Posh Boy and Dead Boy

XXI

As was his custom, Reichsprotektor Ulrich Korngeibel had his breakfast in the rear withdrawing room of the royal château of Zenda. As he did so he contemplated as he often did the bizarre fate that had raised him from a young Thuringian provincial college lecturer to be the ruler of what was left of the kingdom of Ruritania. The great turreted castle keep rising dramatically from the dark waters of the lake outside the windows was the most evocative of the symbols of the Elphberg monarchy, built as it had been by a Swabian baron and imperial seneschal, the first Rudolf of Elphberg, after he had been betrothed by Duke Waclaw of Rothenia to his daughter and heir, Osra. It was a symbol too, as far as Korngeibel was concerned, of the proper place of the Rothenian lands within the German Reich.

One of the white-jacketed stewards serving him silently placed a folded note at the side of his plate of bacon and scrambled egg, Korngeibel’s invariable choice of breakfast. It was a phone message from Prince Leopold of Thuringia, announcing that he wished to see the Protektor as a matter of urgency, and he intended to motor down from Piotreshrad that morning.

Korngeibel looked up from his plate and summoned his secretary, a ferociously efficient elderly lady, issuing instructions for the prince’s reception. He also urged her to discover in advance if she could what had brought about this uncharacteristic visit. As he paced his upstairs office, which had once been the study of the famed scholar-king, Henry II Elphberg, Korngeibel pondered the nature of his relationship with Prince Leopold. There was a degree of ancestral loyalty in it. He had prided himself on having been a loyal subject of the Duke of Thuringia, and he had been something of an admirer of Prince Leo’s father, in whose army corps he had served in Galicia in the Great War.

He admired Prince Leo too, though he found it difficult to explain why to himself. In part perhaps it was because the prince represented something of the great Hohenzollern Empire into which Korngeibel had been born in the last year of the nineteenth century. Then there was the man himself: kind, cultured, modest and sensitive, far different from the Nazi functionaries with whom he usually had to associate. He had been advised by no less a person than Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring that the prince was a character to cultivate; the Reichsmarschall openly admired Leo as a fellow enthusiast in collecting art. He believed the prince and Göring occasionally collaborated in their manoeuverings within the feverish art market the Reich had created through its rapacious looting and uninhibited greed. So with such a high-level advocate Korngeibel had made it a practice to assist Leo whenever he needed it and ask few questions, for he very much relied on the Reichsmarschall’s influence in Berlin, and since the arrival and successive promotions of Count Vasselot, more than ever.

‘Do take a seat, your royal highness. Can I offer coffee?’

Prince Leopold shook his hand and smiled around the study. He commended Korngeibel for his choice of office space. ‘King Maxim also used it,’ he remarked. ‘Of course, he venerated the memory of King Henry II, who spent his last years in this château. In fact, Herr Protektor, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to be here. I believe a lot of King Henry’s personal papers ended up here rather in his main library in the Palais du Bâtard on the Altstadt. I’ve been looking for his correspondence with his half-brother, the English Earl James of Burlesdon and with his sister, my great-great-grandmother, Maria Clementina, Duchess of Thuringia. I rather think he may have kept family correspondence here. The alternative is that he left it at the palace of the Marmorpalast in Strelsau, where he spent his younger years. I do hope not, as liberal revolutionaries burned the palace down in 1848.’

Korngeibel shrugged and said he had no idea, but that the prince could have full access to the royal library at Zenda, which was not a big concern but unfortunately had no librarian of its own. ‘It might be an idea,’ he added, ‘to ask the National Archives in Strelsau to construct an inventory of what historical materials are to be found here at the château. The academic in me thinks the former Republic of Rothenia had the right of it in establishing a central archive for the nation, but like much else the republic left the job half-done. It is something useful that the Protektorat can accomplish, and will do.’

Prince Leo smiled. ‘The republic shouldn’t be criticised too much. When Maxim abdicated in 1919 he left unsettled the status of the royal archive and other former possessions of the Elphberg dynasty. So the republic was unable to nationalise the royal papers without an expensive law suit in the Supreme Court. I believe they are still mouldering in the Osten Tor.’

Korngeibel gave a rueful grin. ‘That lack of a resolution of his affairs includes the status of the greatest treasure of them all, the Crown of Tassilo.’

‘Indeed,’ agreed the prince. ‘Maxim’s belief is that the republic’s existence was always going to be limited, and that an Elphberg king would one day re-assume the throne he had vacated. The Crown will remain hidden till then.’

Korngeibel shook his head. ‘That may be some time then. Our Führer believes the Reich will last a thousand years and more. Suggesting otherwise might not be wise.’

Prince Leo let that comment pass. ‘You’ll be curious as to what brought me to Zenda this morning, your excellency?’

‘It won’t be for nothing, I’m sure, your highness,’ said Korngeibel, seemingly gratified at the unsolicited honorific applied to him.

‘I know you are well acquainted with the history of my family in Ruritania. So you’ll recollect the ill-judged and ill-timed deed my father committed after my great-uncle secured the throne, a deed that resulted in his long exile from the kingdom.’

Korngeibel nodded, ‘The duel with the Tarlenheim aristocrat, Oskar Maxim.’

‘Indeed. The consequence was a dangerous rising in the capital city and the alienation of the old Rothenian aristocracy from the Thuringian cause.’

‘Then you’ll understand me when I tell you that Count Vasselot von Regne has just committed the self-same error as my father, and with a likely similar result.’

Korngeibel stared, puzzled. ‘What can you mean, sir?’

‘Vasselot has just abducted young Count Hugo von Tarlenheim, the son of Prince Franz, and taken him off to his lair in Kaleczyk.’

The Protektor was taken aback. ‘Surely there must have been some charge against the man? Vasselot would have had his reasons.’

Prince Leo looked hard into Korngeibel’s face. ‘Reasons there may have been, but none to do with the security of the Reich I think. You’re not an innocent, your excellency. You must have learned something about Tobias, Count Vasselot von Regne, and his amusements.’

‘I … er … well, your highness, there has been talk.’

‘The same that brought down your one-time superior in the SA, Ernst Röhm?’

‘Ah … yes.’

‘Count Hugo is a remarkably handsome young man. A true Aryan in looks. Looks that very much appeal to Vasselot himself, I hear.’

Korngeibel frowned down at his desk for some moments. When he looked up Leo thought he saw a look of hopeful calculation on his face. ‘Royal highness, are you expecting me to do something about this “abduction”? If so you are asking a lot.’

‘I did indeed come here with that end in view. I hear things both here and in the Reich, and they concern the ambitions of Vasselot and his patron Reichsführer Himmler.’

‘Yes?’

‘That they have an ambition to create an SS enclave in Rothenia and Slovakia, a realm where Vasselot would be its lord under Himmler, a realm more or less independent of the Reich, and a political lifeboat for the Schutzstaffel cadres.’

Korngeibel stared at the prince, clearly unable to frame a response that would not in some way compromise him. Eventually he coughed, shifted in his seat and said, ‘Your royal highness must be aware that I cannot comment on such matters.’

‘Perhaps not, but I have with me some materials relating to Vasselot that need to be known to the leadership of the Reich.’ Leo handed over a thick folder to the Protektor. ‘You will find this useful whatever you choose to do.’

Korngeibel unlaced the packet and spread out some of the photographs it contained. He looked up at Leo, his eyes wide. ‘My god! These are obscene. Vasselot must be mentally ill.’ Korngeibel’s face took on a look of suspicion. ‘How did you get hold of them?’

Leo shrugged. ‘Let’s say that there are those under Vasselot’s command who share your appraisal of their boss. They came to me as a friend of the Reich who wouldn’t be intimidated by the SS.’

‘What are these other documents?’ Korngeibel picked up a sheaf of papers.

‘Memoranda, agreements and transcripts relating to Vasselot’s dealings with Wittel Horvath. They can be made to tell an ominous story, which perhaps should be heard in Berlin.’

The Protektor let out a long sigh. ‘My dear prince, I and the Reich thank you for your great service. The Count Vasselot cannot be allowed to get away with this perversion and treason, and he shall not. What can we do to reward you?’

‘No more than liberate the boys that madman has kidnapped and return them to their families. You will reap a lot of good will by doing that.’

***

Hugo surfaced unwillingly to find himself still in his living nightmare. His mouth was dry and foul, and his asshole burned. He looked around the cell where he and several other naked youths were secured in stocks. Only one other boy was currently being used and he looked into Hugo’s eyes as yet another rapist mounted him. He slumped as his assailant withdrew and, astonishingly, smiled and winked across at Hugo.

Hugo had been as grossly abused as any other of the Russian POWs conscripted as sex slaves in Kaleczyk. The sergeant major who had shanghaied him in Zenden had bundled him into a van outside the White Tree with a couple of whores he had randomly designated as resistance agents. The SS men had stripped them naked in the nighttime street and chained them together. They were bounced around in the back of the van for hours. Then he remembered being herded up into the old fortress and into a room full of harsh light. On his knees he was subjected to a humiliating inspection, his body hair scraped off, his butt tattoed with a number and lastly had his anus injected with a viscous lubricant. From there he was dragged along a corridor into his present quarters. He had been fucked non-stop for hours in both his entries by German soldiers, but also to his surprise by Russian prisoners, presumably as some sort of favour from their captors.

He looked across at the pretty Russian boy opposite him. He tried asking his name, and Rothenian was close enough to Russian to make Hugo understood.

‘Vasily, friend,’ the boy croaked. ‘Call me Vasya.’ He was starved-looking but not otherwise much disfigured by the relentless brutality to which they were being subjected. Since the abuse had ceased temporarily Vasya was able to communicate quite a lot to Hugo. They would be released after this shift, he said, then fed and cleaned and given a couple of days to heal before another shift of sex work. This was Vasya’s tenth time in the stocks.

Sure enough, SS soldiers appeared and released the dozen boys from their stocks, chained them together by coffles that fitted round their genitals, and herded them stumbling out into the fortress’s corridors. The weight of the chains dragging on their balls made walking difficult and eventually agonising for all of them. They were herded into a small cell, from which they were taken out in pairs to clean themselves up in a shower room.

Vasya and Hugo were one of the pairs, and the Russian boy delicately cleaned out Hugo’s ass and washed him down. They talked fitfully. Vasya it appeared was just eighteen, captured at Odesa by the Germans only last year. He had not been a soldier but was a sailor cadet of the Black Sea Fleet, conscripted into a naval battalion in the battle for Ukraine. He had been born just outside Moscow, and was no fan of Stalin.

‘Should you tell me that?’ Hugo asked with a smile. Strangely the Russian boy seemed to call that sort of reaction from him.

‘What matter, Yoro?’ Vasya said without any apparent anger. ‘We be dead before long, There are guys who like choke us in sex. They go all the way so we die as they make their cum in our bumhole. We get one of them sooner or later. So I say what I want. That Hitler. He an asshole too.’

‘Nasty!’ exclaimed a third voice in the room. Hugo looked around. Vasya seemed not to have registered it. It was Lucacz.

‘Jesus you are a fucking mess, baby,’ said the revenant. ‘Though you do look sexier now you’re bald.’

‘Can Vasya see you?’

‘I hope not. I’m undercover and acting against orders. That Count Oskar is a bit of a bully, but I think you need to know what’s happening out there.’

‘Anything good?’

‘I hope so, Hugo. Prince Leopold has made his move, and he’s unveiled the SS conspiracy to Herr Korngeibel, with all the proof the Protektor could require, and then some. Korngeibel’s flown to Berlin for a conference with Hitler and Göring. Vasselot is likely going to be screwed permanently and handed over to Hitler for execution, as a peace offering by Himmler. But that’s not all, Martin has manoeuvered Major Harries into getting the Russian NKVD agents in his HQ to take Horvath captive and force him to order an assault on Kaleczyk to liberate these guys.’

‘Fucking hell!’

‘Yup. Things are coming together, just as the Dead foresaw. Though how it helps you I do not see. Gotta go, baby. I like your Russian boy.’

***

Apart from tossing small loaves of black rye bread in among the sex slaves, they were left alone for quite a while, packed tightly in their cell. Hugo was listened to by their fellow captives as he relayed through Vasya his knowledge of what had happened in the world outside. Hugo chose not to mention the possibility that Kaleczyk might soon be assaulted by the Reich’s enemies.

Some incalculable time later Hugo awoke with his head in Vasya’s warm and somewhat odorous lap. ‘What’s up?’ he asked dozily.

‘Sorry Yoro,’ the boy said. ‘I think it our next shift. Bend down as they take you out and let them put the lube in your asshole. They not do it and your fucking will be much the worse.’ They were taken out one at a time and coffled together, then the macabre crocodile shuffled off along the corridors, the heavy chains swinging painfully between their legs. Hugo was more observant this time. He calculated they were in fact underground, in the fortress’s eighteenth-century casemates and chambers within the Kaleczyke Horja. He knew there were exterior buildings and barracks of nineteenth-century vintage on the crest of the hill which he imagined were now the prison blocks for the POWs.

Their customers were already lining up, the men hungrily looking over their naked bodies. Sergeant Major Brückner was grinning at him as he was uncoffled. He put his hand on Hugo’s shoulder and kept him in the corridor while the others were taken in to be shackled in the stocks.

‘Your excellency looks just right as you are now, a dirty young bitch boy with cum leaking out your asshole. I am so going to hurt you. You’ll be begging for me to end it all.’ He held up a blade. ‘Your balls are coming off today. Beg nicely and I’ll jerk you off for one last time, and I might even feed your last ever cum back to you. Then General Vasselot is going to take you to his castle for you to start work as his servant. I think it’ll be the stables for you. But first some fun. A lot of these guys are curious what it’s like to fuck a pretty aristocratic pansy boy. Pity about your hair, made you look like a sweet little girlie.’

Brückner personally shackled Hugo in the stocks awaiting him. The man’s sadism was in full flow. ‘You see, your excellency, time was when your castration would have been done in a clinic by medics. But I started doing it myself last year in Hofbau on some of the boys we took off the street. Course it hurt the poor fucks rather more than a doctor would. But I found I could open their sacs up and whip out their balls quick enough that they stayed conscious and could watch it happen. I stitched them up pretty well too and I took care that they escaped infection. Only one’s died since, but that don’t count as the wimp hung himself.’

He was the first to rape Hugo that time, and as Brückner was rising from his back he whispered in his ear, ‘I’ll be back in a few hours, so be ready for the slicing. I think I’ll do it here so the other bitches can watch as you lose your family jewels. Beg nicely and you can have one last jerk and orgasm first. Remember.’

***

After several other rapes, Hugo was not in so much of a daze that he didn’t hear running boots echoing from the corridor outside. The man currently pressing down on his back rose, and asked his fellows what was going on. He resumed his trousers and poked his head out the door, to reel back inside with a head wound from a gun. He collapsed on the floor. The others jumped up, wild-eyed, and sought their clothing and pistols, spilling out the door.

The sex slaves too looked around, and one it appeared had got loose in the chaos. The man started unlocking the others. Soon Hugo was being lifted up by Vasily.

‘What is happening?’ the Russian asked.

‘Hugo raised his voice so the milling and panicking captives could hear him. ‘It’s an attack on the fortress. The Communist Rothenian resistance movement are attempting to force their way inside, to liberate you POWs.’

Hugo rifled the corpse of the fallen guard and found a handgun. ‘Going outside will be dangerous, men,’ he called. ‘Speaking for myself though, I have nothing to lose.’

‘Damn right,’ said Vasily. ‘I come with you, Yoro.’ The corridor outside was empty, though they could hear a commotion not far away, and his augmented senses picked up the screams and sound of men in battle. Hugo knew something of Kaleczyk and its history. The POW barracks were at the peak of the Horja, and that would be where the assailants would be heading, for it seemed they had forced access to the internal tunnels which he believed gave access to the valleys below the fortress. So the resistance must have forced the hidden entries below and were now fighting their way up to the barracks through the mountain.

‘We go down, fellows,’ he called and led Vasily to the nearest stairs. ‘The fighting’s above us,’ he said, and any people we meet coming up are likely to be friends. On the next landing down was a huddled black shape in a pool of red. Hugo looked down dispassionately at the corpse of his tormentor, Sergeant Major Brückner. He kicked the man in the side, just to make sure, and leant down to tell him that if any man was damned never to cross the Final Sea, it was him.

Vasily was bubbling. ‘That cunt dead! Hope he suffered. The wound was in his groin. I think they shot his balls off. Justice.’

Steps came scuffling up from below. Hugo thought a moment and called down in Rothenian. ‘Hey down there. We’re friends!’

There was silence for a long moment, then a call came back. ‘You with the resistance? What’s the watchword?’

‘We know no watchword, we are escaped prisoners.’

‘That’s you Von Tarlenheim?’

‘Yes it’s me. Who are you?’

‘It’s Bela Rosvic. We met at Medeln.’

‘I remember,’ Hugo sighed with relief. ‘Come on up. It’s me and a dozen Russian escapees.’

The man bustled up the stairs, a squad of fighters behind him.

‘God, young man. You are a mess. The Nazis seem to have gone to town on you.’

‘We want to get out. Is it clear to go down?’

‘There’s not a live Nazi below us, we made sure of that. Now we need to join the battle. These boys are Russkis are they? There’s a mustering point below, and trucks to take them to safety. There’s an NKVD guy down there who’ll sort them.’

They resumed their journey down the stairs. They reached a chamber at the end of the stairs, seeming to be a garage and warehouse. A party of armed men halted them. They were wearing red armbands wuth a hammer and sickle device; the NKVD agents, Hugo concluded. They were efficient, equipped with clipboards with Red Cross lists of the POWs at Kaleczyk. They began checking the names of Hugo’s group. All but Vasily were put in the back of a lorry.

‘Hey!’ Hugo addressed the agent in charge, ‘why aren’t you taking Vasily?’

The man gave him a long look. ‘You’re not Russian. No concern of yours what we do with Comrade Arkhipov I think.’

Vasily took Hugo’s arm. ‘Walk on, Yoro. I’m one of those who will be listed as unfortunately killed in the operation.’

‘What the fuck!’

‘I’m a suspected counterrevolutionary, according to the KGB.’

‘What, why?’

‘My family were kulaks in the old days and my father died an exile in Siberia.’

Hugo shook his head. He addressed the NKVD men. ‘If you aren’t going to liberate Vasily with the rest, he’s coming with me.’

‘Like fuck he is,’ was the sullen reply.

‘I’m an official of the Rothenian resistance. Bela Rosvic will vouch for me, and I’m telling you that Vasily Arkhipov is under our protection.’

‘Vasily Aleksandrovich is a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics facing charges of counterrevolutionary activity. That’s all that counts, now fuck off.’

‘Get behind me Vasily.’

‘Take it easy Yoro!’ the boy hissed in his ear. ‘These men don’t play.’

‘Back towards the open doors.’

The two young men shuffled slowly out. Hugo, gun in hand, carefully watched the NKVD party. Their commander snapped an order, and the rest of his men turned and moved toward the stairs upwards.

‘He’s getting rid of witnesses to his murder of a Rothenian agent, Yoro.’

‘They won’t see me shooting him either,’ Hugo snarled. ‘Now run like fuck when I tell you, Vasya. There’ll be Rothenians outside who’ll help. NOW!!’

He sapped off a shot at the Russian as he levelled his own gun to fire. The man fired as he span and Hugo felt a blow beneath his ribs. As the world paled around him he fell to his knees. There was a humming in his ears and his sight clouded. Then nothing.

NEXT CHAPTER