Repeatedly hitting a wooden tower with a stick
Jumping and kicking
Running back and forth across an exercise yard, thrusting a wooden pole at straw figures.
“There is a lot more to the violent aspect of training,” Ang’kim said. “But we need to make the recruits stronger first before we do much of that.
“After all,” she said. “You’ll be facing men in the arena. Strong men. And they will be trying to kill you.
“And you’ll be facing worse than men. But we’ll cover monsters another time.”
Each group of recruits and prisoners was led through training by one or two professionals who didn’t seem to think much of molly coddling. They screamed at the girls when they could no longer hold their arms up, kicked any who lagged behind in running, barked at the first to break at any exercise until that offender was reduced to tears. And when barking didn’t work, slaps and fist-cuffs came into play.
Ang’kim could see the worry spreading on Pashera’s face. “It looks tough,” Ang’kim said. “And it is. You’ll be pushed to do things you’ll never had thought you could do. But you’ll make it. We all did.”
Pashera felt bad for the girls with large breasts – they were obviously at a disadvantage in physical contests. She was glad her own breasts were not THAT big. She’d never envied a flat-chested girl before, but now she might.
As they walked through an exercise area where girls were jumping while holding weights, one of the figures turned to stare at them. Then another. Then another.
Pashera suddenly realized that one of those figures was Amaz. And another was Tenrici. The third was Rylo. She started to break out in a sweat.
“Why are you stopping, you lazy bitches!” the instructor yelled. At her urging, they got back to their exercises.
“Friends of yours?” Ang’kim asked.
“Yes, Teacher,” Pashera said. “I knew them from the palace. They are friends.”
Ang’kim smiled, not unkindly. “The correct answer is ‘no’. Those are convicts. You might have to kill them.”
That night, Pashera wept herself to sleep, as her comfortable life in Tol’zen’s arms seemed to recede into the distance. She hadn’t known how happy she was with him until it ended.
But in the morning, Pashera stumbled from her bed to the sound of the signal drum, and one of the senior gladiator women, Tooloosa, was waiting by her cell door to put her in a squad. Pashera vowed to focus on her training, and not even think what would happen if Amaz and the others betrayed her.
Because she had to remember that Tol’zen was coming for her, or her heart would break.
The first 10-day period was constant physical effort. The other girls cursed and kicked Pashera when they thought she wasn’t trying hard enough, and she joined in to berate other new girls when they fell short.
It was the hardest Pashera had ever worked in her life. But Pashera had some things in her favor. She was young, in her 16th summer. She was in good physical condition to start with. And she took naturally to the training.
She excelled at running, jumping and climbing. She could also throw a rock at a target better than any other girl. Where she failed was in contests of strength with other, larger women.
“This isn’t fair,” Pashera cried to Tooloosa as one of the truly heavy girls knocked her down for the sixth time in a row.
“The men will be bigger,” Tooloosa said, and hit her on the ass to emphasize the point. Then she signaled for the big woman, a black stump of a woman named Anathi, to grapple with Pashera again. And Pashera lost and ate sand … again.
At the end of Pashera’s first day of training, she followed the others to the food hall, where she gobbled down stew and fruit. They fed her a lot and she ate all of it. She felt like she was starving.
But even more than she was hungry, she ached. Her muscles screamed for relief. Pashera wondered how she would be able to endure this until Tol’zen liberated her.
At the evening meal, she met some of the other girls. Many of the experienced gladiators ignored her or made coarse jokes at her expense, because she hadn’t proven herself yet.
But one of the older saurian females, Orm’ryn, made a point of talking to Pashera. One of the senior human gladiators, Urnkali, joined in the conversation. And two of the new girls, Angani and Emldra, were drawn in by the sound of friendly voices. They, like Orm’ryn, were in Pashera’s training group under the tutelage of Taloosa. Pashera had been so scared and exhausted the first day of training she hadn’t noticed anything beyond the ass of the woman ahead of her.
Orm’ryn told them a few jokes. It was the first time Pashera had laughed in a long time.
After dinner, they were herded to the baths. Pashera and the other new girls were taught a routine of bathing and stretching to work out their muscles so they wouldn’t cramp up at night.
Falling onto her bed – a thin mattress of cloth stuffed with feathers, and lain over a wooden frame – Pashera thought she would pass out that first night. But she heard footsteps in the hallway. It was Ang’ess, bringing another recruit in.
Words were exchanged. As usual, Ang’ess’ tone was matter-of-fact. Not kind, not cruel, but business-like. Ang’ess went back down the hall.
A little while later, Pashera heard the sound of weeping in the next cell.
“Psst! Why are you crying?” Pashera called through the wall.
In response, the weeping got louder.
“Don’t cry, it will be okay.”
There was no change from the other cell. The crying continued.
Pashera sighed. She’d never get any sleep with that going on. She got up and tested her door. It was open. She’d been told to stay in her room until morning, but Pashera tip-toed out and peeked through the bars of the cell next door.
There was a shape in there. A bulky shape. Pashera went in. The shape stood up. This girl was big. BIG! At least a head-and-a-half taller than Pashera. And arms – Pashera had only seen biceps and forearms like that on a man, a very strong man. This girl had shoulders to match, smallish breasts, and a bulky, barrel-shaped body.
The girl had caramel skin and kinky brown hair. Her eyes, now reddened with tears, were also brown. Though she towered over Pashera, the girl looked at her with fear bordering on terror.
“What’s wrong?” Pashera asked.
“I want my mama,” the other girl sobbed, and wept some more.
The tears touched Pashera’s heart. She stepped forward and hugged the big girl, who hugged her back, but kept crying.
Pashera got the girl to sit down on her bed – which creaked under her weight – and sat with her. She hugged the girl and hummed one of the lullabies her mother often sang for her. The girl stopped crying.
“What’s your name?” Pashera asked.
The girl was Dawatana. She came from a farm to the south. The concept of farming was new to Pashera – women of the Long Spear tribe had herb gardens, not farms. Dawatana and her mother had lived on Dawatana’s uncle’s farm. They had goats and it was Dawatana’s job to milk them.
“Who will milk the goats now that I’m away?” Dawatana demanded in a voice that made this seem like a huge imposition on the goats. “Not Uncle. He does it wrong.”
“Where is your father?” Pashera asked.
Dawatana sighed. “Long dead. If he was alive, he would have fought for me.”
“My father is dead, too,” Pashera said. Dawatana smiled in shared sympathy.
Pashera gradually got the rest of the story out of her. The Remnant made a standing levy of slaves on Dawatana’s village, in the name of the Devouring God. Her uncle had drawn the short straw, and he wasn’t going to give one of his own children to the saurians. So, he gave them Dawatana instead.
“Now, I will die and my mother will never know,” Dawatana said, tears bubbling up in her eyes again.
“Oh, Dawatana, you won’t die,” Pashera said. “Look at you, with all these muscles,” she gripped and squeezed one of Dawatan
a’s biceps. There was a layer of fat, sure but this girl had brute strength that Pashera had never seen in a woman.
But her breasts were just buds. Her eyes were so simple when they weren’t filled with tears.
“How old are you, anyway?” Pashera asked.
“Fourteen summers,” Dawatana said.
“Fourteen …” Pashera felt sick. True, she might only be a couple years older, but it seemed more wrong that girl so young be sent to the arena. “Are you even done growing?”
Dawatana shrugged. She seemed sad, resigned.
“You’ll do very well,” Pashera assured the other girl. “Just wait until the trainers get a load of you. That’s why they snapped you up, you see.”
“I want my mama,” Dawatana wailed again.
“Hush now, that’s what your mama would want you to do,” Pashera soothed her. “She’d want you to make the best of it.”
Pashera hummed a lullaby again, and Dawatana calmed down. Pashera got the other girl to lay down, and stroked her hair and sang lullabies until Dawatana fell asleep.
Curled up on the bed, despite her size, Dawatana looked her 14 years.
Pashera got to her feet, aching, moaning, and went back to her cell. There was movement in the shadows in the hallway – had someone been watching? Pashera considered investigating, but she was too tired. She secured her door, lay down on her bed and fell asleep.
She didn’t wake up until the next morning. She missed the signal drum, and didn’t wake until Ang’kim walked through the hallway, banging on the cells with a stick.
Ang’kim paused by Dawatana’s door to guide her. Dawatana fell in line behind Pashera, and they followed the other girls to breakfast.
Dawatana reached forward and squeezed Pashera’s hand. Breakfast was a hurried affair – no talking – but Pashera knew she had made a friend.
That day, Dawatana followed Pashera around like a lost puppy. Dawatana was strong. Insanely strong. But she had no will to fight, to push other girls around in the wrestling. Instead, she would stand there as they tried frantically to topple her. And her lack of enthusiasm infuriated both her trainers and the other girls.
And that night, after a rigorous day of training, Pashera was ready to fall to sleep. But Dawatana tapped on the bars dividing the cells. “Hey, Pashera?”
“What?” Pashera said grumpily.
“Oh,” Dawatana verbally flinched back from the edge in Pashera’s voice. “Nothing.”
“Well you’ve got my attention,” Pashera said. “Out with it.”
“Will you come put me to sleep?”
Pashera sighed. “You’ll have to learn to go to sleep on your own.”
“Oh … okay.”
Dawatana didn’t say any more, and Pashera rolled over.
And then she heard the crying. No, not just crying. Weeping. A soft waterfall of bitter grief bordering on the semi-hysterical. Pashera sat her tired bones up.
“Hey,” Pashera waited. The weeping didn’t stop.
Swearing under her breath, she exited her cell and went into Dawatana’s. The young, oversized girl was curled up in a fetal position on her mattress, sobbing into her blanket.
“I’m so-so-sorry that I woke you,” Dawatana said in an accusing, almost angry tone. “Go back to sleep. I’ll try to be quiet.”
As much as every bone in her body ached for sleep, Pashera could not leave Dawatana alone. She sat down and started stroking Dawatana’s hair. She hummed a lullaby, and slowly the weeping stopped. Tears still ran from Dawatana’s eyes, but she sucked her thumb quietly.
Pashera ran out of lullabies. So she told Dawatana the tale of Dorthiak the Bold, and his adventures in the swamps. She told in in a hushed whisper, but Dawatana was enthralled. Just as Pashera got to the part where Dorthiak was sucked into the screaming spring, there was a clank at the bars.
“Hey!” It was Ang’kim. “What are two doing there. You apes know there’s no funny business before the games.”
“It’s not that, Teacher,” Pashera said. “She’s just afraid. I was singing her lullabies and stories.”
“Oh, by Darklu’s faroos, seriously?” Ang’kim said. “This is the time to toughen up, not mollycoddle the other girls.”
Dawatana started to cry again. Pashera stood up and went to talk to Ang’kim. “I’m sorry, teacher, but if I don’t put her to sleep, she cries.”
“Let her cry herself out.”
“She’ll cry all night.”
“I will beat her then, and give her something to cry about,” Ang’kim said, starting to come into the cell. Pashera, not believing her own boldness, stepped in the way.
“Please, teacher, I almost had her to sleep.” And Pashera knew Dawatana would have been asleep in minutes if Ang’kim hadn’t intervened. But she kept that part to herself.
“Pashera,” Ang’kim said in an exasperated tone, “You mean well, but you can’t coddle the crybabies. Otherwise you’ll end up to singing lullabies to all of them.”
“What’s the trouble here?” Ang’ess said from the hallway.
The discussion went on. Dawatana continued to cry. It did not help that every few minutes, Ang’kim would punctuate a sentence by exclaiming: “Then I should just beat her ass!”
“She’s too young to be here,” Pashera said. “You can’t take an unweaned cat from its mother.”
“Unweaned!” Ang’kim snorted. “Have you seen the size of her? Oh, will you just shut up?!” this last directed at Dawatana.
“There was a girl in my tribe,” Pashera said. “She saw her mother eaten by a lion. She cried so much, for so long, the chief wanted to throw her outside the palisade. But some of the women got together and took turns putting her to sleep at night.”
The memory came back in a flash. But the girl’s name escaped her. It was so strange. Pashera had been in this city for only a month, and yet her previous life in her tribe seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Did it work?” Ang’ess said.
“Yes.”
“You agree to coddling this troublesome monkey?” Ang’kim directed this at her sister, sounding more surprised than angry.
“She’s a big one,” Ang’ess nodded toward weeping Dawatana. “The biggest. We didn’t get many big ones this year. And these games are going to be big. We need her.”
The two teachers went to consult out in the hallway. Finally, Ang’ess came back and said: “You can do this for seven nights.”
“Thank you, Mistress,” Pashera said.
“But listen, Pashera,” Ang’ess added. “You need your sleep as much as she does. Try to ween her quick.”
“I will, Teacher.”
The two saurian females walked off down the hallway. Pashera went back to Dawatana’s bed.
Dawatana’s sobs eased off as the teachers’ footsteps faded in the distance.
“They’re scary,” she said, her breath still heaving.
“Yes, well, they’re gone now.” Pashera stroked the girl’s hair and she calmed again. “Now, where were we?”
“Dorthiak was sucked into the screaming spring.”
“Oh yes …”
Shortly, Dawatana’s eyes closed. Pashera marveled at the other girl’s ability to go from hysterics to calm sleep. Then she toddled off to her own bed.
It was hard for Pashera to pry her eyes open the next morning. But she did it nonetheless, and it didn’t seem like Ang’ess or Ang’kim had put the word out for any of her instructors to go easy on her.
So when it came bedtime, and Dawatana rapped on the bars, Pashera was in a mood that was blacker than the night itself. But somehow, she found a way to force a smile and a calming voice. She ended up telling Dawatana the entire story of Dorthiak again. And Dawatana was asleep before Pashera reached the end.
Pashera got up, stifled a yawn, and walked toward the cell door. But there, along the bars of the cell, she saw three pairs of eyes staring at her. Panic sent her heart leaping into her throat.
But it was just some of the
other new girls. Angani, a buxom, mischief-faced girl with long, dark hair and pale skin, who came from near the great inland sea. There was also Enara, a lissome skinny girl with very dark skin and kinky black hair. She came from the south. And finally, Elmdra, who came from a village in the general direction of Pashera’s village, but a world away in terms of local travel, customs and tribes. Still, of all the girls in the school, Elmdra looked the most like Pashera.
“What do you three want?” Pashera asked. “You scared the devils out of me.”
“Finish the story,” Elmdra said. “It was just getting good.”
“Yes, finish the story,” Angani said. “Did the leatherback eat him?”
Pashera sighed.
“Oh, come in here before the teachers see you.”
Enara, a clever girl, had brought a candle, along with a flint-and-steel striker and some linen to get the candle going. She’d stolen it from the kitchen. “I get afraid of the dark, too,” she explained.
So, Pashera sat them down and, by the light of a dim, flickering candle, quietly finished the story.
“How could one man kill a three-horned beast with just a spear?” Elmdra asked.
Pashera had in fact killed one of the beasts with a spear all on her own, but didn’t want to get into that story. “If you don’t like it, make up your own story.”
“Oh, I know a good one,” Angani said. “Let me tell you how the moon was created.”
At the end of her story – which was very good – the girls stumbled off to their own beds.
The next night, all three girls snuck in to Dawatana’s cell right after lights out. Dawatana enjoyed the company. Pashera resigned herself to the fact that they were going to get caught and there would be hell to pay.
The other girls sat quiet through Pashera’s songs. This time, she told them her adventure after leaving her village, and how Tol’zen had captured her, and the battle with the leatherback, the dagger-toothed cat, and the wolves. Dawatana tried to stay awake, but nodded off somewhere along the way.
“That is a great story,” Elmdra said. “You should be a storyteller.”
“Thanks.”
“How much did you make up?” Angani asked.
Slave in the City of Dragons (Dinosaurs and Gladiators Book 1) Page 30