Carnage

Chapter 5: Foundation

Carnage

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Chapter Five

 Unfortunately, Arie did not get a chance to find out. For nearly one month, Nadu swamped her with as much as she could. Buying clothes, decorating all the rooms of the house and finding new slaves. Nadu had wanted the stones in the bath changed as the aging bricks had mold and produced a lot of dust from the thinning plaster. Arie was meant to look for a few strong pair of hands.

 "Get some Carthigian men to do the construction work," Junius instructed. 

 "Why not hire men from those factories?" Arie asked grimacing.

 "Don't be so simplistic. Once they done doing the princess' bidding, they will be our guards," he answered. Having guards should have been the first thing they did when they arrived, Arie wanted to retort but she held her tongue.

 The work itself was unpleasant in it's extreme. The Forum had a section specifically catered to their sale. The area was almost completely closed with small alleys out of it. Each alley had two burly men standing guard. The ground itself was not paved like most parts of the city and Arie felt suspicious at the copious amount of grey-green dirt on the ground. She had learnt to breath through her mouth as soon as she steps out of the villa. 

 The slaves were kept in groups of five in one wooden cage not big enough to hold three, with chains around one leg tied to the bars. It was difficult to see their skin color despite wearing only loin skins. A single adult male slave went for twice the amount of three female slaves. Children, there were more female ones than males, were nearly worthless and had the same starved, bloated look with sunken eyes. 

 "Step forward," a rather thin slave master yelled. Obediently, fifteen slaves shuffled forwards. "Inspect my wares and you'll find none better in this market."

A large man wearing a bright red tunic that barely reached his knees scoffed and spat in the space between. He gestured to his own set of cages.

 "Do not listen to him," he said in enunciated Latin. "I have men and women from Sparta. You know Sparta?"

She did and they were, it seemed, because one of the slave men nodded as if in agreement. There was a look of desperation in his hollow eyes. Arie glanced at them separately and found they were all under-fed but fit, including the twelve year old boy who was glaring right back at her.

 "How much for them?" Arie pointed at both the man and the boy.

 "Wait," the first slave driver all but grabbed her arm. He hit the bars in front of a deeply tanned man. "He can read, write, teach and he is good for any type of work you have."

 Before she could reply, there was a loud crack followed by a muffled scream behind her. She turned around and saw a woman tied to a stake with her upper body naked. A long leather whip hooked at the end arced and landed on the skin. Blood gushed out and there was another scream. Every fibre of her body wanted to interfere but the law, as stated by Junius while he was administaring punishment, was that a master can do as he wished. 

 "She tried to escape," the thin one explained. "You'll always find those ones in a pack but not mine," he added quickly.

 "But isn't the sentence for escaping death?"