by B. L. Morgan
“Call it off,” I told Miletus. “Look at her, she’s not a fighter. You know that. She sure as hell didn’t do what that guy said the rest of them did. Call it off!” I yelled at him.
“You are in no position to order anyone,” Miletus said. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We were paid to show them death today. We do what we are paid to do. We will show them death.”
Terry backed up into one of the guards, who shoved her forward. Stumbling, she almost ran full onto the woman’s sword in front of her. Somehow, she twisted just as the thrust came and jumped sideways.
“Miletus,” I shouted at him. “You said she’s useless. Hell, take a look at her. Wouldn’t you rather be fucking her than just seeing her die? Take a good look. I can tell you from experience, she can suck your dick like you ain’t ever had it sucked before. Call it off! This makes no fucking sense.”
This made him laugh again. “I can have a thousand slave girls tonight if I want them. What would one mean to me?”
Terry’s opponent was slowing down. She’d been doing all the fighting. She missed one of her big swings and threw herself off balance. She stumbled, turned her ankle and fell to her knees in front of Terry. Terry drew back her sword to swing the killing blow down upon the unprotected head. Then she stopped.
“Get rid of her,” I yelled at Terry. “Fucking kill her! Do it! Do it!”
Terry kicked the woman instead, knocking her to her side in the red sand.
Miletus scowled. “Your people are weak,” he said. “Yes, I know where you come from. Many of you have come through my school. I spit upon your country and your empire. That you should come after we are gone is an affront to the gods.” With that he walked away.
Terry was breathing hard but wasn’t as tired as the other woman. She circled around behind her, keeping her sword in front of her in both hands. She spoke to the other woman.
“Listen girl,” Terry said between her gasping breaths. “We can call this even right now. We don’t have to kill each other. How about it? We both get out of this alive. I don’t want to kill you and I sure as fuck don’t want to die.”
The woman slid around to face Terry while still on her hands and knees. She looked up into Terry’s eyes. She smiled and nodded her head yes.
The woman reached out her left hand to be helped to her feet and Terry reached for her hand. It was at that moment when I saw that the woman’s blade was to her left side. Her right arm was tensed.
I shouted “No!” as she ripped the blade upward in a backhand swing that caught Terry’s left hand just above the wrist and sliced clean through it.
Terry’s scream was like the metallic screech of grinding steel.
Blood flew through the air in a spray. Terry’s hand swung at the end of her arm like something made of rubber attached to her wrist only by a few layers of skin below her thumb. Everything else, bone, muscle, veins and ligaments had been sliced clean through.
Terry screamed, “No! No! Oh god no, please no!”
There’s something particularly gut wrenching about hearing a woman screaming in pain. This was worse. I knew this woman personally and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop what was happening.
I grabbed the bars in front of me and shook them straining against the steel that held me back. Crying out in frustration, I beat at the bars and tried to rip them loose from their moorings like my desperation would transform me into some type of all-powerful superhero.
But today was not a day for superheroes. The bars did not give. I could only watch.
Terry’s opponent came at her like before but this time Terry buckled beneath the blows. She went down from a chop to her thigh and as she lay on her back begging for mercy. Her opponent stood over her grinning.
She seemed to be enjoying Terry’s cries and after kicking Terry’s sword away did not make her end fast.
When Terry kicked at her, she chopped chunks out of her feet. When Terry tried to put her hands up to ward off the blows, her other hand was sliced off.
Terry tried to crawl away on her knees and the two stumps of her arms. She couldn’t move fast enough. Her opponent followed her, hacking at her legs, her buttocks, her back and shoulders. Every sword stroke bit deep.
Each time the blade came down Terry screamed in pain. Each scream was weaker than the one that preceded it.
I turned away and couldn’t watch. After what seemed impossibly long, Terry was silent.
She was dead.
At least her pain was over.
I looked back out at Terry lying in her own blood. Her face was turned toward me. Blood ran from her lips and her nose. Her dark eyes seemed to look at me, accusing me, asking, “Why didn’t you save me?”
CHAPTER 29
Rape of the Innocent
I watched as three slaves pulling an ox cart gathered up the bodies. A few of the fights still went on. They were more evenly matched contests than the ones that ended quickly.
The slaves with the cart handled the bodies like city laborers collecting road kill carcasses from the shoulders of rural highways. They just picked them up and unceremoniously tossed them in the back of the wagon like trash. What a few minutes before were people were now just useless meat.
As far as I knew the Romans didn’t practice cannibalism, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if they did.
On this long day, my surprises concerning what the Romans considered entertainment were far from over.
* * *
When the last fight ended, the victorious slaves were lead away to be bandaged up and gotten ready for their next fight. There was no announcement of the names of the winners.
No congratulations.
The blood thirsty crowd in the stands could care less who won or lost, they only wanted to see the blood spilled. The faces of the people in the stands looked like demons to me, creatures from hell who fed upon pain.
I wasn’t going to let them feed on me. They could get their thrills off of someone else’s blood. I was about to see them do just that.
Miletus came back into the slave holding area as the slaves on the killing field were finishing cleaning up the mess left on the sand. There were still the odd body parts lying around waiting to be taken away.
Miletus walked to the Iron Gate and leaned on it watching me.
I asked him, “What are you doing back here? Come to give me some more of your sermon on the wonderful Roman way of life.”
Miletus smiled. “I came to watch your face,” he said. “One of the things I really love about your people is how I can give you pain without even touching you.”
I had a bad feeling about what I was going to see next but no matter what it was I wasn’t going to beg this guy for mercy. Miletus didn’t even know what the word meant.
The Announcer strode to the center of the killing field again and shouted, “Continuing our theme of Roman justice. This woman, this vile harlot who will next be revealed to you used the charms of her young body to seduce a noble Roman Senator and then poisoned him to rob his home. Let her meet the beast and the fate she deserves.” He strode away again.
The sun was high in the sky. It gave off a stifling suffocating heat. The smell of blood and human excrement was in the air. Anyone who dies violently evacuates their bowels at the moment of death. It’s not a pleasant smell. Quite a few people had died violently here already. More were to follow.
Two guards came through the doors and went directly to the teenage girl's cage who Johnny and I had tried to protect. They went in and one grabbed her by the hair and slapped her hard across the face.
The other grabbed the stunned kid’s arms and wrenched them behind her. They started dragging the screaming, begging child out of her cage then out onto the killing field.
On the killing field a man leading a leopard on a leash went to the center of the arena. He was accompanied by another man who had a bucket in one hand, a large paint brush in the other and animal skins slung over his shoulder.
They stopped and waited
with the leopard as the two guards dragged the struggling girl to them.
Miletus was smiling as he watched the proceedings. “Go ahead,” he said to me. “Beg for the little one’s life. You are the one who put her where she is. If she had done her job like the rest of us do and proven she was useful, she would not have been used like this.”
The guards threw the girl on the ground and when she tried to get up to run, one of them punched her and knocked her back down. The two guards ripped the clothes off the cringing girl.
Two more guards came out and grabbed the girl's arms and held them to the ground. The original two guards each grabbed one of the girl's legs and forced them apart, exposing her nakedness to everyone in the arena.
The girl screamed out in shame, begging them not to do this to her. She might as well have been screaming at the sun to not shine down so hotly upon her, for all the good it did.
Her cries were heartrending, but I kept a stone face. I wasn’t going to give Miletus the satisfaction of letting him know it affected me at all.
The spectators seemed to really be getting off on what was going on. There was hooting and cheering in the stands. Miletus had a weird expression on his face as he watched what was happening to the girl. Something about this excited him in a sexual way. He even reached down and rubbed himself at his crotch.
“You are some sick fucking freaks,” I told him.
Miletus laughed. “Freaks, we are not the freaks,” he said. “We are the purest people. Our empire lasted longer than any in history because we did not lie to ourselves. We know we are animals. We are the strongest animal.”
The man carrying the bucket dipped the paintbrush into it and stirred around. The large cat’s head instantly snapped up as though he smelled something. Whatever scent caught the cat’s attention, it was so strong he couldn’t ignore it.
The man with the paintbrush and bucket took the brush out. It was dripping red and he slapped a large red swash of the reddish liquid onto the girl’s privates, leaving a large red splotch there.
The girl screamed again and one of the guards at her arms punched her and she was quiet. The punch must have knocked her out. With what was coming, it would have been better for her if the punch had killed her.
The man who had painted the girl slung the animal skins off from over his shoulder and laid them on the semi-conscious teenager. The guy who had the leopard on the leash led his pet to her. The leopard was obviously a male. He was erect. Whatever the guy had painted the girl with it must have had the scent of a female leopard in heat in it.
The leopard didn’t need any prompting. It did what its instincts told it to do when presented with a female in heat. He mounted the girl and started fucking her in a frenzy.
Miletus actually reached down into his tunic and was fondling himself as he watched this.
What in the hell is wrong with you fucking people I thought as the girl suddenly and violently came fully awake.
She shrieked and screamed at the creature that was on top of her and fought with a desperation brought on by madness to get loose from the four strong men who held her.
The leopard, excited to the point of frenzy by the yelling crowd and his sexual instincts, snapped his teeth down onto the neck of the girl beneath him. One jerk to the side was all it took for him to end her life.
The crowd applauded and cheered. Miletus looked at me and laughed. He pulled his hand out of his underwear and wiped it in the dirt at his feet. “That was a good one,” he said. “Yes, it’s not easy to train the big cats to perform in front of crowds but Crixus really has a way with them.”
He started to walk back out of the slave holding area but paused at the door and told me, “You are next!”
CHAPTER 30
Pulling a Train
As the cleanup crew was taking the girl away four guards came to my cage. Three of them had their swords out. Guess they figured I could be more trouble than a skinny teenage girl.
The other guard held leather straps that had sharp steel spurs worked into them. The straps were tied around the fighter’s fists and worn like brass knuckles.
“Put your hands through the bars,” The guard who held the studded straps ordered me.
“Fuck you!” I told him.
“Have it your way,” he answered. “The other fighters will wear the caestus whether you use them or not.”
I put my hands through the bars.
“I thought you would see it that way,” he said as he tightened the straps around my fingers and wrists.
They lead me out to the center of the killing field. The red sand crunched under my feet as I walked.
No announcer came out to broadcast the reasons for my fight. I was probably considered so unimportant that no announcement was thought necessary.
The people in the stands were milling about. They weren’t interested in the least in me having to battle for my life.
That was fine by me.
I wasn’t here to give them a show.
The sun suddenly seemed much hotter than it had been just a few minutes before. The smell drifting up from the red sand was that of rotten meat.
I took a good look around, up into the stands before my opponent was brought out. For the most part, it was a motley bunch that showed up to see today’s blood sacrifice. The mob reminded me of a crowd at a wrestling match, except that these people knew the blood shed here was real.
There were the middle and lower class sections of the seating, dirty, ugly, rude, crude in-breeds; the cream of Roman society.
When my eyes wandered to the upper-class seating I was in for a surprise. Among others of the ruling class was a good looking, tall, slim built woman seated on the central marble throne. Next to her was the reason why I was here, Caesar Lanista.
I walked toward where the aristocracy sat and the guards did not stop me. Lanista had a smug smile on his face. From the body language that passed between him and the woman he sat beside, it was obvious that she was in a position of dominance over him and that there was also something sexual going on there.
I shifted my gaze to the lady on the marble throne. We made eye contact. I showed her with a look I was interested. She blushed red. Not an embarrassed blush but a blush of excitement.
Lanista turned red from the open threat I’d made to his position in this powerful woman’s bed.
I raised my right sharp spurred fist to the lady on the throne and saluted her. She smiled.
“For you my lady,” I shouted to her, “I give my blood today.”
Then I scratched myself on my right cheek with one of the studs and drew blood. As the crowd “Ahhhhhhed,” I wet my fingers with my own blood then blew a kiss to the lady on the throne.
My opponent strode out to the center of the killing field. I moved toward him and prepared to shed blood.
* * *
The guy sent against me was a tall, lean, long limbed, blond, snarling twenty year old. He came at me slowly at first, then with a burst of speed charged me and dove at my legs.
I was ready for it. We were taught at the school in Micea that there were no rules in these fights. You had to expect anything. I circled around to his back and he spun in the sand trying to keep me in front of him.
From where I was at I could have tried a kick to his head but I knew just barely enough about ground fighting to know I didn’t want to be down on the ground with this guy. My thing was slipping punches and kicks and firing back precise counters to mess the opponent up. I didn’t want to be in a wrestling match.
I was going to force him to play my game whether he wanted to or not. The stakes were too high to even consider letting him deal the cards.
We played for life and death.
I motioned for him to get up.
He stayed down, crab walking toward me. He threw a kick at my legs. I avoided it.
In a mixed martial arts match that would happen in about two thousand years, an oriental wrestler named Antonio Inoki used these tactics against Mu
hammad Ali. Their match ended in a boring fifteen round draw.
I doubt these Romans would put up with a fighter boring them for very long. They’d shoot us full of arrows just to see us jerk.
The only way I could attack was to go to the ground with him.
Fuck that! I wasn’t going to do it.
I moved around and motioned some more for him to get up. There was a scattering of boos in the stands.
“Come on,” I shouted to him. “They want to see some knuckles flying.” I motioned to the crowd.
A few shouts came from them. “Come on! Come on!”
I stopped moving and put my hands on my hips and looked around at the crowd with an exaggerated expression of confusion.
More boos came. More joined in to the chorus of cat calls until it was so loud the sand beneath my feet felt like it was vibrating.
The mass of blood thirsty idiots in the stands were not booing me.
My opponent took the bait.
He climbed to his feet. He came toward me.
Some things never change. Insult a man’s manhood by making him look like a coward and you just might make his emotions over rule his head. This guy’s balls were going to override any brains he might have.
Not a good idea.
Moving around, I feinted him out of position, made him miss with a sweeping right and dropped him with a left uppercut.
Miletus told me I was going to die today. So I asked myself, why I was being matched against this guy. Miletus would know I could take him easy. Something wasn’t right.
Give the kid some credit though, he was stubborn. He started climbing to his feet. The kid had a lot of guts. No brains, but a lot of guts.
The kid got to his hands and knees and was taking his time trying to stand up. He was so dizzy you could almost hear all the little birds chirping as they flew around in his skull.
I took two jumping, skipping, running, steps toward him and just as his hands came up out of the sand I planted a rising kick in the kids face.
Something crunched when the kick landed.
The kid went over to his back. His feet flew in the air then slowly settled back down to the sand. From his back he coughed and spit blood into the air.