Echo Cycle by Patrick Edwards

Echo Cycle by Patrick Edwards

Author:Patrick Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan


69 CE

Before they replaced all the movies with that god-awful propaganda, I got to see a couple of the old ones from the height of Hollywood when the stories were big and unashamed. America had dropped its surface prudishness (though they still had some aversion to arse cracks) and there was blood, sex and language to make a granny keel over. One of them that stuck with me (about Rome, of course) was the one with the chap who goes from general to gladiator, a real riches-to-rags type thing with lots of stabbing and moody staring along the way. It was dumb and simple and fun as hell, and I adored it.

A real ludus was nothing like that, no robust camaraderie forged in the fires of battle; oiled Nubians and rakishly scarred Germans were thin on the ground and the training area was not a warm sandy courtyard: it was a death pit crammed with desperate men who knew they were there not only to die, but die for sport. Many pissed themselves with fear nightly in the small, mud-floored room we shared with the chickens. When I arrived it was raining and as I heard the iron gates slam shut behind me I saw rows of barbed, brutal weapons on racks and tables. My hands shook and my jaw was locked in a rictus, as if I was constantly on the verge of throwing up. I remember, clear as a nosebleed on linen, the lanista taking one look at me and backhanding me with a hand heavy with gold. I must have been limp because my jaw was unbroken but it was swollen for days after.

We were the dregs of Rome, lower than miners; at least they could be relied upon to complete a task, short and brutal though their lives were. We were fodder, nothing more, there to be meat targets for the real fighters. There were just five of those, and they lived in another low building on the other side of the courtyard.

I don’t know if this was a particularly poor ludus but those trained men were not the colossi I’d imagined. Not a burnished thigh among them – most were plump running on fat, all the better to absorb impact and bleed just enough for the crowds if it came to a proper one-on-one match (which were rare in most games – crowds were less interested in the subtle flash of strike and parry than seeing living props slaughtered by the dozen). They were horribly strong bastards, though, with plenty of trained muscle under their outer layers of blubber. On my third day one of us worms backed into one as he trained with a padded dummy and he turned, picked the snivelling young man up by neck and groin and tossed him a full three metres onto a rack of weapons. His screams were terrible and the lanista had to cut his throat.

We were tired from the training, our fingers sore and sometimes broken



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.