Morituri

XXIII.

Flavius pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders as agitated gusts of wind swirled around the balcony, blanketing his face with a fine drizzle. The weather god was always capricious in April, but the play of the elements didn't bother the master of the Ludus Flavianus as he let his eyes wander over his estate. This land, the imposing villa, its extensive outbuildings and the luxurious bathhouse formed his very own little empire – and the cinder-track enclosed arena was its core.

His household consisted of more than sixty people, among them attendants and slaves who might well be considered his subjects, and he liked to think of his gladiatorial squad as his personal Praetorian Guard. Watching his fighters exercise never failed to remind Flavius of his roots, and he was proud that his protégés carried on their master's former profession so gloriously, bringing in rich purses and, in their wake, pride and prestige to the name Autronius and the Flavian School .

Many of them had yet to prove that they were profitable long-term investments, but some had already brought in far more than their acquisition and training had cost him. First among them was Byrria, of course, his Thracian tigress, whose skills in the ring were in no way inferior to her unrivalled talents in the bedchamber. It was thanks to her, after all, that his female fighters were regarded as more than a dubious fairground attraction. Then there was Hamilkar, the tall Phoenician, who was one of the few living centenni – gladiators who, like Flavius himself, had won more than one hundred fights. The Phoenician's star had just begun to rise when Flavius had retired from his active career in the ring, and it had cost two thirds of the prize money he had set aside to buy Hamilkar out of his contract so that he could start his own school. But now, after years of climbing the ladder of fame, each fight of this undefeated champion earned his manager a small fortune. Last but not least, the costly purchase of the comely Celtic twin sisters, whose second victorious season had established them as one of Rome 's most popular fighting attractions, was beginning to pay off nicely.

The thought of the two ravishing redheads brought Flavius' wandering mind back to the harsh reality of his arena. He glanced down at the all-but-nude Breaca, and as he watched the drizzle-drenched delinquent kneel forlornly in the middle of the windswept yard, buckling under her dreadful load, the stern master of the Ludus Flavianus began to have misgivings for having surrendered to Byrria's powers of persuasion and agreeing to such a punishment.

Of the twins, it had been the lively Breaca, rather than her sullen sister Verica, who had first incurred Byrria's jealousy when the handsome twosome had arrived at the arena two years ago. Having a fine sense for the strengths and weaknesses of her charges, it had not taken the Thracian tigress long to discover Breaca's Achilles heel – her tendency to be over-protective of her less assertive, but no less beautiful sister. And when Breaca herself had remained stoically indifferent to every attempt to provoke her, Byrria had cunningly adopted the stratagem of harassing Verica in order to goad Breaca into losing her temper.

Eventually, Byrria's strategy had paid off. One wintry afternoon, at the end of an arduous training session, the Thracian tigress had not dismissed the weary Verica along with the other recruits. Instead she had singled out the hapless trainee and ordered her to re-attempt the difficult obstacle course which she had failed earlier that day, and to continue to attack it until she had completed it without a single slip. Time and again Verica had done her best to master the parcours which had humbled the swiftest and strongest of men, but her ever-mounting fatigue insured that each attempt was less successful than its predecessor. Byrria had stalked her the entire length of the course, rewarding her every misstep with a flesh-searing slash of her crop. Finally, following a withering series of lashes which had bloodied her sister's back, Breaca could not stomach the abuse anymore and she had thrown herself at the callous lanista , knocking the Thracian to the ground and clubbing her with her fists until she was overpowered by a couple of guards.

The quick-tempered twin had just been lashed to the cross for attacking her trainer when Flavius had intervened. Acts such as striking a trainer could never be tolerated, but Flavius had had no intention of sacrificing one half of the most glorious pair of twins since Castor and Pollux to a too-strict interpretation of his own rules. But commuting the fiery redhead's sentence to fifty lashes had only served to kindle Byrria's penchant for the dramatic. As a reminder that the rebellious recruit had been spared crucifixion, the Thracian had ordered her to carry a cross-piece, identical, except for the thorns, to the massive beam Breaca was balancing on her shoulders right now. Byrria had paraded the proud redhead around the compound twice, flogging her every faltering footstep, until Breaca had collapsed under the weight of the cross-piece and the force of the whip, halfway through her second circuit of the compound. But even then her torment did not end, for the whip-wielding Thracian forced Breaca to continue her dreadful Calvary on all fours, while Verica was ordered to shoulder her sister's yoke and trudge along behind her. Three times the lacerating lashes had driven Breaca face first into the dirt, and at one point she had lapsed briefly into unconsciousness. But after a guard had revived her with a chilling bucket of water that rinsed the rivulets of blood from her body, Breaca had been made to finish the circuit while Byrria painted fresh streaks of crimson on her back

As he had watched the conclusion of that dreadful castigation, Flavius had marvelled at his lanista's mastery of the whip and wondered how she had come by it. With effortless ease the Thracian was able to make the supple leather find any part of her victim's body, delicately, fiercely, teasingly. Like a lyre player giving a virtuoso performance, Byrria used the whip as if it were a bow, eliciting ever-faster sequences of squeals and sobs and squeaks from Breaca's body.

Nevertheless, Byrria's insistence on the Thorns of Atlas as a punishment for Breaca's recent offence indicated that the vindictive Thracian had neither forgotten nor forgiven the Celtic warrioress for assaulting her in front of the others. Musing about Byrria's unforgiving nature, Flavius' wandering gaze sought out the most recent object of the Thracian's wrath, as the hissing sound of her crop drew his attention to the gymnastics area. There the golden-haired Gaul, who had proven such a fetching Aquaria during the water pail-bearing competition just concluded, was now being made to assume the taxing splits position. Byrria had planted herself in front of the weary recruit, tapping her menacing crop impatiently against her open palm. It came as no surprise to Flavius that Rutilius, the spiteful young guard who had denounced both Breaca and Taleena, was hovering nearby, his eyes darting furtively from one nearly naked beauty to the other.

'That's right! Look her over, you little bastard!' Flavius thought to himself even as he let his own expert eye explore the lush curves of the Gaul 's body. 'The day will come when you wish you'd never laid more than eyes on my property!' Autronius himself was positioned diagonally behind the Avernian recruit, a vantage point which allowed him an enviable view of her heart-shaped bottom as she began to extend her tawny legs across the damp ground. Flavius' breathing quickened slightly when a flick of Byrria's crop swept sharply across the blonde beauty's inner thigh, driving the Gaul 's bare legs even further apart, thus emphasizing the tantalizing groove between her buttcheeks. Flavius noticed that the severe distension of her limbs had caused a wound to re-open, and a little blood was seeping through the white linen, marking the location of the weal beneath. For a moment, Flavius imagined the reverberating crack Byrria's whip must have made when the well-greased leather had landed on those drum-tight bottom ovals, and as his eyes followed the soft indentations of Taleena's spine, he could distinguish each individual welt the whip had left on its way across the planes of her back.  As Byrria placed a pair of fist-sizes stones into the recruit's outstretched hands it occurred to Flavius that had there been an imaginative man in the yard, he might have seen the half-naked Avernian as a desperate worshipper. For Taleena's arms were extended prayerfully, as if she were beseeching the almighty Zeus to recall the menacing Harpy that loomed before her in the form of the Thracian lanista .

"Keep your arms up, Gaul !" Byrria ordered angrily. "This is a training camp, not an inn for weary travellers!" She placed the tip of the crop under Taleena's left wrist to stress her demand, and let it slide along the Avernian's outstretched arm until it reached the corded, concave hollow of her armpit. "I told you that I would spare your back today," Byrria mused with a wicked smile as she tapped the flat-tipped end of the crop against the outer contour of the recruit's breast, "but if you lower your arms again …!"

 Flavius looked on, mesmerized by the battle between these two unequal yet unequalled beauties, this fierce contest of wills doubling as a duel for erotic supremacy. As his eyes slowly moved from the suffering blonde to the olive-skinned Thracian and back again, it struck him that choosing the more beautiful of these two magnificent creatures would have been as daunting a task as the Judgment which had confronted Paris . Pleasingly enough, Flavius was spared the trilemma that had faced that unfortunate son of Troy, for the Fates had no doubt ordained that awarding the Golden Apple to any of the three goddesses would have led to disaster. Flavius, on the other hand, could assess and enjoy the two contrasting beauties down in the yard without having to decide on one, and thereby offending the other.  And enjoy he did as he edged closer to the railing of the balcony to better survey the drama unfolding below. Byrria's face was damp with precipitation, as was her lustrous dark hair, and the blue-dyed linen of her sodden, one-shouldered tunic clung to her curvaceous body like a second skin. Her nipples poked insistently against the wet fabric, and beneath her short tunic, the gleaming skin of her bronze thighs flashed brazenly with her every stride as the Harpyan beauty circled her arm-weary victim, preparing to strike at the first sign of weakness.  Shifting his gaze, Flavius found that the silhouette of the bare-breasted Gaul offered a no less enticing vision. Taleena's extended, stone-burdened arms paralleled the line of her long, shapely legs, and the delicate curvature of her ribs protruded in bold relief beneath her creamy skin whose glossy glaze seemed to render it even more taut and tender. The sensuous arch of the breast that was revealed to his view tantalized his imagination, and Flavius' fists clenched and unclenched with nervous anticipation. His mind raced ahead to that thrilling instant when the proud Avernian would no longer be able to keep her arms aloft, and Taleena's soft, desperate groans only served to heighten his arousal. Every laboured breath, every rise and fall of those pink-tipped mounds brought closer the moment when the abandonment of the proper arm position would trigger a swift slash to those proffered breasts…  But the certainty that the Avernian fought a losing battle against the slow, sad descent of her leaden limbs brought Flavius no closer to deciding the winner of the beauty contest being played out in his mind. Figuratively, Taleena reminded Flavius of a chaste Aphrodite, beautiful and graceful like a statuette of Phidias, but equally incapable of the animalistic passion which was Byrria's most effective weapon. Byrria was more like Isis, the Hellenized Egyptian goddess whose flagellatory rites most Romans found highly offensive – sultry and smouldering, willing to use her female charms for whatever purpose suited her. Yet, sorely tempted though he was to award the Golden Apple to the blue-clad Isis in this very moment, Flavius Autronius could not remember ever having been more intrigued by a woman than by this Avernian Aphrodite since his Thracian tigress had marked the arena as her territory…

* * *

Three years earlier Flavius had begun to sense that the audiences he hoped to please were displaying a certain jadedness with regard to conventional gladiatorial spectacles. Attendance was slightly down and the lusty roars of the crowds lacked the passion of earlier seasons. As he was considering how to rekindle interest in his entertainments, Flavius had conceived the idea of presenting a new type of fighter – young, daring, and female. And not just female – desirably female. The crowds in the tiers had seen women before, but most of them had been over-sized Gorgons with appearances that threatened to turn the entire body of male onlookers to stone, rather than focussing their powers of petrifaction on the one organ that craved such hardening.

It hardly took an Aristotle to conclude that there would be but little profit in training such ungainly warriors, but by a stroke of divine providence that Byrria came to be Flavius' first offering in his new venture. He had bought the wild-eyed Thracian, along with one of her countrymen, at a time when a contingent of Thracian rebels had been awaiting execution in the Carcer Mamertinus . In those days Sejanus had been the praetor urbanus responsible for the supervision of the city's prisons, and knowing that the ambitious young praetor suffered from a chronic inability to live within his means, Flavius had offered him a substantial sum in exchange for an option to purchase any prisoner whom he deemed a good fighting prospect. Sejanus had countered this proposal with an addendum – that if the prospect did happen to become a worthy fighter, he would receive a percentage of the gathered prize money – a condition to which Flavius readily agreed.

` The corrupt bargain had worked out well for both parties and marked the beginning of a mutually profitable acquaintance. For some time Byrria had been Flavius' sole acquisition through this channel, but within a year's time his deal with Sejanus had resulted in the acquisition of the comely Celtic twins who had so enhanced his stable of fighters. The handsome twosome remained one of Rome 's most popular fighting attractions, proving that Flavius' sizable initial outlay had indeed been money well spent. And now that Sejanus had been designated Praetorian Prefect, and had become a fervent epicure of female cestus -fighting, Flavius' connection with that dissolute young patrician who had now put his financial worries behind him seemed more auspicious than ever.

At first Flavius had been a little uneasy about admitting a woman to his squad, especially an exotic beauty like the almond-eyed Thracian. He had feared that her selection would lead to dissension, or worse, among his fighters. And indeed Byrria's arrival had caused quite a stir; she well knew how to call attention to herself and to make herself attractive to trainers, guards, and recruits, but it was her fighting skills, which came naturally to one of her lineage, which ultimately won her respect.

The Thracian people, who had for centuries occupied the strategic region between the Hellespont and the western banks of the Pontic Sea , believed that their offspring were born to fight, daughters as well as sons. For centuries Thracian girls had been brought up to ride and run, to wrestle and fence, unlike their more dainty cousins to the south and west. Having outlasted domination by Persians and Macedonians in earlier centuries, they were no more accepting of Roman ways than they had been of those of prior conquerors.

One of the most barbaric and enduring of Thracian customs was a coming-of-age ritual that had to be performed by youths, male and female, at the age of twelve and again at sixteen. It was called anitome , meaning, 'any time, anywhere', and it consisted of a savage type of hand-to-hand combat. Punching, kicking, biting – no stratagem was too unsporting and no hold was barred in these violent duels. But when the dust had cleared the ritual fight – and its memory – formed a lasting bond between the combatants, and fuelled a fighting spirit among this proud and warlike people whom no victorious armies had ever been able to fully assimilate. Even the mighty Roman legions had come to respect and fear their combativeness for good reason.

In the amphitheatres the Thracians' reputation for savagery preceded them into the ring, and over time their ferocity was such that they had become a gladiatorial class unto themselves – much like the Samnites , the retiarii , and the myrmillones . Gladiators from the four corners of the empire modelled themselves on the Thracian warriors, equipping themselves with all of the accoutrements of the Thracian gladiators – the distinctive helmet, shin guards, shield, and the notorious sica – a long, single-edged, slightly-curved dagger. So menacing was this regalia that a 'Thracian' fighter, whether a native of the region or one of the many counterfeits, was almost invariably regarded as a sinister 'villain' by the multitudes in the tiers. Byrria naturally had capitalized on this notoriety, emphasizing her heritage, and had done well in conventional battles even before the vogue for cestu s-fighting had taken hold; she had never lost a bout in either style of fighting.

But, as with any woman, Byrria had to surmount many obstacles before she managed to carve out a place for herself in a world of men. On her very first day in training, a young fencing master named Metellus, who had been Calixtus' assistant at the time, had set out to teach her a lesson in swordplay. But his attempt to demean the first female novice at the Ludus Flavianus had backfired awkwardly when the olive-skinned warrioress had disarmed the overconfident lanista in short order. But while her triumph won her the respect of her comrades, it earned her the undying hatred of Metellus, who felt that she had made him into a laughingstock in front of his charges.

Recognizing that the Thracian was a dangerous opponent even in a sparring match, Metellus soon found other ways to bully the raven-haired beauty who had disgraced him. He harassed her mercilessly, giving her all sorts of degrading orders and assigning her any number of humiliating tasks in hopes of provoking a response that would warrant some stern discipline. He had ordered her to remove her training costume and perform her drills in the nude in the center of the yard where all could see her. At that time, and for some time to come, she had been the only female recruit, and her enticingly lithe body drew the attention of all like a moth to a flame. It had been a hot summer day and Metellus had drilled the ravishing recruit mercilessly under the broiling sun all afternoon, while the onlookers watched with undisguised pleasure as the sweat-drenched beauty had practiced a seemingly endless cycle of thrusts and parries.

But when her enforced nudity failed to have the degrading effect intended by the ill-willed lanista , Metellus had cooked up another scheme. The next day, he had directed the recalcitrant recruit to wear a vest of chain mail without so much as an undertunic to insulate her bare skin from the woven ringlets of metal. The highly uncomfortable armour, which Metellus had insisted was for her own protection, seemed to pinch and pull at her soft skin with her every movement, and what was worse, the metal seemed to absorb the sun's heat and then distribute it to every part of her body that it touched.

Knowing that his ordinarily nimble opponent must have felt as if she were wearing the incandescent armour of Helios, Metellus had protracted the sword exercises endlessly, hacking away at Byrria with his wooden spatha while she tried to fend him off. But her prolonged toil left her slow and sluggish and time and again her tormentor knocked the sword from her hand and, while she struggled to reach it, followed up with a powerful thrust to a bare thigh or a defenceless belly that forced the exhausted recruit to her knees in the sand.

Flavius had tolerated this cruel training regimen, if only to test the mettle of his new acquisition in the crucible of combat, but he resolved to keep an eye on his ill-willed instructor, and to intercede should Metellus exceed his authority. During the ensuing days, Metellus invariably matched Byrria against the biggest and most ruthless thugs in the squad, allowing them to bully her unmercifully, ensuring that she took a lot of punishment even on the occasions when she did manage to stand her ground. Throughout this nightmare of abuse, Byrria had been clever enough to conceal her wrath at her tyrannical instructor. But near the end of the third week, her every nerve raw from prolonged stress, she snapped and unleashed her pent-up rage by throwing herself at a strapping Bithynian recruit who had dared to mock her 'Thracian cowardice'.

This outburst, of course, was just what Metellus had bargained for, because Flavius had long since ordained that any brawl between the fighting personnel would have to be settled in 'the Pit'. The marble ring, which the fighters referred to as the Pit of Pain, was another measure of discipline that Flavius had adopted from the fighting school in which he had learned his trade. In the event of a brawl, the quarrellers were compelled to settle their differences within the boundaries of that pit, and to do battle until one or the other was willing to concede the triumph of the other. Later on, when Byrria had acceded to the post of lanista , she had conceived the idea of the Scythian Strap to further test the mettle of the female recruits. But her own experience in the Pit had been no mere training drill; it had been a brutal, bloody battle for satisfaction, whose ebbs and flows gladiators were to recount around campfires for years to come.

No one who had witnessed the duel between Byrria and her rangy Bithynian antagonist had ever forgotten it. In the years since, Flavius had taken pleasure from every inch of Byrria's taut-muscled body and had come to know every pleasure-filled nuance of her wanton love-making. But the passage of time had not dulled the flesh-tingling arousal he felt every time he recalled the feline grace with which the sweat-glistening Thracian tigress had stood her ground in the marble ring.

As was customary on such occasions, the pit had been prepared with finely-ground salt, and the two opponents had been equipped with small horsewhips which were lashed to their wrists lest they should lose them in the heat of battle. The two opponents had worn only the coarse loin-cloths of wrestlers and their bodies had been oiled until the sun itself paid homage to their differing but splendid physiques.

The other fighters, standing shoulder to shoulder around the Pit, were enthralled by the sight of the dark-eyed beauty preparing to fight as bare-chested as her male counterpart, and her low-slung loincloth only emphasized her hourglass hips. From behind, the thin fold of cloth that barely covered her private parts, had nestled itself comfortably into the bottom-cleft, and the sight of her otherwise bare buttocks provoked a hail of crude catcalls . Sympathies amongst the audience were unevenly distributed, since most of the men hoped to see their swaggering brother-in-arms put this arrogant female intruder into their male domain in her place. But when the bare-breasted beauty stepped into the ring, each man sensed immediately that this was a woman who knew how to fight. It was evident in her posture, and in the way she held her whip, but most of all it was visible in her eyes. Her dark eyes glared at the Bithynian with a steady, powerful gaze that gave no hint of fear, but rather bespoke an almost unnerving confidence.

When Calixtus had given the signal to begin the fight , raucous cheers erupted each time the Bithynian's whip found its mark, leaving a series of dark welts on the Thracian's oil-glistening skin. But the longer the fight went on, the more Byrria's courage won the onlookers to her cause. The fight had lasted over an hour, but it had taken only a fraction of that time for the welt-streaked Thracian to earn the epithet, 'Tigress' which she was to carry ever after. Asking no quarter and giving none, the two fierce opponents had punched, kicked, and flogged each other's bodies until the salted surface of the marble platform was smeared with their commingled blood. They fought until they could fight no more, neither giving in, but neither having the strength to continue.

By the conclusion of the fight, Byrria's body was caked with sweat, salt, and blood. Lacerating lashes, flesh-raking nails, and punishing fists had all left their mark on her smooth olive skin which was covered with gashes, bruises, and welts from neck to knees. Her opponent, for all of his superior strength, had fared no better. A week later, the combatants had yet to fully recover from their injuries, but even so, no one in the Ludus Flavianus ever heard Byrria complain of her wounds. Though it had come at a dear price, the courage and endurance Byrria had shown during the bloody duel greatly improved her standing among her fellow recruits who treated her with respect from that day forward.

But not so Metellus. The ill-willed instructor was still haunted by the need to avenge his defeat at the hands of the Thracian, and he remained obsessed by the desire to possess her alluring body. One night, not long after the battle in the Pit, he treated a pair of randy guards to a rowdy evening of wine-drinking before coaxing them into joining him in a plot to ambush Byrria in her cell in the barracks basement.

The sleeping beauty had stood no chance against the three wine-emboldened intruders. When Metellus tore Byrria's blanket away from her body, the three assailants found to their delight that the target of their foul conspiracy was clad in only a loose-fitting loin-cloth. One of the guards quickly cupped his hand over her mouth to stifle her cries, while the other two men pinned the wildcat's flailing limbs to the cot. Metellus, who had come armed with several coils of rope, knotted a cord tightly around her wrists, then they hauled the still-groggy beauty to the short side of the cell and within moments they had strung her up to the central bar of the iron grating that barred the high window.

Fully awake now, Byrria thrashed around furiously and tried to bite the man whose grip stifled her, but with her wrists pinioned together above her head , she was helpless to prevent Metellus from fondling her breasts, which were still adorned with faint marks, souvenirs of her savage duel in the Pit. His fingers mauled her dark-nippled treasures for a moment or two and then he slid his hands downward over her bare belly to take hold of her flimsy loin-cloth. With a bestial growl of triumph, he snatched it from her body, wadded it up and forced it into Byrria's protesting mouth.

"Lash her legs to the bars!" Metellus hissed, in a hoarse whisper from which malice dripped like venom. "And spread 'em nice and wide!"

His two minions hastened to obey his order, encircling Byrria's thrashing legs with loops of rope, and then they wound the long ends of the ropes around the outer bars on either side of the window. When the two men had immobilized her, they gave the ropes a powerful jerk, hoisting Byrria's slender legs upward and outward until her ankles had reached the same level as her wrists. There she hung, her lithe legs splayed into an obscene and painful V which spread her womanhood apart like a budding rose.

Metellus, his eyes afire with lust, had liberated his massive erection from his loin-cloth, and an instant later he plunged his throbbing phallus into Byrria's gaping, defenseless slit. He grunted with obscene pleasure as he lunged again, burying his blood-engorged weapon up to the hilt in her moist sheath.

Byrria screamed curses of outrage into her stifling gag and struggled futilely against her bonds. Meanwhile one of the guards wedged himself into the narrow gap between her and the wall behind her, braced himself against it and then reached for the soft mounds of her whip-tender breasts. Metellus, his breath reeking of cheap wine, tightened his grip on her hips and redoubled the force of his thrusts, driving Byrria's body back against his crony, whose hands continued to squeeze her breasts, heedless of her stifled gasps of pain.

Metellus picked up the pace of his bestial thrusts, driving Byrria's naked body deeper into his crony's cruel embrace. The punishing pounding of the lanista's body was so all-consuming that at first Byrria hardly noticed the increasing pressure of the hindman's rock-hard erection against her naked buttocks. She had only just realized with horror that she was destined for a second, even more brutal impalement, when Flavius and Calixtus had burst into her cell, and took in the horrific scene at a glance. Calixtus' stentorian bellow of "Enough! Let her be!" quickly sapped the virility from the three molesters, who turned to stare shamefacedly at their furious employer.

Metellus, his loin-cloth still at his ankles, took a step away from his victim and turned toward Flavius, eyeing him with an expression of shocked surprise. But as soon as Metellus stepped aside, Flavius was distracted from his purpose by the sight of Byrria. Grotesquely suspended from the iron bars, Flavius found his eyes drawn as if by magic from her heaving breasts to the narrow apex of her smooth and shapely thighs, where her mons veneris sloped downward into a glistening gorge.

Metellus, sensing that his only chance to escape the awkward situation was to take advantage of Flavius' momentary pre-occupation, took a lumbering step toward his employer. But Flavius would not have survived ten seasons in the arena if he had waited for his foes to strike the first blow, and he pre-empted Metellus' attack with a powerful uppercut that shattered the man's jaw and sent him reeling to the floor. Upon seeing this, the guard behind Byrria slid past her and started for the door, but Calixtus ended the man's escape attempt by tripping him up into the doorframe, while the least guilty of the three malefactors stood petrified in terror as if he had spotted a Gorgon.

"Get out of here!" Flavius hissed at the guards icily, "And take that useless piece of scum with you." The two men hurried to haul the groaning Metellus away, as Flavius barked after them: "Wait at the guardhouse! I'll deal with you shortly. Cut her loose," he then turned to Calixtus, while he removed the gag from Byrria's mouth, but Calixtus hesitated ever so slightly as he drank in the sight of the Thracian's naked body.

"You heard him!" Byrria hissed, her dark eyes firing daggers at the chief-instructor. "Cut me loose!"

Calixtus returned her glance levelly. "I heard Master Flavius," he replied, emphasizing both words. Then he added in a still lower voice, "But you are hardly in a position to be giving orders!" The chief instructor took his time reaching for the dagger that he would use to cut her down, while he let his eyes wander freely over Byrria's spread-eagled body.

Flavius, too, had treated himself to a last, lingering appraisal of Byrria's splendid body, before finally putting an end to her humiliation by exclaiming brusquely, "Enough, Calixtus! Cut her down!"

* * *

Later that same night, Flavius had cashiered Metellus and the two men the assistant instructor had inveigled into joining him in his nocturnal assault. But he had learned a lesson from this unpleasant affair, and to prevent future incidents of this kind, he decreed that any attempt to prey upon the female members of his squad would have severe consequences. Since they were free citizens, Flavius had no penal authority over guards and attendants guilty of such an infraction, but he made it clear that offenders would not only lose their position, but would have to compensate him for damaging his property. Those who were under his direct control – both slaves and fighters – who violated his edict would, he promised them, find themselves roped to the cross, where a particularly intricate variety of crucifixion was bound to cool their ardour.

On the very next evening, Flavius had summoned Byrria, so recently emerged from her twilight bath that her skin was still moist under her tunic, to his quarters. When he had assured her that Metellus would no longer pose a threat to her, and inquired whether she had recovered from her assault, Byrria had remained enigmatically silent for a moment while her dark eyes wandered around the room, comparing its relative luxury to her Spartan quarters. By the time her dark eyes returned to meet his steady gaze, she had made her fateful decision.

Fresh and fragrant from her bath, her raven hair and dark eyes sparkling seductively in the light given off by a pair of elevated lanterns, she had moved closer to the Roman who had rescued her first from execution and more recently from the depths of degradation. "You liked what you saw the other night, didn't you?" she had asked in a breathy whisper as she reached out to stroke a well-muscled bicep, and indeed Flavius had found himself haunted by the stunning vision of Byrria's nude body straining against the ropes which had bound her to the bars of her dingy cell. A bit shocked by her boldness, he had tossed off the last of the wine in his goblet, as she moved still closer and pressed her warm thigh against his. "In my country, women are valued for more than their fighting," the Thracian tigress had purred, and paused briefly to stare deeply into Flavius' grey eyes while she ran her moist tongue over her sensuous lips. Then she added: "Metellus was a fool! A real man does not need to use force to take what he desires…"

Flavius had felt his ardour rising as he eyed his comely acquisition, his gaze taking in the glossy raven ringlets of her hair, her exotically attractive facial features, and the almond-shaped eyes that promised wild, Maenadic pleasures undreamt of in the City of the Caesars. His erection thickened as he shifted his gaze downward, drinking in the sight of the twin mounds that pressed so boldly against the cloth of her tunic, and then further still, to the long and shapely thighs which he had seen spread in such obscene and provocative fashion only hours earlier. He had vowed to himself, before choosing this enticing beauty for his school, that he would keep business and pleasure separate. But when Byrria had inched closer and pressed her firm body against his, and he had felt the tips of her nipples stabbing against his chest, he had discarded his vow as easily as he tossed aside the tunic that he ripped from her body with a masterful sweep of his arm.

On that night, the first of many such nights, Byrria had made love to him, using her body as a weapon in a battle of raging lusts. Her erotic imagination seemed to know no limits, and her hands, her hips, her mouth, her breasts had moved over his body like those of the most accomplished hetaira of Rome . Time and again she had used her fine-tuned pelvic muscles to drain every drop of passion from his body, leaving him inert and utterly spent, only to rekindle the flame of his lust by worshipping his almost aching genitals with the hot, moist breath of her lips and tongue.

A few weeks later, when Balbinus provided him with his first batch of female slave-fighters – of whom the Nubian net-woman was the last remaining survivor – Flavius decided to entrust Byrria with the novices' training. He would have done so even if she had not become his mistress in the meantime, since the Metellus incident had made the necessity of putting a female lanista in charge of the female recruits quite evident. After the duel in the Pit, the veteran fighters had no reason to doubt Byrria's qualities as a gladiatrix, nor did she ever give them reason to suspect, even for a moment, that she was treating her fellow-females with undue favouritism. But even so many of the old hands regarded her quick promotion by Flavius with suspicion, and the brazenness with which she took advantage of her new position turned their initial respect for her into envy and resentment.

 

From Flavius' point of view, however, the division of labour between Calixtus and Byrria had proved to be quite effective. Despite her own experience with Metellus, Byrria had not shrunk from treating her charges with her own form of draconian discipline, a regimen which served the attractive young women well in the ring. But notwithstanding her success as trainer and fighter alike, Byrria remained always uneasy. For the more beautiful and promising a novice seemed to be, the more fearful of losing her position as both lanista and bedmate, Byrria became...

* * *

The sound of leather smacking against bare flesh interrupted Flavius' musings and brought him back to the present. Taleena had done her best, but the gnawing teeth of time had ravaged her shoulders and, together with the relentless pressure of her splayed-legged position on her groin muscles, had finally forced her to drop her arms. Just as Flavius had imagined, the abandonment of her position was quickly rewarded with a swift, stinging slash from Byrria's crop that found the side of her right breast, scattering the lucky raindrops which trickled gently down the luscious slope . And when the statuesque blonde was slow to lift the stones back to the desired height, a second slice of the crop sent a shudder of pain coursing through her left breast, drawing a soft moan of pain from her lips.

Eventually, by the time Calixtus had concluded the gymnastics session, the outer curves of each of Taleena's breasts had been freshly emblazoned with three lurid streaks, and Flavius' arousal had mounted to a new level…

XXIV.

Taleena would never know how she had endured the morning drill until lunch break. By the time Byrria dismissed the sorely tried Avernian from the rigors of the circuit training, the other recruits had already taken their places on the benches under the narrow awning that sheltered the dining area from the elements. Taleena could scarcely drag her exhausted body across the breadth of the compound, disdaining, in her fatigue, to expend the energy necessary to step around the small puddles that dotted her path to the lunching area

Utterly spent, Taleena dropped down on one of the benches, choosing a place a little apart from the others. Strands of long, rain-drenched hair partially covered her face and shielded her downcast eyes, but Taleena turned her whip-torn back toward her fellow recruits so that they could not see the tears streaming down her cheeks. As she tried to catch her breath, Taleena covertly cradled her aching, red-speckled breasts in her forearms hoping to soothe the pain which coursed through them. For when she had completed the agonizing circuit for the second time she had been surprised, and relieved, to find that her treasures were not covered with blood.

Against her better judgment, Taleena had clung to the faint hope that she might be at least spared the press-ups over the broken tiles, which she dreaded more than any other exercise of the circuit training. But it was not to be. With feigned courtesy the ruthless Thracian had ordained that – out of consideration for her whip-scarred back – she needed only to satisfy the woman's quota, confident that even that number would be beyond Taleena's present strength. But in return for that small favour, the sneering instructress had insisted that she meet the mandatory minimum for each exercise, regardless of how many attempts it took her. Each time Taleena had bent her arms to lower herself, she had felt a dozen tiny daggers thrusting into her back, only to be extracted with agonizing slowness as she pushed herself up again. And during every moment in the lowered position, the sensitive tips of her pendulous breasts kissed the sharp-edged shards, giving her a frightening foretaste of the painful fate that awaited her when the strength in her arms gave out.

And her arms did give out – on only the sixth press-up. Her strength sapped by her taxing ordeal with the stones, the muscles in her shoulders shuddered for a long agonizing moment and then she collapsed painfully into the beckoning sea of shards. She had lain there in motionless misery for a few seconds on the horns of a dreadful dilemma: Should she lie there for a bit to regain her strength, even though the entire weight of her body seemed to press her tender skin ever deeper into the torturous bed of broken tiles? Or should she lift herself quickly, relieving the immediate agony, but knowing that, without rest, her arms would give out all the sooner in the next set of iterations, thus causing her defenceless breasts and belly to crash into the dreadful tiles once again?

In the end, she had tried both tactics, but neither had spared her the ravaging effects of the breast-gouging bits of tile. It had taken her no fewer than eight attempts to complete the target of thirty-five, and she had never again managed complete to more than five of the press-ups before collapsing, defeated, into the jagged shards once again. Earlier, Byrria's stinging crop-blows had embossed the pale parchment of her breast-flesh with a pattern of dark-red bruises, and here and there random beads of blood oozed from pinprick-like fissures. But surprisingly the shards, however sharp they had felt against her tender flesh, had failed to pierce her resilient skin while Byrria had kept track of the count with an icy implacability as Taleena had groaned pitifully each time her strength had given out and her pendulous breasts had crashed painfully into the broken tiles.

Taleena could not have explained exactly why she had sacrificed her body to complete the torturous regimen that Byrria had set up for her. Perhaps it had been the memory of Breaca's plaintive, "Promise me that you will not falter!" Or perhaps it was the fact that her friend still knelt in penance in the center of the yard, naked to the elements and the onlookers, many of whom had positioned their benches so that they might take in the tantalizing sight of the bare-breasted delinquent. It seemed to Taleena that it would be an insult to Breaca to concede defeat while her brave friend still languished in her own torment.

Larius, the young water-slave, was busy serving the contingent of Rhinelanders their drinks, but when he noticed Taleena's late arrival at the lunching area, he hastened to offer his services to her. As he approached her he glanced at the lattice of lash marks on her back, swallowed awkwardly and stepped around so that he faced her. He could not help but see the tears streaming down her face as he held the goatskin to Taleena's beaker, nor could he avert his troubled gaze from the dark bruises that dappled her breasts. He gave her an encouraging smile as he filled her cup, and Taleena was touched by the boy's attempt to lift her spirits. As a concession to the cool weather, Larius' wineskin contained warm mulsum , a diluted, honey-sweetened wine whose spicy vapour also helped to perk up the bone-weary recruit .

"It is not fair that they should hurt you like this," he whispered angrily. "If I were grown…" and his hushed voice and clenched fists left no doubt that were it in his power, Larius would have tried to avenge the injustices done to the young woman who had taken his part when Rutilius had played his cruel trick on him and thrown his toy over the wall.

.

The recruits were forbidden to speak during their lunch break, but seeing the sadness in the boy's eyes Taleena ignored the possible consequences of a breach of this rule. "Do not worry," she whispered bravely under her breath as she flashed Larius a weak smile. "I will be all right." Then trying to summon a more reassuring smile, she took a sip from her cup and added. "Your drink has made me feel better already!" Taleena hoped that her words would calm her young friend, since any further conversation could lead them both into serious trouble. But before Larius could mouth a reply, Scaurus, the one-legged waiter appeared, shoving the boy gently aside with his crutch as he placed a steaming bowl of stew on Taleena's table.

"Come on, lad," the ex-gladiator nudged the boy, casting Taleena a warning glance as he tilted his head in Calixtus' direction, "the dishes in the scullery will not clean themselves."

Inasmuch as the recruits customarily fetched their own rations at the hatchway, it was clear to Taleena that the purpose of Scaurus' intervention was to steer the boy clear of trouble, and she gave him a brief nod of appreciation for his concern for the child. As man and boy turned toward the kitchen, Taleena pulled the bowl of stew toward herself and was about to wolf down the first bite when her eyes caught a glimpse of the object the one-legged servant had tucked in his belt. The flute! That soft nocturnal flute whose simple melodies had soothed her soul on so many lonely nights. The sweet pastoral instrument whose fluttering notes had permeated the grimness of the Flavian compound, and transported her to gentler times in gentler lands.

Taleena sat for a moment stunned, not quite believing that a man so accustomed to the gory gladiatorial trade as this wretched, limping ex-gladiator, should be such a talented disciple of Orpheus. As Taleena watched the odd couple make their way toward the kitchen, she smiled seeing that Larius, who had been so fleet of foot while at play, was at great pains to walk no more quickly than his lame companion. The knowledge that these two victims of Roman rule, each seemingly alone in the world, had found a place in their heart for each other warmed her deadened spirits, as did the compassion and concern that each of them had shown her.

Taleena quickly finished the bowl of stew and as she swallowed the last sip of mulsum from her beaker, she thought about the troubled expression on the boy's face as he had filled it. If only for the peace of mind of the child, she promised herself, she would brave out her ordeal and prove that such gods as afforded mercy to men had not abandoned the Ludus Flavianus to their more spiteful brethren. But just then Calixtus' stentorian voice cut through the afternoon's stillness like the crack of a whip barking out the order to reassemble for the afternoon's training. Taleena's stomach balled up into a tight knot at the thought of another encounter with her blue-clad tormentress. But the midday break, the light meal, and her encounter with Larius and Scaurus had restored much of her strength and spirit, and she rose painfully to her feet, trying to concentrate on the knowledge that the day was half over – and trying to ignore the equal reality: that she still faced another half-day within reach of the claws of the Thracian tigress…

* * *

The fine, intermittent drizzle had stopped by the end of the lunch break, but the sky had grown portentously darker in the west, suggesting that Vulcan had done Jupiter's bidding and fashioned a quiver of thunderbolts to be launched in the violent storm to come.

Taleena, feeling much more alert after the midday break, trudged determinedly to the sword-training area, where the Thracian lanista stood near the weapons rack, casually playing with one of the wooden swords, displaying her usual sneer at the sight of the approaching recruit. Byrria had apparently changed clothes during lunch break, and was now wearing a fresh blue tunic under a bronze cuirass whose modelled breast plates accentuated every curve of her well-toned torso. Despite the depths of her fatigue, Taleena met Byrria's gaze forthrightly, her azure eyes locked in a battle of wills with the smouldering eyes of the Tigress.

As she reached the rack, some deep inner combativeness led Taleena to raise her chin proudly, to throw back her shoulders, and to stick her chest out ever so slightly, but thrusting her naked, pain-quivering breasts provocatively forward nonetheless.

The other recruits at the rack stopped sorting through the weapons when they saw that even the iron-willed Calixtus had let his own gaze stray intently in Taleena's direction, and, like themselves, was covertly watching the encounter between the two women. Everyone who witnessed the scene could sense the challenge in the Avernian's defiant bearing, which seemed to say, "I may be at the end of my tether, but I will never admit defeat. You can hurt me, but never conquer me!"

Flavius, observing the scene from his eagle's nest on the balcony above, nodded his head approvingly, pleased by Taleena's indomitable spirit. Only two days ago, Byrria had flogged the proud Avernian within an inch of her life, and today she had spent all morning making the life of the suffering recruit a living Tartarus. The tell-tale residue of Taleena's various ordeals were evident on almost every part of her marvellous body, and yet the unswerving Gaul still dared to challenge her wrathful instructress. 'She has the fighting spirit of a daughter of Bellona,' Flavius thought to himself, and then watched, spellbound, to see how Byrria would respond.

Byrria raised a dark eyebrow in surprise at Taleena's bold gesture, but then, as if sensing the eyes of the onlookers upon her, her features relaxed, and an enigmatic smile crossed her face. "Well, it seems that you are ready to do battle again," she stated in a bemused voice that even seemed to contain a hint of recognition and respect. "But we shall have to have you fully rigged out first, won't we?" The dark-haired lanista used the tip of her wooden sword to lift a piece of armour from the rack, and tossed it towards Taleena. "Don your armour, Gaul !" she ordered with an evil grin. "It's time you got used to the feel of it!" Byrria glanced over her shoulder at the male recruits who had been watching their exchange and added mockingly, "and even higher time you stopped strutting around so shamelessly. This is a school for gladiators, not a topless tavern in some Bithynian port!"

Taleena bristled at the unfairness of these words, and the rosy blush suffusing her face and features made it obvious that she was more conscious than ever of the lustful stares of the male recruits. It had hardly been her choice to pose bare-breasted when she had done the splits, much less when she had been compelled to perform the dreadful push-ups in the sea of shards. But she held her tongue and caught the mail shirt Byrria had tossed her . The mail itself was made of iron, with rings no larger than the tip of the stylus Calixtus used to inscribe demerits on his wax tablet. Taleena was surprised by its weight relative to its size since she could see at a glance that the short-sleeved shirt would barely cover half her torso. About half of the rings were solid, having been punched from sheet metal, while the rest were riveted shut, with a mere slit as a neckhole where the shoulder seam had been left unsewn.

Taleena slipped the shirt over her head, taking care that her rain-dampened tresses didn't get tangled up in the metal meshwork. She had been longing to cover her breasts for the entire morning, only to realize that the short-sleeved shirt might conceal, but did not support her aching breasts. It scarcely reached to her lower ribs, and her bosom's resilient fullness strained to assert itself against the oppressive weight of the pinching garment. A quick glance at the mocking smile on the face of her instructress, convinced Taleena that it was no accident that the Thracian's decision to introduce her to body armour had come at a time when she was without so much as a strophium to protect her bare skin from the coarse mailshirt. Bearing in mind how the sweat-soaked breast-bandage had been rubbing against the sensitive tips of her breasts during the training sessions, Taleena did her best not to dwell on the abrasive friction that the rigid metal meshwork of the chainmail would exert on her nipples

"Now for the rest of your uniform," Byrria said, smirking at Taleena's discomfiture as she used her wooden sword to lift another piece of armour off the rack and toss it in the recruit's direction.

Taleena reached out to catch it, but missed. Her stretching movement caused the scabs of her welts to chafe against the mail shirt, giving her another foretaste of the effect the metal ringlets would have on her skin once the swordplay began. She picked the bundle Byrria had tossed her off the ground, and looked quizzically at what appeared to be a broad belt not unlike the one she was wearing. As wide as a hand, this sturdy military belt known as the cingulum had plates of cast brass riveted to its dark leather with hinge tubes. A concave length of chainmail was attached to the back of the belt, and at its loose end dangled a small, triangular shield of brass that looked like some sort of groin guard.

Taleena stared at the cingulum uncertainly, and began to slide it clumsily around her waist.

"Do they wear two belts at once in Gaul ?" Byrria said mockingly to the amusement of the onlookers. "Here in Rome , we content ourselves with one at a time. So you had better remove the one you have on!"

Taleena fumed silently at this disparaging reference to her homeland, but she knew that she had no choice but obey the Thracian's order. She took a deep breath as she dropped the cingulum and reached down to undo the belt that held her loin-cloth in place. She tugged the garment over her womanly hips and let it slide down her shapely legs. Despite the cool breeze that swept across the training ground, Taleena could feel the hot gaze of the male recruits on her golden triangle and the pink-lipped seam displayed so prominently between her slightly parted thighs. She stooped to pick up the cingulum , but as she girded herself, she didn't know what to do with the triangular length of chainmail that dangled from the belt behind her. But so concerned was she to shield her modesty from the ravenous eyes of the onlookers, that she was unaware of Flavius who looked down on her from the balcony.

From above the master of the Ludus Flavianus studied the sizzling signature Byrria's whip had left on the perfect halfmoons of Taleena's heart-shaped bottom – six evenly spaced, lurid-red stripes – and again Flavius caught himself picturing the golden-haired Gaul hanging naked from the whipping post, squirming, moaning, twisting under the flesh-searing strokes of Byrria's whip.

"Come on, Gaul , it's not as if I had ordered you to don the Scythian Strap again!" Byrria scoffed impatiently. Taleena felt a warm flush of shame coursing through her body as she remembered how the Thracian tigress had bridled her and Selia with the inhumane crotch straps, while half the men of the Ludus Flavianus had looked on – just as they leered at her now.

Her face masked in an imperious scowl, Byrria edged forward until the breast-plates of her leathern armour were no more than a hand's width from Taleena's mail-covered chest. Taleena could detect the faint scent of perfume wafting its way toward her nostrils as she matched the slightly shorter lanista's malicious gaze with a downward glare of her own. Byrria's lower lip curled into an evil smirk as she reached between Taleena's legs, gripping the length of chainmail dangling from the back of the cingulum, and jerked it toward her , threading the metal meshwork tightly through Taleena's crotch before wrapping its loose end around the clasp at the front of the belt.

Taleena gritted her teeth as she felt a faint tug where the metal ringlets rubbed against her most sensitive flesh, and a desperate groan came from her lips as Byrria tightened her grip slightly to attach the shield-shaped groin-guard to the rim of the mail sleeve she had just pulled over the belt. Worn over a loin-cloth, or over another layer of fabric, this ensemble would offer a measure of protection for the groin area, without being too uncomfortable too wear, but without so much as a loincloth or undertunic to insulate her most intimate flesh from the metal meshwork , the woven ringlets would pinch her flesh and tug at her pubic hair every time she moved.

Byrria took a step back, looking pleased with her work. "Behold our Gallic princess in full armour," she sneered, "wearing her groin guard as if it were the girdle of Hippolyta! Take up a sword, Gaul , and select your shield!"

Moving gingerly in her tight-fitting iron loin-cloth, Taleena did as she was bid, choosing first one of the handy round-shields which were used by the legions' auxiliaries to complement the spatha . Made of lime, wood slats, and glue, backed with felt and faced with rawhide, the parma was lighter than the large square scutum used by the infantry. The aspiring gladiatrix hefted the unfamiliar defensive weapon in her right hand, noting that it was quite thick and protective, in addition to offering a better field of vision than the bulkier scutum with which some of the veteran fighters were practicing. She raised and lowered it a few times, accustoming herself to its weight, and then took one of the swords from the rack.

Byrria had armed herself, too, with sword and shield, and measured the similarly equipped recruit with interest. "It is time to introduce you to the niceties of sword-play," she stated, "But first we will have to find a new training partner for you, won't we?"

The Thracian stalked off toward the training ring, followed by the miserable, long-legged Avernian whose usually proud gait was hobbled by the metallic loin-cloth, whose protective purpose was far out-weighed by its maddening pinch.

" Verica!" Byrria shouted across the yard. "Come over here! And bring your weapons with you!"

As Verica approached, Taleena eyed the equipage of Breaca's sister with a touch of envy. Verica was armed with a sword and a shield much like the ones Taleena had chosen. But unlike the blonde Avernian, the ginger-haired Celt was accoutred with a brass-studded, form-fitting armour, and wore a pair of caligae , the familiar legionary boots, open like sandals, with a thick leather sole studded with hobnails, and cords that wrapped helix-like around her shapely calves. In her shiny armour, it was Verica who resembled a latter-day Hippolyta, the Amazon queen to whose famous belt Byrria had already referred, while Taleena looked like a barefoot recruit manning some provincial outpost in the most remote corner of the empire.

To a casual observer, the Celtic sisters appeared identical, but despite having been cleft from the same ovum, they were as unlike as a pair of Gemini could be. Whereas their graceful figures, their creamy-white, freckled complexions, and the configuration of their facial features were as alike as those of most twins, a certain pout to Breaca's mouth gave it a lively and daring cast, while Verica's downward-pursed lips hinted at a bilious disposition. But the most striking differences between them lay in their eyes, for even though they were the same shade of green, Breaca's eyes had the sparkle of emeralds, while Verica's eyes were strangely blank, almost soulless, as if they masked a deep-rooted bitterness. And while Breaca was warm and open and friendly, Verica seemed cold and closed and distant. Taleena had hardly spoken to her in her days at the Ludus Flavianus , nor had she seen her converse much with anyone else; Verica seemed to avoid the company of everyone but her good-hearted sister.

Byrria had spitefully seen to it that the two contestants should fight not far from the centre of the arena, at a place from which both would have an excellent view of Breaca. Taleena found it difficult to judge whether the sullen-looking Verica bore her any ill will, but there was certainly no friendliness in her demeanour at the sight of her suffering sister. Breaca still knelt there posed in all her penitential pulchritude, voluptuously naked save for her skimpy loin-cloth, and motionless save for the occasional shudder of pain that coursed through her magnificent body. At the sight of her suffering sister, Verica's usually emotionless eyes shot Taleena a fierce glance, as if she blamed her for her sister's dire predicament.

 

But Taleena was too appalled by the cruelty of her friend's punishment to bother herself with Verica's misplaced animosity.

Breaca's weary arms had long since lost their struggle with the thorny cross-piece, which now rested painfully on her bloodied shoulders. Yet she still knelt stiffly upright, as she was forced to do by the four broken spears which had been driven into the ground at such an angle that their dagger-sharp points were poised just inches from her midsection, front and back. Her ginger hair was damp from the morning rain, slicked down in dark strands which seemed plastered to her face, a face whose luminous green eyes and deep-etched lines of endurance told the grim tale of her suffering. The drizzle had covered her milky white skin with a moist sheen which gave her statuesque body an alabaster gloss, and if the muscles in her arms had not been quivering with pain and exhaustion, she might well have been mistaken for a carving of a lushly feminine Atlas.

Taleena knew that the sight of the suffering Breaca would be a distraction to her concentration, so she tried to avoid looking directly at her friend. But Breaca's pitiable cry of anguish that morning when she had stumbled and the thorns had found her bare breasts still reverberated in Taleena's ears, and she could not help but glancing in the delinquent's direction. Now she could see from close range the effects of Breaca's fall. Where the beam had fallen against those parts of her torso where the skin was stretched over the slightly protruding bones of her scapula and ribcage, the thorns had broken off, leaving only jagged scratches on the surface of her skin. But where the thorn-bristling beam had fallen against the upper slopes of Breaca's breasts, the dreadful spines had speared the milky-white mounds, burying themselves to the hilts in her soft flesh. Tiny droplets of blood were still leaking from a dozen such punctures, mingling with the moisture beading the Celt's body to form thin, pale-red rivulets which followed the graceful curves of her torso, painting her alabaster skin with gruesome scarlet streaks.

When their eyes met, Breaca tried to flash Taleena a brave glance, but her vain attempt at valour could not belie the extremity of her suffering. This was no longer the proud warrioress, the helpful, confident comrade who had shrugged off Byrria's orders with disdain. In her place knelt a pain-quivering penitent who was paying dearly for a petty offence, and for whom the day's end still seemed a lifetime away.

Taleena felt her throat tighten at the appalling sight, and turned away to hide her grief from her suffering friend, so as not to make Breaca's ordeal even worse. But when she looked at her equally grief-stricken opponent, the juxtaposition of the twin sisters – the vigorous, fierce looking, armour-clad Verica on one hand, the all but naked, pain-wrecked Breaca on the other – only seemed to intensify the tension of the drama in which the four women in the center of the arena played leading roles.

Byrria observed the reactions of Taleena and Verica to the sight of Breaca's suffering with silent satisfaction before calling them to attention. Then, making a beckoning gesture, the lanista signalled for Verica to attack her, so that the Avernian recruit could learn from the technique of the two more experienced fighters. After a brief demonstration how to coordinate the movement of sword and shield, the Thracian let Taleena take her place, and made the recruit repeat the different cycles of motions which she had just performed herself with such remarkable ease. The weary Avernian did her best to follow the Thracian's instructions, but it took her a while to become accustomed to her new weapon.

The parma was surprisingly light, and after a short time of practice Taleena was able to move the shield as if it were a natural extension of her right hand. For today, as always, she held her fighting sword in her left hand, while she used her natural dexterity to fend off blows with her right. Even so, her skill with the weapons was soon counterbalanced by the nagging friction of her armour against her bare flesh. As the training wore on, her occasional winces of discomfort evolved into louder and louder moans each time she parried one of Verica's blows, or lunged forward so as to throw her opponent back on her heels.

 

* * *

After an hour of intense drill, the dark-eyed lanista glanced upward at the threatening sky and announced that the day's training session would be concluded with a sparring match. Occasional rumbles could be heard in the west, out over the Mare Tyrrhenum , and the gathering clouds overhead were darkening by the moment, so Byrria decided that her two charges had better get in some real fighting before a session-ending downpour might set in.

The two combatants crossed their swords, but Verica refused to grant her Avernian opponent the customary nod of the head betokening the mutual respect among gladiators. Instead, the stern-looking Celt simply backed away after the swords had made contact , and lowered herself into a tense crouch, raising her shield and brandishing her sword.

Taleena had only just assumed her fighting stance when Verica hurled herself forward with a wild battle-cry, raining a succession of blows at the blonde recruit's head. Taleena parried the blows with her sword, but Verica drove her steadily back, step by step. Only when the verve of the Celtic fury's first attack seemed to subside a little was Taleena able to mount any sort of a counter-attack. But Verica deftly dodged each of her blows and then spun around quickly, knocking Taleena's spatha aside, and thrusting her own sword at her opponent's throat. Taleena jerked her head back, but this evasive action left her bare midriff vulnerably exposed. Taking advantage of her opponent's high-held parma , Verica thrust her wooden weapon hard into Taleena's stomach, and although the blunt tip of the sword met muscular resistance behind the soft layer of belly-flesh, Taleena shrieked at the pain of the thrust, slumping to one knee and gasping for breath.

Byrria fumed at the ease with which Verica had triumphed in the first round. "Is this the best you can do after two weeks of training?" she screamed at the hapless recruit. "The Iberian girl could have done as well!" A lump formed in Taleena's throat at this callous mention of Selia, but the angry lanista only continued to berate her. "If that had been a real sword, you'd be on your way to meet the useless Spaniard in the afterworld!"

Byrria's disrespect for the dead was almost harder to stomach than Verica's blow, and Taleena could only stare at her in disbelief, indignant at the Thracian's callousness. She glared at the heartless lanista for a moment, but the Thracian only gestured to Verica to continue the fight, and Taleena had no choice but to stagger painfully to her feet.

Taleena had only half-risen when the Celt's sword swept downward from the heavens, and Taleena only just managed to raise her shield in time to deflect the powerful blow, gritting her teeth as the shock of its impact travelled down her arm and drove her back to the ground. Her eyes wide in astonishment at the Celt's unsporting attack, Taleena fended off the next stroke before managing to leap back to her feet. After another clattering exchange of blows the two opponents separated, neither having gained an advantage, and began circling each other warily while they struggled to catch their breath.

The freestyle sparring demonstrated Verica's superior skill and experience far more than the technical drill had done, and the longer the fight continued the more apparent the disparity in their abilities and energies became. Had it not been for the ordeals she had suffered in the morning, Taleena would have made a far better account of herself, but her limbs were leaden with exhaustion. Yielding no quarter, the Celt pressed her advantage ruthlessly, unmoved by Taleena's increasingly louder moans. For as the fight progressed, Taleena's every stride and parry caused the thin strands of chain mail between her legs to tear at her raw flesh, and gave her breasts an unbidden bounce which pressed them painfully against the mail-shirt which strained to contain their fullness.

The clatter of wooden swords echoed across the yard of the Ludus Flavianus for a while, interrupted occasionally by Taleena's guttural groans, as her strength and stamina were pushed to their very limits by Verica's harrowing onslaught. So seldom did she have an opportunity to mount a serious counter-offensive that Byrria was finally moved to snap, "Are you a straw figure or a fighter?! You'd better start to attack unless you'd like a demerit for not landing a single score all afternoon!"

Stung by this second insult, Taleena hurled herself at her Celtic opponent, as if her headlong attack would belie the Thracian's words. They exchanged a few violent blows, until Taleena suddenly felt a burning pain in her chest as Verica slashed a blow past her guard. The strike landed on the sensuous crease where the soft skin of her breast melted into the flesh that guarded her ribcage, driving the metal ringlets into her whip-ravaged skin. The n umbing force of the blow made her drop her parma , and she was slow to react to Verica's next stroke which knocked the sword from her other hand as well. Shieldless, swordless and half-dazed, Taleena swayed unsteadily as Verica quickly whirled around on her own axis, and swept her sword arm forward with a powerful backhand swing.

Since the Celt was a bit shorter than her long-legged Avernian opponent, her blow was aimed at Taleena's chest, and her frontal assault smashed into the Gaul 's body with full force, knocking her off of her feet. As she fell, Taleena's arms crossed over her chest reflexively, but far too late to protect her breasts from the pain lancing through them. She cried out as she landed heavily on her back, and when the impact of her fall caused the metal rings in her shirt to nip hungrily at the whip-welts on her back and buttocks, she groaned again. Her body awash in a sea of pain, Taleena writhed from side to side on the sandy ground, doing her best to suppress the whimpers of misery that strove to spill from her lips.

Byrria and Verica watched the agonized Avernian for a while, long enough for Byrria to prepare her next callous remark. "Get up, Gaul !" the Thracian snapped. "Put up a better fight and spare us your grimaces and groans!"

Taleena clenched her teeth to choke back her pain as she rolled to one side and propped herself on the ground, stretching out her arm to retrieve her wooden weapon. When her groping hand found the sword, she hefted the training weapon in the palm of her left hand and rose unsteadily to her feet, realizing that the chainmail, while affording her chest some protection against stabbing injuries, had done little to absorb the shock of Verica's sweeping blow. The Celt's violent attack had driven the ringlets of her mailshirt into her body with such force that some of the metallic circlets had lodged in the soft flesh of breasts. As Taleena tried to straighten up, she realized to her dismay that her left nipple had been hooked by one of the broken rings, gripping her flesh as tightly as one of the pincers of Athenodoros.

"This will teach you not to stick out your chest too proudly, Gaul !" Byrria sneered, referring to their encounter at the weapons' rack, and her wicked smile indicated that she was well aware of Taleena's predicament. "Adjust your armour, so that we may proceed!"

Taleena bit down hard on her lip to conceal her suffering as she slipped her hand underneath the chainmail. But a moment later a shudder of resignation shook her body when she realized that the broken ringlet was clinging to the tip of her right breast with the tenacity of an eagle's talons. Gritting her teeth, Taleena gave the chain mail a quick tug with her other hand, freeing her breast from the hook-like grip of the ringlet, but at a cost that brought tears to her eyes.

"It seems that you are re-paying the Gaul in the same coin with which your sister is paying her penalty," Byrria sneered to Verica as the two women stared at Taleena's bare midsection. As her eyes followed theirs, Taleena couldn't see past her mail-covered chest, but felt a throbbing pain in her tender nipple, while a warm streamlet of blood was trickling down the creamy flesh of her belly, just below the hem of the mailshirt.

"Take a look at your sister!" Byrria goaded Verica as she pointed toward her suffering twin, "and tell me you don't want to land another blow on the troublemaker who placed the beam on her shoulders! Come on, deal this Gallic bitch a final blow, and finish this farce of a fight!"

Verica glanced at Breaca, then at Taleena, and resumed her tense crouch, preparing to strike again. But just as she sprang forward, a muffled, almost inaudible sound startled her, leaving her upraised arm frozen in an attacking position.

" Stopadh! Is leor sin !" These strange guttural words, voiced by her sister in their native tongue, had brought Verica up short. The Celtic twins exchanged intense glances, and finally Verica lowered her sword under her sister's silent gaze.

Despite the terseness of Breaca's command, those few words were enough to enrage Byrria as quickly as they had stopped Verica in her tracks. "What was that?" the dark-eyed Thracian snapped as the Celt tried to straighten her bloodied shoulders. "Repeat what you said! And in Latin, if you please, so that we all can do your bidding!"

Breaca glared at the raging lanista disdainfully, once again a proud Celtic warrioress, not a pain-stricken penitent being subjected to a punishment so brutal that it had heretofore been reserved for only the most unregenerate of offenders. "You would not understand my words if I spoke them in your own language!" she retorted in a voice cracking from the strain of her burden. But her valiant effort was well rewarded by the look of utter consternation on Byrria's face.

But the wily Thracian was quick to recover her poise. "So, you think you can make a fool out of me, do you?" she muttered in a sly voice when she saw that Breaca had no intention of explaining further. "Well, words from one such as you are of no importance anyway. But, as you know very well, recruits are not permitted to speak at all during training, much less mouth words in some barbaric tongue!"

Byrria glanced down at the blood-streaked Celt, and then questioningly up to Flavius on the balcony, wondering whether she dared to inflict a further punishment on this suffering gladiatrix who had once again challenged her authority. But when Flavius made no motion to intervene, her misgivings vanished, and she seized her opportunity with alacrity before Flavius could change his mind. "Rutilius!" She bellowed across the yard, to her loyal minion, "Bring me a gag! This one talks too much!"

Although Breaca's accepted the implication of these words impassively, indicating that she had reckoned with Byrria's verdict, Taleena was indignant that Byrria would dare to impose a new penalty on one who had already suffered so much. Without thinking, she confronted their instructor once again.

"Don't you ever get enough?" she spat out, quite oblivious to the consequences of her outburst, her eyes flaring with contempt as she returned the gorgon-like glare of the lanista.

"Enough of what?" Byrria spat back. "Enough of punishing you fools for your insubordinate behaviour? Why should I ever get enough of that?!"

Byrria's dark eyes fired daggers of fury as she stared intently first at Breaca and then at Taleena, but there was a hint of hesitation in her manner, a hesitation inspired by the implacable fury in Taleena's cobalt-blue eyes.

Above them, Flavius placed both hands on the railing of the balcony, and leaned forward watching intently as the silent duel between the two proud beauties unfolded. How, he wondered, would his tempestuous lanista react to this new provocation? Would arrogance once again crush insolence under its heavy boot? A moment later his unspoken question was answered when Byrria abruptly slapped the tip of her spatha across the palm of her hand.

"Rutilius!" she called after the skinny youth who was just emerging from the door of the guardhouse. "Perhaps you had better bring two gags! It seems that we have two songbirds to silence!"

The young guard smirked at the callous command, stepped back into the guardhouse, and re-emerged moments later with a second gag in tow. By this time, two of his comrades had positioned themselves beside the kneeling Celt, and at Byrria's command they seized the thorny cross-piece by the projecting nails to which Breaca's wrists had been tied, lifting it off the delinquent's bloody shoulders.

Save for her single cry of anguish in the morning when she had stumbled under Rutilius' fierce thrust to crumple under her heavy load , Breaca had borne her ordeal with silent fortitude. But when the guards raised the beam and stretched her arms, arms whose every nerve and muscle were raw after hours of struggling against her Atlantean burden, their roughness drew a frantic, high-pitched squeal from her lips.

So ear-piercing was Breaca's scream that for a moment it seemed to trouble one of the guards whose assistance in hoisting the beam aloft had lifted Breaca's tortured breasts into even more painful prominence. But when he glanced down at her out-thrust breasts as they rose and fell under her laboured breathing, and at her crinkly carmine nipples perpetually aquiver from the strain imposed on her tortured body, his mounting arousal brushed aside his misgivings as quickly as they had arisen.

Rutilius, too was clearly enjoying Breaca's plight. He stepped lightly behind the kneeling beauty, taking care to avoid the pair of entrenched spears whose points were aimed at her kidneys. "Open up, wench!" the young guard snarled maliciously, as he brandished one of the gags before her face, drawing a shudder of revulsion from his victim.

The beautiful redhead fought to steady her panting breath before opening her mouth and baring her teeth so that the crude bit gag could be inserted. "I've got something hard for that pretty mouth," Rutilius muttered with a salacious chuckle as he violently forced the wooden, leather-wrapped rod deeply into Breaca's mouth, before buckling the straps of the gag tightly behind her head.

Then, at Byrria's curt signal, the two guards who were holding the cross-piece aloft transferred its weight back onto Breaca's upraised arms. Breaca's athletic body shuddered under the strain as she tried to keep the ghastly thorns away from her ravaged shoulders, but despite her heroic efforts, she could not prevent her shoulders from buckling under the beam's weight.

Taleena could only watch with horror as Breaca's strength gave out and the bloody thorn-beam crashed once again on her friend's ravaged shoulders, opening a new series of lacerations on the torn skin. Breaca screamed into her gag as her upper body swayed and tilted forward under the onerous weight of the beam until the soft skin of her belly was attacked by the brace of impaling spear heads positioned in front of her. Recoiling in pain, she rocked backward only to have that motion stopped by the pressure of the sharp spears that were pointed at her kidneys. Finally, after a brief but horrific struggle marked by a series of gag-stifled groans, Breaca managed to resume her stiff upright posture as fresh streamlets of shoulder-blood began to trickle down her heaving, scarlet-smeared breasts.

"Well done, Rutilius," Byrria sneered, glaring down tyrannically at the bridled Celt who gasped in misery under the oppressive force of her yoke. "I don't think this one will interfere with our training any more today. Now," she continued, transferring her attention to Taleena, "why don't you deal with the other big-mouth!"

As Taleena watched the gloating young guard approach her with the smug swagger of a bully who knows that his victim is vastly out-numbered, she felt an overpowering urge to leap at this disgusting youth who had dared to try to rape her only after Byrria's whip had stripped her of her ability to resist. Now, with her wooden sword still in hand she was tempted to break his skull open with the lead-weighted spatha and then turn on the Thracian as well.

"On your knees, slave!" he barked in his odd high-pitched voice. "Where a whore like you belongs!"

"You heard the mighty guard," Byrria scoffed in her sneering voice, her scorn directed at both the recruit and the young guard. "On your knees! Or shall we add disobedience to your tally for the day?"

Taleena's heart raced, and once more her left hand clenched her sword so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palm. A volcanic rage had risen within her, and for an instant she was on the verge of lunging headlong at the gloating, gag-bearing guard, hoping to club him to death before she could be pulled off of him. But in the end reason prevailed. Pulled off of him she surely would be, and the more successful her assault, the surer would be her path to the cross. Even if she managed by some chance to slay him, the Fates, those cynical sisters, would probably grant Rutilius a reprieve from his journey across the river Styx, so that he could have the pleasure of driving home the nails that would fasten her limbs to the cross. Breaca had been right – a hasty revenge was a fool's revenge.

She also tried to tell herself that she was only obeying Byrria's order, not submitting to Rutilius' as she lowered herself to her knees as slowly as she could. But her attempted self-delusion did little to mitigate her humiliation once she knelt in the wet sand in front of the despicable boy guard, nor did it soothe the affect of her kneeling posture on the genital-scraping strands of chain mail between her legs.

Rutilius came around behind her and paused for a moment to ogle Taleena's shapely backside, which was bare but for the strand of chain mail which had been pulled tightly through the tempting cleft of her buttocks, and stray specks of sand which clung to the curves of her bottom affectionately. With the cord-straps of the bit-gag trailing menacingly from his hand, Rutilius edged forward, positioning his body so closely to his kneeling captive that Taleena could feel his thick erection pressing against her neck.

"Open up, slave!" he growled menacingly, but Taleena, still hating herself for having to submit to this repulsive young Roman, clenched her jaws in reflexive refusal.

Rutilius answered this misguided attempt at resistance by driving a knee between her shoulder blades so viciously that the metal ringlets of her armour tore at the pattern of whip-welts on her back and clawed at the laceration on her breast. Taleena cried out in pain, and as soon as the scream had pried her jaws open, Rutilius forced the gag into her mouth. Taleena retched violently as her senses were overpowered by the foul taste of the bit-gag and the smell of its putrid leather wrapping. But Rutilius, relenting not at all, forced Taleena's head forward and down on her chest, pulling roughly on the cords that would bridle the rod behind her slender neck, heedless of the strands of entrapped blonde hair which he all but ripped from her scalp in the process.

Once the gag was securely in place, the spiteful guard placed the toe of his sandal into the delicate crevice between her legs again and then kicked forward with such force that Taleena was sent sprawling face-forward into the muddy sand. There she lay in misery for a moment before she staggered painfully to her feet and gave her tormentor a hateful glare. But the young guard merely gave the fuming young woman in the grotesque headgear a contemptuous smirk in return.

Byrria, too, was enjoying the Gaul 's most recent humiliation, but the brutal gagging of her two recalcitrant charges seemed to have placated her somewhat. So it was in an even voice that she gave the order for Taleena and Verica to resume their sparring, oblivious to the arrival of the rain which the dark clouds had been promising for hours.

In the short time it took Taleena to rearm herself the chilling rain became a torrential downpour, which the westerly wind drove at the recruits in blinding horizontal sheets. But before taking arms against Verica once again, the flaxen-haired Avernian, still choking on her every breath, turned to take the full brunt of the storm against her face and body, as if by defying the elements she could somehow shame the gods into taking action against the outrageous injustice taking place in the yard.

As Taleena responded to the wrath of the storm with muffled imprecations, an inner voice rebuked her for not having had the courage to attack Rutilius when she had had the chance. Had ever anyone deserved death more than this cowardly specimen of manhood? Had he not abused her and the other young women at every opportunity? The more the voice chastised her, the greater Taleena's anger grew, both at herself and at the object of her scorn.

But in spite of the wrath that raged within her, a second voice, a wiser voice, assured her that she had been wise to stay her hand. Surrounded by guards and gladiators, the chances of striking down the servile young sentinel had been remote at best. And as chilling cascades of rainfall washed over her body, a second realization came to her – that the viciousness of Byrria and Rutilius had managed to rouse a killer-instinct within her, an instinct which lay dormant in every human being. An instinct which, if surrendered to blindly, would destroy her, but without which survival in the ring was impossible.

Until this very moment she had doubted whether she had had it within her to kill; but if her two tormentors had done nothing else for her, they had given her that resolve. They had taught her how to hate and had given her the courage to kill, for it had not been moral restraints that had kept her from striking back just now. It had been a cold-blooded clarity of calculation which would serve her as well in the ring as her new-found readiness to kill …

* * *

When Byrria had ordered the two young women to be gagged, Flavius had watched in silent rage as Rutilius had responded to her command with odious eagerness. The pelting rain did little to cool Flavius' ire, and although he had pulled the hood of his military cloak over his head, the wind-driven droplets continued to sting his face, each tiny prick increasing the fury of his wrath at the two of them.

He had spoken to Byrria during lunch break, admonishing her that she was allowed to test the mettle of the Avernian recruit, but not to mete out unwarranted punishments to her, let alone to the Celt. But the Thracian tigress had found a way to violate the spirit of his orders while conforming to their letter. Goading Verica into thrashing the Gaul in fair combat could certainly be construed as appropriate to Taleena's training regimen, and gagging the two women could conceivably be rationalized as due punishment for their rebelliousness. Even so, the cunning scheme she had devised to have her way bespoke a breach of faith on Byrria's part, one which would have to be dealt with. But when and where and in what manner?

Flavius raised his eyes to the portentously black sky for a last time, and made up his mind. The downpour was likely to turn into a full-fledged tempest – the gods themselves seemed intent on ending this training session before it got completely out of hand. And in a way the fortuitous cloudburst provided a good excuse for him to order the Celt's release, since no one could possibly misconstrue his forthcoming decision as an un-Roman leniency toward insubordinate slaves.

"Let's call it a day!" the grim manager of the Ludus Flavianus barked down to the yard, straining his voice against the fierce blowing wind. "Let's get the equipment stowed away before the storm breaks loose! And have the delinquent released from her yoke before Jupiter strikes her down with a bolt of lightning!"

The guards followed their masters' order and removed the four spearheads that had kept Breaca in her agonizing position, and as they released her from her Atlantean burden, her tormented body toppled over face first into the muddy ground. The freshly inserted gag was removed, and a stretcher was quickly summoned to transport her to the infirmary, where Athenodoros and his aides could tend to her wounds.