by B. L. Morgan
The only thing that was any different was that the people outside the wagon didn’t really appear to be any better off than us. For the most part the people we saw traveling on our road looked underfed, dirty, and were dressed raggedy as hell. Most of them were traveling on foot. The few pack animals we did see looked skinny and unhealthy. The Roman Empire might be the strongest empire in the world but the common people weren’t living any better because of it.
Torstan laughed at my efforts to communicate with the local civilians and didn’t attempt it himself.
McRae made a few attempts to talk to the locals. But after he made a suggestive remark to a farmer’s wife he wasn’t fed for two days. After that he didn’t say too much. Hunger will make you agreeable with local customs very fast.
On the second day after McRae was not being fed when food was thrown to us, a large potato that bounced off my leg rolled toward the bars that separated McRae’s cage from my own. He made a dive for it, his arm reaching into my cage, his hand snatching for the potato. I reflexively snapped out a right cross and punched his hand away and grabbed the potato. I gathered up all the vegetables and made a small pile in front of myself in the center of my cage.
McRae retreated to the boundaries of his bars and glared at me for a minute. Then a whimper escaped his lips and I heard his stomach growl.
The guard who’d thrown the food to us walked away.
I looked at Johnny. He looked back at me. I remembered what Jeanette had told us, “Always keep in your mind who you are, or you could lose yourself.”
Well, just who the fuck was I anyway. I was looking one hell of a lot like a hungry son of a bitch in a goddamn cage the last time I checked.
I looked at McRae. He looked like someone who’s just seen his baby die. A blank look of despair was on his face.
“Hey, Mac,” I said to him. He didn’t even look up.
I divided my food up in half and passed half my vegetables to him between the bars.
He ate the food down and muttered a thank you. I could tell he wasn’t the kind of guy who liked thanking anyone for anything. Johnny passed me some of his food.
He said, “I know that wasn’t easy.”
“Fuck it. I’m getting sick of potatoes and carrots anyway.” I told him. “We get out of this shit, I’m gonna spend a month in a Safeway, just going up and down the aisles, eating as I go.”
“I heard that,” Johnny said. “Yeah, we get out of this we might actually be able to eat some of Sushi’s cooking.”
I remembered how Sushi cooked.
“I don’t think so Bro,” I told him.
“No,” he agreed. “We’d have to be a lot hungrier than this.”
The next day, our little caravan pulled into Micea.
CHAPTER 19
On the Auction Block
We knew we were coming to some sort of a city at least two hours before we were able to see it. The smell of the place told us what was ahead of us. Even the smell of our farting ox didn’t drown out the stench of a large number of people living close together in a time of no sewage treatment plants.
What we were approaching smelled like a huge pile of cow crap mixed with rotten eggs.
When me and Johnny started talking back and forth about this McRae asked us, “Just where do you come from anyway, that your cities do not smell like this?”
Johnny told him, “We come from the United States of America.”
I chimed in, “East St. Louis to be exact.”
“Never heard of them,” McRae said. “So what is this place like where men don’t stink?”
We tried to tell him what life in the good old U.S. of A. had been like. Most of it, he just couldn’t get. The idea of a supermarket was an alien concept. Explaining cars was another thing that wasn’t easy. The idea of a carriage not pulled by animals just didn’t make sense to him. TV’s, radios, or telephones were impossible for him to figure out and when we told him about twentieth century air travel he started laughing.
“That’s enough, that’s enough,” he told us smiling. “I’ve told some mighty big lies in my day, but stories about silver birds big enough to carry over one hundred men… even I wouldn’t try to put that one over on someone.”
He laughed off anything else we tried to tell him about our world. I can’t say I blamed him none either. If I’d have grown up and lived in the world he did, I wouldn’t believe what we were telling him.
* * *
When the sun was still high in the sky the gates of the city appeared before us. Micea had a stone wall around it that stood roughly fifty feet tall. The gates that we passed through were made of thick rusted iron bars.
The caravan moved into a courtyard and the different owners of the different wagons parted ways and went off to where they needed to go. The guy who had been arguing over Johnny’s price had four wagons holding a total of sixteen slaves. He had the wagons arranged in a half circle so that all of us could be looked at and bargained over at the same time.
McRae leaned close to the bars so he could whisper to Johnny and me. “I’m pretty sure that most of us are going to be tested here to find out what they are going to use us for. At least we’ll get a good meal before they do it.”
I wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about but I was betting they weren’t going to keep us waiting for long. I leaned close to Johnny. “No matter what happens,” I told him, “We got to be cool about it until we get them to believing there’s no fight left in us at all. Then we escape. Won’t be no trying either, we make it or die.”
A stocky guy with a short sword in his hand was walking back and forth in front of the cages. He was slapping the flat of his sword against his palm like a lion tamer cracking a whip. When he noticed me talking he came over and slapped the flat of his sword against the bars of my cage. “Silence slave!” He barked at me.
I didn’t say anything else. I even had to look the other way. Otherwise he would have seen the murder in my eyes.
He walked away.
I looked at Johnny.
Johnny just nodded back at me. There was no doubt about the message we passed to each other. Just take the shit they throw at us in silence, until we can make them pay.
Looking into the other cages that had been brought with us I saw only one female among the sixteen prisoners. She was a skinny, scared, and grimy looking little teenaged girl.
There were a few skinny teenage boys and a few old looking guys. The rest looked like us, mean prisoners of war.
After a few minutes, five guys dressed like they thought they were royalty showed up with their guards. They began inspecting us, making comments on every aspect of our appearance from our teeth to our toes. They went over every one of us in the cages, one at a time.
When they got to me, I smiled at them and gave them the finger. They didn’t know what it meant anyway.
One of the bidders called the guy who’d brought us here Chilo. So I figured that was his name.
Most of the others had been purchased at between fifty to eighty sesterces. The little teenaged girl had to practically be given away. She was weeping the whole time that the bidding was going on for her. Chilo kept poking her with a stick to make her reveal a breast or a bit of leg for the bidders. She just shrank back to the far corner of her cage hiding her face.
When McRae was up for bid he proudly told the group, “If any of you have a house of pleasure, I’m the man for you. I can please any woman on the Earth. If you have a nagging wife just give me a shot at her and her nagging will be over. She’ll walk around your home with a grin as big as the sky and stars in her eyes and bowl legged as well.”
The bidders discussed McRae’s powerful looking thigh muscles then he was bought for ninety sesterces. When Chilo asked the winning bidder, a mean looking dark skinned guy, why he’d went so high the Bidder said, “I just want to see the look on his face as he’s being gelded.”
Torstan went for seventy sesterces. He was sold to a short, fierce looking, bla
ck haired man named Flaccus, who said he’d make a great arena fighter.
I was bought by the same guy for fifty sesterces.
The bidding got really hot when Johnny’s turn came. A black man in Rome was very rare. A few of the bidders had never even seen a Negro before. The bidding reached one hundred and fifty sesterces before the guy who’d bought me and Torstan added Johnny to his collection.
I was grateful as hell that guy bought Johnny too. If we’d been bought by two different bidders I’d have had to have found him and the girls. Finding the girls is going to be hard enough.
After the bidding was done we were taken out of our cages at sword point. I’d been bent over so long in that damn cage that it hurt just to try to stand up. Outside my cage, off of the wagon, the first step I tried to take my knees gave way and I pitched on my face on the dirt.
A guard kicked me in the ass. I stood up and told myself, the first chance I get you’re a dead mother fucker. I didn’t voice a word of it. Yeah, be cool, until it counts. Laugh now mother fucker, I will laugh last.
* * *
We were prodded at sword point down the street and into a building that looked like a horse barn except for the chains screwed into the floor. They slapped the chains on us in there and we were brought some bowls of a type of stew and large chunks of coarse bread. After all the days of raw potatoes and carrots, this meal tasted better than anything I’d ever eaten.
Flaccas bought five of us from our caravan, Torstan, Johnny and me, the crying girl and another skinny teenage boy.
While we were still eating Johnny turned to me and said, “Did you see the way they were bidding on me. Shit, they like brothers around here don’t they? If I’d of shown them my dick, they’d still be arguing over me.”
Torstan scowled at Johnny and with an evil smile said, “Yes, they would still be arguing over who would get the pleasure of cutting your dick and balls off.”
“Man, that shit ain’t funny,” Johnny said. “Don’t you people have any sense of humor at all?”
“You are a slave now,” Torstan told him. “Speak when you are spoken to. Do what you are told. You will live longer.”
“Well, you ain’t my master, mother fucker,” Johnny said. “I’ll speak to you any goddamned way I feel like it!”
“Take it easy,” I told Johnny. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I know,” Johnny said. “I don’t wear these damn chains too well myself.”
We ate the rest of our meal in silence.
The idea that we might spend the rest of our lives in chains wasn’t a good thing to be thinking about.
* * *
A few minutes after we were done eating six guards came marching into the barn. One of them was carrying an armful of thick chains and manacles. Starting with Johnny first, they put a thick metal ring around his left ankle and using a type of pliers, an anvil and a hammer, they beat on it and riveted it shut.
They moved from him to me, then on to everyone who was already chained to the floor in the room, fastening a manacle around each of our left ankles. For the full grown men, the guards kept their swords pointed at us, ready to run us through if we gave them any trouble.
After that, again starting with Johnny at the beginning of the chain, they used the pliers to squeeze a ring closed and fastened our leg manacle to the long chain. When they were clamping the final ring onto the end of the chain and fastening the last of us, the weeping girl to the rest of us, Johnny whispered to me, “Hell, I ‘d rather be in the back of a bus in the 1950’s in Alabama than being the leader of this train.”
“I heard that,” I answered. “After this, if anybody in the U.S. complains to me about being treated bad, I’m gonna bust him upside his head.”
One of the guards yelled at us to shut up, which we did. We were then prodded at sword point out the barn doors and down the street.
Walking with a chain attached to one leg ain’t easy. Every time one of us stumbled a guard would smack that person with the flat of his sword and kick the stumbler until he got in step with everyone else. Not my preferred method for learning how to march, but it was effective. Before we’d walked fifty paces, all of us were in step and moving along pretty good.
I don’t know how far we marched. It must have been at least a mile when we came to a compound that looked to me like the outside of the prison in Papillion.
High walls, iron bars on all the windows and doors, spikes at the top of the walls.
A large door was opened for us and we were prodded inside. Across an open courtyard we heard the clash of steel. Men were slashing and stabbing at each other with strange weapons of all kinds.
This was to be our new home.
CHAPTER 20
Gladiator School
The smell of dust and sweat was in the air. Mixed with it, almost overpowering, was the smell of spilt blood. I knew this smell well, a pungent, unpleasant, repellant aroma. I’d never smelled it this strong before.
Here, many people had died, and their deaths had not been pleasant ones. The smell of a person's death when it comes violently is strong. The air will reek of the fecal matter the body throws off in its final fight to live. That stench was heavy.
Off in a far corner of the courtyard two men were nailed to crosses. Crucifixion has to be a terribly painful way to die. Their final agonies were etched on their faces.
In the open courtyard, separated from us by a fence of steel bars, men were training with swords, spears, and three pronged tridents and nets. Some were sparring, their hands wrapped in cushioned bandages. Others were training with apparatus that swung wooden poles at their heads that they ducked under then swung a pole at their ankles that they jumped over in succession. Those poles looked like they would knock hell out of you if you miss timed a duck or a jump.
A few seconds after I started watching a guy using one of these training machines the guy didn't jump fast enough. The swinging pole cracked him loudly across the ankles. He went down. As he was getting up the top pole swung and knocked a handful of his teeth flying through the air. That boy looked like he wouldn't want to be kissing anyone for a while.
In another part of the courtyard, sandbags hung from platforms. Some guys with blunt iron swords were slapping these around. More bags, hung the same way, were being punched at by more guys with wrapped hands. The guards let us watch this for a few minutes then the door we’d entered through swung open and Flaccus, the man who’d bought us, walked in.
He walked back and forth in front of us, looking us over. He didn’t seem overly impressed. He stopped his pacing and addressed us as a group, like an army drill Sergeant would.
“Before these chains are taken off of you, I will tell you this,” he said to us. “I am a business man, and you are my property. I supply fighters for The Circus Maximus in Rome. The Emperor himself watches the shows that I supply to. Some of you will be granted the honor to fight and die in front of our great Caesar Caligula. All of you will in some way contribute to the shows put on in Circus Maximus.
“Disobedience will not be tolerated and will be punished. Attempts to escape will be punished,” he pointed at the two crucified men, “In this manner.”
“Obedience and bravery and giving an entertaining show will be rewarded, sometimes by letting you have a woman. Do as you are told and you may be happy here. Some are. Disobey and die.”
He walked toward the back of the line again looking us over. Flaccus stopped in front of the scared teenaged girl and reached out to touch her cheek. She shrank back from him. He backhanded her hard, knocking her from her feet.
Flaccus looked at one of the guards and motioned to the girl, “Take this one to the females.”
He walked toward the door and said over his shoulder, “Have the others bathed. They stink of their barbarian homes.”
Flaccus left.
* * *
The girl was unfettered from our chain and led away.
The chains were taken off us and the image
of the two men nailed to crosses in the courtyard did stop any idea I had of springing at the throat of the nearest guard. I can think of quite a few better ways of dying than being crucified. So I did as I was told and acted like a good boy.
We were taken into a large room where several wooden washtubs were filled with water. Each of us climbed out of our clothes and into the wash tubs.
A female slave was at each tub to help us in and scrub us down with an abrasive sponge. The water was cold, but after weeks without a bath the cold water felt great. The slave that was helping me wash was probably in her thirties. She was attractive, but never looked up and never met my eyes, even though I tried to get her to. I tried to talk to her but she just looked away and wore a stony expression on her face.
I asked her name but she didn’t answer. Hell, here I was sitting in a bath tub in the raw in front of a nice looking woman and I couldn’t even get a peep out of her.
“Come on, you can tell me your name.” I said to her, “There’s no harm in that.”
But she just stayed stone silent and kept working at my dirt like a well-trained mechanic working on an engine. After a few minutes, I gave up and just enjoyed the scrubbing.
She also gave me a shave with a very sharp knife. I was hoping she knew what she was doing when she had that knife at my throat. I kept my mouth shut during the shave. At that moment I didn’t want to be pissing that woman off.
At length, a guard came in and clapped his hands together. “Finish up now,” he barked. Man I could have stayed in that tub all day.
My attendant had me stand up and she dried me off using a coarse cloth. Someone brought some clean clothes for me and took my soiled ones.