THE CRUCIFIXION OF ANNIA

The First Day

Annia could not stop trembling. She could hear the soldiers approaching the locked door to the room where she sat huddled in the arms of her supervisor, Tertia. The older woman, head mistress of the household slaves, tried to comfort her, stroking her head, gently hushing her, suppressing her own fear in the face of the unfolding disaster.

"What will they do with us?" the frightened girl kept asking.

But she already knew the dreadful answer. Even as news reached her that her Master had been murdered by a slave boy, the house had been erupting with wails of despair. The older slaves who knew the law wasted no time spreading the word that they were all doomed. Those slaves had witnessed the terrible consequences for such a crime sixteen years before when Annia was still suckling at her mother's breast. Every slave in the region, including Annia's mother, had been forced every day for seven days to walk past the dozens of dead and dying slaves hanging from crucifixes all around the perimeter of the farm they had worked. They were forced to see what happens when one witless and angry slave murders his owner, how it affects every last slave of the deceased.

In this case, the family had moved fast to contain the rising panic and prevent escapes. By the time a contingent of soldiers had arrived from the nearby barracks, all but a few of the field hands had been herded into one of the barns with the doors bolted shut. Likewise, the household slaves had been crowded into two storage rooms of the main house — males in one, females and small children in the other — and locked up for safekeeping.

The few who escaped had run off as their Master was bleeding to death, including Tullipor, the wretched young hothead who had wielded the pitchfork. But where would they run? No slave in the region would dare give them shelter and certainly no free person would show them any mercy. They would soon be caught and dragged back to a fate even worse than that which awaited Annia and all the other slaves. Roman soldiers were extremely talented at conducting punitive executions, and the law specifically demanded they lavish their most terrible skills on wayward slaves.

The reason, of course, was that over the centuries Rome had engorged itself with slaves torn from the peoples it had subdued all over the known world, from Britannica to Persia to Africa. And since the children of slaves were also slaves, by now fully one third of Rome's population was slave. The danger was obvious, so the Senate had passed laws which deliberately ignored individual innocence in order to achieve the strongest deterrence against even the tiniest slave uprising. Obviously, the worst possibility was that a slave might strike out at his owner, so that particular crime merited the most brutal possible punishment, the very punishment which was about to be imposed on the human property of the slain Marcus Tullius Fortunatus.

He had been killed in mid morning. Before a quarter of an hour had passed, one of his sons had ridden off to alert the local authorities while the rest of the family began rounding up the slaves. By midday nearly a hundred soldiers from the nearby barracks had descended upon the late land-owner's estate to investigate and take charge. It didn't take long to learn the identity of the guilty party and dispatch a squadron of soldiers to hunt him down, along with the other fugitives. Another officer was sent to the nearest prosecutor to apply for an official verdict of murder. Since the murderer was a slave, no trial was required. By late afternoon a judge had delivered an ad hoc order to crucify every slave belonging to the victim, and to do it as publically and quickly as possible, according to law.

All this time the slaves had remained boxed up in the barn and the two rooms of the house. The tension and anxiety were extreme. Communal pots were provided from which they could scoop water, but they were given no food. As the hours dragged by, the air in Annia's room became foul from the overflowing waste bucket behind the curtain in the corner. No one came to empty it. The room was windowless and little light seeped through the cracks around the bolted door, so other than knowing it was still daylight there was no way to tell how many hours had passed.

Then came the dreaded tramp of soldiers' feet.

The bolt was slammed aside and the door thrown open. Five burly soldiers stood outside the doorway. At the sight before them, all five broke into smiles. What luck! Most of the slaves on this estate, as everywhere, were males, but these soldiers, thanks to some beneficent god, had been directed to the females, most of them young and some of them exceptionally beautiful. One does not reject such a gift from the gods; it would be a sacrilege.

"Well, look what we have here," the tallest, most muscular and most finely uniformed of the three said. "All the bitch slaves in one place. How convenient."

The others laughed, more heartily than necessary. The tall centurion looked directly at Annia.

"I see the one I want." He pointed. "She's right there. The one with the big blue eyes and golden hair. You men pick out anyone you want, but leave that little morsel for me."

The tall soldier stood in the doorway with his sword in hand as the other four stepped into the room and made a quick survey of the quivering females. The first two chosen were the dead man's two lovely concubines. They were immediately dragged out into the vestibule and out of sight. While the other two soldiers continued their search, squeezing breasts to check size and firmness, Annia used the temporary reprieve to study the back-lighted figure of the man who would soon get to her.

It wasn't the rape that she feared. She had been used sexually by her Master and others since puberty. Her mother had also been quite beautiful (before she contracted the wasting disease that eventually killed her) and had been a favorite of Fortunatus; Annia had watched him having sex with her many times. After her mother died, Fortunatus turned to Annia who by then was developing into an even more stunning beauty. The first few times he simply seized her in a room she was cleaning, forced her over a chair and entered her from behind, pumping vigorously until his hot seed spurted into her. Later, as his infatuation with her grew, he would usher her into a private room and lay her on a proper couch or bed. Or he would order her to meet him in a certain grove, or some place on the estate where his wife would not see them and give him grief.

Nor was he the only one to enjoy her body without the need to ask. On many occasions his sons, both Primus and Secundus, had their way with her. Fortunatus himself sometimes offered her to a guest to show special gratitude for some favor or other. Having been taught by her mother to obey her owner, no matter what, she never offered the least objection. These continuing injections of semen had their inevitable consequence. She had missed her last two periods and had been vomiting in the mornings. She thought little of it; after all, most free girls her age were already married and bearing children. As to who might have put her in this condition, there were several possibilities; but she was fairly sure the seed had come from Fortunatus. In any event, it hadn't really mattered because the child would have simply been another of his slaves.

Since her body was about to be used again by yet another man, she began mentally comparing Fortunatus (who was pudgy and mostly bald) to the tall centurion. It did not escape her notice that he was exceedingly good looking. Black hair, dark brown eyes, rugged build (an impression enhanced by the metal breastplate on his leather shirt with its godlike musculature) — a far more attractive specimen than any of the others who had fondled and fucked her. It even excited her, for some perverse reason, that he had in his hands the power to spare her life or let her die. In spite of her fear, she found she was actually looking forward for her turn to be ravished.

With that realization, another thought began to form. If she had so easily captivated old Fortunatus and his sons and friends, why could she not win over this handsome officer and maybe save her own life?

The other two soldiers had made their selections. One chose a pretty brunette from Britannia with a delicate sprinkle of freckles and a pouty mouth. He made her stand up right there in the crowded storage room and bend over with her hands on the floor, then took her from behind. The other selected a black-haired Macedonian beauty, ordered her to take off her robe, pulled her out into the vestibule and humped her right there on the floor behind the tall centurian.

"All right, men," the centurion chuckled when the fourth soldier had finished his turn at fornication,"tuck it back in and make sure these sluts don't go anywhere. I'm taking Goldenhair here to a more pleasant location to give her one last treat."

He grabbed Annia by her left arm and dragged her to her feet, pushing her to the door and propelling her through it. In spite of the dismaying implication in his words and his rough treatment, she still felt (or, at least, wanted to believe) she might be able to win him over. Her only hope of survival was to convince him to separate her from the others and keep her as his own slave. She had to try.

"Sir, I know a room with a nice soft bed," she murmured.

"Do you now?" he laughed. "So show me."

She led him to the Master's bedroom, but when he opened the door she was shocked to see the murdered man's widow standing there.

The centurion was unfazed. "My lady Claudia," he said cooly, "With your permission I need to use this room for a short while to interrogate this slave."

"You mean you want to screw her in privacy," she snapped. "Fine. Why not? The little bitch was ‘interviewed' by my husband every chance he got. Might as well give her fetid little hole one last reaming before she gets what she so richly deserves. Just make sure you enjoy it more than she does." She turned to the trembling girl and spat, "Annia! Strip that bed! I don't want the linen soiled by dirt from this officer's sandals, and I certainly don't want it stained with your filthy juices. Or your blood," she added with a hopeful glance at the centurion.

Out of habit and training Annia started forward to do as she was told, but was stopped short by the iron grip of the officer. She looked up fearfully, her eyes darting between the two. She had never deliberately disobeyed her mistress before, having been whipped mercilessly the few times she hesitated. On the other hand, this Roman commander remained her only hope to remain among the living.

He resolved the situation by throwing her toward the bed.

"Do it!" he barked. "You owe your mistress one last service."

"Oh she owes me a lot more than that," Claudia said through gritted teeth as Annia hurried to pull the linen coverings off the bed and fold them up.

"I'll bet!" he snorted. "And you'll have a chance to collect your due before she's dead. But first I must attend to that ‘interrogation.' I don't often get to ‘interrogate' so stimulating a subject."

"Interrogate her well, then. I plan to do so myself when she's properly prepared. On a cross."

Claudia glided from the room, keeping her head high, dark resentments boiling in her mind.

When the door was closed, the centurion laughed. "So you and old Fortunatus were playing squeeze-the-zucchini! How quaint. An inspiration for poets. Perhaps I should compose an ode. Something like:

A rustic Roman loved to ride

his randy house-slave's handy hide."

He chuckled at his own wit, and at the look on Annia's face. "Or even better:

Fortunatus, although wed,

liked to fill his marriage bed

with pretty strumpets, but instead

ate a pitchfork. Now he's dead.

That has more possibilities, don't you think?"

"But it wasn't like that!" Annia protested. "He loved me. He said he was going to make me an official concubine. I'm carrying his baby!"

"Are you, now? Let's see! Pull up your gown."

Annia gathered up the front of her coarse garment and pulled it up to just below her breasts.

"You don't look pregnant to me."

"It's only two months."

"Is it? Well, that's yet another slave for the dung heap. Maybe we'll pull it out and nail it to it's own little cross. Don't you think that would be cute?"

"Please, Sir," she whispered, "look at me." She raised the robe to her shoulders. "Am I not beautiful? Everyone says I am. Would I not make you a fine slave? Wouldn't you like to . . ."

"Wouldn't I like to hustle you off and hide you away for my own personal use?"

"Yes! Yes, Sir!" Annia felt the stirring of hope. "I can do things for you that you'll really like. Master could never get enough of me. I'm really very good at . . ."

"And when you swell all up with your dead Master's baby? Am I supposed to put up with that?"

"Oh no, Sir! No!" Annia felt hope beginning to slip away again. She had to convince him she was worth saving. "Please, Sir! You can do what you wish about the baby. Any midwife knows how to . . . how to get rid of it. If that's what you want. Sir, I'm very, very good at pleasing a man. I can make you . . ."

"You can make me dead, little Goldenhair. Do you think the Widow Claudia would not notice your absence among the crucifixes? Take off your robe."

She unwrapped the robe, still pleading with him. "Please, Sir! I can do things with my mouth that . . ."

"With your mouth! Well, now. Get yourself naked and let's see what you can do with your mouth."

As she dropped the robe to the floor she drew herself up before him and watched his eyes gleam at what he saw. A lovely, delicately shaped face atop a shapely and graceful figure; smooth, pale, flawless skin; ample breasts, firm and upright with temptingly rigid nipples; golden curls that fell to the middle of her back and the matching patch of golden fleece at the junction of slender legs. She had seen that look often enough, the look of male entrancement. This was the moment to seize. She approached him and framed soft hands gently around his face.

"Please, Sir, let me make love to you. Let me . . ."

"Oh, I intend to," he assured her. "Get on your knees!"

She dropped quickly to her knees and awaited him, knowing what was expected of her, intending to give him pleasure such as he had never known before.

He unbuckled his sword and threw it on a side chair. Between the leather strips of his outer uniform Annia could see his manhood poking at his tunic. He removed the breastplate and leather shirt. She lifted the edge of the tunic. The pinkness of his genital area was in stark contrast to his sun-bronzed face, arms and knees. She had never seen such an imposing penis. It was nearly twice the size of her deceased Master's or any of his sons. It was even larger than that of the stable boy, Chrysogonus. A tingling desire to feel it inside her emboldened her to ply him with flattery.

"Oh Sir! You are huge! I don't know if you can fit inside me."

"No? Then let's start with your mouth. You claim you do wonderful things with your mouth. Surely it will fit in there."

He grabbed her hair and shoved himself in her open mouth. She did her best to service him as she had done so successfully with Fortunatus, but his grip on her hair made it difficult to apply the delicate tongue strokes to the sensitive flange at the head of his member that had driven her Master wild. Worst of all he kept ramming it deep into her throat, making her gag. Before she could accomplish any of the magic that had bewitched other men, he pulled out of her mouth.

"I'm not impressed," he said. "Get on the bed!"

She scrambled to obey, panic rising in her belly at the possibility of failure. In a moment he had mounted her, inserting himself painfully into her, driving into her. The hands crushing her breasts were large and calloused, especially the sword hand. How many people had died by that hand? He gripped her fiercely, twisting the nipples, the metal grieves on his shins cold against her calves. Yet she found herself moaning as an irresistible thrill surged from the button between her legs to every point on her body. She cried out in her ecstacy, amazed that she should come so easily with this bearer of death. She shivered and cried out again as his hot seed burst into her. By the time she had regained her senses, he had pulled out of her and was standing beside the bed shrugging into his uniform.

"Get up!" he demanded.

"Please, Sir . . . " she began, catching her breath.

He back-handed her across the mouth.

"Get up, you little whore! Or would you like me to ram my sword up your ass?"

She crawled out of the bed without further complaint, licking away the blood collecting at the corner of her mouth.

He was already strapping on his sword. "Put on your robe!"

She obeyed quickly and fearfully, her hope dissolving, trying to think of a way to regain his interest. "Sir, if you would give me a little more time . . ."

"You've had as much time as you'll get. Move!"

He shoved her toward the door as he drew his sword. "You give shitty fellatio, although you do have a nice tight cunt, I'll give you that. But there's plenty of those around, plenty of legs willing to open up for a Captain of the Army. Yours is not nearly good enough for me to die for. Not good enough to keep you off a cross, either. Get moving!" He put the point of his sword in her back and prodded her down the hallway, back to the room she had come from. She felt the wetness of his semen leaking down the inside of her thighs, adding insult to her dread.

A number of other soldiers had arrived outside the storage room and were in the process of tying the hands of the women and children behind their backs. One of them seized Annia and in a moment her wrists, too, were bound behind her with rough hemp rope.

"Captain!" one of the men yelled. "Now that you've had your fun with Goldie here, how about sharing the meat? I ain't never fucked anything so sweet as that!"

"Sure, help yourself. But make it quick. We've got to move this lot to the barn before dark. She claims she's good with her mouth."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. In fact, let's make a wager. If she doesn't make you come in her mouth and swallow it by the time I count to sixty, we'll tear out her tongue."

"But I wanna fuck her!"

"You'll have time for that later. Come on! Get out your weapon and lets see if she can bring you off fast enough to keep her tongue."

Annia was shoved to her knees as the soldier came toward her, raising the hem of his tunic and pushing aside the leather panels of his shirt to expose his manhood. It was only partly aroused as he pushed it into her mouth and it reeked with the pungent taste of another woman. She recognized that taste from the times she had serviced her Master right after he had been with one of his concubines. A new apprehension gripped her bowels because she remembered how long it had taken him to recover before he was able to perform again. Often the better part of an hour! Annia had no clear idea of what it would be like to be crucified, but she could definitely imagine what it would be like to have her tongue ripped out, having seen it done to three slaves accused of lying. She struggled to subdue her fear and concentrate on the skills she had perfected with Fortunatus. It was difficult with her hands tied behind her, but she took his cock gently into her mouth and slid back and forth on its entire length, wetting it, stroking the sensitive flanges around its head with the tip of her tongue, enclosing his testicles in the warmth of her mouth, licking around and around the shaft. She could hear the Captain counting behind her, but he had passed "ten" which was as far as she had learned to count, so the metrical droning told her only that she was getting closer to losing her tongue. To her surprise, however, the soldier had become really hard and was beginning to go into those little spasms she had come to recognize as the prelude to a man's eruption. Spurred by desperation and hope, she concentrated on the most sensuous area behind the flange, sucking on it, kneading it with her lips. And suddenly there it came! The grunting soldier pumped a thick load into the back of her throat which she swallowed in a series of gulps, milking the last of it out of his root and licking him clean, just as her Master had taught her.

She looked up at the Captain tenuously.

"Well done," he laughed. "Lucky for you that Ignatius here is a horny bastard. I'd been looking forward to yanking that chattering little tongue of yours out of your pretty little mouth. Oh well. Now we'll be able to enjoy your pleas for mercy when we nail you up."

So much for her earlier plan to win him over, Annia thought. It was hopeless from the start. His heart is as cold and hard as his breastplate.

"Take them all to the barn and lock them up with the others," the Captain ordered. "If you or any of the guards want to play with them during the night, you may. But only two of you at a time. The rest of you are to remain alert. If any prisoner attempts to escape, crush his feet. Or hers. Now get them out of here!"

Annia was herded with all others out of the house and across a field to the small windowless storage barn where the field slaves were confined. The females were stopped outside the door briefly while the guards selected which ones they wanted for their "play." Eleven were chosen, including Annia. These eleven were tied to a hitching rail; the others, their hands unbound, were pushed inside and the door bolted shut.

Dusk was rapidly turning to darkness, and the guards had built a bonfire to keep themselves warm and provide light for the front area of the barn, which they called their "holding pen." Guards with torches had been stationed all around the building in case a clever slave managed to dig his way out. Now and then Annia heard a shrill scream from inside — probably one of the females being raped. One last gratification for a condemned field hand. But she had her own rapes to worry about. As the night hours went by, she was "played with" by more than half the soldiers on guard duty. She stopped counting after she had passed ten three times. Her thighs were encrusted with a mixture of semen and blood, the tender lining of her vagina so torn and sore she could barely walk.

Some time before dawn she had finally been thrown into the holding pen with the others where she was able to sleep for a few unmolested hours before being roused again.

It was time to prepare the slaves for execution.

The Second Day

The Roman guards didn't much care what went on inside the holding pen as long as no one escaped and no one died before they could be executed. One of the younger field slaves did attempt to escape during the night by breaking through the floor and tunneling his way out, using a broken board to scoop the dirt. His hopes ended when two grinning guards grabbed him as he emerged from the tunnel, crushed his feet between two millstones and threw him back into the pen

To make sure the slaves would be well nourished for their ordeal (and last longer) provisions were taken from the slave pantry and thrown into the pen at dawn, including a few dozen loaves of stale bread, a bucket of overripe fruit and a few buckets of leftover swill from the now deserted kitchen. A barrel of water was pushed in, as well.

The Roman soldiers knew from experience that as soon as the execution process began the slaves would start finding ways to kill themselves — strangling each other, hanging themselves from the rafters, opening veins with splinters or their own fingernails. Accordingly, after the famished slaves had devoured the bread, fruit and swill, they were brought out of the pen in twos and threes and moved to the great barn, a building meant for the storage of hay, wheat and straw, but nearly empty now because the harvest had not yet begun.

Annia, the last slave to be tossed into the pen after the guards were finished with their amusements, was among the first to be taken out. Her wrists were bound tightly together with rough hemp rope and two grizzled soldiers, one on each arm, half led and half dragged her toward the great barn.

At first they seemed indifferent to her limping and whimpering, but when they were nearly to the barn the guard on her left growled, "What's the matter, Goldenhair? Your little mousie sore after all the fun and frolic last night?"

The other guard giggled at the drollery and added, "You should look happier. You're gonna look back and realize this little stroll was the best part of your day."

When Annia made no reaction to their taunts, the first guard grabbed at her crotch through her thin robe. "Maybe her little mousie is hungry and wants to be fed again." He squeezed painfully. "How about a nice fat Roman sausage?"

She still remained silent, so they gave it up and quickened the pace to make her stumble more and stub her bare toes on the rocky ground.

As they dragged her into the great barn, she saw that long horizontal rails had been attached to the vertical posts along both long walls. The slaves ahead of her were backed up to the rail on her left by their two escort guards and a third soldier lashed their wrists to the rail. Soon they were doing the same to her. The lashing was painfully tight, so tight she could not slide her wrists along the rail nor find any knots with her fingers. As if it mattered. There was no way she could escape.

Fear, lingering pain and lack of sleep muddled her thoughts for a while, but as the rail on the opposite side of the barn began to fill, Annia noticed that the females were being mixed in among the males more or less evenly. Her mind was not so addled that she couldn't figure out why. It was for the benefit of the soldiers. For them, crucifying men and boys was mere routine, but crucifying women and girls was a sexual rush. By distributing the females evenly, they spread the joy around for the troops, not to mention those who would be coming to view this mass display of public disgrace and punishment.

Annia's hands were going numb. Her legs had begun to tremble from exhaustion. She needed to sit down but could not without wrenching her shoulders out of joint. The best she could do was kneel for short intervals until the pain in her shoulders forced her to stand up again.

In addition to her other troubles, Annia had a bad taste in her mouth. Hunger from nearly two days without food made her lunge into a loaf of bread too ardently. She had wolfed down nearly a third of it before she realized it had begun to molder. She had managed not to throw it up, but the taste of mold still permeated her mouth. Even the many handfuls of water she had scooped out of the barrel had failed to flush it out.

As the last of the slaves were brought in and tied up, the soldiers threw ropes over two of the horizontal beams that crossed from one side of the barn to the other at the roof line. Annia had a pretty good idea of what they'd be used for and to take her mind of it she began counting the slaves lining both walls. She only knew the numbers one through ten, but she counted up to ten five times, plus four more. Tertia, her former supervisor, was on Annia's rail near the door, the second slave to be brought in. Directly across from Annia was Laila, one of her Master's concubines.

She wondered if Claudia hated the two concubines as much her. He often slept with one or the other instead of his wife. Sometimes both at once. Come to think of it, why was Fortunatus not satisfied with those three women? Why had he added her, one of his wife's chamber slaves, to his roster of sex partners? She craned her neck to find Rufa, the other concubine, who was somewhere further down the wall on her side. The two young concubines were exact opposites. Where Laila was from exotic stock, someplace called Judea, and had smooth, olive toned skin, dark intense eyes and lustrous black hair, Rufa was from one of the Germanic tribes to the north. Her skin was as fair as Annia's and her eyes the same brilliant blue, but her hair, as her name implied, was a resplendent red hue that Annia had always envied. Actually, Annia had always been convinced that Fortunatus loved her and the two concubines equally. Was it mere irony that all three would now join him in death, or had Claudia conspired with some sympathetic god to exact a ghastly punishment on her husband and his sexual playmates?

Annia didn't recognize the men on either side of her. One of them was a boy, not more than a year or two beyond ten. They were probably field slaves who were never allowed in the house. Their body odor was very strong, but then, so was hers at this point. Neither one attempted to talk to her, and for some reason she didn't say anything to them. How could it be that those who are about to die cannot speak to each other?

The soldiers had finished their preparations and went to the head of the line on her wall for their first victims. The first was a young man, tanned and muscular from working in the fields. The other was poor old Tertia, pale and trembling. They were untied and forcibly escorted to where the ropes dangled from the two beams. The two prisoners were stripped and the ropes swiftly tied to their wrists. Their arms were hauled up by the ropes until their feet left the floor. Other ropes were tied to their ankles and run through bolts on the floor. These ropes, too, were pulled taut so that their legs were spread wide. It grieved Annia to see the abject embarrassment on her former supervisor's face at being strung up naked in front of the entire assembly.

The Captain who had ravished Annia the evening before, stepped into the center of the Great Barn between the two hanging slaves and read aloud the warrants for their execution.

"These slaves," he named them, "being the legal property of the deceased citizen, Marcus Tullius Fortunatus, who was brutally murdered by his own slave, known as Tullipor, have been found by the Prosecutor General of Rome to fall under the provision of law, as set forth by the Roman Senate, which requires that the murderer and all other slaves belonging to the victim be put to death by crucifixion. This is done that they may serve as an example to all slaves in the Republic that should a citizen be slain by any one of his slaves, all his slaves must share in the guilt and be put to death. Therefore, by authority of the Regional Court, I order that these slaves be scourged, and then taken out and crucified."

The Captain stepped aside and two pair of soldiers took up positions beside the two condemned prisoners. Each was holding a short whip with several leather thongs extending from the handle, knotted at the ends. At a signal from the Captain they began systematically whipping both sides of their prisoners whose groans grew to cries and then screams as the whips raised angry welts on their bodies, buttocks and thighs, both front and back. As the flogging went on and on, the knots tore bloody stripes through the tenderized skin. Annia found herself weeping for them by the time the scourging ended and they were dragged out of the barn for the next stage of their execution. Or perhaps she was weeping for herself, because she would be strung up there all too soon.

Three more pairs of prisoners, all male, were subjected to the same ritual: a reading of their death warrants followed by a brutal scourging, with a fresh pair of soldiers wielding the whips. As, the soldiers worked their way up her rail, getting closer and closer, Annia thought her heart would pound its way out of her body. She was soaked with perspiration, both from the rising heat in the barn as the late summer sun rose higher, and the fear churning in her belly. The only one still tied to the rail on her right was the boy. Their turn was next.

She closed her eyes and immersed herself in a numbing sea of anger and hate! She hated these pitiless brutes and the Republic that fed their blood lust with horrendous laws, that treated cattle better than slaves and slaughtered either when it suited their purposes. Her anger boiled at the cruelty in the hearts of men who saw no point in distinguishing between the guilty and the innocent, but simply condemned them all to the same gruesome death — men, women and children — in the interest of protecting a privileged life for the well-born.

Suddenly the young boy next to her was sobbing. The guards were untying their hands. Now they were being forced to their scourging stations in the painful grip of the guards.

They were stripping her. She could not numb herself to the disgrace of it. Stark naked in front of the entire assemblage of gawking slaves and hooting soldiers. She could not ignore the bite of the hemp into her wrists as her arms were jerked over her head and hauled up until her feet left the floor. She gasped, tightening the muscles in her arms to keep them from being pulled from their sockets. When her ankles were suddenly yanked wide apart and pain blazed through her hips, she broke down and wept.

It felt like her body was being torn apart as she hung helplessly while the Captain rattled off her death warrant.

"These slaves, Quintupor and Annia, being the legal property of the deceased citizen, Marcus Tullius Fortunatus . . . "

She tried not to hear it. Moaning to block it out.

". . . be put to death. Therefore . . . ."

But that was nothing compared to what came next. Eight slaves had already gone through it while she languished at the wall. But watching it and hearing their screams had not prepared her for the reality of being savagely flogged by two strong soldiers using the most vicious whip ever invented. The pain was incredible, literally taking away her breath between her screams. She lost consciousness at one point and had to be revived with salts, but not a stroke was deducted from the full complement required by the government. When it ended and eternity later, she was choking and sobbing, her head drooping with exhaustion, saliva dripping from her mouth. When she looked down at herself, she seemed to be bathed in blood. It seeped from innumerable welts and slashes, dripping off her feet to the floor beneath her, spreading over the darker blood of her predecessors.

She was so lost in residual pain that she hardly noticed when the ropes on her ankles went slack and she was lowered to the floor. An unseen guard behind her held her upright by her arms so she wouldn't collapse as the ropes were untied. The hands released her without warning and she swayed precariously, but two soldiers grabbed her arms and half carried her out the door behind the young boy. His body, too, was a latticework of bloody stripes and he staggered as he walked.

Outside they put a cup to her lips and let her drink. She sucked greedily at the cool water, surprised at the severity of her thirst.

As she drank, another soldier approached with a heavy wooden beam almost as long as Annia was tall. He laid it across two wooden blocks to keep it about a hand's width off the ground. One end of a rough hewn wooden plank was placed in the middle of the beam, the other end resting on the grass. The soldiers waited until she had drained the cup, then grabbed her arms and ankles, toppled her backwards on to the plank, stretched out her arms along the beam and immediately began to lash them in place with narrow leather straps at the hands, wrists, forearms, upper arms and shoulders. She cried and whimpered as splinters from the plank stabbed into her bruised and lacerated back. They paid no heed.

Another soldier arrived with a wooden sign. He showed it to her. There were letters painted crudely on the board and two holes on the upper side where a thong could be threaded to hang it.

"Can you read this?" the soldier asked, sneering.

"No, Sir." Slave girls were not taught reading and writing.

"It says, ‘Fuck me, please! I ain't got much time left. And if your cock ain't stiff enough, a sharp stick will do.'"

The other soldiers laughed as they cinched the straps tight. Annia doubted the sign said any such thing. The soldier hadn't even looked at it. He probably couldn't read either.

"Now the way we usually do it," he went on, "we'd hang this thing around your neck. But that would hide them beautiful tits, so I got a better idea."

He opened up his right hand and produced a thick needle strung with a heavy string, the kind that was used for fishing. He threw a leg over her body as though mounting a horse and sat heavily on her mid-section, making her cry from the pain of her injured back grating hard against the plank. Like a lover, he milked her left nipple gently a number of times, making it stiffen, then, pinching hard, pulled the nipple up taut and slowly drove the point of the needle through its tenderest part. Annia screamed, but with her arms pinned and the heavy soldier sitting on her belly she was helpless. He drew the thread through the hole he'd created and repeated the same painful procedure on the right nipple. With the cord drawn through both nipples, he finished the job by threading the ends through the holes in the sign and tying it off.

"She's ready now, boys!" he said jauntily, and dismounted, making sure to push down on her as he did so to give her one last painful grind against the plank.

Annia could hear the first whacks of the whips and the screams of their targets coming from the barn behind her as the soldiers lifted up the beam and her along with it. It was nearly as heavy as she and she staggered under its weight when they let it go. At the same moment the sign swung away from her belly and pain stabbed her nipples from the pull of the cord. Except for that and where the beam ground into the wounds on her upper back, the level of pain had become manageable. But she knew it would soon get much worse.

One of the soldiers looped a chain around her neck. As he was bolting it in place, a group of horses trotted into view trailed by a roiling dust cloud. They passed by on the way to the Great Barn and Annia could see they were dragging three bodies behind the horses. Although naked and covered with blood, with much of their skin torn away, they could still be recognized. And they were still alive. Tullipor and the two runaways. With a shock she realized that none of them had feet. Just singed stumps.

The sight inspired one of her guards to sudden loquaciousness. "You see that? That's what happens with murdering slaves and runaways. The boys are gonna have some fun with them today." He leaned closer to her face, his breath foul with the stench of rotting teeth. "Course, not as much fun as we're gonna have with you ."

Annia trudged on, picking her way around the sharpest rocks in the road, straining under the burden of the heavy beam and her churning emotions. They had burned off his feet! She hated him for what he had done to her! To the entire household! But the bastards had burned off his feet and dragged him who knows how far, skinning him alive in the process! Did he deserve that? Did she deserve this?

Her thoughts were cut off by a sudden jerking of the chain around her neck. "Come on, bitch!" The voice churlish now. "You don't want to keep your audience waiting. They're looking forward to a good show."

She stumbled forward, her knees trembling under the weight of the beam. As they reached the road her heart sank. It was lined with spectators ogling her naked body, pointing, laughing, making loud obscene remarks. She had never imagined such humiliation, such a feeling of shame. Whatever was written on her sign they seemed to find especially funny.

Then they came to the first cross erected beside the road. She nearly fainted at the sight. It was the first time she'd seen an actual crucifixion. The first slave to be strung up for scourging back in the barn now hung from nails driven through his wrists, the blood dribbling down his arms. His legs were tucked up under him as though he were crouching, his knees pointing to his left. A single large spike had been driven through his heels. His head lolled and his mouth hung open. He seemed to be struggling for breath. The crack of a bull whip was followed by a searing pain across her back.

"Get moving you stupid cow! This piece of dung has his own problems. He don't feel inclined to chat right now."

Her legs trembling, Annia forced herself to keep walking, too weak now to avoid the rocks bloodying her feet.

They came to the second cross. The sight of Tertia, her naked form a mass of welts and blood, her wrists nailed into the beam, was bad enough. But they had managed to degrade her even further. They had nailed her heels together so that her knees were pointing in opposite directions, spreading her sex wide open for all to see. Annia wept for the woman who had held her and comforted her in the little storage room, who had been her kindly supervisor and her last friend.

But she couldn't stop. The man with the bull whip was right behind her, warning her to keep walking with painful flicks of the whip.

The death march went on and on, past cross after cross, past terrible suffering, past excited crowds, until they finally reached a place where there was only an empty hole and a long, roughly hewn tree trunk lying beside it. The effort to hack the bark off the tree had been half-hearted at best, so the surface was rough and splintery. A notch had been cut into it near one end. Annia knew what would be going into that notch.

The cord holding her wooden sign was cut so that it dropped edgewise on her feet. Just another small contribution to her misery. A soldier ripped the cord through her nipples, pleased with the scream it produced. Another soldier picked up the sign and nailed it to the top of the tree trunk above the notch.

The leather straps holding her arms to the beam were removed and the beam was lifted away from her. The relief was immense and she even had a few moments to kneed her sore shoulders as they nailed the beam into the notch.

When they were satisfied it was secure, they grabbed her by the arms and removed the neck chain. Gripping her firmly, they forced her to straddle the tree and quickly laid her down on its crude surface where the many splinters and patches of bark dug into the wounds on her back. She cried from the pain as they stretched out her arms on the beam once more and held them down.

A third soldier appeared with nails and a hammer. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, trying to steel herself to what was coming. She felt the point of the nail in her right wrist, then the terrible pain as it was hammered through the wrist and into the beam. After bending the nail over to make sure she could not pull her self off it, the soldier moved to her left wrist and did the same.

The two soldiers who had held down her arms now grabbed her legs, spread them apart and pulled her body down the splintery pole as far as her nailed hands would allow. The man with the hammer laid a spike against the slit of her sex and tapped it with the hammer to anchor it in the wood. The other two pushed her body back up the tree trunk a little. The spike was then moved up the tree by the width of three fingers and driven into the tree at a slight upward angle. It would become a kind of saddle digging into her most tender flesh and giving her partial support.

The soldiers holding her legs then placed the right heel over the left heel about three handbreadths below the nail so that her legs were bent and the knees spread wide apart. The point of another long nail was then driven through both heels into the post and bent over. The pain was excruciating, but nothing compared to what came next as they raised the cross to vertical and dropped it into the hole, packing dirt in around it to firm it up.

A cheer went up from the crowd at the sight. With her knees splayed wide, her sex was on grotesque display and pain she had never believed physically possible blazed through her body. She was not hanging entirely from the nails in her wrists as she had expected; some of her weight was pressed into the end of the spike they had placed beneath her crotch. The pain from her wrists was extreme, but the crotch nail soon began to compete. Very soon she found it was hard to exhale because of the way her body pulled on her arms. She seemed to be suffocating. For few moments she thought that would be a good way to end all this: just let herself suffocate. But her body would not allow it, any more than it will allow us to strangle ourselves with our hands. Involuntarily, her body reacted to immanent smothering by pulling on her wrists and pushing on her ankles. The agony produced by that maneuver was beyond belief, but she couldn't help it. As soon as she was able to breathe again she let herself down on to the crotch nail. And the cycle of smothering and torture began again. The crowd loved it as she alternated between the two agonies, groaning and crying. Going up, going down. She prayed desperately that she would die quickly, appealing to every god she knew about.

The Romans, in their hellish cleverness, had developed the crucifixion process to maximize pain and prolong agony. They had learned how to minimize blood loss, avert shock and stretch out the length of time each crucified wretch could survive in the extremity of torment. They had practiced the art on hundreds of thousands of men, women and children all over their realm for three hundred years. Annia was only the latest wretch to suffer the most cruel death ever invented. And this was only the beginning.

As the hours dragged by and her fellow slaves plodded past bearing the cross beams for the trees awaiting them, her agony increased to the point where she cared nothing for their suffering, only hers. Yet, curiously, the incredible pain sharpened her mind. She looked down at her body, past the stripes of the whip to the swollen pink lips puffing out through the gold fleece. She tried to push away the present torment with recollections of past pleasures, of the sweet sensations from that obscenely exposed hole that once thrilled her, made her body convulse with the raptures of lovemaking. But sweet thoughts were burned away by the unceasing cycles of pain. Up, then down.

The morning wore on, the sun rising higher and hotter, burning her. The crowds grew larger. Where were they all coming from? Invariably she drew the largest groupings. Men and boys leering. Pointing. Making lewd jokes. Then moving on to the next display.

The pairs of doomed slaves slogged by under their cross beams at predictably even intervals. It took a certain length of time for the reading of the death warrant and the scourging. Eight crosses away on her left, the crowd would cheer the arrival of each new pair of slaves, bleeding, carrying their cross beam. The cheer was noisier still when one was a female, her sign hanging from her nipples.

Annia had never seen the majority of slaves owned by her Master, only the household staff, the concubines and the stable boys. Most were field hands: young, well muscled, their skin darkened from hours under the blazing sun, except for that part which until now had been hidden beneath a loincloth. Now the contrast of skin tone called attention to their genitals as they paraded past the jeering crowd. Annia was amazed to see that even under these circumstances some were actually aroused at the sight of her. The illogic of it made her keep looking down to examine her ruined body, it's swollen welts encrusted with smeared blood. But it wasn't her defiled body that aroused them; it was that part of the female anatomy that most slaves rarely get to see, much less lewdly displayed like this.

The march to death went on as the sun arced past noon. Unlike the strong young men who bore their beams stoically, the women, children and older men had to be whipped frequently to keep them on their feet and moving. One little girl provided Annia with a particularly heartbreaking example of just how hatefully mean these Roman soldiers could be. Her name was Flavia. Like Annia, she had been born in captivity and knew nothing of life but hard work; in her case, the kitchens and laundry. Yet she was a pretty thing, small and elegantly formed, with light brown hair, gray-green eyes and a sweet, slightly upturned nose. It was obvious to everyone that if she lived to puberty unblemished, she would be a stunning young woman and a valuable piece of merchandise for Master Fortunatus. He and Claudia had been already making plans to offer her as a concubine or courtesan, and arguing about which market and which auction house would fetch the best price. Now, as she limped along behind one of the stable boys, her once beautiful hair was matted with sweat and grime, her face was ravaged with pain and her body a mass of bloody welts. Her knees had been skinned to the bone from falling and they shook as she staggered along leaving bloody imprints on the rocks and dirt. Her back and bottom had been whipped raw by the soldier behind her. She fell again in front of Annia's cross, was hauled to her feet by the hair and given three more lashes to get her walking again. Annia could not bear to watch, could not bear the sound of her sobbing, could not bear to think about what they would do to her when she reached her destination.

But there was no way for Annia to avoid thinking about her own agony. It enveloped her. Swallowed her up. She didn't scream any more as she had during the flogging, yet how mild that torture had been compared to this! Screaming had become mostly impossible. To scream you need to be able to exhale. To be able to exhale she had to clench her teeth and push-pull herself up, moaning and crying with the molten pain. When she could no longer stand the pain, she would settle back down on the spike and begin to strangle. Up and down. Up and down. The hours of torment dragging by.

Why was she still alive?

A loud cheer to her left signaled the arrival of another condemned female. Annia looked over to see who it was. The sight Laila, the younger of Master's two concubines, deepened her sadness. Even now she was still achingly beautiful despite the appalling damage from last night's unrelenting rapes and today's scourging. She was only a little older than Annia herself, maybe ten years plus seven or eight, but more voluptuous. Even with her black hair stringy and dulled with filth, even with her almond eyes swollen and bruised and her thighs encrusted with blood from the amorous savagery of the soldiers, even with her skin ripped and bloodied by the scourging, she was still breathtaking. As with all the female slaves, the sign destined for the top of her cross had been hung from her breasts. In this case they had pushed a fish hook or bent nail through each nipple from which to suspend it. Rivulets of blood had dripped off her breasts and traced twin trails down her belly and into the thick fur of her triangle. Tears had carved paths through the dirt on her face. But she kept her head erect as she struggled to carry the heavy cross beam and shut out the salacious taunts of the crowd.

A few hours later the other concubine, Rufa, was met with an equally lusty cheer when she emerged on the road to begin her final walk. She had not held up as well as Laila from the rapes and the scourging and seemed on the verge of collapse. Probably would have, if not for the encouragement of the bull whip. Apparently she had managed to provoke one or more of the soldiers because a heavy iron object had been tied into her bright red hair, pulling her head back, which, in turn, forced her mouth open. A rope had been wound through her mouth and tied cruelly tight to keep it that way. She panted and drooled as she wobbled along the road, unable to keep in a straight line, her hands opening and closing compulsively where they were strapped to the ends of her cross beam. Her gait was erratic and she left bloody footprints with every step. Annia could see points of metal jutting up through the tops of her feet where someone had pushed small nails through from the bottom. A single slim wooden stick had been driven horizontally through her breasts at the base of the nipples, and her sign hung from it. Suspended from the sign was an urn filled with sand. Rufa's life as a slave had been relatively pleasant. Someone was making sure that her death would be particularly unpleasant.

For Annia, the greatest humiliation of this horrendous day came late afternoon, just before the last of the slaves had been crucified. Much of the water she had drunk this morning in the holding pen and after her scourging had been sweated out in her endless ordeal, but the rest of it had built up in her bladder to the point where she could no longer contain it. The natural discomfort of a distended bladder was so far below the level of her other torments that she had simply ignored it. Now the muscles that normally held back the pressure failed her. Within full view of a large crowd of onlookers a fountain of urine gushed out from between the pink lips of her sex and arced noisily to the ground. Crude shouts went up from the men and boys! This was a spectacle none of them had ever witnessed. A woman pissing! One of the older boys suddenly ran forward, caught some pee in his hand and threw it back at her, causing riotous jocularity among his friends who rushed in and did the same until her flow tapered to a trickle and stopped. Annia, who had thought no greater degradation was possible than to be naked and spread open obscenely to every passerby, felt she would go insane from the shame of this new debasement. Eventually the boys became caught up in the passage of another condemned female, a pretty young scullery maid, and left to enjoy the dance of the sign hanging from her tits and watch her be nailed up with her knees spread.

Annia wept. The pain, already unbearable, was getting steadily more intense. But at least, she thought, she had now endured the worst degradation possible for a human being.

She was wrong.

The Third Day

Up and down. Up and down. All day long, until darkness had swallowed up all but the torches of the soldiers standing guard. And then on into the night.

Had she slept? It didn't seem like it. How could she sleep when the pain never stops, always grows worse, constantly demands a shifting of the body on its nails. First up. Then down. Up. Then down. Each movement such agony that it stops the breath, blocks the voice, rends the mind!

She ground her teeth. Hard! But it didn't help.

All through the long night nothing helped.

And the thirst! Building up. Drying her mouth. Cracking her lips. All she can think about is water. And the pain.

The moon crested the horizon, bright and almost full. She prayed to the goddess Luna for death. But Luna ignored her.

Sleep was impossible against the thirst and the pain. The grueling, helpless battle to breathe when all she wanted was to die.

Yet as the sun came up she emerged from a fragmentary sleep, from a dream about being in pain. Regained a consciousness she didn't want.

It had only been a tiny sliver of sleep, a transition from real pain to illusionary pain and back to real pain. But that's all the relief she would get. Short lapses of consciousness before the body forced itself to rise on the nails and the inflamed nerves of bone and muscle screamed at her! Waking her up! Making her keenly alert, maddeningly aware of the agony!

Ah, those Roman soldiers! How cleverly they had placed the nails. Miss the arteries and veins. Hit the nerves. Minimal bleeding, maximum torment! The body will do the rest. It demands the right to breathe!

She hoped for madness to blunt her senses, send her adrift into delirium, a fantasy world where there is no pain or thirst. But madness wouldn't come.

Please! Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Diana . . . Is there any god who will take pity? What have I done to deserve such suffering? I don't ask for life or any worldly thing . . . only death. Please let me die!

Weeping. Moaning. Praying. Shifting up. Shifting down. Simmering pain growing to white hot pain! Up again so her body can exhale. Down again to relieve the agony. Her back raw and bleeding. Her hands and feet swelling angrily around the nails. Her tongue dry and swollen, her lips bleeding, her mouth filled with grit.

Please be merciful! Please let me die! I can't stand any more!

A soldier appeared at her feet with a bucket and a long pole. He stared up at her sex for a while, then dipped a sponge into the bucket and attached it one end of the pole. He raised it up and touched it to her mouth.

Water! She lunged at it like a dog seizing a piece of meat, sucking desperately at it, leaning into it, pulling against the nails in spite of the pain! Until there was nothing left except the damp, vaguely salty cells of the sponge. She fights the pain so she can rise up and breathe out the words she needs.

"More, please!" Her voice hardly audible. "Please! Have mercy!"

"Well ain't you the greedy bitch. You want more when all I got is this one bucket to go around for all this vermin. Tell you what. Why don't you come down here and suck on my cock for a while, like before. Anything you bring up you can drink."

Now she recognized him. She'd been afraid of losing her tongue. How trivial that threat seemed now. The quick pain of having the tongue ripped out was insignificant compared with this incredible and unending agony.

He laughed and moved off.

Her thirst slightly assuaged, she settled on the point of the spike to look around at her neighbors. The crosses had been spaced a good twenty paces apart along that portion of the estate bounded by the road. Soon parties of slaves from other farms and households in the area would be arriving to view this object lesson, as required by law. On her right was the boy, Quintupor, son of one of the cooks by a field slave. He had been writhing all day and all night as she had, pushing himself up, then going back down, over and over, accepting moments of intense pain to seek periods of relative relief. The old man on her left, however, had been hanging without movement since mid-afternoon yesterday. Perhaps he had worshiped a more merciful god than she. But how was one to tell? They're so capricious.

The sun was not far over the horizon, yet it was already very warm. It would be a hot day. Was that good? Bad? Would it hasten her death? Or just make her suffering more acute?

She watched the black flies, horse flies and mosquitos accumulate on her body, drawn to the mixture of sweat and dried blood. Some were at work burrowing into her exposed genitals. If she were not in so much greater pain elsewhere, she would have been distressed at the many bites from these and other insects, at the stinging and the relentless itching left by their toxins. That she was helpless to discourage these tiny predators in any way was only part of her despair. If only she could die! Why wouldn't her body let her die? How had the old man on her left accomplished it?

The crowds had begun to gather and, like yesterday, a large contingent of men and boys had stopped to ogle her. There was not much about her anymore that was attractive. Her breasts and belly were a patchwork of scars and welts. What she could see of her once glorious golden hair was hanging in dirty strands. Her face was permanently twisted in agony. Yet there they were, staring agape at her. No, not at her. At that part of her that only the most privileged could have seen if she had not been nailed to a cross. Let them stare. She was no longer human. She was only meat. And pain. What did it matter?

Bright red stripes had appeared on her arms and lower legs, radiating from the nails by which she raised and lowered herself. She knew what it was. Eventually it would turn to gangrene. Maybe it would speed her death.

A group of boys detached themselves from the crowd. They talked conspiratorially among themselves as they gazed at her sex. One squatted down and another climbed up and sat on his shoulders. When the boy below stood up, the boy on top could just reach the enticing lure of this blonde female's secret grove. He wriggled his fingers past the spike and into that forbidden cave. He giggled joyously. He had never been inside a girl, even with his fingers. Annia groaned. Damage from the spike and sun made the invasion a new source of pain. The boy continued to wiggle his fingers inside her vagina, finally drawing them out and sniffing them. She watched all this with a strange detachment. As long as he only added a little to her physical suffering, she could bear the added shame. She was beyond caring about shame. She felt the fingers return. More of them this time. The boy was ramming three or four fingers into her sunburnt passage. She whimpered. She didn't need this much extra pain. She began the agonizing process of pushing herself up to escape the boy's fingers.

"Hey!" he yelled. Then, seeing his first access to a cunt drawing out of reach, he made a last-ditch jab at it, his fingernails tearing the delicate tissues. A satisfying smear of blood appeared on the ends of his fingers and he dismounted the boy who had lent his shoulders to the enterprise. He moved off to study the girl blood, to taste it with the tip of his tongue.

Another pair of boys began a second human ladder, but a patrolling guard spotted them and bellowed, drawing his sword. They quickly disentangled themselves and ran off.

Annia noticed that for this second day on the cross most of the troops had departed, leaving only a small deployment of guards to keep the condemned safe from rescue or mercy killing. But before the troops had departed last evening, they had offered up a final grim spectacular for the blood-lusting audience. The hapless Tullipor and the two runaways had been dragged past the entire line of crucified slaves, some of whom spat at them from their crosses. Because the road curved off behind her, Annia could not see more than a few crosses in that direction, but the distant cheering of the crowd indicated they had been given an especially entertaining grand finale.

As the sun climbed and grew hotter Annia became increasingly aware of the painful burning of her face, body and exposed female tissues. She looked down on her breasts and belly and saw that they were bright red from a full day of baking under yesterday's unimpeded sun. Her arms, shoulders and the tops of her splayed legs were the same angry hue. It was to be expected, of course. Almost every hour of her ten years plus six had been spent inside (except for those tree-shaded trysts with Master). Her duties as a house slave mostly involved cleaning and polishing — walls, floors, furniture, dishes, vases, pots, all the articles that comprised her owner's indoor comforts. Along with satisfying his sexual whims. The concubines, Rufa and Laila, had similar household duties, but had their own private chambers and a real bed where Master Fortunatus could enjoy their charms at his leisure without interference from his wife, who was forbidden to enter those rooms. Annia, who slept on straw in the women's dorm of the slave quarters, had always envied the two beautiful concubines and longed for the same pampered life. Fortunatus had often promised to elevate her to it, usually just before he burst forth with his seed. Now, as she began again the horrific process of pushing herself up off the crotch nail, she longed for the bed of straw.

When she had risen as far as the nails in her wrists allowed, she glanced over to the boy on her right and saw he was doing the same thing, whimpering as he struggled upward. She called out to him, hoping to be able to comfort him in some way, but he did not respond. Perhaps her voice, hoarse with thirst and pain, could not be heard. Or perhaps he was too wrapped up in his own misery to hear. She understood. Pain of that magnitude tends to monopolize the mind.

His heels had been nailed together with his knees pointing in Annia's direction so she could not help but let her eyes drop to his genitals. They had only begun to develop. There was a slight hint of pubic fuzz above the penis. Annia remembered that at his age she had already developed a small bosom and had her first period. The kitchen slaves had shown her how to pleasure herself by rubbing that little button at the top of her slit. She had spent many hours working herself up to those wonderful thrills that made her wet in that secret place. Then the Master had discovered her doing it one day, and made her demonstrate it for him. That was when he introduced her to the extraordinary experience of inserting the male thing into her "love sleeve," as he called it. It was a considerable improvement on doing it alone.

She had seen the male thing before, of course. She was probably nine or ten when one of the stable boys had shown her his in return for seeing hers. Later there had been clandestine meetings in the hay bins to look and touch. Several times the boys talked her into sucking on their things and making them hard. But Master Fortunatus had been the first to do it right, to treat her like a real woman. Why hadn't he made her a concubine as he had promised? Hadn't she pleased him? What more could she have done?

As the morning wore on the wind shifted, blowing in from her left. It carried with it a distinctive odor. The smell of a dead animal. No, not an animal. It was the old man on the cross next to hers. His name was Martianus. She wasn't sure exactly what he did, beyond the fact that he was Master's dresser. Every morning he would bathe Master and help him into his clothes. He also attended to Master when he did his rounds of the farm. Once again she wondered what gods he worshiped who would take pity on him and let him die before the worst of the torment.

As the heat built up toward midday the attacks from the insect world and the odor from the dead Martianus redoubled. The positive side of this increased misery was that the leering crowds tended to move on more quickly to get away from the stench. The negative side was that a trio of ugly carrion birds began circling overhead. One of the birds, large and black with a crooked neck and hooked beak, landed on the dead man's shoulder. Annia tried to look away but could not. To her horror, the bird jumped up on the man's head and pecked out first one eye, then the other. She looked away, feeling sick, but could not avoid hearing the clack of the bird's beak against teeth and bone as it began tearing away the soft flesh inside the open mouth. The other birds, encouraged by their partner's success, circled closer. Finally one landed on the man's right arm and began feasting on it. The third member of the squadron continued to circle, but had located an exclusive target of its own. Annia saw its shadow first, then felt the talons dig into her left shoulder. With more strength than she thought she had left, she cried out and tossed her head. The creature released its grip and flew off.

Her heart was hammering, oddly erratic. Maybe it would fail. Oh gods, she hoped so! But it did not. It slowed to a faint, jagged thump. In spite of the agony, her body refused to grant her release.

But the thought of being eaten alive by vultures kept her moving. Slowly up. Hold herself there to take some deep breaths until the pain soared beyond bearing. Then down for the infernal pain of the spike in her cunt and wrists. It was getting harder. Her strength was ebbing. She could no longer cry. Her eyes and mouth had dried out in the ravaging thirst. Even her sweat had dried up on her seared skin.

The day ground on, the stink from partly devoured corpse growing stronger. The sun rose to its most punishing height, cooking her as surely as if she were roasting on a spit. Blisters formed on her breasts, arms and thighs. Her skin was a sheet of fire, registering every grain of sand that blew against it, and every rock thrown by the passing throngs of boys from the village.

One group gave her a special taste of hell by pausing for a throwing contest. First it was accuracy: who could score the most direct hits on her nipples. Then it was strength: who could make her gasp the loudest. A guard finally put a stop to it when a rock hit her on the forehead, opening a gash.

"All right, boys, move along. There's plenty of other targets down the line. Some nice pussy, too. And take it easy with them rocks. This lot'll be tossed on the dung heap soon enough. If you speed things up with them rocks, you'll wind up on a tree yourself. Then your buddies will be throwing rocks at YOU. Got it?"

They sauntered off grumbling.

The guard looked up at Annia. "Don't you worry, honeypot. We'll protect you from them dungheads. We want you to enjoy a nice long life up there so you can entertain all the good folks who've come to see the show." He snickered and wandered off to keep his eye on the boys.

The sun slid to mid-afternoon. Annia couldn't keep herself from glancing up at the circling scavengers and their vile hooked beaks. The original three had multiplied many times over into a fearsome cloud of hungry birds. For the most part they remained intimidated by the host of humans wandering about and the shuddering up and down movements of their potential meals. Determined not to be mistaken for carrion, Annia writhed on her four nails, rising up, dropping down, lolling her head about. She also used the presence of the birds to divert some of her attention from her agony — counting them as they flew past her line of vision, or singling out a single bird to follow its course.

That vision became increasingly impaired by swarms of flies and other insects drawn to the blood that had caked in her eyebrow and eyelashes from the recent gash. She felt them dining on the flesh laid open by the rock, crawling into her eye, but was too weak to shake them off. It was hard enough to keep them out of her mouth as her efforts to exhale deteriorated to shallow grunts. She wept in bleak frustration, but there were no tears under the scorched lids.

By late afternoon she realized she was weakening fast. She could barely push herself up off the cruel point of the crotch nail, or evade the long pointed sticks that the more despicable gangs of boys shoved into her cunt and twisted until they drew blood. Two boys had found a ladder and when the guards weren't looking propped it up against her cross. The most daring of the two scrambled up the ladder and put his mouth over her left nipple, sucking hard. A guard two crosses away yelled at him and drew his sword. The boy sank his teeth into the nipple and bit if off before scrambling back down the ladder. They were well away by the time the guard arrived. Almost with indifference she watched the blood drip off her mutilated breast and cascade off her open thigh on the way to earth. Now there was a fresh banqueting place for the clouds of insects that emerged from the shelter of the nearby fields as the sun sank behind the distant trees.

The endless up and down motion against the upright of the cross had torn much of the skin from her back, slicking the wood with her blood. Every new push against the nails in her heels was more painful than the last. It was common knowledge, of course, that the soldiers could end her torture anytime simply by breaking her legs, making it impossible for her body to push her up for another breath. Although it would try. She yearned for that final agony that would end all agonies. But it wouldn't happen. If she were a free-born criminal with a family rich enough to bribe the Captain, she would be dead by now. But no such mercy was available to a slave.

The approach of dusk brought three small blessings. The procession of witnesses and tormentors dwindled. The carrion birds, who would be blind in the dark, departed for their night's lodging. And the guards arrived with their buckets of water, sponges and long poles — not out of kindness, but to help prolong the punishment. Humans can live for many days without food, but lack of water summons death quickly.

"Hey, you with the golden pussy!" one of them called up to her. "How'd you like some of this?" He dipped a cup into the bucket, raised it to his lips and sipped it noisily.

"Please," she croaked. "Water."

"Oh, you do want some?" He tipped his head back, lifted the cup over his mouth and let water fall into it. Then made a show of licking his lips.

"Please!" she begged in a broken whisper. "Please, Sir. Have pity."

He watched her writhe for a while, mouth open, gasping, pleading with her eyes.

"Gods! You're a mess. You know that? What happened to your nipple?" He wrinkled his nose in exaggerated distaste as he slipped the cup under his leather skirt. Annia heard the sound of his pee filling the cup. When he had finished, he saluted her with the cup, immersed his sponge into it, attached the sponge to the pole and lifted it up to her lips. Without hesitation she grabbed it with her teeth, drew it into her mouth and greedily sucked every drop of urine out of it.

Then begged for more.

The guard snorted. "Tell you what. Next time I have to piss, I'll give you first crack at it. And if you're real good, you can even eat one of my turds." He laughed, picked up the bucket and continued to the boy on the next cross.

The Final Day

Dreams of pain. Pushing slowly up. Exhaling. Letting herself slowly down. Exchanging one agony for another. Brief lapses into delirium. The snuffling of wild dogs in the moonlight. She can see one now, at the base of her cross, under the wings of her spread legs. A big male dog. Sniffing at the ground where her pee has soaked in, and her blood. Sniffing at the little pile of excrement that slipped out of her while her tormentors pointed and made faces of disgust. The dog lifts its leg and marks her cross. His territory now. He stands up on his back legs and paws at the wood, snapping hopefully. He can't reach her. And she would make such a nice meal.

But the insects can reach her. Numberless swarms of them, crawling all over her scorched skin, entering her many wounds and dark orifices — vagina, anus, nose, ears, mouth — warm and inviting places that call to them with the aromas of sweat, breath, blood and filth. And she can do nothing but bear it.

She writhes in misery no human being can ever imagine. Until they are nailed to a cross.

Distant snarling wakes her from another dream of pain. Somewhere up the line of crosses dogs are battling over meat. She doesn't want to think about it, but it fills her mind as she struggles upward, exhales, then down. Up. Down. Up. Down.

Please let me die! Please.

But when the sun clears the eastern horizon she is still doing her dance of agony. As is the boy just beyond her. And whoever occupies the last cross she can see before the road bends out of sight.

The buzzards are the first arrivals, eager to fill their bellies with as much of these delicacies as they can before the pesky mobs appear. They've nearly picked old Martianus clean. His skull fell off his torso sometime during the night.

Next come the slaves, a large group from a farm on the other side of the village. Annia recognizes a few of them. It's mutual. They break off eye contact instantly. She can't bear the debasement and shame. They can't bear to look upon her suffering and the wreckage of her body. They are here only because the law demands they learn first hand the temper of Roman justice, lest one of them be tempted to repeat Tollipor's mistake.

The sun is barely a handsbreadth above the tree line when Claudia comes into view, escorted by none other than the Captain. They stop and look up at her.

"Well, there's the little slut," Claudia observes. "She's not so damned sexy now, is she."

"Why do you hate her so?" the Captain asks.

"She thinks she's a gift from the gods, what with her yellow hair and pale skin and perfect figure. She had my husband bewitched. He snuck off with her every chance he got. She wanted to be a concubine so she could fuck him in comfort and eat with our guests. The little whore!"

"She says she's carrying his baby."

Claudia's face darkens. "That wouldn't have gone far. I'd have poked a stick up her cunt myself before I'd let her bear any of my husband's bastards."

"Sounds fiscally irresponsible to me. Why not keep it and sell it? Make some money off her."

"And watch her use it to slip her hook in deeper? Not a chance. I regret only that the little bastard wasn't born so we could crucify it along with her."

"You want us to crucify her baby? Do you hate her that much?"

"She stole my husband's affections. I was willing to put up with a couple of concubines. Everyone knows a man needs a little variety. But when he started to spend the rest of his time with that slut . . . well, no self-respecting wife should have to put up with that!

"And you feel crucifying their baby will right that wrong? Give you peace of mind?"

"Yes! If she has to watch."

"It can be arranged."

"It can?"

"Absolutely. It's not exactly a novel idea. These slave executions frequently involve babies."

"You'd have to get the baby out of her."

"That's right."

"You're saying you're willing to rip the baby out of her belly? Won't that kill her? I want her to suffer at least as long as the rest of them."

"You underestimate my experience, Claudia. You seem to forget that I live by the sword. In my profession I have seen the inside of many human beings, including pregnant women. I have watched and assisted my surgeons at work. I know exactly where to find a woman's womb and how to open it up with minimal damage to the mother. The real question is, why should I do this for you?"

Claudia's eyes brighten, then become sly. "Before I answer that, Captain, may I ask you a question?"

"Certainly."

"Do you find me attractive, in the way of a man with a woman?"

A smile creeps into one corner of his mouth. He touches a finger to her chin and traces a path down her throat to her breastbone, across the blue linen covering her left breast, around the outside of her arm to the center of her back and down the length of her spine, spreading out his hand over her buttocks and drawing her against him. "I think you know the answer to that."

"You must know that Fortunatus has left me a wealthy woman."

"Perhaps so, but you have a great many slaves to replace if you expect to bring in the harvest."

Annia watches Claudia's hand slide under the Captain's tunic and up between his thighs. "Buying slaves and organizing a work force is something a man of your experience can do much better than I can. A strong man, a man with a military background, could double the value of this estate in a few years."

Several moments go by as Claudia makes her point manually.

The Captain inhales sharply, but his expression remains unchanged. "Such a man would require substantial incentive, like half ownership of everything, for example."

"Oh I agree," Claudia breathes in his ear, her hand moving under the tunic.

Finally he smiles. "Fortunately, I happen to have with me the necessary surgical tool." He draws a dagger from his belt and barks a command to the nearby guards. "Soldier! Fetch me a ladder, now!"

A ladder is quickly found and placed against the side of Annia's cross.

Why is she frightened? She wants to die. The baby will die with her anyway. Yet her lips quiver at the sight of the dagger in his hand as he climbs the ladder and leans over her. He touches the point of it to her navel and carves straight down to the top of her slit. She gasps, but what is a little more pain in her present agony? She watches him shove aside the grisly organs she has only seen before in slaughtered animals. New pain flares as he puts his hand around the little sac just above her sex and slices it open. He plucks out a tiny form, red and squirming. She feels the sting of the blade slicing things in her belly, detaching the miniature human who had been growing there. Making no effort to close the wound, he climbs down the ladder and shows his prize to Claudia.

"This fetus is well into the third month. Look, you can even see that it's a girl."

"You can?"

"If it were a boy, you'd see the beginning of a penis right there." He points.

Annia strains to see her child, but can only make out a roughly human shape about half as long as the width of the Captain's hand.

Claudia's face hardens. "Kill it."

"That won't take much. It will be dead within moments anyway."

"You promised to crucify it!"

He laughs. "Form over substance. I understand. That's the whole point of crucifixion, is it not? To make a point. Not to the crucified, but to those who follow."

As he talks he produces a nail from his belt pack, holds the fetus against the upright of the cross and pounds the nail through it into the wood with the flat of his sword.

Annia wails from where she is nailed above her murdered baby, her blood dripping on to its corpse from the slash in her belly.

"So what are we going to do with all these bodies?" Claudia is asking the Captain. "The dead ones are already stinking up the place. Can we bury them?"

"Absolutely not!" he replies. "The law requires they remain nailed up until they rot. Just stay in the house, or take a vacation. Only the new slaves will have to endure it and the lesson will be good for them. Actually those birds up there will eat a lot of them. When their bodies begin to crumble and fall off the crosses, we can toss them into the pit behind the pig barn and cover them with layers of pig and sheep dung. They'll make good compost."

They continue to discuss their future plans as they stroll out of earshot.

She wants to be dead, but she isn't. Her body is demanding to exhale again. It's pushing her up on the nails in her heels. She strains through the blossoming pain, her intestines begining to bulge out through the gaping wound in her belly. The vultures overhead take note.

Why did he do it? Why was he so hateful to her? She had done her best to please him in her Master's bed. Even if he couldn't spare her this horror of an execution, he might have shown her just a little compassion in carrying it out. The tiniest amount of lenience. Why did he volunteer to kill her little baby? Her little girl?

Gradually she realizes she's too weak to rise up off the crotch nail. She keens in her effort to exhale. She drops her head in utter despair. Now the vultures will make a feast of her, tearing into her open belly to feed on her organs as the flies are now doing. By evening she will be full of maggots. She watches the blood welling up inside her and spilling out. The gold fleece above her desecrated sex is red with it, collecting the flow before it drains down her legs, past the nail through her heels and finally down the post and over the tiny corpse nailed there.

She thinks about what the Captain was saying about the law. She understands now that the cruelest part of crucifixion is not that one is put to death. Everyone dies. It's not even the endless agony, terrible as that is. The cruelest part is the knowledge of what comes after death: that the body will be left to carrion eaters, or tossed into a dung heap. That is the ultimate disgrace. The ultimate injustice. The ultimate pain.

She thinks about her dead baby. She wonders if it might not have suffered the same fate when she revealed her pregnancy to her Master. Rufa had once confided that she had become pregnant by him, and that he had made Plautilla, the household mid-wife, abort her with a stick. He said he didn't want to be deprived of the services of his favorite concubine or take the chance that she'd lose her spectacular figure. Would he have done the same to Annia?

The carrion birds are circling lower.

She tries again to raise herself, but cannot. She's strangling, struggling to exhale. Her arms and legs are numb, her vision blurred. The nails begin to feel distant. The crowds of sightseers are blurring. Some throw rocks, aiming at the gory opening in her belly. A rock rips into the wound and a segment of intestine falls out. Some boys cheer. A torrent of blood streams from the bottom of the incision and through the cleft of her sex, spattering off her heels. But she feels nothing.

Suddenly she understands. She had misunderstood the Captain. In his crafty way he has granted her prayers.

A rock hits her eye, blinding it. But it doesn't matter. There's nothing left to look at. She will rot on this cross, be eaten by vultures, and what's left will be thrown in the dung pit behind the pig sty.

But none of it matters any more. The pain is fading quickly. The suffering is over.

Her heart is doing desperate things. Stuttering. Struggling. But there's too little blood. Movement is impossible. She can't breathe.

The world sparkles in a gathering darkness.

Sounds swirl inward to a pinpoint.

Silence.

Now there's only the soft smell of hay, waiting to be harvested.