boy's cock? I do it all the time!"
"Now that I can well believe" said Magnus drily. He was still feigning irritation, but finding it hard not to smile at the boy's impudence.
"So tell me, young Brenko" said the mage, "do your cabin boy duties include servicing all the members of the crew like this?"
"No! Well, not all of them. Certainly not my uncle! We Cheskans do have morals you know. But I think I've sucked off most of the others."
"Hmm", said Magnus, "well I suppose you may as well finish what you have started. Don't worry, Callixtus, I'm not angry with you, though I would prefer you to have kept your no doubt tasty boy juice to spend with me. But as young Brenko is helping himself to you, I think I may have to help myself to him."
The cabin boy simply grinned and shrugged his shoulders. "Be my guest!" he said, and as he did so he fell back to his knees, re-applied his mouth to Callixtus's cock, and protruded his arse back to Magnus in a most lascivious and inviting manner.
Magnus needed no further invitation and tugged out his already rigid member without bothering to remove his tunic, and then proceeded to lubricate it thoroughly with the gel from his blue flask. Brenko turned over his shoulder and said, "What are you waiting for then mister? I've never had a mage's cock up my arse before. I don't suppose it's very different to any of the others!"
"You rascal!" laughed Magnus. Without further ado he mounted the cabin boy from behind as he continued to suck away at Callixtus. The boy's smooth bum cheeks, warm and tanned, easily parted and despite his small size the mage's cock slid in easily. Clearly, Magnus's cock was not the first to enter this particular hole.
It didn't take long before Callixtus flooded the cute little cabin boy's mouth with his seed, to be followed a few moments later by the mage's orgasm. As both of them had been celibate since they had fucked on the river barge more than a week ago, the amounts of sperm produced were prodigious. The cabin boy pumped away at his own cock as well and added his smaller quantity to the party. Then he bounded to his feet, fingering his hole and wiping his mouth at the same time. "Thanks mister!" he said. "Your cock is nice and big, and yours is really tasty Callixtus! Mind you, mister, I have had bigger!" And with that, the cheeky youngster flounced out of the cabin, spattered in rivulets of spunk.
Magnus collapsed on the bunk and burst out laughing. "Well, if that wasn't the most impudent young scamp I've ever had the pleasure of fucking!"
Callixtus laughed too. "So you're sure you're not angry with me, master?"
"No, my boy, how could I possibly be angry with such a sweet and delectable treasure as you. Mind you, I don't want to share you around with all and sundry. But as it will take us a few more days to make land, I suppose we might repeat today's performance with that young knave on a few more occasions before we reach port."
And so they did - as well as resuming their own former intimacies. The warm breezes and clean sea air had invigorated them both, so by the time the Cheskan port of Karlovar hove into view six days later, a great deal more seed had been spilled in the cabin, and quite a lot of it in the orifices of the cheeky cabin boy.