Chapter 1
Rome, AD 62
The roar from thousands of throats in the Circus Gai rose like a bulwark. I closed my eyes and leaned into the noise, as if the strength of the sound would hold up my exhausted body.
LEE-O-NI-DAS! LEE-O-NI-DAS!
They chanted my name as sand burned my bare feet, my skin not cooled by its rivers of sweat. Equally sodden was the loincloth that hung from my hips and the padded arm guard that reached from shoulder to wrist. My chest, back, and thighs were bared to the December sun, my head covered with a bronze helmet that trapped the heat. The grill of the helmet’s eyeholes allowed me a slice of the arena and no more.
But I could hear, and the cries of the men and women who’d come to the Saturnalian games grew wilder by the moment.
In the embrace of my left arm was a gladiator, a provacatur called Regulus, the secundus palus of our ludus. I was primus. “Regulus” was no more his real name than “Leonidas the Spartan” was mine, and I counted Regulus a friend.
The point of my secutor rested on Regulus’s throat. I waited, eyes closed, chest burning, for the signal that would either save Regulus’s life or tell me to drive the sword home. I smelled blood—from the animals hunted earlier in the day, the humans who’d been executed for their crimes, to the gladiators in the last fights of the afternoon, some wounded, a few dead.
The crowd did not urge me to make the kill—iugula! Nor did they scream for mercy—mitte! They were simply shouting, bellowing their cheers for Leonidas, the greatest gladiator in the Empire.
In the box of the princeps, the curly-haired, lyre-playing, actor-in-training, mother-killing Nero basked in the entertainment. As he’d sponsored the games today, he would be the one to decide what should be done with Regulus.
“Do it!” Regulus’s voice came from the level of my knees. “Kill me now. Before he chooses.”
Regulus wanted to die. He’d told me this last night, at the meal given in the gladiators’ honor. I’d eaten token pieces of meat, barely able to stomach them—I usually existed on lentils, barley, and the best greens money could buy. But those who attended the cena libera to watch our last supper wanted to see us eat flesh, like the beasts we were supposed to be.
Regulus had taken me aside after the meal. “This is my last fight, my friend.” His brown eyes had held an emptiness I sometimes saw in my own. “If I draw you, I won’t be easy on you, but I ask you to make the kill clean. Let me go with honor.”
He was tired of the life. I understood. Choosing the day of his death would let him go in some kind of peace.
I’d nodded in agreement, hating the reluctance in my heart. Now, I should honor Regulus’s request, but as my sword hovered at his throat, my hand shook and would not obey.
No more death. The words trickled through my head, as though whispered by someone outside me. A god perhaps, or the spirit of one of the creatures dead this day. I was finished with killing, finished with watching men I’d grown close to die on the sand.
Regulus was my only friend left. The others had either joined their ancestors, like Xerxes, who’d been closer than a brother, or were struggling to survive in some far corner of the empire. I barely knew the tiros, the raw young gladiators who gazed at me with both admiration and the determination to topple me.
One quick, smooth thrust would end Regulus’s life. His blood would gush over my hand and splatter my bare feet, and Regulus would be gone, his body an empty shell.
“Now!” Regulus commanded. “Hurry, you bastard.”
A faint sound came on my right. Half-blind in the helmet, I had to turn my entire head to find the source, but it was only the bulky figure of the referee in a plain tunic stepping up to us.
The man cleared his throat. “Caesar has made his decision.”
I could not stop my glance at the box, but the princeps made no signal, only watched. I couldn’t see him well at this distance, but I swore the man’s face held a smile.
The referee pitched his voice to be heard through the noise. “His command is for you to decide, Leonidas. Kill Regulus or show him mercy for a good fight.”
Rage washed over me. I was no murderer—I killed because I was ordered to. I was a weapon, pointed at another gladiator in the ring for entertainment, or at brigands when I was hired out for guard duty.
Regulus wanted me to make the kill. Nero, with his bloodthirsty reputation, probably did too.
No more death.
Regulus let out a breath of relief. “Make it quick, old friend.”
The tip of my blade remained unmoving on his skin. I should want to help Regulus die as he wished, to free him from this life.
Then he’d be gone, added to a long line of men I’d known, liked, admired, fought with, drank with, celebrated with. Another loss after so much already.
“Leonidas?” Regulus sounded worried. “What are you waiting for?”
It would be so easy. One push, and Regulus would drop at my feet, dead. At rest with the gods.
I would remain, alone, undefeated, lying in my cell to stare at the ceiling and the crude erotic sketches Xerxes had made there as a joke.
I withdrew my sword from Regulus’s throat. I held it high while the spectators screamed their anticipation of whatever it was I’d do.
I hauled Regulus to his feet. He was bleeding from stabs I’d landed on his gut and shoulders, but none were lethal. I too bled from his sword cuts on my chest, thighs, and stomach, but the wounds wouldn’t kill me if they didn’t take sick. We had the best medicus in the world to make sure they didn’t.
“What are you doing?” Regulus bellowed at me, his cry lost in the din of the crowd.
“Making you a champion.”
I took hold of Regulus’s left fist and raised his hand high. I pulled off my helmet and turned us slowly around, forcing Regulus to move, displaying myself—the primus palus, the champion—and Regulus, my equal in the fight.
I spared him, I was telling them, because he’d fought valiantly and lost only by ill luck.
“You prick,” Regulus snarled. “You bloody prick. I’ll kill you for this.”
His rage cut through the delirious screams of approval, but I didn’t waver. Regulus might hate me, and he might kill me, but he’d be alive to do it.
The crowd wasn’t finished, but I was. Still holding Regulus by the wrist, I started for the edge of the arena, and the opening to the cells. This was the last game of the day, and we’d have our wounds tended before returning to our ludus not far from here. There we’d celebrate victories and make toasts to the dead.
Regulus froze in sudden shock, pulling me to a halt next to him. “Hades.”
Three men strode toward us, two in tunics with cloaks, one in a toga. I didn’t recognize them—they hadn’t come to watch us train or negotiate our price for the games. The threesome proceeded solemnly, one toga-less man carrying an object on a square wooden platform.
I waited, wiping sweat from my shaved head, my heart hammering.
I’d seen a procession like this only twice before. First, the day I’d survived my virgin match, young and terrified, surprised to find myself alive at the end of it. The veteran I’d lost to had been honored thus. He’d beaten me by a slim chance, and my life had been spared because I’d fought skillfully and valiantly. The gladiator, who’d been about thirty summers, had wept when he’d beheld those heading for him.