He clambered up. His right arm was heavy and slow, weighed down by the chain mail and mace. He used both hands to lift the weapon. He hefted it and swung it to his left. The ball moved sluggishly, as though Xander were trying to fight underwater.
The gladiator approached.
Xander pulled the handle to his right. The ball swung with it. He had to throw his hips back to avoid being hit by his own mace, but he thought he had figured something out. Once the ball was moving, it didn’t want to stop. All Xander had to do was get it going and steer it. He pumped his arms, as though he were stirring a vat of molasses. The ball swung out in front of him. It came back to his left side. When it swung out again, he pulled it toward his right. This kept the ball swinging in a semicircle around him. The problem was, he couldn’t get it higher than his stomach. Still, the gladiator seemed intimidated by this display. Perhaps he believed it was a cunning trick to lure an unsuspecting foe near, at which point a fancy flick of the wrist would send the ball skyward and down on the opponent’s head.
If only, Xander thought.
The chain, kept taut now, did not make the chinking, chainlike sound Xander expected. It was the ball that emanated the sound of danger, with a whoosh-whoosh as it cut through the air. At his right ear, the chain mail’s metal rings scraped together, reminding Xander of pebbles dropped onto a metal slide. These sounds, and the grunting of the gladiator, occupied Xander’s auditory sense. The crowd had ceased to be. Xander was in a zone that maybe his brother would understand on a very minimal level because of his gaming acumen: two combatants . . . life and death . . . nothing else mattered.
Focus would make him better than he was. Still, he was outmatched. The gladiator possessed skill and experience and bloodlust and the strength to turn these things into a killing machine. The way he glared at Xander, Xander realized he was also focused—focused on bringing down this last stubborn opponent.
As the mace reached its leftward apex, Xander heaved up on its handle. The ball arced up. It passed in front of Xander, level with the gladiator’s head. This potentially fatal move was impressive . . . and completely unsustainable. As it swung out, it dropped heavily, all the way to the ground. It took Xander with it, yanking him off his feet, like a novice water-skier. He tumbled over it and wound up on his stomach, staring up at the gladiator jogging toward him. The man was laughing.
Xander scrambled to his feet and ran. He had decided to take a stand, but now was no time to learn how to use a new weapon. Especially one as exotic as an ancient mace. To his untrained and underdeveloped arms, it was nothing more than an anchor. If he had tried that last move while the gladiator was moving in for the kill, Xander would be dead now.
He spotted another body at the far end of the arena and turned toward it. The chain mail on his arm was heavier and heavier. Wearing it was like carrying an anchor. As his feet dug into the sand, he unlashed the strap under his arm and let the chain mail fall away. As much protection as it provided, he needed agility more. Besides, it may have prevented a blow from that gladiator’s sword from cleaving off his arm, but without doubt, such a blow would shatter his bones. In agony, without the use of his arm, the gladiator’s coup de grâce would have come swiftly.
Xander skidded next to the damaged body. A sword lay in the sand beside it. The handle was sticky with blood.
All the better to keep my grip, Xander thought. He stood and faced the gladiator, who had closed the distance faster than Xander had expected. Xander swung the sword in front of him and screamed. What came out was guttural and animalistic and represented exactly what he felt inside.
The gladiator sneered. It was the same twisting of the lips Xander had witnessed on the faces of countless bullies. It dawned on him that the gladiator was a bully to the extreme.
The man lumbered forward.
Despite his resolve, Xander took a step back. Then another. The top of a round boulder protruding from the sand caught his attention. Of course, it couldn’t have been a boulder: Just beneath the sand of the coliseum arena was a wood floor. Under that was the hypogeum, tunnels and rooms where the amphitheater managers kept slaves and animals before spitting them out for the entertainment of the crowd. The “boulder” was a shield. He sidestepped over, stooped to pick it up.
The gladiator rushed in.
Something prevented Xander from gripping the strap behind the shield. The gladiator loomed over him, raising his sword. The weapon disappeared in the brightness of the sun. With no time to wield it perfectly, Xander dropped his sword and clutched the perimeter of the shield. He lifted it over him and ducked his head under it. The gladiator’s sword slammed into the shield. It felt as though Xander were trying to hold back a battering ram. Metal clanged. The impact rattled his hands and vibrated up his arms to his shoulders. Instant pain.
But nothing like it could have been, he thought. Nothing like the sting of death.
With the shield pushed down onto him, he saw the reason he could not wield it properly. Another arm was already in the shield’s straps. It had been severed mid-bicep, at the edge of the shield. The dead fingers waggled at Xander, as if bidding him farewell.
CHAPTER
twenty - eight
Again, the sword came down on the shield, bending it in at the center. He hoped the gladiator would not notice his fingers and lop them off. The sword struck again. A central blow that drove Xander backward, onto his butt. His legs were unprotected now, and one more blow would pitch him onto his back. The tip of the sword scraped the shield as the man lifted it out of the crease he had made.
Xander released one hand from the shield. He put all his strength into swinging it around, aiming at the gladiator’s knees.
The gladiator was no fool.
Obviously accustomed to last-ditch efforts at survival, he reeled back. The shield missed its mark. Xander lost his grip and it sailed away.
Even before the gladiator had started moving away from it, Xander had grabbed his sword and slipped a foot under himself. By the time the shield left his hand, he was already leaping forward. The tip of the blade trailed the shield’s trajectory by no more than a second. It was extended farther than the shield, thanks to Xander’s forward momentum. It clipped the gladiator’s left shin and then his right. Little bleeding mouths opened up under both knees.
The man howled and staggered back. He did not fall. He bowed to examine his wounds. Probably, Xander thought, if the man lost a leg, he would pick it up and beat his opponent with it.
Xander saw his strike had caused little damage. He pushed himself up and again ran. There was no shame in it. He was there to survive, not honor Caesar or this barbarian game or even himself. Since he was learning about combat and weapons literally on the run, hightailing it was a strategy, not an act of cowardice.
He pulled up to catch his breath. Before he could turn, he heard the gladiator’s footsteps, like the crunching of cereal between molars. He spun, swinging his sword in time to deflect his opponent’s blade. Sparks snapped between them. The man leaned in, howling in rage. Rancid breath filled Xander’s nostrils. The man’s eyes were black, hateful.
Xander caught movement beneath him. The gladiator was reaching beneath their sword arms. His hand grabbed at Xander’s torso, much the way David’s had done not so long ago, but so very far away. This time, however, Xander’s skin was slick with sweat. The man’s fingers could not get a grip. Xander pulled his sword back. It came off the gladiator’s weapon and dropped onto the top of his forearm. It sliced a deep groove into the man’s flesh. Xander continued the movement of his hand until his sword was positioned over his head, ready to bring it down.
Xander knew the gladiator’s entire life had been about surviving in battle. He would not be defeated so easily. Xander caught a flash of the man’s sword as it swung up. If nothing changed, it would catch Xander below the ribcage and angle diagonally through his chest to his heart. Abandoning the possibility of victory, as close as the lashing down of his hand, Xander pitched himsel
f sideways. He somersaulted, was up, scurrying away again.
That image of his heart impaled on the gladiator’s blade made him sick and dizzy. It did not stoke the fire of determination. Rather, an overwhelming sense of defeat washed over him. It occurred to him this was how battles were won and lost. They were not always the result of superior skill and stamina. Close calls, images of impending death, and the lack of opportunities were just as instrumental in putting combatants in the ground. Xander suspected that with experience, a fighter became accustomed to these little defeats; so he would reach the point of giving up much later than Xander would.
Giving up? No, he was not there yet. He did, however, doubt his chances of getting out of this alive. After all, he was a fifteen-year-old boy, living a relatively cushy life by most standards. His opponent had lived a brutal life in a brutal world—he was a shark: Xander nothing but a minnow.
But even minnows wanted to live.
The gladiator huffed toward him. If the nicks Xander had inflicted to the man’s shins had enraged him, the slice to his arm and perhaps Xander’s escape had sent him into a stratosphere of maniacal hatred. Despite his wounds, the man moved faster. His sword sliced the air before him, this way and that.
In seventh grade, Xander had fought a kid who was smaller than he was. Xander hadn’t wanted a showdown, couldn’t even remember what had ticked the kid off. He’d easily parried some blows. Finally, to end it, he gave the boy a hard knock on the side of his head. Instead of admitting defeat, the kid had come at him with wild disregard for anything except pummeling Xander. Xander had discovered that pin-wheeling arms were nearly impossible to stop. They just kept coming like a lumber mill’s saw, and you were the tree.
The gladiator was coming at him like that. With swords, though, instead of scrawny seventh-grader fists.
The blades moved so fast they left gleaming arcs in the air that appeared solid to Xander. He could hear them now, hissing through the air like the mace never had. Rage may have pushed the gladiator into this mulcher mentality, but he had not lost any dexterity in reaching it. The blades whirled in perfect opposition to each other. One coming up as the other came down. They crossed in front of the man and never so much as grazed each other.
Xander backed away. He made feeble slashes at the approaching Pinwheel of Death. Xander wondered how, at a time like this, he could name the instrument of his own demise like that. Definitely too many movies. Too many movie posters and trailers, with their catchphrases and taglines.
“Stop!” he yelled. “This isn’t fair.” He continued moving backward, keeping ten feet between him and the whirling blades. He stepped on something, twisted his ankle, almost fell. He steadied himself, lifted his leg higher, and stepped back. He had almost tripped over another body. He didn’t want to see it; he’d join its former owner soon enough.
The gladiator continued after him. That nasty sneer never left his face. He could have moved in for the kill at any time. Xander thought this drawn-out prelude to his dissection was orchestrated. The gladiator was as much a performer as warrior. Xander hoped his body parts would not teleport back to the house. It was bad enough to die this way. Torturing his family with evidence of it was cosmically cruel. If his parts did make it home, would it be David who discovered them? Would they splash down at his feet back in the little room? True, it would keep his kid brother from making Xander’s mistake, but could you ever recover from seeing something like that?
Xander was backing toward a wall. Soon, the only thing left for the gladiator to do was end this performance. Xander swung his sword again and again. If nothing else, he would go out fighting.
When he could reverse no farther, he screamed, another unintelligible representation of his anguish. Then, the sound formed into words—defiant, angry last words: “Come on, you fat pig! Do it!”
The blades whirled. His own weapon clashed against them. Chang! Chang! His wrist snapped one way, then the other as the blades battered his sword. For a moment, he wondered if he should pull his arm in so that the first hot cut would be the last he knew. Otherwise, he would watch his hand go first, then his arm, fed slowly into the ancient Roman version of a blender.
Something rumbled. The sounds of the crowd were returning to him. Their feet stomped in anticipation. As his right hand swung the sword, his left counterbalanced the weight. Held out from his side and back just a little, his fingers pressed the hewn stone of the arena wall.
The spinning blades ripped his sword from his grip. It flipped away. Something clamped around his left wrist. He was yanked into the wall, then through the threshold of one of the big wooden doors. He plunged into shadow, as the door rumbled closed. A latch snapped shut. From the other side, swords thunked against the wood.
Hands grabbed his shoulders, breath—not rancid, but smelling of toothpaste—blew over him.
“Are you all right?” someone screamed.
His legs felt weak. Emotion, like adrenaline, hit his heart, rushed into his face. He said, “Dad?”
“It’s okay, Son. Hold on.”
CHAPTER
twenty - nine
SATURDAY, 1:32 A.M.
As soon as Xander and his father crossed the threshold, the door slammed shut. Xander’s face was pressed into his father’s chest. Dad’s arms around him had never felt so good. Xander opened one eye. He saw the bench and shelf in the small room. David stood a few feet away. He was shaking and sniffing. His eyes were puffy and red, still leaking. He had been crying, hard and long. Xander tried to smile at him. He squeezed even closer to his father, trying, for just a moment, to get lost in the man’s warmth and smell, his very being. He hitched in a stuttering breath. Then he wept. It started gently, then grew into ragged sobs. Too many emotions to hold in. Relief swirled with the residue of intense fear. His soul felt abused and tired.
A month before school had let out, Mitch Dawson had been goofing off in his new ride, a ’74 Firebird Formula. He had been ripping donuts in the school parking lot. Mitch had lost control, nailed a car, then a light pole. The Firebird had jumped the curb and rolled down the concrete embankment of a runoff canal. The whole school had run out to see. When Xander got there, Mitch was bawling like a baby. Everyone had assumed he was grieving for his totaled car, but later he had confessed to Xander that as the car was rolling, he had been completely and utterly convinced he was going to die. Through an embarrassed smile, he had said, “I stared death in the face and got another chance.” Xander had nodded, but had not truly understood. Now he did.
Dad let him cry it out. He stroked Xander’s hair and whispered over and over, “You’re here now.”
When the worst of it was over, he felt David hug him from behind. The boy slid around to include their father in the embrace.
They stayed like that a long while. When Xander raised his head, David released them and Xander took a step back. He wiped at his cheeks and ran the underside of his nose over his forearm. He sniffed back what hadn’t already come out. He said, “I’m sorry.”
Dad squeezed his shoulder. “I am so glad you’re here.”
Xander glanced at David, back to Dad. “But how . . .”
“Your brother came and got me.” He offered David a tight, I’m-proud-of-you smile.
Xander turned to David. He couldn’t help it. He had to hug him.
David returned the squeeze, but said, “Are we a bunch of girls or what?”
“Shut up.”
When Xander released him, David didn’t let go. “Man, I thought you were gone forever.”
“So did I. I couldn’t find the . . . Dad, how did you follow me?” Then he noticed the animal pelt tied around his father’s waist over his pajama bottoms. The sword Dae had been holding was in the scabbard, slung around Dad’s neck, hanging under his arm. Xander had a faint memory of feeling it as he embraced his father, but he had been too lost in his emotions to care what it was.
“I couldn’t get the door open,” David explained. “It locked me out. Dad put those t
hings on and opened it.”
Xander said, “How did you know to do that?”
“David told me how the door opened after you put on the chain mail and helmet.” He shrugged. “Not difficult to figure out.”
“But why didn’t you end up where I did, in the middle of the arena?”
Dad’s eyebrows went up. “You can add that to my long list of questions, Xander.”
“Where did you appear?”
“In the bleachers, on the other side of where I got you.
I went through, and suddenly I was standing in the middle of a crowd that was chanting for someone’s death. I almost croaked myself when I saw it was you.”
Xander squinted at him. “They were chanting sign-something. You know it?”
“Sine missione. It means ‘to the death.’ Romans used to say it to encourage the winning gladiators to take down their opponents.”
“Dad, we were in the Colosseum!”
“I recognized it.”
“Like in Rome?” David said, catching the excitement.
“But it was new,” Xander told his father. “Like it was twenty centuries ago.”
“History is my subject, Son. Good thing I studied the Colosseum. I knew there were tunnels under the arena. When I saw where you were heading, I used them to reach the door closest to you.”
“Just in time,” Xander said and felt his eyes tear up again.
“Just in time?” David said. “What happened?”
Xander opened his mouth to answer but simply couldn’t.
He didn’t know where to start, how much to say . . . “Was that real?” he asked his father.
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