The slave trader spoke gruffly to the Celt in a foreign tongue. The man answered haltingly, keeping his eyes downcast. The slave trader, Sextus, clucked his tongue and shrugged his hairy shoulders.
‘He says he grew oats and barley, mostly.’
‘I see,’ Lucius murmured, his gaze never leaving the slave. ‘Nonetheless, I like the look of his build. He has the muscles of an ox, to be sure. Unchain him, I wish to give him a chance to test his mettle.’
‘Remember Lucius, if you damage him you buy him,’ the slaver cautioned.
Lucius laughed and clapped a jovial hand upon the man’s back, recoiling almost instantly at the grime-laden greasiness of his tunic.
‘I may be many things Sextus, but a cheat I am not. If I damage your goods, I’ll pay in full for them.’
‘Very well, unchain this one,’ the slaver barked, and his armoured assistant, a burly Nubian warrior, unlocked the Celt and shoved him forward.
‘Your sword, hand it to the slave, please,’ Lucius said to the guard.
The guard raised a sceptical eyebrow and glanced across at Sextus, who gave him a reluctant nod. The guard drew his gladius and handed it to the slave, who accepted it with an expression of confusion writ across his coarse features. Lucius then drew his own gladius, a gleaming, jewelled weapon, befitting of both his bloated pride and his obsession with material wealth.
‘Explain to the slave that if he can kill me he is free to go.’
‘Remember, if you injure him, you pay me the full price,’ Sextus grumbled with a scowl.
‘Of course.’
Sextus turned and spoke gruffly to the man again, and with the promise of freedom in such tantalisingly close grasp, the Celt’s eyes lit up with new hope.
‘Does he understand?’ Lucius asked.
Sextus nodded.
‘Good. Tell him to step over here onto this patch of smooth dirt. This shall be our arena, and he may attack me whenever he sees fit.’
Sextus relayed these instructions to the Celt, who began swinging the sword about him, testing its weight and balance, his heart fluttering with unexpected excitement at the promise of freedom. Lucius strolled onto the smooth ground and kicked his sandals off, raising the weight and balance of his scrawny body onto the balls of his feet. The Nubian guard observed this David and Goliath scene and suppressed a guffaw behind one of his scarred hands as Lucius assumed a swordsman’s stance.
‘Your guard does not think much of my combat abilities?’ Lucius asked with a swift grin, oozing calm confidence.
‘You do not look the part of gladiator, Lucius,’ Sextus muttered, ‘especially in that, er, extravagant purple and gold getup. Forgive the man if he is sceptical.’
Before Lucius could respond, the huge Celt charged at him with a roar and swung his sword with brutal intent at his head. Lucius sidestepped with unexpected speed and an almost nonchalant ease, and then darted nimbly to the side, dealing a walloping blow to his adversary’s back with the flat of his sword. This quickly gagged the guard’s laughter, and Lucius shot a smile of impish arrogance.
The Celt, who was smarting from the blow on his back, turned to face Lucius again. Hope and battle-ferocity still burned in his eyes, but now he approached his opponent with more caution. He lunged forward with the sword, but his attack lacked conviction, and with swift fluidity Lucius batted the blade away, dashing forward past it to press the point of his gladius against the man’s throat. The Celt was caught completely off-balance, and his sword was left dangling limply at the end of his muscular arm. His fear-glossy eyes were locked on the sharp steel that was driving its deadly threat into his Adam’s apple, and without a word he dropped his weapon to the ground. Lucius shook his head disapprovingly as he removed the blade from his adversary’s throat.
‘No, this one will not do, I’m afraid,’ he said flatly. ‘The poor brute has obviously never swung a weapon in anger in his life. He’s got the body, yes, but he lacks speed, coordination and, of course, the killer instinct needed to survive and thrive in the arena. See how quickly he gave up when threatened? It would take too much training and mental conditioning, and it would be far too much of a financial risk on my part. If he lost his first fight, which he may well do, I’d have spent an awful amount of coin on a corpse.’
Sextus grumbled under his breath and threw up his hands, somewhat melodramatically.
‘Well look, if I sell him to the quarry, I’ll get next to nothing for him! Half of these saps, they’ll get me less than what I’ve paid to keep them alive over the past few weeks. A specimen like this doesn’t come along that often. Come on! He stands head and shoulders above the others. Sure, he can’t swing a sword with any skill yet, but they’ll see to that in Batiatus’s ludus! You’d be a fool to pass up an ox like this one.’
Lucius raised an eyebrow as he sheathed his sword.
‘You speak as if you were the expert on gladiators, rather than I, Sextus,’ he remarked dryly. ‘You’d best mind your place, or I’ll be finding another slave merchant to work with, and you can go and sell off your second-grade stock to the mines and quarries.’
The cross-eyed slaver assumed an air of apologetic subservience at this threat.
‘I, er, you must, um, forgive my impertinence, good Lucius,’ he stammered. ‘I meant no offence. I certainly do not wish to put our, er, mutually beneficial business relationship at risk.’
Lucius chuckled and slid his hands onto his hips, revelling in his position of dominance.
‘Do you have anything else in this menagerie which may be of interest to me, Sextus?’
The slaver shook his head, but then the Nubian guard tapped Sextus on the shoulder and jerked his head towards a man at the
