Tanys Gladiatrix (The Chronicles of Tanys Book 2) by Andrew Hunter Read Free Book Online Page B

left with Jorva for the arena, and then followed along an alternate route through the winding alleyways of the city.
    The girls stopped by the cart of a street vendor, purchasing a pair of the sugared cakes that Danella loved. They ate them as they walked, arriving at the outer wall of the arena thoroughly dusted with crumbs. Danella stuck out her chest, demanding that Tanys brush her off. Tanys smiled ruefully, giving her a few terse swats that set the nipple rings bouncing at the tips of Danella's dusky breasts. Danella surprised her then by leaning close and licking the last traces of syrup from the corners of Tanys' lips.
    "Hey," Tanys said, nodding toward the arena, "The games are in there."
    "That's what you think!" Danella cooed, "Tell me again why we left that big empty house with the soft, soft beds?"
    "Let's go see how Jorva does against these one-legged men."
    Danella smiled, bouncing away toward the slave gate. Tanys admired the girl's bottom, two round cheeks, parted by a white linen thong, and the slender brown legs stretching down to her jeweled sandals. She followed after, arriving at the gate just as Danella pulled the soft leather pouch of coins from its hiding place between her skin and the front flap of her loincloth. The man who took the coins looked as though he would gladly have traded places with that money pouch.
    Once inside, they found seats in the slave section of the stands. The day was yet new, and they easily found good seats among the human slaves who sat watching the first matches of the day. Tanys took a seat on the long stone bench beside Danella. The grand arena was the largest she had seen. Multiple battles could take place at once with no danger of the combatants spilling over into one another's space. Even mock wars between hundreds of gladiators were fought within its thirty-foot-high walls on rare holy days. For now, however, the crowd contented itself to discuss the coming matches of the day, mostly ignoring the plight of an escaped slave, chained in the center of the arena and armed with only a stick, facing a pack of hungry dogs.
    "When does Jorva go in?" Tanys asked.
    Danella leaned over and made inquiry of the young men seated on the row below them. They seemed to have a schedule of sorts drawn out on a scrap of parchment. The girl took her time in retrieving the information, at last turning again to Tanys, still giggling at something the boys had said. "He goes in after the next match," she said. "The odds are high against him."
    "We should have placed a bet," Tanys laughed.
    At last the cries of the doomed prisoner chained below died away amid the growling of dogs fighting for his flesh. The keepers let it go on for as long as they deemed it might be entertaining, and then moved quickly to clear the arena in preparation for the next match. Tanys shifted restlessly on the hard bench. Already the sun had climbed above the spires and domed rooftops of the Holy City, and the shadow cast by the arena walls waned like a black moon on the pale sand of the arena floor.
    The next match proved to be a general melee among a group of freshly captured slaves. They would fight until only half their number remained alive as a sort of initiation into the brutal world of the gladiator. What followed was more butchery than sport, and Tanys turned her head away, looking to the audience of this spectacle of death.
    The majority of the arena's seating was reserved for the satyrs and a few important slaves. Most of these seats sat empty, with only sparse groups of the beastmen scattered throughout the stands, camped under bright umbrellas, engaged in various debaucheries, mostly oblivious to the humans fighting and dying in the arena below. By contrast, the stands reserved for the slave class were already beginning to fill to capacity.
    Tanys frowned at a group of slaves that pushed by her headed towards their seats. She felt someone sit down on the bench beside her, and she turned to find herself