In the Shadow of the Wall (16 page)

They stood at the edge of yet another courtyard, a large one this time, the floor covered in sand. It was full of men training. At one side were a few who were practising with various weapons under the watchful eye of their trainers while armed guards stood close by. Elsewhere the men used shields and wooden swords in mock combat while closer to where they stood men were running, jumping, dodging mechanical devices which swung heavy wooden beams with frightening speed, or dancing along blocks of wood protruding from the ground, leaping as quickly as they could from one to the next. It was the strangest sight Brude had ever seen.

Curtius pointed to the men with the real weapons. “That’s a Murmillo, the one with the fish crest on his helmet. Large shield, heavy sword, face guard, shin guard, armoured sword arm. Heavy and strong, the Murmillones are. Well protected but usually a bit slow because of the weight they carry.” Brude glanced at Valerius who had been nominated to fight as a Murmillo. “Why a fish?” he asked Curtius.

“Tradition,” Curtius replied without thinking. He went on, “Then there’s the Samnite. Basically the same armour but uses the gladius of the legions and has a slightly different helmet. Still heavily armoured. These two are the Secutors, the chasers. It is their job to hunt down their opponents in the arena.

“Then the Thracian.” He indicated another gladiator. “Hardly any armour, just the very small circular shield and the curved sword, the sica. Relies on speed and agility to defeat the armour of the Secutors.” Brude saw Josephus nodding. The little Jew had shown that he was quick and would train as a Thracian.

“Finally the Retiarius,” Curtius said. “No armour, just the trident and the net. Uses speed and the long reach of the trident. If he catches you in his net, you’ve had it.” That was Sarcho’s designated role.

“You said five types,” Josephus pointed out. “That’s only four.”

Curtius gave him that wolfish grin they knew heralded a macabre joke. “The fifth kind are the dead ones. We get lots of those.” He laughed aloud at the joke, which they soon discovered was a stock one at the school. Curtius looked at them all, his face serious again. “But before you learn how to fight, you must learn how to move. If you are fast, you must become faster; in thought and in movement. We will train you so well that you’ll be able to catch a fly off the wall with your bare hand. If you are strong, you must become stronger, able to take the pain and stand in the sweating sun and keep on fighting no matter what.” He lifted a hand, pointing at them, one at a time. “I warn you, many do not survive the training. Either you get killed here or, if I judge that you are not up to it, you’ll be sent to the arena with the criminals and war captives. Either way, you’re dead.” He let that sink in, then said, “I expect at least one of you to fail the training, maybe two of you. That’s normal. It’s up to you to prove to me that you deserve to stay and become the best.”

The training began. It was brutal, efficient and relentless. They ran, lifted weights, spent hours hacking at wooden poles with heavy wooden swords, jumped on rolling logs to improve their balance, and had to run a course which involved dodging swinging weights and beams. In the sweltering summer heat they were soon exhausted but the trainers gave them no respite, working them till they dropped. Brude had thought he was fit and strong but this was the hardest thing he had ever done and he never had a problem sleeping at nights. Often it was all he could do to stay awake long enough to climb into bed. His muscles ached from exertion and his body was bruised whenever he misjudged a swinging obstacle and caught a blow from one of the weights.

Despite the exhaustion, the training had its compensations. The food was varied and good and, if Curtius deemed they had done well, he would sometimes send one of the female slaves to their cell at night. That was about the only thing that could keep them awake.

In the barracks room they were soon accepted, although only if they kept their place in the pecking order. The experienced fighters were always at the head of the queue, sat together to eat and rarely spoke to the newcomers. Then there was a group of men who had fought a few times and survived and, finally, those who were untried in actual combat. Despite the warning Curtius had given about forming friendships, Brude soon discovered that many of the gladiators were close. Living together in such proximity, he supposed it was inevitable but, for his own part, he took care not to become too friendly with any of them, not even the three he had arrived with. He thought Josephus was mad anyway. The little Jew boasted he had killed half a dozen Roman soldiers in his homeland in what he called the perpetual struggle for freedom from the imperial yoke. He insisted he was enjoying the training because it would allow him to kill more Romans. He did not change his view even when Brude pointed out that most of the gladiators were slaves, not Romans. “I’ll kill them anyway,” Josephus laughed. “The Lord has told me that is my destiny.”

Valerius was strong but slow-witted and Brude had little in common with him while Sarcho made no attempt to learn Latin and spoke to nobody, so Brude was happy to keep himself to himself. He concentrated all his energies on working hard at the training. He still recalled the words of Basillus, in the slave stockade four years earlier, about how a slave could win his freedom in the arena. That dream kept Brude going, drove him to become as fast and as strong as he could.

Like all of the gladiators, he took a few bruises and pulled some muscles. When that happened he would be sent to the infirmary where a Greek physician would examine him. If the physician said he should stop training, there was no argument until he was pronounced fit again. Brude quickly realised, though, that getting hurt deliberately to be allowed some days of rest was not a good idea because when he returned to training he had to work even harder to catch up with the others. If he was not able to train, it also meant that he was assigned other duties such as cleaning out the privies. After only a few weeks, most of them preferred to put up with the aches and pains, refuso go to the infirmary unless they were genuinely unable to train.

It was three months before they were given any training in actual combat, three months of hard work, which improved their strength and their speed beyond anything Brude would have thought possible. He tried catching flies off the wall of his cell in the evenings. He never quite managed it but he felt that one day soon he might do it.

He learned more about the school as well. Lentulus was not the owner, just the manager who ran it on behalf of an ex-slave called Trimalchio who was, therefore, Brude’s master. “You’ll hardly ever see him, though,” Curtius told him. “He pays for the running of the place and takes a share of the profits but it’s just a hobby for him.”

“He was a slave and he owns the school?” Brude was incredulous.

“Yes, he was a slave and he is now a very rich man indeed. He’s a pompous ass, but he’s a rich pompous ass and he owns more land than you or I could walk across in a day.”

“How does a slave get to be that rich?” Brude asked him.

“Don’t start getting ideas,” warned Curtius. “First you’ve got to gain your freedom and then you’ve got to earn the money. Trimalchio has fingers in lots of pies and from what I hear he has an influential patron.”

“But a slave can be freed and become wealthy?” Brude insisted, his mind once again racing with dreams of freedom.

“It can happen,” Curtius conceded, “but most slaves die as slaves. Even if you do get your freedom, either by buying it, which you won’t because you’ll never be given enough money, or by winning it in the arena, like I did, you still stay poor.”

“Poor but free.”

Curtius looked at Brude seriously. “Look, Brutus, you’ve got some talent and, if I was a betting man, I might put money on you being good enough to win the rudis and get your freedom. But don’t count on it. Aim for it and try your damndest and you might get there if you are very, very lucky, but this is a dangerous life. No matter how good you are, and you’re not that good yet, believe me, you can have bad luck or you can get over-confident or you can simply meet someone who’s better than you. When that happens, it can all be over.”

Brude listened to the advice and promised he would work as hard as he could, but the dreams of freedom would not go away.

He also learned that while the threat of death was a constant companion for every gladiator, it was not as common as Curtius made out to the newcomers. There were twenty-six gladiators in the school, all at various stages. Those who were deemed ready to fight would only be taken to the arena perhaps three or four times a year and, even if they lost, death was not always inevitable. Gladiators were expensive to train and to keep and no lanista liked losing an experienced man so the school charged a lot more when a gladiator died. The magistrates who paid for, and supervised, the shows knew this, so would often let a gladiator live, especially if they had fought well and enough of the crowd called for them to be allowed to survive. On the other hand, they sometimes liked to show their generosity to the crowd by condemning a defeated gladiator to death. If the emperor was presiding, there was more chance of this happening because emperors liked to be generous to the people and money was no object for a man who ruled the empire. One more dead gladiator would make no difference to the emperor’s wealth.

So every few weeks Curtius and Lentulus would go off to
Rome
with a few of the experienced men and, perhaps, a novice they deemed ready. Later that day they would come back, sometimes without one or two of those who had left. The bodies would follow later, brought on a wagon and the men would be buried in the small graveyard, which sat outside the school. Often they all came back, even men who had lost their fights. Brude saw that such men were welcomed even though the school had lost some reputation. Every gladiator knew that defeat could happen to any of them. There was no shame in it provided the man had fought well. That did not stop them fighting hard in training and constantly trying to outdo each other, to improve their standing in the group, but when it came to actual combat there was a feeling of togetherness, a fraternity of fighting men who looked out for each other because of the dangerous lives they shared.

By the time the autumn rains were turning colder and winter was approaching, Brude was given to Kallikrates, a Greek who had lost his left hand after a wound had become infected, forcing the physician to amputate it at the wrist. Kallikrates could no longer fight but he had been allowed to stay at the school to help train the other fighters. He was very good at it. He had fought as a Samnite and now he trained the eight men in the school who also fought that way. Brude was allowed to join the group and was initiated by being dressed in the armour of a Samnite, given a wooden sword and set against Pollio, the most experienced man in the school, who had fought nine times and won seven of the bouts.

Brude listened carefully as Kallikrates explained the armour. Wearing only a loincloth, Brude had an iron greave strapped to his left shin and a broad leather band fastened around his belly like an enormous belt. Next, the ornate crested helmet with its face guard was placed over his head. He could hardly see anything out of the eyeholes and the weight of the helmet was far greater than he had expected. A heavy linen sleeve was strapped to his right arm by leather bands, providing protection for his sword arm. Then he was given the rectangular curved shield, made from layers of plywood bound in iron, with a large, round iron boss at its centre. The shield was large enough to cover his body from the gro his shoulder and was curved so that it provided almost full protection when held in front of his body. Lastly, Kallikrates gave him the heavy wooden sword then shoved him onto the sand of the training arena to face Pollio.

The fight did not last long. Brude was nervous, felt restricted by the helmet and was still trying to adjust the shield when Pollio attacked, using his own shield as a battering ram to knock Brude off balance. Pollio’s sword cracked against Brude’s helmet, sending a ringing through Brude’s head. Dazed, he waved his sword in a futile attempt to hit Pollio who simply blocked it with his shield before knocking Brude over with another massive shove.

Brude crashed to the ground, jarring his head when the heavy helmet struck the sand and getting a crack on the ribs from the rim of his own shield. Lying on the ground, he felt Pollio’s foot on his chest. Angry and disappointed, he let go of his sword and heard the laughter from the watching men. Kallikrates helped him to his feet and removed his helmet for him, a broad grin on his face. “We do that to every new man,” he said cheerily. “It makes you realise how much you still have to learn.”

More training and more mock combats followed. Kallikrates showed Brude how to use his shield as a weapon, not just something to hide behind. “The sword does the killing but the shield is what can really do the damage,” the Greek told him.