Chapter 3

Kaelus, Tarin and Lykos were standing in a row on the wooden platform in the banqueting hall, each of them thrusting into a slave girl from behind. Livia was enduring Kaelus’s forced attention with her usual stoic despair, but Talia was shedding floods of silent tears as she listened to Tarin’s childish sobs behind her. Lykos and his companion – whose name the three boys still did not know – were both staring straight ahead with a detached, vacant gaze.

Since his brutal ordeal with the whip, Kaelus’s entire torso had become a patchwork of scar tissue, and he had lost a great deal of muscle definition. This had made him deathly afraid that he would be judged unsuitable to take part in the forced display, and that Aulus would be chosen to replace him. (Aulus’s own scars from the whip were confined to his back.) However, to Kaelus’s infinite relief, no mention of such an arrangement had been made.

Before Aulus’s arrival, Kaelus would have given anything to be excluded from duties such as this, but with his younger brother apparently next in line to take his place, he would have given anything to be allowed to continue his sexual performances despite his permanent disfigurement. For once in his life, the fates had granted Kaelus his wish.

As they released inside the slave girls, Kaelus, Tarin and Lykos felt the familiar mix of shame, humiliation and guilt, but the act also stirred a new sense of hope in all three boys as they thought about what was to come next. However, the master had other plans.

‘Again,’ he said simply.

Having half-expected this command, Kaelus was still inside Livia. He resumed his thrusts with a detached sense of mechanical efficiency, but Tarin and Lykos were both forced to steel themselves to start the whole process again from the beginning.

Tarin wept bitterly as he entered Talia for the second time, while Lykos barely managed to force himself to push his way back into the third girl, simmering with anger and frustration as he did so. The master’s guests were enthralled by the scene, revelling in the obvious discomfort and distress of the six young people on the platform.

Tarin’s entire body was wracked with pain when he released for the second time, while Kaelus and Lykos both found that they felt nothing whatsoever, either physically or emotionally. All three girls turned their heads as the boys withdrew, the six of them sharing a brief moment of connection through their combined humiliation.

The master then declared the entertainment over for the evening, reigniting the earlier spark of hope that the three boys had experienced.

‘Can you do it?’ Lykos whispered to Tarin.

‘I’d find it harder not to do it,’ Tarin replied ruefully.

‘I’ll be ready,’ said Kaelus.

After they had been led from the hall by two guards, Tarin collapsed in the corridor. Lykos let out a cry of alarm and knelt down to tend to him. Cursing and snarling, the guards attempted to force both boys back to their feet, threatening to drag Tarin along by his hair if necessary.

Amidst this scene of confusion, Kaelus slipped away and set off after the retreating forms of the three slave girls.

The barred door to the ludus crashed open and Kaelus was propelled violently over the threshold. He stumbled, and fell in a heap on the cold, hard floor.

‘You can see your girlfriends again when you are ordered to and not before!’ one of the guards snarled.

‘You’ll probably be sent for public castration if we tell the master where we found you,’ said the second guard. ‘And believe me, we will tell him.’

The one who had spoken first gave Kaelus a particularly painful kick in the gut, then the guards left the ludus and locked the door behind them.

Much to his own disgust, Kaelus experienced a moment of desire and relief at the thought of being castrated. Then the full horror of the threat – of everything it would mean for himself and for Aulus – gripped his heart with fingers of ice and he started trembling all over. As he dragged himself unsteadily to his feet, Lykos and Tarin approached him.

‘Did you do it?’ Lykos asked urgently.

Kaelus nodded, his voice strained but firm. ‘Yes. We’re on.’