Love of the Gladiator (Affairs of the Arena Book 2) (2 page)

And she had still more marks still from scuffles she had entered into with soldiers and guards, who always seemed to think that a slave girl was an easy target when they were too randy and drunk to think straight.

She’d straightened them out well enough.

Lucius approached, looking her over. He was a stupid idiot man no matter how handsome he was. This was why it bothered her so much when her chest fluttered at his nearness. He ran his fingers down her scars—all the raised skin and starred circles from years of endurance living.

Again, those electric prickles ran up and down her spine. And again, her mind flashed with images of his nakedness. It was easy to imagine; all he wore was a loin cloth and sandals. His torso was flat and chiseled, except for the scars he had earned in the arena.

“Yes,” he said, “you do have the scars.” He took her chin in one hand, smiling confidently. “One day we’ll have to compare the stories on our flesh.”

She gathered another round of spit. But he pulled his head away at the last second, and the loogie went flying into the field, hitting nothing.

He walked away with that stupid smarm still all over his face. “Speed is the name of the game, little flame. Try again soon.”

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O
utside of the bounds of the ludus of House Varinius, grass was unkempt and wild. Smatterings of wild onions and wheat littered the ground, clearly grazed upon by any wild animals that happened through the area.

But inside the ludus, there was hardly any grass at all. There were two levels to the estate, which was built into a large hill overseeing Puteoli. On the bottom, at the base of the hill, were a half-dozen large circular sands. They were for training. Their borders were denoted by heavy rocks. Small cobblestone pathways formed a pattern criss-crossing between the training areas. On the far side of the walls was a small, mostly unpopulated horse stable.

The top area was reached by a tall stone staircase that led up the hill. A few small buildings—the medicae's office and the guards' barracks—were placed on the incline of the hill with paths to them leading from the long stairway.

Halfway up the stairs, there was a sort of platform with a gate, preventing any unwanted callers—or more likely, rebellious slaves, from reaching the top. The house above was luxurious and large, with two stories. A grand balcony peered out from the end closest to the training sands so that the slave-owners could watch their property at work.

Lucius led the new slaves inside, all entering with their hands bound. Each was caked in mud from the rain and travel.

The gladiators were in the midst of their training as they arrived. They trained shirtless and dressed only in loin cloths. Their bodies were spectacles of masculinity. Every muscle harshly defined. Every torso rock solid and toned from years of effort.

Each one a warrior, fearless in the face of death. All would face men just like themselves with no quarter, no mercy, and fighting until the end.

Lucius knew from personal experience that just being in the same room as a gladiator had a singular effect on many women. His bed had been filled many times due simply to the fact of his many victories in the arena. Special liberties were given to a victorious slave after a good day at the arena.

And so he knew that, when alone with the flawless, hard body of a gladiator, a woman’s sense seemed to leave her.

Lucius, though loathe to admit it, hadn't enjoyed such privileges for some time. The injury to his arm had taken much of his lust for life away from him. Although another few long looks into Gwenn's eyes might turn him around...

Their struggles in the arena gave gladiators a unique status—the men themselves were utterly low to actually
be
gladiators. They would never be accepted in civil society, and though Senators and even Emperors had joined the ranks of the gladiators at points, this had always been frowned upon by the massive conservative bloc of the Roman elite.

And at the same time, gladiators were celebrated everywhere they went. Women dipped their hairpins in gladiator blood to increase their sexual stamina, and kept vials of gladiator sweat to encourage virility. Gladiators were well known for their endless endurance in all things, including the bedchamber.

The celebrity extended to both genders. Men still called out the name of Orion—Lucius’s fighting name—as he passed in the city streets. None had today, though, which Lucius thought was a pretty good reason to have a drink later.

Most things, good or ill, were a good reason for Lucius to have a drink later.

He wondered if all the sight of these shirtless, muscled men training in unison was enough to raise the pulse of Gwenn. She seemed a tough nut to crack. That alone was enough to draw his attention. What might bring joy to that impassioned, rage-filled face?

Her skin, scarred and marred how it was, might have been reason for other men to turn away in disgust. But it only drew Lucius’s attention all the closer to the loveliness beyond all that pain. The patches of clear softness that wrapped in a loose whirlpool pattern around all those years of pain.

“Little flame” was a diminutive, and an obvious one. She was as big of a flame as he had ever seen.

Her face and neck were clear of scars, so far as he could tell. No doubt her previous owners thought enough about hurting her that they wanted to ensure they could warp her skin and still sell her.

The cold certainty of that made his fists twitch to hurt someone.

Lucius had started the day poorly, waking up hungover as he ever did. He had slept on his bad arm again. That meant all day it would ache.

It ached now and would not stop for anything. The only anodyne he’d found with any effectiveness was wine.

Frequently he slept on the bad arm. It would always be the same. In the early hours of the morning, there were several spurts of waking where he felt himself putting weight on the arm. But, he was too tired—and too drained from drinking the night before—to move himself over.

And so, he would ache, and the ache would drive him to find more wine.

Once, he had been a gladiator. Once, he had been the Champion of Puteoli, the king of fighters in one of the largest arenas in the entirety of the Roman Empire.

Now, Lucius didn’t even know what he was outside of a drunk. He felt like a lion kept in the house of a patrician’s house, toothless and with its claws removed, kept around to show the other lions what happened if they slipped up just once.

The fight that had taken his arm from him had been more than a year and a half ago. In the time since, he’d tried to earn his keep at the ludus of House Varinius by acting as a doctore—a teacher. There were four other doctores to teach the dozens of gladiators that the ludus boasted.

Murus was the lead doctore, overseeing the administrative duties of the fighters. He decided who was fit to fight and who needed more training before stepping into the arena. A gladiator was a highly lucrative commodity, and even unshaped novices could be hardened into money-making diamonds if only given proper time.

Lucius was a doctore for the retiarii class of fighters at the ludus. The retarius was one of the more unique styles in the world of arena fighting. He fought with a trident in one hand and a weighted net in the other. The idea was to try and catch an opponent with the net and stab him with the ends of the trident. It was a showy style, and required great skill to be effective. Lucius had been one of the best in Rome—perhaps in all of Rome's history.

Now that he had returned to the ludus, he left the slaves with the guards and walked across the sands to his men. They were all handsome—a retarius usually was. Part of the selection for a retarius in the first place, indeed, was that they were good-looking, because they were one of the few fighting classes to enter combat without a helmet on.

Their lack of armor was supposed to be made up for with speed and agility—neither of which Lucius had much of anymore. But in his day, when he was well, there was no one who could match him.

Murus, thick of body and heavily balding, had been training the retiarii in Lucius’s absence. Now that Lucius was here, Murus nodded curtly at the other doctore and approached the newly arrived slaves. That was odd, but Lucius had to focus on his men.

There were not many of the trident-fighters left in the ludus. Just eight, in fact. But Murus had told Lucius, repeatedly, that whenever they happened to arrive, the newest recruits were to be his responsibility. So, Lucius hoped to thicken their ranks soon.

This was part of the reason he had approached the errand this morning with some annoyance. Why was he buying woman slaves when he needed to flesh out the ranks of his retiarii so badly? The crowd loved to watch them fight, and they were an important part of any games as opponents for the always-in-demand murmillo style fighters.

The retiarii trained with long wooden poles with three prongs on the end to represent the trident they carried. The training weapon, like all training weapons in the ludus, was heavier than the actual weapon they would use in the arena.

If a man could spin, thrust, slash, and dodge with the training weapon in his hands, then he would be well equipped to do the same with a real weapon in the arena with adrenaline pumping through his veins.

“All right.” Lucius took his position at the edge of the sands. He picked up a long walking stick he used as a training aide instead of a whip. He couldn't use a whip; he had been whipped too many times. “Position two. Let’s see it.”

The retiarii formed up and thrust, slashed, and thrust again as he instructed. They all worked in a line, each across from their own post, dug deep into the sands. The post was the target, and had notches at points to indicate where a fighter’s eye-level ought to be with his weapon.

The retarius was just one style of gladiator—and House Varinius trained many. They all differed in some ways, with the retiarii differing more than most.

But even the overall style of the gladiator was different than that of, say, a soldier. A soldier entered a fight purely to kill. Sometimes, a gladiator killed. Sometimes he did not. But always, a gladiator had to entertain. A gladiator without the crowd behind him was dead the second he stepped foot in the sands.

“I see you’ve finally returned to your job.”

The voice came from the Domina of House Varinius, Porcia, who had approached from behind him. Lucius did not try to hide his disdain. She knew he disdained her, and he knew she knew; just the same, her low opinion of him was no secret to anyone.

“Position three!” Lucius called out. The fighters obeyed. “And continue repeating!”

Then he turned to Porcia. “Hello, Domina. I see you've finally remembered you run a ludus.” He pointed at his fighters. “Those are gladiators. They're working on sand. Did you recall our conversation about how we need more of both?”

She was a beautiful woman. Her hair was thick and blond. She wore a green stola that fit tight around her shapely form, a sunset-orange belt cinched around her waist. Behind her, as always, stood her two tall guards—Karro and Brutillus. Both had been gladiators at another ludus, once upon a time. She bought their freedom specifically to ensure their loyalty to her.

Porcia did her best to present herself as a single childless woman to the available suitors in Puteoli. Lucius knew the truth, though.

Single? Yes. Childless? Hardly. She had a son named Marius who she saw maybe twice a year on visits to her family in Neapolis, with whom the boy stayed. He was eight years old.

Despite all of Porcia’s beauty, and her clear cunning of intellect, she always seemed to be containing some ball of fury.

From Lucius's words, her fury was clear now. “If you weren’t protected by my husband’s will, Lucius...”

“You would have me flayed, Domina? Or is it hung from the walls today? Dragged behind horses?”

“Something like that. I think I may simply ride you to death, for old times’ sake.”

He thought of this woman trying to tame the wild Gwenn. The thought gave him much glee.

And the thought of being around Gwenn as it happened gave him something
more
than glee. Perhaps, over time, the lovely young fighter would want to know the very best ways to get on Porcia's nerves—all of which were well-known to Lucius.

“Domina.” A tone of soft reproach entered Lucius’s voice. “If you hadn’t sworn to see me to my grave, I might think you were flirting.”

Technically speaking, House Varinius was run by Marius Antonius Varinius, the son of the late Rufus Antonius Varinius who had expired from sickness some eighteen months prior. It was, in fact, around the same time that Lucius’s arm had been mangled by a tiger in the arena, and shortly after a fire had destroyed much of the ludus grounds. Tragedies, like armies, always liked to arrive reinforced. The better to break a man’s resolve.

But Marius was seven years old, and so instead the ludus was run in fact by Porcia until he became of age. Lucius was of the opinion, as were most of the gladiators he spoke to, that Marius would probably be able to do just about a good of a job as Porcia in most of the affairs of the ludus.

Perhaps that was unfair. She
had
done a nice job of rebuilding the estate after the fire. The house had undergone extreme renovations, completely rebuilt. Every floor was marble. Seven new columns had been installed in the atrium, and the dining room had been furnished with great silver disks on the walls.

Many roman houses held busts of their ancestors; the great men who had come before them and paved the way. It was uncommon for the operator of a ludus to do that, and yet Porcia had designs on the upper class of Roman society. She furnished busts of a few of Rufus’s ancestors, and a great many of her own—which many, many hundreds of years ago were instrumental in protecting the Republic during the wars with Carthage.

Lucius, unlike many gladiators at the ludus, knew what the inside of the house looked like due to his tenure as Porcia's personal Adonis. When she called, he had to answer. Once, it had been an agreeable arrangement—he received extra favors, and she convinced the doctores and the Dominus to turn a blind eye to his drinking.