Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [52]
I’d like to say that I thought of something noble, like the Plataeans at Oinoe. They didn’t win by fighting better. They merely refused to break. Fair enough. But I didn’t really have a thought in my head. I was an animal. I decided that if I could endure pain, I could eat. I noticed that other slaves tried to take their food off into a corner and eat, like animals on a kill ripping a haunch and running. But it occurred to me in my feverish desperation that I could simply eat while they beat me. I’d tear food out of their hands and put it in my mouth. I’ve seen a starving cat do the same, on a wharf in Aegypt.
That was my plan, and it worked well enough.
It only worked because they feared the guards.
We had Scythian guards. Now that I know the Sakje better, I suspect that few, if any, were actually Sakje. They were probably a rabble of Persian bastards, half-Medes, half-Sakje and Bactrians. Scum. But armed scum, soldiers with bows.
They didn’t do a lot, except prevent escape and punish us if we hurt each other too much. After all, we were worth money. But they watched us with the lazy, amused contempt of the better man for the worse. All free people know they are better than slaves. Slaves have no honour, no beauty, no dignity, nothing that makes them worth knowing. Why? It’s all taken from them with their freedom, that’s why. The ones who might have had dignity kill themselves.
They watched us for entertainment. They loved it when we fought, and they would wager money on their favourites.
One old fellow had wagered money that I would live. I figured it out from listening to him argue – he felt that I’d already beaten the odds. So the first day that I decided to eat, when I grabbed bread from the trough and stuck it in my mouth, and when a bigger man hit me with his fist, I kept eating.
I took a blow to the head, and my nose broke, and blood sprayed.
I kept eating.
Then the cage opened and the old Sakje waddled in and kicked my tormentor in the head.
I ate his food, too. While he lay unconscious, I ate it all.
The next morning, he was groggy. I ate his food again. His partner, one of the boys who had pissed on me, hit me in the face, where my nose had been broken, and I vomited from the pain. Then I picked up my bread and ate it. Disgusted yet?
In the evening, I felt better, despite the inflammation of my whole face. I got to the food trough and waited.
When the bread loaves began to fall into the trough, I waited for the food mêlée to begin and then I punched the biggest boy in the ear. Down he went. Once he was down, I kicked him in the head and took his bread. While I ate, I kicked him again and hurt my foot.
The next morning, the other slaves gave me space at the trough. My guard laughed when he saw me. Later I heard him demand payment, but the other soldier told him I would be dead before the end of the day. He said this in Ionian Greek, a variant on our language – well, you know, honey. And this fellow you brought with you grew up with it, so I won’t bore you with how it still sounds alien to me now.
It didn’t take long to realize that my two tormentors were planning to kill me. Murder was not so infrequent in the slave pens. I watched them from under my hair – my lank, filthy hair, full of bugs – and saw they were together. I had united them. Or perhaps they were allies before my coming, although, as I say, such alliances are rare for slaves.
Of course, they were waiting for my Scythian to go off duty.
I watched them, and I waited, and I tried to plan. But I was still wounded, and I was still weak, and they were bigger and tougher and there were two of them.
I was beginning to think of attacking them – if only to get it over with while my Scythian was on duty – when the