‘Yes, sir.’
Marcus felt his face burn with embarrassment and he would dearly have loved to tell Taurus where he could shove his opinions. But he kept his mouth tightly sealed and looked straight ahead as he controlled his anger.
When Taurus reached the end of the line, he took one quick glance at the Spartan and gave his verdict. ‘Mixed group. If he lives long enough, I doubt that this one will ever be good for anything but fighting animals.’
‘I will fight you, master,’ the Spartan replied coldly. ‘Now, if you are brave enough.’
‘Fight me?’ Taurus looked amused. ‘I don’t think so. If you were to so much as raise your hand towards me, then I’d have you crucified within the hour. You’d best remember that.’ Taurus paused, then raised his voice so that all of the new recruits to the gladiator school would hear him. ‘That goes for you all. The only fate waiting for any one of you who strikes me, or any member of my training staff, is a slow, agonizing death. There are no second chances for a gladiator. Remember that well and you may live. Fail to, and you will surely die.’ He nodded sombrely. ‘You are dismissed!’
16
There were twenty-three other boys in the youth class under the command of a wizened old instructor named Amatus. Thin and sinewy, Amatus had fought as a retiarius for fifteen years. He had won most of his fights, and been spared by the crowds in the handful that he had lost, but had failed to distinguish himself sufficiently to win the favour and rewards that some of his contemporaries had achieved. So he was destined to live out the remainder of his days as a slave, instructing new recruits in the gladiator school of Porcino.
Marcus was one of the youngest in the class. He may have lacked the years but, having been brought up on a farm and encouraged to exercise regularly by his father, he was fit and strong for his age. The other boys had come from across the empire and had different-coloured skins and features, and Marcus could only understand a handful of them who spoke either Latin or Greek. They had all arrived at the school within the last month and a pecking order had already been established.
The self-appointed leader of the group was a large Celtic boy, named Ferax, from one of the tribes that lived close to the Alps. He was three or four years older than Marcus, and much taller and broader. He spoke Latin with a coarse accent and walked with a pronounced swagger when he led the youths out on parade each morning. From the outset he had taken a dislike to Marcus, when they first spoke shortly after Marcus had arrived. Marcus had finished using the latrine and was returning to his stall when Ferax and his four cronies blocked his path.
‘Son of a Roman centurion, eh?’ Ferax sneered. ‘You look more like the son of a sewer rat to me.’
His companions laughed. Marcus glared back, bunching his hands into fists. He did not want to fight the larger boy, but at the same time he did not want to take his insults.
‘In case you don’t know, my name is Ferax.’ The Celt thumbed his chest. ‘This is my gang. These two are Celts like me.’ He indicated the tall blond boys to one side. Then Ferax nodded at the other two, who were swarthy and slim. ‘And these two were plucked from the slum of the Subura in Rome. Hard cases.’ He stepped forward and jutted his head out, face to face with Marcus. ‘Let me tell you my rules, sewer rat. My mates and I take the first share of the rations. Also, if I want, you and the others will do our duties for us once the day’s training is done, such as fetching water or cleaning our kit.’
‘You can fetch your own water,’ Marcus replied.
‘Oh!’ Ferax chuckled. ‘We’ve got a tough one here, lads! I’d better warn you that the last lad who refused to do what I say had a good beating. Once word got round about what happened to him, all the other boys have been as good as gold. So, you do what I say and you won’t have any trouble. Otherwise…’ Ferax took a step back and clenched his fist in front of Marcus’s face. ‘You’ll be feeling this breaking your nose. Understand?’
Marcus stood quite still and stared back in silence. Ferax nodded, then turned to his cronies. ‘Right, the greeting’s over. Let’s leave him.’
As they strode away, Marcus pressed his lips together. Ferax was a bully. He would have to be watched carefully and avoided as far as possible. Even so, Marcus felt a powerful urge to confront him.
But not yet. Later, when he had been trained to fight and knew how to handle an opponent. Then he’d see just how tough the Celt really was.
While the men trained all day, the youths were tasked with cooking and cleaning duties before and after their training sessions. Marcus was assigned to the kitchen. It was hard and demeaning work, but he carried it out without any complaint, and all the time his mind remained fixed on the need to escape from the school and make his way to Rome. He also thought of his mother, condemned to toil on the estate of Decimus. It made his heart heavy to think of her, and he knew that she would be worrying about him in turn.
Not that she would easily recognize him any more, he reflected ruefully. Like all the others who had been trooped out of the cell block that first morning, Marcus had been issued with two grey tunics and two pairs of boots, each one bearing an identifying numeral burned into the heel of each boot. All their existing clothing had been taken away – the best of it sold to a local merchant, the rest to be burned. Marcus’s head had been crudely shaved. Now all the trainees looked hard and brutal and difficult to distinguish from each other, like the chain-gangs of convicted men sent to the mines. Marcus had hated having his head shaved. The slave who did it handled his cutting shears with little care, scraping his scalp in a number of places. But even that torment was nothing compared to what came next.
Once the boys had emerged from the caged pen where they had been sheared, dazed and bleeding from the cuts and scrapes on their scalps, Amatus had led them into the forge in the corner of the compound. A dozen of the school’s guards were waiting for them, and beyond stood a slave, sweat running down his face as he worked a small furnace out of which a long iron handle extended.
‘First boy, come forward,’ Amatus ordered, gesturing to one of the Nubians. The boy flinched, but before he could try to edge back into the ranks of his comrades, two of the guards grabbed his arms and pinned him between them. Then they dragged him towards the forge as he struggled wildly in their grasp. Amatus took a dampened rag and grasped the end of the iron handle. As he drew out the branding iron, the shaped symbol at the end – a large letter P above two crossed swords – glowed orange and the heated air around it wavered. He approached the Nubian boy, who was now writhing desperately in the grip of the two guards.
‘Hold him still,’ Amatus ordered, and the guards braced themselves and kept the boy from moving. Amatus pulled back the boy’s tunic and pressed the branding iron on to his chest, just above the heart. The boy screamed as there came a sizzling noise and the air filled with the acrid scent of burning flesh. A moment later it was over, and Amatus stepped back as the boy fell limp. The guards dragged him outside the forge and dropped him on the ground.
‘Next one!’ Amatus called out.
One by one they were taken forward and branded with the symbol of Porcino’s gladiator school. As they waited, the boys glanced at each other nervously, some shuffling away from the front of the crowd in a bid to put off the torment. But that was as far as they got, as the other guards herded them back. Marcus’s terror at the prospect of being branded was made worse by every cry of fear and scream of agony that came out of the forge. But he kept silent and did not attempt to try to move to the back of the group. He glanced round and met the gaze of Ferax.