TAMERLANE’S BOYS

(Inside the walls of Baghdad, Mesopotamia, Autumn, 1396)

The naked, petrified Teimuraz, suspended vertically from the ceiling by rope, harshly applied to his slim wrists, could hear and feel the draught from the swish of a whip. The ugly, scar-faced bodyguard of the Sultan of Baghdad, Ahmad Jalayir, was practising use of the implement before attempting to land his first agonising blow on the boy’s vulnerable rear.

Meanwhile, sharing the gloomy, torch-lit chamber in the dungeons of the evil Sultan’s Baghdad palace was a similarly nude and terrified Rezan. The latter 13 year-old lay, firmly restrained in a spreadeagled position, on the nearby castration table, with his completely smooth but seriously threatened genitalia already darkening in colour because of the effective tourniquet tied round the base of his scrotum.

The fearful Teimuraz, currently expecting the first excruciating hit by the thin leather of the whip, instead now felt the hands of the bodyguard, running over the delightful geography of the tremulous boy’s highly attractive, bare rear. The man’s manual attentions were gentle and lingered especially on the lustrous curves of the 13 year-old’s bottom, as if gaining sorrowful pleasure from the touch before inflicting great damage on this wondrous feature of young human architecture.

Teimuraz then felt a reaction in his groin to the attentions of the bodyguard, who was currently alone with his young pair of victims. The boy instinctively looked down to see in horror and shame that his smooth, slender, uncut cock had grown to full, throbbing, almost vertical erection.

The bodyguard too noticed Teimuraz’s humiliating reaction to his gentle manhandling of the 13 year-old’s rear, deliberately looking round the young Georgian’s bare back in order to do so. He then confirmed that he had been expectant of spying a disgusting response to his fondling by declaring to the youngster "I thought so, you’re nothing but a boy whore!"

The bodyguard subsequently advised the appalled Teimuraz "However, we’ll soon cure your sexual perversions, boy slut, after I’ve whipped you. Once I’ve castrated your friend over there, you’ll replace him on the table to have your own balls sliced away. Let’s see your cock become erect then!"

Teimuraz thought of begging for mercy. However, the boy, trying to be as brave as he could be in the awful circumstances, refrained, realising correctly that such a demeaning act would not secure his salvation from severe flagellation and subsequent gelding. The 13 year-old instead braced himself for the first experience of the bodyguard’s whip, as the man withdrew from fondling his rear, apparently to take up the necessary position for the first vicious strike.

To Teimuraz, the bodyguard’s adoption of such a stance and his imminent intention were obvious from a shadow now cast on the floor of the chamber before him. A wall lamp, located behind the man, had created the grim spectre, which revealed that the whip had been raised into the air in readiness to land the first hit.

Teimuraz could not prevent himself from beginning to sob, even before this blow engendered acute agony within his beautiful form. Meanwhile, the similarly aged, frightened and naked Rezan, fearfully observing the nasty spectacle from his immobile position on the nearby table, also started to shed tears.

(Outside the walls of Baghdad, same time)

Tamerlane had sent an emissary, under a flag of truce, to Ahmad Jalayir in Baghdad, warning him against the consequences of harming either Rezan or Teimuraz. The Sultan had replied by catapulting the envoy back over the walls of his city into the midst of the dreaded conqueror’s besieging forces.

Tamerlane was told by his physicians that it appeared that the poor emissary had been alive immediately prior to being launched into the air by Ahmad Jalayir’s catapult. To the conqueror, the implications for the welfare of Rezan and Teimuraz seemed obvious until he read a note affixed to his late envoy’s body.

The document, personally hand-written by Ahmad Jalayir, informed Tamerlane that Rezan and Teimuraz would be kept alive only if the conqueror withdrew his forces from the walls of Baghdad and publicly swore to Allah never to return. To encourage the besieger to go quickly, the Sultan also advised that the next items to be catapulted out of the city would be body parts belonging to the boys.

In fact, Ahmad Jalayir was already intent on providing Tamerlane with further early evidence of the seriousness of his threat. As soon as his bodyguard had completed his tasks in the palace dungeons, the Sultan proposed to catapult to the conqueror the extracted testicles of Rezan and Teimuraz.

(Samarkand, Transoxiana, same time)

As Tamerlane was now absent from Samarkand on campaign, Shadi Mulk Aka quietly released the ambassador of the first Ming ruler of China, the Hung-Wu Emperor, from prison, where the poor man had been incarcerated for a year. The conqueror’s Eldest Queen believed that it was more properly diplomatic to allow the envoy to return home along the Silk Road.

(Nanjing, China, same time)

In a workshop of the palace of the Mings in the current capital of China, Nanjing, a freshly acquired 10 year-old slave boy, captured in a raid from the Muslim Hui people of Yunan, had, like Rezan in faraway Baghdad and for a similar reason, been bound naked to a table. The surface of the ancient furniture to which this particular terrified youngster was fastened by leather restraints, face-up and spreadeagled, was deeply discoloured as a result of many old and new bloodstains.

The workshop’s craftsman had tied a thin leather cord tightly around the pretty boy’s sexual organs, as well as a protective gag to his imminent young victim’s mouth. He then allowed the genital ligature to perform its task for a short time before introducing a little, razor-sharp, curved knife to the lower base of the 10 year-old’s small scrotum, whilst holding the youngster’s now suddenly erect, diminutive penis out of the way with his spare hand.

The workshop’s craftsman then proceeded expertly to amputate excruciatingly the boy’s completely smooth sexual organs entirely, which were soon dangled, by the cockhead, before the agonised 10 year-old’s appalled eyes. After then discarding the freshly severed, bloody, young genitalia, the perpetrator of the initial and most fundamental act of emasculation then cauterised the resultant appalling wound by application of a red-hot poker.

After eventually reviving from his consequent faint, the first days of the newly nullified boy’s slow recovery would be spent without the benefit of any water to drink. Such depravation was designed to prevent urination, which could have caused infection. However, once this very painful and tormenting period of recuperation had passed, the 10 year-old would be forced to drink enormous amounts of the liquid until the pressure in his bladder punctured a hole in the layers of genital scar tissue, finally reopening his healed urethra.

After full recovery, the boy would be ready to serve the Mings, who were to call him Chi Le.

(Outside the walls of Baghdad, same time)

Tamerlane issued orders for the immediate withdrawal of his whole army from the environs of Baghdad.

(Inside the walls of Baghdad, same time)

Haluk originated from Tikrit, north of Baghdad, which in the modern era is most notable for being the birthplace of a certain notorious Iraqi dictator. However, in the boy’s time, the town was renowned for being, almost 260 years previously, the scene of the birth of the 14 year-old’s most famous fellow Kurd, Saladin, scourge of the Crusaders.

Kurds were now few in Tikrit, with Arabs being predominant in the town since their conquests of the 7^th century. However, Haluk’s family had been amongst the few of their ethnicity to remain in the locale, to which Tamerlane’s armies had earlier brought much devastation, having encountered some resistance there.

One consequence of Tamerlane’s activities had been Haluk’s enslavement and transfer to Baghdad, where he had, unfortunately for his balls, remained after Ahmad Jalayir’s return and the expulsion of the conqueror’s governor. Because of his exceptional looks, the boy had been selected for training as an erotic dancer, whereby he had ended up in the Sultan’s bed and subsequently suffered dire genital consequences for possessing an unruly libido.

The Kurds, who are Muslim but non-Arab, being ethnically closer to the Iranians, now number over 20 million. They are, in fact, currently the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country. The territories that they dominate, which are sometimes called ‘Kurdistan’, is an extensive plateau and mountain area, covering parts of modern Turkey, Armenia, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The region lies astride the eastern extension of the Turkish Taurus Mountains the Iranian Zagros range, and extends south across the Mesopotamian plain to the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

By Haluk’s time, Kurdish tribes had become accustomed to reaching relatively peaceful accommodations with the various predominant regional powers, which were originally the Persians, followed by the Arabs and Mongols, and would eventually include the Ottoman Turks. Now, most, whilst trying as always to retain as much independence as possible, were coming to terms with submitting to Tamerlane’s suzerainty.

Amongst the Kurds who were currently very keen to ally with rather than confront Tamerlane was Haluk. The boy’s attitude arose because he still sought revenge for his castration against the man who had perpetrated the deed, namely the Sultan of Baghdad’s bodyguard, as well as the person who had ordered it, who was Ahmad Jalayir himself.

It was the bodyguard who experienced Haluk’s revenge first. The knife, with which he intended to geld Rezan and Teimuraz, just as he had done the young Kurd 5 months previously, and which he had set aside in order to whip the young Georgian, instead venomously struck his own back, accurately midway between his shoulder blades.

Consequently, instead of striking Teimuraz’s beautiful but tremulous naked body for the first time, the whip fell from the bodyguard’s suddenly limp hand, as he also crashed, quite dead, to the cool chamber floor. "Follow me!" was Haluk’s subsequent instruction, in an understandable Turkic dialect, to the young, unclothed prisoners, as he then used the bloody castration knife to release the delighted inmates from their bondage, as well as Rezan’s constricted genitalia from their ligature. Naturally, the pair of nudes was happy to comply with the young Kurd’s command, despite their state of undress.

As the trio later ran along a myriad of windowless corridors and stairwells, which was a quiet escape route that Haluk had cleverly mapped out earlier, Teimuraz completely forgot that he was still sporting an incongruous erection. The 13 year-old remained in this happy state of ignorance even after his 14 year-old eunuch guide had brought him outside onto palace battlements, which directly overlooked the wide River Tigris.

"I hope that you both can swim," Haluk then commented, whilst quickly joining Rezan and Teimuraz in nudity and then clambering onto the crenellated frontispiece wall. Soon afterwards, three loud splashes could be heard in the adjacent River Tigris.

(Outside the walls of Baghdad, a few days later)

Whilst inside the Sultan of Baghdad’s palace, Haluk had heard about the plight of Rezan and Teimuraz and decided that he had to do something to prevent the evil Ahmad Jalayir from creating two more young eunuchs. Subsequently discovering the dungeon whereabouts of the boys had been easy, and then finding the bodyguard alone and distracted with them in an unlocked chamber had been an unexpected bonus.

Killing the bodyguard with the man’s own, well-used castration knife, which had already been utilised to geld Haluk and others, appeared vengefully rather appropriate. The fact that rescuing Rezan and Teimuraz would now cause Ahmad Jalayir immense problems from an enraged Tamerlane also seemed to the young Kurd to be pleasant retribution for the loss of his boyhood.

Haluk, however, would not have been pleased to learn about Ahmad Jalayir’s current, successful, night flight from Baghdad, at a time when the city was again on the point of falling to the now aggrieved Tamerlane. Instead, the boy’s only consolation, for the fact that the Sultan was not now to suffer grievously at the vengeful hands of the dreaded conqueror, would have been, if he had known, the humiliating initial means by which the rightfully frightened man escaped back to the Mamluks in Syria.

Ahmad Jalayir had also swum in the Tigris naked, accompanied by some similarly unclothed male members of his family and a few supporters, all in possession of as much of the Sultan’s riches as they could carry without sinking to the bottom of the river. However, Haluk was currently oblivious to this scenario, not least because he was presently dancing erotically inside a large, luxurious tent.

The principal spectator, excitedly eyeing Haluk’s gorgeous, gyrating Kurdish form, which was slowly disrobing to appropriate music, was Tamerlane.

(To be continued in chapter 34 – ‘Pilgrimages’)