by B. L. Morgan
The way the floor was rocking I could tell the other cages were being off loaded.
When I showed signs of life the guy yelling at me said. “I am going to have that sack taken off your head. You give us any trouble and you will be fighting today missing an arm or a leg. You decide how you will have it.”
”I’ll do what you tell me,” I told him through the bag and leaned close to the bars with my head.
The drawstring was untied and the sack was pulled off.
The inrush of cool air felt good going down my throat. I had to squint against the brighter light that scratched at my eyes.
After a few seconds I could see again. A big ugly guy in need of a bath and a visit to the dentist was unlocking the door to my cage. Outside, four guards were waiting for me with swords drawn. These were not those training swords either. Nothing blunt about any of these blades.
There was a long line of slaves lined up in front of the cages they’d just come out of. All kinds of slaves were in that line: young, old, male, female. Most of the females were old. I saw that the skinny teenage girl Johnny and me tried to protect was in the line. She had a busted lip and her left eye was purple and swollen shut.
Pugnax was in the line too. We locked eyes and he gave me a stare of pure death.
I looked for Johnny but didn’t see him anywhere. Might be he was considered too valuable to be wasted in these kind of fights. It didn’t matter. I knew Johnny could take care of himself. I was going to need to concentrate on keeping my ass alive today.
I went to the end of the slave line, and with two of the four guards watching me very closely. We were marched through some huge doors into a foul smelling room where the walls were lined with cages.
One wall of the room was a steel gate made of crisscrossed metal bars. Beyond that gate was a large killing field. Covered in ugly reddish dirt it was a round central open area enclosed by stone walls.
Over the stone walls the spectators sat on ascending rows of stone steps. This arena was structured like a bowl, so everyone could get a clear view of the carnage below them.
Miletus was in the room we entered. He pointed at me. “This one,” he barked. “Put him there.” He indicated a cage next to the gates where I’d have a clear view through the bars to the arena floor.
I was put in the cage he said and the door was locked behind me. At least these cages were large enough to stand and stretch.
After all the slaves were placed in cages, Miletus walked over to where I stood with my hands on the bars.
"I knew you would be a problem the first moment I saw you,” he said. “I could see it in your eyes. You and that Nubian would always be a problem.”
“Where’s Johnny?” I asked.
He ignored the question.
“You will not be a problem after today,” Miletus said as he was walking away. He stopped and looked back at me. “Flaccus paid for you to die in front of them.” He pointed toward the spectators. “Do yourself proud,” he said, “Show them a death they’ll remember.”
Ain’t this a bitch, I thought. This mother fucker’s giving me a pep-talk so I won’t just lay down easy and let myself be massacred. The harder I fight, the more money Flaccus makes on the next group of sacrificial lambs brought here, the better it makes Miletus look to Flaccus. This was fucked up.
Well, I wasn’t going to lay down for anyone, for any reason.
“Fuck you Miletus,” I yelled at him. “Why don’t you just step your ass out there in the dirt and have a go at me? Don’t have the balls, do you?”
That made him smile. He laughed and walked away.
* * *
It was still early in the morning and there weren’t many spectators in the stands yet. Some slaves came through with sacks of vegetables and fruits and handed them out to the slaves in the cages. Some of the cages were still empty.
On the arena floor to start off the day’s festivities, they began by having a beast hunt just a few minutes before another group of slaves were brought in. A beast hunt is a sad thing. All kinds of animals are turned loose on the arena floor and trained bestiaries hunt them down and kill them. The bestiaries might use swords or knives or spears or they might even be bare handed. No matter how they did it, it was a sad thing to watch. Hell, the animals, whether they were deer, antelope or even lions and tigers were in an enclosed area. Eventually they were going to die.
After a little while, I was rooting for the lions and tigers to eat a few of the bestiaries. The struggle was so unequal I wanted to see the underdogs get in a few good licks before they went down.
When the new group of slaves came in I was surprised as hell to see a short attractive black girl among them.
That was Terry, the sweet looking black woman who was just starting to play a symphony on my skin flute when Sherry so rudely interrupted us. She was placed in a cage two away from mine.
As soon as the guards had all the slaves locked up, they left to perform other duties. I shouted, “Hey Terry, over here,” And waved at her through the two sets of bars that separated us.
For a moment she looked at me like I was crazy. She didn’t recognize me at all.
“It’s John Dark,” I shouted to her.
At my voice, recognition flashed in her eyes. “Mr. Dark,” Terry gasped and involuntarily reached toward me. “What are you doing here?”
“Just out for a stroll, figured I’d drop in. Now what the hell do you think I’m doing here? Me and Sushi’s boyfriend came after you, Sushi, and Sherry, “I told her. “We kind of got sidetracked.”
She smiled. “I can see that,” Terry said. “I know Johnny, if you guys came to rescue us, who’s coming to rescue you?”
“That’s the part of the plan I’m still working on.”
“Where’s Johnny?” Terry asked.
I told her about the gladiator school and us trying to stop the girl's rape and pointed her out across the room.
“You best learn something about where we are,” Terry told me. “Here, you better help yourself and that’s it. You try to help anybody else, you gonna get fucked up.”
I had to smile at that. “We came here to help you,” I reminded her.
She smiled at me and those big African lips contrasting nicely with her white teeth made my balls twitch. I had a mini flashback to her wrapping her lips around my dick in her dressing room. It must have shown on my face because Terry said, “You know we have unfinished business.”
“You got that right,” I told her. “Can’t never leave a man unfinished.”
“Might cause you some long term problems,” she said and giggled.
“Yeah, like a stiff dick that never goes away.”
We just smiled at each other for a minute.
After a moment of silence I asked her, “How’d you end up here?”
“That’s a long story,” Terry said.
“I ain’t going anywhere,” I told her and listened to what she had to say over the screams and cries of wild animals being butchered.
CHAPTER 27
Terry’s Tale
Terry told me that her, Sushi and Sherry were taken directly to Rome and put on the auction block in front of a bunch of wealthy Romans.
“With my dark skin I was bought for some damn good money,” Terry said. “I don’t know who Sushi and Sherry went to. I was sold first so before their bidding even started I was taken away.”
The guy that bought Terry was a short plump effeminate man that turned her stomach at first sight. “I just knew, he put a hand on me, I was going to have to kick the shit right out of him,” she told me.
Turned out, he hadn’t bought her for himself. The man named Apronius Marcelus, bought her for his fifteen year old son. The boy named Seneca was so withdrawn and shy that he couldn’t even look at a female without turning a bright shade of red. Talking to girls for him was totally out of the question.
When Terry was introduced to Seneca and told her duties would include instructing the boy in sexual techniqu
es her first thought was, this wasn’t going to be such a bad job. “The boy was cute,” Terry said. “And when I got him loosened up and speaking a little he had a way with words that got me all hot and bothered just talking to him.”
The boy reminded Terry of the guy that starred in the beach movies shot in the 50’s, Frankie Avalon. “Except, he was smaller,” Terry said. “But I liked him.”
It took Terry a few weeks to get Seneca at ease enough to get him into bed, “The trick was,” she told me. “I had to make it seem like it was his idea so I wouldn’t bruise his ego. I needed to make him feel like a man and I was his conquest, or some shit like that.”
Seneca had a separate house in back of his father’s mansion. He was given this house so he could have privacy for his studies. Since she was Seneca’s personal body servant, Terry was given a room in the same house.
After she’d spent quite a bit of time doing little things to get the boy interested in her, like rubbing up against him by accident or revealing a bit of naked thigh, also by accident, Terry figured it was time to take a more direct approach.
In the middle of a night lit by a bright full moon Terry awakened Seneca by sitting beside him on the bed and pretending to weep.
Sitting up, he asked her, “What is wrong Terry? What brings these tears from your lovely dark eyes?”
“I had a dream,” she told him. “It was horrible. I’m afraid to go back to sleep. Master,” she asked, “Could you just hold me in your arms and make the nightmares go away?”
With that she shrugged out of her clothes and slid in beside the boy. It didn’t take much urging from Terry for Seneca to begin doing naturally what his body had already been bidding him do. They made love all the rest of that night.
“I couldn’t believe how much energy that boy had,” Terry told me. "Once I got Seneca that first night, he wanted to be fucking me, morning, noon, night and day. He found out what that thing between his legs was for and was going to make sure he got the most out of it.”
“I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t like it too,” Terry went on. “Every different position I showed him, man he got to it. I was his new toy and he loved playing with me. After a few weeks I was trying to figure out new things to teach the boy. He was a very willing pupil. My favorite student, if you know what I mean.
“Seneca was a very gentle lover too. One peep from me that anything we did hurt and he’d stop. He was always asking me how things felt. And he got to be like a magician at pulling orgasms out of me. Once he found out that my moaning and groaning was because I was feeling good, he’d do his very best to make me squeal.”
“I wanted to make sure Seneca knew as much as I could teach him. For one thing, he was practicing on me and I was getting the benefit of cumming like no woman on Earth had ever cum before, and Seneca was also whispering words of love to me when we were in the middle of our hot and heavy lessons."
“There was a library in the big house. I checked it out for books on sex. You know they had nothing in there about a guy giving a woman head. They had all kinds of stuff about girls blowing guys but nothing the other way around. Guess these Roman’s ain’t too concerned about a woman feeling good. When I taught Seneca about that, man he about had me climbing the walls. He liked to lick my pussy hard just to hear me scream.”
”I’m not sure if I love Seneca or not, but he loved me,” Terry said. “He treated me good and never talked to me like I was a slave. He asked me if I would marry him. I said I would. I know I could do a whole lot worse in this world than being married to the son of a rich man.”
“When Seneca went to tell his father of his plans to marry me that was the last time I saw him. He went to the house, about fifteen minutes later some guards came out with a chain. They threw me in a cage and here I am.”
Terry’s face had a sad look on it. Like she was seeing in her mind what might have been. “Guess Apronius didn’t want his son marrying no slave,” Terry told me.
“I’m sorry,” I said and meant it.
“Ain’t nothing but a thang,” Terry said. “Something good’ll come along again. It’s bound to.”
* * *
The beast hunt was winding down. Out of what seemed like at least a hundred animals let loose into the arena, only a few of them were still alive. Of the bestiaries, just a couple of them received minor injuries. It was a rigged fight that we’d just witnessed, rigged but real. There was only one possible ending.
The spectators were divided into different areas for the different classes of people that watched the show, one area for the lower classes, another for the rich and one other for the elite class.
The elite sat in marble throne-like seats that were covered with an umbrella type of sunshade.
After the beast hunt ended a different type of slave came out and started working in the arena among the dead animals. These were guys who had meat cleavers and bundles of cloth bags thrown over their shoulders. They were chopping up the bodies of the animals where they lay and putting the pieces into the bags. Then they’d toss the bags to the spectators in the seats for the poor, where they would fight over the scraps.
We watched this for a little while until I realized Terry probably didn’t really have a grasp of the seriousness of what was happening today. Something about her attitude didn’t seem right. She seemed to have an, I don’t give a shit attitude about her.
“Terry, you do know where we’re at don’t you?” I asked her.
“Course I do,” she answered me. “I seen this kind of shit on channel 11 on the Saturday Afternoon Cinema. Saw this stuff in that movie Barabas.”
“Good, cause you better start waking up,” I told her. “These people do some ugly shit to slaves.”
“They won’t do shit to me,” Terry said, “Wouldn’t make no sense.”
I told Terry, “They’ll do anything just for a good show. When we fight today, it’ll probably be to the death.”
She laughed at that. “I doubt I’ll be fighting anything, except maybe some Roman’s big dick. It just wouldn’t make no sense,” she said.” “They can only kill me once. But they fuck me a thousand times. So why would they kill me. It just don’t make no sense.”
“Don’t bet on anything these damn people doing making any sense at all,” I told her.
That was when the guards came in and opened up Terry’s cage and dragged her kicking and screaming out into the arena.
CHAPTER 28
Slaughter
Other slaves were dragged out of their cages. Not many of them kicked and screamed like Terry did. In the open killing field, five pairs of slaves were spaced out evenly. While they were held at sword point by guards who each held an extra short sword in his left hand, an announcer of sorts walked to the center of the arena and read from a scroll.
The announcer shouted directly to the spectators in the elite seats. “For your entertainment, an exhibition of the faultlessness of Roman Justice, these criminals have been collected from throughout the empire.”
Terry and her opponent-to-be were no more than fifty feet from where I was standing on the other side of the bars of my cage and the gate. I could see Terry’s mouth drop open and her eyes were wide in surprise. She mouthed the word, “Criminal?”
“These committers of the vile acts of murder, arson, thievery and deception will be given the chance to atone for their actions. They will fight for you today and noble combat will cleanse the evil from their hearts. Those who survive will be given the chance to show the courage of a true citizen of Rome. When they show this courage, their crimes will be washed away and they will once again be accepted by all of Rome as one of her children.”
With that he strode to an exit door, paused before leaving and shouted, “Let it begin!”
The guards that were with Terry and her opponent, tossed the short swords from their left hands into the dirt at each of the girl’s feet. Then they backed off so that they were behind each of the women. It was obvious that they were there to
force the girls to fight and to keep the fight going at a fast and furious pace.
For a moment Terry stared dumbly at the sword at her feet not comprehending what was really happening.
Her opponent, a wiry, strong looking woman with dirty brown hair and skin like tanned leather did not hesitate, she snatched up her blade and came at Terry at a run.
“Get your fucking sword!” I screamed at Terry.
That seemed to jar her out of her funk. She grabbed up her blade and brought it up just barely in time to stop a slash across her head.
The force of the blow knocked Terry to her back. She rolled away and her opponent missed another slash at her head purely by accident.
The other fights were going on too but I was only watching the one unfolding directly in front of me.
Terry didn’t have a clue as to what to do with her sword. Thank god the other woman didn’t either. The other woman waded after Terry, ripping the air with viscous strokes of her blade. She had no skill at all, just meanness and a ruthless desire to kill.
Terry just kept backing off, putting her blade in front of the swinging sword that was coming at her. She was making little whimpering noises. This was not something that she had even remotely been prepared for.
The crowd roared when in another part of the killing field a man was stabbed and went to the ground. The spectators sounded like hungry animals that were somehow devouring the feeling of the kill. Whenever a blow or slice or stab struck home, the crowd ate it up. That’s what they were there for.
I was watching Terry’s fight so intently that I didn’t even notice when Miletus walked up. He stood beside the bars to my cage.
“Your friend,” he said to me and laughed. ”She has no courage. She has no skill. She has nothing of any value. She will die.”