How Not to Win the Next Bet

This one is short and, hopefully, sweet. Throughout most of Rome's history, military pay rates determined that a simple legionary could afford five fucks with the cheapest kind of licensed prostitute.

That's five turns per day. For what it's worth, my prostitutes in this story are charging much more than that, the equivalent of maybe $75.

Just a bit of trivia to start you off. I was going to write this in Latin, but I don't know any. So just use your imagination. I'm writing this for the 2019 Valentine's Day contest, so make sure you read all the V-day stories and vote up your favorites!

* * *

"I'm telling you, man, you can't just keep quitting jobs like this. Word's going to get around that you're unemployable." We'd just gotten off the sullen old Milvio Bridge across the oily river, with nothing but a short slope leading up to the gate.

"Aw, fuckit." Vitus spat a massive gob of phlegm off to the side of the road, aiming for a tomb entrance. You could always tell when you were getting close to the city; there were tombs every five or six feet. That, plus the stink of shit from the latrines for the men working on the new customs gate. "Who cares? There are always ways to make money."

I shook my head. "Dude. You're what, forty-seven?"

"Far as I know."

"I mean, you've got kids. You need to make sure you're taking care of them."

"Bullshit." Vitus laughed. "That's what my ex-wife is for." I gave up; arguing with Vitus was like screaming at a tree. Always had been. "It's okay. I think the winery is going to hire me."

"No shit! The one over near the river? " I was surprised. I'd had some of the wine from there, and it was actually pretty good. "What's the pay like?"

"Okay," Vitus allowed, "but not as okay as it was in the army."

I whistled. "Never is, is it?" Almost two years Vitus had been out of the cavalry, and he bitched about it every day. "You should be used to that by now."

He made a face and kicked at some of the gravel. The pavement was in shitty shape, for being so close to the city. " It's fine, though. The owner's got a daughter." He shrugged and dug around in his pouch. "So that should save me some money on whores. Want some chestnuts?"

"Thanks." The rain was going to come back soon, I thought sourly; you could always tell. February was a wretched month. It was the day before the ides. "Ah," I said unnecessarily. "The city."

"Yup." I heard him sigh. "Center of the world." The gate, half-constructed, rose up in all its mud-colored glory, looking even shabbier today with their backdrop of low, spitting clouds; you could barely even see the gardens up on the Pincius. They were saying there were plans afoot to build new walls out here somewhere, but for now nobody seemed to feel there were any fucking Gauls about to come knocking on their doors. The usual clot of merchants and day-trippers was strolling along, mostly coming north out of the city, trying not to stumble into the muddy puddled ruts. "Viva Rome."

"Something like that." I frowned at the little knot of people to the left of the gate, punctuated with the dull gleam from a few helmets. "Huh. Look at that."

Vitus squinted. "Must be funtime for the soldiers." He spat again. He had the cavalryman's usual disdain for infantry. The two of us walked slowly past the last of the tombs, the oldest ones from way back. I could see now that the little crowd was

very

little, no more than ten or twelve citizens; must not be a very popular victim, or possibly an elderly one. Certainly not a woman.

People always flocked to see a woman off to the Inferno.

We hung around on the fringes of the crowd for a few minutes, peering between peoples' heads until most of them got bored and moved away. This brought us to the front of the pack, next to one of the soldiers. He showed no interest in anything at all besides the apple in his hand.

"Yup," I grunted. "Old man." It was, too, a short guy with a white beard and dirty hair, prison-long, now washed in his blood. It was difficult to tell how they were killing him: another soldier, herding the condemned man as he crawled in the mud, had a club; the third soldier had his sword out. "What are they doing to him?"

The soldier beside us stirred, his cloak beading with the rain, and shrugged. "Beating. Stoning. Whatever works." He looked up at us for the first time. "Then the sword, if the old man doesn't die. Want a rock?"

"Dunno," Vitus shrugged. "I stoned a guy once. It's not as much fun as it looks." The soldier sharpened his glance, flicking his eyes up and down Vitus' body.

"You were a legionary?"

"Nope." Vitus shrugged. "Cavalry. I just got out a couple years ago."

"No shit!" The soldier perked up. "Where you from, man?"

"Africa." Vitus spat again. Off to the side, next to the river, a couple of slaves with shovels were digging the grave. I watched as they pulled some old bones out of the mud, then went back to work. Vitus nudged my ribs. "This guy is Felix. He traveled with us for a few years."

"I sell horse tack," I explained, already knowing the soldier wouldn't care. Fine by me. I was fascinated by the gravediggers. From the looks of things, there'd been plenty of other men buried here over the decades. We all winced as a stone hit the old man's chest with a hollow, wet noise. "What'd this guy do?"

"Him?" The soldier frowned, trying to remember. "Oh. Yeah. He's the one who got sent down this morning. The emperor's jailer was all pissed at him, so the emperor went ahead and condemned him." He scratched at his groin through the leather armor. "Christian; you know the type. But I also heard he was a pimp, so who can say?"

"Bleh." Vitus shook his head. "Christians. Bunch of pussies. But they can't be killing him just because he's a Christian, can they?"

"Well," the soldier said ponderously, thinking about it, "I'm not sure. This guy's different." He shook his head, then nodded down at the groveling old man. "Hey! Pissant!" He kicked at the fellow's ribs. "What was it you did, again?"

I saw a face in pain, the remaining eye rolling up to stare at us with horrible attention. I felt like looking away, like I had back when Vitus and his buddies stoned that fuckup, up in Germania. The old guy spat a tooth out. "I married a bunch of people."

"Oh." Vitus shook his head. "One at a time, old man." I heard pity there, though not much. "One wife's enough."

"No, no." The man wagged his head wearily. "I mean I was a priest. I did the ceremonies." Vitus and I frowned at each other, still not understanding why they were killing him. "Christian rites," he went on, patient as only a condemned man can be; the longer we talked to him, the longer he lived. "No dowries."

"Oh!" I tutted. "That makes more sense." The State didn't like that kind of thing. But still. "Why the extra attention, though?" I wondered, nodding at the stones all around. The whole thing seemed to be taking awhile. "Just cut the fucker's head off."

"No argument here." The soldier shrugged again. "The jailer wants special treatment for this guy. Something about his daughter?" We stood a few moments, looking down at the wretch. The other two soldiers waited for him to die. "Her eyes?"

"Oh! I heard about that!" A local man, tall and skinny enough that he looked like he'd be next in the new grave, nodded vigorously. "I think she's blind. So he said he could heal her."

"Did he?" Vitus nudged the dying man with his toe. "Is that true?"

"I can do anything," the man wheezed, "through the power of Jesus."

"Yeah?" Vitus sounded intrigued. Christians made him curious. "Like, stop my foot?" He lifted his leg and put the boot in, a sickening crunch coming from the old guy's ribs. "No, really. How'd you heal the girl?"

The criminal was busy coughing up blood, so the thin man leaned over to answer. "He claimed he could do it by rubbing his semen on her eyes."

"No shit?" I was impressed; it sounded like a neat trick. My wife was always saying cum was good for the skin. I'd always figured she said it just so she wouldn't get pregnant again. "What, like, on the eyelids?"

"Nope." The skinny guy was grinning now. "The rumor is she was sucking his cock, and he just came in her eyes."

I couldn't help laughing. "What the fuck. The jailer's daughter?"

Vitus was shaking his head slowly. "That took balls, friend," he muttered to the condemned man. He lay on the ground, retching. One of the other soldiers, pissing into the new grave without bothering to miss the slaves, craned his head back.

"Nope.

I'm

the one who took his balls." He nodded down at a pair of whitish testicles lying in the blood next to the old man's heaving body. "Cut them off him a few minutes ago."

We all thought about that for a second. "Say," the skinny guy added, "I've got to go soon. Can I get one more stone?"

"Sure." The first soldier clamped the apple in his teeth while he rummaged in his pouch. "Need any change?"

"No." The man handed over a quadrans, the coin old and worn. "I'm good." He picked up a fist-sized rock, one of the sharper ones, and then took a couple of steps back. Vitus and I shrank away, afraid he'd miss, but there was no need: that skinny arm had surprising strength, and the stone took the old man squarely in the forehead with a small spatter of blood.

"Nice shot!" The pissing soldier put his penis away and then took his sword back from the slave in the pit. "Few more like that, and we can all go home."

"Cool!" Vitus was nodding at me. "Felix, I'll make you a bet. One sestertius for whoever can get closer to his face." Without waiting for me to reply, he turned to the guy with the apple. "A quadrans per stone, right?"

"Yup. Or buy three stones, get one free."

"Nah, we'll just need two." I never liked it when Vitus got like this; he was very fond of gambling, on nearly everything. And he usually won. "Felix here is a good shot with a rock."

"Huh." I looked narrowly over at him, digging for my own quadrans. "Better than you." It had been a good week, my pouch jangling. I found a nice, smooth stone, a little smaller than Vitus.' "You go first, Vit; it's your bet."

"Sure." He gave himself some room while the rest of us watched in the drizzly rain. Vitus crouched down, judging his throw. "Up on your knees, old man," he called. "It'll end sooner."

"Do it." The soldier with the club aimed a sharp kick at the old man's ass. "I want to go home." Painfully, the man dragged himself to his knees, panting and covered with blood. Vitus lined up his shot, juggling the rock in his hand.

"Hope she was a hot piece of ass," he shrugged, meaning the jailer's daughter, and then he launched a brutal overhand shot at the broken man. The rock flew hard and fast, taking the man on his right shoulder in another grudging little speckle of blood. The little crowd around us nodded, a few of them clapping, and I wasn't even slightly surprised when a number of them started making side bets.

Romans love a game of chance.

"Your move, Felix," smirked Vitus, and I took my place slowly, weighing my own stone. The old man stared back at me, his one eye wide and alert, looking at me with a look of terrible and complete resignation. I remembered hearing that Christians thought they went to some sort of paradise after they died, which sounded interesting. I thought about that, wondering what the old man was thinking now as he stared at me. Behind me, Vitus and the kid with the apple had fallen into a low conversation.

"Yeah, we're deploying to Belgica in the spring." The soldier sounded more curious now. "Been there?"

"Hell yes. I spent almost four years up there, supporting the IX Legion. I thought it would be all exciting and shit." He shook his head in disgust. "It sucks now. It's all civilized. The tribes there are almost more Roman than you are."

"Bummer."

"It's easy to get a decent haircut there, though."

I was staring hard at the dying man, trying hard to summon some hatred, something that could make me fling my stone, but I just couldn't. The man looked so alert, so calm; as I watched, he straightened his back and drew himself up, the clouds clearing from his face, and his lips moved as he began to pray.

Fuck.

I couldn't stone this guy. Without even thinking about it, I dropped the rock on the ground. "We're late," I told Vitus shortly, and as I turned away the old man raised his voice into a mighty shout.

"The power of the Lord will bless you!" he yelled at me, the spit and blood flying out of his mouth. He was grinning, I noticed, as though he was about to have an orgasm, and his one good eye fixed mine with an awful intensity. There was profound peace there, even gratitude, and I felt humbled. "Truly I say unto you that you shall be blessed, for you deserve all the delights of the house of true love!"

Embarrassed, I turned away; the soldier with the club was nodding sagely at the one with the sword, and I started back toward the road. "Come on, Vit. Let's go."

"What the fuck!" Vitus shook his head. "You always shit the bed when it comes to following through on wagers, you fucking asshole." He sprang to take my place, picking up the rock I'd just dropped. "Paid good money for this shit," he growled, and without any prep he cocked his arm and let fly, catching the man squarely on the mouth. He started coughing again, swaying like a tree in a gale. "Ha," Vitus winked at me. "You forfeited, and I

still

won."

"Whatever," I muttered, sickened by my friend's lack of discipline, and then we both watched as the swordsman stepped up, brought back his sword, and swept it hard into the man's neck; he toppled slowly, his spine severed, and it took two more hacks for the soldier to get the job done. He kicked the bloody old head back toward the crowd, wiping his blade on the man's loincloth, and when the head came to rest it was staring at me with a smile. "Yech." True love, I thought to myself.

Vitus stared down a second, then nodded. "What was his name?"

The three soldiers looked at each other, and then the one with the club picked up a small bronze tablet and studied it. "Says here his name is Valentine." He sidestepped as the corpse's leg, still twitching, brushed his foot. "From Umbria."

"Well," the soldier with the apple said after a pause, "he died hard, that's for sure."

"No he didn't," the swordsman snickered. "I cut his balls out, remember? So he couldn't have been hard." The guy with the club laughed loudly.

"That's not what I meant," said the apple kid, hurt, and the slaves were already dragging the body away as Vitus and I started back toward the customs gate.

* * *

"You're such a pussy, Felix," Vitus jeered. "You should've just pegged the guy. Even if you'd missed, you'd still owe me and you wouldn't look like a whiny little bitch."

I was burrowing sourly for a sestertius coin, sliding through the crowd with that urban rhythm you get walking through the streets of Rome, where you never really want to touch anyone. "I just couldn't." I sighed. "I'm not like you, Vit. Remember that one time, that decimation? Up in Gaul? What was his name?"

"Dardanus." Vitus said the name with a certain relish. They'd drawn lots that time, after the mutiny, to see which soldier would be stoned, and I'd stood there with the other civilians and watched as the whole squad rigged the drawing to make sure Dardanus would get condemned. "He was a real piece of shit."

"I just, you know, didn't want to participate." I was still troubled by the look in the dying man's eyes, that look of acceptance, of love, of rapture. "I didn't want to hit him."

"Well, shit! Then why'd you take the bet?" Vitus was incredulous. "Weasel."

"Sisterfucker."

"Bitch-ass cocksucker."

"Greek." Vitus snorted, knowing I'd won; there wasn't much worse than a Greek.

"Barbarian," he added sullenly, after a moment. He slipped past a bystander. "Dude. You know you've got to get your honor back."

"Fuck you," I murmured, but he was right. I never should have taken his bets. Hell, I never should take any of his bets. But I had no choice, and he knew it. I scowled at him. "What do you have in mind?"

Vitus gestured left, to where the packed streets pushed the crowds toward the Esquiline. "Subura." He smiled slowly, fiendishly, and began to explain.

* * *

The pimp me down the narrow corridor, the air getting heavier with every step; we had to be underground now, the brothel burrowing back into the mass of the hill. I'd been in a hundred of these places, all of them low and close and windowless, stinking of the sweat and cum spilled here over the decades.

I loved them.

Every Roman man loves a brothel. It's an excellent place to go with your friends, where you're served a tall glass of wine and installed on a sleeping mat with a willing woman who'll take whatever you've got, no questions asked, and who'll even laugh with you afterward if you've got an extra dupondius or so.

As a young man, apprenticing in the saddling trade, I'd spent small coins and copious semen in the lowest possible class of brothel. But now I was a man, a paterfamilias, a tradesman over forty, accustomed to a higher-class receptacle for my penis, and I had the extra money to make that happen.

It was great. It was like having a wife without any of the arguments.

I was vaguely aware that I might have been here before, to this particular brothel on this particular side street, and I even suspected that Vitus was the friend I might have come here with, as the pun went. If I'd been here, though, it had been a few years; I was unlikely to find a woman here that would know me. Whores can last awhile, but not in the Subura district, not in the higher-class establishments.

"Okay!" The pimp rubbed his hands briskly together. The prices posted by the curtained doors at this end of the hallway were a little lower than they'd been behind us, closer to the lobby, but that was okay.

There are absolutely no bad girls here,

I'd been told. Vitus' favorite place. "Here we are, gentlemen. Any of the ladies from here on back is in your price range, all of them licensed and up-to-date, all of them experienced and over twenty, and there's an alcove at the back for when you need a bath afterward. That's included, by the way. With the girl."

"Great!" Titus had heard all this before. "Thanks, Leno."

"No problem. Always nice to see you, sir." The pimp bowed, his hair grease gleaming in the lamplight, and hesitated. "If you want my advice? Take the girls in rooms number 12 and 15. They're always good." He nodded, and then off he went back up the corridor, back up to where he kept his coins in the strongbox under the counter. Titus and I stood there and looked at each other, our eyes shining in the yellow light, pretending not to hear the various sounds coming from some of the chambers.

"12 and 15, then?" I was already getting hard just from being here, just from the smells. It had been a week or so since I'd fucked my wife, and I wondered why I'd waited so long to find a whore. I punched Vitus lightly on the arm, already forgetting the Valentine fellow and his troubling blessing. "This was a good idea, man."

He grinned back. "You're welcome." He raised his lamp and studied the number by the nearest door. "Ten. Let's see what's behind curtain number 12, huh?" We chuckled and moved down the corridor; I stopped by the doorway with XII over it. I licked my lips and peered at the license by the door, where her nickname was chalked.

"It's Plipia, right?" I called expectantly; a lot of guys just thrust back the curtain and headed inside, but I think that's rude. The voice that answered me was high-pitched and quick.

"It is if you've got a coin or two!" Her giggle was loud, staccato, and I felt Vitus shift his weight next to me. "Come on in, honey." I already had the curtain thrown aside before she'd finished her sentence, and I didn't wait for Vitus to go first.