Simon Scarrow - Gladiator

‘We won’t be slaves for long, mother. Decimus can’t do this to us.’ He frowned with determination. ‘I won’t let him get away with it.’

She stared into his eyes with pity, then gently pulled him into her arms and held him tightly. ‘Marcus. You are all that I have left.’

Her tears began to flow again, and Marcus felt his own eyes burn with a similar urge to cry. He gritted his teeth as he looked over her shoulder at the other slaves in the cage, fighting back his tears. They looked back with blank faces, too weary or despairing to react. Marcus silently swore a sacred oath that he would never accept slavery. Never.

It took another four long days before the wagon reached its destination, but finally, at dusk on the last day, they entered the town of Stratos.

Set astride one of the main trade routes across the mountainous interior of Graecia, the town had long outgrown the walls that dated back to the days of the small city-states that were almost constantly at war with one another. Nowadays the walls of the town surrounded a maze of narrow streets where the wealthier families lived and did their business. Beyond the walls sprawled the ramshackle buildings of the poor.

During the journey, Marcus and his mother had little to do with the others inside the cage. Their fellow slaves knew only a handful of words in Greek, had no understanding of Latin and spoke in unknown barbarian tongues.

The wagon rattled down the main road into the heart of the town, making for the slave market.

For Marcus, who had been raised on a farm for all his life, and who had only ever known the fishing village at Nydri, the town was unnerving. The shrill cries of street vendors and beggars assaulted his ears, while the stench of rubbish and sewage filled the air. He wrinkled his nose as he breathed in.

‘Ughh! Do all towns stink like this?’

‘As far as I know,’ his mother replied with a look of equal distaste.

The wagon entered a large market square in the centre of Stratos and then turned through a gate into a narrow courtyard. Two burly guards stood just inside, armed with cudgels. It had been a stable once, but now there were iron grilles across the entrance to each stall and Marcus could see the ragged forms of men, women and children of all ages huddled behind the bars. Beneath them was a thin spread of filthy straw.

‘Whoah!’ the driver of the wagon called out as he pulled sharply on the reins. The mules clopped to a halt. A large man in a plain brown tunic waddled out of a doorway and approached the wagon. He nodded a greeting to the driver as he climbed stiffly down from his bench and stretched his back.

‘What’s this lot then?’ The man jerked his thumb at the prisoners in the cage.

‘Slaves.’ The driver yawned. ‘Property of Decimus. Wants them put into the next auction.’

Marcus grabbed the bars and pulled himself up. ‘We’re not slaves!’

‘Shut it, you!’ The driver whirled round and slashed his coiled whip at Marcus’s knuckles. Marcus fell back with a cry of pain. ‘One more word out of turn and I’ll beat you black and blue.’

The driver turned to the other man with a laugh. ‘The boy’s a born liar. Like all slaves. Just ignore him and his mother there. They go into the auction, as I said. All right?’

The auctioneer nodded and then pointed to the only remaining empty cell. ‘Put ’em in there. I’ll add them to the sale inventory for tomorrow.’

‘Right.’

As the auctioneer waddled back to his office, the driver made his way to the end of the wagon and loosened the coils of his whip. Reaching for the key that hung round his neck, he unlocked the door and backed off a pace as he swung it open.

‘Get out!’ He gestured to the ground to make sure that all the prisoners understood his meaning.

One by one they climbed out, Marcus and his mother last of all. The driver pointed to a cell and pushed one of the others towards it. They were all hungry and stiff after living in the cramped confines of the cage for several days, except for a short break every other day to change the soiled straw. They had been fed twice daily with stale bread and water. The prisoners slowly made their way into the cell. The driver thrust Marcus inside so that he stumbled against his mother, then slammed the door shut and turned the key in the lock before striding off to join the auctioneer.

Inside the cell Marcus and his mother sat down on the straw and leaned against the dirty plaster wall. While his mother stared at the opposite wall, Marcus’s mind was filled with frightening thoughts about the next day’s auction. What if they were bought by a mine owner? He had heard terrifying stories about the conditions slaves endured in the mines. It was little more than a living death. Then the worst of all possibilities occurred to him. He turned to his mother with a horrified expression.

‘What happens if we are sold to different owners tomorrow?’

His mother stirred, as if from a troubled sleep, and looked at him. ‘Sorry, Marcus, what did you say?’

‘What happens if we are split up, at the auction?’

She stared at him and forced a smile. ‘I don’t think that will happen. The auctioneers don’t like to separate families. It makes for discontent.’

‘But what if they do?’ Marcus felt a stab of fear. ‘I don’t want to leave you.’

She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘We’ll stay together. You’ll see. Now try to sleep. Here, put your head in my lap.’

He wriggled round and lowered his head into the folds of her long tunic and she began to gently run her fingers through his dark curls. She had comforted him this way for as long as he could remember, and had once remarked that Marcus had his father’s hair. Marcus recalled that he had laughed at the time, since his father’s scalp had only a thin crop of wiry hair. As she stroked him now, his body began to relax and for a while his mind drifted back to dreamy memories of the farm with Aristides and Cerberus, as if they were still alive. Most of all he thought of his father, strong and proud. Marcus wished Titus was there to protect him and his mother. An image of his father lying dead in the rain filled his mind and it was a long time before he finally fell into a troubled sleep.

During the night, he was woken up by a loud outburst. Shouts and yells came from another cell as a fight broke out. The auctioneer and his guards turned up with flaring torches and clubs, and then all Marcus could hear was them beating the prisoners back into silence. He tried to get back to sleep, but he was unsettled by the violence, and his thoughts once again turned to the grim situation he and his mother were in. What would become of them?

There was a deafening clatter as the guard ran his club along the iron bars and Marcus was startled into wakefulness.

‘On your feet, slaves!’ the guard bellowed, then moved on to the next cell. ‘Wakey, wakey!’

Starting with the cells nearest the main gate, the prisoners were chained together by their ankles and then escorted out of the courtyard into the market. Marcus estimated that there were at least a hundred other people waiting to be sold and the morning dragged on as they were taken out in batches to be auctioned off. All the time he felt his guts knot with anxiety over the terrible prospect of being parted from his mother.

At last a guard came to their cell with a club in one hand and a heavy length of chain with ankle irons in the other. He let them out one at a time, clamping the iron collars round each prisoner’s ankle and then hammering home the locking pin. When Marcus and his mother had joined the short line, the last six slaves were led out of the yard. The market square was crowded and people pressed round Marcus and the others as they shuffled towards the stage a short distance away, where the auctioneer stood waiting. Marcus felt hands squeeze his arms as he passed, and one man forced Marcus’s mouth open to look at his teeth before being thrust back by the guard.