‘Yes, master.’
Porcino narrowed his eyes for a moment, then straightened up, relaxing his hands. ‘Then I’ll have no more of your nonsense. If I, or Piso, hear one more word of any ridiculous story about being kidnapped again, I’ll beat you so badly your mother would never recognize you.’
He turned away and strolled back to make his fire. Marcus stared after him, terrified. He felt a hand pluck his sleeve.
‘Here.’ Pelleneus spoke in a kindly tone as he handed Marcus his food. ‘Eat up. You’ll need all your strength. We’ve a long journey ahead of us.’
13
They continued marching up the coast in the following days. Each night they stopped, Porcino took turns with Piso keeping watch over the prisoners. When he got the chance, Marcus carefully examined his neck collar and the link through which the chain fastened him to the others. The iron was strong and the pin that fastened the collar had been firmly seated so that he could not make it budge at all. At length Marcus realized that he would not be able to get out of the collar while he was chained to the others. He would have to bide his time and wait until they reached their destination. When the collar came off, he could turn his mind to thinking about escape again.
The one consolation of the situation that kept him from sinking into complete despair was the knowledge that each step took him closer to Rome and General Pompeius. From what he could glean from Piso, the lanista’s gladiator school was just outside a town called Capua, in the region of Campania, just over a hundred miles south of Rome. If the chance to escape came, then Marcus felt confident that he could at least reach the great city by himself.
On the fifth day after leaving the port, they reached the small town of Ventulus, where Porcino left the coast road and took them on to a route heading inland. The gently rolling farmland soon gave way to hills and then mountains as they marched west. Summer was coming to an end and the evenings had turned cool, so that Marcus found it hard to sleep, curled up on the ground, his teeth chattering. It took some time before the effects of exhaustion and an increasingly numbing despair allowed him to finally drift off for a few hours.
All the time he harboured a simmering rage against Porcino and vowed to all the Gods that there would be a reckoning one day. Meanwhile he avoided the lanista’s gaze and never dared to address him directly again. On the coldest nights, when the road crossed the highest points of the mountains that ran down the spine of Italy, Piso lit them a fire.
As the prisoners sat in the warming glow of the flames, Marcus thought for the first time about how the rest of his companions had come to be here. Maybe they all had stories as unjust as his own. He turned to Pelleneus.
‘How did you end up one of Porcino’s slaves?’ he asked.
Pelleneus gave a bitter laugh. ‘You want to know more about the life of a slave, boy? … Unlike you, a Roman citizen, I was born into slavery, in a brothel in the slums of Athens. I was raised with a handful of other children whose mothers worked there. As soon as we were old enough, the slave who ran the establishment on behalf of the owner had us out on the streets stealing for him. Jewellery and other valuables from market stalls. We also picked the purses of the wealthier citizens of the city as they strolled through the crowded streets.’ The Athenian smiled at the memory, then his expression hardened as he continued. ‘Then one day my mother rejected the advances of the head slave. As a result, the slave took his revenge and bullied me relentlessly.
‘In the end, I snapped. I was fourteen when I finally turned on the slave and used my fists. It was a short struggle, in the brothel kitchen, with the women screaming in panic all around us as customers ran for cover. I won the fight, beating the man to a bloody pulp. Beating him so badly that he died from his injuries a few days later.’
‘You killed him with your bare hands?’ asked Marcus in astonishment.
Pelleneus nodded. ‘Not the smartest thing I ever did. Once the owner heard, he wanted to make an example of me. He demanded that I be put to death. However, it turned out that one of the customers who had witnessed the fight owned a team of boxers and decided that I had potential. So, he bought me and trained me until I had grown to manhood, and since then I’ve been fighting in bouts across southern Graecia, losing only a handful of fights in ten years. It was in a fight staged at the party of a wealthy merchant that Porcino saw me and decided my talents might be more profitably used in the arena. He paid a high price,’ Pelleneus said with evident pride in himself. ‘Now I’m looking forward to fighting before the crowds in Rome.’
Marcus looked at him curiously. ‘You mean you actually want to become a gladiator?’
‘Why not?’
Marcus could not help a surprised smile. ‘Because you’ll be putting your life at risk every time you fight.’
‘I’ve been in fights before.’
‘And, as you say, you haven’t won them all.’
‘True,’ Pelleneus conceded.
‘If you lose a fight in the arena, it could well be your last,’ Marcus suggested. ‘Seems to me that it’s more dangerous than boxing.’
‘Then the trick of it is not to lose,’ Pelleneus replied. ‘If I train hard and learn all I can, then I will have every chance of winning in the arena.’
‘Unless you meet a better gladiator.’
Pelleneus pursed his lips. ‘Then it will be a case of putting up a good fight. If a man does that, then the crowd will want him spared. If I live long enough, and win enough fights, there will be rewards.’ He stared into the fire and smiled longingly. ‘I might even win my freedom one day, and have enough money put aside to buy a farm, or a small business, and live out the rest of my life in comfort.’
Marcus did not know much about the life of a gladiator but what Pelleneus had just told him had sparked a thought. If he could not escape his current position and was condemned to live as a gladiator, what if he survived long enough to make his fortune? He could return to Graecia and buy his mother’s freedom, and take her back to the farm and return to the way things had been before Decimus’s thugs had destroyed their lives. If the chance came, then he would be a good enough fighter to take on and defeat those who had killed his father. Best of all, he would find – and kill – Decimus. He dwelled on the prospect for a while, until he became aware that the iron collar was chafing his collarbone, and he shifted the neckline of his tunic to cushion his skin.
It brought him back to reality. Whatever ambitions Pelleneus might have, the truth of the moment was that they were all slaves. The property of the lanista, Porcino, to do with as he wished. As he thought about it, Marcus decided that it would be better to continue with his first plan. However difficult, he must try to escape and find General Pompeius, rather than spend years preparing to become a gladiator, and then more years risking his life in the arena in order to win liberty and riches so that he could rescue his mother, if she survived until then.
The fire was starting to die down. The Thracians and the Spartan had already lain down close to the fire to try to sleep. With a deep sigh Phyrus followed suit, curling up on his side, like a child. Before long the air reverberated with his deep snores, but his sleep was troubled and he frequently twitched and mumbled snatches of sentences that made little sense to Marcus.
‘What about him?’ Marcus nodded to the slumbering giant. ‘What’s his story?’
Pelleneus looked at their companion with a pitying expression. ‘Poor Phyrus shouldn’t be here. He may be as strong as a bear but he does not have the heart of a fighter. I fear for him once we reach Capua and enter the gladiator school.’
‘Porcino must think he has potential,’ Marcus reflected. ‘Otherwise, why buy him?’
Pelleneus glanced round to make sure that neither their master nor Piso was within earshot, but he lowered his voice anyway. ‘Porcino just sees his size, his strength. He does not see the man within. Well, more of a child than a man, I think.’
‘How did Phyrus come to be bought by Porcino?’
Pelleneus drew up his knees
and wrapped his long muscled arms round them. ‘From what he’s told me since we were chained together, Phyrus was little more than an infant when he was brought to Athens. He was owned by a Greek slave trader and raised as a household slave, until the trader and his wife had a child. A boy. Phyrus was made his body-servant. He virtually raised the boy, and loved him like a brother. However, as the child grew and began to return Phyrus’s affection, the mother became jealous and demanded that Phyrus be sold. The father would have none of it. He saw how much Phyrus meant to his son and knew it would break the boy’s heart. So, from what I can gather, the mother claimed one day that her most precious bracelet had been stolen. She insisted that the entire house be searched from top to bottom.’ Pelleneus looked at Marcus and smiled sadly. ‘You can guess what happened.’
Marcus considered briefly, then nodded. ‘They found the bracelet in Phyrus’s quarters?’
‘Yes. Under his bedroll. The mother convinced her husband to sell Phyrus. It broke his heart to leave their boy. He was auctioned in the slave market at Athens. Phyrus stood out among the other slaves on sale, as you can imagine. Porcino was impressed enough to buy him.’ He looked down at Phyrus. ‘I doubt he’d hurt a fly if he could help it. I am afraid for him. I doubt he will survive for long once we reach the gladiator school, unless he learns to fight.’
Marcus thought for a moment as he hugged his knees. Since being taken from the farm he had been consumed by his own problems. Only the injustice done to him and his family mattered. It seemed as if the rest of the world was an uncaring place filled with people who knew nothing of his grief. He had thought that his suffering was the worst thing that could happen to a person. If others would only listen to his tale, then they would think so too, and do what they could to help to correct such a monstrous injustice.
Now, Marcus understood that the world was filled with injustices, and that others, like Phyrus, suffered too. He was not a special case, singled out by the Gods to endure the harshest cruelty and grief. There were others, with similar tales, carrying similar burdens. Marcus was not quite sure how he felt about it. The thought of so many more people suffering as he did struck him with a kind of numbing horror. Yet, in spite of that, for the first time since he had been seized by Decimus’s henchmen, he felt that he was not alone. There was some comfort in that.
He raised his head and spoke softly. ‘What about the others? The Thracians and the Spartan?’
Pelleneus scratched his chin. ‘I hardly know anything about them, only what Piso has told me, and that’s no more than a few comments. The Thracians were part of a gang of brigands who were hunted down and destroyed by a Roman column. The Spartan – well, he’s something of a mystery. Piso says he is an outcast. He disgraced himself among his people and they condemned him to slavery.’
‘Disgraced himself? How?’
‘Who knows?’ Pelleneus shrugged, and glanced at the sleeping Spartan warily before he continued. ‘They’re not as civilized as us Athenians. They’re a prickly people, the Spartans. Still think they are the toughest nation in Graecia. Even today they raise their young as if the only thing in life that mattered was being tough and going to war. Chances are that he just looked at someone’s wife the wrong way. Or maybe he couldn’t face fighting a pack of wolves with his hands tied behind his back and they branded him a coward.’ Pelleneus smiled quickly to show that he was joking. ‘Anyway, he doesn’t talk about it. Doesn’t talk about anything, come to that. Only speaks when spoken to by Porcino or Piso, and then only in sentences of one word. Seems that Spartans are somewhat lacking in small talk.’
‘But they know how to fight,’ Marcus responded. ‘My father told me that. He said that when he was serving with Pompeius’s army, they had some Spartan mercenaries fighting with them. The toughest men he had ever seen.’ Marcus recalled the admiration in his father’s voice as he’d spoken of them. ‘And the most fearless.’
‘Well, our Spartan friend is going to need those qualities if he is to survive in the arena,’ Pelleneus mused. ‘Of course, he’ll need other qualities too. Fast reflexes and quick thinking. And thinking doesn’t come easily to a Spartan.’
‘Nor does sleep,’ a deep voice growled. ‘Not when some Athenian keeps you awake all night with his prattle.’
Pelleneus started and then he and Marcus looked across the sinking flames of the fire to where the Spartan lay, eyes open. He closed them again, without another word, and lay quite still. The others watched him for a moment, not sure if he was awake or asleep. At length Pelleneus muttered, ‘Better get some rest. Bound to be another long day’s march tomorrow.’
Marcus nodded, still watching the Spartan. Then he eased himself down on to his side, with the curve of his back as close to the fire as he could bear. For a while he thought about his companions. Most of them were hard men with experience of fighting. There was much he could learn from them. And he was beginning to realize that he would need to learn quickly in order to survive if he had to begin a new life in Porcino’s gladiator school.
14
The next day they left the mountains behind them and descended on to the plain of Campania. A vast expanse of farmland sprawled out before them and Marcus was astonished by the number of large farming estates and grand villas that he could see from the foothills. The Romans of Italia were clearly as wealthy as he had heard they were when his father had told him of his travels through the heart of the empire.
The view quickened the heart of Piso as well, and he raised his club and pointed out into the plain. ‘There’s Capua. Home for us all now, boys!’
Marcus tried to follow the direction Piso had indicated, but he could see several towns on the plain, and in the distance the looming mass of a great mountain appeared as a vague outline against the horizon.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing.
‘The mountain? That’s old father Vesuvius. Some of the best wines in all Italia are made from the grapes that grow on his slopes. Quite a sight, ain’t it, boy? You’ll grow used to it. You can see the mountain clearly from the gladiator school.’
Piso’s tone was light and Marcus realized it was the first time he had seen the slave in a cheerful mood. He turned and raised an eyebrow at Pelleneus. The Athenian smiled back as he spoke out.
‘You’re cheerful this morning, Piso.’
‘Of course. I’m coming home. Haven’t seen my wife and the girls for over four months.’
‘You have a wife?’
‘Yes.’ Piso scowled at Pelleneus. ‘So?’
‘Nothing. Just a side to you I haven’t seen before. That’s all.’
Piso’s expression assumed its customary surliness. ‘Pick up the pace there. No dawdling! The master wants to reach the school before dark. Move it!’
The shackled slaves lengthened their stride, while Porcino rode some twenty paces ahead of them, casually munching on an apple.
The well-worn road gave way to a paved surface as they descended from the hills and stretched out across the plain in a straight line. The air was warm for most of the day, but towards the end of the afternoon the sky clouded over, the atmosphere grew hot and cloying and the prisoners sweated freely as they were driven on by Piso to keep up the pace. As dusk crept across the landscape there was a flicker of lightning in the distance, in the direction of Vesuvius, and a puff of breeze stirred Marcus’s hair and cooled his face. Just after they passed a milestone a short distance outside Capua, Porcino turned off the main road and led them down a narrow lane lined with poplar trees. The first drops of rain began to fall as they came to the end of the lane. It descended gently into a vale. Before them, in the gloom, Marcus saw the gladiator school.
A ten-foot-high plastered wall surrounded a large complex of buildings, pens and training areas. Immediately outside the wall stood an oval wooden arena, perhaps a hundred feet across, linked to the school by a covered way. Beyond the arena stood some stables and large cages, and in the nearest of them Marcus could see the grey shape of a wolf, cea
selessly trotting back and forth behind the bars. A short distance away sprawled a large villa with a courtyard garden which, Marcus guessed, must be where Porcino lived. At each corner of the walled enclosure stood a solid tower where guards watched over the gladiator school and its inmates.
Porcino led his small column down into the vale and up to the main gate of the gladiator school. A heavy wooden door, barred on the outside, filled an arch wide enough to take a large covered wagon. As the lanista approached, six guards emerged from a door in the side of the gatehouse. Marcus saw that each man wore a helmet, and scale armour with a sword-belt hanging from the shoulder. They looked like soldiers to him. It was clear that Porcino guarded his gladiators closely. Marcus thought his training school would probably better be described as a prison.
The guards heaved the heavy timber bar through the iron holders fastened to the door and slid it into the slot in the gatehouse before hauling the door open. Then they stood to the side and bowed their heads at their master as he rode by. As soon as the last of the column of prisoners had passed inside, the gate was closed and there was a deep grating sound as the timber bar was hauled back into place, locking the gate.
Marcus glanced around and saw that they were passing between low buildings. An enticing odour of food wafted from an open door and inside he could see a handful of slaves labouring over some steaming cauldrons as they poured in diced vegetables and chunks of meat. On the other side was a storage area, protected by stout iron bars. Inside, on shelves and pegs, hung a wide variety of weapons: swords, spears, tridents, daggers, axes and maces, with wooden versions of the same weapons hanging nearby. The sight of so many deadly weapons made Marcus flinch as he imagined what damage they might do to his flesh and bones. The next storeroom contained armour: helmets, shields, armguards, greaves and breastplates, neatly arranged on shelves.
Porcino led them out from between the buildings into an open training area where the ground had been beaten hard and covered with fine gravel. He reined his horse in and turned it to face the prisoners, who shuffled to a halt and stood chained in a line, while the lanista surveyed them for a moment. The rain began to fall in earnest and Marcus and the others were quickly drenched to the skin as they stood in silence and waited to be addressed.
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