“What the fuck?” Ursus roared, forgetting himself and rushing forward while Anazâr took stock of the situation.
“Good aim,” remarked Anazâr. His mind had caught up with the movement of his body. Someone in the darkness beyond had thrown a jagged chunk of wood at him.
“That was the Sarmatian, masters, and no one else! And she’s out of things to throw, I promise!” Whoever shouted had excellent Latin; better than his own but still not quite Roman. A hint of please don’t punish us all hung in the desperation of the plea. That she’d sell out one of her own was very telling of the work Anazâr had ahead of him.
His eyes adjusted to the dimness. They were shackled along the length of a single chain—had apparently lain shackled all night on rough blankets next to reeking latrine buckets. His old cell at the ludus was palatial in comparison. Bile rose in his throat at the thought of women kept this way, but he pushed it back. His wife was a woman—these were gladiators, and he’d need to treat them as such if they were to have any chance of survival.
“There’s the Sarmatian bitch,” shouted Ursus, pointing at one who was crouching in a corner like an animal, but not in fear. Long dark hair matted in filthy tangles obscured her face, and she laughed. “Should I throw that bucket of piss on her to teach her a lesson?”
“No,” Anazâr said. “Stand back. Who among you speaks Latin?”
Shadowy forms stirred. A woman with skin much darker than his own raised her hand. “I, Amanikhabale, was the one who warned you, Dominus.”
Dominus. He quelled the urge to look behind him. I am he. “You sell out your sisters so easily?” Anazar chided.
Her bold face fell for a moment, but she recovered quickly. “My people are known for learning, Dominus, a quality which could be of great advantage to you. Provided with tablet and stylus, I would quickly write you a detailed report of the food supplies, physical condition, and fighting ability of our motley group of—”
“I don’t read, and I’ll form my own impressions. Step back. Who else?”
“I am the Roman,” said another, as large and broad-shouldered as the Aethiopian—thank the gods they all appeared to have been chosen for size—but shrinking in on herself, barely standing. She didn’t even say her name.
“I am Venatrix, the Gaul.” Her name meant huntress, but she looked more like a shepherdess, stolid and accustomed to patient waiting. Hair that if clean might be that golden color common among her people.
More women raised their hands after her and repeated their names, all mythological or warrior names no doubt assigned earlier that year. A Diana, a Penthesilea, an Atalanta. Some of them spoke in such a heavy Gallic accent that their Latin would be minimal, at best. Venatrix could translate, in that case.
“Those are the Germans,” said Ursus, gesturing to the right of Amanikhabale the Aethiopian. “I keep them chained apart. They don’t mix well, and they don’t speak Latin. Nobody knows their jabbering.” The three didn’t look different from the Gauls, except they stood closely together and looked directly toward him, not downward, eyes steely and lips tight.
Anazâr imagined that the Aethiopian would have learned much of their “jabbering” by now, if she was as clever as she claimed. But she stayed silent. Holding back in hopes of a more beneficial opportunity?
“I will speak slowly, and I will wait for this to be translated, and then I will speak it again,” Anazâr said, beginning his breath from deep in his chest so that his words exploded into the air and echoed from the high brick walls. “My name is Cyrenaicus the Numidian. I am here on the order of Marianus to train you as gladiatrices. Everything I do will serve that purpose. Everything. I am not here to punish you or rape you. I’ve fought in the arena and I will teach you to do the same. To fight, to kill, to win. What I teach you in these months will save your lives and those of your sisters. Since your lives are in the balance, I will not be lax in matters of discipline. But I will not be needlessly cruel.”
One of the Gauls raised her hand again, and Anazâr nodded curtly at her. “If my fighting bad, the master sell me?” she asked.
Ursus moved closer to whisper harshly into his ear. “The old trainer already checked that. Rule is, they go to the arena either way: gladiatrices or lion bait. Otherwise they’ll all fight like shit so they’ll get sold for whores and live.”
Anazâr had already figured as much. “Nothing has changed,” he proclaimed, and then tried to disguise the sympathy in his voice with savage finality: “You have no choice.”
Just as I have no choice.
“A question from Rhakshna Roxolania, oh master-who-is-slave,” shouted the Sarmatian in a strange, guttural Greek. “When can I kill some fucking Romans?”
“Two months,” said Anazâr. “Next question?”
The scant light from the few high windows obscured the sun’s passage, leaving the cavernous interior of the warehouse in perpetual rank-smelling twilight. I am a master in Hades, thought Anazâr more than once that day.
He could do little training. After unchaining the women, he and Ursus saw to their breakfast, and then there was the unavoidable matter of the buckets. He’d tried to organize a line passing to the sewer outside, only to have it break down into a German-Gaul shoving match where filth spilled across the floor as the Sarmatian paced and howled curses.
By the time the sun went down, he’d memorized all their names, judged their strength by having them lift stone weights, checked them for wounds and sores, and taken each alone (save Rhakshna) for a walk around the warehouse in the fresh air, for which they were all probably grateful, even if not all of them were quick to show it.
The Aethiopian was the last. She linked her arm around his elbow and walked as if they were lovers, smiling to passersby. “Can you even read the letters across your forehead?” she asked.
“I know enough,” he growled back at her. “I know what they mean.”
“That’s not the same as being able to read, but fine. What was it like, running away? Being captured again?”
“The first was easy. I’m a horseman. I stole a horse and rode far. But it was winter, and I couldn’t keep it alive, so they found me starving on the road.” He’d been so far gone with the hunger and the cold and the lashing that the pain of the tattoo had barely registered, until he woke up the next morning and scratched and scratched until he bled all over again and screamed and scratched at his bloody forehead some more. Details, details.
The weather now was a perfectly fresh Roman spring. Cool breeze, but no need for a cloak.
“I could teach you to read, you know. That could increase your value to your master. I’d ask for nothing in return, in the beginning.”
In the beginning. He could find no fault in her quest for advantage, of course, and perhaps they could establish an allegiance along the way. “We’ll speak at breakfast tomorrow. I’d like to know everything you can tell me about the reign of the old trainer—what he did that worked, and didn’t. I’ll try to bring a tablet and stylus.” He wrinkled his nose. “And most definitely soap and oil. Ursus should not have neglected that so badly.”
“He’s a pig. No better than your pig predecessor. You’d do well to be rid of him, if you hope to change things here.”
“You overstep your boundaries,” Anazâr warned.
“I’ll act more deferentially around the other women, but I propose we establish our relationship upon the most pragmatic of foundations. You’re in over your head. You need me. The only one of us who can fight is the Sarmatian, and she’ll vault the wall and start killing the audience if given half the chance. Examine your options from the outside, all of them, as wisely as possible, and I’ll keep you informed from the inside.”
They’d made a full circuit. As he led Amanikhabale back into the warehouse, he saw that the sun had fully sunk behind the row of warehouses to the left. It was time to return for his report.
“Tuck the ladies in for the night?” asked Ursus, rattling the long chain he would thread through thei
r shackles. The ladies. Two words, but they were filled with a giant weight of sarcasm and contempt.
“Yes,” he hissed through clenched teeth. Amanikhabale may have spoken out of turn, but she was right about Ursus. Not that Anazâr could do anything about it. He addressed himself to the women. “Vale, gladiatrices.”
“Vale,” they murmured in a hesitant chorus of discordant accents.
“Vale my tits and ass,” yelled the Sarmatian. Amanikhabale, who obviously counted Greek among her languages, fought back a crooked smile.
“Marianus is finishing his dinner,” said the majordomo, whose name was Alexandros. “But he left word that you were to be sent in immediately. Ursus can wait outside.”
Finally free of his unwelcome shadow, Anazâr stepped into the atrium. The candelabras were all lit up now, and warm flickers of light played across the murals on the walls.
“Is he alone?” he asked Alexandros.
“The domina, Aelia, is with him. She takes a keen interest in business and he keeps no secrets from her, so speak freely in your report. They have a young son, but he’s staying at his grandfather’s house this week.”
Alexandros led him through the study that linked the atrium to the interior garden. The stone columns along the edges had white-flowering vines growing halfway up their length, as if the plants were trying to escape through the open roof into the night sky.
Anazâr tried not to stare at the garden, although it impressed him even more than any of the house’s other artful treasures. He’d been born and raised in the dusty westlands, where oasis water was too precious to use on anything save crops.
Marianus and his wife had retired for the evening to a doorless room on the right side of the garden. Aelia was a beautiful woman, as the Romans judged beauty; Anazâr had lived here long enough to understand that instantly, to feel it down to his bones. Pale skin, softly curling honey-colored hair, a heart-shaped face with wide, long-lashed eyes set almost too far apart. On the couch where she reclined, the folds of her rose-pink stola draped over her delicate form, which was womanly but near child-sized, though perhaps his judgment in that regard was clouded by his day spent among the gladiatrices.
The slave woman from the other night sat beside Aelia, painting her nails with pigment from a cluster of miniature glass bottles tied together with golden wire, a little treasure in itself. The slave did not look up from her task for a single moment, but Aelia smiled to Anazâr and acknowledged his presence with a friendly, regal wave of her free hand. “So this is Cyrenaicus,” she said. “I like his manner.”
Alexandros dipped his head and melted away.
Marianus paced into view, sipping from a glass of wine. He nodded to Anazâr and stepped next to Aelia, reaching down idly to stroke one of her curls. Something about the scene made Anazâr’s breath catch. Perhaps it was the ease with which they occupied the heart of this sprawling house, or the invisible bond of affection that linked dominus and domina.
“Report,” said Marianus. “And speak freely. Recommend what you see fit; ask what needs to be asked.”
“Physically, they’re well-chosen. All are healthy. But there’s a matter of hygiene. I see shackle sores developing, and living in their filth as they are is bad for morale. They’ll be of no use to you in the arena, not like this. Other than the Sarmatian, that is—she’d fight in a fountain of piss, if you let her. I understand you might want their hair to be long, to show that they’re women when they fight, otherwise I’d recommend shaving, since they’re tormented with lice; the first battle will be against those. I request a visit from a barber and doctor, better daily access to water, a weekly trip to the baths”—he began ticking items off on his hand—“fourteen standing wooden posts for use in training, more stone weights, twenty buckets of sand—”
“Alexandros, are you making note of this?” asked Marianus.
“Yes, Dominus,” came a voice from around the corner. That he could disappear so fully until needed was a sign of his skill and worth as a man and a slave, but also a sign of Marianus’s exacting standards.
Anazâr finished all his items. He’d memorized them over and over again every step of the way to the house of Marianus. One day, maybe I will have a better way . . . Amanikhabale’s lure.
“This all sounds reasonable,” said Marianus. “I’m new to this business, but I’m willing to make an investment based on your suggestions and expertise. Alexandros will arrange everything. Thank you, Cyrenaicus.”
“Will that be all then, Dominus?
“Y—”
“No,” Aelia interrupted, some spark of inspiration in her eyes. “We should thank him more. Perhaps he would like a glass of wine, or the remains of your dinner, Lucius.”
Marianus’s eyebrows rose just slightly in surprise, then fell again, his face resuming its expression of perfectly schooled control. “Would you?”
Anazâr shifted from foot to foot, uneasy at this sudden blurring of boundaries. Domestic slaves would know what was proper—would he need to sit on the ground to eat in their presence?—but Alexandros staying out of sight meant Anazâr couldn’t look to him for guidance; he had no choice but to take Marianus and Aelia at their word and treat the question as one honestly asked, with no trick answer.
“No, thank you, Dominus. I had porridge and beans with the women at the warehouse. A gladiator’s diet must be strictly followed. But I’m grateful for the offer. I’m not used to . . . to household service. But I stand ready to fulfill any of your commands, of course.” He hoped his answer would suffice, but if it didn’t, he was prepared to take his punishment.
“You’ll find that discipline here is quite relaxed compared to your old master,” said Marianus, smiling. “Efficiency, honesty, obedience, and loyalty are all I ask for, and you’ve proved the first three while seeming likely to prove the fourth.” He left off touching Aelia’s hair, drained his glass, put it aside, and began to pace, full of nervous energy.
Anazâr shifted his glance to Aelia, wondering if she would give him the signal to leave. She didn’t notice him; her eyes were on her husband, and a small pout of displeasure settled onto her lips. Anazâr felt invisible, intangible, but not unwelcome. “I wish you would settle down, Lucius.”
“You in my bed is what I need for that,” said Marianus. His eyes narrowed.
Aelia sighed. “I’d like nothing better myself, but the moon forbids.”
Anazâr’s stomach lurched in a strange combination of arousal and fear. He shouldn’t be here. But he was, and so was the slave woman, who continued to paint lines onto Aelia’s fingers. She didn’t show any trace of discomfort, but then, as a body slave she’d be used to witnessing these things, and likely more than just the discussion of them.
Graceful discretion—another skill he would do well to learn, along with Alexandros’s trick at disappearing and Amanikhabale’s letters. He stayed very quiet and tried to clear his mind. All he had to do was wait for a command, he reminded himself.
“I’d offer you the pleasure of Cosmeta’s mouth if she weren’t otherwise occupied,” Aelia said, and the slave Cosmeta didn’t flinch or even pause, just laid down her brush and picked up another one to apply a different color. Anazâr realized she was painting stylized suns onto Aelia’s nails. The spark returned to Aelia’s eyes. “Cyrenaicus, then! He doesn’t have anything pressing to attend to.”
Marianus, who’d been preoccupied with his wife thus far, suddenly turned that cagey, hungry gaze on Anazâr, and the regard brought a mix of arousal and fear roiling in his stomach, then diffusing, sinking lower, transmuting into heat and hardness. Not bodily fear—Anazâr had been used for release by masters before, and ones much crueler and less physically appealing than Marianus—but fear of causing displeasure, of being valued lower, of having his place in this household irrevocably changed.
Anazâr thought his hesitance would earn him punishment, but Marianus’s face was sympathetic. “I’ll give you the choice of refusing, and Alexandros will bring me a kitch
en slave instead. No?” Anazâr stood frozen, barely able to breathe. Marianus stepped closer. “On your knees, then. No, not the tile, you can move to the rug. Don’t look so surprised. I know some masters take pleasure in the pain of their slaves, but I’m not one of them. I’d have you comfortable.”
“Dominus,” Anazâr acknowledged, allowing himself to be led to the rug. Marianus didn’t grip him, just barely brushed his elegant fingertips across Anazâr’s skin with the faith that Anazâr would not let that touch be broken. Marianus’s power: the ability to command without threat, to have his expectations fulfilled without voicing them.
That same touch guided Anazâr to his knees.
The fabric of Marianus’s tunic was eggshell white and smooth and fine, and the man himself smelled of expensive perfumed oil and faint musk. Anazâr carried the day’s sweat and exertion on his back, despite his efforts to sponge himself clean before he’d come to make his report.
He was fortunate to be so close to this man, this nobleman in his prime, everything a Roman man aspired to be. I will please him. He will lift me as he rises, at his side or at his feet, it matters not. His cock rose to strain against the rough fabric of his own tunic. He would not dare to touch himself, of course; this act was for his master’s pleasure, not his own.
“Cyrenaicus quite likes you,” said Aelia. “I can see clearly from here.”
Humiliating to have it pointed out. By Roman custom, it was one thing to serve another man as his station required. Quite another to visibly enjoy that servitude. To be so affected . . . it was one step away from presenting his ass and begging to be fucked like a woman.
“Interesting,” said Marianus, mercifully with no judgment, as he pulled up his tunic to reveal an impressive length of shaft. “I won’t hold that as a mark against his virility. He’s eager to please, after all. Begin.”
Anazâr lowered his head and followed the command. No coy teasing, as he would have with Gaius. He took as much of Marianus as he could without gagging. The tight skin of that hot, heavy prick dragged against his tongue, crushing it. He pulled back and went down again, forcing a little farther this time, and again, and again. Eager to please. Oh yes.
Mark of the Gladiator Page 3
