The second time, the man they’d come for had been half-dead of his wounds, but still standing. He’d been carried from the ring, leaving me to become primus palus in his stead.
“I don’t believe it.” Regulus glared at the men and then me. “Why didn’t you kill me, you stupid bastard?”
I didn’t bother to speculate that the procession might be for Regulus. I knew it was not. They came for me.
They reached us, none of the three looking happy with their task. The lead man in the toga, whoever he was—senator, praetor—turned and faced the crowd. The one next to him, his tunic and cloak showing him to be of the Equestrian, or middle class, began a loud oration while the togaed man remained silent—a highborn gentleman would never waste his voice on the populous of Rome.
I paid little attention to the words that flowed around me, standard phrases praising the gods and the princeps.
At the end of the speech, the man who carried the platform lifted what was on it and held it out to me.
The crowd’s approval rose to blot out all other sound. The noise snaked into my head, kicking up the pain already there. Regulus cursed again, long and hard, his hatred of me clear.
Paralyzed, I stared at the wooden sword, offered hilt first.
The rudis, in the shape of a gladiator’s short sword. A reward for a life spent in the games. I recognized the letters of my own name carved into the blade, the only word I could read. The rudis meant release.
Freedom.
I couldn’t move. The man with the sword glared at me impatiently, his distaste evident. He didn’t like gladiators, his stance proclaimed, and he didn’t want to touch one.
Many believed the blood of a gladiator cured illness. People had crowded today to the place where the dead fighters had been carried, jamming forward to dip cloths or even bare fingers into the gladiators’ still-flowing blood. They’d take it home and store it for when it was needed.
This man didn’t want anything to do with my blood, or me. But at last he had to shake my bronze sword from my hand, and shove the wooden one into my grip.
Regulus wrenched himself from me, not gently. The sting of his rage was a distant pain, receding behind the buzzing in my head.
I lifted my arm, the wooden sword strangely light after the heavy weapons I’d wielded this day. I heard my name pouring from the crowd, shouts of joy.
I should share the joy, but at the moment my arm ached and my fingers were lifeless. I turned in a circle, holding aloft the symbol of my freedom, without any sense that the freedom was real.
Nothing was real but the hot sand and my friend’s hatred. The noise rolled on, but the heat and blinding light from the arena floor blotted out all but the bite of wood against my palm.
I didn’t regain awareness until I tried to retire to my cell in the ludus that night. I’d been tended to and bandaged by Nonus Marcianus, the talented medicus who kept the gladiators alive to fight another day. After that came wine in great quantities, bestowed upon us by our lanista to celebrate the survivors and my new-won freedom.
I drank and drank until I brought up the wine again, disgusting sweet grapes gone to death in the corner of the training grounds. My hand stayed around the sword as I vomited, I clenching the thing as though my freedom would evaporate if I let it go.
Once I was finished being sick, I decided I’d sleep first and then visit Lucia, on whose narrow pallet in the Subura I forgot about death, life, and pretty much everything else. I’d rest until I could better navigate the streets of Rome.
Regulus was in my cell, lying on my bed. He didn’t bother to get up.
“Mine now, my friend,” he said to the ceiling, eyeing Xerxes’s drawings.
“Then where do I sleep?” My tongue was heavy, drink dulling my wits.
“No one cares.” Regulus slung his arm over his eyes. “You don’t belong here anymore. Go away, Leonidas.”
I felt a presence behind me and turned to the hard bulk of Aemilianus, our lanista.
“Stay if you want.” Aemil’s scarred face, as usual, held little emotion. “I can use you to train the others.”
“No.” My answer was instant. “No more death.”
Aemil simply looked at me. As lanista, he had to herd forty gladiators through training every day and keep them confined and out of trouble. If anyone wanted to hire us as fighters in the games, or for exhibitions, or as bodyguards, they went to Aemilianus. A former gladiator himself, he knew exactly how to tame us, and one of those ways was to rein in his own emotions.
“You’ll be back,” he predicted.
“No.” I set my body stubbornly, at least as much as my drunken swaying allowed.
Regulus, on the pallet, lifted his arm. “He means, idiot, you either stay and work for him or get out. I’m primus palus now. I don’t want you here, so go.”
“I’m sorry.” My tongue, not gifted at the best of times, could not explain why I’d spared him. But Regulus was alive. He had a chance. I didn’t regret the decision.
“Hercules strike you down.” Regulus slumped back to the bed, arm shielding his face again. “I hope he does.”
Aemil continued to watch me from his mismatched Gallic eyes, one blue, one green-brown. “Are you staying?”
I shook my head. Regretted the shake, as the world spun.
“The gate is open for you.” Aemil gave me a nod, a dismissal. “Godspeed, Leonidas.”
I’d lived in this ludus for seven years, well beyond the sentence given to me for a crime everyone believed I’d committed. A life in the games was an almost certain death. Only the gods had assured it hadn’t happened to me.
I stumbled out of the line of cells to the gate, the sword’s wooden hilt driving slivers into my hand. I still couldn’t release the thing.
The guard at the gate, a man I’d known for years, said good-bye to me as I walked out. The gate creaked closed behind me, the only noise in the silence.
Graffiti on the wall outside showed a crudely sketched figure with too-long legs and an optimistic phallus, my sword raised while I destroyed a retiarius. The letters beneath the figure spelled my name in crooked capitals.
The click of the gate held finality. Leonidas “The Spartan,” was no longer a gladiator, adored by crowds in the arena.
I was free, homeless, and alone in the Roman night.
I went to Lucia. She lived in a house with seven other ladies in the Subura, run by a lean woman called Floriana. They were used to me there, coming and going when I pleased, with Aemil’s blessing.
Lucia had a soft body, a wide smile, and eyes that could be kind. Her hair was dyed red, which made it brittle, but some customers liked a woman to resemble the barbarians of the north.
I was tired, drunk, and bewildered. I said nothing at all, only took Lucia to her cubicle and drove into her like a man drowning.
I woke alone, with my hand fast around the wooden sword. I hadn’t let it go, even when I’d coupled with Lucia on the low bed, using the thing as a brace on the floor.
Lucia was gone. Sunlight stabbed into my eyes from a crack in the wall—no windows for Lucia. My hand ached but I could not make myself open it and set the rudis aside.
“Leonidas.”
The voice belonged to Floriana, scratchy and thin, like the rest of her. Very black hair curled around her sharp face.