by J M Hemmings
‘This one looks promising. Where does he come from? How was he acquired?’ he asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the body, evaluating, calculating, and dissecting all the while.
The slave trader, a swarthy, obese ruffian with greasy shoulder-length hair and a wiry black beard, shuffled up to the Celt and stared at him – or rather, at a spot a few paces to his left, for he was cross-eyed.
‘This one,’ he grunted, ‘he was a farmer, captured with most of his village in a conquest in west Hispania. I don’t know if he’s exactly what you’re looking for, although he does have the build for it, no?’
Lucius scratched at his smoothly shaven chin, and then absentmindedly fingered one of the golden earrings that decorated his earlobes before answering.
‘Yes, he does, but his mental constitution is just as important as his physical prowess. It depends a lot on what kind of farmer he was; those who butcher pigs and cattle on a regular basis graduate with ease to the butchering of men, whilst those who simply till the soil for their sustenance are sometimes harder to convert. There are always exceptions of course, though. Do me a favour, ask him about that.’
The slave trader spoke gruffly to the Celt in a foreign tongue. The man answered haltingly, keeping his eyes downcast. The slave trader, Sextus, clucked his tongue and shrugged his hairy shoulders.
‘He says he grew oats and barley, mostly.’
‘I see,’ Lucius murmured, his gaze never leaving the slave. ‘Nonetheless, I like the look of his build. He has the muscles of an ox, to be sure. Unchain him, I wish to give him a chance to test his mettle.’
‘Remember Lucius, if you damage him you buy him,’ the slaver cautioned.
Lucius laughed and clapped a jovial hand upon the man’s back, recoiling almost instantly at the grime-laden greasiness of his tunic.
‘I may be many things Sextus, but a cheat I am not. If I damage your goods, I’ll pay in full for them.’
‘Very well, unchain this one,’ the slaver barked, and his armoured assistant, a burly Nubian warrior, unlocked the Celt and shoved him forward.
‘Your sword, hand it to the slave, please,’ Lucius said to the guard.
The guard raised a sceptical eyebrow and glanced across at Sextus, who gave him a reluctant nod. The guard drew his gladius and handed it to the slave, who accepted it with an expression of confusion writ across his coarse features. Lucius then drew his own gladius, a gleaming, jewelled weapon, befitting of both his bloated pride and his obsession with material wealth.
‘Explain to the slave that if he can kill me he is free to go.’
‘Remember, if you injure him, you pay me the full price,’ Sextus grumbled with a scowl.
‘Of course.’
Sextus turned and spoke gruffly to the man again, and with the promise of freedom in such tantalisingly close grasp, the Celt’s eyes lit up with new hope.
‘Does he understand?’ Lucius asked.
Sextus nodded.
‘Good. Tell him to step over here onto this patch of smooth dirt. This shall be our arena, and he may attack me whenever he sees fit.’
Sextus relayed these instructions to the Celt, who began swinging the sword about him, testing its weight and balance, his heart fluttering with unexpected excitement at the promise of freedom. Lucius strolled onto the smooth ground and kicked his sandals off, raising the weight and balance of his scrawny body onto the balls of his feet. The Nubian guard observed this David and Goliath scene and suppressed a guffaw behind one of his scarred hands as Lucius assumed a swordsman’s stance.
‘Your guard does not think much of my combat abilities?’ Lucius asked with a swift grin, oozing calm confidence.
‘You do not look the part of gladiator, Lucius,’ Sextus muttered, ‘especially in that, er, extravagant purple and gold getup. Forgive the man if he is sceptical.’
Before Lucius could respond, the huge Celt charged at him with a roar and swung his sword with brutal intent at his head. Lucius sidestepped with unexpected speed and an almost nonchalant ease, and then darted nimbly to the side, dealing a walloping blow to his adversary’s back with the flat of his sword. This quickly gagged the guard’s laughter, and Lucius shot a smile of impish arrogance.
The Celt, who was smarting from the blow on his back, turned to face Lucius again. Hope and battle-ferocity still burned in his eyes, but now he approached his opponent with more caution. He lunged forward with the sword, but his attack lacked conviction, and with swift fluidity Lucius batted the blade away, dashing forward past it to press the point of his gladius against the man’s throat. The Celt was caught completely off-balance, and his sword was left dangling limply at the end of his muscular arm. His fear-glossy eyes were locked on the sharp steel that was driving its deadly threat into his Adam’s apple, and without a word he dropped his weapon to the ground. Lucius shook his head disapprovingly as he removed the blade from his adversary’s throat.
‘No, this one will not do, I’m afraid,’ he said flatly. ‘The poor brute has obviously never swung a weapon in anger in his life. He’s got the body, yes, but he lacks speed, coordination and, of course, the killer instinct needed to survive and thrive in the arena. See how quickly he gave up when threatened? It would take too much training and mental conditioning, and it would be far too much of a financial risk on my part. If he lost his first fight, which he may well do, I’d have spent an awful amount of coin on a corpse.’
Sextus grumbled under his breath and threw up his hands, somewhat melodramatically.
‘Well look, if I sell him to the quarry, I’ll get next to nothing for him! Half of these saps, they’ll get me less than what I’ve paid to keep them alive over the past few weeks. A specimen like this doesn’t come along that often. Come on! He stands head and shoulders above the others. Sure, he can’t swing a sword with any skill yet, but they’ll see to that in Batiatus’s ludus! You’d be a fool to pass up an ox like this one.’
Lucius raised an eyebrow as he sheathed his sword.
‘You speak as if you were the expert on gladiators, rather than I, Sextus,’ he remarked dryly. ‘You’d best mind your place, or I’ll be finding another slave merchant to work with, and you can go and sell off your second-grade stock to the mines and quarries.’
The cross-eyed slaver assumed an air of apologetic subservience at this threat.
‘I, er, you must, um, forgive my impertinence, good Lucius,’ he stammered. ‘I meant no offence. I certainly do not wish to put our, er, mutually beneficial business relationship at risk.’
Lucius chuckled and slid his hands onto his hips, revelling in his position of dominance.
‘Do you have anything else in this menagerie which may be of interest to me, Sextus?’
The slaver shook his head, but then the Nubian guard tapped Sextus on the shoulder and jerked his head towards a man at the end of the line. Sextus shuffled over to the man, who was tall, very broad-shouldered and of a wiry, leanly muscled build, with a large head that was topped with a greasy mass of dreadlocked brown hair speckled here and there with grey. His entire lower face and most of his upper body were obscured by his gargantuan chestnut-coloured beard, and his bone-white skin, where it showed through his coarse coating of body hair, was stained liberally with jagged-patterned clan tattoos. Beneath thick, sharply angled eyebrows deep-set green eyes, popping strikingly against the griminess of the Gaul’s hairy face, regarded the men with a gaze of defiant aggression. The hard, prominent facial features of his broad, squarish face could perhaps look ruggedly attractive in the right lighting, but he was not particularly handsome.
‘Come, come my good friend!’ Sextus said, suddenly perspiring rather copiously as he stammered, his hastily delivered words tripping over each other. ‘Here is one I, er, forgot to mention earlier. I was, um, so convinced you’d take the Celt that I, er, yes, I entirely overlooked this specimen.’
Lucius strolled over to join the slaver, and gave the slave a cursory examination, and soon snivelled his nose with distaste.
‘Gods, he’s as hairy as a beast, and he smells like one too! He’s certainly no mountain of a man like the Celt is either. Why would I be interested in this savage? Where’s he from anyway?’
‘He’s from northern Gaul,’ the Nubian guard said. ‘A warrior chieftain among his people, well, he was until the Ninth Legion slaughtered his army in battle. He was one of the few survivors of his side. Friends of mine in the infantry tell me he fought like an enraged lion, and it was only with the greatest of effort—’
Sextus shot his bodyguard a withering glare, and the man stopped mid-sentence, shrinking in awkward silence from his employer’s fierce, cross-eyed glower, abruptly realising that he should not have said any of this. Lucius, meanwhile, laughed slowly and mirthlessly, staring with cold, accusatory eyes at Sextus all the while.
‘Your man’s given away your game, Sextus,’ he muttered. ‘You would sell me a worthless farmer and keep the best gladiatorial material for one of my rivals who would pay a higher price. Is that it?’
‘No, no, I swear, I er, I merely erm, forgot about this one,’ Sextus stammered, many beads of oily sweat now inching a tell-tale passage down his face, his flabby jowls glistening. ‘I would never do such a thing, never!’
‘Relax, Sextus,’ Lucius said coolly, although his gaze remained barbed and jagged with an unyielding iron threat. ‘Just because I’ve caught you out this time, doesn’t mean I’ll no longer do business with you in the future. Or … does it?’ Lucius laughed suddenly, breaking the icicle-thick tension of the moment, and slapped Sextus on his back. ‘I jest, I jest,’ he continued, but anger still simmered in his brown irises. ‘Guard, unchain this one and hand him your weapon.’
‘Do as he asks,’ Sextus muttered to the Nubian.
The guard unchained the Gaul and offered him his sword, as he had done with the tall Celt. This man, however, shook his head and refused the weapon. He turned to Sextus and mumbled something in his guttural language and then spat upon the ground, staring with naked contempt at Sextus and Lucius.
‘What’s wrong with him? Is the oaf as stupid as he looks?’ Lucius asked, looking the man up and down with a disapproving glare that rivalled the intensity of the Gaul’s.
‘He says that he will not fight with the Roman blade,’ Sextus said, dabbing with a grimy rag at the sweat pooling on his jowls and forehead.
‘He said something else too,’ Lucius grunted, keeping his wrathful gaze locked into the slave’s eyes, which were ablaze with unrelenting, prickly defiance. ‘What was it?’
‘He says that your Roman swords are as useless and stumpy as your little cocks,’ Sextus grumbled. ‘He demands a longsword, as he is accustomed to using in combat.’
‘Well, well, well,’ Lucius smirked. ‘You lot haven’t broken the spirit of this one yet, have you? I like him already.’
‘Beat that barbarian until he agrees to fight with the gladius,’ Sextus commanded with a scowl.
The Nubian guard nodded, and, clenching his fists, he squared up in front of the Gallic slave with a look of fierce wrath etched across his broad visage. As he cocked his arm to throw a punch, however, Lucius stepped forward and gripped the Nubian’s wrist.
‘Hold! If the slave is injured and half-dazed, I won’t be able to accurately assess his fighting worth. Listen, I happen to be on very good terms with a dealer of antique and exotic weapons in the marketplace. I’m sure he has a Gallic blade that he’ll gladly lend me.’
Sextus face crumpled into a deep frown, and he folded his arms across his chest in a huff.
‘The other slaves will follow this insolent thug’s example if we concede to his ridiculous demand! No, I cannot allow it.’
‘Give him a longsword, Sextus, and if he proves himself worthy of the arena after his first fight, I’ll pay you a bonus of forty percent of whatever his asking price is.’
Sextus’s crossed eyes immediately lit up with a sheen of fresh greed.
‘Make it seventy percent and it’s done.’
Lucius threw his head back and roared with mocking laughter.
‘Never! My offer was generous enough as it stood, Sextus. Do not insult me with such terms.’
Sextus would not budge, though.
‘Well what if this filthy creature proves as unworthy as the Celt over there? What then, Lucius? I’ll tell you what then: you will have just shown this crop of slaves that they are able to make demands of me! My authority over them will be severely compromised, and that will lead to all sorts of rebellious behaviour, none of which will be of any possible benefit to my purse!’
Lucius nodded sympathetically and chewed on his lower lip, contemplating this point before he replied.
‘That’s a fair point, and I’m a fair man. Hmm…’
Lucius paced back and forth on his thin legs, scratching at his chin and mumbling to himself as he masticated on the dilemma before him. Eventually, he turned to Sextus.
‘Let me ask the slave a few more questions. Would you assist me with translating them?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘How old is this slave? I see streaks of grey in his beard and hair.’
Sextus guffawed.
‘Come on my friend, everyone knows these barbarians can’t count. It would be pointless to ask him such a question.’
‘Do it anyway.’
Sextus grumbled under his breath and then turned around to question the Gaul. The man gazed with haughty disdain at Sextus and Lucius, and then muttered a response, which elicited a look of surprise from the slave trader.
‘He says that by Roman reckoning he is forty-one years old.’
Lucius nodded slowly, and a hint of a smile began to materialise in the creases around the corners of his small, downturned mouth.
‘He certainly is more intelligent than his appearance would indicate, is he not?’ he remarked. ‘Forty-one, that is of a fairly advanced age, though.’
‘Well, he has some grey in his mane, that is true,’ Sextus said, ‘but look at the tautness of his muscles beneath all this fur! I’d wager he can swing a sword with twice the ferocity of a man half his age!’
‘That will be for me to decide, Sextus.’
‘Aye, aye,’ Sextus acquiesced reluctantly. ‘Well, go on, what else do you want to ask him?’
‘Ask him how many men he has killed in battle.’
Sextus translated the question, and the man’s eyes shone with a crackling, dangerous blaze. He spoke loudly and clearly now, and he puffed his chest out with pride.
‘He claims to have taken the ears of over thirty men in combat. It was his tribe’s custom to sever and keep the ears of defeated opponents, apparently.’
Lucius nodded appreciatively, the corners of his mouth inching up into a wry smile.
‘Very well, I will purchase this man, no trial necessary.’
‘This is most unusual, Lucius!’ Sextus exclaimed, delighted but rather surprised. ‘You’ve never bought a man you haven’t tested first. I’m not complaining, but don’t come back to me with gripes if he fails to perform! You’ll not get a single denarius back from me.’
‘I accept full responsibility for the success or failure of this gamble,’ Lucius said calmly.
‘Very well! You can take him off my hands for five thousand denarii.’
Lucius let out a mocking guffaw.
‘For a forty-one-year-old? You are too presumptuous for your own good, Sextus. He may well be lying about his battle victories.’
Sextus shrugged.
‘You’re the one who wants to take a gamble.’
‘Three thousand.’
‘Four thousand five hundred.’
‘Three thousand.’
‘Four thousand two hundred!’
‘Three.’
‘The gods take your cock!’ Sextus snarled. ‘I’ll not sell him for three!’
Lucius smiled mockingly.
‘Very well. Three thousand five hundred.’
‘You take pleasure in insulting me, Luc
ius!’ Sextus growled. ‘Fine, take the filthy savage off my hands for such a pittance. I’ll not forget this slight against me though!’
Sextus grumbled and muttered angrily under his breath, but he ordered his guard to unshackle the Gaul. Lucius, meanwhile, counted out one hundred and forty gold aurei from his velvet satchel, and handed the stack of coins to the slave trader.
‘Three thousand five hundred denarii, in gold.’
Sextus bit one of the coins and nodded, smiling now that the money was in his hands.
‘He’s all yours, Lucius. I look forward to seeing him perform in the arena. We will see then whether your gamble has paid off, no?’
‘I have a feeling it will, Sextus. Good day to you! Come, my barbarian pet,’ he said, turning to the Gallic slave, who had been removed from the line and put into individual chains. ‘I’m your master now. You’ll be doing as I say.’
Sextus muttered something in the Gaul’s language, and pointed at Lucius. The man nodded and bowed his shaggy head, although the flames of defiance still danced in his eyes.