Simon Scarrow - Gladiator

Marcus responded quickly and obediently, and the others shuffled on to their feet behind him. Once they were all up, Piso shoved Marcus towards the gangway, causing him to stumble as the chain became taut between him and the others. Pelleneus stepped forward just in time to save Marcus from falling headlong. With a steady chink, chinkle, chink from the chains, the seven prisoners shuffled across the gangway and on to the quay. Porcino was waiting for them. He sat in the saddle of a small horse and was leading a string of three mules loaded down with nets of bread and crudely cut chunks of salted meat. He had a sword-belt fastened round his middle and a club hung from his saddle horn.

With Porcino at the front and Piso bringing up the rear, the small column of prisoners wound its way along the quay to the main street leading through the port. No one spared Marcus a second look as he passed by and he felt his heart sink as he realized that these people were going to see that he had been wronged. To their eyes he was just another slave, one of the vast number who landed in Brundisium over the course of a year. He wondered if he should call out for help – if he should shout about all the wrongs that had been done to him. The moment he slowed down, however, steeling himself to cry out that he had been kidnapped, Piso strode along the line and prodded him with the end of his club.

‘Keep the pace up, boy! No slacking.’

Marcus stumbled on a short distance and then settled into the rhythm that the other prisoners also fell into as they passed through the city gates. After leaving Brundisium, Porcino followed the coast road, heading north. To their right, the sea sparkled invitingly now that they were safely ashore. To the left the landscape rolled gently towards a distant line of hills. Farms and some large agricultural estates lined the road. Close to the port there was a constant stream of traffic: carts large and small carrying goods to be exported, or piled high with imports from across the empire.

By the time evening came, they had passed fifteen of the milestones and Marcus was exhausted. His feet burned from the steady pace he had been forced to endure along the hard surface of the road. Porcino led them a short distance off the road to the edge of a small pine forest.

‘We’ll stay here for the night. Piso, settle them down and feed ’em.’

‘Yes, master.’

Marcus and the others slumped to the ground. Unlacing his boots, Marcus examined his feet and winced as his fingers found a burst blister. If they marched the same distance tomorrow and the day after, he knew he was going to be in agony.

Pelleneus and the other slaves stretched out on the ground and rested briefly, until Piso approached them with a basket he had taken off the back of one of the mules. He moved down the line, giving each of them some bread, a lump of cheese and some dried meat. Marcus was the last to be fed and he nodded a brief thanks before he spoke to Piso in a low voice.

‘I want to speak to Porcino.’

Piso glanced at him in surprise. ‘You what?’

‘I said I want to talk to Porcino.’

‘Slaves don’t give orders. So you keep quiet and eat up, eh?’

Marcus shook his head. ‘I’m not a slave. I shouldn’t be here. I have to speak to Porcino and explain the situation.’

Piso looked round at his master. The lanista was building a fire a short distance away, his powerful frame hunched over the kindling he was breaking up and arranging into a compact bundle. Piso smiled to himself and turned back to Marcus.

‘Well, if you insist, I’ll fetch him.’

‘Thank you.’ Marcus smiled.

He sat and watched as Piso approached his master, bowed his head and mumbled a few words that Marcus did not catch. Porcino looked past Piso towards Marcus and nodded. Then he stood up, stretched his back and strolled over to the chained prisoners.

‘You, boy. On your feet,’ Porcino said evenly. ‘Piso tells me you want a word.’

‘That’s right.’ Marcus nodded, his hopes rising at the chance to explain his predicament finally. ‘You see, I was kidnapped and -’

Porcino’s hand whipped out and slapped Marcus hard on the side of the head. His vision exploded into a brilliant white cloud of sparks. He staggered back, reeling from the blow. Porcino hit him again and Marcus collapsed on to his backside with a grunt. A fist clenched in his hair and shook him painfully.

‘When you speak to me,’ Porcino growled in his ear, ‘you call me “master”. If you fail to do that next time, then I’ll knock your teeth out. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ Marcus replied, still dazed by the blows.

The hand twisted his hair violently. ‘Say that again!’

‘Yes, master.’

‘Louder, boy!’

‘YES, MASTER!’

At once he was released and Marcus fell on to his back, gasping at the pain in his head. Porcino loomed over him, hands bunched into fists as he glared at Marcus.

‘That’ll be the last time I show you any mercy. Whatever you were before, now you are my slave. My property, to do with as I want. You will call me master and you will do whatever I say at once, without question. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, master.’

Porcino narrowed his eyes for a moment, then straightened up, relaxing his hands. ‘Then I’ll have no more of your nonsense. If I, or Piso, hear one more word of any ridiculous story about being kidnapped again, I’ll beat you so badly your mother would never recognize you.’

He turned away and strolled back to make his fire. Marcus stared after him, terrified. He felt a hand pluck his sleeve.

‘Here.’ Pelleneus spoke in a kindly tone as he handed Marcus his food. ‘Eat up. You’ll need all your strength. We’ve a long journey ahead of us.’

They continued marching up the coast in the following days. Each night they stopped, Porcino took turns with Piso keeping watch over the prisoners. When he got the chance, Marcus carefully examined his neck collar and the link through which the chain fastened him to the others. The iron was strong and the pin that fastened the collar had been firmly seated so that he could not make it budge at all. At length Marcus realized that he would not be able to get out of the collar while he was chained to the others. He would have to bide his time and wait until they reached their destination. When the collar came off, he could turn his mind to thinking about escape again.

The one consolation of the situation that kept him from sinking into complete despair was the knowledge that each step took him closer to Rome and General Pompeius. From what he could glean from Piso, the lanista’s gladiator school was just outside a town called Capua, in the region of Campania, just over a hundred miles south of Rome. If the chance to escape came, then Marcus felt confident that he could at least reach the great city by himself.

On the fifth day after leaving the port, they reached the small town of Ventulus, where Porcino left the coast road and took them on to a route heading inland. The gently rolling farmland soon gave way to hills and then mountains as they marched west. Summer was coming to an end and the evenings had turned cool, so that Marcus found it hard to sleep, curled up on the ground, his teeth chattering. It took some time before the effects of exhaustion and an increasingly numbing despair allowed him to finally drift off for a few hours.

All the time he harboured a simmering rage against Porcino and vowed to all the Gods that there would be a reckoning one day. Meanwhile he avoided the lanista’s gaze and never dared to address him directly again. On the coldest nights, when the road crossed the highest points of the mountains that ran down the spine of Italy, Piso lit them a fire.