by Nick Morris
Drilgisa looked up at the sound.
Around him in the cavea vendors squeezed through the packed crowd, coaxing spectators to buy their wares: fresh olives, small loafs of bread, rich pastries, boiled duck eggs and various roasted fowl. Others sold plump wine-skins that were quickly bought up.
The cloying smell of sweating humanity was partly disguised by the many small fountain heads that sprinkled scented water over the audience. Many of those around him were drunk, and the man and woman sat in front of him openly fondled each other. The woman was groaning as the man’s hand moved busily beneath her stola. Few of the nearby spectators paid any attention to a sight repeated across the amphitheatre.
The noise of the crowd pulsing around him, he turned his attention back to the arena. It was the third day of the Parentia Games and the amphitheatre was full. The mob is there for the blood-letting, he mused, yet few have any understanding of the talents involved when the gladiators fight. The earlier killing of the animals had been tedious, but the lunch-time slaughter of criminals would hopefully be more entertaining. It had particular significance for him, because it was on the sand that Africanus would receive his due punishment.
Six days previously, he’d returned home prematurely with a sour belly after a supper of spiced veal at a local inn. Two hurried visits to a latrine had not eased his discomfort, and he reluctantly made the decision to return home.
On arrival he‘d again emptied both his stomach and bowels before promptly retiring to his bed-chamber, feeling queasy.
The scene that greeted him had set his blood to boil. Africanus was zealously rutting with Edo, the house boy, and in his own bed. Engrossed, neither participant had noticed Drilgisa’s approach. He’d proceeded to strike the unsuspecting Edo a crunching blow to the back of his head with a nearby figurine of the God Bacchus, bespattering Africanus’s face and chest with tacky gore. He’d gained the catamite’s attention.
Initially shocked, Drilgisa’s sentiments had quickly changed to angry resentment, coupled with an overriding desire for retribution. Clemency was never a consideration for Africanus.
After slicing out the catamite’s tongue, he delivered him trussed to the brothel. He told Albus that the catamite had stolen money from him, and that he wanted him arrested and punished for this serious crime. Africanus was unable to plead his innocence. A surprised but fearful Albus complied.
Edo‘s body was easier to deal with. He’d chopped the body apart, later feeding the pieces into a stall of pigs on the outskirts of the city after dark. He’d saved a few choice cuts for himself. A runaway slave was not an uncommon occurrence in the city.
In the arena the mid-day punishments had begun with two blinded women striking with swords at each other. They fell dead at the same time and there’d been a ripple of laughter from the crowd. Then, a knot of condemned criminals appeared at the entrance gate. All ten had been stripped naked. From his seat in the front of the packed cavea Drilgisa now scanned the terrified group for a familiar figure. Africanus was situated at the rear of the group.
The usual crowd, armed with rotting fruit, vegetables, stones and buckets of man waste were there to bait them. The condemned had no sooner taken a single step onto the sand when they were showered with the rubbish. Their tormentors seemed to take particular delight in aiming for their face, their eyes and ears quickly filling with muck and stinking pulp. A shard of pottery struck Africanus on the forehead and he fell forwards onto his face. Each of the arena’s attendants was armed with a metal tipped whip, and both now lashed Africanus with vigour.
For long moments Drilgisa thought that he would not rise. Slowly, he managed to get to his knees, and then stand upright, all of which gave the mob greater encouragement to revile and pelt him. His back, the sleek muscles of his buttocks and thighs were a mass of bleeding meat. Tears streamed down his face, his empty mouth gaping open like a fish. The group moved forward, the lash quickening their pace, driving them to the centre of the arena.
Piercing screams elicited from some of the women, signalling the entry of their executioners in the form of twenty garishly painted dwarves, huge phalluses attached to their groins. They were armed with razor sharp knives that were ideally suited to their small, cruel hands.
The diminutive killers quickly set about their grisly task of gleefully cutting at the buttocks, private parts and hamstrings of the condemned. The ill-fated group broke apart, scurrying in all directions, desperate to elude the slashing whirl of blades. The dwarves pursued their targets relentlessly, their outsized phalluses bobbing obscenely up and down as they scurried across the sand. The crowd roared its delight. Once cornered, the victims quickly collapsed to the ground under a hail of knife-cuts, their tiny executioners continuing to hack at their prone bodies. There was no quick death for the condemned.
Africanus’s long legs enabled him to initially outpace his pursuers. It was a brief respite and he was last of the condemned still alive. His legs were quickly weakening and wobbled from the unfamiliar demand placed upon them. He’d sustained deep gashes across the back of his right thigh and buttock, the splashes of blood glistening against his dark flesh.
His empty mouth gaping wide, Africanus waved his arms as he ran, his spittle mingling with the streams of tears that soaked his cheeks. The dwarves breathed heavily as they doggedly closed the circle about him. Almost spent, Africanus ploughed a desperate path towards the editor’s podium. Collapsing to his knees in the podium’s shadow, he raised his arms in supplication to the editor positioned above him. His mouth made strange wet noises and he’d clasped his hands in prayer.
A pair of dwarves then pulled him the backwards onto the sand, pinning him flat onto his back, before squatting toad-like on the tops of his arms. A third dwarf rammed his phallus into Africanus’s open mouth, breaking teeth and choking him. Swaggering up, another deftly snatched up the slave’s manhood in both hands. It was answered by a wave of applause that rolled down from the amphitheatre’s crammed tiers.
Smiling perversely and omitting a bray-like squeal, the dwarf stepped deliberately backwards, stretching the protesting member to an impossible length. The crowd howled their approval even louder.
Then the death chant rang out, Iugula, Iugula…
Drilgisa looked to the editor’s podium, where the verdict would be given. Leaning forward over the podium’s balustrade, the editor signalled to the dwarves for the death stroke to be administered. A knife-blade sliced down, and Africanus’s manhood separated from his body in great gout of blood that doused his executioner red. The scarlet trophy was raised and waved to the crowd, and like the tortured hounds of the underworld they in turn howled their delight.
Drilgisa smiled, satisfied.
He’d seen enough, and rising from his seat he bulled his way towards the nearest exit. Patrons grumbled as he roughly pushed passed them. The protestations were short lived when he flashed them a warning glare.
He descended the covered stairway, the weight of stone bearing down on him. He would be glad to be in the open again. His time in the mines would always loiter in his brain and he avoided spending any time in enclosed places.
Striding through the echoing corridor out into the sun-light, he sucked in a great lungful of air, before quickly crossing the deserted Great Palaestra. He spotted an inn shaded by the fringe of trees that encircled the grassy expanse. He’d frequented the inn before and had had no complaints about the wine or the food. The inn was quiet, with many of its customers still occupied in the amphitheatre. They’ll stay till the last drop of blood is spilt, judged Drilgisa, knowing how it would dramatically change in an hour’s time when the thirsty mob spilled out onto the palaestra.
Sat outside, he ordered some wine, together with some fruit and fresh bread.
The noise of the crowd carried from the amphitheatre, an aberrant back-drop to the chirping songs of small birds that swooped down onto the grassy training field, snatching up seeds and small scraps of discarded food.
Sipp
ing his wine his thoughts turned to places he’d listened to others at the ludus reminisce about, and their recounting of tales they’d heard themselves. There was a vast world outside the walls of the city that he wanted to see. The lands in the east where the sun burned like a brazier and men’s skins were brown and yellow, and the lands of long dead kings whose great tombs touched the heavens. He’d heard tales of vast, open steppes north of his home-land, where tribes of fierce nomads raised tent cities, before moving on with the seasons to raise another. There were legends of giants in the lands to the far north, where it was so cold it could freeze a man’s piss. He’d not encountered a man who’d met one of these giants, but one day he’d find out for himself.
A gushing Phoenician had endlessly talked about a city called Antioch, and Drilgisa had sworn that he would visit this wondrous capitol of Rome’s empire in the east. The Phoenician described the city as lying between great mountains and the sea, with a shining river running through it like a skein of gold. He’d said that it wasn’t the largest city in the Empire, but that in some things it was unmatched. Nowhere in the Empire had vice reached such admirable heights. The city was a melting pot of peoples, customs, languages and religions, and it absorbed the most depraved of them all. The Roman gods of Jupiter and Apollo were worshipped alongside other gods with strange names like Cybele, Astarte and Isis. But, it was the physical pleasures that were the true gods in Antioch, and there was no taste or wish that couldn’t be sated within its walls. Yet, outdoing them all was the white temple of Apollo in the beautiful wooded Grove of Daphne, with its untold numbers of male and female whores who carpeted its gardens nightly.
A feeling of frustration settled on him as he pictured these exotic places in his mind, and his thoughts turned to his recent discussion with Gordeo. The fat procurator had explained that his recent impressive victories had partly worked against him. He’d pointed out that available opponents in the region would not test him. Gordeo had no desire to upset the game’s editor who ultimately paid for the match, and who in turn dared not disappoint the voting audience who had to be kept sweet at all costs. This was the reason that he’d not fought in the current games.
Gordeo had instructed him to continue training hard, and that there was always the chance of a private bout being arranged between the times of the games, particularly as Drilgisa had made quite a name for himself.
Drilgisa had quietly listened to the fat man’s words, nodding that he understood. Secretly the inactivity ate away at him. It did not matter to him who he fought – whether man, beast or even giant. But, fight he must; to quench the searing hatred in his soul and to win the rudis and his freedom.
A sourness tainted his mouth that the wine could not disguise as he remembered his life’s journey. Not since a boy had he really been free. There were the brief years after he killed the dog, his own blood, who made him his whore. As a slave he’d served Rome in the bowels of the earth and in the arena. He’d had no choice – obey or to die. Yet, always he endured. And, now, he had the freedom of the city. Surely the gods must despise me, he decided, to condemn me so, to shape me into the creature I’ve become: a devotee of a new god – one of pain, blood and cruel suffering, forsaking all pity, kindness and remorse. But, this devotee will continue to forebear, and one day will be free.
He took a bite from a peach then lapped the juice dripping from his fingers. Hungry, he quickly finished it. A bead of juice slipped down the corner of his mouth as he caught wind of another scent. It was sweet and sharp, the faintest tang of raw pork. He savoured the aroma as the warm syrup rolled under his chin while he stared at the amphitheatre as though looking through it. He stretched his nostrils for a stronger trace and the smell became more pungent. His legs began to tremble as it blossomed on his tongue.
As he sucked in the smell, the fruit turned into wedges of flesh soaked in red nectar. He bit into an orange and threw back his head. Lines of blood spilled over his knuckles and snaked between the creases of his mouth, and he gobbled down the last few morsels. He sucked on his fingers until they were clean.
When the fruit was gone and the bloody illusion passed, he stood and tossed some coins on the table. He shook his head to clear it, his mouth still watering. He planned to visit the brothel and he hoped Albus had someone new for him.
But first, he needed to purchase his evening meal.
The attendant tightened his fist around the coins he’d been paid by the hulking pugile. He’d recognised him immediately as the champion, Drilgisa, as there was no mistaking the hunched back, pale skin and unsettling countenance. It was the easiest silver he’d earned in many a year.
He wiped the gore from his hands on his apron, and then slipped the coins into a tattered pouch at his belt. He turned and sat on one the raised stone slabs. He was a primitive looking man who wore nothing but a long, worn leather apron over his greasy flesh. His hair was a twisted jungle of coarse hair and his beard as matted as the mane of a wild pony.
Around him were four other slabs in the amphitheatre’s chamber of death. They were all occupied by mangled, torn corpses. At least six corpses dangled from the low ceiling which sprouted a row of meat hooks threaded with coarse rope.
The noise of the crowd throbbed above him, and it was if he listened to their clamour through water. It sounded far off, the sound distorted by the buffer of ageless stone.
His fellow attendant had slipped out for a piss and he‘d decided to take the opportunity to have a break himself. He needed it, as the day had been exhausting. The city seemed to produce a steady supply of felons, together with inventing ever more gruesome ways to kill them; all of which made a terrible mess, one that he had to clean up and then dispose of. It wouldn’t be so bad if the pay was half decent, but it was shit. Yet, in a city whereby a third of the work was carried out by slaves, there was little left for a free, unskilled man such as himself. Thank Caesar’s cock for the extra I make on the side, and for visitors like the Dacian.
When his co-worker returned they’d dump the queuing bodies into the rough wooden coffins lined against one wall. All would have been checked for coins and any trinkets of worth hidden in various orifices of the body during the final hour before execution. When there were not enough coffins the corpses where simply carted to unmarked holes prepared outside the city walls. There was no particular cemetery area for them, not like the gladiators who fought and died after. It was the gladiators who now fought at the climax of the day’s spectacle.
His mouth was dry and his tongue felt as if it had grown fur. He took a long slurp of watered wine from a practically positioned clay jug. The heat was bad despite the thick stone walls – their dark grey faces blotched by scabrous green mould. After three years of doing the job he hardly noticed the foul smell of opened guts, shit and fresh blood. It was the floor that caused him the most problems. As the day wore on and the death toll rose, the floor became treacherous. Despite their best efforts its surface became coated with a greasy layer of oily blood and gore, and he’d taken more than one nasty tumble.
Settling himself more comfortably on his makeshift stone seat, he studied the butchered black cadaver sprawled by his side at an odd angle. There were the blade wounds and the cock was missing, probably still frying in the arena sun, if it hadn’t been tossed to the mob. There was the ragged puncture hole at the back of one heel, where the iron hook had been driven, necessary to drag the dead body from the arena. Then there was the work of the hunch-back.
He’d appeared like a spectre, and after agreeing payment had quickly gone to work. He’d deftly cut slices of flesh from the most tender parts of the body – the buttocks, insides of the thighs and upper arms. It was done quickly and then he left.
During his time in the chamber he’d seen some strange things – family and spectators paying their last respects in the most unusual ways, and devotees bribing him to take away tokens from the bodies of their fallen champions – a lock of hair or a vial of blood.
But, the hunch-ba
ck’s eager, hungry look, the dribbling mouth as he cut away the flesh, had brought his own meagre fare to the back of his throat.
Clodian’s face was healing well, with no sign of infection or distortion of the facial muscles. Neo finished applying the salve that would speed healing, and then wiped his hands with a clean cloth. He briefly looked around the newly rented quarters in the city. They were clean and roomy and practically, had only one stairway. Anyone ascending the stairs would have to pass Belua’s room first to reach Clodian.
Clodian sat up on the bed, flexing his mouth and cheeks. “It itches like the furies,” he complained.
“That’s good,” said Neo.
“How do I look?”
“Worse than it is,” said Neo. “The swelling is going down, and with time the redness will fade. The scar will be…impressive.”
“As I thought,” said Clodian, rising to his feet. Orbiana looked on, smiling at them both. “Not the handsome fellow I was.” He directed the comment towards her.
“I think it gives you character,” she responded, eliciting a painful grin from Clodian.
They are well matched, thought Neo, and lucky to be so much in love. His mind briefly skipped back to his time with Placidia; and the ache was still there. He shook himself back to the present. “I’ll take the stitches out tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” said Clodian. “Have you spoken to Belua today?”
“Yes, I have,” answered Neo, sensing what was coming next.
“I believe I’ve offended him beyond redemption.” He hesitated before continuing. “I even wonder why you are so generous in your manner when in my company…after what I’ve done.”
“Each of us is unique, thank goodness.” Neo talked as he packed away his instruments. “We all perceive the world differently; with its joys and tragedies, its victories, successes, and its sad mistakes. All men and women stumble on their journey through this life, and it’s the wise person who learns a little from the mistakes they make. I believe everyone deserves a second chance, and I’ve not yet met anyone who hasn’t stumbled.”