Free Spartacus: The Gladiator by Ben Kane Page A

first. ‘Take it!’
    Unable to protest further, Paccius took a firm hold of the bone handgrip. ‘Grasp it so. Remember, it takes real force to stick it in a man’s belly. Like this.’ He thrust his right arm forward in a powerful, calculated manner and pulled it back to his side. He repeated the move several times. ‘Clear?’
    ‘Yes, I think so.’
    ‘Let me see you do it,’ said Paccius, handing the gladius back.
    With grim concentration, Carbo held the sword close to his right side. With a grunt, he copied Paccius’ move, imagining that he was sinking the iron blade into the guts of a Pontic warrior or a Cilician pirate. Along with the former Marian leader Sertorius in Iberia, these were Rome’s main enemies. Better still, he imagined, would be to bury it in the flesh of his father’s largest creditor, whoever he was. ‘Like that?’
    Paccius pursed his lips in approval. ‘That’s better. Do it again.’
    Carbo obeyed eagerly, plunging the weapon back and forth in a flurry of blows.
    ‘Slow it down. Conserve your energy. Striking your opponent in the belly once should be enough to put him down. There are few men who’ll stay standing after half their guts have been sliced apart.’ Contorting his face in mock agony, Paccius clutched at his abdomen and mimed falling to the ground. ‘That’s the beauty of this weapon,’ he went on. ‘When used with a bloody great shield like the scutum , by a line of soldiers who stick close together, it’s damn near invincible.’
    ‘That’s how your people were defeated.’
    Paccius grimaced. ‘It’s one of the reasons, yes.’
    Carbo had spent his childhood listening to Paccius’ tales of the Social War, when the last of the fiercely independent Samnites had been crushed by Rome. He knew how the defeat still rankled. Once Paccius had been a high-ranking warrior among his people. Now he was but a slave. When they’d lived on the family’s farm, a dozen miles from Capua, he’d been the foreman. After the move to the city, he’d assumed the role of doorman and guard. Paccius was also the person to whom Carbo went with his problems, and he cursed himself for bringing up old, painful history. ‘I want to learn how to use a shield too,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Go and fetch one.’
    Paccius started to argue again, but thought better of it. Muttering under his breath, he disappeared into the tablinum again.
    Carbo dipped a hand into the fountain that graced the centre of the small courtyard. He patted his face with water several times, refreshing himself. Inadvertently touching the myriad of pockmarks that covered his cheeks, he scowled. Much of his good humour fell away. Why couldn’t the scars be on my chest or back? It was easy to tell himself that he was lucky to be alive – after all, more than a third of those who developed the pox died, while others were left blind – but quite another thing to enter adulthood looking like a freak. The matter wasn’t helped by the fact that most of those he’d regarded as friends didn’t want to know him now. And what woman would ever want him? Carbo’s mother kept telling him not to worry about it, that an arrangement would be made with a suitable family, but it did little to ease his self-loathing. While some of his peers were already sleeping with willing girls – merchants’ daughters and the like – Carbo found it hard even to skulk into a brothel and choose a prostitute.
    Apart from using his hand, his only other form of sexual release had been to bed his father’s female slaves. Two or three of them were passably good-looking. In their lowly position, they could not refuse Carbo when he’d ordered them to his bed. During the months since his recovery from the pox, he’d used this power a number of times. The sex had been a real release, but he had found it hard to ignore their poorly concealed revulsion at his appearance. What Carbo really wanted was for someone to accept him as he was. He