Chapter 4: Welcome to the Ludus

Chapter 4: Welcome to the Ludus

The gates of the ludus were unwelcoming, and sounds and activity were everywhere beyond them. Outside, the world was quiet, filled with birds, insects, and the wind in the pines. But inside the walls, only pain existed. Men screamed, and whips cracked. Flesh met flesh with heavy thuds. No one relented.

We crossed the threshold like cattle. Varka led our line, silent, her whip coiled at her hip. The cloaked man remained at the rear. The seven of us, new meat, shuffled across a black-gray stones of the courtyard. Gladiators in scaled leather and steel helmets fought as their lanistas directed them. I walked barefoot on rough stone, my feet still scabbed and raw from the road when I walked through the woods, but I didn’t slow. I felt Varka was waiting for an excuse to use her whip and assert her dominance.

I wasn’t wrong as the man in front of me paused to look at a fight of experienced gladiators and her whip cracked. His shoulder flesh parted in a line of blood, and he screamed in pain. Varka spat words at our group, and we moved forward. I didn’t want to draw her ire, so I followed every implied command. The cloaked man had said she was to be our lanista, our gladiator trainer.

The ludus was alive with motion as we moved. Training grounds sprawled across the interior: arenas of sand, raised wooden scaffolds, spike pits, and stone columns meant for climbing, or falling to your death from. Everywhere, men were being broken physically and mentally.

We passed the first pit, a sunken rectangle with a layer of fine gravel on the bottom. Two men fought bare-fisted, their footing uncertain on the river stones. One of them was missing an eye and had a jaw that hung crookedly. The other was taller, covered in scar tissue, with his chest painted red. Nope, that was blood, and I almost wanted to vomit when I realized it. With a grunt, he headbutted his opponent so hard I heard the skull crack from ten yards away. The other gladiators and their lanista watching didn’t cheer; they just watched what I could only assume was punishment.

A second group ran in a circle around a blazing iron brazier. Naked except for loincloths, they carried logs on their backs. One collapsed, and instead of helping, the others ran past him with one even stepping on the downed man. He struggled to his feet as his lanista whipped him to rejoin the training.

Varka paused and pointed to a wooden tower on the far side of the yard. At first, I didn’t see what she meant. Then I noticed the hanging forms—six men suspended by their wrists. Flies circled. One of them was still moving; his back was a map of cuts. The others were clearly dead with rotting flesh.

I couldn’t understand what she was telling us, but the point was clear. If you were not deemed useful to the ludus, you would be executed and left hanging as an example. No one said anything in my group; the shock was enough.

Near what I assumed was the armory, a young man was strapped to a tall X-shaped rack. His arms and legs were pulled taut, his skin glistening with sweat. A hulking shirtless brute struck him across the abdomen with a cloth-covered club. Once. Twice. Over and over. There was no hate in the strikes. No emotion at all. He was tempering his blows in some sick exercise to teach him to take a blow.

We had nearly crossed the courtyard filled with various torture scenes. Just before the entrance to the main hall, there was a more formal arena. There was seating for a few hundred people but the seats were currently empty. The stands shadowed the brown-stained sand of the fighting ring that was currently in use. Three gladiators circled a fourth man, who was kneeling. They all carried wooden practice swords. The kneeling man had his arm at an unnatural angle.

The three beat him mercilessly. One went for the ribs. Another smashed a thigh. The third jabbed the wooden sword into the man's back. It wasn’t a fight. A whistle blew, and the three men who had beaten the man helped him up. I didn’t understand the brutality I was seeing. What good was it to cripple the men they were training? A sense of dread was forming in me. There was no way I was going to be able to survive this “school.”

We reached the central structure of the Ludus, a squat, rectangular hall built from the same stone as the walls, but it had been scrubbed clean of the encroaching black lichen on the outer walls. An iron bell hung above the entrance. Carvings of helmeted warriors lined the rafters over the entry.

Varka waited until we fully absorbed the hopelessness of our new world. Her gaze swept across the seven of us. A boy, five men, and two men past their prime. A few of us might have had some fights before seeing the choreographed brutality. Now they knew their life and health did not matter here.

“You’ve seen what happens to the disobedient and those who do not learn,” the cloaked man said from behind us. Varka’s eyes challenged us to speak or object, her hand ready on her whip. She said something I couldn’t understand, and the others mumbled in response. I didn’t say anything, and Varta’s whip cracked the air, and my chest exploded in pain. The whip didn’t cut the heavy tunic, but the welt just below my left nipple formed as I collapsed to the ground in more pain than I could ever recall.

“She asked if you understand,” the man said. He sighed. “He needs to learn the language. Place him in Joren’s cell. Tell him if he can teach this one to speak and understand, he will be moved into one of the outer cells.” The cloaked man left, and I still did not know his name. I had asked a few times during the trip, but he never responded.

Varka looked annoyed but nodded. I tried not to meet her gaze as a wet spot formed on my tunic. The whip strike had broken the skin. At first, I was worried about an infection in this filthy place, but maybe I would get one, and dying would be a mercy. My mouth was dry. Varka walked toward me, slow and deliberate.

She hit me across the mouth with her fist. My teeth clicked together as my head jerked. I tasted blood. She said something, and I nodded, not sure what else to do. She lifted my chin to look at me for a long moment. I nodded.

“Bonum,” she said. Then, to the rest, she gave directions, and we all followed her. She led us into the hall. It was dim, lit by slit windows high in the walls. The air smelled of sweat, piss, blood, and stew, a pungent stew of men too close for too long. We passed through a corridor lined with old steel weapons locked behind rusted bars. Then down a set of stone stairs, into a low chamber that reeked of rot and mildew.

The kitchen, if you could call it that. A long table, stained and cracked, took up the center of the room. Two massive pots bubbled on stone hearths, tended by an older man with a burned face, no eyebrows, and his left arm missing from the elbow down.

He ladled something pale and viscous into wooden bowls. Gruel. A pasty mess of boiled oats, crushed beans, and fat. It looked like run-off from an industrial accident. The water was worse—cloudy, yellow-tinged, and stored in cracked clay jugs.

Varka pointed to the high table and spoke. The others hurriedly took bowls and filled clay cups with the water. I followed suit, somehow deciding living was worse than the alternative. The mark left by the whip still throbbed, but sustenance was more important if I wanted to live.

There were no seats because it looked like benches had been stacked to clean the floors. We stood at the table and ate eagerly like animals. Hands trembled, and one old man vomited halfway through, but he kept eating. I forced it down, ignoring the taste and texture. It was warm. That was something.

Varka didn’t eat. She just stood by the stairs, silent, arms crossed, waiting for us. A bell rang, and Varka barked at us. The others moved to follow, and so did I. Back up the stairs, into another corridor. This one smelled worse. A row of iron-barred cells, each no larger than a closet. The walls were made of bare stone, and the floor contained a straw mat, a blanket, and a bucket.

Varka pointed to each cell in turn. A man entered, and the door was shut behind him. Each of the six men got their own cell. When it was my turn, she grabbed my tunic and pulled me into another corridor into a different cell. This cell had no lock as she slammed the door, clearly a threat that I should not open it. My cell had a single straw mat, but it also had multiple blankets and some clothes. There were also jugs on a stone shelf. I sniffed the jugs, and they appeared to be fermenting fruit.

I had nothing to do but wait for Joren to return. At least I would learn the language from him. I sat on the mat, hugged my knees, and pulled the blanket over my shoulders. It scratched like burlap and reeked like death. I pressed my back to the wall and tried to disappear into the stone. My hands trembled, and I couldn’t hold back any longer. I cried.

Outside, I heard the groans of training continuing. Someone was shouting in a language I didn’t know. The ring of steel. The thud of bodies. I pressed my back to the wall and tried again to disappear into the stone. The sounds only stopped when the sun set. Somehow, I fell asleep.

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