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sanguinifexHe had had his horse’s shoes checked by the blacksmith at the last town. There was no reason the animal could not handle the open forest; indeed, the way it was shod, there was less cause for a problem that way, than on the road. A roughshod horse could easily throw a shoe on a cobbled road, and would loosen the stones, and would tear up a well-packed dirt road. Generally, there were few roads in this part of the country, which was why his horse was roughshod in the first place—that and the recently-ended winter—but this one had been left behind at the fall of the ancient empire. It was still strong, all these centuries later, not even moss growing in the minute spaces between the stones[1] (and the masons of today were still trying to figure out just how that was done, for their own roads had to be recobbled every few decades)[2], and Sir Ewain did not want to be the one responsible for damaging that. Leave it for the wagoners, who actually needed it.
He turned his horse into the woods, ignoring its protests, for it wanted to go down the smooth, easy road. Deus forbid a warhorse had to navigate uneven terrain and trouble its head with finding its footing. It was not even very muddy, today, as the zephyrs of May-day had for the last week been drying the rains of April. Indeed, if one went by the weather, one might guess that today was past midsummer. Ewain’s surcoat covered most of his armor, shielding it from the sun, and now that he was off the road the trees gave him shade, but even so, he was sweating through his shirt and into his gambeson. He noticed a still-swampy area downhill from where he rode, a sort of thing between a wide place in a stream and a small pond, with small insects swarming above it. Fumbling in his left saddlebag, he pulled out a pot of musky-smelling salve and smeared it on his exposed face and hands (removing his other gauntlet, having already removed one to use the salve) and on his horse. It was supposed to keep bugs away; he had never tested it, but a large number of locals a few towns back had sworn by the stuff. He had not been able to get citron oil,[3] there, when his personal supply had run out, and the mystery salve did not seem much more expensive, so he had bought it.
He put his gauntlets back on—the horse had kept going, directed only by his spurs, all this time. The lack of citron smell in the bug salve was a little unnerving; every little breeze still made him feel as if there were imaginary bugs that he needed to brush away from his face. Midges were so annoying. His brothers had always laughed at him for his “girlish precautions,” but it was far better than getting fleabites or midge bites behind one’s testicles. He had learned that the hard way.
Reaching into his saddlebags again, Ewain pulled out his compass,[4] checking the swinging needle against the position of the sun. What a wonderful thing, Moorish technology. At least, he was pretty sure it was Moorish technology. Most of the good inventions were. He was pretty sure, from his readings, that if he left the road-bank and cut through this hilly stretch of forest that the old road curved out around, he could get to the next town on his father’s lands before nightfall. As the oldest son, he was responsible for familiarizing himself with the holdings that would someday be his, though, Deus willing, not for years yet. He would ride through a third of the fiefdom, each spring or summer—for the rest of the year, he was learning the running of the estate proper, and it would not do to continually miss one season’s workings—learning each little town’s infrastructure and meeting its inhabitants, dealing with immediate problems such as bandits or wolves, and bringing less time-urgent grievances to the attention of his father. But it was only the third year since he had returned from his squireship as a newly-made knight, so he had never been in this exact part of the holdings before. (When a son of the family was not available, this circuit was the duty of the undersheriff. Of course, that was much less inspiring and impressive than a real knight, to the peasants and lesser lieges.) After a final glimpse at his compass, he returned it to the saddlebag and pointed his horse in the straight direction to the next town.
It went fairly well, for the next couple of hours. Then, suddenly, it very much did not. Some…thing dropped out of a tree and grabbed onto Ewain’s face.
Ewain was not a stranger to combat. He had been in training as a squire recently enough to actually remember his lessons, he had fought two or three real duels, and he had spent the last few months occasionally dispatching wolves and bandits. The thing with human and canine opponents, though, is that they do not generally attack men on horseback from trees and by jumping onto their faces. Arrows from trees, in the case of bandits, yes, but not downwards tackles. Bandits also generally set up ambushes on established roads, in valleys or at bridges or other tactical bottlenecks of frequent traffic. Ewain was riding through a forest of plane trees,[5] navigable only by compass (so thick was the leaf cover); literally no one but him had a reason to ever be there.
Blinded, Ewain flailed and clawed at the thing clinging to his head. His shield was on his back; he could reach his sword and dagger, but he had just the presence of mind to realize that that would likely end with him stabbing or bludgeoning himself in the face.[6] He scrabbled with mailed fingers at the thing attacking his face—whatever it was, it seemed to be about the size of a dog. Only, dogs could not climb trees, he thought. He was pretty sure of that. Absurdly sure, for a man who was being slowly smothered to death. That was curious; why was this thing not clawing him, not eating his face? But he was unharmed, save for a few scrapes and bruises from its landing, and of course lack of air.
Eventually he managed to dislodge the thing and throw it to the ground, where it spooked his horse, more than it must already have been from the behavior of its master. For the first time he got a look at it, as he blinked in the sudden return of light, and—no, he must be hallucinating from near-suffocation; that could not be a spider. That had to be some kind of…very large cat, with sticks caught in its fur. Spiders were not that big. And then another one jumped him, this time on his back, to one side, and the weight of it dragged him off his horse, to the leaf-strewn ground. From where he landed, Ewain saw a third creature jump onto his horse itself. Unsurprisingly, the horse ran off, rolled, got up, and kept running, screaming in terror.
The creature that had been on the horse’s back scuttled back towards Ewain as he struggled to his feet, as several more emerged from the treetops and underbrush, and— Deus, Jesu et Maria,O Sanctes, that was a spider, that could be nothing but a spider, that was a giant, fucking, bloody spider the size of a birding dog, and there were at least five of them. Ewain tried to fight them with his side-sword, but they had carapaces as effective as his own plate at withstanding blows. He tried to beat them down and run, but there were too many, and he could not get the space to take his shield from his back. It was but a buckler, made for easy transportation for a traveling knight, and so the vambrace, rerebrace, and pauldron on his left side were flared in proportion. This helped him a little more, but not enough. And then all the spiders leaped upon him at once, and bore him to the ground.
As Ewain kicked and struggled, several spiders bound his wrists and ankles with webbing—thick as ropes, it was—while others began to tug off pieces of his armor, tearing the chain that covered the gaps in the plate, biting through the lacings with jaws like pincers. They tore through his surcoat, already half torn off in the tussle. His open helm had already come off in the fight or the fall; now chitinous limbs tore off his coif and pauldrons. He felt a tugging at his legs, and realized that his cuisses were being stolen as well—what did the monsters want with them? Did they simply covet anything shiny, like magpies? And then his cuirass and faulds were torn off as well, as he struggled in his bonds, and his hauberk ripped open down the center; but even then, he did not realize the spiders’ full intent.
Claw-hooks tore through Ewain’s gambeson and shirt, baring his chest, and then one of the spiders bit him, sinking its fangs deep into his shoulder. Thinking they meant to eat him alive, as ordinary spiders did to flies, Ewain cried out and struggled all the harder—the webbing stretched, a little, but did not break. Within moments, though, a curious warmth and weakness spread through his limbs, and he went limp, still trying to break free, but unable to command his body. As he twitched futilely, the spiders tore off his chausses, leggings, and smalls as well, and finally Ewain realized what the creatures meant to do to him.
“No!” he gasped, rendered by the venom unable to scream, indeed barely able to draw breath. “I am not your kind. Why are you doing this?”
The spiders, being dumb creatures, did not answer.
“Jesu protect me from these demon-spawn! Or wake me, if I am dreaming!”
The heavens did not answer. Instead, a spider bit him once again, perhaps deciding he was too loud, and another dose of venom coursed through Ewain, making him feel as though he were burning, and, to his horror, awakening his fifth limb even as it paralyzed the other four.
Spider limbs traced over his skin, leaving arousal in their wake. Ewain’s cries of distress turned to moans, as despite himself he could not help but crave more. The stroking continued, eventually centering on his groin, and were he not all but paralyzed by the venom, he would have thrust into it.
A spider straddled Ewain’s face. A slit in its belly opened, and a spiny appendage extended from it, glistening with clear, musky fluid. Chittering, it tried to push the thing into Ewain’s mouth. He attempted to clench his jaw, as it smeared itself across his face, but his muscles were toneless and slack, and the spider’s rigid member easily forced his mouth open, sending strange pleasure through his body as it passed through his hypersensitive lips.
The fluid coating the spider’s cock tasted strange, but not unpleasant. After a few passes of the spider thrusting in and out, it began to make Ewain’s mouth and tongue tingle. It alarmed him somewhat, but he could still breathe, and the feeling sent a wave of bliss down through his body to his own cock. The rest of the spiders were still stroking it; he could feel their strange limbs tracing over it. Some of the things touching him there seemed sticky, but he could not see why that was so, with a spider all but sitting on his face and thrusting its thick mentule into his mouth.
The spider continued to ravage Ewain’s throat, and as it did so, Ewain thought he sensed a change in the liquid slowly seeping from its member. Perhaps it was the venom in his veins, or the action of the earlier liquid on his mouth, but where before it had tasted mildly salty, now it seemed metallic yet sweet, and somehow the best thing he had ever tasted. Before he could stop himself or protest the indignity, Ewain began to suck eagerly on the invading spider prick, trying to get more of that delicious substance out of it. He was rewarded by a pulse of stronger-tasting fluid, and he greedily swallowed it down, before he remembered, through the venom haze, that this was a spider raping his mouth, and realized that he had just willingly participated in this violent and shameful humiliation. He was a knight, and knights simply were not irrumated by unnatural beasts in bewitched corners of forests! For that must be it, why the ancients had avoided this part of the forest and built their road around it, and he, a fool, had ignored that wisdom of the past. And now, to pay for it, he lay half-naked on moldering leaves untouched by men for centuries, being raped by infernal spiders. He had not believed in the fae, trusting instead in the teachings of the Church. He did not know if these spiders were the fae, but he was much more willing to believe, now.
But the combination of the venom and the lack of air was making Ewain’s head swim, and soon once more all he could think about was the need to suck on that spider phallus and taste that delicious fluid. Perhaps the other spiders could sense that spider’s reaction to his sucking, for they kept pace with his every suck and lick, so that the faster he sucked, the faster the spiders stroked Ewain’s cock, tying the submissive act to his own pleasure. Realizing this with his body—for his mind was now out of the equation—Ewain intensified his oral worship of the spider cock, licking great sweeps over the spiny ridges at its tip and slavering along its alien shaft.
Suddenly Ewain’s mouth was filled with an ambrosial deluge, as the spider face-fucking him reached orgasm. As he gulped down the decadent liquid, whatever simples were in spiders’ spend sent a wave of tingling pleasure to his own core, starting in his throat and stomach, and Ewain spent himself in turn, thrashing weakly against his bonds and spraying a torrent of white seed over the limbs of the gathered chittering creatures.
The spider pulled out of Ewain’s mouth, leaving him whimpering at the loss. Within seconds, though, another spider had taken its place. This one’s cock was shaped a little differently, with more of a concavity at its end, but it was in his mouth, and it was leaking a slightly less sweet but no less delicious and mouth-tingling fluid, and that was all that mattered. Hardly had he settled into the rhythm of sucking again, though, when some of the spider limbs moved from his cock to his hitherto-unmolested hole.
Ewain squeaked in alarm at the sudden, new sensation, some vestige of self-preservation returning to him. It was bad enough for his mouth to be used in such an unseemly fashion (he continued to swallow around the spider phallus all the while), but for the core of his virtue to be so defiled as well? Ewain was not ignorant of what vices men could engage in with that part; had heard whispers of pleasures to be gotten from a mysterious thing referred to as “the walnut” or “the catamite’s womb.”[7] He had had several opportunities to indulge in them himself, as a squire, but had chosen to spurn such advances and keep his purity, according to the dictates of the Church. And he had kept it through to the day of his knighthood, only now to have it taken by vile beasts? But the spiders were relentless, as they poked and licked—for those could only be tongues, though strangely shaped—and their venoms worked their power on his flesh, and his sphincter tingled and laxed and let the spider tongues slowly slip inside.
Ewain keened and moaned as more spider tongues entered his ass, licking at the gland therein. It felt so good, all those spider tongues plundering him, stimulating something inside him and forcing him towards pleasure. Three spiders had their tongues in him, he thought, three tongues jabbing at that sensitive gland. Ewain felt a desperate need to come, egged on by the spider tongues stimulating his most sensitive parts.
Then, a spider cock slid into him. It was big and spiny, ridged like the one that had gone into his mouth. But this was his ass, and the stretch burned, the phallus being so much larger than the array of spider tongues before it, and Ewain screamed around the spider cock at the pain of it. Then suddenly, his rim felt…wetter, and the pain lessened. He only hoped that the wetness was not blood. The spider thrust in and out a few times, and then its angle changed. Suddenly, instead of being merely bearable, the spider’s thrusts were now a source of unimaginable pleasure. Ewain was ruined, he knew, corrupted by demon arachnids, turned sodomite by their infernal appendages. How could he be a lord of the land, after this? He still desired women, but he knew he would never be free of the memory of these beasts, or consider pleasure only as a man should, without the wish for this shameful penetration. And yet more strongly driven by the drug, he endeavored to push back onto the phallus impaling him, even as the webbing and those same drugs rendered his attempts at moving useless.
The spider-cock in his mouth pulsed, and Ewain felt a solid yet squishy object slide into his esophagus. It stretched his throat wide, and he gagged on it. Another one slid into his mouth, and Ewain was forced to swallow the first, simply to be able to breathe. What on earth…? He had no more time to wonder, simply to swallow, as the oncoming procession of those mysterious things threatened to cut off his breath. It was a difficult task. The things were the size of small hen’s eggs—perhaps they were in fact spider eggs, Ewain realized; normal spiders had eggs—and the drugs ravaging him made their passage down his gullet agonizingly intense, simultaneously painful and somehow erotic. And all the while, the spider at his rear continued pounding that shamefully pleasurable gland within him, forcing him closer and closer to another peak of ecstasy, even as his very stomach was violated by another spider’s eggs.
After perhaps a dozen of the strange things, the spider emitted a rush of strong salty-sweet fluid into his mouth, and withdrew. Ewain sputtered, coughing, as a few drops got in his lungs; still, he was thankful to be free for a moment from that penetration, even as a part of him, spurred on by the drugs, lamented the loss of it and wished once again to take a spider cock in his mouth. The spider raping his ass thrust all the harder, physically jarring him now that his upper half was not held down by a spider’s weight, and suddenly one of the jolts against his “walnut” gave him such a sharp jolt of pleasure that it grew and spread into true climax, and Ewain spattered seed all over himself once more.
The spider fucking him did not stop.
Ewain began to cry out as the continued thrusting overstimulated his drug-strung nerves to the point of pain. At least he could cry out; that meant the venom was starting to wear off. Fearing another envenomed bite, he forced himself to be quiet. Before long, though, another spider (or was it the first again?) straddled his face, and Ewain’s mouth was penetrated for the third time.
If this was not indeed the first spider, erection renewed, this was certainly the same sort. Ewain recognized the metallic-sweet fluid coating its member, and realized with relief that at least he was unlikely to get another bellyful of mysterious egg-things this time. He hoped he would not later, either, before the spiders were done with him (they must be done sometime, he prayed); he feared his stomach would burst if he were forced to swallow another load of them. Already it had seemed slightly distended, for the few moments he had been able to look down at himself before the current spider had blocked his view.
So great was his relief and continued lust that Ewain eagerly sucked on the new spider’s phallus, stroking the alien ridges with his tongue in loving detail, lingering on every cranny. His suckling kept time with the excruciatingly pleasurable thrusts of the spider indefatigably sodomizing his ass, as he tried not to accidentally bite the one using his mouth. Even disregarding his desire to hide his gradual recovery from the spiders, biting, he thought, would not end well. If sexually frustrated spiders were this formidable, he did not want to even consider sexually frustrated injured spiders’ wrath. Ewain kept his jaw lax, and dutifully sucked.
The ass-spider plunged in even further than before, the pain making Ewain scream as he swore he felt something tear, and then it climaxed, sending burning fluid into his ravaged bowels before it withdrew. For burn it did. Whether it was a peculiarity of spider jism or of intestines, or whether it was the injuries he had doubtless sustained from the abhorrent copulation, Ewain did not know; all that mattered was the stinging pain within him, and the awful pleasure it brought in its wake, even as it felt as if hot coals had been poured into his anus.
He had almost adjusted to the agony when yet another spider’s penis thrust into the starburst center of the anal inferno, driving through his torn and abraded rim like a torturer’s hook into a criminal’s flesh. Ewain screamed even more loudly than before, unable to stop himself, and kept screaming, until he tapered off into heaving sobs, even as he continued to lave the spider cock in his mouth. He could tell that he was still hard, somehow, despite the pain or even because of it, and despite the burning and boiling in his flesh, he felt the renewed thrusting against the shameful gland in his ass as renewal of pleasure, and could only helplessly await a third unwilling climax. He cried and sucked once again in rhythm with the pounding, sobs being forced out of him with each slam of spider-body against buttocks.
Once more he felt a spider drive into him deep and still itself (and the pain was still there, it had never gone, he was nearly at the height of pleasure and utterly consumed by pain), but instead of more seed, he felt a much more insistent pressure, starting at his rim, but then slipping through and continuing up his entrails. Ewain realized almost at once what that meant. He cried with renewed alarm and managed to struggle a little in his webbed bonds, fearing he would die as the spider laid its eggs deep within his bowels. Was he meant to die here, filled with spiders’ offspring, perhaps to be food for the young when they hatched in his bloated, rotten body?
He was sure to go to Hell. That was his most urgent thought, even as the spiders continued to rape his mouth and fundament. He had not confessed in weeks, and he had taken pleasure in the most depraved and unnatural of acts, even if he had not intended to. Unshriven, and without Christian burial if he died here; surely he had no hope of seeing the face of his Creator. He tried to call out to God and the saints, to make vows for his rescue and salvation, but his mouth was occupied, and his thoughts scattered by the spiders’ thrusts and the awful, stretching, burning pain, and the blooming pleasure.
The spider fucking his mouth finally shuddered and ejected its juices into his throat, and climbed off his face. The venom had worn off just enough that Ewain was glad to see it go. Shortly thereafter, the spider filling his guts with eggs finished emptying itself and pulled out. The drag of the flared head of its instrument pulling itself out through his abused rim finally triggered his own climax. Ewain shuddered through his last orgasm, emptying his bollocks weakly, as his seed trickled more than spurted out of him, coating his pintle with a layer of sticky whiteness as it finally, blessedly went limp.
Blessedly, the spiders had disappeared. Night had fallen. Perhaps the creatures feared the more usual beasts of the night, or perhaps they considered him bred well enough, having put both eggs and what might be called semen into both his orifices. Ewain did not want to think about what that meant. He simply worked on freeing himself from the webbing, as movement slowly returned to his limbs.
His clothing and armor lay around him, but much of it was hardly wearable. The spiders had wrenched what of his armor they had torn off, though funnily enough he was still wearing his gauntlets, greaves, vambraces, and sabatons, and the back half of his cuirasse. His leggings and smalls were so ripped as to be unwearable, what was not held on by his remaining armor, nor did he want anything in contact with his crotch, right now. The tatters of his hauberk, shirt and gambeson offered no modesty, for they were torn down the middle. He was unsure where his surcoat had even ended up. Ewain ended up tying on his breastplate and faulds as best he could, for some coverage, and his cuisses, with the remains of his shirt, and put on his helmet, for armor was expensive, but gave up his coif as a lost cause. He must look like an apparition, he thought, and then more grimly, wondered if indeed he was one.
He staggered in the direction of where he thought he had been heading, before the spiders, judging the moon to be in the east, for it had not been long since dusk, and the moon had not risen while it was still day. He managed several hundred paces before his body rebelled against the spider eggs, and he fell to his hands and knees, vomiting up metallic fluid and whitish blobs onto the forest floor. A few more spasms of the same and he felt the urge to squat; and he did so, since there was nothing but air between his backside and the ground anyway, ejecting more fluid and eggs from his rear as he continued to vomit. Shamefully, he felt a few twinges of pleasure from the last traces of the venom as the eggs passed through his abused sphincter; his cock twitched, but thankfully remained limp.
At last he was pretty sure he was done; nothing had come out for a few minutes, and, checking around him, there seemed to be the same number of eggs in each pile of filth. Yes, Ewain confirmed, those were definitely eggs. Their rubbery shells were semi-transparent, and he could see dark masses within them by the moonlight. Mere yolks, or baby spiders? Ewain stomped them all into the ground to be sure, every one of them, trying not to think about what he was getting on his sabatons.
Ewain felt light-headed, but less foul. Not much farther on, he found a small stream, which refreshed him greatly, for he had drunk nothing but spider fluids for several hours, and he had thrown up most of those. Thus he had the strength to arrive at the ancient road, and a half mile later by that, at the next town.
By then, it was nearly dawn. It had been slow going, for he was injured and on foot, nor was the town itself so very near, and he had gone slightly the wrong direction, backtracking himself from his original path and meeting the road before the town. Ewain rapped at the town gates, scaring the lone watchman nearly insensible with his appearance. The man had recognized the markings on his armor, though, after the initial shock, and quickly opened the smaller door set within the great gate; he helped Ewain inside, for the knight was on the point of collapse. Inside the guardhouse, Ewain mumbled something about “wild beasts,” and asked for a priest. Seeing that Sir Ewain was not bleeding significantly from anywhere, the guard decided to leave the priest to sleep until morning, and woke his fellow guard from the previous watch to go fetch the barber-surgeon.
Ewain refused to be examined by the man, too ashamed to admit what had happened under any circumstances other than the seal of the confessional. However, he then collapsed into sleep, and the barber made a cursory examination, for fear the liege-lord’s heir was dying of internal injuries. He guessed the general nature of what had occurred, though he blamed bandits, not spiders, but said nothing of it to the guardsmen, fearing for his own skin when the knight awoke. Still, it would have taken a blind man or a child not to guess the basic cause of Sir Ewain’s injuries, and the guardsmen were still in the room when the state of his trousers and groin were revealed. By midday, whispered rumors swirled around the town.
It was afternoon by the time Ewain awoke. He noticed that he had been stripped and bathed as he slept, which sent fear into his soul, for now he knew someone must have realized the indignities he had undergone. His armor had been cleaned, perhaps by the guardsmen, and put on an armor stand, though pieces other than his coif were missing. He would ask at the blacksmith’s, to see if they had it. A clean shirt and breeches of rough linen had been left on a chair by the bed he lay in, plus a pair of smalls made of finer fabric. It almost confirmed his suspicions of what the townsfolk knew, yet he was grateful for the mercy to his horribly battered privy areas. He dressed, and hobbled out of the guardhouse bedroom; the guard on duty simply nodded at him and gestured at the fireplace, where Ewain found a small pot of broth, and warmed almonds’ milk[8] with a bit of honey. He drank both, and felt waterlogged but much less wobbly.
That was enough tending to his mortal needs; he must tend to his soul. The weight of what had been done and his acquiescence to it weighed on his spirit and threatened to burst from his lips; he felt as if he would choke, if he did not tell it. A priest could not tell. Priests could not even be compelled to give witness to confessed murders, so one could hardly be induced to spread word of sodomy or pathicism. Ewain would just have to send this parish a few barrels of really nice sacramental wine every year for the rest of his natural life, to be safe.
He had arrived at the church. The aged priest immediately realized who he was—perhaps he had been forewarned, or perhaps Sir Ewain was simply the only person in the village right now that he would not recognize. Ewain was ushered into the confessional, where he knelt and drew breath to speak. He was bizarrely aware of the smell of the incense which permeated the church; it was a different one than was used in the chapel of his father’s castle. From the smell, it might have been straight pine sap.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” began Ewain. “It has been eight or nine weeks since my last confession. I normally go to the priest at my family’s estate to confess my sins, but a matter of urgent guilt has come upon my soul.”
The priest told him to continue.
“I have often heard the psalm that bids the Lord’s spirit to lead us on a level path,[9] but I must never have truly taken it to my heart, for yesterday I strayed from the level path, and thus befell me a great evil, and I sinned. I turned off of the ancient road, thinking to cut across where it curves and reach this town before nightfall. I soon learned the reason why the ancient builders chose such a seeming folly of design, for in the woods I was set upon by wild beasts, like spiders but monstrous in size, and being overcome by them, I was bound by their webs and forced by them to engage in unnatural intercourse.”
“The spiders have been thought to be an old wives’ tale,” interrupted the friar, at this point. “Any other man I would accuse of jesting, if he told me this tale. But I have heard from the guardsmen what condition you were in, when you came here last night, and I must admit some such foulness must have been done to you. But take care you do not invent blasphemies to cover up willing sins.”
“I invent nothing! Please believe me, father. The ancients who built that road must have had some reason to build it that way. There are not even ruins of a town where it curves, thus I saw from a map I bought, which sadly I do not now have, unless another has recovered my horse, which I lost when the spiders beset me; why else would learned architects and mason do such a thing?”
“I believe that you at least believe the tale you relate to me. But being forced by a beast is itself no sin. One may be disgusted when a dog attempts to rut itself against one’s leg, for example, but that is not a sin, since the dog is a dumb animal. If these spiders exist, as fantastical as it seems, or if you were beset by demons in such shapes, though may God forgive us for comparing ourselves to the ascetics of old, that is as that dog, but simply larger.”
“It is worse, Father. I took pleasure in the indignities the spiders wrought against me. They bit me with teeth envenomed, to paralyze me, but also I think to engender such a thing. Enflamed by the venom, I wanted it, wanted every violation, no matter how shameful or painful.
“First one of them climbed upon my face, and committed that type of sodomy[10] that I have heard in whispers called ‘irrumatio.’ I accepted it, at first reluctantly and then eagerly, even sucking and kissing the shameful part of my own free will, for the venom stirred my desires and the taste of the spider’s member was sweet, even as the fruit stolen by Eve was sweet. While it did so, other spiders stroked my member by some technique I could not see, on account of the spider defiling my face; then, after that one reached its completion, I was subject to the same indignity by another spider, which one must have been female, for it laid eggs in my mouth, and forced me to swallow them. As this second spider did this, the others performed on me the ‘kiss of infamy,’ as one hears is done by heretical orders in the Holy Land,[11] and then one of them shamefully penetrated that same part, I think that act is called ‘pedicatio,’ and spent its seed within me. During this time yet another spider…irrumated me, male this time, and then a female spider also penetrated my lower parts and laid eggs there as well. These eggs and the earlier ones I later expelled, after my escape but before I reached this town.
“I enjoyed all of these indecent acts, even as they caused me pain, even as the venom began to release its hold, and reached my own completion three times during these events.”
The priest was silent, for a moment. He had heard many sordid things in confessions, and forgotten most of them, as is the way with priests, but never a tale such as the man on the other side of the screen had related. It could not be possible. The spiders were a well-known local legend, but they were the same fae folk that priests were always trying to get peasants to stop believing in. Good Christians scorned such legends, though paganism ran so deep in the blood of common folk that he and many of his fellows despaired of ever getting rid of it. But for a knight such as Sir Ewain, who was well-bred and Latined, who as a youth had been rumored to have more interest in the Church than to knighthood, to believe such a thing…undoubtedly the poor boy must have experienced some great indignity, perhaps at the hands of evil men, and his mind had seized on the legends he must have heard in childhood from some wet-nurse, turning the evils of men into the senselessness of beasts. Perhaps he had even been drugged, but mayhap with hash-hish or henbane,[12] which might explain his visions.
He would still give the man penance. He could find little culpability, but many times, penance was less for the sin committed and more for the sinner to free himself from his own guilt. The Lord allowed men to be shriven both to save their souls and to heal their bodies, for hoarded guilt caused all manner of earthly ills. The priest read the prayers of absolution, and assigned a penance that would seem reasonable to the man given it.
“Do one entire rosary once a day, for ten years, twice on the Lord’s day, and, as soon as you are recovered enough to do the prostrations, and any day you are well enough, three of the prayer of Ephraim, immediately before slumber.[13] Because you did not end up in that sin of your own accord, you are not required to abstain from the sacrament. You must also relate all you have told me to your usual confessor, when you can.”
Ewain gratefully accepted this penance, merciful in his eyes, and indeed prayed his first assigned rosary right there. Not in the confessional itself, of course, but in the little village church. Then, much relieved of his guilt, though not of the horror, he went about the town, resting frequently, inquiring after his armor (indeed at the blacksmith’s) and his horse (it had not been found). He took a private room at the tavern, on credit, and went to bed even though it was barely dark, for he was still weak from his ordeal, and had exhausted himself.
******
Several miles away, in another tavern, a merchant was waving around a mug containing the last few drams of his sixth pint of ale.
“So I’m out of citron oil, I tell ‘im, b’cus I am,” he said, stopping to take another drink. “So ‘e asks if anyone else ‘as some, because ‘e really ‘ates bugs. Noblemen, y’know. I don’ wanna lose a sale, so I tell ‘im I got a ‘local formula.’”
“You didn’t sell ‘im the spider salve!” gasped the barmaid. “Sammy, ‘e’s not from these parts, ‘e doesn’t know! Anythin’ ‘appens, ‘is da’ll ‘ave our ‘eads, all of us!”
“Nyeeeah, Bess, ‘e’ll take the road. ‘E’s got a ‘orse. ‘Orses ‘ate goin’ off the road.” Samuel leaned-sprawled over the table and stuck his arm out, spilling the last of his drink. This was probably intended to be some kind of emphasis. Or it might have been a request for another drink, but Bess decided to ignore it until he sobered up a bit. “’E’ll take the road, ‘e’ll go round the bend, prob’ly see nuffin’. Mebbe ‘e’ll see…one spider, but ‘e’s a knight. ‘E’s got a sword. So ‘e kills the spider, and I comes along after’n gets the spider juice. C’n I get summore ale?”[14]
******
He dreamt of spiders. Once more they tormented him, weighing down his limbs so he could not move, sitting on his chest and waving their obscene members before his paralyzed eyes. Their spiny limbs skittered over his body, caressing his ears and nipples and teasing his ass and even slipping inside his swelling cock. They even seemed to penetrate him, cramming their horrid mentules into his ass, two or even three at a time, splitting him open and filling him with eggs until his entrails burst and eggs flooded the entirety of his organs.[15]
Ewain woke with a start. He was safe, and in an inn. And then he began to cry from shame and humiliation, as he pulled back the bedclothes to reveal sheets soaked with his own seed, for his nightmares had caused him to have multiple emissions.
[1] Possibly a chemical treatment of the road’s underlayers, perhaps some kind of metal salt? I don’t know if this is actually a feature of Roman roads, or the still-surviving ones, in fact I doubt it, but it seems ultimately too unimportant to look up. This is Fantasy Europe.
[2] Roman concrete was on some shit. The formula for their concrete was lost during the fall of the Empire, as the building method that used it, opus testaceum or opus latericium, relied on components mass-produced from around the empire and shipped to where it was needed, and the increasing instability of the Empire made it not worth using, as it might be impossible to get either concrete or tiles, and neither was much use on its own, at the time. We still don’t know today, in the 21st century, just what the Romans did to make it so durable, as many of their roads and buildings endure today—this isn’t a matter of chemical analysis, it’s stuff like temperatures and lengths of processes—while our modern asphalt and concrete cracks after a few good winters. Whoever figures it out and manages to make it mass-producible (for the Romans managed to mass-produce it, so it can be done) will probably win a Nobel prize in engineering or chemistry or whatever. Famous examples of this technique include parts of Hadrian’s Villa, which has a wonderful digitally explorable 3D reconstruction available somewhere. Source: http://sights.seindal.dk/sight/330_Opus_testaceum.html .
[3] I am assuming, because I am too lazy to look this up at the moment, that this is the stuff that is in modern citronella candles and most other natural bug repellents, or very similar to it. It actually comes from lemongrass, not citrons, but not a species that would be found in any of the regions where Ewain might live. Given that it has to be imported from somewhere, it is not unrealistic for it to have a similar cost to the mystery salve, even considering that salve’s later-revealed source and arduous means of harvesting. Source: Wikipedia (Citronella_oil).
[4] It’s the late 14th or early 15th century, chosen primarily because that’s the sexiest armor. According to Wikipedia (History_of_the_compass), Dante’s Divine Comedy, written in the early-mid 14th century, mentions the dry compass, meaning it would have been known in whatever deliberately vague part of Europe Ewain lives in.
[5] So no acorns or fruit worth harvesting or letting pigs or other animals to wild there. No use but lumber, and the peasants aren’t allowed to cut trees on their lord’s land, just gather deadwood, which they do closer to the village…especially because of what lives over here.
[6] A large percentage of sword kills were actually bludgeoning enemies to death with the sword pommel, called the “murder stroke.”
[7] I have no idea if these are accurate. The first is likely, but the second is entirely my own invention. There really isn’t any data on what the prostate was called in the millennia that people were doing enjoyable things with it before the word “prostate” was invented in the 17th century. I asked my favorite gay medievalist, but I haven’t gotten an answer, so either he doesn’t know or tumblr ate my ask.
[8] Almond milk was used extensively in medieval cooking, because most people could not easily obtain fresh, unadulterated milk, unless they kept cows themselves. Urban people mostly didn’t. Source: http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec31.htm Kudos to the wonderful penbrydd for giving me links to medieval recipes. I hope he forgives me for using them for this.
[9] Psalm 143:10 (142 in Septuagint and apparently also Vulgate numbering). This psalm is the last of 6 that are read at the start of Matins, and this verse is the one that is repeated at the end of the psalm by the cantor, before the “Alleluia.” It is unlikely that a medieval European would have heard it in the vernacular, but Ewain, who knows enough Latin to get through services, is likely translating. In Latin, the text is “spiritus tuus bonus deducet me in terra recta.”
[10] The word “sodomy” in medieval and renaissance Christianity covered a number of acts. If you’re interested in this topic, you will want to read Mark Jordan’s The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology, and probably the rest of his body of work as well.
[11] I’ve probably got the timeline wrong, but ritual anilingus actually was an accusation against the Knights Templar. At least according to a book I read 10 years ago, which also thought the Knights Templar turned into the freemasons, but I don’t see too much reason to doubt its assertion of what the Inquisition or whatever accused them of.
[12] Black henbane, hyoscyamus niger. Also known as stinking nightshade. It used to be a common herbal remedy, and can be useful for pain relief, but in high doses can also cause nausea, seizures, and hallucinations. Interestingly, one of its active components is scopolamine. It is specifically known to have been used in medieval Scotland at a “healing waters” monastery on the Isle of May, and that it was referred to as “henbane” definitely by the late 13th century CE. Sources: Wikipedia (Hyoscamus_niger); Marlo Willow’s “Prayers and Poultices: Medieval Healthcare at the Isle of May, Scotland, c. 430-1580 AD,” from the book Care in the Past: Archeological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Oxbow Books, 2017, via JSTOR.
[13] This is a sizeable prayer regimen. It is doable (I had a similar-length daily prayer ritual as a child, as a result of severe OCD), but it takes a certain amount of effort. When sung all prettily, it’s about an hour long; spoken, I’d guess it’s about half that. (I used to listen to it, in Latin, sung by a monastic choir, while I worked on my undergraduate thesis, because it was grounding and soothing. It’s amazing how much better Latin sounds when it’s sung by people who know it, rather than just the average high school or university choir. Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gPan_INmjE.) I will not reproduce the full text of the Prayer of St. Ephraim here (Wikipedia: Prayer_of_Saint_Ephrem), but it involves “prostrations” where one goes from standing down to a hands-and-knees kneeling position and then back up, rather quickly. Obviously, that is a risk for a head rush! Thus the priest’s warning. It is rather unlikely that it would be used in the Roman Catholic church in this period, but it seems appropriate. I admit to blending Byzantine practice into this fic, out of laziness.
[14] It’s all fucking spider pheromones. Which might actually work, to repel other bugs, because the bugs are like “fuck no there’s spiders,” but it’s a fucking bad idea to go traipsing into a giant spider nest with that on your face. Though it might’ve saved him from simply being eaten; I think dog-sized spiders would go for like pheasant-sized prey normally, though. Also, I have no idea what accent I’m writing, here. Probably some horrific combination of Yorkshire and Appalachian.
[15] Sex nightmares. They’re a thing. They’re usually worse than what actually happened to you. If you’ve been through shit or definitely-thought-there-was-imminent-shit and that happens to you, it’s normal. Like, it mega sucks, but it’s normal.