Tessera - Chalk
Boden could understand Latin, even though he didn’t speak it well. But for a marketable slave, language skills were not a high priority.
He stood on the platform, naked to the blazing sun, far away from his home country north of Italy.
The market for large men had dwindled after the close of harvest. The two other men on the platform stood abject, but Boden decided that his Burgundian pride would never let him be like that. No matter how little food he had or the rough treatment from the slave master, they could never break his spirit.
As the slave master presented four girls on another platform, the crowd turned away uninterested, except for one man. He was a curious fellow, small, lithe, compact, and dark except for the touches of gray at his temple. A pampered slave,
