The big man's mouth splits when Jan, straddling, strikes him; he sucks the wound reverently, giving it deep consideration. When his teeth release his lower lip, the spittle is running over his chin; a hank of dingy yellow hair has fallen from behind his ear and is stuck to his cheek. His eyes are bright and round, a sublime pale color between blue and gray; they are the only innocent-looking thing about him. The big man starts babbling up at him with red-stained teeth — his teeth may not be pleasant-looking, but by all appearances they are strong in their sockets, because he proceeds to try and deep-throat and then bite Jan's thumb.

Christ Jesus only knows what this man's spittle could do — wither the grass and send dogs mad. Jan sucks a kiss from his mauled lips, bending low, and turns his head to spit.

"What shall I call you, then, my Dordtener friend? Seeing as we are friends now, and you can't get away from me."

"Sander," the great fool gasps, bleeding and beatific. "Call me Sander."

Jan had expected something uglier, a Rubbrecht or a Willem. The name has an archaic charm. Persuading this Sander to lie down again and be fucked is a bit like persuading any other large, resentful animal to do anything at all. Jan achieves it mainly through touch and tone of voice, not through the actual content of his promises, which are meaningless anyway at a time like this.

Sander lies on his back like a great slab, all muscle crossed with rubbed red scars and sturdy hemp ropes — no doubt he will run to fat one day, if he lives long enough, but this ragged life has left his broad bones relatively lean, with only the beginnings of a hard gut. All the thick yellow hairs on his legs are standing up, like a porcupine of lust, and to that end his stout red prick is hard and shining.

One tool in his lap and another by his side, a good old blade that looks like it's left bits of itself buried in a couple different skulls along the way to its present master's belt. It seems a funny thing, to know the names of the tools of a man's trade before the name of the man himself. Back when the big man had only been a nameless lout, and not Jan's dearest companion on the bloody road to his just deserts, the lunatic had taken the blade from between his ugly teeth and grinning, pronounced it to be a "she". The she in question even had a name of her own. It's almost sweet.

The old sword seems as much a part of Sander as his ugly fists, or his cock and balls for that matter. Fucking Sander with his own cock is an amusing prospect, but beside the point for now. Sander seems to hold a sentimental attachment to the thing, which is well enough. It is drawn up on the same stout lines as its master, with the grip wrapped in leather and the fat rounded pommel not unlike the head of a man's prick if viewed with sufficiently jaundiced eye.

Jan thinks of making a joke, but Sander heaves up on his elbows before he has the opportunity, exhaling a fine red mist through his yellow whiskers. He is bound tight to the bedframe in criss-crossing lines of rope, with thin coils cutting into the soft undersides of his knees and holding him in a pleasing position to be railed, but the action of jerking himself forward has torn one wrist free of its bonds and significantly loosened the other. A pity.

"If you do anything to hurt her, I'll stick you through the fucking bunghole, stiffhead."

"It's not my bunghole you should be worrying about, lambkin. Hold your hands above your head, and stay very still."

Sander complains, but he complies; Jan fucks into him with three fingers until his growling turns to groans and he lies still again, bolt-erect and ready to be touched.

If a sword can be said to be a woman, then this will be the first and last time a woman has come between them. Jan goes about wrapping Glory's End in a linen cloth folded double — there is a blunt stretch about as wide as a man's hand sitting just beneath the hilt. It's designed to be gripped, the better to parry with or to wrench the buckler from a man's arm. Jan will be the one gripping it now, the better to thrust with.

Sander jerks his chin down to his chest, squinting down at him from under thick wayward brows as he works. Strange it is, that such a bloodthirsty, cock-hungry brute can look at him in such puzzlement — he'd been only too willing to bend over for him alongside a cooling corpse, or to suck him raw in a tavern privy with a knotted rope slithering tight around his throat. Some things are simply beyond the limits of such a man's imagination.

"You're a strange cunt, you know that? Do you hear me, Jan? Strange."

"So I've been told. Now don't twitch, or I can't say for certain what your lady love will do to you."

Sander's grunt turns into a muffled sob, but the reddened portal of his asshole laps against Jan's fingers all too eagerly. Between the grease and the smooth bluntness of the pommel, the instrument can be forced in readily enough — but only little by little, inch by inch.

Sander swallows down spittle as he is entered, the muscles of his thick thighs all a-tremble; his big chest heaves and sweats, rubbing itself raw against its hempen bonds, and the flush of blood extends down past the line of his dark nipples. Jan takes a distant sort of pleasure in fucking into him with such a cumbersome object and feeling his guts yield to accept the intrusion anyway — with his free hand he braces against the low ledge of Sander's pelvis, and the obtrusive shape of the sword-handle moving beneath the skin is practically palpable beneath his palm. Perhaps this is only wishful thinking; all his late adventures in anatomy have taught him that a man's insides are largely malleable, like the filling inside of a pie. Glory's End will require flexibility.

Sander grunts his appreciation and lifts his big hips, knees apart and buttocks spread. The mashed pillow supports his lower back, all the better for him to be fucked. Jan thrusts the sword-hilt into him with a growing steadiness, slipping in his fingers alongside it to stretch the taut band of Sander's asshole still further — Sander curses and cries, but his great purple cock is leaking tracks of seed fast and hot, and his balls are tightly-drawn and squirming in their hairy purse.

"Don't hurt her," he says again, pleading in between tooth-crumbling obscenities — like he's worried for the sword in all this, and not his guts.

The weight of the blade is something remarkable in his hands, and it strains against the body it occupies even with nothing much to cut. Jan's two fingers press down against the seam between balls and arsehole, feeling for the fleshy spot beneath the surface — there is a place here that yields, and that if adequately mauled can make a man spunk all on its own, but all he finds is the stiff stretched hardness of metal beneath the skin.

"I know you, Sander. Men like you, you're never happy without a full cunt."

Truly, there are no men like him. It is in this that the two of them are alike.

"You don't know me," Sander says muzzily, raising a great broad hand to stroke Jan's hair. He does it with a reverence, like a priest handles the pyx. "You don't know me at all."

Jan elbows him in the thigh sharply, jostling his insides in the bargain. "Arms up, lump. Do you want to get cut?" Only the mad fellow really might like that, all things considered. He takes Sander's cock-head in his mouth delicately, fixing his teeth just below the ridge of the head, and bites.

Sander comes violently at that, bucking and convulsing and all but frothing at the mouth. Jan withdraws the sword just as the deep muscle-spasms begin, wrenching the pommel-knob free with such force that he expects an audible pop.

With this Jan can be satisfied; the fat ribbons of seed spill down his chin as he grins his triumph. He may not be able to tie a stout knot one-handed, but he can do nasty things to the human body with impunity. Sander lies for a moment with his whole body bent back like a tortured man, and then goes limp, as if concussed by the force of his own climax — his great belly heaves with each breath, so at the least he isn't dead, just a sprawling heap of none-too-fresh beef.

Jan rolls the great beast over in his bonds, the better to free the linen cloth and wipe his own hands more or less clean; the ropes strain threateningly, but they restrain such a dead weight that they hardly seem likely to shatter any rented bedframes. Sander isn't any prettier from behind but the raw power of him has an undeniable appeal, raw and beautiful as horseflesh. The red puffy ring of his hole still gapes slackly in the crevice between his arse-cheeks. Jan rubs a smear of Sander's jism into the raw hole, thoughtfully — though well-fucked, it still clutches pitifully around his fingers. Sander closes his legs around Jan's hand as if to pin him there, and moans incoherently.

"Sander Dordtener, whoever your people might be, I thank you for the use of your sword." Jan settles back on his naked haunches; his own arousal is a dull presence indeed, a throbbing hard-on that might as well belong to somebody else. "I'll be sure to sharpen her up and give her a polish just for you.