It’s not as if Ifan is a mercenary himself — he doesn’t yet have the training or even the strength to serve as a sell sword, but part of this position, being an apprenticeship of swords, will entail training later on. For now, his duties are simple — he’ll fill water pails, help cook in camp, help clean the men’s armour and hone their weapons, repair their clothes, run errands.

No one mentioned how much fucking walking there’d be.

“Come on, probie, it’s not as bad as all that,” laughs Ursus, a big, hairy mage with a stave as thick as a tree trunk strapped to his broad back, and he claps a huge hand into the centre of Ifan’s back, thumping heavily between his shoulders. Maybe the blow would have winded him, were it not for the fact that he was winded already — they’d been walking uphill for what felt like since the beginning of time, and his whole body ached. His feet were sore, blisters forming on his soles; his calves and thighs ached and felt exhausted from working their way up the hill; his shoulders screamed out with heat and pain from the pack strapped to his back.

His skin felt sore, all over — and worst of all was the hardness of his breathing, the pound of his heart under his jerkin and the sweat dripping down his back and face and thighs under his clothes, and the taste of acid in the back of his parched throat.

“Everything hurts,” Ifan mutters, and it’s not just Ursus that laughs this time — the other two mages, Ax and Mace, share a laugh as twinned as their square faces are, and other of the nearest men do too — Jona chuckles and shakes his head, and Alder, Yen, and Orr are all laughing themselves.

“Fuck me, lad,” Jona says, “we haven’t even started training you yet — just taken you for a stroll!”

“A stroll?” Ifan repeats incredulously. “I’m fucking dying.”

“You’ll get used to it,” says Orr in pleasant tones, and claps him on the arse as he walks on by, making Ifan jump, and he exhales hard before he drinks heavily from his waterskin and tries to brace himself for the rest of the day ahead. He can fucking do this.

He knows he only has the position because his father is a clerk for the defence corps, knows that they’re probably being easier on him than they otherwise would be — the training he’ll get with these men will be invaluable, especially compared to anything he could pay for from travelling tutors in town. He doesn’t exactly have the bargaining power to get to one of the prominent institutes, let alone the social status to go to one of the royal training academies — and in any case, while he’s sparred with the blacksmith’s girl and taken tutelage from her, taken the training that swords and mercenaries have done as they’ve passed through, but he’d never be able to keep up with the nobles who’ve been trained in everything imaginable since they were babes in arms.

If he wants to leave home as something other than a scribe or a bureaucrat, this is the only opportunity he’ll get, and if he’s going to quit, he’s certainly not going to quit his first day travelling.

He’d only have to fucking walk home anyway.

* * *

When they finally make camp, Ifan feels like he could fucking drop — the sun has dipped below the horizon, and the skies are beginning to darken from red to purple as he helps clear space around where Orr is building a fire, space for everybody to set up tents and lay out their bedrolls.

“Here, sit down,” Jona orders, catching him by the shoulder once the clearing has been cleaned up, and Ifan is torn between gratefully obeying the order and not wanting to look so fucking useless.

“But, sir — “

“You’re not used to this shit yet, and you’ve weathered well today, lad,” Jona says, nudging him toward a log — Ifan drops down onto it with a loud sigh of relief, feeling his whole body suddenly sing out in different aches and pains, pangs that run through him as his working body is suddenly permitted to relax.

“Strip off your armour,” Jona tells him, and nods to Ursus and the twins, who have laid out the huge steel tub that magically folds up flat to be carried, and are conjuring steaming water to fill it with. “You can take the first bath, eh?”

“We’re bathing?” Ifan asks, disbelieving, but he can’t strip off his heavy leather armour fast enough, laying it over the side of the log. It’s agonising to take his boots off, let alone his socks, and before he walks over to the tub, Ax comes over and makes him sit back so that he can run some healing magic over the blistered flesh.

It’s awful.

Healing magic often feels strangely warm and tingles, but it works by speeding up the natural healing process, and he can see the skin changing and shifting before his eyes as the blisters move about before the fluid in them is reabsorbed and the flesh repairs itself, feels a hot, electric tingle in the soles of his feet that runs up his ankles and calves.

“You’ll get callouses soon enough,” Ax says, patting his knee, and Ifan stumbles as he initially stands, not expecting the now-weird painlessness in the soles of his feet at first as he goes toward the tub.

“There he is,” Ursus rumbles. “Strip off the rest, lad, you’re not about to wash in that shirt, are you?”

Ifan pulls his filthy chemise off over his head, and as he shoves his trousers down his thighs, he’s aware of Ursus’ gaze on him, the way that the other man isn’t averting it at all, isn’t even pretending not to look at him. Ifan swallows, but keeps on peeling off his trousers as he looks around and realises that it’s not just Ursus watching him.

A lot of the men are. They’re stopped in their work, looking Ifan’s way, and they’re not just looking at the tub — they’re looking at him, their eyes roving his body, probably thinking about how little muscle he has compared to them, thinking how small he is, how he’s not a big, strapping guy like a lot of them are.

“In you get,” says Ursus softly, and nervously, Ifan puts his leg over the side of the bath and gets in.

He can’t help the moan he lets out at the sudden sting and then soothing heat of the water, feeling it sink into his muscles and force their stiffened, tangled forms to relax a bit, to melt in the water around them.

“Feel good, probie?” Ursus asks, smirking at him.

“Fuck yeah,” Ifan sighs, sitting back in the tub.

“Need a hand?”

He gasps as Ursus, his gloves stripped off, douses a washcloth and washes hot water down his back, pressing against the sore flesh and making him arch his back, leaning helplessly back into the touch.

He’s paid for an attendant in the baths before, has had some pretty elf giggling as she washes his back or soaks shampoo into his hair, but this is different. Ursus’ hands are strong and commanding — after squeezing hot water onto his back, his thumbs press hard into the meat of Ifan’s shoulders, and he begins to massage the tired muscles.

Caresses them.

His hands slide around and squeeze the softer flesh at Ifan’s chest, one thumb “accidentally” tweaking his nipple, and it makes Ifan moan breathlessly, sitting up straighter in the tub and straightening his legs, stiffening his body as best he could. His cock was half-hard under the water, and with no soap to make it sudsy or white, he was shamefully aware that Ursus would be able to see, that any of the men would be able to see if they stepped any closer.

“I can, fuck, ah,” he moans as Ursus presses his thumb into a knotted bit of muscle at the base of his back, his cock twitching powerfully, “I can do this myself, you don’t have to — “

“No, no, kid, you’re tired, right?” Ursus asks, tone surprisingly serious. “Lemme help you out here.” He slides the washcloth down between Ifan’s arse cheeks, pressing at his hole, and Ifan lets out a loud whine as Ursus presses a wet finger forward, still wrapped in the cloth, into him. He’s squirming, one hand gripping at the side of the bath and the other grabbing the arm Ursus has wrapped around him as he sinks his finger as deeply as he can get it.

Ax and Mace are right there, leaning on the side of the bath and grinning at him, each with their robes unbuckled and open; Jona and Alder are stripping each other of their heavy armour.

“There’s, ungh,” Ifan says, and fuck, is Ursus just going to keep doing this? Just going to finger him like this while everybody watches? “I need to, to let someone else use the hot water — “

“You stay right here, boy,” Ursus murmurs in his ear, and then grazes his teeth down the side of Ifan’s neck. Ifan feels not just the drag of Ursus’ teeth, the damp heat of his breath, but also the graze of his beard against Ifan’s skin, making him gasp and shudder at the sensation, at the tingles it sends down his spine.

Mace has made soap foam between his palms, and he scrubs into Ifan’s chest, rubbing at his tits, and then he takes each of Ifan’s nipples between his thumb and forefinger and begins to tug and pull on them, squeezing and twisting before blowing cool air over them. Ifan’s knees are shaking as Ursus pulls the washcloth out of him and drops it aside, and he groans as Ax comes and takes one of his nipples into his mouth, sucking hard on it.

His nipples are big and puffy, both of them pink and fat from being played with, and fuck, but they’re sensitive. He can’t believe this is happening, can’t believe Ursus’ mouth is still on the back of his neck, nipping and kissing at the base of it and at his shoulders, Ax and Mace biting and pulling at his tits.

“We want you nice and clean before we get you dirty again, probie,” Ursus says, and laughs again.

He’s breathing heavily as hands touch him on all sides, rubbing at him, squeezing at him, and it feels good but also like too much, more than he can handle or would be, should be, able to handle, even before the first hand wraps around his cock — he doesn’t even know whose — and suddenly he’s coming.

The men all around him laugh and cheer like he’s a bottle of champagne has gone off early, and suddenly he’s being lifted out of the tub and hefted up by several of them at once, manhandled and carried over their heads with his cock still weakly sputtering, his come frothing on top of the bathwater.

“Sorry,” he gasps out against the mouth of the man he’s closest to — Jona’s — who just laughs, his eyes glinting. He’s stripped off his armour and down to his breeches, is shirtless.

“The fuck are you sorry for?” Jona asks, and then bites into Ifan’s mouth and swallows his whining moans. His legs spread without his meaning to.

As one tongue slides into his mouth, one of the other men pushes his cheeks apart and tongues into his arse, and he thinks he’ll actually die as the world goes momentarily white. He wails into Jona’s mouth, lifted full off the ground and feeling like it’s a hundred hands doing the lifting, keeping him suspended. They’re not just lifting him, either — every man is handling him, getting a feel of his thighs, his hips, his chest, his sensitive nipples, his aching, spent cock.

The man tonguing his hole grunts, tongues deeper.

He’s sloppy about it, wet and making loud noises, and his head is spinning with embarrassment at it, at the sensation of it, the idea that this man has his mouth somewhere so… dirty, and that it feels so fucking good.

He’s dropped a few inches, carried not over the other men’s heads anymore but in line with their waists, and he realises with a start that almost all of them are naked, their cocks all hard and waiting, glistening at their heads, jutting out from their bodies. He swallows, wondering if they’re gonna have him suck them, suck all of them.

“Pass and play, Jacobs,” says Ursus — he’s a big, bearish man, appropriately named, with thick thighs and a heavy belly and a cock that matches up, short but thick around. “Hand him over.”

He drops into Ursus’ warm lap with his legs spread, his arse feeling open.

“Wait,” he says breathlessly, his eyes wide as he feels Ursus’ fat cock pressing up between his cheeks, his own soft cock rubbing up against Ursus’ belly. “Wait, wait, you can’t put that in my…? It’s too big, I can’t — “

“No pain, no gain, rookie,” says Orr behind him — how many fucking times has he heard that today? — and then, “You’ll get used to it.”

“Get used to it? How can I — agh –!”

It feels huge, the blunt head of Ursus’ cock at his hole, open and wet but not nearly open enough to take such a monstrously thick cock, and he wails loudly at the pressure of it, the sense he’s being stretched so widely he feels liable to tear in two.

Two fingers —

He moans around the pressure on his tongue, feels the push down against the muscle, and it feels like something in him relaxes, softens; at the same time, someone else is gripping at the back of his neck, and the world goes hazy at its edges, becomes easier, somehow.

“Oh, he likes that,” muses someone out loud — Alder, maybe. “A born cockslut, this one.”

The blunt pressure is forcing him apart, forcing his body to yield, and then it manages to press past the tight ring of his hole and he squeals with the sheet sensation of it — sensation, because it doesn’t hurt, exactly. He’s full. There’s… pressure. He can feel himself stretching.

And then he’s being sunk down on it and the noises he makes are suddenly coming from deep within him, deep and low and wanting, his whole body writhing with cock filling him from one end and fingers his other. His spent cock is throbbing, his balls aching.

“Look at him take it,” marvels Ax.

“New favourite toy, this one.”

His arse makes contact with Ursus’ thighs, his cock fully buried in him, and he can’t quite conceive of how easily he’s been made into a sheath for it. He feels so full, feels so stretched, feels dizzy with it.

And then Ursus jerks his hips up from beneath him, starts to fuck up into him so that he’s bounced up off of Ursus’ strong, muscular thighs, and he gasps wetly around the fingers he hadn’t realised he was sucking on, at the white hot pleasure that sings through his bones, radiating out from his arse.

It feels like his cock should be hard, it feels so good, but he’s come too recently — it’s a quarter of the way there, maybe, and it aches, and with the position he’s in Ursus is dragging past some button within him that makes him throb, makes his body jolt whenever he manages to catch it.

The fingers are removed from his mouth and he moans, “Nooo,” draws laughter out of the men surrounding him, watching him eagerly. He looks blearily up at all their laughing faces, at their focus, their interest. This is what they wanted him for all along, not as an errand boy, but as… this. “It’s too big,” he gasps out, “I can’t, it feels — feels too good — “

“You just want your mouth full again, right, rookie?”

One of them grabs at his nipples again, twisting them so that he squirms and cries out, and Ursus moans underneath him.

“Fuck, he got so tight at that. He’s a sweet piece of ass.”

“I bet his throat is nice too.”

“You want that, probie? You want something to suck on?”

“Yeah,” Ifan says automatically, because it’s like he’s distracted now, like everything’s suddenly harder because his mouth is empty, and then more fingers are pressing on his tongue and his mind goes soft and buzzy at the edges again, and easy blur. He’s still getting bounced, still full of cock, and when he hears Ursus groan and sigh, gripping at his thighs, he doesn’t connect the dots until he feels it.

Feels the wet heat of it, the slickness inside him — knows all of a sudden that there’s come in him.

“Pass him over, Urs,” he hears, and then he’s in the air again, wrestled onto his back in the air at waist height once again — he feels empty and distracted and dizzy, and then all at once he’s threaded at each end with cock, one sliding into his arse at the same time another is pressed down his throat.

Ifan’s howl of pleasure is muffled by the amount of meat stuffing his throat, his back arching into the torturous hands that tug and play at his tits and the others that are touching his belly, his waist again —

The cock in his arse is bigger than the first, longer, is so deep inside him he feels like it’s going to touch tips with the one that’s been slid down his throat. Upside down as he is he’s got his nose buried in the other man’s balls, and he has to measure his moments to breathe between the thrusts of his cock into Ifan’s throat.

He wishes he could struggle, wishes he could kick out his arms and legs — not to get away, he doesn’t want to ever get away, but just to work out some of the energy, the tension and need and desperation coiled inside him. He’s shuddering and whining around the cocks in him.

He’s utterly powerless to do any more than accept it, spitroasted between the two of them and feeling the hands grabbing at him — a cock slides into one of his hands, coaxing him to grip at it, to pull and squeeze, and he moans. His throat feels like it’s being battered.

He keeps choking, trying not to, to just relax and take it and breathe when the man fucking his face pulls back — there’s saliva dripping down his face, saliva and come and his own messy tears, and his cock is dripping with pre so wet it feels like warm piss.

He thinks he could come again like this, suspended upside down and being filled up from every end, and he can’t, he can’t… They come at once (it’s the twins, he thinks) and his moans are choked and sputtered, feeling like he’s drowning as he’s filled from both ends.

There’s barely even a break, barely even a respite as he’s tugged upright and dropped down onto another cock, this one thicker and longer still than either of the first ones, and he gasps harshly at the fucking rub inside him. He’s so slick inside his head spins.

It’s easy — he’s easy. Maybe they’re right, maybe he is a born cockslut, maybe —

Two fingers slide over his tongue again, and he tries to focus this time, but the blankness still takes hold. “That’s it, probie,” one of them murmurs in his ear — he doesn’t even know which one anymore. “Just follow our lead and let us break you in.”

His cock is hard again, finally, and there’s something utterly blissful about giving himself over to the ache inside him, the sense of being overused, something truly relaxed unlocking inside him.

Maybe this is what he was made for, even if he does have to hike for it.