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A Gladiator's Life - 7 - The Others
🕑 Added 2025-09-20 19:40:01 +0000 UTCChapter 7: The Others
With a basic understanding of the language, my training might go better. I was filling in the gaps in a lot of the speech and sometimes guessing meanings through body language. As long as they were not rushing their words, I could mostly figure it out. Varka led my training group outside the walls again, and we followed the running path. As we turned off the trail before the first tower, we descended into a shallow valley with a raw, exposed slope of stony earth.
Varka smiled maliciously. “Retrieve stones and stack them outside the ludus’s gates,” she announced. “Every stone must be larger than your head.”
“How many?” the boy asked. Why hadn’t he learned? The crack of Varka’s whip left a gash on his forearm. She was really good at controlling that leather whip, as the mark was minor. The boy still howled in pain.
“Any more questions?” Varka asked, looking pointedly at me.
We moved to the overturned earth and found rusty picks to help free the stones from the earth, but recent rains had done a good job of exposing a number of them. We all attacked the slope. I was the first to free a sizable stone and hugged it to my chest as I walked the two hundred yards back to the ludus up the modest incline. My back, legs, and arms protested with each step. I cursed Varka as a wagon with two oxen was there, and a gruff man gestured for the rock to be placed in the back. The path was wide enough for the wagon to be brought to the site. The man moved to some shade and sipped on a waterskin while we worked.
I passed the others on my return trip since I was the first to deliver a rock. I could hear the rocks being dropped into the wagon behind me. Since I couldn’t see Varka, I did not need to hurry, so I waited for the others to catch up to me. Their bodies were more abused, having not been given a day off. Varka’s whip cracked the air, and I looked up. She was sitting in the shade of a tree with the perfect vantage point to watch us work. I almost tried to find the feeling of bottomless energy I had during the run, but held back until I truly needed it.
There were no more easy stones to find, so I grabbed a pick. The wooden shaft was stained dark, not from age but from blood. I swung it into the soft earth and loosened the soil. I quickly found a rock that was too big and moved on. “Break it!” Varka yelled from her perch. I wanted to retort, but instead heaved the pickaxe overhead and down. I was rewarded with flecks of stone stinging my face. It took five strikes, each one harder than the last, before the soft rock split. I admired my effort for a second, and the boy rushed in and took the smaller piece.
I considered lowering the pick onto the teenager for the theft, but sighed and picked up the larger chunk, which had to weigh seventy pounds. I struggled to get it off the ground, the sharp edges cutting into my legs. I had to waddle up the path, my thighs burning, and the rock getting marked with my blood from scratches. Dirt and sand coated my clothes and sweaty skin as I worked not to drop the stone. Picking it up off the ground would just be more work.
When I got to the cart, I struggled to get it high enough for a deposit, briefly crushing a finger. I looked in disbelief as the nail of my thumb had been torn away. In shock, I didn’t even register the stinging pain as the thumb throbbed and oozed blood.
Varka’s whip cracked in the distance, and she was looking at me. This was a brutal way to train our bodies, and I couldn’t believe I was actually looking forward to learning to fight with weapons over this primal conditioning. I made three more trips before the wagon driver took the stones away, and I thought we were done, but instead we had to pile our stones outside the gate. When the wagon returned, we loaded it. The rocks were being delivered to the large town a short distance away to build a wall, according to the brief words I heard from the driver.
“I am Thomas,” I told the boy as I walked beside him. He was limping slightly. He looked at me with vacant eyes, and I wondered if he had already been broken. I already had a low opinion of the boy for stealing the easier stones, but I guessed he was maybe fifteen.
“Aulus,” he finally introduced himself as we both grabbed picks. My hands were blistered and bleeding, and the boys looked little better.
“What did you do?” I asked about his crime. I hadn’t committed any crime, so I didn’t know
“Stuprum,” he said, and I needed to interrogate him a little more for the meaning of the word. Essentially, Aulus's only crime was having relations with the daughter of a First Citizen. He worked in the household of First Citizen Decimus Fabius, and the youngest daughter had seduced him. She was slightly older than Aulus, from what he told me.
On one trip to the wagon, a blanket with greasy bread and fruit close to expiration had been laid out with a barrel of water and a ladle. The old men were drinking thirstily, passing the ladle back and forth between them. The four other men in our group were greedily eating the food, shoving as much as they could into their mouths. If I hadn’t worked the kitchens yesterday, I might have been doing the same. I moved to the old men, and they reluctantly gave me a turn.
The tepid water had an acidic lemon flavor, but it coated my throat like ambrosia. I hadn’t even realized how cracked and parched I was from the morning of work. “I’m Thomas,” I said to the two men. They looked at each other, judging me.
“Appius,” the oldest man said. His hair was stark white, but his body was lean and wiry with muscle.
“Hostus,” the other man said in acknowledgment. He was the one who had fallen and broken his ankle. Wrinkles dominated his face, and his upper torso was covered in scars underneath the dirt and grim.
“How did you get so many scars?” I asked.
Hostus studied me, deciding if I was worth answering. “Goblin wars,” he said, although it took some time for me to understand what he meant by goblin. Stunted humanoids with greenish skin, and the larger they got, the closer their skin was to brown, but the greens and browns were two different species. Varka’s whip cracked, and that was a signal for us to resume. I grabbed some rotting fruit and ate quickly as we returned to work.
It wasn't long after the meal that some of the others started stumbling, their muscles protesting. I was among them and looked for the reservoir of stamina. It was easy to find this time, and like flicking a light switch, the fatigue washed away. The four men in our training group were the strongest and most capable of all of us.
I was able to learn their names as we worked into the afternoon from the old men, since they didn’t have the patience to talk with me as I stumbled through learning the Telhian language. There was Drusus, the tallest in the group, but still under six feet and much shorter than me. He had been a farmer and was caught stealing his neighbor's sheep, though he proclaimed his innocence and said it was his neighbor who stole it first.
There was Quintus. His shoulders were broad, and his arms were thick. He laid pavers on the roads of the Telhian Empire. He was convicted of killing one of the other laborers in his crew. He claimed it was a drunken brawl and that he didn’t mean to strike him so hard.
Postumus was a wiry man with greasy black hair. Just looking at his dark beady eyes gave you the impression of evil. Appius said he had broken into at least three houses, killed the men, and raped their wives. He would have been executed, but dying as a gladiator was just as good a way to die.
The last man in our group was Gaius, but since he never spoke, so I didn’t know how Appius knew his name. His tongue had been removed, and Appius thought he had spoken ill of a First Citizen.
These were the men I was forced to train with. Besides the boy, all of them had a hardness to them. The old men, Appius and Hostus, seemed resigned to their fate after hard lives. The men seemed to think that we others were a liability to their preparation to be a gladiator. I had to admit, I thought I was a liability too.
The water remained and as the heat of the afternoon wore into us, my skin burned and turned red but I pushed on. I knew Varka wouldn’t let me stop until my stamina well ran dry. Aulus dropped first. The boy stumbled and dropped a rock he was trying to get into the wagon, almost crushing his foot.
Varka yelled at him, “Your done for the day! Sit!” At first, he thought it was a trick, but when she didn’t rush down the hill and whip him, he collapsed under the shade of a tree and fell asleep. Postumus tried to mimic the boy’s drop, but Varka just cracked her whip, and he continued.
Unlike sprinting, I found that my stamina lasted longer than it did the first time. It was almost as if the well inside me was slowly being replenished, and the drain matched my effort level. Maybe if it refilled faster than I used it up, I could go on forever. No, that wouldn’t work, because I remembered what happened two days ago. When my well drained, the rush of muscle fatigue hit me all at once. Not that I’ve ever run a marathon, but that’s what it felt like.
Drusus collapsed next, his legs spasming and muscles locking up. Varka cursed him for not drinking enough water and told him he was done for the day after giving him a mark with her whip as a reminder.
Hostus was the next of us to fall. Hostus clutched his chest right after dropping a rock inside the cart. The healer was called immediately, but it took too long to find him. Varka even came down from her perch as she barked angrily through the gates. When the healer arrived, he placed his hands on his chest, not for CPR, but to push magic into him.
The body didn’t respond, and the healer looked at Varka. “I repaired his heart, but it is too late. His blood has gone still, and his core refuses life.” Varka was about to lash out at the healer but held herself back. I didn’t know the old man and felt detached from the situation, but silently thanked whatever gods were on this world that it was not me on the ground, dead.
Varka looked over the rest of us, her eyes narrow and hard. “You all can go get food, wash your bodies, and rest,” she said with harshness. “Except you,” she pointed her whip at me. “We will have a special time together, as I want one more wagon loaded.” She sneered, noting there were only two stones in the wagon, even though it usually took twenty or so stones at a time to the town.
Instead of going up to her shaded tree, she walked behind me as I made my way back to the excavation site. “Faster,” Varka spat after I deposited the next stone in the wagon. My return walk soon turned into a jog. I could feel my mystical reservoir draining much faster than I could replenish it as she pushed me to work harder. I tried to quantify it, but it was too hard.
On my third solo rock run, Joren walked out of the ludus gates and stood over Hostus. His eyes travelled over me and then to Varka. Their eyes met, and the air got heavy. “Titus wants to see you,” he told Varka in a calmness his eyes didn’t show. Varka’s neck tendons stood out, but she marched through the gates to be reprimanded.
Joren’s eyes turned to me. “Take the legs, and follow me.” I dragged the body of the old man behind Joren as he walked to the spot where we had been harvesting rocks. We walked a few minutes past the slope to flat ground, and my blood chilled. There were dozens of patches of earth, each about the size and shape of a person, some much older than others. Joren studied the landscape and walked to a particular spot. “Dig here,” he said, and I went to retrieve a pick.
As I dug Hostus’s grave, I felt like it wouldn’t be long before I joined him.
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Comments
Ivan Kanewske
The last man in our group was Gaius, but since he never spoke, so I didn’t know how Appius knew his name. Remove so This will flow better
Ivan Kanewske
The man moved to some shade and sipped on a waterskin while we worked. Man mived to shade, assume he is going to rest, slip on Probably slip a water skin off. Or better yet a wine skin while doing nothing
