Tales of Ancient Rome 2: Salidia and Lydia

Synopsis: Using her lethal skills, a young, beautiful slave        rises to power in ancient Rome.  Tales 2 is a

       character study of a complex and murderous femdom.

       109 pgs.

               Tales of Ancient Rome 2: Salidia and Lydia

                                               by

                                               TG

                                         Chapter 1

                                  Laying in Supplies

       "Oh, this feels so good," Salidia thought.  Winter still had time to go, but Salidia had lucked out with mild weather for her entire trip, and today was the best day yet, almost like spring.

       The warm sun on her face, the gentle rocking of the ship, the lap of waves against the bow, and the sound of sea gulls in the distance.  "I'd love to do this every day when the weather turns warm again," she thought.

       Salidia, her men, and the slaves she had just bought, were on a Phoenician galley on the return trip from Massilla, a port town down on the coast from her villa in Abbalo (Avalon, France).  She had gone down to the coast to buy specally trained slaves, where she had gotten twenty capable of doing such work as repair wagon wheels or assist a carpenter.  She had also stumbled upon two exquisitely soft wool gown for herself, and three tunics of the same luxurious wool for Selenius, her childhood friend and now Imperator (Commander) of the local Legion.

       She and the men with her, her bodyguards, were lounging on boxes, on the deck, leaning on the rail, any place comfortable, soaking up the warm sunlight and just lolling the time away until the journey was over.  "If only those nit-wits would settle down," she thought peevishly.  One after the other, the mercenaries with her, all of them, had to squirm and clunk about, disturbing her enjoyment of the rare day.  She glanced at her other men, ex-gladiators and veterans of the Legions; they had the good sense to relax and enjoy this break from the usual routine. She didn't know what it was, maybe something about the personalities of men who choose to be mercenaries, but they had to clunk and shuffle around while everyone else laid back to soak up the good weather.  "Those guys can't ever just sit down and relax.  They always have to be fidgeting around," she thought, annoyed at the mercenaries for disturbing the tranquility of the afternoon.

       Finally, with some satisfaction, she noted they too settled down.  "Ohh! Damn!"  One was at it again. "What is that jerk doing now," she wondered, seeing one of them starting to shift about again. A chill ran up her spine.  She stopped breathing and her stomach knotted up.  The mercenary, Cetus, was trying to surreptitiously signal Talig!  Talig, the Captain of her bodyguards, was gazing out to sea.  Cetus knocked a wine skin off the box he was sitting on.  Talig looked in the direction of the noise.  Salidia saw Talig's expression suddenly change, becoming alert, eyes widening.  Salidia noticed then that all the mercenaries were looking toward Talig.  Cetus flicked his eyes toward the Phoenicians, all of whom were at the stern of the ship.  Talig looked at them, got an angry look on his face, and looked again at Cetus.  He nodded to Cetus.  The nod was more a drawn out blink of the eyes, and an almost imperceptible dip of the jaw.  Talig glanced at the nearby group of three veteran ex-Legionnaires who were sitting together to the right of Cetus, and then back at Cetus.  She saw Cetus do that same nod which was more just a slow blink of the eye.  Then Talig glanced at two of the ex-gladiators who were sitting together on the other side.  Again Cetus nodded.  The other mercenaries had also seen Talig's gesture to the veterans and ex-gladiators, and they were already trying to alert the veterans and ex-gladiators before Cetus passed on Talig's silent instructions.

       Salidia remembered hearing that Cetus had served on a galley, and then she recalled he had been curious about the weapons stored on deck when they first came aboard, but she hadn't paid much attention to it.  She wished someone would include her in all this nodding and blinking back and forth, but she took her cue from her men, who were acting nonchalantly, and she remained in her casual position.

       Talig was sitting near his best friend, Caius.  He nudged Caius, who looked at him, and then Talig glanced at the Phoenicians and then at Salidia.  Caius followed Talig's gaze.  For the first time, Talig noticed that Salidia was staring at him.  He stared back at her, stuck his tongue in the side of his cheek, and made a long, protracted blink.  She hoped the gesture meant, "Something's odd, but it's alright," but whatever the gesture meant, she was thankful he just made a calm response to her stare.  His calmness reassured her.

       None of her men acted alarmed.  All stayed relaxed.  But they all causally shifted positions to be within reach of their swords.  Not all at once, but one by one.  Salidia slowly put her hand to her waist, and felt a flood of relief to feel her dagger there, just where it was supposed to be.  Right now, she felt glad that in the last few months Talig had been showing her tricks to using a knife, and that she had gotten into the habit of wearing one at her waist.

       Talig got up and causally sauntered over to the ship's rail near Salidia, and  gazed out to sea.  She felt much better with her best man at her side, but her heart was still pounding.  There were more than twice as many Phoenicians as her men, but an angry part of her felt her men could smash the Phoenicians.  "Let these bastards try fucking around with my men, and it will be the last fucking thing they do," she thought to herself.

       When she fled Rome to escape the murderous Caligula, she picked the best man she could think of to head her bodyguards, the famous ex-gladiator Talig, a Dimachaeri*; and she charged him with assembling a corps of twelve as body guards for her trip to Gaul.  Three were other ex-gladiators whom she recognized from the Colosseum.  She had seen them fight dozens of times, and kill every man they fought.  Practiced killers.  They were the best of the best, and all had been awarded their freedom because of their exceptional abilities.  With the four gladiators alone, she felt she could kill these bastards if they threatened her.   Yet......she was still scared.

       "Ohhho," she turned her head, startled.  Movement out of the corner of her eye surprised her, and she turned to see a group of three Phoneticians walk toward her men and then start to reset the rigging on the mainsail near two of her mercenaries.  A moment later another group of four Phoenicians walked to the other side of her men, and began to batten down the hold.  Frightened by their approach, she looked back at her men and realized someone must have alerted the other three ex-Legionnaires because they had shifted positions to be next to their weapons.  A moment later, Caius got up and went to the rail on the other side of her to piss off the side of the ship.

       Other groups of Phoenicians had drifted onto the deck and surrounded her men by pretending to engage in diversionary tasks like shifting cargo or coiling ropes.    Each of the places the Phoenicians choose to work at their fake tasks was next to one of the stores of weapons which were stored on deck.  They were waiting for the last group of their men to get into position behind Salidia's men.  The ship was a stage where two groups of men were trying to fool each other.

       "Awhh," she screamed, jumping to her feet and grabbing her knife as the deck suddenly exploded into rushing, shouting men.  Striking first, her men sprung on the Phoenicians with their weapons in their hands while the Phoenicians still had coils of rope or freight boxes in their hands.  Two Phoenicians fell spewing blood across the deck, stabbed by her men, before they reached weapons they had stored on the deck.  Another Phoenician ran unarmed back to the stern when one of her veterans cut him off from reaching his arms.

       Three Phoenicians were running at her.  She jerked her dagger up over her shoulder, ready to stab them when they got close.  In rage, she wanted to kill one before they killed her.  From the side Caius suddenly jumped in front of her, his attack bringing them to a stop.  Before they could encircle Caius, one of Salidia's ex-Legionnaires, Rufus, charged the three Phoenicians from the back, pinning them between himself and Caius.

       Talig was a ~blur~ of motion.  He sprung at a group of three Phoenicians nearest him.  Choosing the throat as his target, he struck at the man to the left of him with such hand speed that it beat the man's reaction time.  In a well practiced move, the thrust initiated an instantaneous swing of his arm to the right and he twisted his body to continue the swing of his sword across the throat of the man in front of him.  The two moves happened so fast, it just looked like a flashing swing of his arm to the right.  Talig's hand speed was so great, neither man had time to raise their arms in defense.  His arm just shot from one to the other.  Only their eyes had time to react. In the same motion, he continued it's momentum by jumping toward the man on his right with an outstretched right arm.  The whole thing looked like one flash to his right.  The third man had time to take half a step backwards, and to start to raise his sword in front of his throat for protection.  Talig simply made a back and forth stab around the man's swords to the unprotected side of the man's neck before the Phoenician could move to block Talig greater speed.

       Then Talig spun and jumped at the group pinned between Caius and the Legionnaire.  Two were fighting Caius, one the Legionnaire.  Salidia was behind Caius with her dagger raised overhead, wanting to help him, but lacking the fighting skills to know what to do.  In a step Talig was behind the two on Caius, stabbing one in the back before the man knew Talig was behind him and the second in the side as he turned too late to face the new comer.  The veteran killed the third.  Caius stationed himself in front of Salidia again, her protection for the fight.  Talig pivoted again and started to run for two in the back of the ship who were also heading in the direction of Caius and Salidia, the Legionnaire, Rufus, following right behind him.  Seeing them coming, the Phoenicians stopped in their tracks, and dropped their weapons and fearfully got down on their knees.

       Talig used the same blinding speed that Salidia had seen time and again in the Colosseum.   The first time Talig had appeared in the arena, the crowd hadn't cheered.  It went dead silent, no one in the stands moving, and then roared.  He was the fastest man anybody ever remembered seeing.

       In less than a minute, more than half the Phoenicians were dead and the others had dropped their swords.  The Phoenicians had planned on surprising Salidia's men, killing them and robbing them; but her men had turned the tables on them, catching them while they were still engaged in their diversionary tasks.  None of her men were hurt.  They had fought the Phoenicians as if they were amateurs.  Salidia had paid good money to hire the best swords available in Rome, and it was money well spent.  Her men were formidable, each of them.

       They backed the surviving Phoenician into a small group near the stern.  Salidia burst through the ring of her men and stormed up to the captain.  In a rage, she snarled at him, "You bastard," and jerked her dagger into his belly three times, as hard as she could, as fast as she could, grunting with each thrust.  He fell to the deck, moaning.  She glared down at him in hatred, and then kicked him in the face.  Turning to two Phoenicians on her left, she growled in a low tone, "Throw him overboard!"

       As the still conscious captain was being carried to the rail, Cetus said to her, "We need the rest to sail the ship."  She angerly grunted, "Hummp."  Then she softened, some of her rage discharged, and said,  "You're a good man, Cetus.  How did you know?"

       "We got on ship; I saw the arms."  He made a gesture with arms and shoulders, implying, "Of course!"  "They get rusty fast up on desk!  So I asked one of them why the arms were on deck, and he tells me, 'We want to be ready if we run into pirates'  Mistress, if an Athenian Trireme were to hove around that point of land over there this very instant, at Battle Stroke, it would take them well over an hour to run us down and come abeam.  How fast did he think oar and sail can go?  So I started to watch them.  Then they got all together at the stern.  There's no reason to do that in the middle of the day.  So that's when I let Talig and the others know."

       "Good man, Cetus," she repeated, "When we get to shore take whatever you want from the captain's things."  "Thank you, Mistress," he answered, smiling, thinking of all the valuables usually stored in a captain's cabin.

       She looked across the ship at the dead Phoenicians lying on the deck, and felt invincible.  With her eyes ablaze and excited by the victory, she felt a heart pounding thrill and a thirst to crush anyone who opposed her.

       A little later she said to Talig, "When we get home, let's increase the time you and I spend training.  When I saw the Phoenicians running at me, I forgot everything you taught me, and stood there with the dagger stuck up into the air.  I wanted to kill one of them, but didn't know what to do."  He chucked, "Yeah, I saw you waving the dagger around.  What did you think you were doing?  Swatting flies?"  The two laughed.

"I wanted to help Caius.  Don't make fun of me, you big goon."

       "Awh, don't feel bad.  Looking at you waving that dagger around so mad, I think you must have scared one of them so bad he was afraid to go around to the left and get Caius from the side.  You looked so mean, it looked like you were ready to stick anything you could reach," he laughed.  He was having great fun at her expense.  "You looked so angry, I was afraid you might stab me or Caius by mistake," he said, laughing away.

       Then he soften, starting to feel a little bad that he might have hurt her feelings.  He smiled at her, "They had swords, you had a knife.  Sure, it can be done, I fought with a small buckler and dagger; but we've got to make you a lot stronger and faster.  A lot faster.  It's going to take a lot of time for you on the training ground.  I get to order you around some more, Mistress!  This is going to be fun," he chuckled.  She slapped him on the arm with a smile.

       When they reached the port leading to Abbalo, they pulled into the next cove, and ground the ship on shore.  They herded the surviving Phoenicians to the back of the ship, and ransacked the galley.  The men kept anything they wanted from the ship.  A pile of arms, clothing, and personal items was growing in front of the slaves she bought in Massilla, who were expected to carry the booty.  The gold and silver they found was gathered together in one spot.  There was enough precious metal on the galley to pay for her trip four times over.  Apparently, her Phoenician trader was a busy little pirate on the side, and he must have robbed and murdered several passengers before Salidia came aboard his ship.  Salidia kept half the money, gave her men 1 part of 4, and she would use 1 part of 4 to build the men better quarters.  They set the front of the galley ablaze and sat on the beach watching the Phoenicians jumping off the stern of the boat and splashing around in the water, too frightened to come ashore while Salidia's men were sitting on the sand.  Two of the crew couldn't swim and they ran back and forth across the stern not knowing what to do as the fire approached them.  Salidia's men bet on which of the floundering men would be the first to drown.

       (*Dimachaeri were gladiators who used speed as a weapon.  Usually armed with a small buckler and dagger or 2 swords, and no body armour, they depended upon their speed and reflexes to avoid opponents blows.  Talig was one of these.  Dimachaeri were expected to streak in to an opponent, find a chink in their armour, and strike.  They typically fought heavily armoured opponents, who's armour slowed them down. The contest hinged on the speed and endurance of the 2 fighters, one vulnerable but fast, the other almost impregnable but slow.

       Unlike today's custom of pairing evenly matched opponents against each other, the Roman's usually paired men with very unequal abilities against each.  Each man had different strengths and weakness, and the contest hinged on who could best use his strength against the other's weakness.  The most common type of match was between a "small shield," a lightly armoured man, against a "large shield," a heavy armoured man.  Roman contests were than between two different types of strengths,i.e., speed versus muscle; and the type of strengths involved depended upon the type of gladiators employed.  Different types of gladiators had different strengths and weaknesses.  At the gladiatorial games, Romans watched horseman fight infantry; the lightly armoured and fast Retiarii, with his net and trident, trying to catch a better armoured, but slower, Thracian, etc.  To use a modern analogy, the Romans would have staged a contest between a baseball player and a basketball player to see who was the better athlete, then they'd try a boxer against a wrestler.  Of all the gladiator types, Dimachaeri had the least armour, none, but they were expected to be the fastest.  It might be easiest to think of Dimachaeri like the gun fighters in the American Old West.  Both types of men lived by their hand speed.)

                               Chapter 2

               Give, and You Shall Receive

       The next day, Salidia sat with Selenius in his tent within the Legion's camp.  Salidia and Selenius had grown up on adjoining estates, and, with her brother Anthony, had been best friends all their lives.  Now Selenius and his Legion had been posted to Gallia Comata to patrol and protect the strategic Via Agrippa, the main access and resupply route for Legions going further north.  When Salidia fled Rome, it was here she came to her friend for refuge.  Before she arrived, he had found a villa for her to use.

       She gave him the three tunics she had gotten for him. "Do you like them?  I got them to replace that moth eaten rag you're using under your armour now," she said with a self-satisfied smile.  "Long shelves and thick enough for any snow."

       "This is wool?  It's softer than the best Egyptian cotton.  It feels more like down than wool!"

       "The Sumerian trader in Massilla told me he gets it from the Kashmir mountains to the north of him.  They pull it from under the throat and chest of goats rather than shear it from sheep.  I had him sew on the leather across the shoulders so your armour wouldn't wear through it in a week."

       "It's the softest, finest garment I've ever seen anywhere.  I can't take this.  It must have cost you a fortune.  The Emperor doesn't have anything this fine.  Nobody has anything like this!  This is going to put me in your debt for a year and knowing you, you'll have me running little errands for you until next summer to pay you back. I bet you already have a list of things you want me to do for you.  Let me give you something back."

       "Hum, Hum, Hum," she chuckled.  "I have an idea of something I might like and it won't cost you anything or take any of your time.  I noticed the stockade when I arrived.  Who are the men you have there?"

       

       "Hold outs from a valley up north.  Trouble makers. Goths.  Stubborn, independent.  It took us the better part of a month to clean out the valley; the damn block heads fought over every damn little village.  For the whole valley, we only got 440 men captive.  The rest fought to the death.  I'm sending these down to the Colosseum, and selling the women and slaves.  You know how Caligula is always pestering us for more prisoners to use in the games."

       Shaking his head, "You don't want them.  They wouldn't make good slaves.  They're only good for the lions.  Too independent and rebellious.  Take some of the women, or the slaves.  The slaves are already broken in."

       "The more rebellious they are, the better.  I want a challenge.  I told you how exciting it felt to defeat that Phoenician on the galley.  Now I've got my head body guard, Talig, teaching me the knife so I can be part of it...........You've seen Talig!"

       "Sure, I remember Talig.  I've seen him dozens of times.  Who in Rome hasn't seen Talig?  I saw him with Anthony when he was alive.  I made it a point to attend whenever Talig was scheduled.  Although it wasn't much to watch, it was over so fast.  Blink and you'd miss it.  Even staring at him, I had trouble seeing his hands move.  The guy is more magician with his hands than Dimachaeri.  The first time I saw him, I didn't know how fast he was and didn't watch his hands.  It looked like he stood in front of a Murmillones ("large shield" gladiator type), and then the guy just feel down.  I didn't see the strike at all.  Moved faster than I could see.  The elders say he's the best Dimachaeri that ever lived.  You sure picked the right man to teach you the knife."

 

       "Hummm, that's what I thought, too.  But it hasn't rubbed off on me yet.  He said there's still a whole bunch of things he hasn't shown me yet.  He said I have to get stronger before he can teach me to become fast.  I'd love to be able to move with half the speed he has."

       "What are you going to do?  Become a female gladiator now?"

       "Ha, Ha. No.  Although that is a fun idea.  If Talig ever teaches me to move like him, I give it try, though," she chucked.

       She continued, "That Phoenician taught me how much fun it is to fight and win when I'm actually a part of it and not just a spectator.  The idea of a challenge excites me now.  I understand how you must feel after a good campaign.  It's exciting to win when you have a stake in it, and aren't just sitting in the seats, away from it, and watching someone else do it.  I'd like a hands on battle of the wills with your rebels.  Bend them to my will!  Them or me!  And what's the worst that can happen?  I have to kill them?  Not going to cost me anything.  Send the bastard in Rome an even 400 and let me have the rest."

       ".... AND I was giving you the tunic anyway ......Without asking you to run errands for me for a year.....But if you want to give me 40 new slaves, I can't stop you if you insist ...Seleeenieeeeeee...," she said, tickling him.

       Carefree, she added, "Besides, with the money I got from the Phoenician, the whole trip didn't cost me anything, including the tunics.  Consider it a gift from the Phoenician captain.  His parting gift for you."

       "You know, Selie, I know what I'm going to do.  You say they're no good for slaves, but I bet I make some of them meek as sheep and have them working in my fields.  If I don't, I'll have Casper (her head steward for her villa in Rome, a promoted former slave) send up a dozen amphoras of the best wine he can find for you.  But if I get your rebels to be nice little lambs, you have to feed me grapes the next time we have dinner.  Give me time though, a lot of my time I won't be able to get to them at all.  I have a lot to do setting up the new place.  The slaves that came with the villa are yokels and don't know anything.  And the old centurion (former owner) didn't plan on any farming.  He was going to spend his time growing olives.  I have to set the whole place up for farming, and I have to show the steward and foreman everything.  I do more work than they do."

       She went through the stockade picking out the most attractive of the Goth captives, thinking, "The lions can eat the ugly ones!"   Selenius lent her some Legionnaires and chains to get the slaves home.

       She now had forty more slaves than she had originally planned.  Twenty useful slaves to transform her new property into a functional farm, and forty men that whetted her new found taste for domination.  Plus a few new slave girls she got from Selenius to help feed the new slaves.  The twenty bought in Massilla were assigned positions in a perfunctory manner.  The fourty Goths got her full attention.  If she managed to beat any of them into submission, they would go to work in her fields.  But most of all, they were a new game for her to play.

                               Chapter 3

                 Making New Friends and

                   Diana Come to Earth

       The rush of victory over the Phoenicians was still fresh in Salidia's mind when she returned to her villa, as well as her bet with Selenius; she was going to dominate them.  Bend the rebels to her will.  She would kill the ones who wouldn't bend and use the ones she broke to farm the land of her new villa.  The bet and the prospect of field slaves were trivial to her.  Dominating the men was a burning desire, sparked by the heart pounding thrill she got defeating the Phoenicians.  Salidia now had a thirst to defeat men who opposed her.  She had learned how much fun it could be on the Phoenician galley.

       She planned on softening up the forty by giving them each a session in the torture room, one by one, and she intended to revisit each one after giving them all their initiation.  To her way of thinking, the pain and fear of torture would destroy their wills, and make them into cowering cowards who would be too frighten to resist whatever she demanded of them.

       She would have to rush.  The upcoming planting season would demand all her time as she devoted her time to organized her new villa, and she would only have a month plus to get the Goths started.  She wanted to have two or three torture sessions with each one before she had to shift her focus to the villa.  At least working one in the morning and one in the afternoon, more if she could manage, until all were done. (The "torture room" was really a building within the villa grounds that had been pressed into service as a torture room.  The stable had also been pressed into service as the slave quarters and continue to be called the stable even thought it housed the slaves.)

       The 8th day into this, as Talig's men were pulling one of the slaves into the torture room, a tired Salidia walked into the kitchen to grab something to eat, and she caught one of the new scullery maids, a tallish girl, staring out the window, a scowl on her face.  The maid had interrupted her work and stood transfixed by the scene outside, while the other maids worked.  Caught staring, the maid gave Salidia a furtive glance, then turned her head down and went back to work cleaning pots.  Intrigued by the angry glare the maid cast on the Goth outside (and, simply, Salidia was getting exhausted by the hard work involved in dealing with the Goths morning till night, and she wanted help with the task), Salidia said, "Would you like a new job?"  The angry glare the girl cast on the Goth sparked the idea that the girl might be good as an assistant.  The maid's eyes widened in surprise.  She asked, "In the torture room?"  Salidia noted that the girl didn't think of a likely occupation, such as milking the cows, but her mind went straight to the torture room.

       "Come here.  Sit down.  What's your name?"

       

       "Lydia."

       "Pretty.  Do you know what happens in that room?"

       "You torture and punish the Goth men."

       "Why were you staring so hard and angry?"

       "When the Goths came to my valley, they killed my family and the whole village, and took the land for themselves.  They sold me and the rest of us that were still alive into slavery.  I want to see you torture and kill every one of them!"

       The world was full of people who had been treated unfairly, as well as women who resented how men treat them, and Salidia thought she had just found another to add to the long list.  Most were too timid to complain.  This one was unusually vehement.

       "You're an Aedui?"

       "Yes!"

       "Ah.  Selenius told me the story of the Goths, and what happened to your valley when the Goths got there.  That was a busy valley you had up there."

       What wasn't being said was how deep the anger was that Lydia held against the Goths who had killed her parents, and ripped her from a happy life to a life of slavery.  After she had been sold as a slave, she was repeatedly raped by every man, from slave to owner, on the farm where she lived.  And she was brutalized by every man there, from slave to owner, every day.  Her life had become a living hell punctuated by beatings.  Lydia had a grudge against men in general, and Goths in particular.

       Also, that five nights ago as twilight was falling and the domestic servants were preparing to go to bed, Lydia had said she was going out to the outhouse.  Instead she snuck into the torture room and walked through the empty building, looking at the things there.  Some things she didn't understand.  Some things simply looked cruel and dangerous.  The caged rats startled her, and made her walk down the other side of the hall.  When she got to the heavily constructed lattice, she saw the straps attached to it, and from the straps she knew the Goths were tied there.  She saw the heavy bull whip, and knew that kind of whip wasn't used on horses or cows.  It was only used to whip slaves.  Dried blood smeared the floor beneath the lattice.

       Lydia imagined her Mistress in that place whipping Goths, and she was in awe of Salidia as if she were a Goddess on earth.  They said Salidia was a Patrician, a great and powerful Roman.  She knew Salidia wasn't really a Goddess but the emotion she felt about Salidia was the same as if Diana had come down to earth.  In her whole life she had never seen a household ruled by a woman.  From the first moment Lydia had seen Salidia, every man had bowed to her, even the powerful and dangerous man Talig, who was the leader of soldiers.  They said he was a ferocious gladiator who had killed five men all by himself when they went to get the slaves from Massilla, and he obeyed Salidia!  Most, the Roman soldiers did her bidding, something that was inconceivable to her.  When they were at the Roman camp and for the journey to Salidia's villa, Roman Legionnaires guarded the Goth men.  To Lydia, the Romans were implacable killing machines whom everyone feared, yet they obeyed Salidia.  Salidia ordered the Legionnaires around like a parent orders children about.  When Salidia gave a Legionnaire an order, the only thing he did was salute, bow his head, and obey!  Where Salidia was the world as Lydia knew it was turned on it's head: a women ruled and the men obeyed.

       The torture room was like a palace of justice ordained from Mount Olympus by the Furies.  Here men were punished for how they treated women; and her enemies, the Goths, would be tortured to death, Lydia gloated.  This godlike mistress punished men and gave them what they deserved.  She made them hurt for what they had done.  She wasn't sure what a Patrician meant, but to Lydia it made Salidia the most powerful women on earth, and she was in awe of her.  When Lydia walked through the torture room she longed to see this powerful Patrician punishing the Goths.  She never imagined that she could be a part of it.  Only Salidia, this Roman Patrician, was that powerful.  But she longed to be able to just see it.  When Salidia mentioned a new job, Lydia hoped the job might be in the torture room where she might catch a glimpse of Salidia punishing a Goth.  She imagined some menial task which was her wont in life: sweeping, cleaning, some dreary task.  But she might catch a glimpse of the powerful women reeking vengeance on her enemies in the torture room, something her heart cried for.

       "Would you like to help me in the torture room?"

       Lydia's eyes went round, and she simply nodded, "Yes," not able to speak, her wish come true.

       "You would be helping me torturing the men.  Could you do that?"  Lydia was stunned.  She stopped breathing.  "...help torture men."  She couldn't imagine that.  She thought sweeping, cleaning, something like that.  Not actually being a part of it.  She didn't ever think she could part of it.  She wasn't powerful like Salidia was.   Any time she had fought back against her abusers, which was most of the time, she had been badly beaten.  She just hoped to be in the torture room where she might be able to watch Salidia punish a Goths. But her?  And what if she had the chance to do some of it herself?

       "Me?"

       "Yes."

       "Help you do it?"

       "Yes."

       "I could be right there with you?  See it happen, right next to you?"

       "Yes."

       "Every day?"

       "Yes."

       "Yes, Mistress!"

       "Are you sure you can do this?  I like to make them hurt and suffer.  It can be mean and cruel.  Can you do that?"

       "Yes, Mistress!" The girl was so emphatic, it made Salidia laugh.

       "I'm making you my maid," said Salidia, amused by the girl's enthusiasm and emotional personality.  "You are no longer a scullery maid.  Take Miridia's room next to mine.  Since I've come here I've gotten into the habit of doing much for myself, simply because no one here is capable of doing what I want.  I will show you what I want.  Pay attention. I don't like repeating myself.  Make sure you're clean.  Tell Miridia she is to get you two new dresses, and decent sandals.  From now on you will be with me."

       "Yes, Mistress."

       In one fell swoop, Lydia had been changed from one of the lowest status slaves to one of the highest, the one who stood at the side of Salidia.

       "Come."  Salidia walked outside, Lydia trailing behind.  She stopped at Talig.  "I've made this girl my maid.  She will be with me in the torture room."  "Yes, M'Lady."  They walked into the torture room, and the Goth Lydia had seen a few minutes ago was tied to the lattice.  When Lydia woke up that morning and had started her tasks in the kitchen, she never imagined she would ever be standing along side this powerful women in the torture room.  Now she was actually there in the room and there was a Goth tied up before her.

       "Lydia, do you think this man should be punished?"

       "Yes, Mistress."

       "Good girl."

                               Chapter 4

                   Surveying New Territory

                And Loosing Sight of the Old

       Without actually thinking about it, Salidia felt as if she had a companion in Lydia who shared her purpose.  Before beginning with the Goth, she said to Lydia, "Get me some wine.  Get a cup for yourself, too."

       Twenty minutes ago Lydia had been in the kitchen staring at a pot, and facing the prospect of spending another of her endless days staring at more pots.  Her one aspiration was to catch a glimpse of one of her enemies being singled out for torture by, from Lydia's point of view, the most powerful woman in the world.  Now she was about to share wine with the woman she considered a demigod, while her enemy was tied nearby, awaiting torture by this powerful goddess and HER.  Her stomach was doing flip flops, and her pulse raced.  As Lydia ran to get the wine and cups, she repeated time after time, "Pay attention to everything she saids and does."  In years to come, Lydia would be able to recall this day moment by moment.

       When the girl returned with the wine, Salidia noted the adoration in the girls eyes, and the way she hung on every word that she spoke.  Salidia began to feel warmly toward the girl, and was glad she had made her her maid.  She began to take the girl into her confidence and began to talk to the girl, something she missed since leaving Rome months ago.  Since she left Rome, she had been surrounded by nothing but soldiers, and had not sat and talked to another women the whole time.

       "These men are destined to be field workers.  They're all proud and independent, and will rebel, and be useless to me.  I'm going to break their spirit with torture.  Some will break and be useful slaves.  Some will not.  They will remain defiant and rebellious in spite of the torture.  They will be killed in this room.  It doesn't matter to me if some are killed since I didn't pay anything for them, and any few I make into good slaves will be pure profit to me.  What is important to me is that I break some of them."

       "It's simple.  We just torture them.  And then we do it again and again until they either break or die.  If some of them look too strong to break, we'll kill them and waste no more time on them.  The ones we break go to the fields to help the steward."

       Well, it sounded like a simple plan to Lydia.  Lydia simply wanted to torture and kill the bastards, and Salidia's plan got straight to what Lydia wanted to do.  And Lydia could live with seeing a few of these arrogant bastards bent over and dirty working in the fields as slaves for the rest of their miserable lives, their spirits broken and humbled.

               "Have you ever been involved with torture or punishment before?"

       "No, Mistress."

       "Let me tell you some things.  We're here to torture and break these men.  They must always be afraid of you.  In this room or before these men any place else, you are no longer Lydia, the scullery maid, but my surrogate.  You have a job to do in this room: to break these men.  You are here to make this easier for me by taking over some of the work yourself.  You must act like me, Mistress of all the slaves, with the power to kill whenever you wish.  You must make them afraid of you.  Can you do that, Lydia?"

       With a big beaming smile on her face, "Yes, Mistress!", Lydia said emphatically.  Salidia laughed.  The girl pumped so much emotion into what she did, it was hard not to notice it.  She was so animated and emotional it endeared her to Salidia.  Salidia liked this girl who wore her emotions on her sleeve for all to see.  From that moment, the bond between the two women was formed.

       "Come on."  Salidia got up, and took out the dagger from her waist.

       "That reminds me, when we're done here, go to Talig and tell him to give you a dagger like this one.  Always wear it whenever you're around these men.  Better yet, always wear it."

       "If any of these men start to escape from the straps, kill him immediately.  There are weapons in this room, and he might hurt one of Talig's men if they have to come in here to catch him.  Unlikely, but I don't want to gamble with the men's lives."

       Salidia put her finger against the man's carotid artery.  "Feel that.  Feel it's position and how deep it runs."  "Go ahead, Lydia, and feel it."  Lydia stepped up to the man and felt the pulsing artery in the man's neck.

       "Feel it's position in the neck.  Run your hand up and down the neck so you can see it's position.  See how it runs from top to bottom of the neck.  Now try the other side."  "It's his life's blood.  Cut it, and he'll stop moving in a few heart beats, and be dead moments later.  It's one of the fastest ways to kill a man.  Talig showed me this.  You don't have to aim to hit it exactly. You might miss it.  This is more certain.  Aim to just slice your dagger any where across here."   With her hand she indicated a wide swath from jaw to clavicle.  "It's a big target.  You only have to get a finger width deep into the throat near the top, a little deeper as you go down, and your blade will be sure to catch the artery.  Just slash the throat like this."  She made a swinging motion, so her hand swung across the man's neck, but didn't put her blade to skin.  "As soon as we decide to kill one, I want you to practice it for me so I can see that you can do it.  Can you do that?"

       "Yes, Mistress,"  very seriously, without hesitation the girl answered.  Salidia thought, "Good.  The girl understands this is a life and death issue, and she treats it seriously.  She's not a feather brain when it comes to serious things."

       "Talig can do it so fast the men don't have time to block him.  But you're not Talig.  If the man has his arm free, don't try for the throat.  He might block you and grab your arm.  If the man has an arm loose, call Talig's men immediately.  DO NOT try to get the heart.  You're angle might not be true, and the blade might travel to the side. And you might hit a rib which can stop the blade.  The men can drive through the ribs without a problem.  You don't gamble.  For you, the throat is a surer and easier kill."

       She repeated, "Slash the throat if the man is starting to get free.  If he has an arm free, call the men.  Do you understand, Lydia?"

       "Yes, Mistress.  Move fast to kill him, but don't take chances."

       "Good Girl, Lydia!" Salidia was impressed that the girl grasped the wider implications of what was said.

       She pushed her dagger between the man's legs, hooked it behind the man's balls, and plopped them onto the stool.  She poked the cock and balls with the dagger.  "This is the most sensitive part.  It's easiest to hurt him here, and it won't damage him for field work.  Avoid things that ruin him for work."

       Using the dagger, she pushed the cock to the side.  Indicating the balls, she said.  "If we cut these off, he'll become easier to handle, just like gelding a horse.  But I'm not doing that immediately.  It's too valuable to have the balls to torture.  I want to use the balls for torture first before they're finally cut off."

       "The same goes for the cock.  Sensitive.  It's easy to hurt him there, and it doesn't hurt his value as a worker if it's cut off.  Don't cut it off yet.  I still want it for torture first."

       "An eye or a finger or a toe can go and he'll still be a good worker.  But not the big toe or thumb and not a bunch of toes and fingers.  Do you understand?"

       "We're looking for ways to hurt them the most, but we want to keep them fit for the fields."

       "My good little scullery maid!"  The two women beamed at each other.  "This girl has got potential," Salidia happily thought, "maybe she'll turn out to be more than just a 'step and fetch it'.  This one might turn out to be another Casper."

       Salidia went to the man and grabbed his jaw, twisting his head to face her.  "We're going to torture you, until you pass out.  It may kill you.  You may care about that, but I don't.  I expect to kill a few of you in this room.  And when we finish, you'll be sent back to the stable to heal.  And when you're healed, we going to bring you back in this room and torture you all over again.  And that is your future.  To come here and be tortured by us time after time after time.  Hour after hour of torture, and then waiting in the stable for it to begin all over again."  With that Salidia raised the dagger, and stabbed it down into the man's penis, pinning it to the stool.  She looked into the man's eyes, and asked, "Do you understand?"   And then she began......

       Later that night when Lydia went to bed, she couldn't sleep.  She lay shaking at all that had happened that day, from being made Salidia's maid, to that bad incident when she lost her temper, to people being nice to her.  What had happened to her was wilder than anything she had ever dreamed.  Once she dreamed she was swift Mercury and could fly.  Now she lay in her OWN room, and she wasn't Mercury, but Mars, the taker of men's lives, the god of war, with a weapon of her own, which lay under her pillow now, ready for her to grab if any man came into her room during the night.  From now on, she would always have a weapon at her side to protect herself if some man tried to hurt her.  She had stood next to this powerful women, and tortured a Goth, murderer of her family and her village, who had sent her into slavery and rape.  She had lost her temper when the Goth started to shake off the torture as if it were unimportant, and she was ashamed of that, but Salidia said it was all right.  And soon when one of the brave Goths came into the torture room, one who couldn't be broken, she would kill him with her own hands.

       Earlier when she finally felt strong enough to leave the torture room after having lost her temper, she went up to Talig, with her heart pounding, and said, "Please, Sir, Mistress said I was to get one of the small, thin daggers".  (She couldn't believe she actually said that particular sentence to anybody.)  All the men stopped what they were doing to stare at her, and that made her feel very uncomfortable and self-conscious.  They all just stood still staring at her with serious or troubled expressions.  Talig turned and looked at her for a long time with a grave look on his face, and then turned and went into the villa without saying anything.

       Maybe he had found out she lost her temper.  She feared the look meant he disapproved of her and that right now he was in the villa telling Salidia she should not have a knife.  She didn't know if she should follow him.  When he left, did that mean he refused her request and was ignoring her?  She didn't know what to do, and she was afraid of doing something wrong.  She just stood there because she didn't know what else to do.  In 10 minutes he returned with a belt, sheath, and dagger, and saying, "Here," he gave it to her; but he continued to stare at her with a serious, troubled look on his face.  Terrified he disapproved of her, she scurried away, head down.

       Within a few steps he called, "Wait."  Her heart sank.  "He's going to take it away from me!  He knows I don't deserve it; he knows I'm just a scullery maid.  He decided I should not have it."  She turned, with fear and disappointment flooding her face.  With tears starting to brim in her eyes, she handed it to him.   He took the dagger from her.  And then he opened it and ran his thumb along the blade.  Her mind said, "He's not going to take it from me!", but her heart still pounded in fear and tears still threatened her eyes.  He turned to one of the men and said, "Andeocene, sharpen this for the girl."  He looked at her again and then returned to his men.  Not knowing what to do, she stood in the same spot without moving for a half hour until the man returned with the blade, which he gave to Talig.  Talig winked (????!!!!!!!) at her, nodded his head in the affirmative, smiled, and pleasantly said, "Now it's good for you, little one!"  He turned and went to his men.  Stunned by his unexpected pleasantness when she believed he disapproved of her, she turned and slowly walked away, in shock, to find Salidia.

       Later that night when the shock had worn off, she though, "I talked to Talig, and he listened to me!  And I asked him for something, and he actually got it for me!!  And HE WAS NICE TO ME!"  Reinterpreting his stare in light of his niceness, she now thought, "He treated me like I was important!"  She hadn't had any sort of pleasant relationship with a man since she was a little girl with her family.

       In months to come, Talig would show the girl tricks to using a knife, like never doing the same thing twice unless it's a trap; or how to spring forward and to the side while she struck for the throat, and then position her arm to stab the back of the leg as she landed behind the man, so all the parts came together as one quick leap and turn.  And variations: spring and turn for the leg if she missed the throat, or spring forward and continuing on to the next target if she was certain she got the throat.  Or practice trying to accurately hit a target, like the eye, and still be fast.  And he showed her ways to become faster like practicing with a heavy weight in her hand.  She had to practice time after time two fast strikes to use when two men were standing close to each other.  But most of all, he had her train, over and over again, how to whip out the dagger fast and catch a man by surprise.

       And finally, when her arm had become stronger from the heavy weights, Talig showed her the three main ways to train the body to move faster, speed training, which he never taught anyone else but Salidia.  He made both women promise never to show anyone else what he taught them, and he made them practice in the villa with no one in the adjoining rooms so no one else could see.  Lydia practiced what Talig had shown her for six months and didn't get much better.  Salidia was already starting to become fast because she had been practicing with Talig for months before Lydia came along.  And then one day, ONCE while Lydia practiced, her arm flashed out in a strike.  But try as hard as she could, she couldn't do it a second time.  It took her three more weeks of practice and then it happened once again: her arm flashed out at blinding speed.  And then it happened more and more frequently, until every time Lydia stuck, her arm flew forward with stunning speed.  It had taken a long time, a lot of training and practice, but eventually Talig's training methods had trained her body to move fast.  Then she understood why Talig had her train to strike two men standing close together.  Now she was fast enough to strike two men before either could move to block her.  And she remembered the story of Talig on the Phoenician galley, killing three before the third took one step, and she understood how he did it.  Talig had used that technique in a real fight with men, and he won; and Talig had taught her the same technique so she could be in a real fight with men and win.

       Salidia and Lydia never became as fast as Talig, but they became faster than Caius, the other fast "small shield" gladiator.

       Talig never showed another man how he trained his body to become fast, because then they might become as fast as Talig and might kill him in a fight.  Talig never taught another man, but he taught the two women.  When Talig was finally killed at 42 in a senseless fight in the village with two fast young men, the two women went alone into the village to find the men.  The first young men was fast enough to avoid Talig's first strike, and while Talig move to strike again, the second young man stabbed him in the back.  The women found the men and killed them.  After they killed the men, they fell on their knees and cried for Talig.  The two women tended Talig's body, with his men standing around.  They only let his men touch the body.  But that was all many long years in the future.

       Talig also had the men practice with the girls so they could become faster at dodging and blocking, and sharpen their reflexes.  The men were always respectful to Salidia, although her sense of humor kept everyone laughing; but the men loved practicing with the spunky, spirited young girl. They loved her for her courage.  When she fell or was hit by one of the wood training swords, she would get right back up and start training again.  And when she was hurt, she would still practice the next day, even if she was limping or had pain when she moved her arm.  For all the training, the laughing and smiling that went on made it seem more like children playing together.  Several days a week both women would practice with the men, and it was the high point of the men's week to practice and laugh with the women.  And the man strictly enforced a rule to rotate who would train with the women, so each man would have his turn.  Lydia noticed this and talked of it with Salidia. and it would come to pay the men back for all they did.

       In a few months of laughing and joking with the women on the training ground, the men had become so fond of them that any of the men would have died to protect them.  The laughing together had moved the women into the men's hearts.

       And in less then a year, when Lydia walked in among the slaves, she could kill any one of them in a blink of the eye, and she knew it.

       And when she stood with the slaves, she always stood with her right hand resting on the hilt of her dagger.  She had become Mars, the taker of men's lives.  And her eyes spoke that to the slaves she talked to.

                               Chapter 5

                       A Day at the Office

       That first day with Salidia in the torture room, Lydia tried to be so good.  She waited to do anything Salidia might ask of her, and she paid attention to everything Salidia said and did.

       "You're a big, bad Goth warrior, aren't you.  No little women is going to scare you, are they," Salidia asked the Goth.

       "Well, my big tough man, when you leave here, you're going to a bit less of a man.  Every time you come here, you're going to be a little bit smaller, until you're no longer a man."  Salidia stood directly in front of the Goth as she said this, looking straight into his eyes.

       "And when you go back to the stable, when you look at your comrades, they are going to remind you of what the little lady did to make you a little bit smaller man," she said, leaning in closer to him.

       She put her knife tip in his nostril, and pulled up, slitting the nostril open.  "Oh, you're so tough!  You didn't show any pain.  If I do it again, will you still be so tough?"  She put the knife in the other nostril, and sliced that one open also.  "Oh, still so tough!"

       "Well, I don't want you worrying about scars on your nose that will make you look ugly.  No one will see anything on that nose of yours.  You see, I have this little trick to remember how many times you've been in this room.  Every time you come here, I'm going to make a little mark so I know if you've been here 1,2,3,4....times."

       "Now the first time you're here, I take your nose, the next time an ear, then the other ear, then eyebrows and it keeps going.  I'll have some of your fingers and toes.  And when I'm finished with you, your cock and balls too.  I let rats do that.  They'll eat your cock and balls while you watch their little stomachs get bigger and bigger."  As she said this, she began to slice off the tip of his nose.

       "When you go back to the stable, you can look at your companions, and they will remind you what I did because they won't have any noses either.  When you see them, I want you to remember you're just like them: without a nose.  And each time you or your friends come here, you're going to be a little less of the man than the man who walked in here.  Ears and eye brows, and fingers and toes will go.  And in the end you won't even be a man because you won't have a cock or balls anymore.  You'll just be a thing without a face or sex.  And when you're back in the stable and you and your friends look at each other, you can remind each other of what the little Lady does to you here in this room."

       As she said that, she started to take off another slice of nose, starting at the bridge of the nose and going down.

       "Of course, your nose isn't the end of your visit here.  We're going to do more things for you today.  After the nose we have some red hot needles to shove into your cock and balls.  And after that, we're going to cut a little skin off the top of your head.  And after that, a little fire.  One thing after another until you pass out."

       At this point she was cutting the nose off flush with the cheeks.

       Salidia stopped, and said, "Lydia, see that brazier over there.  Bring it over here and light it.  Be careful, there are needles in it.  Don't spill the needles out."  Salidia leaned back against a table to rest and sipped some wine, expecting the brazier to take a little time to get hot and the needles to glow red in the fire.  That's not what happened to Lydia, as they waited for the needles to glow red in the brazier's flames.

       Lydia and Salidia were two different women.  Salidia enjoyed the power and control she exercised over the slaves, which she could coolly plot and plan to achieve.  She was coldly calculating.  That's not what Lydia was like: Lydia was filled with rage and could be impulsive, explosive.

       As Lydia watched the Goth being tortured for the first time, it didn't satisfying her and slake her rage.  Each time the Goth grimaced in pain she was provoked more; it reminder her of a wish she had 10 yrs. ago, a wish she had 9 yrs. ago, a wish she had 8 yrs. ago, 7 yrs., 6 yrs,.........she had 13 years worth of rage stored in her, each year filled with hundreds of wishes to see the Goths suffer for each of the hundreds of crimes they had committed against her.  As she watched the Goth, more and more wishes to punish them, and anger against them, filled her.  "Good! That's the way you should feel!  Hurt, you bastard, hurt!  Suffer!  Good!  Hurt him some more, Mistress!  Make him hurt worse," she thought as she watched Salidia with the Goth.   As she watched the Goth, she became more and more enraged at him.  "Hurt him!  Hurt him," she screamed in her mind.

       As Salidia tortured him, the Goth sort of rocked back and forth, his body shaking as he tried to control the pain, making inarticulate sounds as he struggled to control his screams.  When Salidia stopped, he slumped forward, exhausted from his tense and struggling body.  As time passed as they waited for the brazier to heat, he began to recover, and raised his head up and he looked angrily at the women.

       When Lydia saw him recovering and the angry look in his face, she flew into a rage.  She rushed at him, threw her arms on his shoulder. and started kneeing him in the balls, shouting, "You bastard, You bastard, You bastard...."  The attack was so ferocious, blood started to fly about as his balls and cock were caught between her knee and the bones of his pelvis.  The Goth moaned under the attack.

       Salidia was caught by surprise and in shock over what was happening.  The sheer athleticism behind the girl's fury was incredible.  She was amazed Lydia didn't fall to the floor in exhaustion.  Wide eyed and opened mouthed, she thought, "How long can she do this????"  First, it was the rapidity of the kicks.  She didn't think anyone could kick that fast.  It was almost like something Talig could do.  Second, it was the endurance.  She couldn't believe anyone could keep up that pace for so long.  She thought, "I bet that girl could run to town and back again as fast as I could do it on a horse."   The girl was obliviously athletically talented.

       What Salidia saw was the result of Lydia being in fights with men almost every day of her life as she tried to fight back against her abusers on the farm where she had lived; it had fostered the skills and abilities Lydia needed to fight.  Lydia had been in physical fights with her abusers most of her life, and she fought like a wildcat.  She had learned that if she fought hard enough to hurt the man, he would just beat her, but be too sore to rape her.  So she had learned to fight as best she could.  She just continued on and on in a frenzy with the Goth, kicking and kicking.  Finally she stopped in exhaustion, bent over, her hands resting on her knees, her body heaving, trying to catch her breath.

       Lydia noticed the brazier beside her, screamed "Ahhhaa", and grabbed the Goth's balls with one hand, and one of the foot long needles with the other and started stabbing the balls in another frenzy.  The Goth was screaming.  This didn't last as long; she was already exhausted when she started.  Soon she dropped the needle and stood bent over again, gasping for air, trying to catch her breath.  The Goth slumped over, uttering low moans.

       As Lydia slowly caught her breath, she saw the bull whip.  Again, she screamed "AAAhhhhaaa," and ran to grab the bull whip.  She grabbed the whip by the wrong end, by the tip rather than the handle.  She raced back and started to flail at the Goth, holding the tip in her hand, with the handle crashing into the Goth, uttering grunts with every swing.  The Goth was going, "Ohhhahh," with every impact.  Eventually, the handle crashed into his head, and he slumped forward unconscious.  When he passed out, Lydia's shoulders slumped forward and her head sagged to her chest.  She stood there heaving for breath.

       The Mistress became the maid and Salidia attended the girl.  She pulled a chair up behind the girl, and guided her back into it.  Salidia stroked the girl forehead, pulling hair from the girls face.

       "There, girl. It's all right.  It's all over.  Just relax and rest"

       "Talig!"

       Five men rushed into the room, swords drawn, eyes flashing around the room for danger.  They saw Salidia with the girl slumped in a chair, with her head forward against her chest, half unconscious from exhaustion; and they feared for the little (compared to them) girl. They looked at Salidia with anxious eyes, wanting instructions.

       "Get him out of here.  Get me water and some towels."

       Two men pulled the Goth down and dragged him out. Not very nicely.  Two raced for water and towels.  Talig stood there, in case he was needed, anxious for the young girl, and not knowing what else to do.  When all four men returned they put the water and towels by Salidia and stood behind Talig.  The rest of the men had gathered around the door.  Talig motioned them all out.  He backed up to the door, and hovered there until he saw the girl was beginning to recover and that she was alright.  Knowing he was superfluous, he backed out the door and left.  The men were all gathered outside, and Talig said, "She's alright."  The tension left the group, and they all reluctantly went back to what they were doing.  He left one man stationed outside the door to listen for any summons.  Later, when the girl came out and approached Talig to get a dagger, they all stopped what they were doing and watched her to make sure she was alright.  Talig stared at her a long time, making sure she looked alright and wasn't hurt.

       There is a camaraderie among people who face the same danger, and the girl had been swept under it's mantle when she entered the room with the Goth.  When she was a scullery maid they didn't pay much attention to her, just another one of the slave girls who worked on the farm.  But when she was in the room with the Goth she became one of them, and they all closed ranks around her.  From that day forward all the men felt protective of her.

       Salidia wiped the girl's face with a wet towel.

"I'm so sorry, Mistress, I just got so angry.  I feel so ashamed.  Don't send me away,  Please, don't send me away. I'm so sorry."

       "It alright, girl.  They can't hurt you any more.  I've been to the north with the soldiers.  The soldiers killed all the Goths from your valley.  They can't hurt you anymore.  The few alive were sent to the Colosseum in Rome last week, and they will all be dead by now.  These here are the last of the men from your village and valley.  They're all chained up, and Talig and his men are standing guard over them.  You can kill every one of them with your own hand if you wish."

       The girl broke down crying.  Salidia held her.  Lydia kept saying she was sorry and ashamed, but instead of her actions alienating her from the others, what happened opened the hearts of all to the girl.

       No matter what happened outside or inside the villa, the people who lived in the villa were a tight knit group loyal to each other.

                               Chapter 6

                       New Kid on the Block

       Andeocene was a calm, relaxed man, who was pleasant and helpful, which was no surprise.  Talig liked to laugh.  The head bodyguard wasn't just a skilled fighter, he was also a capable, competent, smart man; but he wrapped his abilities in laughter, which made his days more pleasant and made the dangers he faced more bearable.  When he assembled his group of bodyguards, he choose men who were the best at what they did.  But Rome had hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of the best swords for hire, and when given a choice between two men, Talig choose the man who was easiest to get along with.  Only when he got to the end of his selections, the twelfth man, Atus, an outgoing man from Germania, did he choose personality over ability.  Talig choose Atus over a mean spirited Greek who was a better swordsman.  Overall, Talig's group of men were pleasant and friendly.

       The first time Lydia started to focus on Andeocene was late in the afternoon of her first day with Salidia, when she was moving her few things, her new clothes, a blanket, pillow and her pallet, from the slave quarters to Miridia's room.  He had seen her struggling with the stiff, hay stuffed bag across the court yard, and said, "Here, let me help you with that."  Surprised, Lydia never had a man help her at the farm where she had lived.  They had only laughed at her when she struggled with something.  The next day when she ran into him, he said, "Here, I have a surprise for you." and he walked to the side of the building, and there was a wool stuffed pallet. "Here, this is much better than that old straw bag you have.  The weather's still going to be cold for a while.  This will keep you warmer."  He didn't ask for anything in return, just smiled at her, tousled her hair, and walked away.

       She started to watch him.  The men at Salidia's villa were a different kind of man than the men on the farm where she had lived.  Andeocene was like that with everybody.  When somebody struggle with a load or a task, he'd walk over and help.  On the part of the other men, when he walked over to someone, they always welcomed him with big smiles, and put their arms over his shoulder.  If a group of men were sitting, they'd all slide over to make room for him, and all say, "Come on, sit down, there's plenty of room," even when there wasn't much room.

       During her first practice the next day, when she accompanied Salidia for Salidia's practice session with the men, Talig had showed Lydia a way to block and counter strike while she spun to the right, and then change direction to move behind an opponent to attack him from the back a second time.  She was having trouble with the change of directions.  Her momentum carried her straight back, and she stumbled when she tried to change directions and move to the right.  Andeocene came over and said, "Here, when you come around, you have to lean forward and put all your weight on your right leg, and keep your knee bent, and ready to absorb your stop.  Then push off with your left.  Keep the left leg close to your body as you turn.  It helps if you dip your shoulder down just before you move right.  It helps start the movement.  Do the strike for the leg then.  See," and he demonstrated it for her.  Then he showed her a variation to strike for the leg, and move straight back, instead of going to the right.   The variation was very easy to do, and fast; and she liked it.  And he stayed there and practiced it with her time after time until she got it, and the variation too.

       Andeocene continued to watch the girl practice for a while, and noted that the girl had started to picked up the trick of bringing her body into the correct ending positions for each of the separate steps.  "That's good, Little One, you picked it up fast," he said to her.

       "Here, let me show you something.  Talig has his way of being fast.  He trains muscles to move quickly.  I have my way of being fast.  I'll show you," he said to her.  "At the end of the second step, your right arm is up in the strike, and you know you want to start dipping your right shoulder down at the start of the fourth step.  Be fast by starting to move your right arm down during the third step.  Be fast by positioning yourself to be ready for your next move, so when you have to do the next thing, you're already in position."

       "Position yourself to be prepared for the next thing you have to do, that another way to be fast.  For this block, it means dropping your shoulder as you come around for the second strike.  That means you have think of both your right arms and your left leg during the third step, but that is what practice is for.  It is why we drill hour after hour.  Practice enough, and you'll get faster by having all your moves integrated with each other," he continued with her.

       "See," he said to her, demonstrating.  "On the fourth step, if I start to push off my left leg, it naturally helps to push your right arm forward for the second strike, and that starts you off for the fifth step.  Everything working to together.  That makes you fast, too."

       Caius, who had been standing around like a fifth wheel, joined the conversation.  "Don't let this windbag fill you up with too much to remember all at once, kid."  "Ande," he said, turning to Andeocene, "give the girl a break.  One thing at a time.  Let her learn Tal's stuff first."

       Turning back to Lydia, "You practice this stuff tomorrow, and if you feel you've got it down, then try something else.  Don't let that bag of hot air over there stick you with too much to do.  And when you feel you are ready for something new and you get bored doing the same thing over and over, come see me.  I'll show you something new, too."

       He went on, "Not everything is about speed.  You have to be agile and nimble, too.  There's two ways to be agile.  You have to be born with some it, or else you can't do this job; but there's another way: be practiced and ready with a dozen things to do no matter what your opponent does.  Be agile by having a bag full of tricks ready to use on your opponent.  Be ready to fly into a dozen practiced moves the instant your opponent tries something."

       "When you're comfortable with these variations, see me.  There are three other variations on this one block alone.  We'll having you flying around this training ground in no time."

       There maybe no better way to pump up a man's ego than letting him strut around as a "know it all."  It puffed up the ego of all the men to play the "expert" for the young girl.  They would have beat each other over the head for their turn at being a "all knowing expert" for Lydia.  And she rewarded them with a best reward possible: a big smile.  And because Lydia was a naturally good athlete, the frustration of dealing with a lot of mistakes was avoided, which just encouraged the men to teach her more and more.

       Because of the boost to the men's ego's, Lydia had a line of twelve of the best swords in Rome showing her what they knew, each man something different than the other.  She was getting a good education, and practice day after day, with possibly the best twelve swords in Rome.

       That night after practice, everyone gathered in the atrium, as was their custom, and just chatted.  As Salidia's maid, Lydia accompanied Salidia to the gathering for the first time, and she didn't know what to do standing on the edge of the group.  She surreptitiously watched Andeocene, remembering her father and uncles who were so nice and good to her.  She missed those men from her family so much, and that look of longing must have colored her eyes.  Andeocene noticed her glance at him, and motioned her over to him, scrunching over on his seat to make room for her.

       To him it was an inconsequential thing; something he would have done for anybody standing while everyone else sat.  But to her it was a big deal.  It was not a place to sit while people talked; it was the warmth of family that were nice to her that she remembered and missed.  It wasn't a seat she looked for; it was people who would be nice to her that she wanted.  Andeocene reminded her of her uncles, and he came to symbolize them to her.  Shy because the stakes were so high for her, afraid of being rejected for something she wanted so badly, she was too shy to sit on the seat with him; but she went over and sat on ground next to him, leaning back on the empty part of the seat.  It was no big deal to him.  She reminded him of his younger daughter, Kaylin.  Both were spunky, brave girls.  He stroked her hair once, as an acknowledgement of her presence, as he would if he were sitting with Kaylin.

       To Lydia, this was a big deal.  When he stroked her hair, it was like she had found her uncle from long ago.  The first time he did it, a tear filled her eye.  She was timid about it, and it took some time, but it became her habit to sit next to Andeocene, with her head resting on his leg, him stroking her hair when they gathered at night to talk.  One, with the emptiness of missed uncles filled in; the other, with thoughts of a missed daughter, sons, and wife replaced with a substitute for a while.

       That second day with Salidia, when Lydia followed Salidia to practice for the first time, Talig had his first chance to talk to the girl.  Talig had shown Salidia a move that he wanted her to practice until she could do it without thinking, so she was going to be repeating it 300 times, or 500 times, or a 1000 or whatever it took.  Caius had gotten tired of waiting for Talig as he instructed Salidia, and had started up some 2 on 1 practice with Andeocene and Rufus.  Two on one practice was really just keeping your reflects sharp, and parrying like all Hades.

       Talig liked that the young girl was there at practice.  There were an even 12 men for practice, and everyone had a partner.  When Salidia came, she made 13, and someone had to stand around without a partner.  The young girl made an even number again, and even if she was too green to offer much use in practice, at least she was somebody to talk to.

       That first day at practice when he talked to her for the first time, he was mindful that the girl had some sort of issue with the Goths, some sort of history with them, and he was tactful with her.  "Would you like me to show you some things with that," he said, pointing to her dagger, "Some day you might have to defend yourself or your Mistress with it."

       Besides, he was standing around the practice ground with nothing else to do.

       Lydia got all flustered and embarrassed when Talig came over and started to talk to her for the first time.  On the one hand, he had been the first person to be nice to her, and there was such a shortage of people in her life who had been nice to her.  On the other hand, he terrified her.  Muscular, agile, his simplest movements betrayed an athletically coordinated man who made everything look easy to do.  He was incredibly fast and skillful when he practiced.  On the farm where she lived, where brute force ruled, it was clear he would have dominated every man there; and in that world, the stronger a man was, the more he hurt her.  He was the most physically dangerous man she had ever seen, and her instincts told her this man could hurt her worse than any other man she had ever met.  She could hardly concentrate as he talked to her, torn between the memory of his niceness and fear of him.

       Talig noticed how shy the girl was, and that she wasn't really following what he was saying to her; and he deliberately slowed down what he said and made it real simple for her.  He was showing her the simplest block and strike.  "First you block like this.  That's step one.  Then you strike like this.  That's step two.  Then you bring your leg and arm around like this.  That step three.  And you strike a second time.  That's step four.  See!  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Simple!  Do you want to try it?  I'll pretend to strike at you, and you do the block and counter strike.  Alright?  Ready?  Here we go."  He pretended to strike at her, and hoped she would counter with the 4 steps he had just shown her.

       She really wasn't paying attention to him, lost in the welter of thoughts racing through her mind, and it caught her by complete surprise when he feigned a strike at her.  First, her face flashed terror, and then immediately shifted to rage, and then...............

       "Holy Gods," he thought!  She flew at him, both arms swinging, faster than any of the "large shield" men could have done.  It was like fast Caius was coming at him.  He really had to work hard to stay away from her.  He felt like he had just stepped on a cat's tail. "Easy!  Easy, little one," he laughed, backing up as fast as he could.  "Easy, my Little Lion!  God's, you're fast.  It's just practice.  It's just practice," he laughed, running backwards as fast as he could before her onslaught.

       It was his retreating and constant laugher that made her realize he hadn't really attacked her.  His retreat removed her feeling that he was threatening her; and without the threat of attack, she started to think clearly again; and remember where she was.  Then she realized she had acted inappropriately, taking him seriously when he really meant no harm.

       "I'm so sorry.  I didn't mean to get so mad."

       He leaned over to look her level in the face, and with a big smile on his face, he said, "It's alright, Little Lion.  No harm done.  And you turned my practice session into a real workout, so I owe you a 'Thank You.'  Come on, I'll show you again.  Just don't bite me."  This time, she paid attention.  And she picked it up immediately.  She only had trouble when he added the fifth step, the change of directions.

       "Don't worry about it.  First, practice each of the steps separately.  You have to be able to do each one clean and complete, or you'll get sloppy and make mistakes when you do it fast.  Do One, Two, Three, Four, Five.  Each one separate.  Train your body to go to each of the five positions. Then we'll worry about getting them all to fit together later.  It just comes with practice."

       She started to practice the five steps by herself.  Salidia was still practicing what he had shown her.  Caius, Andeocene and Rufus had stopped to laugh at the spectacle of Talig backing across the practice grounds as fast as his legs could carry him before the assault of the little spitfire.  Talig went back to his own practice with Caius.  Later, when the girl tried to put all the steps together, he noticed that she was having trouble with the change of directions.  That was the hard part.  Everyone had trouble with the change of direction.  Then he noticed that Andeocene went over to help her with it.  Good Andeocene, he was always ready to help anyone with anything.

       That night when they gathered in the Atrium to sit and talk, the girl attended for the first time, and Talig watched her.  She was so shy.  Good Andeocene made room for her, but she shyly just sat on the ground next to him.  Andeocene tried to make her feel welcome.  Talig thought, "She's such a contradiction.  So shy when you talk to her, yet so tough on the training ground.  Like the god Janus, the god with two faces, one side of the girl is the shy little kitchen mouse, and the other side is the ferocious little lion.  So fast and quick to learn."  He saw what Salidia liked in the girl.  He liked her, too.  She was just a bundle of changing emotions, first one thing, than another.  And talented, better than any novice he remembered seeing.  She was already getting smooth with the change of directions, dropping her right shoulder and bringing it forward.  In one day!  Smooth!  Salidia made a good choice in picking the girl.

       He leaned over to Salidia, "Your little spitfire is quite a little lion.  Fast.  I'll spend some time with her.  She might turn out to be something quite good."  "Little lion," Salidia thought.  Talig's opinion mattered a lot to her.  When she picked Lydia, it was because of the scowl the girl cast on the Goth, and her amusing personality.  She had no idea of the girl's physical abilities.  That was a fortuitous turn of events.  She looked again at the young girl who was now leaning against Andeocene's leg, listening to the men talk as Andeocene stroked her hair.  Salidia now started to think about the Little Lion as a fighter.

       They were talking about strange animals they had seen.  Cetus was telling them about the giant black fire breathing fish he had seen at sea.  He was telling them about a pod of them that surrounded his ship, and then passed the ship by.  They were longer than the ship, and rose up and down in the water, coming to the surface at the top.  And when one was along side the ship and came to the top, he had seen a hole open up in it heads, and a giant plume of smoke and hot steam rushed out, to the sound of, "Wisshhhs."

       Too shy to speak in front of the group, Lydia whispered to Andeocene, "What's a lion?"  He repeated the question to the group.

       All the men had been recruited in Rome, so they knew what a lion was and they knew where the question came from.  Presphene got up, and stalked toward the girl, hunched over, moving his arms as if walking on them, imitating a lion.  "It's a giant, ferocious cat that weighs as much as three men and stands as high as a man's waist, and it can pick a man up like a cat grabs a mouse and run away with him to eat him all up."  Andeocene held the girl's shoulder: "Don't scare the girl, Pressie."

       Lydia looked up at Andeocene, "Are there really such animals, giant cats?  And they hunt men?"  Andeocene nodded, "yes," to her, "Yes, ferocious animals that hunt men, and even a man with a shield and lance is very lucky to survive an attack."

       Presphene started to stalk toward the girl again, wanting to pick up the joke again and continue it, but Andeocene shook his head, "no," not wanting to scare the shy girl too much. 

                               Chapter 7

                       Their Souls to Keep

       On the 12th day they got a Goth who cursed them from the beginning to the end of the session in the torture room.  When he returned the second time, they cut off his ear, and he pulled at his straps and wrenched his body about the lattice, shouting "You fucking cunts, I'll kill you when I get loose."  Very seriously, without any agitation, Salidia nodded to Lydia for the first time.  Lydia stood in front of the Goth very calmly and seriously starring at him for a while.  Very seriously she said, "This is for my mother," and as fast as she could for that time in her life, she slashed her knife across his throat.

       It appeared as if he tried to grab his throat from the way his wrist and fingers bent in and pointed toward his throat, and from the way he tried to pull his arms in toward himself, although he was tied to the lattice.  His eyes went wide in shock, and then fear as he realized he couldn't break free to grab his throat.  He tried to pull his arms in more frantically, and then his body started to spasm.  His head slumped to his chest and his eyes visibly dimmed and gazed over, and his whole body relaxed.  He wet himself.  Lydia would later learn that no matter who they were or what they were doing, they always stopped fighting and grabbed for their throat the moment the throat was cut.

       When Lydia cut the carotid, the blood surged out, spraying more that half a body length.  Lydia didn't try to dodge it or move away.  She just stood there, letting it wash over her, instead watching the Goth very seriously.  Except for Talig's murderer who she would kill years from now, it was the most important man she ever killed.  Behind him, as he died, she could see her village and her parents.

       There were sixteen who were killed between the second and third round of torture, most grouped toward the end.  It seems they were the ones who fought the Roman guards the hardest when they were chained up at the Roman camp, so they were the last to be put in irons, and they were the last to be put into the stable, filling up it's back.

       Lydia killed them all.  How she killed them was always basically the same, except for the names of the people she mentioned when she killed them.  That became Lydia's style, her preference, when she was sure she was faster than the person she faced.  It was exactly how she killed Talig's murderer.  Except then she walked over to Salidia and knelt down beside her, and the two women hugged each other and wept.

       Lydia was Mars.  Lydia was one of the Furies.

                               Chapter 8

                          Diana and her Cat

       Lydia began to changed after her first kill, little by little with each man she killed.  First it was the look in her face and how she watched what went on around her.  Then around eight months into her training with Talig, when she first started to get very fast because of Talig's speed training, how she positioned herself around people changed.  As her training increased, she became stronger, more lithe, more agile, more nimble.  By the 11th month how she moved around a room or people was noticeably different than the girl Salidia first met, or other people in general for that matter.  By the close of the year she had developed a style which would mark her for the rest of her life.

       Not with Salidia or Talig or the men.  With them she became warmer, more affectionate, more demonstrative, more playful.  With her little group she would run from one to the other, hugging, touching, giving kisses on the cheek.  The men all grumbled, and they all loved her because of it.   She became a glue that pulled the whole group closer together, uniting parts that would not have come together without her.  Her vivacious and affectionate personality enlivened the whole group.  The men talked among themselves when they were in a group; they laughed and joked with each other when Lydia was part of the group.  They became the family she missed, mother, father, uncles, and when the men finally brought their families up from Rome (which was Lydia's suggestion to Salidia), aunts and nieces and nephews.

       A very good analogy would be a lioness playing with cubs in the pride, but stealth incarnate stalking prey outside the pride.  But a lioness only describes her eyes, not her body.  The eyes looked like she was stalking prey: concentration.  But her body moved with a lightness on her feet that no lion ever had.  She always seemed to be on the balls of her feet, her legs centered underneath her, as if she were prepared to spring forward; lunge.  When she focused on someone not in her group, like a merchant, she would orient her body toward them as if prepared to strike.  When Salidia or Talig talked to someone not in the group, Lydia tended to circle from left to right around Salidia or Talig and then back again, over and over, always oriented toward whoever Salidia or Talig talked to.  For lack of a better analogy, like a lion pacing back and forth in an old style cage.

       To Lydia, the world was always a dangerous place filled with people who would hurt you, like the men on the farm where she had lived or the Goths, ready to rip you from your home and cause you pain; and the only safe place was with her little group who loved her, and who she loved.  To Lydia, every stranger could be a Goth, there to hurt her or her family.

       How Lydia moved around didn't apply when she decided to strike, like in killing one of the Goths.  When she decided to strike she would pause first.  She had a tell.  To those who didn't know her, she seemed like a lithe young women, who couldn't stay still and who always stared at people straight in their eye.  To the men who trained with her and saw her speed develop over the past year, Lydia seem always dangerous when she moved, and deadly when she paused.  At a year, Lydia was faster than any of the men except Talig, and they knew she would have been dangerous to them in other circumstances.

       When Lydia was in the torture room, Salidia would tend to stand in front of the slave, and Lydia would circle from left to right around Salidia, and that characterized the two women wherever they went: Salidia standing and talking, Lydia circling in the background.  Salidia always thought of the first time in the torture room with Lydia.  Salidia tortured the Goth and Lydia stood on the side watching, but she flew in a rage at the Goth when he seemed to recover.  Salidia saw the same girl she had seen that first day, standing still then striking, only today the affects of training were added on top of stand then strike: agility, nimbleness and Talig's emphasis on springing forward to strike.  Lydia was the same girl, but now she added on the physical prowess to kill that Talig had taught her, and her actions reflected these physical skills.

       Typical of how the two women were with each other was something that happened around thirteen months after Lydia started training.  On a nice spring day, Salidia needed oil, and she wanted cloth from the market.  Because of the wonderful change from the dreary weather of winter, she decided to walk, and headed to town with three of the men and two pack horses.  (And Lydia, of course, because she always went wherever Salidia was.)  Coming from the other direction was a local Cimbri chieftain, mounted, his son who was a young man of eighteen, and four vassals.

       When they drew abreast, the chieftain continued straight down the middle of the road (expecting all to yield to his exalted high Majesty!), forcing Salidia and Lydia to the side of the road.  As the chieftain pulled across from Salidia he said, "Roman slut, let a Chieftain pass."  The Cimbri may have assumed Salidia was a commoner because she was afoot and not well dressed, among a group who appeared to treat each other casually, possibly a group of slaves on a mission for a master.  The moment Lydia heard what the Cimbri said she stepped out into the road and walked toward the boy.  Typical of her, she came to a stop in front of him and stared into his eyes a moment.  The moment Lydia stopped in front of the young man, everybody with Lydia knew what was going to happen next.

       She struck from a standing position without bothering to spring, and then turned to face the chieftain.  The vassals behind saw the young women, who didn't seem frightening to them, step in front of the young man, the young man blocked their view of the girl for a moment, and then the young man fell, revealing the young women's back as she now faced forward toward the chieftain.  There was a moment of puzzlement on their part as they tried to understand what had just happened.  Salidia's men used that moment to their advantage, knowing that they would need to use their swords the moment Lydia walked into the road.

       The chieftain noticed the young women step on to the road, and he watched her move in front of his son.  He saw the blood gush out of his son's throat and the woman calmly turn to him.  He bellowed a roar, and swung off the horse to charge her.  He was forty, and looked like he hadn't fought in the last ten yrs., and Lydia didn't think of him as a challenge as he lumbered heavily toward her.  Her first choice move was always the strike to the throat and then spinning off to the side and back.  She withheld the strike, just spun off to the side and back.  She did strike the back of his leg as she pivoted around, and he was so slow she had time to jerk up on the knife after it was in him, leaving a palm width gash in the back of his leg.  When the men saw she didn't do her typical strike to the throat, they knew she was playing with him.  He was now crippled, facing someone faster than himself, and that meant he was a dead man.  He knew he was a dead man, too; you could see it in his eyes.  He stood unsteady on one leg, afraid of what was going to happen next.  Lydia walked backwards until she was to the side and behind Salidia.

       And the picture then was the picture that would typify Salidia and Lydia for the rest of their lives.  The man on one side, Salidia facing him, and Lydia to the side and behind Salidia.  Whenever the men thought of the two women, that's how they pictured them.  Salidia in front, Lydia to her side, and back.

       Salidia watched Lydia and her men clear the road of Cimbri for her, leaving the Chieftain standing alone, and she waited for Lydia to return to her place beside her.

       Lydia was Salidia's attack dog, and she had just delivered up to her Mistress the man, crippled, who had insulted her.  To the men who trained with Lydia and knew her speed, they knew Lydia was more deadly than any mastiff.

       Salidia finished off the Cimbri who had insulted her.  The strike and slide to the side was Salidia's favorite too.  (It was Lydia's favorite, and it was Salidia's favorite --- because it was Talig's favorite and he taught them.)  Salidia was easily faster than the man and she could have simply struck without him being fast enough to block her, and then pivoted to his back.  His left leg was crippled and she could have done "ballet pirouettes"  to his left and been safe.  But it's just "nice", comfortable, to know where the sword is.

       (When very fast people train, they develop "set" pieces of 3-4-5 steps coordinated into one flowing whole, which they practice over and over again to become even faster, which they can execute without thinking.  When they initiate one of these integrated moves, they don't want a left or right arm of their opponent to unexpectedly appear in their line of travel because their momentum will carry them into it.  So they like their opponent to indicate whether they'll strike with their left or right arm; then the fast person moves to the clear side.  It was the technique used by Bruce Lee, and it is known as "Defensive Counter-punching."  They are "counter-punchers", a skill reserved for the very fast.  They wait for the other person to move first, and then counter with a strike to the open side, and because of their greater speed they beat their opponent to the punch.  They never throw the first punch; they always land the first punch.  They watch, wait, and then explode into movement.)

       Salidia walked straight at the chieftain, with her arms simply at her sides, which was meant to provoke, and entice, him into making a move.  The woman slowly walking towards the man with her arms at her side was not a calm scene; it was like watching a mouse trap that was about to snap close.  When she got close, he raised the sword up, intending to strike down at her.  With the swords line of travel established, she exploded up to the throat before he could completely raise the sword, and flew to her right behind him.  In a flash, the women was behind him, and he stood with the sword raised in the air and a hole in his throat. The two women stood one in front of him and one behind him; he clutched his throat a few moments, and fell.

    It was an execution, not a fight, from beginning to end.

    They left the men and their possessions in the road, and went on.  The six men would be found in the road with no witnesses as to what happened.

                               Chapter 9

                       Cleaning House

       Sixteen Goths were killed in the first three torture sessions because they weren't breakable.  Salidia let Lydia do all the killing.

       Everything fell into patterns, with only one exception.

       The men were all pretty much the same.  "You filthy cunts," "You fucking cunt," "you lousy cunts,""You fucking bitches," "I'll kill you when I get loose," "I'll strangle you when I get loose," "I'll gut you...." They were all brave men, or strong men, or stubborn men, Or just stupid.  They would have fought the Romans to the death but for whatever reason the Romans had managed to captured them alive.

       It fell into the pattern of Salidia doing the torture, and Lydia just watching, in spite of the fact that Salidia had first sought an assistant to relieve herself of some of the hard work.  That's because Salidia tried very hard to cater to Lydia's wishes, after that scene in the first torture session with Lydia, and Talig's assessment of the "Little Lion."  Lydia seemed to want to watch and not participate much, so Salidia kept it that way.  Lydia just watched, and then she would step up to do the killing.  (Salidia recognized the lethality of girl and her potential as a fighter, and did not want to divert the girl with other distractions.  She encouraged the girl's specialization by perpetuating this routine in the torture room.)

       There was a starting style, and a ending style.

       The first five Lydia just stood in front of them for a long time and just looked in their faces, doing nothing.  The men would curse, some stared back at Lydia, one spat at her.  It didn't matter.  Lydia just starred at them.  Then, "This is for my mother," "This is for my father," then 3 names nobody knew.  She struck with as much force as she could muster, cutting much deeper than she had to.

     For all 16 she never tried to get out of the way of the blood.  She would just stand there watching them die, and stood there a long time after they were dead, and then just quietly walk away.

       When the 6th came up, he was the one exception.  She stood before him like all the others, mentioned a name nobody knew, and this time she slowly extended the dagger up to his ear, and slowly drew it down, pushing hard into his throat.  Then she stood for the dying and a long time after.

       Then the pattern changed.  The first six weren't in pain when they died.  She looked at them; they looked at her; and then she struck.  But after the 6th Goth, she wanted them in pain when they died.  Not non-lethal torture like Salidia with her noses and ears.  Lydia wanted their last minutes to be in pain, and the torture was sufficient in itself to kill them.

       The first one, the 7th Goth, she walked up to him and stared, same as usual.  Then she took her dagger and placed it against his abdomen and pushed in slowly, and then sawed it down, going in and out.  She sawed down until the intestines spilled out.  She watched the agony in his face for a few minutes, and then slashed the throat.  Not hard like the first five, but just enough to get the job done, like someone blowing out a candle close by.  Just enough to get the job done.  She never mentioned a name with the last batch.  There were variations in how she caused the pain.  She cut across the abdomen, she cut up the abdomen.  One she put the dagger between his legs behind the balls, and pulled up so the dagger drove upward into the abdomen.  One she drove the dagger in to the inner thigh and sawed down, on both sides.  Three she pulled out the balls, and cut them off, then pulled the cock out and cut it off.  Then she dug the dagger into the wound for a while as she watched him.  Finally, she thrust the dagger through the wound and into the abdomen.  One she pulled a stool up and put the penis on it, and cut the penis in half lengthwise.  The last she pulled the cock out and made small cuts on the left and right sides until she cut it through.

       Nobody knew why the first group was different from the second group.  Everybody assumed the first group was for her family, and the second group was for friends and relatives, or for times she was beaten or raped.  Salidia or any of the men would have been happy to talk to her if she wanted, but she just went off by herself after it was over.  Everybody just respected her wishes.  Nobody ever found out why she did what she did.

       Furies: Three goddesses who pursued unpunished criminals and exacted vengeance.

       After the straight killings were over, Lydia went back to the way she usually was.

       After the third torture session with the Goths, Salidia was forced to concentrate on organizing the new villa, and starting the planting for spring.  Following that, she had to expand the slave quarters, and purchase more farm slaves and equipment for the upcoming harvest.  And she expanded the villa and the men's quarters.  Although she had to leave the Goths for a while, she and Lydia continued the training sessions with the men.

                                Chapter 10

                    One Day Among Hundreds

       "Yea, Caius," Salidia shouted, and then laughed.  She and Talig were sitting on a bench along side of the training ground.  Lydia and Caius had been circling each other, a battle of the fast against the fast, and Caius had just won the round.  Lydia had a right shoulder lead, with her arm at her side, and she had snapped a strike up toward Caius's throat.  Caius had a left shoulder lead, arms low, and had blocked Lydia with his left, while he countered at the same time with a right snap over her right shoulder.  It would have been a kill, but Caius went high and to the side of her neck so he wouldn't hurt Lydia.

               "You almost got me, Cutie," Caius said, conciliatory and wanting to make Lydia feel better after her loss.

       Salidia smiled.  She loved the way Caius always tried to make people feel better.  He was the "Peacemaker" of the group, and always tried to make people feel good.  When he wasn't trying to make a joke, that is.  It made him her favorite of the men.

       "You gave it away," Talig called from the side.  "I knew when you were going to strike before you moved.  Your face got an angry look an instant before you struck, and that told Caius when you were going to strike.  He blocked by watching your face, not your hands or shoulders.  Control your expression, or you'll tell your opponent when you're going to make your move."

       Lydia walked in a tight circle, to physically burn off her frustration, and suddenly broke in a double step toward Caius to catch him by surprise; but when she broke toward him, he already had his arm up and extended toward her throat.         Talig laughed again, "You're faster, but he's wiser.  He knows people better.  He knew you were frustrated and would act on it, and he was waiting for you to do something else.  Don't act on what you feel; act on what you see the other person doing.  You gave yourself away today: your face told him when you were going to strike, and you let him see how frustrated you were and that you wanted to act.  So he was waiting for you."

       Caius wrapped his arms around Lydia, and swung her around in a circle, walking toward the bench as he swung her.  "It's a good thing you're so cute.  We'll keep you around just because you look so good, even if you can't fight worth a damn," he told her.  Taking a bunch of grapes from the side, he took some and handed the rest of them to her.  "There's always next week.  You can kill me next week."  "Promise," Lydia asked him playfully.  "I promise, Little Lion.  Next week you can kill me.  That is, if you can catch me," he laughed back at her.   She leaned over, and bit him on the shoulder; "Gotcha!"

       Salidia leaned back.  "I want to get some more oxen tomorrow.  Talig, give me Cetus, Atus, Presphene, Gadius, and Andeocene to go with me to handle the animals.  I'm taking Claudius (the foreman) with me, too."

       Lydia looked over, "When are we going?"

       "You're not going.  You're staying here.  We're going to Brivas (a nearby town), and we'll have to use the horses.  Those guys can all ride well enough to pull some ox behind them on the horses.  You get Cato (the steward) and set up something permanent with the sheds to house additional draft animals.  Maybe a whole new building.  Let me know what's decided."

       Lydia looked disappointed at not being included.  Then her expression changed to thoughtful, "If we're going to the effort of a permanent building, it should be strong enough for winter.  It would be wise to make it large enough to house additional animals we might buy later.  You and the men need more saddle horses.  And now's a good time to do it.  The farm slaves don't have much to do in the middle of summer, and giving them some useful work would be a good use of their time."

       "Good, I like that.  Put the field slaves to work building some structures for winter for the additional animals we're getting," Salidia answered.  "Have Cato lay out the marks for a building to hold our animals, plus an additional eighteen.  You and Talig help him with the slaves to start the work."

       "Stop telling everybody what to do, and get your noble Patrician ass out there, M'Lady.  It's our turn," Talig said to Salidia.

       "Don't be rude to me, you over sized has-been.  You treat my noble ass with more respect or I'll have you out guarding the chickens tonight," Salidia answered Talig with exaggerated disdain.

               

                               Chapter 11

               The Sadist - A Cat Comes of Age

       Out of the blue, one summer afternoon, "Would you mind if I tried one of the young one you bought in Massilla," Lydia asked Salidia during lunch.  "Opps!  That's something new," Salidia thought.  Surprised, she answered, "Pick anyone you want.  Do whatever you want with him.  I bought them just for fun and games. You pick the game, and you make the rules.  The only rule I ask of you is to have fun.  You know my tastes.  But if you want to take one out for a picnic or treat him like one of the Goths, it's your choice."  Salidia was surprised because Lydia seldom asked for anything, unless it had to do with some task Salidia asked her to do.  And she was more than a little curious that one of the few things Lydia asked for was one of the boys, but she knew enough to give Lydia plenty of room, and not press her with questions.  Sometimes Lydia could be shy.  With some things, like her parent's death, Lydia could be closed mouth and moody, and it worked better if you were gentle and took your time if you wanted information about it.  Besides, when Salidia did the first boy months ago, there was sex involved.  She had climaxed with the tortured boy by holding his shaking and quivering hips against her cunt.  People can be reluctant to discuss their sex life.  So Salidia decided to give Lydia some privacy, and not pepper her with questions about something she might be shy about.  Besides, the girl had been so good lately, Salidia intended to reward her with something.  The girl deserved this......and a little more.  But she was really curious about this new turn of events with one of the boys.  "Take the afternoon, and I'll take the opportunity to go over the last missive from Tuscany," Salidia lied to be accommodating.

       Lydia got up, gave Salidia a very warm kiss, an excited "Thank you," and left.

     After Lydia's effusive exit, Salidia was burning up with curiosity.  Did she want the boy for stud service, to play a little nasty with him, or have him give her a back massage?

                                 ......................

       Presphene was on duty in the stable and got up when Lydia came in, prepared to go with her down for a Goth.  She shook her head.  "No, don't bother.  I want to look over the boys."  He had no worries about her with the boys, and he sat back down.

       Although she had walked through the boys section twice out of idle curiosity, she had turned and left after a perfunctory glance without really examining them.   The boys were terrified when this time she walked down and stopped to look at the first of them.  When she did that with the Goths, they came back maimed or not all.

       "Stand at the front of the pallets," she ordered them, in a peremptory tone that expected immediate obedience.

            She walked down the isle and stopped at one she was mildly interested in.  "Do you know who I am?"

       "You're Lydia, Salidia's Legati (a subordinate officer).  You kill the Goths." "That's useful," she thought.

       She stopped at another who was mildly interesting.  "Do you know who I am?"

       "You're the killer.  You're Lydia."

       "Is that how you think of me?  First as a killer, and only second as a person?  You've got the right way of thinking, boy," she said to herself.  "That's the kind of attitude that will get us off to a good start.  We're going to have to discuss how you think of me as a killer.  And even if I didn't like the way you think, you're brusque and blunt enough to be rude, and that's enough to earn you a lesson in manners in the torture room.  You've just earned yourself the place of honor at my party twice over, my gutsy, plain spoken young man," Lydia thought.

       "Pressie, could you please bring me the keys and some shackles?"

       When he got there, she nodded toward the boy.  Presphene put the shackles on, and unlocked the leg iron.  When he was done, she leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

       "Thank you."

       "Want me to go with you."

       "No.  He's smaller than you and I can take you."

       "No, you can't, Lady," he laughed.

       "I'm faster than Titus.  I'm going to take you this week," she teased, her feelings turning from the boy to the good humored man.

       "NO,   you're not.      Maybe....., sometime .....years from now..... but not this week. Not this year.  Maybe ....when I'm an old man."  He tousled her hair and smiled at her.  It was always fun to banter with her.  She was adorably spunky as she tried to get better and better with the men, and she always made him smile.

       She left with the boy, but after she was outside, she stuck her head back in the door again.  "Pressie, I'm going to take you this week."  And then she ducked back out before he could answer.  His answer was a laugh and a smile.

                        ....................

       As she walked behind the boy toward the torture room, she was nowhere near as calm as she acted with the boy nor as casual as she acted with Presphene.  She was nervous.  This was the third biggest change in her life since her parents had died.  First, Salidia had changed her from a nobody whom everyone could abuse into the de facto third in command, in charge of the torture room and slaves.  Then Talig had given her a knife and taught her how to use it, and now she was one of the most dangerous fighters in the villa.  And now, with this boy she was going to change how she lived her life: she was going to start speaking up for what she wanted more forcefully.

       So far she had been a rather passive person, waiting for permission from others before she did anything.  Not too surprising for a slave and a girl who had grown up with men who physically abused her.  She had been safer if she avoided bringing herself to the attention of her abusers by requesting anything.  But now with the confidence she was gaining on the training ground with the men, she was feeling brave enough to start asking for what she wanted.  Salidia and Talig treated her just like the men, and they were all freeman.  No one treated her like a slave, and she was falling into the manner that the men lived their lives, confident, self assured, and willing to stand up for what they deserved.  She didn't mean rude or disrespectful.  Salidia was a Patrician, a noble of the highest rank, senatorial, the ultimate rulers of Rome.  Even Talig was deferential to her.  But she meant that she had wanted to try one of the boys and, for a change, she asked for it instead sitting around hoping someone might offer her the chance to use one; like Salidia had, out of the blue, given the her the chance to get even with the Goths for what they had done to her.

       There were so many things she just sat around wishing for.  She'd love to see what it would be like to ride a horse.  It seems so wonderful to sit up so high while the horse ate up the miles and you had nothing to do but watch the countryside.  The horses watched out for all the rocks and holes and sticks.  She bet she could ride all the way to the village doing nothing but sitting back, looking up and watching the clouds roll by.  And all her life she had worn unbleached dresses.  Now, because of what she did, she wore the plain tunic ubiquitous to the provinces.  It would be so wonderful to once wear a dyed dress.  Blue because it would match her eyes.  And there were things she didn't like.  Talig wanted her to train with a gladius, the short stabbing sword used by soldiers, and it was too heavy for her, even the smaller one he had made for her.  It slowed her down.  She wanted to just stay with a knife so she just had to depend on her speed.  She didn't trust what would happen with a gladius slowing her down, but she felt safe and confident with a knife.  She could beat half the men with a knife.  She wanted to tell Talig that she didn't want to train with the gladius anymore.

       Of all the things, it was the blue dress she wanted the most, but that cost money and she didn't have the courage to ask for something that would cost Salidia money, and she certainly didn't have the courage to say, "No," to Talig.   She decided to start with the boy because it was more in character with what she usually did, and it wouldn't surprise people so much.  And the boy wouldn't cost money like the blue dress would.  The boys were kept just for this purpose, and this was the way they were supposed to be used, for entertainment, unlike the Goths who would be useful in the fields.  So nobody would think it that outrageous or strange if she brought a boy to the torture room.  It was what Salidia intended to do with them when she had more free time.

       When she finally asked Salidia, after taking three days to build up her courage, Salidia was so nice and she even tried to be helpful, and she didn't even act like it was anything out of the ordinary.  Salidia acted like it was every day that she asked for something and nothing unusual that she wanted something for herself and not just for a job.  And Presphene acted the same as if she asked for one of the Goths, nothing unusual.  She was so self conscious with Presphene that she couldn't say, "I want that boy to use for myself," but she could only nod her head toward the boy.  She tried to act causally with Presphene like it was an ordinary day, and she even joked around with him.  But inside she felt as nervous as that first day when she asked Talig for her dagger.

       She had ideas and fantasies of taking one of the boys into the torture room, and she wanted to try it out just like she wanted to try one of the horses.  In plain words, she felt it would be fun to torture one of the boys, and wanted to see if it were as good as she thought it would be.

       But this was more important than just having fun.  It was more important than starting to ask for things she wanted.  She wanted to change how she lived her life and the role she took with other people.  "I going to change my life around," was the thought that excited her.  Using the boys was just the first time she would do that.

       Her experience with sex so far was as a victim of rape.  One person was gratified, the other person hurt.  Following this model of abuser and victim she had grown up with, she intended to be one gratified, and that the boy take the role of the one to be hurt.  (With the Goths, she was a victim seeking revenge.)  For the first time in her life, Lydia decided, she was going to be one of the abusers and takers, and not one of the victims.  When she asked Salidia, "Can I try one of the boy," she could have said, "Now I'm going to become one of the users and takers in life."  They both meant the same thing.

       And when Lydia pictured herself abusing and hurting the boys, she pictured herself acting like her role models: the rapists and abusers from her past.  Lydia wanted to hurt the boys as she had been hurt.  She wanted payback: she wanted her turn.  Lydia was big on revenge, and her revenge was to become an abuser, and a handy victim would be nice.  She was following in the foot steps her rapists and abusers had laid down years ago.

       By the end of this day, Lydia was going to become a different woman.

                        .....................

     She shackled the boy to the lattice with the smooth efficiency of having done it many times with the Goths.  Lydia grabbed the boy's jaw and dug her nails in to his skin, twisting his face to look at her.  It was a move that came easily to her since she had gotten use to doing it with the Goths, as Salidia did.

       Salidia told her that the boys were selected to be breakable, unlike the Goths she killed, but not cowards.  "Brave, but not too brave," was the way Salidia described it.  This boy looked back at her defiantly, as his blunt answer to her had been defiant.  She looked into his eyes and wondered, "Are you going to be like the Goths and unbreakable, or will you break?"

       "How do you know of me, boy," she asked, both curious and wanting to direct the boy's attention back to thinking of her as a killer.  She wanted to frighten him and appear self assured, as her rapists had been with her.

       "We hear the Goths talking, and sometimes the guards stand around and talk."

       "And what do they say, boy?"

       "The Goths say that Salidia tortures them, cuts off their noses, and ears, but you just walk around the room looking at them.  But they're more afraid of you."

       "Why is that?"  "This is going well," she thought.

       "They hear the guards talk, too."

       "And what do the guards say?"

       "They say you do the killing.  When Salidia is done with a Goth, you kill him.  The guards say you're dangerous. I heard Cetus tell the big man, Gadius, that you were good enough to kill the blonde man, Atus.  That Talig has shown you secret, magic things to make you like swift Mercury, faster than any man.  The Goths know you do the killing."

       The information about the guards surprised her, and exhilarated her.  The Mercury thing, flattering as it was, was probably just the boy talking and not the men, but what the men said was exciting.  Secretly, in the past two months of practice, she began to feel that she could kill some of the men if she had to.  She loved the men and would die to protect them, and would never think of hurting any of them; but it was a measure of her increasing skills that she could surpass some of the men at practice.  It bolstered her confidence and pride in her growing abilities.  To hear that the men also felt this to be true tickled her pink.  None of the men admitted it to her, and they continued to treat her as a young girl just learning the skills they had mastered long ago.  The stone cold face she presented to the boy betrayed none of her excitement over this piece of news.

       Unfortunately for the boy, his comparing her to a god and the news that she could beat some of the men swelled her ego, specifically her sense of dominance and superiority to  men.  The men's talk confirmed her belief: "I'm better than some of the men, and I can kill a man in combat."  It was a heady emotion, and she wanted to feed it.  The idea of being able to kill a man in combat, not just one tied to the lattice, left her feeling very dominant and sadistic.

       "Do you think I know secret magic?"

       "It's not right that a women should be able to kill a man.  And you don't act like the women on any other farm or village.  Neither does Salidia."  She was pleased by the idea that she was different from other women, and that she could do things other women could not, although she knew he meant "freakish."  The talk of killing was increasing her sadistic feelings.

       "Are you afraid of me, boy?"

       He shook his head, "No", but she saw the tremors in his body, and she knew the truth.  And it thrilled her.  From her rapes, she knew this was the way it was suppose to be, the victim being afraid of the abuser.  She felt the images in her mind of how this should go were falling into place as she hoped they would; and his fear and shaking assured her she was taking the role of the abuser and he was falling into the role of victim, as she had planned.  Now it was her turn to be satisfied and to do the hurting.  Standing in the torture room with the slave tied up before her, knowing she was about to start a torture session, she felt deeply gratified and excited.  After years...after a life time... of being a victim, it was finally her turn.  She deserved this after so many years of being the one who was hurt.  She felt completely, unquestionably, undeniably  entitled to be the abuser.  And she was wildly happy about it.

       She was dying to begin, and her victim was perfect.  He thought of her as killer, the god Mercury, capable of doing what other women couldn't, and, although he was a little defiant, he was already afraid of her.  What more could she want in someone she was about to torture.  And several things in the conversation had left her feeling sadistic.

                               Chapter 12

       The Sadist - What's Old is New Again

       "I'm not going to kill you, boy, and I'm not going to maim you, but I am going to hurt you.  Not like the Goths; you won't look like a freak next week and in a little while you'll look like you did this morning."  She ran her hands over his shoulders, chest, hips, cock and balls, thighs.  Then she went over to the brazier on the side.

       This was the first time she had done a boy, and the newness of the situation made her feel a little nervous.  She closed her eyes for a few moments to relax herself, and remind herself that everything that she wanted to do with the boy, she had already done with the Goths.  She was just going to do it on a boy instead of a Goth.  That made her feel calmer.  She felt more sure of herself.

       She looked down into the brazier and saw the needles there.  She knew what to do with those.  She and Salidia had used them on the Goths many times, although Salidia had been the main actor.  She felt confident.  Time to begin!

       She took out one of the foot long needles, felt the sharpness of it's point, and put it aside.  Placing another next to it, she left the other four in the brazier.  She brought the brazier next to the boy, and lit it.  Then she threaded ropes through the lattice, securing his thighs, hips, chest and arms, so he couldn't thrash around as she used the needles on him, but he would be held helpless and vulnerable for the pain she knew was coming.  She got a whetstone and leaned against a table while bringing the two needles to a fine point.  Then, starring at the boy, she sipped some wine.  She was unaware that in standing there sipping the wine and watching the boy, she was mimicking Salidia.

       She was starting to feel comfortable with this.  Her new role was beginning to feel natural.  And it should have felt natural to her.  She had done all these things with the Goths: sharpening the needles, setting up the brazier, having a slave waiting on the lattice.  The only difference today was that she hated the Goths and she didn't hate the boy.  The Goths were tortured because they deserved it; she was going to torture the boy just for the fun of it.

       "These are just the same things I've been doing with the Goths.  I'm just going to pay attention to the boy, let my feelings wander, and do what seems fun," she thought to herself.  Like her rapists had done.

       She relaxed into watching the boy. She loved the play of fear across his face: he was afraid of her, and that made her feel powerful; and she anticipated drawing more fear out of him so she would feel even more powerful.  She enjoyed keeping the boy on pins and needles, as he waited dreading what was about to happen.  The more she leaned on the table and starred at him, the more nervous he became, and she liked that feeling of power it gave her to know she frighten him.  She looked at him directly in the eyes, and when their eyes met, he quickly looked away, a frightened look on his face, to her delight.  Later, she would develop a liking for scaring the boys before she actually started, and she would toy with the boys to build their fear.  Completely into her new role, she got up and went over to the boy.  She intended to just improvise what she did, and try whatever felt good.

       In the manner she had developed with the Goths, she grabbed his jaw again and twisted his face to look into hers eyes again, and she starred into his frightened eyes.  "You're mine, boy," she thought, smiling.  "I like that I can scare you just by starring at you," she thought.  She dragged her fingernails across his cheek, digging her nails in and leaving four bleeding cuts across his face.  His face quivered, but it was more fear than pain. Then she did the same across his chest, and finally up his stomach, watching his eyes the whole time; and she was rewarded by his fearfully averting his eyes from her.  As she scratched him, she used her other hand to twist his face toward her, forcing him to look into her eyes as her nails left blood ribbons across body.  He did not want to look at her but she forced him to.  His pupils were dark pools, but area around his eyes shaded the pools with a deeper color of fear.  It was the first time in her life she looked into someone's eyes, and saw reflected back fear; and she drank it in.

       "Look at me," she commanded the boy, "and don't take your eyes off of me," she added, so she could have both hands free.  Holding his cock with one hand, she pinched the tip of the cock with the other, squeezing the skin between the nails of the thumb and index finger.  With hands made strong by hours of wielding heavy weapons on the training ground, her nails sliced through the skin, and she felt warm blood run onto her hands from the cuts.  She ignored the tremors of pain and the drawn up tight corners of his mouth and eyes, and focused on the fear that quivered in his pupils.  She was in love with, and fascinated by, the look of fear in his eyes.  A fear of her.  She moved her hands, and repeated cutting the skin with her nails again, and again felt the warm blood run down her hand.  She was in love with the look of fear in his eyes.

       Within a minute of beginning her first torture with a boy, she was in love with it.  In love with what was written in the boys eyes.  Never before had she seen someone frightened of her, and it intoxicated her.

       She did this not to hurt the boy at this point but to scare him so she could feel her own power over him and enjoy it.  And she also felt the boy was her possession to do with as she wanted.  She was a cat stretching out it's claws over prey it knew was it's to take and have.  When she scratched the boy, she was a predator marking her territory.  The scratches she drew across the boy's body marked him as her property, and she was delighted that her "property" was frightened to be in her hands.  She was intoxicated with feeling powerful.

       His eyes were telling her that he was afraid of what was about to happen to him, so she decided it was time to give him what he was afraid of.

       She wanted to start slow, increasing the pain by steps.  The Goths were tough warriors, battle scared, enured to pain by the tough conditions of the battle field.  Most were stoic under torture.  Their torture was brutal: cutting off ears and noses, and slicing off eye brows and strips of scalp.  With the boys, she wanted to experiment with lighter tortures, something she was unfamiliar with, so she could build a repertoire that ranged from light to heavy.

       Not having planned this, she picked up one of the sharpened needles, and only knew she wanted to hurt him a little bit, and watch his eyes to gauge how painful it was.  At the same time, all the talk of her being a killer and that the men thought her good enough to kill some of them had made her feel very sadistic, and she wanted to hurt the boy a lot.  She also wanted the boy to tell her she was Mistress of all, as the men had started to admit she was the best of all; and she wanted the boy to say that he was helpless before her, as she wanted the men to admit she could kill some of them.  And that was a ego thing for her. It was a ego thing, but it also was an ego thing that sexually excited her.  She had a full agenda of emotions to play out as she stood there with the needle in her hand, and the next step was to start pushing the needle into the boy's flesh.

       It felt right to start with the nipples.  Without any qualms or reservations she place the needle against the edge of the areola, and slowly pushed the needle under the skin and across underneath the nipple until it emerged from the skin on the other side of the areola.  It felt good to hurt him.  She wanted to, she desired to be the one who did the hurting.  She drunk in what it felt like to hurt someone; it made her feel so powerful and in control.         She focused on the specifics.  It seemed to hurt him most when the needle burst up through the skin on the other side.  She paid attention to the mechanics of how to hurt someone: how the needle felt in her hand as she pushed it against the skin, how easily it slipped through flesh once it was beneath the skin, how easily the needle slipped out when she pulled the needle out.  She drew the needle out, and started it again slowly right adjacent to the first hole, running parallel to the first wound she had just made, guiding the needle so it would emerge next to the last hole she had made.

       The tissue had been hurt by the first pass, so the already tender skin made the boy hurt more the second time. She could hear it in his whimpers.  To be able to control the amount of pain he felt made her feel in control of his life.  As she pushed the needle slowly through his body, she watched how much each area of the body hurt, and what she had done to cause the pain.

       She paid special attention to the needle breaking out through the skin on the other side: how easily the needle moved beneath the skin but became hard to push when the point angled upward against the tougher skin, how the skin distended outward as the sharp point pushed upward till it broke through the skin in a rush.  The skin would push up in front of the point, stretch - stretch - stretch - resist the point - fight against the point pushing through - and then: give way, in a rush, to the relentless pressure of the sharp point.  The point would suddenly jump through the skin, and the needle tip would jump out free and clear, the skin puckering up around the needle a distance back from the shinney point.

       She watched the pain in his face and pushed the needle so slowly, so she could draw out the moment.  She drew out the needle again, and pushed it in between the first and second wounds, and because the skin had been made even more tender by the 2nd pass, it hurt the boy even more.  She was fascinated by the mechanics of causing pain, and realized that repeatedly hurting the same spot sensitized the area to feel greater and greater pain.  Each time the needle passed through the flesh right next to the last wound, it hurt the boy more than the previous pass.  Each new insult to the tormented flesh built on top of the pain from the last injury.  Injury upon injury multiples pain.  It reminded her that a burn made the skin very sensitive and painful to touch, and she filed that away in memory to use that next.

       She watched his eyes as she forced the needle through his nipple.  The edges of his eyes drew down, the muscles of his jaw set and trembled, and his body quivered slightly.  She could see the pain there, but he met her gaze and stared back in her eyes.  "You're fighting me, boy, trying to act brave, but the trembling around your eyes tells me not for long.  You're having trouble just hanging on now; your trembling shows me you're hurting, and we've just begun the pain," she thought to herself, and smiled.

       She knew the inevitability of what would happen.  From the Goths, she knew how horrible the torture could be.  She could just keep on increasing the pain until it became unbearable, and he would break.  He was only thinking about the light pain of the moment; she knew the progression she intended for the whole session.  Step by step she would increase the pain until it was too much for him.  She wanted to play with him along the way, and watch the trembling in his face as step by step the pain got worse.  She knew, but he did not, what was going to happen to him.  By the end of the session she intended the pain to be horrible, unbearable, overwhelming, for him.  From the Goths, some of whom she had killed, she knew how terribly she could treat him.  The needle under his skin suggested may more ways to increase the pain, as she experimented with different ways to make it worse and worse for him.

       She smiled because she knew she could break him any time she choose, but she wanted to go slowly so she could see the pain in the eyes rise and fall at her command.

       She choose the other nipple so she could compare the amount of pain she teased out of him by different methods.  She picked up a burning branch from the brazier, wanting to try out her idea about burns.  His eyes really widened in fear when he saw the fire.  "This is good," she thought to herself when she saw how frightened he was.  "Yes, boy!  It's right for you to be afraid of the fire.  It's going to hurt you so much more.  See it coming closer and closer to your skin?  Well, no matter how much you don't want it, I am going to hold this terrible, hot burning branch against your skin, and it's going to hurt you so much while it burns you.  And there is nothing you can do to stop me from holding this to your nipple and hurting you," she said to herself.  "You're looking at it hoping it doesn't touch your skin; dreading the moment the pain leaps into you from the fire; but I know I will burn you with it, and I can't wait to see your reaction," she impishly imagined.

       His eyes seemed glued to the branch, following it as moved closer to the nipple.  Out of curiosity, she moved it back to the first nipple.  His eyes followed.  She faked another move.  His eyes followed, real fear written on his face.  "Oh, this is funny," she thought, "He's like a puppet."  "I like this!  He's much more animated with the fire than with the needle.  This is a better show to watch when he is very frightened of being hurt a lot.  It's much better than when he is only afraid of being hurt a little."  Anticipating greater fun than with the needle, she held the branch to the nipple.  He screamed, squinted his eyes close, and thrashed his head around, pulling himself around the lattice as much as his bonds would permit.  "Oh, this is no good.  I can't watch his eyes; he's moving his head too much."  Annoyed, she slapped him.  "Shut up, you wimp.  Act like a man!"

       Remembering the times she had been burnt, she knew it didn't take long to make the skin sensitive.  She held the fire to the nipple three times longer than she though necessary, to make sure she got the job done, and relishing the extra time she was burning him because she wanted to punish him for annoying her.  He screamed the whole time, which she enjoyed because she knew he was hurting extra as a punishment; and he wiggled within the ropes, but she tracked the moving nipple with the burning branch to make sure he endured the full measure of searing pain she intended for him.

       She grabbed him by the throat. "Quiet!" she barked, in a tone made very deep and guttural by anger.  The boy's screaming had begun to annoy her; it was too loud, and she was getting angry with him.  With eyes threatening tears, he obeyed.

       She touched the nipple with her finger, and he winced.  "Good.  It hurts to the touch. He's ready."  With the intense pain of the fire gone, the boy started to regained his composure, and was trying to act more bravely again.  That pleased her because she could see through his act to the fear underneath, like his fear of fire, and she knew she could play with him and break down his act of self control whenever she wanted, as she just did by holding the fire to him an extra long time and making him scream.  It was a more interesting show to see his act of bravery and self control on the surface and the fear underneath it when she hurt him.

                        .....................

       Outside, Salidia heard the boy scream, and her biggest question about what Lydia intended to do with the boy was answered.  Now she only had details to fill in. She remembered she heard stories of the young girl Drusillia, screams coming from her apartment all night long as Drusillia (Nero's sister, one of those in the long line to possibly become Caesar) tortured one of her slaves.  Sometimes, they said, the screams went on for days until the slave finally died.  She wondered if Lydia would be like Drusillia and keep the boy screaming all night.

       Drusillia maintained a stable of forty good looking studs just so she would always have plenty of fresh studs to torture.  It was rumored that Drusillia's summer estate had scores of young men and boys that she used to while away the summer, with several rooms and gardens devoted just to torture, where she would spend day after day torturing one slave after another.

       Salidia even remembered one story of Drusillia hunting some of the boys with a bow and arrow in one of her gardens.  Drusillia played at being Diana, and she would hunt the boys with her bow and arrow as Diana, the Huntress, would hunt deer.  Drusilla was supposed to string them up in trees like a deer after she wounded them, and torture them while they hung from the trees, and then finally gut them like a deer while they were still alive.  She would do everything to the boys that a hunter would do with a deer, only the deer were dead and the boys were alive.

       The story went that she would skin them alive while they hung from the trees like you skin a deer after it is killed; and cut out their tongues, cock and balls like you would a deer to eat as delicacies.  If she choose to forego skinning them, she would roast them alive on a spit over a fire.  If she was roasting them, some she tied to a spit, and had a slave turn them over the fire, so the fire took a long time to slowly cook and kill them gradually.  But a few she had the guards push the spit through them, starting at the ass and forcing it through their bodies as they screamed and she watched them.

       Salidia chuckled to herself.  They said Drusillia wasn't a very good shot, and her "hunting" garden only had a few small trees for the boys to hide behind.  On bad days, they said, she'd have to have the guards hold the boys still for her to shoot.  On her good days when she felt adventurous, she'd have them run one after the other in a line in front of her for her to shoot, and she'd make them run slow enough, and she'd get close enough, for her to hit some of them.  If one of the boys in the line was especially attractive, she'd have them circle a few times, and then when the boy came to the front again, she would call out, "Him!"  The guards would grab the good looking boy, and she would walk up close to him as the guards held him, so she could watch his face as she shot him.

       Well, at least Drusillia was said to have a sense of humor.  Sometimes, they said, she would blindfold some of the boys, and call out, "Run, run, little deer!  I'm getting closer!  Run, before I shoot you.  It will hurt you so much, so run fast!"  Then she would gleefully pursue a blindfolded boy as he stumbled around the room.  Or she'd sneak up on some of the blindfolded boys and jab them with the arrow to scare them.  Or she'd sneak up on them with the arrow in her hand, and just stab them in the ass or cock, to make sure she got the arrow just where she wanted it.  Sneaking up on them was easy because she had musicians playing in the background to cover the sound of her approach.  Once a blindfolded boy started to run, she'd run behind them calling, "I'm coming!  I'm coming to shoot you!  Run! Run!"  And, of course, she would shoot them, often walking around the sightless boys and picking out where she wanted to shoot them from up close: legs or stomach or chest or ass or cock or throat.  "Oh poor deer, didn't run fast enough."  And string them up and torture them, "See, I told you to run faster."

       Nice to be part of the Emperor's family.  You could afford all the slaves you wanted.  When this new villa was up and running and she could afford it, Salidia wanted to have a "hunt" or two in the atrium.  She especially liked the idea of the blindfolds.  "Run, run, little deer, before I shoot you!"  That sounded like a lot of fun.  "Of course," she chuckled to herself, "I'm going to end up just like Drusillia.  I can't shoot a bow worth a damn either."  "Hold him down for me, boys, until I can get real close," she laughed to herself.  "Maybe I should try something like a Retiarii (a gladiator type called the 'fisherman' because they used nets, tridents, and knives.) and go fishing instead.  If she removed the barbs from the trident, and made the points shorter, she could stick the boy over and over with the trident once she netted one, and let him struggle to escape the net as she stuck him again and again.  She could imagine a boy caught in a net that completely surrounded him, trying to ineffectively block her as she jabbed the trident into one place after another.  She could tease him, faking one place, and than another, before she rammed the trident into him.  "The cock, the balls, the ass: where will I strike next, boy?  Awwha! Gotcha!."

       Salidia wondered how long Lydia would have the boy screaming.  This was such a delicious and tantalizingly salacious turn of events with Lydia, Salidia thought it well worth the price of a boy or two if Lydia ended up killing them.  Salidia toyed with some ploys to get into the room to see what Lydia was doing.  She was dying of curiosity about this new side of Lydia.  Salidia wondered if she had a torture session herself with one of the boys, and asked Lydia to assist her as she did with the Goths, would Lydia open up to her.  It certainly seemed like a good night's entertainment to watch Lydia torturing one of the boys.  Just sitting back and watching as Lydia did something malicious and cruel to boy, and the boy screaming as Lydia hurt him.  Salidia decided that next week she would have a session with one of the boys, and ask Lydia to help her pick out the one to use.  Maybe she would have Lydia take over the torture of the boy during the scene.

       Salidia wondered if Lydia were like Drusillia and liked killing the boys (which was way too expensive to do often) or if she were like herself, just torturing them but keeping them fit enough for use again in the future.  Salidia preferred to recycle her victims.

       Salidia started to get jealous, wondering if Lydia had more entertaining and titillating methods of torture than she did.  She was jealous of Lydia having a screaming boy while she sat outside with nothing.

       The only thing Salidia was concerned about was keeping the Goths and the boys separate.  Lydia had turned out to be an outstanding athlete, naturally fast, an efficient killer, and she was quickly becoming one of her best warriors; and she was prudent even when she was angered.  She thought of Lydia as her primary bodyguard now because the girl was always at her side.  She had seen gladiators and solders who had become drunk on blood.  Wanton, indiscriminate killers.  Especially the soldiers.  Their thirst for blood and reckless killing made them a problem for their commanders.  They needlessly incited the locals to rebel.  Lydia was perfect now, killing only when there was a reason.  She wanted to make sure Lydia kept the fun, and lust for blood, to the boys, and remained serious and prudent with the slaves and locals.

                               ............................

       Inside the room, Lydia wanted to try out the higher level of pain on the second nipple now that it was red and tender from the fire.  She grabbed the nipple with her left hand to hold it steady while she pushed the needle in.  The boy winced at her touch.  Distracted by the boy's reaction to her touch, she pinched the nipple hard to enjoy her handiwork with the fire; and the boy really winced hard.  Simply touching the skin really hurt him a lot now that it was burned.  She could see that the skin of the burned area was much redder than the other side, and she liked that the area was so easy to identify when she wanted to use it.  That thrilled her.  The fire had done a good job and she was pleased with herself.  This was going to hurt him a lot more than the first side.  It was the first torture "trick" Lydia had thought of all by herself, and she was pleased that her idea worked out so well.

       Excited by how sensitive the burn was to the touch, she couldn't help playing more with the area before she began to pierce the skin.  She was hungry to see what she could do with her "trick".  She put the needle tip on the skin, and dragged the tip across the red, inflamed nipple, and the boy gasped and tried to pull back.  It was so easy to hurt!  With baited breathe, ready to see how much the tender skin would hurt, she put the needle back on the skin, and this time she pushed down hard, and mean, as she dragged the needle across the skin.  Wow, he pulled his chest down as if she has stuck a red hot poker against his chest.  He was really hurt!  The needle left a deep furrow cut across the skin with little drops of blood forming along it's edge, and a loud gasp escaped the boy.  She did it again, from top to bottom.

       Unable to resist the temptation to enjoy how well her handiwork worked, she laid the needle down, reached up and pushed two fingernails into the horizontal cut.  A mean feeling to hurt the boy tickled her appetite and a mean look came across her face.  She hooked her nails in deep and hard into the cut.  She liked using her own hands, her fingernails, to show off how much more she could make the boy hurt.  Pushing in and pulling down at the same time, she tried to pull the wound open wider with her fingernails, watching the boy's face the whole time and seeing how much it hurt him.

         "Does that hurt you a lot there, boy?  Do you want me to massage it for you and make it all better," she asked the boy, feeling mean, and teasing the boy.  Mischievously, she was having fun making the boy suffer with her new trick.  She wanted to force the boy to suffer with her new trick because it made her feel powerful to be able to manipulate him so easily.  She dug her nails as hard and deep as she could into the cut again, and pulled down trying hard to pull open the wound by hooking her nails into the edges of the cut.

       "See, doesn't my massaging it make it feel better?"  She pushed her fingernails straight into the cut again as hard as she could, and this time started rocking her fingers in little quarter turns.  "Let's message it for you until it feels better."  Keeping her fingernails in the open wound, she rubbed her hand left and right, making the wound wider and deeper, and making it bleed more.  It really made the boy hurt.   "See, boy, how massaging it makes it feel better!"

       Very pleased with how sensitive the skin was, she dug her index finger hard into the wound, and thought to herself that lightly burning the skin until it turned red was something she wanted to do in the future before she began to torture an area.  As a parting gesture of success, she pinched the tip of the nipple between her thumb and index finger, pulled the skin out from the body, and twisted her hand left and right, accompanied by a pleased, "Hummmp," from her, and a high pitched squeal from him.

       "How you doing, boy?  Having fun like I am," she asked him. As a first time outing into sadism, she was finding that she had fun when she teased and was mean to him.  Satisfied, she picked up the needle again.

       With her left hand she took a wide grip on the pectoral and squeezed.  That made the whole areola area and nipple budge up above the chest.  She put the needle to the edge of the areola, and turned to watch his face.  She could watch his face without watching what her hands were doing.  She pushed slowly.  From his face, she could see that the burned area hurt much more than the first nipple.  Her left hand felt the skin dent inward from the needle's pressure, and the skin deformed even more as the skin's integrity resisted the needle's penetration.  Then there was a sudden release of pressure as the tip pierced the skin and slid suddenly underneath the nipple.

       She wasn't sure, but she thought it hurt the boy more when the needle was pushing against the skin than the moment when it actually pieced the skin.  Interested in the mechanic of pain, she tried again.  She watched the expression on the boy's face, and listened to his whimpers.  Yep, it was the needle pushing against the skin that hurt the most, more than when it pierced the skin.  To try out her theory, she banged the needle against the stone floor to dull it, and tried again.  She had to push the dull needle harder against the skin before it broke through, and that certainly hurt the boy more than before.  The boy's face told her he was hurting more.  "Well," she thought, "That makes sense when you think about it."  No more sharpening needles for her.  "Oh, my little toy, with fire to make the skin very sensitive and dull needles, we are going to have some fun in the future."

       Lydia was poking, jabbing, stabbing and sticking the boy several different ways in her curiosity to find out the best ways to hurt him.

       "You don't mind me trying out my ideas on you, do you," she asked him.  He was quiet.  She slapped him.  "Tell me it's all right to try my ideas out on you!"  The boy felt confused by being asked such an obviously false question, and he didn't understand her intent in making him say blatantly untrue things.  Not understanding her intent, he felt afraid and unprepared to deal with the situation.  Feeling confused and unprepared, he answered, "It's all right, Mistress," then he felt vulnerable and frightened, having said it.  He regretted having said it, and felt it was a mistake.

       "That's a good little boy!  Tell me it's all right to stick my needles in you."  The question really frightened him and he couldn't bring himself to say it; and trembling, he shook his head, "No."  She angrily kneed him in the balls.  "Tell me!"  "It's all right to stick needles in me," he said looking ashamed and feeling more frightened by this turn of events.

       "What a good boy.  Now tell me it's all right to hurt you."  He definitely didn't want to say she could hurt him. He was silent again, but she thought he was learning the routine.  She just grabbed his throat without hurting him, and he blurted out, "It's all right for you to hurt me," looking like he was about to cry.  She smiled.  "Well, since you say it's alright for me to hurt you, let's make a full day of this and see how well we can torture you.  Is that alright with you?  To spend a full afternoon here with me while I hurt you?"  She just patted him on the cheek and he said, "Yes," feeling helpless, hopeless, trapped and afraid.  She smiled, then laughed, amused by his frightened obedience.  "Say the whole thing. Say, 'It's alright if you want to spend the whole afternoon hunting me.'"  "Say it!"  Threateningly, she took his cock, and squeezed her fingernails into it a little, as if she were about to squeeze it hard.  "It's alright if you want to spend the whole afternoon hunting me, Mistress"

       "Ha, ha, ha, such a good boy," she laughed.  "Well, since we both agree, that settles it.  We both want to spend the afternoon hurting you."

       "I think I want to hurt you a lot.  Don't you think it would be the most fun if I hurt you a lot?"  His chest shook like someone crying, but there were no tears in his eyes. He turned his head down and said, "Yes."

       "Alright, since you think it would be fun, let's spend the day trying to hurt you a lot. You're a very good little boy to be so agreeable to my plans.  Since we both agree very painful torture would be the most fun, I'll do my very best to hurt you a lot during the torture so we can both be very happy.  Tell me you're happy for me that I have fun hurting you.  Say 'I'm glad you're having fun hurting me.'"  He looked at her and his eyes trembled a little, as if he was about to cry.  "I'm glad you have fun." "You forgot the 'hurting me' part!  Say, 'I'm glad you hurt me'."  He said, "I'm glad you hurt me," with such a sad look in his eyes.

       She cupped his mouth with her fingers, and squeezed so his lips were pushed apart.  "Say it once again.  Say you're glad that I'm having fun hurting you."  With tears almost breaking out, he looked at her with frighten eyes and said, "I'm glad you're having fun hurting me."

       She grabbed his cock, and she dug her fingernails into the skin to make him bleed, and twisted her hand around.  "Say you want me to hurt you some more so I can have fun.  Say 'Please.'"  He looked down at his feet with his eye squinted closed at the emotional agony of saying these things, "Please hurt me some more so you can have fun."

       "Hum, hum, hum," she gently chuckled.  "That was fun to hear."  She grabbed his jaw, and twisted his face to look into her eyes.  "I want you to add, 'Mistress,' to that, and repeat it.  I want to see your eyes when you say it, so look me in the eyes while you're saying it."

       She held his jaw so he looked her in the eye, as he repeated, "Mistress, please hurt me some more so you can have fun."  She loved the look of fear in his eyes.  She guessed he felt desperate, wanting to escape, but didn't know what to do to escape her and the pain.

       "Keep your eyes on me, even if you hurt, and repeat it again."  She twisted and squeezed the hurt nipple as he spoke, starting easy and getting harder."

       "Mistress, ohh, awh, please.....ohh, hurt me, ooooh, more, awhh, sohh youoh kkkannn, ohh, ahh, oooh, ahh, Heee."

       "Keep going.  Finish it! Finish it!  Look me in the eye!"

       "sssooo yoouh ccaann .....awh...havemorefunohhhh."

       She laughed as he struggled with the pain, the corners of his eyes and mouth quivering.  She had wanted to look him in the eye to watch how his face quivered while he was hurt.

       "So far you've made me very happy, little boy.  Shall I torture you a long time a lot of different ways so we can have a lot of fun?"  He was emotionally overwhelmed, and he was just starred at her with wide, frightened eyes.

       She liked that she had pushed him to an emotional place that left him unable to answer, and she thought if she pushed him a little more, she might get him to cry.  To get him to answer, she squeezed his throat, at which he simply nodded his head for an answer. That wasn't enough for her.  She wanted to push him a little further.  "Answer," she said to him while at the same time she grabbed his cock and squeezed, aiming to make her fingernails cut into the skin and make it bleed again.  She watched his face, wondering if he would start crying when he answered.

       She had made him agree to so many ridiculous things, he was having trouble remembering the specific combination of things she wanted him to agree to this time. "I don't know what to say, Mistress," he said sheepishly and afraid of her.  Disappointed that he didn't think of the right thing to answer and didn't start crying, she said seriously, "A lot for a long time is alright."  "A lot for a long time is alright," he said, hanging his head down ashamed and feeling defeated.

       She did like the ashamed way he hung is head.  Grabbing his throat and squeezing, she said, "Now say the whole thing,'I want you to torture me a lot of different ways a long time so you can have fun.'"  He repeated the whole thing with his face turned away from her.  She slapped him, "You little wimp.  You better know I'm going to torture the hell out of you this afternoon until I have you kicking and screaming in pain, you little cock."  She kneed him in the balls with a look of contempt.

       She didn't think about this, but this whole dialog was inspired by one of her rapist who use to ask her, "You like this, don't you, you dirty little whore."  Unlike her rapist, however, she had a better sense of humor, and she found teasing the boy this way very funny.  The boy may not have agreed with her.

       She was delighted and thrilled she could manipulate him so easily and make him do and say whatever she wanted.  It made her feel powerful to control him so completely.  She was beginning to feel confident and competent as the abuser.  It was the same feeling of confidence and competence she was beginning to feel on the training ground with the men, and the same feeling she had whenever she dealt with the slaves.  In general, she was feeling more confident and competent in everything she did, maybe egotistically, and she was very conscious it stemmed from the power she had with a knife in her hand.  She knew she was developing into a very skilled killer and she liked the power that gave her.  It was the confidence built on accomplishment; a true confidence.

       "Shall we get started with the torture again?  Maybe a little more painful this time?"  He was too afraid to answer her.  "Answer me," she said, slapping his face.  "Tell me you want to begin the torture again.  Ask me to make it more painful."  "Lets begin again.  More painful," he said, without raising his eyes to look at her.  "Good, if that's what you want, I'll be happy to do what you want to do.  Just to please you and give you what you ask for" she said merrily.

       She decided there was a lot of humor to be found in being a sadist, and that it was very easy to enjoy her new role.  She decided then that she would like to question a slave about how they felt as she tortured them, whether it hurt a lot, if they were afraid, if they wanted her to stop, whatever seemed to scare them and hurt them.  Then she'd aggravate their fear and hopelessness with sadistic answers.  Asking them if the torture hurt a lot, and if they were afraid, seemed like delicious answers to hear.  She'd ask them what they were afraid of, and then do it to them.

       "Does my sticking you with needles and burning you hurt you, boy?"

       "Yes, mistress."

       She slapped him.  "Say it the way I want to hear it.  I want you to describe what I'm doing to you, and then tell me how it makes you feel.  And I want you to look me in the eye when you say it.  Say, 'It hurts me when you stick needles in me,' and look at me when you say it."

       "It hurts me when you stick needles in me, Mistress."

       "Yes, I know, boy," she said, looking him in the eye and smiling.  "The needles are so sharp, and I like to do it slowly, so it hurts you a long time.  I'm going to keep on sticking needles into you today to hurt you more.  I've already decided I'm going to stick them into your cock to hurt you a lot.  Does that scar you, boy?"

       "Yes, Mistress."

       She slapped him again, "Say it the right way!"

       "It scars me that you're going to stick needles in my cock."

       "Good boy.  You answered correctly.  Are you afraid it will hurt you a lot."

       "I'm afraid that sticking needles in my cock will hurt me a lot, Mistress."

       "Good answer, boy.  Yes, I know it's going to hurt you worse than sticking them into your nipple.  Get use to the idea. I've already decided that I'm going to do it to you, and you have no choice but to feel the pain."

       "Later, when I'm pushing a long, pointy needle through your cock and hurting you, I want you tell me how much it hurts you.  I want a nice, calm answer, and I want you to tell me what it feels like as I do it.  But only tell me when I ask you, and not before.  I'm not done torturing your nipples.  While I'm doing that, I want you to think of what is coming later, the sticking the needles through your cock.  As I torture your nipple, I want you to think that in a little bit I'm going to torture your cock and that's going to hurt worse."

       Returning her attention to hurting the burned side of the boy, she matter of factly pushed the needle half way under the nipple, stopping when the tip reached the center.  He began to tremble at the same level as the last thing she had done.  She wanted to increase the pain at this point.  She pulled up on the needle so the skin was pulled away from the body, forming a /\; and turned the handle of the long needle left, and right, so the skin twisted in a circle under the torque.  She knew that in the flesh underneath the skin, the tip was tearing flesh across it's path, as flesh reached the limits of it's elasticity and gave way to rip in two from the force of the cruel tip pressing against it, although she didn't think of it in these terms.  She thought, "It's probably getting all red and bloody under the skin from this twisting."  The edges of his eyes scrunched down in pain and effort as he tried to fight the pain.  At this point, she wasn't interested in conversation, but in the mechanics of causing pain.

       She increased the pain a little more: she twisted the needle in a full 360 degree circle, but the needle slipped out of the skin before she was finished.  To keep the needle from slipping out again, she pushed the needle completely through the nipple a little below the tip of the nipple so the needle stuck out from both sides.

       She twisted the needle in a full circle, and continued twisting.  At a turn and a quarter she saw a small rip in the skin just behind the needle.  She realized the needle was going to rip the skin apart if she continued to twist it.  She slowed how fast she twisted the needle so the skin would rip in half slowly.  She wanted to watch his face as the skin slowly ripped apart.

       At a turn and a half, the rip had opened up a lot wider.  She guessed that she had ripped about half the skin apart, and only a little remain until the nipple was completely ripped open. She went very slowly now, so ripping the nipple completely apart went very slow and took a long time, more then a minute, just a little bit at a time.  "Next time," she thought, "I'm going to go deeper with the needle, so I can rip the nipple open from deep down inside, and go slower so I can drag this out longer."

       His lip were drawn straight across in a line, and his jaw shook in visible shudders.  His chest and arms quivered.  He was gasping in short, fast breathes.  During the easier things she had done before, like playing with the burn, she felt excited and it made her laugh.  This was a slightly higher intensity of pain, and greater pain made her feel serious.  She liked how she felt about it, though, even if it didn't make her excited or make her laugh.

       Although the more intense pain made her feel very serious, she discovered in herself a very mean spirited wish to see the boy suffer more.  She felt much more satisfaction when he suffered a lot.  Paradoxically, the more serious she felt during the torture, or the more angry or mean spirited she felt, or crueler or meaner she felt, the more fun she was having.  The fun she was having was proportionately related to how mean, cruel, angry or serious she felt.

       This first journey into sadism was teaching her something about herself.  She had felt that same mean spirited wish to see a man suffer with the Goths, and the greater the pain, the more satisfied she was.  But she had assumed it was because she hated the Goths for what they had done to her family.  The boy wasn't Goth, but she felt it with him too.  She realized she was like Salidia, Drusillia, and Caligula, a sadist, which didn't bother her a bit.  She was enjoying herself.

       In the world of ancient Rome, there was no moral stigma attached to sadism, and Lydia certainly attached no criticism to herself for her taste.  In the world she lived in, they threw slaves to lions for entertainment.  Sadism was what she liked, and she was going to have more of it.  In plain words, she realized that the more cruelly and viciously she hurt the boy, the more fun she was having, and she intended to have more fun by hurting the boy worse.

       She returned her thoughts to the boy, and he looked her in the face.  She realized that his looking her in face was his way of trying to act brave again.  It might be fun to play with that, slowly stripping it from him until he broke down.  She knew she wanted to try heavier pain today, but she decided to play with the boy's bravery first by dragging him through more and more pain slowly, step by step.

       She thought his attempts at bravery were fun because she could up the pain ante any time she wanted.  He was hanging on to his bravery only because she was holding back on the bigger pain.  And as soon as she got bored with what she was doing, she would make it worse for him.  She knew it was inevitable that he break down because she wanted to try heavy pain before she was finished.  His whole act would disappear, and all his efforts to stay brave were in vain, because she had already decided that, before she finished with him today, she wanted to hurt him so bad he would pass out from the pain.

       But first she wanted to see how much pain it would take to make him give up trying to be brave.  So far, he had made some slips, showing her how frightened he was, like how he almost cried when she was asking him questions.  And those were just questions!  Scary question, true; but just questions.  When he stopped being scared, he went back to trying to be brave.  She noted, with a laugh, that he was brave when the pain wasn't too bad, but that he forgot his bravery as soon as the pain got worse.  So far, while she was only hurting him lightly, he was hanging on to his courage.  But she could see he was close to losing it by such things as how his lips were trembling in fear as she hurt him.  She guessed it would only take a little more.  He was still hanging on to his bravery, but she didn't think it would take much more to break him down.

       She thought, "You're so close to losing it, aren't you, boy!  But you are still trying to act brave, aren't you.  I know it's inevitable that you give in to the pain.  I think it's time to take it up one more step to show you why you're going to give in to me."  She slid the needles out from beneath his skin.

       She put the tip of the needle on the edge of the areola again, her face suddenly changing to a contemptuous and angry look, and with a sudden, brutal thrust, she angrily drove the needle under the skin and out the other side.  It was a brutal, vicious, angry thrust of the needle.  In rapid succession, her body jerking with the violence of her exertions, grunting, her hand smashing hard into the side of his chest, she repeatedly jabbed the needle through his nipple eight vicious more times, trailing off with 3 more hard thrust paced longer apart.

       Each time he gasped, his whole body tensing with each violent thrust, and he started breathing in ragged gasps.  She paused a moment, to let him suffer from the new pain she had just caused.  While his breathing was still ragged, which told her he was still hurting, she held the needle back over the wound she had previously ripped in the nipple.  Then, like someone cutting a steak on a dinner plate, but pausing between each stroke, she drew the needle tip across the wound, bearing down as hard and mean as she could.  Back and forth she dragged the needle across the wound, pushing down as hard as she could, ripping it deeper into the wound.

       His gasps matched the cadence of her strokes.  Her breathing matched the cadence of his gasps.  His gasps were caused by pain, her breathing by excitement.  Her body jerking from the exertion, each back and forth movement of her arm excited her as if she were masturbating.  Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, her dragged the needle across the wound, cruelly pushing down on the needle hard and mean; jerky, hard movements that cut deeper and deeper into the wound, blood running down his chest. His quivering and moans and gasps mimicked a lover climaxing, and it excited her more and more,until.........she climaxed.

       That surprised her a little.  It was the rhythmic movement of her body as she moved he arm so violently back and forth time after time.  Her body jerked in reaction to the violent forces she was exerting with her arm.  She hadn't expected a sexual reaction.  But she realized that the more she hurt him, the more it excited her.  She knew that when she saw him quivering and gasping in pain before, she was titillated, but she didn't expect how much more it would excite her to hurt him more.  It really excited her when she hurt him a lot.

       Unfortunately for this boy, and a lot of other slaves to follow, she had no qualms over using them to excite herself.  If hurting a boy was her path to masturbation, she'd callously use them for her satisfaction; and if hurting them worse or longer made the climax more exquisite or longer, she had not the least hesitation to put them through hell for her enjoyment.  If it gave her a climax, she was willing to, and would in the future, rip the skin off their bodies.  Slowly.

       She decided that any time she had a sexual need, she was going to pull a boy into the torture room and torture him as much as it took to satisfy herself.  As a matter of fact, this new discovery of a new way to masturbate pleased her so much, she planned on pulling a boy into torture room again, as soon as she could, so she could do this all over again.  And, of course, she wondered if hurting the boy worse would make the climax any better.  She would find out, and the answer would be, "Yes."

       She wanted to hint around with Salidia to find out if she too got off while she was torturing the boys.

       She was a little surprised the boy was still acting brave.  Throughout the torture, the boy had tried to remain brave.  He might have been a slave, but he still had some pride.  When the boys talked among themselves, they had their own code of behavior, and values that bestowed status on some and not others.  Courage was the most valuable commodity in their world.  This boy knew the reality: she was a master and he was a slave.  Worse, she was a trained warrior, same as a man, and he knew she was a killer.  As a slave, he must obey her or die.  But he could obey her and stand before her with bravery or cowardice.  He bravely looked into her face.  Paradoxically, it was fear of being called a coward that made him try to act bravely.  He desperately wanted to be brave and not a coward under her torture.

                               Chapter 13

       The Sadist - More is Definitely Better

       She was sexually satisfied, but her ego was no where near satisfied.  And it was her ego which was most important to her.  Since learning what the men thought she now had the ability to kill, which had swelled her ego when she first heard it, she wanted to feed her sense of power and superiority even more.  Without question, she intended to continue torturing the boy as long and as brutally as it took to slake her need to feel powerful and dominant.  Her climax was only a mile marker with the boy.  The boy was not nearly done.  She wanted to hurt him more and more, until he was kicking and screaming, until she was satisfied.

       When she started the session, she had curiosity about light, easy ways to hurt the boy that she wanted to experiment with, to expand her repertory of tortures.  As the scene progressed, and she saw him hurt, a burning desire to hurt him more and more crept into her mood.  It was the sadism in her that was coming out.  She noted that with everything she had done with the boy so far, like making him say what she wanted or dragging the needle across a wound which she had just done, she had wanted to make it worse and worse for the boy until he was driven to some kind of painful climax.

       This whole session with the boy would follow the same pattern, moving from light to more and more painful things for the boy.  Now that she was sexually satisfied, her desire to hurt him worse controlled her desires, her sadism.  She was done with the mild torture.  She wanted the heavy torture now.

       Something else began to change.  When she first picked him out in the stable, she selected him for questioning because she found him sexually attractive.  He pleased her, and she liked him.  But as the scene progressed and she started to feel more and more sadistic, her mood about the boy changed.  She was starting to hate him.  He was becoming a substitute for all the men who had beaten and raped her.  By the end of the scene, he would stand in their stead and suffer for all they had done to her.

       Lydia was a Mistress in a brutal age.  She knew any master could kill any slave any way, whenever, she wanted.  She knew from her conversations with Salidia that Salidia would not mind it if she killed a boy or two, as long as she didn't kill a lot of them.  Salidia had told her how young Nero and Drusillia periodically tortured their toys to death through long nights and days of screaming.

       Lydia grabbed the boys face and turned it to look at her.  She looked into his eyes, and thought, "I can kill you if I want, boy.  But right now, I want to hurt you more."  Her rapes in the past left her no qualms about how brutally or bizarrely she tortured the boy.  She knew she could go to Rome today, and see a slave in the Colosseum have his arm thrust into a fire until it was burned off, while the crowd cheered his suffering.  In the world she lived in, no one thought what she did was wrong, and she knew that throughout the Empire there were Colosseum filled with people who wanted to do the same things she was doing, for their entertainment.  If she were in a Colosseum right now, the crowd would cheer her on until the boy died from what she did.  She had no qualms about what she was doing to the boy.

       When she first started having sadistic ideas about the boys, she pictured in her mind things like burning him with a burning touch, pushing a long needle down the length of his cock, holding red hot metal to his skin....hurting him so much he passes out from the pain...all things that hurt a lot.  From the beginning, she wanted him to hurt the worst she could make him hurt, the worst pain her imagination could devise.  All the scenes she pictured in her mind ended with the boy passed out from pain.

       This was the serious stuff.  And she felt serious.

       Her preference was to do it slowly.  She wanted the torture long and drawn out so he would feel it a long time, so she could enjoy his suffering.  She also wanted the torture to be mean and cruel and vicious, because mean and cruel and vicious matched her mood.  That all boiled down to being painful.  The more painful for him, the better.  And to satisfy her mood, she wanted to be mean spirited when she did it to him.  When she did the light stuff with him, it was to satisfy her curiosity about methods of torture and how to cause pain.  The heavy pain was about what she personally wanted, emotionally desired, to do to the boy.  She wanted to hurt the boy a lot.  She wanted the torture to be long and hard and cruel.  And she was ready to begin.

       She brought two stools over to the boy, placing one between his legs and placing his cock on it, and set the other a little in front of him, settling herself down on it.  Holding the cock steady with her left hand and starting at it's tip of the penis, she looked up at the boy in hatred and started to push the needle through the cock lengthwise, on the right side.

         When she started to push the needle into the boy's cock, he started to scream, his courage of a minute ago melted away by the pain.  Rather than care about his pride, now the only thing he cared about was escaping the pain.  She stopped and stood up.

       "Don't scream.  It annoys me.  Hurts my ears.  You can whimper and moan, but don't scream.  If you scream I will make this twice as hard on you and twice as long.  And I will add a whipping to the cock torture that will leave your flesh ripped and bleeding.  Do you understand?"

       He nodded, "Yes," now obviously deeply afraid of her.  His desire to be brave was long forgotten, easy overpowered by his fear of her. He tried to control himself, now because of fear of her and fear of provoking her anger rather than a desire to be brave.

       She sat down, but then got right back up.  She reached down to her waist, took out her dagger, and held it before his face.  "Better yet, boy, if you scream again I'll shove this down your cock instead of this."  She held up the needle next to the dagger.  "Understand?  Scream again and I'll shove the dagger down your cock instead of the needle. And from now on, you had better obey everything I tell you or I'll shove this dagger down your cock once for each time you disobey me. And if you don't do exactly as I say, I'll just kill you."

       She sat down again and continued to push the needle down lengthwise on the right side of his cock.  He was whimpering, but she was concentrating on the needle.  She wanted to watch his face to see his suffering, but she knew the dick would be too floppy to control the path of needle unless she held it steady against the pressure of the needle.  When she got the needle half way down the length of the cock, she thought it was well started, and she was now free to shift her attention to the boy's face.

       Before she began, she wanted to talk to the boy.  "How does that feel, boy?"

       "It hurts so much."

       She slapped him.  "That's not the way to answer!  Always tell me what I'm doing to you and then tell me how it feels.  It excites me to hear from your mouth what is being done to you.  So always include what I'm doing to you in your answer.  Now tell me how it feels."

       "You pushing a needle down my cock hurts so much, Mistress."

       "Good.  Tell me more about how it hurts you.  Think of everything you can to describe it.  Talk a lot."

       "It's a sharp pain.  It's all I think about.  It's going up the length of my cock up into my stomach.  It feels like you've shoved the needle up into my stomach.  My eyes hurt from squeezing them closed."

       "Good.  Tell me more."

       "It feels strange.  I've never had pain from inside my cock, only on the outside.  The needle feels so big.  I wish you'd stop pushing it, but you just keep pushing it deeper and deeper.  It's so bad. I want to run away.  I want to pull my cock away from you so it will stop hurting, but I can't because the ropes are holding me, and you're holding my cock."

       She had seen him struggle under the pain, and knew the ropes held him firmly, only allowing him to wiggle just a little.  Knowing it was impossible for him, she said, "I'll be good to you.  I'll give you a chance to escape.  If you can wiggle around enough to pull your cock away from the needle, I'll let you go, and take you back to the stable."

       "But there is a price to pay for this gamble.  If you fail, I'll hurt you worse, longer.  Do you want to try to escape?  Remember, if you can pull your cock away from the needle, I'll let you go; but if you fail, I'll hurt you worse.  Do you want to gamble?"

       "Yes, Mistress."

       "Good, start now."

       She watched what he did.  When he pulled his hips to the right, she titled the needle point to the left so it cut into the side of his penis as he pulled it to the right, and she titled the needle to the right when he pulled left.  When he pulled down, she titled the needle up, so the point cut into the penis as it was pulled down past the point.  She saw blood start to flow from the entrance wound, and knew he was cutting himself as he moved.  He was going, "OHHH,"  "Oauh," "Heeee," with each move. He stopped, giving up and started to cry.

       "Try some more," she commanded him.

       "It hurts too much," he answered.

       "You almost pulled free, but you stopped too soon.  A little more and you would have pulled away from the needle, and I would have let you go.  Try again.  Pull your hips to left."  She titled the needle to the right.

       He looked down to see how much his hips moved.  She grabbed a burning branch from the brazier, and angrily shoved it into his eye.  Fortunately, he blinked before it hit his eye, but it left burning embers in his eyelids.  He screamed.

       "Shut up," she yelled at him.

       "Don't look down!  Do what I told you!  Pull your hips to the left and try to pull away from the needle.  I don't care if it hurts.  Do what I tell you!"

       He tentatively pulled his hips a little to left, while she pushed the needle to the right.  He stopped after 3 little attempts.

       "Harder! Don't stop!"  She stuck the burning branch into his face as a warning, but let him pull away.  She was too intent on watching what was happening with his cock.  Still not much blood from the entrance wound.

       "Faster and harder," she ordered him.  She pushed the needle further to the right.  Blood started to flow.

       "Keep going until I tell you to stop."

       She watched his face as he pulled his cock back and forth across the needle point.  His face was contorted in pain, and he gasped with every move of his hips.  She pushed the needle further right.  "Pull left!  Pull left! Harder! Harder!"  Blood dripped down his cock.  She tilted the needle at a right angle to the cock and pushed so the cock bent at an angle from the needle pushing against the flesh.  "Pull left!  Pull!  Pull!"   He was screaming with each pull he made.  Then she just held the cock firm with her right hand, and rubbed the needle point up and down inside the cock.  His screaming was constant.  Blood was running down his cock and dripping on the floor.

       She let him go then.  That was enough pain to satisfy her.

       "Always do what I tell you, no matter how painful it is.  The punishment if you disobey will be much worse.  No matter how much it hurts, obey me and you will hurt less than if I punish you.  If you had looked down after I told you not to, I would have held your eye open, and shoved the burning branch into your eye."

       Look down at your cock."  The cock still had the needle in it, push half way down it's length, and it sagged down under the weight of the needle.  She pushed up the cock with her left hand until it pointed straight up, and with her right hand, she held another needle pressed against the cock.

       "Push your hips forward until your cock push through the needle, and the needle comes out the other side......Wait."

       She loosened the ropes holding his hips against the lattice.

       "Good, push forward, slowly."  She held the needle firm against the pressing cock.  In fear for his life, he pushed his cock into the needle until the needle came out the other side."

       She pulled the needle out.  "Good.  Always obey me no matter how painful it is, or I will kill you."

       With this last thing she did, commanding the boy to push forward into the needle, her mood had changed, become more serious.  And more sadistic.

       Her mood was now the deepest her sadism would go.  She felt more serious than she ever felt in her life before.  She was done with the slave.  It wasn't slaves she wanted to command, it was men and people she wanted to command.  This new place in her sadism and seriousness made her want to step out of the torture room with it's slaves, and step into the world, and command the people there.

       `This didn't happen right then.  It didn't happen because Lydia's moods changed with the situation she was in.  Simply, she responded to the people she met or the place she was in.  Her serious mood of a minute ago was still there, buried inside her and ready to come out, when she was in the time and place it should come out.  But now, when she came out of the torture room and saw Salidia sitting outside waiting for her, all the feeling she felt about Salidia flooded out and controlled her actions.  She was responding to the situation before her.

       

                                       Chapter 14

                The Sadist - After The Ball Was Over

       When Lydia left the torture room, Salidia was sitting outside the atrium, the letter from Tuscany spread out on the table.  After waiting for Lydia to finally come out, Salidia had finally broken down and really read the letter.

       She motioned Lydia over to her.  Salidia was still under the misconception that Lydia needed reassurance that she was free to ask for things once in a while.  She intended to encourage Lydia to use the boys if she wanted, unaware it was unnecessary.  But then, Salidia didn't know that Lydia had decided to make some changes in her life.

       Salidia nodded toward the torture room.  "That's why I bought the boys.  They're here for entertainment.  You can take one anytime you want, and do whatever you want with them.  They're there to be tortured.  Kill them if you want, at least occasionally, although I'd prefer something less costly.  I pay a lot of money feeding and housing them just so they're handy for fun and games.  You might as well take advantage of them or they're just taking up space, not doing anything useful, and I'm paying for nothing."

       "Think of the boys like 'horses'. (Lydia lit up at the mention of horses, but stayed quiet.  Learning to ride a horse was one of the other things Lydia wanted to try.  Even more than trying one of the boys!)

       "It's like having a horse, and never riding him.  Just feeding him and keeping him in the stall and never taking him out for a ride.  So Sweets, go ride my 'horses'."  (Lydia was about to explode, but she thought, "Enough for one day!  Don't press your luck and ask for too much!") "Don't let my money go to waste.  Those 'horses' were purchased specifically to be 'ridden' by you and me.  Their whole purpose here is be 'ridden'."  (Lydia was thinking something like, "UUUUURRRRRRRRHHHHHHGGG," trying to hold herself back.)  "Go take advantage of them as much as you want.  It's fine by me."  (Lydia was thinking, "Tomorrow.  Maybe tomorrow wouldn't be too soon to ask her about the horses!  OOOOOOhhhh, I hope it's not too soon.  Please!!!")

       "The only thing I'd ask is not to kill too many."  (Lydia thought, "Oh putz, the boys again.  Talk about the horses some more.")  "Not that it bothers me," Salidia continued. (Lydia was thinking, "Why don't you make my day complete, and wear a blue dress.") "It's just a matter of money.  With this villa just starting up, I can afford to replace five or six of them, but not fifteen or sixteen.  The farm here isn't producing any crops yet.  I have to pay for you, Talig, his men, all the slaves, the new slaves, plows, horses, wagons, plus the villa in Rome, and not one coin is coming in.  Everything paid for by the revenue from Tuscany.  In about two or three months the first of the crops here will be ready for market.  Then you can ride the 'horses' into the ground till you hearts content."  (Lydia thought, "Oh, I will! I will! Both the horses and the boys.")

       Lydia forced herself to concentrate on what Salidia had just said, and answered,  "Not to worry, Mistress.  I've discovered that once I got to ride one of your 'horses,' I prefer to 'ride' him time after time if I could.  I'd ride the same one day after day, if he's rested up enough."  (Lydia thought, "And I promise I will do just that with both the horse and boy.")

       "Oh, Good Girl, Lydia!   You're a girl after my own heart.  Me, I get favorite things to do, and rotate one boy after another through it."

       The two women smiled at each other mischievously, and then started to laugh together.  They really did have so much in common.

       Feeling that this certainly wasn't one of the subjects that the girl was shy about, Salidia felt free to ask the girl some questions and satisfy her curiosity.  She asked, "Was your 'ride' today entertaining?"  Lydia nodded "Yes," with her big smile.  "Did you have fun," Salidia asked.  "Yes, a lot.  I loved it.  I can't wait to go back for another 'ride',"  Lydia answered.

       This wasn't what Salidia expected, and she was thrilled by Lydia's enthusiasm.  Salidia started to warm up to the subject.  "Great! Exciting, isn't it," Salidia asked.  Lydia's eye's opened wide and sparkled. "It was one of the most exciting thing I've done in my life.  There were moments my heart just stopped beating, and times it raced so fast I lost my breath. It wasn't like torturing the Goths.  When I torture them, I feel emotionally drained afterwards.  This left me feeling happy.  And it was dramatic, like the ludi (gladiatorial games) the men talk about.  You know how the men say that at the end of a match, one gladiator stands over the loser, sword ready to plunge into the loser's neck.  And everybody in the Colosseum looks to the Emperor to see if he will turn his thumb up or down.  Shall he live or die???  This was like that.  Sometime everything stood still, watching, waiting for the Emperor - Me! - to turn her thumb up or down.  And then: DOWN!  It was up to ME to decide if the thumb went down and the sword was plunged into the loser's neck - well, cock, not neck.  So exciting. I can't wait to do it again.  I want to do the same boy again.  I'm not finished with him.  I'm already making plans for him that are better than this time."

       "Ha, Ha, Ha.  You've been sucked in like me.  It's like the Sirens; the call beckons you and draws you in.   I thought I'd have to reassure you that's it alright. You can be so shy sometimes.  I don't have to!  You like it as much as me," Salidia teased her.

       "I haven't had time to try the boys since I got the Goths," Salidia said.  "but I'm going to make time for them next week.  If you're not shy about it, I'd love some company.  I can show you some of the tricks I've taught my rats.  The rats have some very cute ideas about how to treat the boys, and I bet they're a lot tougher on the boys than you are.  You can't believe how dramatic it can all be. Sometimes it's better than the lions in the Colosseum, and sometimes you laugh yourself silly.  It dramatic just like you said, waiting for the Emperor to turn his - her - thumb up or down.  The little lions sneak up to the boy and get ready to bite him, and then Down!  Come join me if you want.  I bet you'll have fun."

       "The rats can be funny," Lydia questioned, not able to connect rats with the parts she found fun today.  "Oh, yeah.  Hysterical sometimes.  I'll stop feeding them tomorrow.  A little hunger seems to make them much more interested in the boys. It takes a few day's hunger before the rats become ferocious.  The hungrier they get, the more they act like little lions.  By next week they'll be so hungry, they'll jump on the boy like a lion, and bite down on him so hard you'd think they were taking a lion sized piece out of him.  They tug and pull at the flesh like a dog tugging on a rope.  I have all those cages with different sized holes.  I can stick the cock up to one of the holes and just let the rat take little nips out of the cock, or stick the cock way inside the cage and let the rat take big bites out of it.  If I use one of the holes high up on the cage, the rat will jump up and grab on to the cock and shake back and forth trying to tear a chuck of meat out of the cock while they're hanging in the air, holding on to the cock with their teeth."  "Alright," Lydia said, "Show me your rats.  I'll be ready to cheer them on."

       "Oh, you have to see the rat's teeth.  I feed them a special diet.  When they chew on hard food like nuts, it wears their teeth down. If I don't feed them anything hard, the teeth just keep growing longer and longer, like our fingernails.  When they're first caught, the teeth are shorter than the nail on your pinky.  And clean and bright.  After a few weeks on a soft diet, the teeth get longer than your thumbnail."

       "So I've been feeding them nothing but mush.  The teeth are so long now and pointy looking.  And so yellow and dirty.  Uhgg, the teeth look so dirty, yellow and dirty and long.  It gives you chills just looking at them.  The night before I use them, I give them just a little mush, and the next day the teeth are even yellower and dirtier.  And you know their breath must stink."

       "And you can watch the rat come up to the cock and open wide over the cock.  You see the big yellow, dirty teeth hanging above the cock and the yellow, dirty ones on the bottom, and then the rat snaps down on the cock, and shakes his head to tear off a piece of meat.  And the boy screaming as the rats plunges those dirty yellow teeth into the cock.  And the rats jerks his head around until he tears off a piece of cock, and it leaves this deep bleeding hole in the cock."

       "Uhhh, those dirty yellow teeth.  They're so disgusting and evil looking.  I can't think of anything so evil and dirty looking to drive into a cock.  It's the worst thing you can think of to bite into a cock, so dirty and yellow looking, and so pointy and long; and the rats have such ugly, mean faces.  It's so horrible and mean to the boys. And so painful to them."

       "That mean, ugly face; lips pulled back; long, yellow, dirty pointed teeth poised above the cock, and I swear they have a mean look on their face and seem to smile when they snap down; driving those long teeth into the cock; and then the shaking and tugging and pulling; the boy screaming as the rat shakes his cock around with his teeth driven deep into the cock; and finally ripping a chunk out, leaving a deep bleeding hole.  Ugh.  It's so mean to do to the boys."

       "The worst is a cage with the hole midway up.  The rat has to stand on his hind legs to reach the cock, and they hold on to the cock with their front paws, and their evil, mean looking faces.  And I let them feed for a long time, taking bite after bite out of the cock.  They just stand there on their hind legs, front paws holding the cock, and their mean, ugly faces, and long, yellow, dirty teeth taking bite after bite of cock and shaking and pulling on the cock until they rip out a bloody piece of meat.  And the blood drips all over them and their faces as they feed.  And they stand there on their hind legs, all blood covered, holding on to the cock with their front paws, and taking bite after bite out of the cock, tugging and pulling on the cock to rip a piece of meat out of the boy.  It looks like someone eating a rib at dinner.  Holding the rib up to their mouth, and taking bite after bite out of it."

       "Sometimes I let them feed on the shaft for a while, and sometimes I just stick the tip of the penis into to cage, so the rats take nip after nip out of the tip of the boy's cock, while he screams and screams at each bite."

       "I just love the teeth.  I haven't feed them anything but mush for months, and the teeth keep growing longer and longer.  And without something hard to bite and gnaw on, the yellow just grows thicker and dirtier.  Their teeth are so long now, some of them starved to death.  The top teeth and bottom teeth overlap so they can't open their mouths wide enough to bite anything.  I have to keep replacing the older ones."

       "But it's best when the teeth are so long that they almost overlap, but not quite.  Then they have to struggle and work to get their mouths open wide to get their teeth around the cock.  You can watch the whole thing because the rats have trouble biting with their extra long teeth.  They have to stretch their mouths extra wide to get those long teeth above and below the cock.  You can watch the whole thing, it takes so long.  The rat comes up, stretches open his mouth to get the top teeth over the cock and the bottom teeth below the cock.  It's best when the rat has to try again.  He tries to stretch his mouth open even wider so he can get the long upper teeth on top of the cock, and the long lower teeth on the bottom.  And the boy feels the long teeth rubbing on his cock as the rat tries to stretch his mouth wider and wider until he can get a bite, and the rat paws away at the cock trying to grab the cock tight."

       "After the first bite, the boy knows what's coming next.  He feels the teeth rubbing on his cock as the rat struggles to stretch his mouth open wide enough.  He feels the rat pawing at his cock as the rat tries to get a good grip on the cock.  He knows the rat is going to bite him, and tug and pull at him until he rips out a chunks of meat.  The boys look so desperate and frightened about the pain they know is coming.  And then finally the rat drives his teeth into the meat.  The really long teeth drive completely through and come out the other side.  And then the rat starts tugging and pulling on the cock to tear out a chunk."

       "Sometimes I blindfold the boys so they're surprised when they're bitten, but most of the time I like to let them watch, so I can see the fear in their faces as the rat approaches, then stretches his mouth wide, holding on to the cock, and then the look on their face when they're bitten.  And the look of terror on their faces when they see the bleeding hole the rat leaves.  Especially when the rat hasn't fed for a while, and a lot of the cock meat is gone."

       "Their teeth don't work right anymore because of the mush diet.  Nothing to wear them down and keep them sharp.  Since I started feeding them mush, the teeth are much duller and the rats have to work real hard to pull out a mouthful of meat.  The boy screaming as the rat tugs and pulls on the cock."

       "That mush diet has really messed up their teeth with nothing hard to gnaw on.  But it works out just great.  Everybody's happy with it.  Well, I'm happy with it.  The rats and boys not so much.  The teeth get really long and yellow and dirty.  And dull.  They have to tug and pull so hard at the cock.  So much like a dog tugging and pulling at a rope."

       "I love it when the boys start to beg me to stop it.  I love being mean to them then.  When the boys start to beg me to stop, I get a special cage with a small hole.  That one I have to hold the cock in my hand and push the tip of the cock against the hole for the rat to bite it.  I rotate the cock around for the rat to take bites out of all sides of the tip, and while I do that, I tell the boys they have to let the rat bite them and feed on their cock.

       "There are three new things I wanted to try and you can be the first to see it.  I've had the stable boys catching mice instead of rats lately.  I'm going to let the mice eat just one of the balls on a kid.  Not both balls because I don't want the kid acting like a gelding, and I'm just going to stick one ball into the cage.  I'm going to let 20-30 of the mice loose on the ball, because I thought it would be more fun, and last longer, if it took a lot of little bites to eat the ball completely, but it would still happen fast, one little bite after the other because there are so many mice."

       "And I had a hook made, the size of a crooked index finger, but much thinner.  Like a big fishing hook.  I was going to hook it through the cock behind the head, and pull the cock into the cage, all tight and stretched out long, and let 5 mice loose on it.  I thought the little mice would take longer to eat much, and make more little bites.  If it's not exciting enough, I have some more mice, and I can just dump them into the cage, and have them all feast down on cock."

       Lydia said, "Don't use a sharp point on the hook.  It's more fun if you use a dull point.  I'll take it to the blacksmith and have him cut off the point and leave the end square.  I'll drive the hook through the cock next week for you, and you can see the dull hook hurts much more.  I may have to use a starter hole to get it going, and it's more work, but it hurts the boy much more.  Then you can pull the cock into the cage."

       "Maybe we can cook the meat a little before we give your mice their meal of cock.  I bet the boy does a lot more screaming and jumping around if you cook the meat a little first.  Let me hook it and cook it first for you, and then you can serve up dinner to your little friends.  I don't mean really cook it through.  I just mean burn it enough so it hurts him to touch it, then let the mice bite it.  I can pull the cock out long and tight with the hook in it, and burn it from tip to base, top and bottom and both sides.  That will be a show in itself."  She laughed, "I hope for the boys sake I don't get carried away with the burning, and forget I'm suppose to leave something for the mice.  Do your mice prefer their meat cooked rare or well done?  You're going to have to show me where you keep that hook.  I think I'm going to have some uses for it.  I've got a feeling I'm going to go fishing for some cock with that hook in my hand."

       Salidia asked, "Are you going to do the burning slow?"

       Lydia: "Oh, definitely.  With a lot to teasing.  You know, the burning makes the skin all rosy and red.  And the boy just jumps when you touch it after."

       Salidia: "That might work well for the last thing I wanted to try, but you'll have to burn the penis head.  A rosy, red penis head might work real well for me.  I had a cage made up with a very small hole at one end."

       "The hole is so small, it will take a lot pushing and squeezing to get the head of the cock through it, into the cage.  It might be fun if the cock is all red and hurts when it's touched.  Pushing it through a small hole might be a lot of fun then.  And a bright red cock will make it easier for the mice to find it."

       Salidia added, "We're going to have to do some of the Goths with the rats.  I was saving that for last thing with them, but I'll do one or two out of turn as soon as I get the rats hungry enough.  We pull the table up to lattice, strap the Goth down so he can't pull away, and use that big cage.  It holds eight or nine rats.  We'll stick their balls in and let the rats eat them both, and let the Goth watch the whole thing.  Then we push the cock into the cage and let them eat that.  I said I was going to do that last, but I guess the Goths will just have to live with the disappointment of having their schedules messed up."

       Salidia smiled to herself.  She was pleased that Lydia decided to open up a little bit.  This conversation was a bigger success than she had hoped.  People can be so private about their sadism because it revealed private sexual preferences they want to keep to themselves, and she was afraid that Lydia might be shy about it.  She was pleased with the idea of the rats.  Neither woman had to reveal much about themselves but instead they would be the audience for her little henchmen.

       And Salidia was right about the rat teeth: they were so disgusting, long and yellow and dirty looking.  And they opened their mouths so wide to get their extra long teeth above and below the cock before they plunged the teeth into the boy's cock.  Uggg, and their mean, ugly faces.  The two shared the laughter and thrills provided them by the little pocket lions without exposing anything about themselves.  It turned out to be a great ice breaker for what they liked to do to the boys.

       The women ended up sharing some session, and keeping some session private.  In part because Lydia liked long sessions, and Salidia didn't have that much patience.  Lydia would start a boy and run it to a dramatic climax, then she'd wait a while and start it up all over again for a second torture session.  She's do three and four torture sessions with the same boy, one after the other, for hour after hour.  Salidia would often beg out after one or two rounds of torture; not that she was bored, she just wanted a change of pace after a few hours.  They loved being the audience for each other, watching the show as one tortured a boy and the other watched, often stopping in while the other had a session going.  But they tried to be discrete, avoiding sessions that were sexual.  Most often they shared sessions with the rats, cheering the furry little demons on.

       Lydia was starting to open up more and share things with Salidia.  She even asked to learn how to ride a horse.  They did two Goths with the rats, waiting a week between them so the rats would be really hungry.

       The women started using the boys much more often.  So much so that they had to pick up more.  It could take a month or more before a boy healed, and was ready to use again.  While one boy healed, they had to use another.  Instead of going down to Massilla again, Salidia sent Lydia out locally with some of the men to find young slaves.  Lydia used this opportunity to practice her riding.  Young stable boys turned out to be the cheapest and most available source and Lydia showed a preference for good looking, muscular ones.  They didn't cost any more since nobody cared what a stable boy looked like.  Unless you had other uses for him.

       On one of these buying expeditions, when the slave trader was passing through the village, Salidia accompanied Lydia so she could point out the type of boy she found most attractive.  While she was in town, Salidia picked up a little something for the girl, a blue dress Lydia seemed to like.

       Exactly like Drusillia, and for the same reason, they assembled a stable of forty.

       And Lydia did change after the first torture session.  The self-assurance she showed with her role as an abuser, and the commanding tone she took with the boy began to creep into her everyday dealing with others.  Within a couple of months of starting the torture with the boys, Lydia was acting like the men she dealt with everyday: self-assured, confident, and willing to speak up and say what was on her mind.

       Everybody was just fine with it.  First, it was how they treated each other (except for Salidia), and it was what they were use to.  She fit right in with the group.   Second, everybody felt the "shy" Lydia was out of place, unnatural, for her.  The shy, timid part of her personality was caused by the abuse she lived under as a slave, and it wasn't a natural part of her.  The new Lydia fit her better, was more natural for her; and was more in keeping with the group she was in and the job she had to do.  Besides, she was still playful and affectionate, and that was really what they liked about her.  If anything, the change in her made her more outgoing and emotive, which everyone loved more.

       At night, everyone would sit around and talk and joke, and Lydia would be as confident and self-assured as the men.  Lydia had stopped being a girl, and become a woman.  A woman who was the equal of the men she lived with; and they, like her, were the best of the best at what they did.

       And, with the change in Lydia's personality, the men all treated her with the respect she deserved.

       Within a few months of starting the torture of the boys, Lydia's manner of acting was indistinguishable from the men: confident and self-assured.  And the shy, self-effacing Lydia was seen no more.

       The shy, self-effacing part of Lydia's personality was a result of where Lydia was living, a place where Lydia was badly abused by all the people around her.  It was a sensible reaction to abuse that kept her safer.  When her situation changed, and she had a chance to develop and be rewarded for her accomplishments, her confidence grew and the natural, inborn elements of her personality emerged.  Her new found assertiveness and confidence were the natural result of a physically talented woman living in a culture that rewarded people who were good athletes.

                               Chapter 15

                                Neighbors

       Late summer had come around.  Salidia now had a productive villa: there were enough farm slaves for the harvest, additional ox and carts, and expanded slave quarters.  She had enlarged the villa to make it more comfortable, and built new quarters for the men, each man getting his own room and a common room for all to share.  With the work on the villa now completed, Salidia was able to resume beating the Goths into the slaves she wanted.  There were fourteen left.  Ten had died of infected wounds.

       Lydia had become fast and dangerous under Talig's training.  She was also embolden by the changes that had occurred with her sense of confidence and assertiveness, and she had started to play out her own agenda with the Goths when they were brought in for torture.  At the beginning of each session, when they were still alert, Lydia asked them all, "Where did you live?"

       They could have lied, but Lydia gambled that their fear made them want to please her.  And she asked them follow up questions.

 

       One man answered, "Tendown."  Lydia exhaled deeply, her eyes seemed to set deeper below her brow, and her focus on the man became harder and more steely.  Her lips turned down. "Tendown," was the answer she had waited to hear.

       She went over to Salidia.  "He's from my village.  May I talk to him."  Salidia remembered the killing of the strong Goths, and knew what this meant to Lydia.  She kissed Lydia on the forehead, and left the room.  Lydia followed her, and returned with a sword.

       She untied the Goth, threw the sword on the stool a little in front of the man, and backed away to the table a distance away from him.  The man understood the challenge implied by the sword within his reach.

 

       The man had never seen Lydia kill anyone.  The only men present in the room when she did that were dead.  He had never seen her practice with Talig's men because he was chained in the stable when she practiced.  But he damn well knew who she was and what she could do.  He knew his life hung by a tread.

       The man had a frightened, but sadly resigned look to his eyes, like he had been in this position before, and had learned to resign himself, sadly but hopelessly, to his fate.  It was not what Lydia expected and it softened her.  Had he shown the slightest anger, he would have already been dead.  If he had acted angry and reached for the sword, he would have been dead a second after he started to move.

       "Where did you live?"

       "Tendown."

       "You said that already! What house," she asked annoyed.

       "The small one with the oven on the side"

       "By the tree with the big bole in it?"

       "Yes."

       "Do you know who lived there before you?"

       "No."

       "Their name was Vinenci.  His name was Miclow, and her name was Mischa.  They had two children, Laudar and Kayna.  She would have been a year younger than me.  They had a brown dog and chickens in the back."

       "I remember a brown dog that hung around when we first got there."

       "What happened to the dog."

       "I didn't see him after the first winter."  She knew what that meant.  She had played with that dog and Laudar and Kayna.

       "At the end of the street there was a house with a pond way in the back.  They use to keep ducks with clipped wings there."

       "There were no ducks there."

       "Who lived there?"

       "I don't know."

       "I mean the Goth."

       "Nagman.  Gunto Nagman."

       "Is he alive?"

       "I don't know.  I didn't see him after the Romans came."

       "Pick up the sword."

       "Mistress, I am a tanner.  I make bridles and harnesses and clothes.  I do what the lords tell me.  Mistress, I do not want to fight you, but I will defend myself to save my life if I must.  I will pick up the sword and fight for my life but I am not a warrior."

       The sad, resigned look in his face told Lydia that he had stood before other Lords who had held his life in their hands, and that he knew he must accept what they decided for him.

       What he had said touched her.  The brave are forced to fight when they don't want to, also, only the forces driving them to fight are internal.  They have no choice either.  She could force him to fight for his life, but she was also forced to fight like he was.  What he said was also a practical matter: she was trained, he was not.  He would die.  He stood no chance against her.  Yet he would fight if he must, even if he was destined to die.  It would be the same as she would do in the face of death.  It was what she had done when she fought back against her rapists and abusers, even when she had no chance of winning.  She respected him for his honesty.  He was a truthful man.  There were awful, terrible truths in what this man said, and they would apply to her again some day.  She had in the past, and probably would some time in the future, fight when she had no chance of winning.  She respected this man who could not fight.

       She looked at him for a while.  "You still have all your fingers and toes.  Salidia has not let her rats loose on you.  Your face is a mess."

       "You came to my valley with swords, and I have scars you cannot see.  I did not ask for them or deserve them.  The Romans came to your valley with swords, and you have scars you did not ask for or deserve.  Come with me."  She walked out of the room without watching what he did behind her.  He followed her.

       She lead him to the building where the horses were kept.  "Bridle the small bay.  That's her bridle on the post."  She left and returned a few minutes later with a cloak which had a hood.  He could pull the hood over his head, hiding his face.   She threw it to him.  "Take the horse."  She walked into the courtyard to the front gate.  He followed with the horse.

       At the gate she handed him her dagger.  "Do not go to your valley.  All your people are dead or sold as slaves.  Go."  She closed the gate behind him.

       She went to Salidia.  "I took the small bay.  She is gone."  Salidia looked at her, and didn't say anything.  She never mentioned it again.

       In six months when Selenius would give Salidia the Aquitani land, Lydia would see this man again among the slaves which were captured.  She would put him in charge of the stables and horses, and give him land nearby for a home. In that post he would make a Roman saddle with a cinch for Lydia's horse, and the advantages that saddle gave Lydia would save Lydia's life many times over.  And he would find his wife from Tendown among the other slaves and be reunited with her.

                               Chapter 16

                       One Summer Morning

       Usually in the morning, Lydia would try to rise before Salidia, and she would go into Salidia's room to be there when Salidia woke up.  Miridia, the housekeeper, had already laid out Salidia's clothes for her the night before, but Lydia like to be there to help Salidia in the morning.  This morning Salidia was already up, and standing at the window watching the sun rise on a beautiful morning.  It was a warm late summer morning with birds chirping merrily outside.  In the far fields, young calfs ran across the meadow for no other reason than that they were young and it was morning.

       Lydia approached Salidia.  Salidia started talking without turning to see who it was.  "When I came here, my world and my life were destroyed.  My best friends, my brother, my aunt and her children had all been killed.  And all the others, my allies, my other relatives.  I had everything else, my revenue from Tuscany, my villa in Rome, a place at court, but without the people I cared about I had no life left, and no safety.  I came to this hell hole and only had one thing: my safe harbor, my ever constant Selenius."

       "And look now.  This is my home now.  And it is you and Talig and the men that made it home.  I don't go to banquets anymore, or stand by Caesar as our Legions bring their spoils of war to lay at our feet.  I talk to slaves and gladiators and lowly freeman.  And I am happy."

       "This will be my home from now on.  When someone finally kills Caligula, I will not return to Rome.  I'm selling my villa in Rome, and bringing my people up here.  Some of them are like you and Talig.  Good and trustable.  It will take some time.  Caligula has left many vacant villas on the Hill, and little reason people would want to move up there close to him.  But soon, when he is gone, I will sell it."

       "I will do what you said.  I will use the money from the Phoenician to bring the men's families up here, and build them houses around us.  There will be children laughing in the fields as well as calfs gambolling."

       "You are free, Lydia.  You have not been my slave for a long time now."

       From the side, Lydia took Salidia's left hand in both of her's, and lay her head on Salidia's shoulder.

       "Where would I want to go?  You and Talig and the men are my family.  From the beginning you and Talig have not been my masters, but my mother and father.  You are the people I love."

           Later that morning, when she finally left the villa, Talig and Caius were waiting outside.  They had stayed there the whole morning waiting for her.  Salidia had told them what she was going to do.  Talig walked up to her and didn't say anything; he just fondly stroked her hair and smiled at her.  She hugged him and cried.  Caius stood to the side, just smiling.  He reached up and put his hand on her shoulder.  It was the same when the rest of the men found out.

                               Chapter 17

                        Weeding the Garden

       Lydia continued to watch the Goths Salidia tortured, now that they were getting down to the end.  If these thirteen men were used as field slaves, their supervision would be reduced to that of ordinary farm slaves, and she didn't trust them.  

       Lydia walked up besides Salidia at the start of one session.  "You're a liar, Goth."

       "Look at his eyes.  When you have a torture implement in your hand, there is fear in his eyes.  When you have nothing in your hand, there is no fear.  He is afraid of the torture, not us.  When we're done with the torture, and he is in the fields, he will plot to escape or seek revenge."

       Looking at the Goth, Lydia said, "I want to do him."

       At that, Salidia turned to Lydia, and eyed her a moment, with a slight smile.  She was proud of her charge's judgement on the best way to deal with slaves.  Lydia was becoming a competent officer for her.  "All right, if that's what you think should be done," Salidia said, accepting Lydia's judgement as final.  Salidia turned and left the room, leaving her officer to finish up business for her.  Then Lydia left the room also, leaving the Goth alone.

       

       Ten minutes later, two of the men came in.  They untied the Goth, shackled his hands behind his back, and took him outside.  Lydia was astride a horse with her dagger at her side, and a sword slid beneath her belt in the back.  She held the reins of a second horse.  The men hoisted the Goth onto the back of the second horse, and opened the side gate.  Lydia lead the Goth out, and they walked to a small knoll a good distance from the villa.  The horse's hoofs provided a "clop," "clop," "clop," background to the slow walk, while their bodies swayed to the rhythm of the horse's gate.  It was a quiet 12 minute ride.

       When they got to the hill, Lydia dismounted and told the Goth to slide off.  The free horses started to graze.   Lydia unlocked the shackles, and walked to face the man from about three body lengths in front.  She threw the sword at the man's feet.  "If you kill me, you can take the horses and escape.  If you look, the gate to the villa is closed and no one is looking over the walls.  You can ride one horse, and pull the other behind you.  When your horse gets tired, you can change to the other fresh mount.  No one from the villa will be able to catch you.  You can pick up the sword first before we begin."

       Lydia was developing a preference for single one on one combat to handle problems.  Her training had produced a solid confidence in her abilities.  Taking someone alone to some quite place and fighting was now how she wanted to do things.  It replicated the one on one training sessions she had with the men.  She had complete confidence in her speed, and assumed, with only a few exceptions like Talig, that she would be the fastest person in any group.  By a long shot.  With a knife in her hand, she felt she could kill anyone in front of her.  Or three or four people for that matter.  She understood how fast she was.   The man in front of her may have a sword, but Lydia thought of this as no contest.  After all, she could take most of the men, and they had all proven they were the best of the best, in the arena or battlefield; and none of the Goth warriors were half as good as any one of Salidia's men.  Lydia knew she could beat men more than twice as good as any of the Goths.

       She was just playing with him.  This killing was to be a display of her power to the Goths who had raped and beaten her.  Killing him was the modern equivalent of Lydia saying, "How do you like me NOW, GOTH?"  This man was to be killed to suit Lydia's ego.  She felt he was like all the men who had raped or beaten her, and now she wanted to triumph her skills over him and all his kind.

       The man was no coward.  The Roman's had captured him when a dying man had fallen against him, and he lost his balance, falling forward into Roman hands.  He was no fool.  He didn't want to die a senseless death, like some of the others.  He would survive the torture, and be put into the fields as a slave.  Then he would wait for his chance.  He was disfigured, but if he could return to his people in the North with the blood of Salidia, Lydia, and Talig on his hands, he would be a hero.  The night would come when he could escape, and he would go and kill them in their sleep.

       Now she had found him out.  Like all warriors, he knew the day would come when he had THE FIGHT: the one he wouldn't win.  He was prepared to die.  But now!  No matter what they said about her, she was just a girl!  And the vain little strumpet had been foolish enough to stand in front of him with a dagger while he had a sword.  He would run her through, take her head, get the horses, and return to his people in the north with his bloody trophy.  He picked up the sword and grinned, thinking of her head hanging from his hand.

       "Whoa! Ha! Ha!," she thought.  "You're left handed!  This is going to be interesting!  No strike and spin to the right, blocking with the left.  Well, I've practiced this often enough."  She shifted position, right foot and shoulder leading, and double stepped in toward him, keeping her left arm across her stomach and her right straight down by her leg.  The downward position of her arm allowed her to "snap" her strike upward, developing more terminal velocity than if she held her hand higher.  The fool kept a left shoulder lead, pushed off his right foot, and struck up toward her heart.  The moment she saw the movement of the sword in line with her body, and not a swing from the side, Lydia smiled and thought, "Easy!"  (Not incidentally, the downward position of her arm was also intended to induce this strike, reducing the chance of a swing from the side.)

       She pushed off her left, her upper right arm coming up and then down, while her forearm rotated in a circle to knock his sword to the side, and as a check to her momentum on the right side.  From it's downward position, she snapped her right arm up to strike the throat.  The momentum of that move anchored her shoulders, allowing her to snap the left shoulder forward, while she pushed off her right foot to the inside.  She was now in front of him, spinning to her left.  Her previous moves had imparted momentum to her shoulders.  She brought her right arm down and back, her left arm forward; their movement adding to her rotation, while her right leg swung around and to the back, as she pivoted on her left foot.  She was now along side of him, facing in the same direction.  She checked her rotation by planting her right foot solidly, and allowed herself to be carried straight back.  There was no need to check her movement and swing behind him for a second strike; the throat was cut on the first pass.  She allowed herself to take a few steps straight back to gently come to a stop behind him.  She was now more than an body length behind him on his weak side, facing his back.  He was holding his throat, and had dropped the sword.  The whole thing had been executed in a blur of spinning motion that started the moment he brought his sword within range for her to block.

       She went to get the horses first because sometimes they can be a pain in the ass to catch, deliberately walking away from you to avoid being caught.  Horses have an annoying preference to spend their days eating grass rather than have someone sit on their back and kick them.  Once she caught the horse, she got the sword and shackles.

       There was a slight cut to her left forearm where she blocked his sword thrust at her.  It was a problem she overlooked while practicing with wood swords.  She realized she should add arm guards to her equipment to cover this problem in the future.  But, overall, she was happy with this kill.  It had gone just like practice, except for the cut on her arm.

                               Chapter 18

                               A New World

       The Goths were finished by the end of the eight torture round.  By that time they all were terror filled at the mere sight of Salidia or Lydia, babbling and screaming and crying when they saw either of the women.  In our terms, we would say they were suffering from acute post traumatic stress disorder.  Induced by Salidia.  If it were 60 yrs. ago, we would say it was extreme "shell shock."  One symptom would be paralysis of their sense of initiative; another would be compulsive, intrusive thoughts, specifically terror and fear, plus depression and flashbacks.  Salidia and Lydia referred to it as "broken."  They decided to forego any further torture considering the number who had already died of blood poisoning.  They wanted some slaves to show for all their effort, and twelve was more than Salidia had originally expected.  She had thought she'd be lucky get a quarter of them for slaves.

       Selenius paid off his bet, and that was more fun than Salidia had imagined.  Plus, she got to tease him over the grapes for months afterwards.  And she had the wine sent up anyway.  She knew how to milk a good situation when she saw one.  Every time they had dinner together, drinking her wine, she reminded him that she didn't have to give him the wine because she had won the bet.  Twelve amphoras of wine lasted a long time, and allowed her to tease him for meal after meal.

       A week later the two women were on horseback on the knoll overlooking the villa.  Below them male slaves worked in the fields, including the twelve Goths.  Salidia said, "We defeated them.  Bent them to our will, and those who did not bend to our will, we killed."

       "When I was in Rome, I controlled my world through intrigues and alliances and family ties.  When Caligula forced me out I came here and carved out another world to control.  This world I control through the weapons I hold in my hand, and that is much more satisfying.  Simpler.  More dependable.  You and I control all these men.  They obey our bidding, or suffer the consequences.  And we will defeat anyone who opposes us.  In Rome I used words to fight.  Here, you and I have become lethal weapons.  I like this world better."

       "Next week Talig will take eight of the men to Tuscany to pick up my revenue.  While all those men are there, I will have them pick up all the families to bring back here, staging at the villa in Tuscany, and getting whatever they need for the trip.  I will do as you suggested and use the Phoenician's money to build them houses here around the villa when we find out how big a house each family needs, and give them the remainder of the money to begin their lives here.  With more people here for us to use, we can expand our world, and not just be surrounded by Cimbri and Aquitani."

       Salidia would expand her world.  A fight with the Aquitani would bring her more land than before, and she would have trouble getting the people she needed to control it.  It would force her to use more and more women to help rule her domain, as she had groomed Lydia, her Little Lion, to help her rule.  Her new land would become a safe haven and refuge for strong women who did not fit into the rest of their world, as the spirited Lydia did not fit her original role in the kitchen.  And these women working to control this new land would become an ideal to women through the world and the place they created would become known as Avalon, a place of fairness and justice to women.

       In time, history would forget the names of these two women, but the name of the place they created, Avalon, (Abbalo), would always retain the character of the world they created for themselves, the place where women were free to be who they were destined to be.  As the name Avalon drifted down through history, it always carried with it the atmosphere of freedom and fairness to women that these two women first made for it in Abbalo.

                               Chapter 19

                          Like a Phoenix

       Salidia rode down to speak to the steward, and Lydia remained on the knoll watching Salidia below talking to the steward, with her fields beyond her and her slaves working in the fields.

       A lone women on a hilltop watching Salidia below her, she thought of her trip here.  She began as a weak women, angry at the abuse heaped upon her, but too weak to do anything about it, and clearly frightened of the real people with power, men like Talig.  Now she stood at the side of Talig, his powerful protegee whom he treated as an equal.  From a powerless women afraid to speak up for herself, she could now kill any man before her, but one.  And that one stood at her side.  And people stood in fear when she spoke.

       And Lydia was no longer Salidia's timid student who Salidia had to teach how to handle slaves.  Now Lydia was Salidia's protector as much if not more than Talig.  When Lydia looked down the hill at Salidia, she saw a responsibility that was her's to protect and serve.

       Not all people were afraid of her.  There were people who laughed and smiled and hugged her when she spoke.  People that gave her back the world of love she had lost, lost but not forever.  And it was her's again.

       Lydia was a complex figure.  Sadistic and cruel with the boys she used for gratification.  Loving with Salidia and Talig.  Caring, thoughtful and helpful to the men and their families.  Fair as she saw it with the tanner from Tendown.  Murderous with the Cimbri Chieftain and the Goth warrior she had just killed.  Strong, as anyone standing before her would find out.  And soon she would become the protector of her world and those within it.

       Like Janus, the god with two faces who's image hung on every Roman home's doorway for good luck, the door to Lydia heart had a Janus.  One side facing outward was the ferocious killer who used tremendous speed to strike before others could defend themselves.  She was the killer people feared.  The other side looked inward to those she loved.  This was the woman who was loved by the people in the villa.  And Lydia, this ferocious killer who would defend her world and those she loved against all who threaten it, would become the women who would make Salidia's Avalon a reality.

       For Lydia was both Mars and a Fury, and a woman loved by the people in the villa.

                               Chapter 20

                                 Epilog

       Men would come into this world that the two women had created, and they would not only try to destroy that world and take it for themselves, but to kill these women.  As Lydia had stepped out to defend Salidia against the Cimbri chieftain who had insulted her, Lydia would step out again to defend her world.  She would learn to ride as a soldier, pick up a bow, and hunt these men down.

       But that's another story.

                               The End,

                               for now.

Author's Note:  Tales 1 was a Femdom story with some tongue in cheek humor.  Tales 2 was a character study of a complex and powerful femdom.  I had hoped to create a character people would like.  Tales 3 will be an action story where Lydia meets a horse, finds a bow, and becomes Hell on Horseback.  TG

PS. Oh!  And she tortures a couple of guys, too.  But not too much.  It's an action story with a femdom lead.

PPS. I'd love feed back on the story, if anyone wants to give some.   Sitting alone at a computer typing this out, it hard to know if I'm going in the right direction without feed back.  So leave a comment at BDSMLibrary if you'd like, or shoot off an email.  Does anyone like my Little Lion?

                       tomg4262@gmail.com

                                       Thanks, TG.

PPPS.  Hope you enjoyed it.

PPPPS.  There's a "tease" below this.  Like upcoming movies have trailers, there's a trailer for Tales 3 under this.

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Synopsis: Salidia's Little Lion, Lydia, sparks a fight with neighbors, and she picks up a bow to become Hell on Horseback to protect those she loves.  Out of the fires of this conflict, they forge the place that became known as the Valley of the Amazons.  Action story with Femdom leads. `165 pgs.

       Tales of Ancient Rome 3: Lions in the Valley

                                         By

                                         TG

                                   Chapter 1

                               Debts to be Paid

       Lydia, Talig and four of the men were in town, and Lydia was looking at cloth to buy for winter cloaks.

       Suddenly, Lydia dropped the cloth, ran into the middle of the market, and started screaming at a man.  Talig didn't know what happened.  "What the Hades is she doing?"  The men followed her, confused.

       "Do you know me?"

       The man in the middle of the market looked at her like she was a crazy women, slightly alarmed by this women who came out of nowhere to shout at him.  He pushed her out the way, and he and his three men continued on.

       She recovered, and leapt back in front of him, "DO YOU KNOW ME?"

       He went to push her aside again, but she was more collected now, and deflected his arm a little upward, while slipping under it.  "DO YOU KNOW ME?"

       "No, I don't know you, you crazy bitch!" 

       "You went to the Goths.  You bought slaves there.  I AM ONE OF THE SLAVES YOU BOUGHT!"

       Talig and the men individually, and collectively, thought, "Oh Gods, she's going to do it."

       She did a straight strike with her dagger directly to the carotid instead of a slash, and instead of pulling out and spinning away, she stayed there with her arm extended and the blade held in place in his throat.  He grabbed for his throat and managed to get the dagger out.  In a few heart beats he was on the ground dead and she was standing over him, glaring down in hatred at him.

       The two groups of men stood staring at each other.  It wasn't cowardice.  It was just a job too big for either group to handle right then.  The Aquitani men wanted to wipe these crazy people who had just killed their Chieftain's brother off the face of the earth, but they weren't sure if they had enough men to get the job done and get the Chieftain's brother back to the Chieftain.  For Talig and his men, they knew they could kill these three men, but there was a whole valley full of Aquitani who were going to find out what happened to their man.  On Market Day, the town would have plenty of Aquitani shopping in it.  They couldn't kill them all.  The Aquitani gathered up their dead man, and backed out of the plaza.  At the same time Talig grabbed the girl and shoved her behind the men, and they too backed out of the plaza.  Both groups starring at each other the whole time as they backed away.

           .........................................

       Talig burst into the atrium.  Salidia was with the steward.  "She did it again!  And this time EVERYBODY SAW IT!"

       "You can write," he said, pointing to a table in the corner.  "You make a message to Selenius (Imperator [Commander] of the local Legion) and tell him to get his ass down here, or we're all dead men."

       Ever since Salidia had hired Talig, he had been respectful to her.  Now he burst in here giving her orders.........and she DID EXACTLY WHAT HE TOLD HER TO DO!

       "You tell him to send his equites (cavalry) down here first, or we'll all be crossing Styx by the time he gets here.  And tell him those equites better be dragging the mastiffs (The original "Dogs of War") behind them because we're going to need all the help we can get till the Legionnaires get here."

       Jabbing the vellum with his finger, he said, "You make the marks here telling him it was the damn Aquitani from south of the village so he knows what happened if we're all dead by the time he gets here."

       His men had all crowded into the room by then.  He turned to them, "Who can ride?"  All of them could bounce along on the back of a farm horse, but only a few were trained to sit a wheeling horse and effectively wield a sword.  The five mercenaries among her men all raised their hands.

       Talig waved his arm at another group near the door.  "Get the horses ready."

       "Cetus, as soon as she gets that message made, you get it to Selenius, and tell him to move his ass.  Take the horse you think is fastest.  And Cetus, if he's off in the countryside chasing barbarians, then find a temple and pray for us because we'll all be on the shores of Hades by then."  "Atus, as soon as she's finished making the message, get her to Selenius's camp."  "Presphene, get her (pointing to Lydia) to Selenius now."  Lydia shouted, "Talig, I must stand by Salidia."  Talig stopped a moment.  That was a true thing she said.  Lydia was obligated to defend her Mistress to the death.  "Atus, Presphene, wait till the message is done and take them both to Selenius."

       "Well, that takes care of all the horses.  Anyone who wants to try to ride out of here on the back of a cow is welcome.  Titus, Lucius, get the slaves out of the stables (The original stables had been converted into slave quarters when Salidia first bought the villa) and drive them north up the road.  Tell them they are free.  I want to get them out of here.  I don't want them to join up with the Aquitani when they get here.  Make sure you drive them away.  If any of them hang around, kill them."

       "Rufus, find all the servants who are loyal to us and tell them to make a run for it.  The Aquitani are going to be searching for Romans and they won't bother with anyone dressed as one of the local tribes who speaks one of the local languages.  They'll be ignored as long as they aren't standing along side of one of us Romans.  Tell them to get as far away from the villa as they can.  Up the Via Agrippa would be good.  You know where all their houses are on the side of the villa.  Check there, too."

       Putting his arm around the man, he said, "Caius, old friend, we'll make our stand in the stable.  It has the thickest walls, the windows are barred, it's long and narrow, and the roof has been reinforced to keep the slaves from breaking out and escaping.  We'll make them crowd into that narrow building and fight us back for every inch of it.  Get the women and small children to the back.  Put the boys big enough to wield a sword in front, and give them any spare weapons you have.  When we go down, they can defend their mothers and sisters as best they can.  Tell them to work as teams.  Set up what barricades you can.  I'd like to fight them one man at a time if I could.  Take Aurelius and set the place up as best you can."

       "I wish some of you had the good sense to become archers instead of swordsman.  Didn't I see somebody out hunting rabbits?"  Gadius half heartedly raised his hand.  "Ah, Gadius, can you shoot one of those things without accidentally shooting me in the ass?  That a man!  Set up a platform as high as you can in the back of the stable.  Shoot over our heads into the Aquitani, especially any that try to get around us on the sides.  Do the best you can on arrows."  Winking at the man he said, "And Gadius, try not to shoot any of us in the ass."

       "Some of you have got pretty big asses, Talig.  You're asking a lot," Gadius joked, relieving the tension of the situation for everyone.

       "Not many of us left.  Marcus, you're going to have to run to the houses and tell the women to get themselves and their children to the stable.  Tell them to bring any weapons in the house to the stable with them.  Some bread and water would be useful.  But this isn't a picnic. I'm guessing 2 to 3 hours till they get here, but I want everybody inside within an hour, so it's what they and their children can gather up in their arms and that's it's.  No back and forth for two trips. Don't miss anybody.  Check every place you can. Check the outhouses in case somebody had plopped his ass down and is taking all day about it."

       "Andeocene, I guess you've seen everybody's' weapons by now, and know where they all are.  (Andeocene had the steadiest hand, and a lot of the men asked him to put the finishing touch on their weapons when they were sharpened.)  See what weapons you can find in the villa, the torture room, the tack room.  Check any place you can think of.  Bring them to Caius in the stable.  I want everyone in there in an hour.  Don't get caught out there alone."

       "My son, today you will join the men and be a boy no longer.  Bring my things back to Caius in the stables.  Find yourself grieves and manica (arm guards) that fit the best you can.  I'm going to the front wall to watch for the Aquitani.  I'll be back when they're in sight."  He leaned down to kiss the boy on the forehead.  "Love you.  Bring some water with you."

    ......................................

       Three quarters of the way to soldier's camp, Salidia and the other three saw Selenius and his equites galloping up the road toward them.  Cetus was way in the back bringing up the rear on a spent horse.  Selenius pulled up next to her.  She pointed back down the road.  In tears, she cried, "Save them, Selie!"  On fresh mounts, Selenius and his men raced up the road.  Salidia and the others followed behind him on their exhausted horses. 

       When Selenius got to the villa, the Aquitani Chieftain (civitates) and five clan leaders (pagi) were on a nearby knoll overlooking the villa, watching their men below and directing the fight from there.  Their mounts were fresher than Selenius's and they escaped when Selenius's men surged up to the villa.  About three hundred and forty of the Aquitani vassals were inside the villa grounds.  They were crowded around a long narrow building trying to fight their way in through a single doorway, so most were milling around outside.  Some had a large, heavy work table they were using as a battering ram to break in the back wall.  Selenius had gotten there just in time to prevent them from breaking through the roof.  His men had no problem cutting down the smaller Aquitani force.   

       The next day he would march eight cohorts south of the village and raze their land, killing all the men he could find, and taking the women and slaves captive.  Some of the Aquitani were mounted and had a long head start, so they escaped.  These included the Chieftains. 

       The matter of justice was simple for Selenius.  The world consisted of Romans and barbarians.  These people had attacked a Roman citizen.  Worse, they had attacked a Patrician, and that decided that.  An attack against a Patrician was not tolerated any place in the Roman empire, and it would have provoked massive retaliation.  But the issue was never in doubt: Salidia was his best friend since childhood.  The Aquitani men: he took no prisoners.  That was his friend they attacked and the Aquitani men paid for it.  He would awarded Salidia their forfeit land and slaves.  The women he would sell.  He told Talig the defense was excellent and congratulated him on it.

       In the stable, Gadius lay dead in the back with two arrows in him.  He was killed when the Aquitani at the door shouted that there was an archer shooting them from the back of the building.  Two Aquitani with bows were found and they were able to stand at the doorway and shoot him over the heads of their men.  They stayed at the edges of the doorway and rained arrows into the back for the rest of the fight.  Three women, four children, seven older boys were dead back there, another five of the older boys were wounded.  The older boys had tried to protect their mothers and sisters from the arrows with shields, and many were mowed down as they stood in front of their families.  Working as a team, one Aquitani would shoot at a family member to the side of the boy, and the second Aquitani would shoot the boy when he reached over with his shield to try to protect his mother or sister or younger brother from the first of the arrows.  The "Surrrupp," "Surrrupp," of their paired arrows could be heard throughout the fight.  And the boys fell one after the other.

       When Salidia and Lydia arrived at the villa they found Andeocene outside.  He had made it back in time, but was the last man in, and he turned to stand in front of the doorway, next to Caius.  They were the first men to face the Aquitani, and these two men had stood longest at the center of the fight, filling the doorway with dead Aquitani before the Aquitani got a foothold inside.  When Andeocene was wounded, one of the Aquitani managed to grab his arm guard and they pulled him outside.

       When Salidia entered the building, she found Talig sitting on the floor with Caius cradled in his lap.  Caius had stood at the center of the defenses he had erected inside the building, with Andeocene at his side.  Aurelius lay dead nearby.  When Caius was wounded, Aurelius had bent down to try to pull his friend to safety.  It was a dangerous move to bend down like that before the enemy, and he didn't make it.   

       Salidia knelt down beside Talig.  Caius was dead but Talig talked to him, "Who will I argue with now, old friend?  Who will I talk with at night about the old times?"  Caius, the wise old 'peacemaker' of the group, had been Salidia's favorite of the men.  He was the second fastest man there and he spent long, patient hours practicing with her and Lydia.  When the Phoenicians had attacked them on the galley a year ago, it had been Caius who stood over her and protected her during the fight.  She put her hand on Talig's arm.  "I'll take care of him for you."  He looked at her with tears in his eyes.  "How can he go on his journey without me?  We always go everywhere together."  Talig got up, bent over and put his hand on the man's shoulder.  "Good bye, for now, my old friend."

       Talig walked to the back and stooped down to Gadius.  "I gave you bad advice, my friend.  I sent you to your death and I didn't mean that to happen.  I'm sorry for that, Gadius.  I hope,...you can forgive me.  But you did good.  You killed four of them, and left others with only one arm to use.  Pretty good for a rabbit hunter.  You killed the man who killed Caius, and then the one that bent over to get Aurelius and I am forever in your debt for that."  He brushed the hair from Gadius's face and closed the man's eyes.

       On the way back, he stopped and knelt by Aurelius.  He stroked the man's cheek.  "Such a loyal and true friend.  He was my friend too.  Thank you for what you did.  That was so brave what you tried to do."  His hand cradling the man's cheek, he closed his eyes and sobbed once, picturing in his mind the scene once more.  Caius being stabbed in the side of his chest, falling.  Gadius shouting from the back, "Caius," rage on his face, putting an arrow thought the face of the man who had stabbed Caius.  Aurelius leaning over in front of the Aquitani, reaching for Caius who was still alive, grabbing his breast plate and beginning to tug and pull Caius back to safety.  Andeocene wounded as he tried to shield Aurelius and Caius, using his shield held in front of Aurelius and Caius to protect them rather than himself.  The Aquitani leaning over to stab Aurelius through the back of his neck, and on down through the torso.  Gadius's arrow slamming into the Aquitani's neck just to the side of the breast plate before he could straighten up, and driving down into his chest.  He, Talig, too far away to do anything.  The pile of bodies on the floor making the footing unsafe to get to Andeocene and help him without tripping as he struggled with the Aquitani who were pulling him out the door.  The four dead men joined together, laying on and next to each other in front of the door.

       When he walked outside, he saw Lydia sitting at the bottom of a open door by the wall.  Andeocene hung with his arms hooked over the back of the door.  The Aquitani had hoisted him up on the door, and stabbed him hundreds of times.  Lydia sat at the bottom of the door, with Andeocene's foot held to her face, crying, blood smeared on her face and hands.  Her first day with these men, it was Andeocene who had sharpened her knife for her.  He always sharpened her knife for her.  He was the one who always got her all the things she needed.  She always felt he took care of her, from her first day with them when he got her a warm wool stuffed pallet to replace to her straw stuffed one.  When they would all gather at night to talk, besides Talig, she would most often sit down on the ground beside him and lay her head against his leg as she listened to the men talk and he stroked her hair.  Lydia felt he was like an uncle to her, and she loved him with all her heart.  Caius was her second favorite.  Fast Caius, he was so patient with her, spending hour after hour practicing with her.  Instead of complaining, he would offer jokes and things to make her laugh.  He was so good to her. 

       Talig walked over to them, and reached up to put his hand on Andeocene's face.  "So brave.  So brave and unselfish.  Good, sweet Andeocene, so good to us all."

       "Oh, Talig, they hurt him so much."

       "I want my Ande back," she sobbed.

       "Oh, Talig, it's all my fault."

       He leaned over and held her shoulder a while as she cried.

       "No one blames you, girl. You didn't know all this would happen when you killed that man.  You killed a man for selling a child into slavery.  How badly do you think I can judge you?"

       He cupped her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes, "You're going to live through this, and you'll cry for this.  Tomorrow you'll have a different heart than the one you had when you killed that man.  Tomorrow you will be less young, and wiser."  He kissed her on the forehead.

       Talig was wise enough to understand the inexperience of youth, and he forgave her for the mistakes an impulsive youth would make.  In Talig's eyes, Lydia had acted like other youths would have acted; she acted on the emotions of the moment.  Experience would give her more wisdom, and understanding of the consequences of her actions.

       "Go inside; they need you there.  Caius, Aurelius and Gadius are dead and they need your help.  Lacerna (Andeocene's wife) is dead, and Kaylin (Andeocene's daughter) is all alone.  Her two brothers are gone."  When she heard Caius's name, Lydia wailed and fell to the ground sobbing, overwhelmed by the death of another of the men she loved.  He leaned over and touched her shoulder.  "Help me with good Andeocene.  Go in the back and cut his arms free, and I'll hold him here.  I'll bring him into the villa.  Then go to the stable.  There are people wounded, there are the dead who need our attention.  Go help them."

    .........................................

       Salidia and Talig sat in the villa later that night.  They both knew there were debts to be paid.  The wounded were owed care.  The dead, honor, appreciation, respect and love.  The survivors, love and compassion.  And the men who did this owed a debt too that should be paid.

       Lydia came in, still blood stained, and looked at Talig.  "Selenius killed all their men today, and he said he will take all their land and possessions to give to Salidia tomorrow as punishment.  Their leader and his clan chiefs will have nothing left.  They're coming back, aren't they, Talig?"

       He nodded his head, "Yes, for revenge."