Flavius pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders as agitated gusts of wind swirled around the balcony, blanketing his face with a fine drizzle. The weather god was always capricious in April, but the play of the elements didn't bother the master of the Ludus Flavianus as he let his eyes wander over his estate. This land, the imposing villa, its extensive outbuildings and the luxurious bathhouse formed his very own little empire � and the cinder-track enclosed arena was its core.

His household consisted of more than sixty people, among them attendants and slaves who might well be considered his subjects, and he liked to think of his gladiatorial squad as his personal Praetorian Guard. Watching his fighters exercise never failed to remind Flavius of his roots, and he was proud that his protégés carried on their master's former profession so gloriously, bringing in rich purses and, in their wake, pride and prestige to the name Autronius and the Flavian School .

Many of them had yet to prove that they were profitable long-term investments, but some had already brought in far more than their acquisition and training had cost him. First among them was Byrria, of course, his Thracian tigress, whose skills in the ring were in no way inferior to her unrivalled talents in the bedchamber. It was thanks to her, after all, that his female fighters were regarded as more than a dubious fairground attraction. Then there was Hamilkar, the tall Phoenician, who was one of the few living centenni � gladiators who, like Flavius himself, had won more than one hundred fights. The Phoenician's star had just begun to rise when Flavius had retired from his active career in the ring, and it had cost two thirds of the prize money he had set aside to buy Hamilkar out of his contract so that he could start his own school. But now, after years of climbing the ladder of fame, each fight of this undefeated champion earned his manager a small fortune. Last but not least, the costly purchase of the comely Celtic twin sisters, whose second victorious season had established them as one of Rome 's most popular fighting attractions, was beginning to pay off nicely.

The thought of the two ravishing redheads brought Flavius' wandering mind back to the harsh reality of his arena. He glanced down at the all-but-nude Breaca, and as he watched the drizzle-drenched delinquent kneel forlornly in the middle of the windswept yard, buckling under her dreadful load, the stern master of the Ludus Flavianus began to have misgivings for having surrendered to Byrria's powers of persuasion and agreeing to such a punishment.

Of the twins, it had been the lively Breaca, rather than her sullen sister Verica, who had first incurred Byrria's jealousy when the handsome twosome had arrived at the arena two years ago. Having a fine sense for the strengths and weaknesses of her charges, it had not taken the Thracian tigress long to discover Breaca's Achilles heel � her tendency to be over-protective of her less assertive, but no less beautiful sister. And when Breaca herself had remained stoically indifferent to every attempt to provoke her, Byrria had cunningly adopted the stratagem of harassing Verica in order to goad Breaca into losing her temper.

Eventually, Byrria's strategy had paid off. One wintry afternoon, at the end of an arduous training session, the Thracian tigress had not dismissed the weary Verica along with the other recruits. Instead she had singled out the hapless trainee and ordered her to re-attempt the difficult obstacle course which she had failed earlier that day, and to continue to attack it until she had completed it without a single slip. Time and again Verica had done her best to master the parcours which had humbled the swiftest and strongest of men, but her ever-mounting fatigue insured that each attempt was less successful than its predecessor. Byrria had stalked her the entire length of the course, rewarding her every misstep with a flesh-searing slash of her crop. Finally, following a withering series of lashes which had bloodied her sister's back, Breaca could not stomach the abuse anymore and she had thrown herself at the callous lanista , knocking the Thracian to the ground and clubbing her with her fists until she was overpowered by a couple of guards.

The quick-tempered twin had just been lashed to the cross for attacking her trainer when Flavius had intervened. Acts such as striking a trainer could never be tolerated, but Flavius had had no intention of sacrificing one half of the most glorious pair of twins since Castor and Pollux to a too-strict interpretation of his own rules. But commuting the fiery redhead's sentence to fifty lashes had only served to kindle Byrria's penchant for the dramatic. As a reminder that the rebellious recruit had been spared crucifixion, the Thracian had ordered her to carry a cross-piece, identical, except for the thorns, to the massive beam Breaca was balancing on her shoulders right now. Byrria had paraded the proud redhead around the compound twice, flogging her every faltering footstep, until Breaca had collapsed under the weight of the cross-piece and the force of the whip, halfway through her second circuit of the compound. But even then her torment did not end, for the whip-wielding Thracian forced Breaca to continue her dreadful Calvary on all fours, while Verica was ordered to shoulder her sister's yoke and trudge along behind her. Three times the lacerating lashes had driven Breaca face first into the dirt, and at one point she had lapsed briefly into unconsciousness. But after a guard had revived her with a chilling bucket of water that rinsed the rivulets of blood from her body, Breaca had been made to finish the circuit while Byrria painted fresh streaks of crimson on her back

As he had watched the conclusion of that dreadful castigation, Flavius had marvelled at his lanista's mastery of the whip and wondered how she had come by it. With effortless ease the Thracian was able to make the supple leather find any part of her victim's body, delicately, fiercely, teasingly. Like a lyre player giving a virtuoso performance, Byrria used the whip as if it were a bow, eliciting ever-faster sequences of squeals and sobs and squeaks from Breaca's body.

Nevertheless, Byrria's insistence on the Thorns of Atlas as a punishment for Breaca's recent offence indicated that the vindictive Thracian had neither forgotten nor forgiven the Celtic warrioress for assaulting her in front of the others. Musing about Byrria's unforgiving nature, Flavius' wandering gaze sought out the most recent object of the Thracian's wrath, as the hissing sound of her crop drew his attention to the gymnastics area. There the golden-haired Gaul, who had proven such a fetching Aquaria during the water pail-bearing competition just concluded, was now being made to assume the taxing splits position. Byrria had planted herself in front of the weary recruit, tapping her menacing crop impatiently against her open palm. It came as no surprise to Flavius that Rutilius, the spiteful young guard who had denounced both Breaca and Taleena, was hovering nearby, his eyes darting furtively from one nearly naked beauty to the other. 'That's right! Look her over, you little bastard!' Flavius thought to himself even as he let his own expert eye explore the lush curves of the Gaul 's body. 'The day will come when you wish you'd never laid more than eyes on my property!' Autronius himself was positioned diagonally behind the Avernian recruit, a vantage point which allowed him an enviable view of her heart-shaped bottom as she began to extend her tawny legs across the damp ground. Flavius' breathing quickened slightly when a flick of Byrria's crop swept sharply across the blonde beauty's inner thigh, driving the Gaul 's bare legs even further apart, thus emphasizing the tantalizing groove between her buttcheeks. Flavius noticed that the severe distension of her limbs had caused a wound to re-open, and a little blood was seeping through the white linen, marking the location of the weal beneath. For a moment, Flavius imagined the reverberating crack Byrria's whip must have made when the well-greased leather had landed on those drum-tight bottom ovals, and as his eyes followed the soft indentations of Taleena's spine, he could distinguish each individual welt the whip had left on its way across the planes of her back. As Byrria placed a pair of fist-sizes stones into the recruit's outstretched hands it occurred to Flavius that had there been an imaginative man in the yard, he might have seen the half-naked Avernian as a desperate worshipper. For Taleena's arms were extended prayerfully, as if she were beseeching the almighty Zeus to recall the menacing Harpy that loomed before her in the form of the Thracian lanista .

"Keep your arms up, Gaul !" Byrria ordered angrily. "This is a training camp, not an inn for weary travellers!" She placed the tip of the crop under Taleena's left wrist to stress her demand, and let it slide along the Avernian's outstretched arm until it reached the corded, concave hollow of her armpit. "I told you that I would spare your back today," Byrria mused with a wicked smile as she tapped the flat-tipped end of the crop against the outer contour of the recruit's breast, "but if you lower your arms again �!" Flavius looked on, mesmerized by the battle between these two unequal yet unequalled beauties, this fierce contest of wills doubling as a duel for erotic supremacy. As his eyes slowly moved from the suffering blonde to the olive-skinned Thracian and back again, it struck him that choosing the more beautiful of these two magnificent creatures would have been as daunting a task as the Judgment which had confronted Paris . Pleasingly enough, Flavius was spared the trilemma that had faced that unfortunate son of Troy, for the Fates had no doubt ordained that awarding the Golden Apple to any of the three goddesses would have led to disaster. Flavius, on the other hand, could assess and enjoy the two contrasting beauties down in the yard without having to decide on one, and thereby offending the other. And enjoy he did as he edged closer to the railing of the balcony to better survey the drama unfolding below. Byrria's face was damp with precipitation, as was her lustrous dark hair, and the blue-dyed linen of her sodden, one-shouldered tunic clung to her curvaceous body like a second skin. Her nipples poked insistently against the wet fabric, and beneath her short tunic, the gleaming skin of her bronze thighs flashed brazenly with her every stride as the Harpyan beauty circled her arm-weary victim, preparing to strike at the first sign of weakness. Shifting his gaze, Flavius found that the silhouette of the bare-breasted Gaul offered a no less enticing vision. Taleena's extended, stone-burdened arms paralleled the line of her long, shapely legs, and the delicate curvature of her ribs protruded in bold relief beneath her creamy skin whose glossy glaze seemed to render it even more taut and tender. The sensuous arch of the breast that was revealed to his view tantalized his imagination, and Flavius' fists clenched and unclenched with nervous anticipation. His mind raced ahead to that thrilling instant when the proud Avernian would no longer be able to keep her arms aloft, and Taleena's soft, desperate groans only served to heighten his arousal. Every laboured breath, every rise and fall of those pink-tipped mounds brought closer the moment when the abandonment of the proper arm position would trigger a swift slash to those proffered breasts� But the certainty that the Avernian fought a losing battle against the slow, sad descent of her leaden limbs brought Flavius no closer to deciding the winner of the beauty contest being played out in his mind. Figuratively, Taleena reminded Flavius of a chaste Aphrodite, beautiful and graceful like a statuette of Phidias, but equally incapable of the animalistic passion which was Byrria's most effective weapon. Byrria was more like Isis, the Hellenized Egyptian goddess whose flagellatory rites most Romans found highly offensive � sultry and smouldering, willing to use her female charms for whatever purpose suited her. Yet, sorely tempted though he was to award the Golden Apple to the blue-clad Isis in this very moment, Flavius Autronius could not remember ever having been more intrigued by a woman than by this Avernian Aphrodite since his Thracian tigress had marked the arena as her territory�



Three years earlier Flavius had begun to sense that the audiences he hoped to please were displaying a certain jadedness with regard to conventional gladiatorial spectacles. Attendance was slightly down and the lusty roars of the crowds lacked the passion of earlier seasons. As he was considering how to rekindle interest in his entertainments, Flavius had conceived the idea of presenting a new type of fighter � young, daring, and female. And not just female � desirably female. The crowds in the tiers had seen women before, but most of them had been over-sized Gorgons with appearances that threatened to turn the entire body of male onlookers to stone, rather than focussing their powers of petrifaction on the one organ that craved such hardening.

It hardly took an Aristotle to conclude that there would be but little profit in training such ungainly warriors, but by a stroke of divine providence that Byrria came to be Flavius' first offering in his new venture. He had bought the wild-eyed Thracian, along with one of her countrymen, at a time when a contingent of Thracian rebels had been awaiting execution in the Carcer Mamertinus . In those days Sejanus had been the praetor urbanus responsible for the supervision of the city's prisons, and knowing that the ambitious young praetor suffered from a chronic inability to live within his means, Flavius had offered him a substantial sum in exchange for an option to purchase any prisoner whom he deemed a good fighting prospect. Sejanus had countered this proposal with an addendum � that if the prospect did happen to become a worthy fighter, he would receive a percentage of the gathered prize money � a condition to which Flavius readily agreed.

The corrupt bargain had worked out well for both parties and marked the beginning of a mutually profitable acquaintance. For some time Byrria had been Flavius' sole acquisition through this channel, but within a year's time his deal with Sejanus had resulted in the acquisition of the comely Celtic twins who had so enhanced his stable of fighters. The handsome twosome remained one of Rome 's most popular fighting attractions, proving that Flavius' sizable initial outlay had indeed been money well spent. And now that Sejanus had been designated Praetorian Prefect, and had become a fervent epicure of female cestus -fighting, Flavius' connection with that dissolute young patrician who had now put his financial worries behind him seemed more auspicious than ever.

At first Flavius had been a little uneasy about admitting a woman to his squad, especially an exotic beauty like the almond-eyed Thracian. He had feared that her selection would lead to dissension, or worse, among his fighters. And indeed Byrria's arrival had caused quite a stir; she well knew how to call attention to herself and to make herself attractive to trainers, guards, and recruits, but it was her fighting skills, which came naturally to one of her lineage, which ultimately won her respect.

The Thracian people, who had for centuries occupied the strategic region between the Hellespont and the western banks of the Pontic Sea , believed that their offspring were born to fight, daughters as well as sons. For centuries Thracian girls had been brought up to ride and run, to wrestle and fence, unlike their more dainty cousins to the south and west. Having outlasted domination by Persians and Macedonians in earlier centuries, they were no more accepting of Roman ways than they had been of those of prior conquerors.

One of the most barbaric and enduring of Thracian customs was a coming-of-age ritual that had to be performed by youths, male and female, at the age of twelve and again at sixteen. It was called anitome , meaning, 'any time, anywhere', and it consisted of a savage type of hand-to-hand combat. Punching, kicking, biting � no stratagem was too unsporting and no hold was barred in these violent duels. But when the dust had cleared the ritual fight � and its memory � formed a lasting bond between the combatants, and fuelled a fighting spirit among this proud and warlike people whom no victorious armies had ever been able to fully assimilate. Even the mighty Roman legions had come to respect and fear their combativeness for good reason.

In the amphitheatres the Thracians' reputation for savagery preceded them into the ring, and over time their ferocity was such that they had become a gladiatorial class unto themselves � much like the Samnites , the retiarii , and the myrmillones . Gladiators from the four corners of the empire modelled themselves on the Thracian warriors, equipping themselves with all of the accoutrements of the Thracian gladiators � the distinctive helmet, shin guards, shield, and the notorious sica � a long, single-edged, slightly-curved dagger. So menacing was this regalia that a 'Thracian' fighter, whether a native of the region or one of the many counterfeits, was almost invariably regarded as a sinister 'villain' by the multitudes in the tiers. Byrria naturally had capitalized on this notoriety, emphasizing her heritage, and had done well in conventional battles even before the vogue for cestu s-fighting had taken hold; she had never lost a bout in either style of fighting.

But, as with any woman, Byrria had to surmount many obstacles before she managed to carve out a place for herself in a world of men. On her very first day in training, a young fencing master named Metellus, who had been Calixtus' assistant at the time, had set out to teach her a lesson in swordplay. But his attempt to demean the first female novice at the Ludus Flavianus had backfired awkwardly when the olive-skinned warrioress had disarmed the overconfident lanista in short order. But while her triumph won her the respect of her comrades, it earned her the undying hatred of Metellus, who felt that she had made him into a laughingstock in front of his charges.

Recognizing that the Thracian was a dangerous opponent even in a sparring match, Metellus soon found other ways to bully the raven-haired beauty who had disgraced him. He harassed her mercilessly, giving her all sorts of degrading orders and assigning her any number of humiliating tasks in hopes of provoking a response that would warrant some stern discipline. He had ordered her to remove her training costume and perform her drills in the nude in the center of the yard where all could see her. At that time, and for some time to come, she had been the only female recruit, and her enticingly lithe body drew the attention of all like a moth to a flame. It had been a hot summer day and Metellus had drilled the ravishing recruit mercilessly under the broiling sun all afternoon, while the onlookers watched with undisguised pleasure as the sweat-drenched beauty had practiced a seemingly endless cycle of thrusts and parries.

But when her enforced nudity failed to have the degrading effect intended by the ill-willed lanista , Metellus had cooked up another scheme. The next day, he had directed the recalcitrant recruit to wear a vest of chain mail without so much as an undertunic to insulate her bare skin from the woven ringlets of metal. The highly uncomfortable armour, which Metellus had insisted was for her own protection, seemed to pinch and pull at her soft skin with her every movement, and what was worse, the metal seemed to absorb the sun's heat and then distribute it to every part of her body that it touched.

Knowing that his ordinarily nimble opponent must have felt as if she were wearing the incandescent armour of Helios, Metellus had protracted the sword exercises endlessly, hacking away at Byrria with his wooden spatha while she tried to fend him off. But her prolonged toil left her slow and sluggish and time and again her tormentor knocked the sword from her hand and, while she struggled to reach it, followed up with a powerful thrust to a bare thigh or a defenceless belly that forced the exhausted recruit to her knees in the sand.

Flavius had tolerated this cruel training regimen, if only to test the mettle of his new acquisition in the crucible of combat, but he resolved to keep an eye on his ill-willed instructor, and to intercede should Metellus exceed his authority. During the ensuing days, Metellus invariably matched Byrria against the biggest and most ruthless thugs in the squad, allowing them to bully her unmercifully, ensuring that she took a lot of punishment even on the occasions when she did manage to stand her ground. Throughout this nightmare of abuse, Byrria had been clever enough to conceal her wrath at her tyrannical instructor. But near the end of the third week, her every nerve raw from prolonged stress, she snapped and unleashed her pent-up rage by throwing herself at a strapping Bithynian recruit who had dared to mock her 'Thracian cowardice'.

This outburst, of course, was just what Metellus had bargained for, because Flavius had long since ordained that any brawl between the fighting personnel would have to be settled in 'the Pit'. The marble ring, which the fighters referred to as the Pit of Pain, was another measure of discipline that Flavius had adopted from the fighting school in which he had learned his trade. In the event of a brawl, the quarrellers were compelled to settle their differences within the boundaries of that pit, and to do battle until one or the other was willing to concede the triumph of the other. Later on, when Byrria had acceded to the post of lanista , she had conceived the idea of the Scythian Strap to further test the mettle of the female recruits. But her own experience in the Pit had been no mere training drill; it had been a brutal, bloody battle for satisfaction, whose ebbs and flows gladiators were to recount around campfires for years to come.

No one who had witnessed the duel between Byrria and her rangy Bithynian antagonist had ever forgotten it. In the years since, Flavius had taken pleasure from every inch of Byrria's taut-muscled body and had come to know every pleasure-filled nuance of her wanton love-making. But the passage of time had not dulled the flesh-tingling arousal he felt every time he recalled the feline grace with which the sweat-glistening Thracian tigress had stood her ground in the marble ring.

As was customary on such occasions, the pit had been prepared with finely-ground salt, and the two opponents had been equipped with small horsewhips which were lashed to their wrists lest they should lose them in the heat of battle. The two opponents had worn only the coarse loin-cloths of wrestlers and their bodies had been oiled until the sun itself paid homage to their differing but splendid physiques.

The other fighters, standing shoulder to shoulder around the Pit, were enthralled by the sight of the dark-eyed beauty preparing to fight as bare-chested as her male counterpart, and her low-slung loincloth only emphasized her hourglass hips. From behind, the thin fold of cloth that barely covered her private parts, had nestled itself comfortably into the bottom-cleft, and the sight of her otherwise bare buttocks provoked a hail of crude catcalls . Sympathies amongst the audience were unevenly distributed, since most of the men hoped to see their swaggering brother-in-arms put this arrogant female intruder into their male domain in her place. But when the bare-breasted beauty stepped into the ring, each man sensed immediately that this was a woman who knew how to fight. It was evident in her posture, and in the way she held her whip, but most of all it was visible in her eyes. Her dark eyes glared at the Bithynian with a steady, powerful gaze that gave no hint of fear, but rather bespoke an almost unnerving confidence.

When Calixtus had given the signal to begin the fight , raucous cheers erupted each time the Bithynian's whip found its mark, leaving a series of dark welts on the Thracian's oil-glistening skin. But the longer the fight went on, the more Byrria's courage won the onlookers to her cause. The fight had lasted over an hour, but it had taken only a fraction of that time for the welt-streaked Thracian to earn the epithet, 'Tigress' which she was to carry ever after. Asking no quarter and giving none, the two fierce opponents had punched, kicked, and flogged each other's bodies until the salted surface of the marble platform was smeared with their commingled blood. They fought until they could fight no more, neither giving in, but neither having the strength to continue.