V.
After such an exhausting day, Taleena slept soundly, the gentle sounds
of the flute dreamily transporting her back to more pleasant times. But when
she awoke on the following morning, the soreness in her every muscle reminded
her immediately of her new lot in life. After rising painfully from her bed,
she donned the two white triangles that comprised her form-fitting subligaculum,
tugging the brief loin-cloth tightly around her slim waist by means of the
broad-buckled belt. Then she wrapped the breast-hugging beige strophium around
her chest, knotting its ribbon tightly on her back.
She was already on her way to the cell door when she remembered to put
on the ankle-weights, fearing Byrria's wrath should she attend the training
session without them. As she finally climbed the staircase which led from the
basement to the entrance hall of the staff building, she dared not think how
much worse the stiffness might have been had she not had the benefit of that
pleasant but disquieting massage.
The entrance hall was massive and opulent. Wide corridors, lined with
mosaics of battle scenes, led from the far corners of the room to the small but
efficient station of the unctores and to other parts of the house. The great
hall was dominated by a large staircase which led down to the basement and up to
the staff quarters. The centre of the hall was filled by a huge stone table,
the eight legs of which were realistically carved into the likenesses of
demigods, kneeling figures who supported the massive tabletop on their shoulders
- as Atlas the Titan was said to carry the vault of heaven
The table was blanketed with great quantities of food - corn bread,
dried and fresh fruits, honeyed milk, and water - from which the recruits made
their choices. After having taken breakfast, they entered the yard, each of
them well aware that their second day of training might prove even more
difficult to endure than the first. The rising sun was bright in an azure sky
streaked with wispy cirrus clouds, promising a pleasant spring day, but
fortunately the April sun was not yet hot enough to add greatly to the rigours
of the training.
* * *
"You may think that we worked you hard yesterday," Calixtus welcomed the
recruits in his roaring voice, "but that was only a taste to whet your appetite.
By the time the sun sinks in the west this evening you may well regard
yesterday's training as a pleasant holiday! If we can break you - and break
some of you, we shall!" he added, eyeing his charges like a grim-looking
bulldog, "you will be of no use to us as fighters. You'll be fit for nothing
more than sparring partners for real gladiators. And after they've carved you
up a bit, we'll sell whatever's left of you as fodder for the beasts, so that
Flavius can recoup some of his precious sesterces." Calixtus surveyed the faces
of the newly-pallid recruits. "But there is always hope for those who give
their all. So show us that you're worthy of training!"
With those words, Calixtus indicated that they were to begin the day's
labours with another run, and gave the signal to start. The recruits hurried to
the track, where they found that they would not be burdened with the yokes, but
therefore would be expected to cover twice the prior day's distance in the same
time frame.
Her legs still aching from the prior day's exertion, Taleena could
hardly bring herself to walk, but the two instructors demanded a murderous pace,
prodding them to greater efforts with vine cane or crop each time someone dared
to slacken. Selia was once again the first to collapse, earning a few fresh
lashes across a back that was already dappled with scarlet blotches from the
blows she had received on the prior day. When the rest of the field crossed the
finishing line, Taleena noticed that several contestants were retching up the
meager contents of their stomachs.
* * *
They were only granted a short respite before the training continued
with gymnastics. The training area chosen for this purpose was situated in the
left corner of the compound in front of the smithy, and after a quarter of an
hour of limbering up - forward bends, lunges and other muscle-straining
stretching - the invigorating exercises became far more taxing when the trainees
were directed to do the splits. Most of the men had difficulty coping with this
challenge, leading Calixtus to compel them to place their feet on pairs of
wooden blocks which the attendants inexorably dragged further apart, thus
lowering them painfully into the required position.
While the attendants had been bringing the blocks from the smithy where
they had been stored, Taleena was startled to notice that the gangly,
ill-featured guard who had been spying on her had taken his place among them,
giving directions and hurrying them along - even though a guard had no business
involving himself in the training process per se. The purpose of his unsought
assistance was obvious - while the attendants were busy toting the spreader
blocks over to the men, the young guard had positioned himself so that he had an
admirable vantage point to observe the two female recruits who continued to bend
and stretch in preparation for the demanding splits.
Both young women found that their limber young bodies were capable of
doing the splits without assistance, but Byrria ensured that they derived little
comfort from their advantage. She made them step out of the line and take up a
position only a few paces away from the men who struggled with their
half-grounded position.
It was only when Taleena had begun to extend her legs parallel to the
ground that she realized that the guard who at first had given her only quick,
furtive glances, had abandoned any pretence of being interested in the duties of
the block-carriers.
Yesterday during the initiation run he had watched the two young
beauties struggling under their yokes from a distance, but now his 'help' had
provided him with a good pretext to get a closer look at their female charms.
He tried to disguise his interest by adopting a casual attitude, but there was
nothing casual about the way his avaricious eyes drank in the alluring vista of
the girls' smooth, taut-muscled thighs, the soft, feminine flesh of their bare
bellies, the enticing curvature of their ribcages which protruded in bold relief
under the tightly-stretched skin.
Taleena glared at him, trying to catch his eye so that she could
register her contempt, but his hot and hungry eyes never strayed north of her
out-thrust breasts which so pleasingly pressed against the clinging strips of
sweat-drenched cloth which hugged them, emphasizing the very curves they were
designed to conceal.
Taleena's barely suppressed rage at the impertinence of the increasingly
bold voyeur was interrupted by a sharp order from Byrria. "Flat on the ground,
both of you!" the dark-eyed instructress barked imperiously. "I want to see your
loin-cloths kiss the gravel!"
The two women struggled to lower themselves even further, but even after
they were at full extension, Byrria was still not satisfied.
"Extend your arms!" she bellowed at Taleena. "Keep them parallel to
your legs! And upturn your palms!"
No sooner had the blonde Avernian done so than she felt a weight placed
in her right hand which bore the welt from the lash she had earned yesterday.
"Don't you dare drop your arms!" Byrria snapped as she placed a second
fist-sized stone in the Avernian recruit's left hand, before she proceeded to
place similar rocks in the Baetican girl's outstretched palms.
The young guard stood there nervously, his probing eyes glancing back
and forth at the beautifully posed bodies of the two women in front of him. A
vulpine smirk stole over his features, as if he could hardly believe his good
fortune. He drank in the sight of the young beauties, their lovely faces set in
lines etched with strain, their quivering, stone-burdened arms and shapely legs
outstretched, the white linen triangles of their loin-cloths clinging to the
junctures of their legs, the protruding tendons of their firm-fleshed inner
thighs attesting to the cruel tension of their enforced posture.
It did not take long for the weight of the stones to begin to gnaw at
the muscles in Taleena's shoulders, thus distracting her from the guard's
presence. Selia's arms sank quickly under the burden of the weights, and out of
the corner of her eye, Taleena saw Byrria's menacing crop whizzing through the
air on its way toward the Spaniard's rounded shoulders.
"Keep your arms up!" the Thracian Tigress growled as the Spaniard howled
in pain. "What are you whining about, girl?" the blue-clad lanista snapped
contemptuously as she lashed at the soft shoulders again with a swift backhand
which drew another tortured cry from the slender Baetican. "If you lower your
sword arm in the ring because your shoulder is weary, your opponent will give
you a lot worse than a lash across the back!"
Moments later Taleena had occasion to share her comrade's pain when
Byrria stepped behind her and admonished her for letting her own rock-laden arms
drop an inch. Taleena grimaced as the evil crop blazed a fiery trail across her
back, and to her chagrin she could not prevent her body from shuddering in a
breast-bobbling convulsion that drew a salacious smile from the pock-marked
guard.
Taleena gave an outraged groan and her angry blue eyes fired daggers at
the leering youth as she struggled to lift her aching arms to the desired height
once again. But his cowardly gaze never dared to meet her own, remaining fixed
upon her taut-stretched body, repeatedly making the leisurely excursion from her
heaving breasts downward across her flat stomach to the place where her skimpy
loin-cloth kissed the ground, before retracing his way homeward to the curves
where his journey had begun. His leering eyes became briefly distracted when
Byrria slashed at the Baetican's back for the third time, before coming to rest
again on Taleena's damp strophium once again. Taleena's fury grew as she watched
the boy lick lustfully at his dry lips, and clench and unclench his hands with
ill-suppressed excitement as he took in the sight of her turgid nipples, chafed
to an unbidden semi-erection by the constant friction of the clammy cloth,
poking boldly against the thin fabric.
"Do you like what you see, Rutilius?" Byrria jeered at the smirking lad
who flinched at the tone of rebuke in the lanista's voice. He clearly resented
the way Byrria had called attention to his private pleasures, but, like most of
the staff, he was more than a little timorous in the presence of the wild-eyed
instructress - and not only because she was the mistress of Flavius Autronius,
"Why don't you ask Master Flavius to relieve you from your guard duty,
and make you a training attendant?" Byrria scoffed. "That way you could sniff
around my pretty kittens all you like - and we could give you something useful
to do besides watching," she added with a mocking laugh, which was soon echoed
by the other attendants.
The gaping lad flushed angrily and took a half step backwards,
apparently intent on fleeing, but unable to tear his rapacious gaze from the
fullness of Taleena's breasts - especially since a second savage slash of the
crop across the nearly bare back of the arm-weary recruit had sent yet another
palpable shudder of pain coursing through her scantily-clad body.
Despite the fierce sting of the lash and the continuing humiliation of
her position, Taleena took some pleasure from the fact that her cowardly nemesis
had been exposed to public scorn. Now that she knew his name, her fear of the
sneaking, skulking jackal of the shadows had been transformed into a withering
contempt.
The mortified young man was clearly intimidated by the Thracian tigress,
and dared not oppose her, but that didn't keep the pock-marked youth from giving
Taleena a final vindictive glare, as if he held her responsible for his
humiliation. Physically, Rutilius' stringy physique could hardly have been less
imposing, but even though Taleena trusted in her ability to defend herself from
the youth in a fair fight, there was a malice in his shifty eyes that caused her
to dread the thought of finding herself in a situation in which he held the
upper hand.
Just then Calixtus, who had been overseeing the men's exercises a short
distance away, announced the end of the gymnastics session, and ordered the
recruits to assemble for the circuit training, thus allowing Rutilius to turn on
his heel and slink angrily away toward the guard house.
Grateful for Calixtus' announcement, Taleena let the stones fall from
her hands, and her aching arms drop to her sides, as she wondered if the homely
guard was merely returning to his duties, or whether he was in search of a new
hiding place...
* * *
The exercises that comprised the circuit training were much the same as
they had been on the prior day, but the two instructors had thought of some
nasty improvements.
"Since the women's quota was evidently not a sufficient challenge for
you," Byrria addressed Taleena with a sneer, "You will be rated against the
men's quota today."
The words caused Taleena's heart to sink. The women's quota had brought
her close to breaking, and now she was being required to increase her
performance by a third again! This would almost certainly earn her a demerit per
day, and at the end of the first week she would be whipped like the miserable
Selia, even if she had actually reached her original target! She did her best
not to blame the Spaniard for her misery, but it was hard to quell the anger
that rose within her and remain passive against this palpable injustice.
"We shall start with the chin-ups again!" Byrria interrupted her
thoughts. "Prove to us that you can compete with men!"
Taleena stepped forward resolutely, determined not to show her
increasing desperation, and Arminius took his position under the second bar. He
of all people! Taleena thought ruefully, for the giant German would make her
failure even more evident. The muscles in his arms were no less prodigious than
those of his shoulders, which were remarkably broad and well-defined, as if they
had been carved from the marble of the Carraran quarries. Had they been standing
in a row, his mighty silhouette would have totally eclipsed Taleena's slender
frame.
Knowing that complaints would prove unavailing, Taleena stepped firmly
onto the footstool and reached for the bar, as did Arminius. In light of the
ankle-weights they were wearing, only sixteen repetitions were mandatory for the
women, and twenty-four for the men. The German began immediately to pull himself
up, seemingly without difficulty, while Taleena's injured hand made itself
painfully felt. But she continued doggedly, raising her chin to the bar,
lowering herself, and then pulling herself up again, though the muscles in her
arms and shoulders were soon aflame from the strain. She had just managed the
fourteenth repetition when Arminius had completed his task and let himself fall
to the ground. She completed the fifteenth lift with infinite slowness, then
managed half another one before she could take no more. Hanging at full stretch
from the bar, her feet sought the footstool, and when they had found it, she
stepped meekly down, noticing Byrria's faint smile of satisfaction.
The press-ups were next, and to her horror, today they had to be
performed above what looked like broken tiles. The small fragments were
sharp-edged, and those who could no longer push themselves up would slump face
down into this sea of shards!
"Fifty!" Byrria demanded.
Instead of thirty-five! thought Taleena, as she took her position, but
the trainers were not satisfied.
"Spread your arms wider!" Calixtus shouted, and as if to stress this
demand, Byrria kicked against Taleena's left wrist to force her arms further
apart. Deprived of her balance, Taleena crashed hard onto the ground, and
shrieked in pain. On her left, Arminius had been given the same treatment, but
that was a cold comfort. For a man it might be painful to land prone on the
shard-strewn ground - for a woman, especially one so well endowed as Taleena, it
was sheer agony. The strophium which covered, but did not conceal the fullness
of her breasts, was hopelessly inadequate to protect her soft flesh from the
fragments of tile. Stabs of pain tore through her, and so great was the pressure
of her body on her bulging breasts that Taleena was surprised that the broken
tiles, though painfully sharp, failed to pierce her skin.
She quickly heaved herself up again to escape from the prone and painful
position, and took a wider stance with her arms to satisfy the trainers, and
then she began to do the press-ups. After the thirtieth her arms began to
weaken, but with clenched teeth she went on till thirty-eight. The time she
spent in the lowered position became longer and longer now, and after the
forty-first the pain knifing through her arms kept her from pushing herself up
again. Her quivering muscles just failed her, and once again she fell prostrate
on the tiles, but this time she managed to keep herself from crying out again
when the jagged stones tore at her tender flesh. She was about to rise when she
felt the hob-nailed sole of Byrria's military boot stamp on her back, pinning
her rudely to the ground.
"How does it feel to fail?" the Thracian sneered, and the malice in her
voice cut Taleena to the quick. "You will get used to it!" Byrria added, her
voice dripping with sneer, and as if to underline her verdict she increased the
pressure of her foot, crushing the groaning noviate's tender breasts even more
forcefully into the shards of fired clay before she withdraw it, allowing
Taleena to continue the circuit.
* * *
Taleena would never know how she had endured until lunch break. Without
that interval to recover from the long run, the humiliating splits, and the
exhausting circuit training whose climax had been her painful sojourn among the
tiles, she might not have had the strength to make it through the balance of the
afternoon.
When the break was over, the two lanistae reassembled the recruits, and
Byrria once again paired the two girls against each other for another strenuous
session of swordplay. But today Byrria had added another refinement - not only
would the sorely-tried beauties have to kneel in the gritty sand once again, but
today their lead-lined ankles had been fitted with spreader-bars as well, which
made their kneeling duel even more difficult and painful than it had been the
day before.
Byrria taught them a variety of different combinations of attack, parry
and riposte and made them learn them by heart, forcing them to go through the
motions again and again. As on the day before, their right hands were pinioned
behind their backs, and their wrists were tied to their belts. In their
kneeling position, their only chance to dodge a blow depended upon their ability
to move their upper bodies quickly and gracefully.
In comparison to the actions of her inept Baetican comrade, Taleena's
motions appeared to be almost graceful. Selia, sadly, like most young women, was
by nature and physique utterly unsuited to such a physically demanding contest.
She did her best, but even if she had not been exhausted by a day and a half of
exertion punctuated by occasional lashes from the sharp-eyed Thracian's stinging
crop, she would have been no match for Taleena. By comparison, the Gall was
taller, stronger, and better co-ordinated. Her natural athleticism enabled her
to wield the sword with her left hand with far less difficulty than she might
have expected. And in addition to her tight bondage, the throbbing welt on her
right palm provided additional incentive to concentrate on her left hand, even
though Byrria's vicious stroke of the prior day had surely had no such purpose
In mid-afternoon, the recruits were given another short break. As the
young water-boy made his rounds, carrying his goatskin bag from one grateful
recruit to the next, Taleena pondered the reason for her unexpected facility for
left-handed combat. Images from her childhood crossed her mind as she recalled
how one of her brothers had broken his right arm and had had to wear it in a
sling for about three months. At first, she and her siblings had made fun of his
awkward attempts to use his left arm, laughing at him when he spilled his food
over himself. But then they had all made a game of seeing which of them could
best use his left hand for their daily tasks.
Taleena doubted that this childhood episode was solely responsible for
her relative ambidexterity, but surely it had not been without value. She
resolved to herself that henceforth she would perform all of her daily routines
with her left hand - just as she had done in those carefree days of childhood.
As if her life depended upon it.
Just then Selia, who had been squatting on the ground to her right,
sat up to greet the curly-haired water-boy, greeting him as if he were young
Ganymede, the cup-bearer of the gods. She tilted the bag, letting its precious
cargo flow into her mouth, uncaring that some of it splashed off her chin and
spilled down onto her chest, wetting her pale breast-cloth to a near
transparency.
As her comrade did so, Taleena heard a guttural laugh and glanced in the
direction of the male recruits to see from whom it came. The German contingent
knelt in the sand opposite the two girls a stone's throw away, and one of them,
a squat, muscular man with a coarse beard had called the attention of his
cronies to the way Selia's damp and flimsy top clung to the curves of her young
breasts.
The Rhinelanders chuckled among themselves and continued to ogle the
unsuspecting Spaniard, and when it was Taleena's turn to drink, she gave the boy
a friendly smile but drank carefully, self-conscious of how the motion she used
to tilt the bag raised her breasts provocatively. She blushed and turned
slightly to one side so that she wouldn't have to meet the men's lecherous
stares, but gratefully drank her fill before returning the goatskin to the boy.
Soon the recruits were engaged in the day's second round of swordplay
practice, hacking away with their wooden swords once again. Selia cowered under
Taleena's fresh onslaught, completely unaware that her blue-eyed opponent was
unleashing her feminine fury not on her, but rather on any man whose leering
glee made the daily training even harder to cope with.
VI.
The third day started much like the two preceding days - with a run.
And, as Taleena had come to expect, the two lanistae had devised new refinements
to make each day's challenges more arduous than the last. Today the oval track
was ringed with obstacles of varying heights, spaced at irregular distances
around the track. The larger obstacles were waist-high hurdles which each
runner would be forced to clear; smaller barriers of similar shape, some no more
than a foot in height, were placed on the track, so that the recruits would have
to crawl beneath them on their bellies.
"You will start in pairs," Calixtus stated. "You two will go first," he
added in a gruff voice, as he pointed his menacing vine-cane at Taleena and
Selia who stood first in line.
"Twelve laps," the bald lanista bellowed to the assembled gladitorial
candidates, "shall be your target today. See that you do not fail to achieve
it!" Then he turned toward the two women with a wolfish smile. "In order to
prove to you that I am a generous man," he said, "I will give you two the start
of half a lap. But if the men overtake you it will cost you a demerit!" He gave
them a threatening stare, and his rather domineering tone of voice suggested
that he would not mind overmuch if they were to fail - and thus be forced to
face the consequences of that failure.
Spurred on by the chief-instructor's threat, the two girls hit the
track, and both of them took the first high hurdle in fair style, only to dive
on the ground to crawl through a low one. They went on side by side, jumping and
diving until Selia began to fall slightly behind after the third lap. Looking
back, Taleena realized that both of them still had a good lead, because the men
were having considerable difficulty in negotiating the low-lying obstacles.
With each passing lap, the tall obstacles seemed to grow higher, while
the low ones seemed to shrink even lower to the ground. By the time Taleena
crossed the starting line for the sixth time, the cumbersome effect of the ankle
weights had begun to take an ever-greater toll, sapping the strength from her
long legs with every stride. Even so she was able to maintain a respectable
pace, even as Selia dropped further and further behind.
Two laps later, their nearest pursuers - Arminius and one of the
Numidians - drew inexorably closer. Being the lither one of the two, it was the
slender Numidian who seemed to manage the constant change of jump and dive
better, so he had a slight advantage over the giant German. As she came out of a
turn, Taleena, her chest burning and her side afflicted by a gnawing pain,
glanced back over her shoulder at her comrade, who had fallen some thirty yards
behind. A pitiful look of despair came over the face of the Spanish girl, as
she heard the ominous rush of oncoming footsteps. The slender girl tried to
find the strength to pull away from her pursuers, but she did not - could not -
and the men's power prevailed.
The two men surged past the faltering girl, serving notice to Taleena
that she, too was in danger of being passed in the three remaining laps. The
race had evolved into a chase, a grim pursuit. Hearing the unmistakable crack of
a crop on female flesh, Taleena, striving not to be overtaken as Selia had been,
threw herself on the ground and almost slid through the upcoming low hurdle,
even if this meant that the coarse cinders left scratches on her knees, thighs
and elbows, and tore at her sparse clothing. Struggling to her feet, cinders
sticking to her sweat-laved, grimy skin, Taleena screamed at herself to maintain
her lead at all cost. Her desperate, almost self-destructive dive had allowed
her to gain a few paces on her rivals, and by a supreme effort she managed to
preserve that lead over her pursuers as she completed the first of the three
remaining laps.
But two torturous laps remained, and the bright morning sun had begun to
take its toll as well, and she, too, was forced to slacken her pace. Her lungs
overworked and suffering, her heart pounding, her breath coming in ragged gasps,
the effort required to keep her tired legs moving was gradually wringing the
last ounce of strength out of her.
Her lead continued to melt slowly away and during the ultimate lap
Taleena had weakened so much that she had to climb over the hurdles. But except
for the leading Numidian, none of the contestants was able to jump over them
anymore. The mighty Arminius merely knocked them down in his final sprint, which
allowed him to catch up with his Numidian counterpart and the twosome came so
close to Taleena that she could hear their laboured breathing and almost feel
their hot, gasping breath on her neck.
Taleena fought valiantly to maintain her slight, shrinking lead, but her
pursuers' footsteps grew closer and closer. When the finish line came within
sight, she threw her exhausted body forward with a desperate lunge so forcefully
that her straining thighs could no longer keep up with the pace imposed by her
will. She stumbled forward, just managing to stagger across the line a step
ahead of her two rivals, before sprawling headlong onto the ground.
She retched where she lay, vomiting bile when there was nothing left in
her stomach, but eventually her panting became breathing again, her racing pulse
slowed to more normal levels, and the sweat stopped oozing from her. Had she
been able to think, she might have felt proud, but very little lucid thought was
possible in her situation. It was only when her body was beginning to pull
itself back from the edge of breakdown that she began to realize fully the
narrowness of her victory and how close she had come to defeat.
* * *
After the massive effort the run had cost her, Taleena would never know
from which unknown source she summoned the energy to complete the circuit
training, which left her even further behind the men's quota than the day
before. But somehow she endured until the lunch break, and the hour-long respite
restored much of her strength. And strength she would need badly because as soon
as the training continued, the recruits were confronted with another strenuous
training discipline that seemed to have been designed for the sole purpose of
breaking them.
Improving the swordplay was on the programme again, and the men were
already kneeling in the sand, preparatory to being fettered with the
spreader-bars.
When the girls picked their swords from the rack, Selia made the fateful
mistake of grabbing her weapon with her right hand. The malicious glint in the
Byrria's dark eyes showed that she must have been waiting for just such a slip,
and indeed the Baetican's mishap provided a welcome pretext for making the
female recruits' forthcoming training session even more arduous.
The imperious Thracian, who had draped a pair of long, thin leather
straps over her left shoulder, ordered the young women to a special training
area in the right-most corner of the arena, where a circle of marble, perhaps
ten feet in diameter, had been planted in the ground, and Taleena's eyes widened
with horror at this sight. She thought of yesterday's training unit, how
horrible it had been to shift to and fro on her knees, dodging the blows of her
opponent. The thick layer of sand which covered the arena was compacted at the
base, with some two inches of looser material on top which could be raked over.
Beneath their feet the sand was packed hard enough to move on, but for those not
arena-trained it was an odd surface, slow going, tiring and sluggish - and
damaging to bare knees. Taleena's knees were still hurting from her prior
lessons, but kneeling on that stone platform would exacerbate their soreness no
end.
But still that was only half of the brutal ordeal that they would be
made to face.
"Strip!" Byrria barked at them, and when they realized that they had
little choice but to obey, the two young women began to remove their sparse
clothing.
As Taleena undid her strophium, she was well aware of the lustful stares
of the male recruits who knelt in the sand a short distance away. Even Calixtus
seemed to have abandoned his stolid professionalism, ignoring for the moment the
recruits he was supposed to be drilling, in order to stare intently at the two
magnificent specimens of womanhood in the marble ring as they reluctantly
unfastened their skimpy garments.
A number of guards seemed to have gathered in a small group on the
nearest vantage point on the roof, which normally was only infrequently occupied
by one of the Syrian archers. Somehow word seemed to have spread through the
camp that the afternoon's training duel would be one of uncommon interest, and
the off-duty guards who had assembled on the roof seemed to outnumber those who
manned their normal posts. No one, it seemed, wanted to miss the exciting
spectacle of two naked beauties pitted against one another. As the flimsy
ribbon that held her strophium together fell open, Taleena spied the angular
figure of Rutilius leaning forward on the roof, so agog with anticipation that
he seemed likely to fall over the balustrade at any moment.
Taleena held the strophium modestly against her breasts, but quickly
became aware that her blushing shyness only served to enhance Byrria's
determination to degrade.
"Your feigned modesty fools no one, Gaul!" Byrria said in a voice
dripping with scorn. Then she spoke loud enough for every fighter in the arena
to hear. "The lowest galley scum have seen this one naked, and yet she puts on
airs. 'Strip,' I said. And be quick about it!"
Taleena felt the warm glow of shame suffuse her upper body, but there
was no way of removing the rest of her garments without letting the breast-wrap
fall. As soon as she lowered her hands to remove the belt that held her flimsy
loin-cloth, her splendid, pink-blushing breasts were bared to the gentle breeze
that swept the training ground, and to the lascivious glances of her wide-eyed
watchers.
Selia, in the vain hope that bringing her female charms to bear might
win Calixtus to her cause, had been quicker to shed her garments. Her slim,
almost boyish figure showed her firm, dark-tipped breasts to striking advantage,
and the dark, downy vee that adorned the juncture between her smooth thighs did
indeed attract the men's attention. Notwithstanding her poor qualities as a
fighter, the young Baetican was surely worth a look, beautiful in a petite,
girlish way. But her pleasing sylphlike figure was hardly a match for the
sensuous curves of the Avernian who soon faced her in all her naked glory.
Out of the corner of her eye, Taleena noted that Calixtus had regained
his composure and resumed his swordplay lesson. Back to his old self, he ordered
the male recruits ruthlessly around, as if to punish them for their - and his
own - undisciplined digression from the business at hand.
While the men were already suffering under Calixtus' severe regimen, the
two young women were compelled to prepare each other for the coming ordeal.
Each had to help the other to fetter her ankles to the spreader-bar before
shuffling into the small marble ring.
"On your knees!" Byrria commanded, and the two now-naked girls lowered
themselves to their knees as gently as they could. It took them but a moment to
conclude that the marble would be uncomfortable to kneel on if they were to
remain motionless; fighting from that position would surely prove to be
agonizing.
"You remember lesson number one?!" Byrria sneered at Taleena, referring
to their encounter on the first day. "This shall serve as an even more
impressive reminder of it!"
The deeply-tanned Thracian planted herself before the kneeling Gaul and
produced one of the long, leathern straps she had thrown over shoulder, looping
a noose around the recruit's slender neck and then tightening it so that the
knot rested just below Taleena's larynx. Byrria tugged at the leash and forced
Taleena to look up, and a smile lit her face when she saw her captive glaring at
her in her misery.
"Knees wider apart!" the Thracian commanded teasingly, and prodded with
her foot against the inner side of Taleena's right knee to stress her demand.
The enforced widening of her stance gave Taleena another foretaste of
the agonizing effect the marble floor would exert on her knees, but by gritting
her teeth she managed to keep herself from crying out. She knelt upright, her
wide-spread ankles tied to the outer ends of the bar, with the soles of her feet
pointing upwards. Since her entire weight pressed downward against the knee
joints, her knees were already aching although she had only been kneeling on the
grim marble floor for a very short time.
Still matching Byrria's malicious gaze with a glare of her own, Taleena
felt the gentle breeze brush past the pink-lipped seam of her exposed vulva that
showed prominently between her spread thighs. She closed her eyes, crestfallen,
as a second wave of shame welled up from her soul and swept over her body.
Byrria smirked at Taleena's discomfiture as she stooped down to pass the
loose end of the strap between the girl's thighs, and then around the
spreader-bar. "Give me your right hand!" she barked at her from behind, and
Taleena flinched when she felt the coarse leather rubbing over her bare pubic
mound. Yet she obeyed, extending her right arm behind her back, cursing the gods
for her womanhood, and even more so for forcing her to fight left-handed, as her
right wrist was tied with the tail end of the strap. The war goddess herself
could not have fought well under such a handicap!
Byrria quickly bound Selia in the same intricate fashion before stepping
back looking pleased with her work. The vile bondage forced the girls into an
utterly upright posture, and the least movement of their right hands would
tighten the brown strap against the most sensitive part of their bodies.
Furthermore, any jerk at the straps would threaten to unbalance them, and
struggling to stay upright, they would tug the leash in the opposite direction
with their necks, again at dire costs. Each harnessed girl would be compelled to
maintain a static posture and keep her right hand totally immobile, to render
the confining strap bearable.
"Legend has it," Byrria began, "that Scythian warriors disciplined the
Amazon women they had abducted with a bondage not unlike the one you are
experiencing. It is most effective, is it not?"
Taleena inwardly agreed, trying desperately to hold her body still, to
defer the pain as long as possible. But she knew that once the swordplay began,
the coarse strap would wreak its havoc on her most sensitive flesh.
"Even those wild indomitable women of the Asian steppe couldn't bear the
strap for long, before becoming quite compliant to the will of their virile
conquerors," the Thracian jeered, her smouldering eyes fixed on the piteous
recruits before her. "And it will certainly serve us well to cure the two of you
of the use of your right hands!"
Taleena felt anger rising within her that she, too, should be made to
suffer for Selia's error, even though she knew that blaming the Baetican girl
for her misery would avail her nothing.
"Concentrate on the five main combinations you learned yesterday,"
Byrria reminded them and handed them their swords. "Take your guard!"
The two wickedly-harnessed girls took their stances with their left
knees forward, which shifted their centre of gravity to the trailing knee, and
raised their swords. Byrria began to shout numbers from one to five into the
ring, expecting the recruits to carry out the corresponding sequence of attack,
parry and riposte, reviling them at each failure and forcing them to repeat the
sequence again and again.
Soon they were laved with sweat, and although the friction of their
knees against the marble had been slight, the kneeling itself had become almost
unendurable. Keeping a static posture helped to reduce the vile effect of the
straps to a minimum, but the persistent rubbing of the coarse leather against
their most sensitive feminine tissue was painful enough.
* * *
From their vantage point on the roof the guardsmen watched with steadily
mounting excitement as the two women young drilled, mesmerized by the sight of
the nude contestants, one dark-haired and slender, the other blonde and
voluptuous, while Byrria put them through their exhausting paces. While the
straps and spreader-bars kept their lower bodies relatively still, their
sword-wielding exertions kept their breasts in nearly constant motion to the
delight of this first, non-paying audience.
At one point Calixtus took his eyes off of his male charges long enough
to glance at the two women. His position obliquely behind the beautiful
Baetican allowed him a perfect view of her wriggling, sweat-glistening buttocks
as well as the magnificent vista of the gorgeous Gaul's pink-nippled breasts as
they shimmied and danced in the air with her every thrust and parry. As he wiped
fresh beads of perspiration from a brow wrinkled from the intensity of his gaze,
the bald lanista glanced up at the excited faces on the rooftops and nodded to
himself. Flavius knew his business. The pleasure-seeking men of Rome would cram
the tiers of the amphitheatre, drawn to the sight of these two beauties in
combat as bears are drawn to the sweet smell of honey...
Before an hour had passed, both contestants were barely able to keep
their swords aloft. While Taleena's own breathing was laboured, her young
Spanish counterpart was wheezing and squeaking with every exchange, a clear sign
that she was on the verge of collapse.
Finally Byrria interrupted the training, and the girls sighed with
relief when they were allowed to drop their arms.
"That will be enough of the exercises, for now," the olive-skinned
lanista explained to the panting young women. "During your stay here we shall
drill you until you drop, I assure you. But now it is time for some sparring,"
the Thracian explained. "In the arena victory - and survival - will depend as
much upon fighting spirit as technique. To survive you must learn to react with
the quickness of a snake; without her quickness, the snake would be an easy prey
to the claws of the eagle! You will continue in freestyle combat, now, to
develop that quickness. But no blows to the head! And show some fighting
spirit, will you!"
The nude combatants took their guard again and swung their weapons with
renewed vigour. When their wooden swords crashed together, each had to struggle
to absorb the recoil of the exchange. Selia reacted with more agility than
Taleena would have thought possible, quickly bringing her arm up again in order
to launch a second attack. Taleena dived sideways, evading the swift downward
sweep of Selia's sword, but at the cost of a fierce tugging at her groin, as the
terrible strap bit deep into her girl-flesh. In the same motion she countered
with a slashing blow that raked across her opponent's chest. Selia shrieked
with pain, but that did not forestall Taleena from thrusting forward with a
stabbing motion, catching the slender Baetican in the stomach and causing her to
double up in pain. Taleena then landed the coup de grace, a hacking blow across
Selia's bare back that ended the duel almost before it had begun.
"Stop, stop! You're hopeless!" Byrria shouted angrily, glaring at the
defeated Spaniard as she shook her head in disgust. "Well, you've just earned
your demerit for today!" she snapped. "Get out of my sight! Go to the others and
practise on the straw figure!" - "And tell Breaca to come over," she added
tersely. "She's one of the twins. She shall bring along her sword and boots. She
will know which!"
The ill-tempered Thracian released the slim Spanish girl from the
Scythian Strap and the spreader bar, and Selia rose and staggered painfully
away, her downcast bearing indicating that she knew that her failure had brought
her even closer to an encounter with the whip at the end of the week.
Taleena's eyes watched the newly freed girl longingly, almost concluding
that it would be worth a demerit to be freed from the cruel strap-bondage and
allowed to rise from the obdurate marble. Her knees felt like they were slowly
crushed between the grinding stones of an oil press, creating a dull pain which
almost seemed to eclipse the searing twinge at her groin. As Selia joined the
other fighters Taleena saw that they were enjoying a break and being served by
the young water-boy.
"I'm... I'm thirsty..." she uttered wearily as she watched the other
fighters drink from the boy's waterskin. During the protracted sword-drill and
the brief sparring match the warm afternoon sun had been beating down
mercilessly, and her body, nude save for the Scythian Strap, was as dehydrated
as her throat was parched.
Byrria looked patronizingly down at the sweat-laved girl. "Well, a
little water seems fair enough," she stated generously. "Larius!" she then
shouted over the yard, waving at the slave-boy to come over, and as he did, she
sneered at Taleena: "But you'll have to beg for it!"
Larius, as the slave-boy seemed to be named, approached Taleena shyly,
but he seemed unsure as to how to proceed. He could have been no more than ten
years of age, and he was the only male creature in the compound whose eyes were
not bright with lustful intent. When he had come within an arm's length of
Taleena, Byrria put her hand on the boy's shoulder, stopping him while he
examined Taleena's body with child-like curiosity. Taleena knew that Byrria
would take pleasure in the abjectness of her condition, but her scathing thirst
got the better of her pride.
"Water...please...," she murmured again to the boy in an entreating
voice, while trying to ignore the domineering smile that crept across the
Thracian's stern countenance.
The child stood in awe, watching the nude young woman's vile restraints,
and although he realized that she was in considerable pain, he couldn't possibly
assess the extent of Taleena's sexual degradation. When he had overcome his
first astonishment, he stepped closer and lifted his goatskin-bag to bring it to
the kneeling woman's lips, shrinking slightly back when she moaned softly as she
craned her neck at the cost of a tug at the crotch strap.
But he continued to pour some of the water-skin's contents carefully
into the Avernian's longingly opened mouth, unaware that every man in the arena
envied his vantage point for taking in the gorgeous landscape of the Gaul's
body, the breath-taking splendour of her nudity interrupted only by the thin
brown strap between her shapely thighs. Thin streams of water escaped the
corners of her mouth, faithfully following the slope of her slender throat, down
through the valley between her out-thrust breasts, across the ridge of her chest
and further down over the smooth plane of her belly, to reach the fertile delta
between her thighs which had been ploughed so roughly by the leathern harness.
"Enough!" Byrria snapped, and the young slave reluctantly withdrew the
skin and put a stopper on the opening. "That's more than she deserves!"
"Thank you," Taleena said gratefully to the boy who met her thanks with
a brief smile. She still strove to avoid looking at the Thracian, and kept her
eyes fixed on the young Ganymede who had shouldered his bag and was just about
to turn away when Byrria stopped him.
"Wait!" the Thracian ordered the boy, in a voice that suggested her
disappointment that Taleena still managed to cling to the last threads of her
dignity. An evil gleam shone in her dark eyes. "You can do the pretty lady
another good turn, Larius, by helping her to adjust her harness. Why don't you
give her cord a little jerk?"
Larius gave the Thracian a blank look, obviously puzzled by the meaning
of the trainer's suggestion. He glanced at Taleena, who, while drinking, had
dropped her sword and placed her free left hand over the golden tendrils of her
pubic hair. Her fingers fumbled furtively with the leathern chord, obviously in
an effort to slacken the strap's inhumane grip, but even a child could see that
the strap still fit very tightly. If he were to pull it ...
The helpless recruit shot an angry glare at the evil-eyed lanista,
appalled that the Thracian would involve a child in her cruel games. But her
glare was not returned, for Byrria's smouldering eyes were on the curly-haired
boy, watching him struggle with his moral dilemma. Taleena knew that Byrria
would see to it that the young slave-boy would be chastised if he failed to
obey, so she took a deep breath and smiled at Larius as best she could. "It's
all right...," she encouraged him in a soft voice. "Do as she says. Perhaps the
strap has come a bit loose."
Larius still hesitated, but finally he reached out his small hand and
slipped his fingers under the strap, just above the kneeling young woman's
heaving breasts. Taleena willed herself to keep smiling even as she gritted her
teeth as the boy's grip made the fiendish strap, mercifully moistened by the
spilled water, bite ever deeper into her sensitive flesh.
"Come on, boy," Byrria snapped, tapping her menacing crop impatiently
against her bare thigh. "Do as you're told! We haven't got all day - so just
give it a tug and run along!"
Again the young water-slave hesitated, until Taleena inclined her head
gently to indicate to him to proceed. But in his agitation, he jerked at the
strap more firmly than he had intended, and even though he let it go quickly
when he heard Taleena's half-stifled groan of pain, he watched, distraught, as
her blue eyes filled with silent tears of agony as the slippery strap cut into
her soft vaginal flesh.
Larius gave Taleena a grief-stricken look and tears of pity and regret
began to fill his own innocent eyes. He stood, rueful and helpless, for a long
moment and then, in a childish attempt to atone for the pain he had caused her,
he dropped the water-bag, his only possession, in front of Taleena before he
turned abruptly and ran off, a picture of dejection.
"Well, he'll never be a Scythian warrior, will he?" Byrria scoffed, as
she watched the miserable child disappear in the distance. She stepped forward
and kicked the half-empty bag out of Taleena's reach, literally trampling on
Larius' penitent offering. Then her furious gaze returned to the kneeling
recruit, and a malicious smile lit her face at the sight of the suffering
Avernian.
"Perhaps the strap has come a little loose," she scoffed derisively,
mocking Taleena's gentle tone of voice. "What a fool!" Byrria's gleeful glance
slid downward to the juncture of Taleena's tawny, widespread thighs. The moist,
supple leather was painfully embedded between the protruding folds of the naked
blonde's pubic mound. A cruel smile creased her face before she returned her
gaze to the Avernian's tear-filled eyes. "Well it looks to me as if the strap
is fitting tight enough to withstand another hour of swordplay! So take up
your sword, Gaul! I do not remember giving you leave to set it down!"
Taleena groaned between clenched teeth as she bent forward to reach the
ground with her left hand, groping for her wooden weapon, her movements causing
the strap to rub to and fro between her thighs. But the prospect of enduring the
searing friction of the strap against her most tender and intimate flesh for
another hour caused her to shudder silently. "No," she whispered softly to
herself, shaking her blonde head in despair, but the will of the domineering
Thracian was not to be denied.
* * *
Taleena had just taken hold of her sword when one of the ginger-haired
Celtic girls appeared at the marble ring. She wore a light armour of
brass-studded leather and boots that reached up to her knees, and carried her
sword casually on her shoulder. Her curly, shoulder-length hair was done in a
short ponytail that failed to tame her unruly locks, and one long tress fell
brazenly across her handsome face. Her legs were not quite as long and slender
as Taleena's, thus giving her a figure a bit more compact than the taller
Avernian's, but admirably well-proportioned.
"Breaca will teach you a lesson," Byrria stated, addressing both the
Taleena and the Celtic girl whose self-confident bearing contrasted starkly with
the Avernian recruit's uncertainty and fatigue. "Let us see how you fare when
you are confronted with a worthy opponent instead of a pathetic weakling!"
Taleena glanced ruefully at Selia, who had overheard the raven-haired
Thracian, as the slender Spaniard slashed at the straw target with tearful but
rather inept fury. What would become of that poor girl who had been thrust into
such a cruel and forbidding world?
But Taleena had little time to concern herself with Selia's fate,
because the Celtic warrioress had planted herself in the place Selia had vacated
and was lowering herself to her knees. Taleena stared at the Celt resignedly
and raised her sword, but she was under no illusion that she could long prevail
against her opponent. Breaca was fresher, had far more experience, was neither
bound nor strapped, and her sturdy boots would protect her knees from being
bloodied by the adamantine hardness of the marble on which they both knelt.
Byrria gave the signal to begin and the two women crossed their swords
in a gesture betokening mutual respect, but Breaca's wry countenance suggested
that she was hardly disposed to grant a warrior's respect to the nude and
hobbled creature who faced her.
Breaca plunged forward immediately, and only by a great effort was
Taleena able to parry the thrust with her sword, moaning pitifully as she
shuffled backwards on her raw knees in order to avoid a following stroke. She
had just managed to ward off a second blow when a third came, and Taleena
groaned in pain as the sword crashed through her attempted parry and raked
across her right breast.
She struggled to keep her opponent at bay, but doing so caused her to
move her pinioned right arm involuntarily, and then to offset that movement she
made a sudden turn with her neck which instantly pulled the slippery strap even
deeper into the tender vaginal folds. Had it been thinner, the strap might have
sliced her to the bone; as it was, the damp leather only chafed the tender
insides of her labia, still hurting her so badly that she groaned in anguish
every time she was forced to alter her position. And Breaca kept her moving!
Although the Celt applied pressure tirelessly, Taleena sensed that she was
holding back a bit, varying her strokes, allowing her opponent to block them,
but letting her know that she was capable of driving her wooden sword into her
whenever she chose. Again and again Breaca's sword found Taleena's nude body,
poking her stomach, lightly hacking her thighs, scraping her tender breasts,
giving the Gaul a taste of the terrible hopelessness Selia must have felt under
her own onslaught.
Throughout this endless assault, Taleena could feel the eyes of the
guards and attendants on her body. Cheers and laughter from the roof erupted
each time the recruit's nude body flinched and shuddered when Breaca's wooden
weapon found its mark, or each time a sudden defensive movement caused the
fiendish strap to tighten between her wide-spread thighs and brought plaintive
moans from the tortured girl's lips.
But still Taleena fought bravely on, her strength subsiding along with
the sun as the heavenly orb gradually concluded its diurnal descent behind a
ridge of foothills, leaving the western sky aflame with the reds and oranges of
a spring sunset. Taleena blocked and parried and countered until her agility was
crippled by pain, and her coordination was crushed by fatigue.
Finally, when she could barely raise her sword-arm, she tried to ward
off a menacing blow, and her imprisoned right arm pulled her off balance. A
searing pain tore through her strap-ravished groin, and she cried out in anguish
as she toppled over. Only some saving reflex caused her to extend her sword arm
so as to keep her from falling face-first into the floor.
Squatting there on the ground, panting for breath, utterly spent,
nothing could have made her rise again. Her body was awash with pain - her
knees raw, her sex sore, her pink-tipped breasts aching from the afternoon's
bouncing and bobbing, not to mention the ill effects of a few glancing blows.
Even Byrria seemed to understand that she could take no more, and stooped down
to release her from her cruel bondage.
The harnessed recruit shrieked in pain as the instructress used her
dagger to cut the strap, thus tightening its inhuman grip for a final dreadful
inch before the blade managed to cut its way through the tough leather.
Taleena's relief at being freed from the strap was redoubled when Byrria
released her ankles from the spreader bar which allowed her to drop sideways and
thus to withdraw her pain-wracked knees from the marmoreal floor. But such was
her agony that she lay there on her side, her knees drawn up, sobbing audibly as
she removed the coarse leather from between the abraded folds of her sex and
pressed her newly-freed right hand between her burning thighs.
"If you think that was bad, wait till you come to the arena, Gaul!"
Byrria scoffed rudely. "Breaca would have killed you a dozen times had the fight
been a real one! So get up! You'd better go and see the unctores."
But Taleena had not the strength to move. She knew how shameful her
prostrate position must appear to the Thracian and her Celtic opponent, but was
too riddled with exhaustion to care. Had it only been her third day in the
arena? If this was Byrria's way of taking out her hostility on her, if her life
was going to be nothing more than a series of ordeals like the one she had
experienced today, what was the point of rising only to suffer again tomorrow?
Better to die where she lay.
But Byrria seemingly had had her fill for today. She told Breaca to call
it a day, and headed off for the main bulding, leaving the battered recruit to
her fate.
It was quite some time before Taleena summoned up the strength to rise
from the floor. Groaning in pain, she pulled herself up onto her hands and knees
and rested for a moment, until she noticed that the beefy, black-bearded German
recruit was staring at her pendulous breasts as if they were a pair of
well-browned pullets on a roasting spit. Avoiding his hungry glance, she
carefully crawled across the marble to retrieve the garments that Byrria had
ordered her to remove, but was too preoccupied with her misery to notice that
her crest-fallen position allowed other, more surreptitious eyes to linger on
her strap-ravaged pubic mound which protruded red and sore beneath the base of
her buttock-cleft.
Grasping the flimsy pieces of cloth in her left hand, she turned to one
side, and only when she had risen onto one knee, did she see the grinning visage
of Rutilius the roof-dweller. She glared at him and then tried to stand, like a
wounded fighter who had been driven to his knees and was now trying unsteadily
to regain his feet, while she held her garments in front of her to shield her
ravaged body from the disgusting youth's leering gaze.
Once upright, she hobbled across the arena, each stride made painful by
the havoc the Scythian Strap had wreaked on the core of her femininity. Selia
gave her an appalled, compassionate look, knowing well that her own failure had
at least spared her the brutal ordeal her Avernian comrade had suffered for the
past hours.
But except for the Baetican's sympathy, Taleena felt only the hot, lusty
glances of dozens of nearby males, fighters and guards alike, on her battered
body, and as she passed through a gauntlet of smirks, catcalls and obscene
gestures, tears of anger, pain, and frustration welled up in her blue eyes. Was
this what the Fates had ordained for her when they had spared her from the
rigours of the galley, she wondered? A life of even direr enslavement, abuse
and degradation?
