Free The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits by Mike Ashley (ed) Page A

claw-like hand. Zuleika reached into her travelling bag and threw the unfortunate a crust of bread left over from her breakfast.
    “Too many slaves,” she repeated. “And far too many gladiators! I can scarcely believe how many camps full of gladiators I had occasion to visit since I arrived here. So many captured warriors, from so many conquered lands, all flowing into Italy. What to do with them all? Put on gladiator games and make them fight each other to the death! Put on ashow with six gladiators, and three will likely be dead by the end of the day. But ten more will arrive the next day, bought cheap at auction! Not all of them are good fighters, of course; the ones who turn out to be clumsy or cowardly or nearsighted can be sent off to a farm or a ship’s galley or the mines. The ones who remain have to be outfitted and trained, and fed reasonably well to keep them strong.
    “That’s how the
best
camps are run. But those
lanistas
charge a lot of money to hire out their gladiators. Not everyone can afford the best, but every Roman wants to host games at his father’s funeral, even if it’s only a single pair of fighters spilling each other’s blood in a sheep pen while the family sit on the fence and cheer. So there’s a market for gladiators who can be hired cheaply. You can imagine how those gladiators are kept – fed slop and housed in pens, like animals. But their lives are more miserable than any animal’s, because animals don’t fall asleep at night wondering if the next day they’ll die a horrible death for a stranger’s amusement. Such gladiators are poorly trained and armed with the cheapest weapons. Can you imagine a fight to the death where both men are armed with nothing better than wooden swords? There’s no way to make a clean, quick kill; the result is a cruel, bloody farce. I’ve seen such a death-match with my own eyes. I didn’t know which man to pity more, the one who died, or the one who had to take the other’s life using such a crude weapon.”
    She shook her head. “So many gladiators, scattered all over Italy, all trained to kill without mercy. So many weapons within easy reach. So much misery. I think, some day, there may be a reckoning.”
    When we reached the outskirts of Ravenna, I asked a man on the road for directions to the gladiator camp of the
lanista
Ahala.
    The man eyed the two of us curiously for a moment, then saw the iron citizen’s ring on my finger. “On the far side of town you’ll come to a big oak tree where the road forks. Take the left branch for another mile. But unless you’ve come to hire some of his gladiators, I’d stay clear of the place. Unfriendly. Guard dogs. High fences.”
    “To keep the gladiators in?”
    “To keep everybody else out! A while back, a neighbour’s slave wandered onto the property. One of those dogs tore his leg off. Fellow bled to death. Ahala refused to make restitution. He doesn’t like folks coming ’round.”
    Leaving Zuleika at a hostel near the town forum, I made my way alone to the oak tree on the far side of town and took the branch to the left. After a mile or so, just as the man had said, a rutted dirt road branched off the stone-paved highway. I followed the road around a bend and came to a gateway that appeared to mark the boundary of Ahala’s property. The structure itself was probably enough to keep out most unwanted visitors. Nailed to the two upright posts were various bones bleached white by the sun, and adorning the beam above my head was a collection of human skulls.
    I passed through the gate and rode on for another mile or so, through a landscape of thickets and wild brush. At last I arrived at a compound surrounded by a high palisade of sharpened stakes. From within I heard a man’s voice shouting commands, and the clatter of wood striking wood – gladiators drilling with practice swords, I presumed. I heard other, more incongruous noises – the bleating of sheep and goats, a smith’s hammer,