Chasing the Lion

by Nancy Kimball

  Through the grated eye holes, Hulderic vanished.

  For an instant Jonathan thought he’d been rendered blind from the blow, but a face, completely out of place, filled his vision. The gray hair pulled back in a simple braid. The weathered skin, the knowing eyes of Deborah.

  ‘How did Nehemiah and the captives rebuild Jerusalem, Jonathan? With a weapon in one hand and a tool in the other. One stone at a time, my boy.’

  Jonathan blinked and she was gone.

  Hulderic stood waiting, smiling bigger than before, and twirling his swords for show to the roaring approval of the crowd surrounding them. He had not seized the opportunity to take Jonathan down. Overconfident. Like Goliath.

  One stone at a time then. Jonathan had to rid him of one of those swords if he stood a chance. He charged again but led with his sword this time rather than his shield.

  Hulderic answered with crossed blades that snared Jonathan’s between them as he pivoted to let Jonathan blow past.

  Jonathan felt his sword tangle, which had been his intent, but it was being torn from his grip instead of stripping Hulderic of one of his. If Jonathan lost his sword, he was already dead. He dropped the shield and held on with both hands as his momentum carried him around. The tangle of blades broke free and Jonathan tumbled to the sand and rolled away. He spun and regained a fighting stance, only to see he was holding half a sword.

  Hulderic’s were still intact. One in each hand.

  It was all over.

  True to Quintus’ word, Hulderic was no gladiator. Jonathan could see it in the man’s eyes as he advanced. He would toy with Jonathan to the screaming approval of the crowd until they tired of it. Only then would Hulderic kill him.

  Jonathan labored through the one-sided fight as long as he could. Blood oozed from the many wounds Hulderic’s blades inflicted on his chest, shoulders, and arms. None of them were deep enough to be fatal, likely by design. He’d lost his helmet long ago, but strangely, this spared him any more blows to the head. This blow, which he saw coming but didn’t have the strength to duck away from, knocked him backward with the force of a battering ram. He fell onto the bowl of his fallen shield and pain rocked through his spine. He lay splayed on his back, broken and exhausted as the sky above him dimmed, and then brightened again.

  “Up.” Hulderic’s command came in an accent as thick as his body. A shadow passed over Jonathan and a foot kicked his bleeding side. “Up.”

  Both grieves were still in place on his legs, but now they weren’t protection as much as weight to have to contend with when trying to find the strength to rise again.

  And this time he couldn’t.

  He couldn’t even raise his head to try. Jonathan closed his eyes. God, if you’re really there… protect her. A strong kick low on his side flung him over onto his stomach. Sand filled his mouth and nose, but he hadn’t the strength to lift his head. She serves you with all that she is. Prove you’re there. Deliver her as you never did me.

  Another kick knocked him onto his back again, flinging his arm wide. The back of his hand collided with something too hard to be packed sand.

  I am Jehovah.

  Almost of its own accord, his hand dug into the hot sand. His fingers curled around the tip end of his broken sword. He opened his eyes to the blinding sky above him and saw what he must do. He could feel strength returning to his broken body, even as the blade in his hand cut into his own fingers as he gripped it tight. It was effortless to roll and pop up between Hulderic’s knees. He plunged the broken blade high in the man’s inner thigh.

  Fifty thousand people fell silent.

  Hulderic staggered back and stared down at the broken metal jutting from his leg. He swayed and dropped a sword to pull the shard from his body. A waterfall of blood sprung forth. He would be dead in moments and they both knew it. He stumbled forward, dropping to his knees to face Jonathan, kneeling in the sand turning to bloody mud beneath them.

  Jonathan saw it coming, but had nowhere to go. The weight of his leg grieves held him in place as Hulderic plunged the broken sword tip into Jonathan’s chest. It entered somewhere between his shoulder and collarbone, catching on the leather strap of his sleeve guard. The blue eyes of his opponent held no triumph. They held no expression at all. The man was dead. His body fell into Jonathan, pushing the broken blade deeper as he buried Jonathan beneath him.

  Jonathan couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t feel, see or hear. Except one voice that was not a voice, speaking to him as it had moments ago.

  Call to me and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things.

  The words of God spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, the God Jonathan had denied half his life. Forgive me, Lord.

  Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt.

  Darkness was coming, the familiar blackness sweeping him under, but this time Jonathan didn’t fear it.

  Chapter 26 – For That

  Cool fingers stroked Jonathan’s forehead, raking through his hair in a soft sweep over and over. A psalm of the shepherd king David surrounded him, the words of the song as soothing as Nessa’s voice. He began to hum along with her and the fingers in his hair stilled.

  “Jonathan?”

  The pillow beneath his head shifted, and he opened his eyes. Even upside down in dim lamplight, she’d never been more beautiful. He concentrated on learning again the planes of her face and the color of her eyes.

  “How are you feeling?”

  He raised a hand to touch her cheek. White hot pain burst through his shoulder, stealing his breath and clamping his eyes shut. Two deep breaths embraced the pain and he ventured a glance down. Linen wraps covered his stomach, chest, arms, and his right hand where he had gripped the broken blade. He resembled one of the Egyptian dead.

  “Seventeen.” Nessa’s voice rippled with pain, as if the wounds she numbered had been inflicted on her. “Most on your arms and chest, though mercifully only one deep enough to worry us.” She shifted so his head rested at a more comfortable angle in her lap, and resumed stroking his hair. “Rest. All is well.”

  The compassion in her eyes echoed in her touch stole over him. So different from her anger that day after his match with Jelani—anger that she had every right to feel. He feared for her life every time he entered an arena. How much greater her fear must have been, carrying the burden for his soul all these years. He’d added to her suffering instead of sparing her more. “Give me your hand.”

  Her fingers met the palm of his un-injured hand and he closed his own around them. “Nessa, God delivered me from Hulderic. He spoke to me as clearly as I speak to you now.”

  A soft gasp passed through her lips.

  He swallowed and began stroking her hand with his thumb. “When my mother died, in my pain and anger, I hardened my heart against God and His truth. But His love pursued me. Through all my years of bitterness and denial. Through you. With your voice.” His own threatened to crack at every other word, but there was so much he needed to tell her. Too much time had already been wasted.

  “You spoke His truth over me again and again, lived out Christ’s love to me, and still I turned away, content in my own strength. Until it failed. I was a sword thrust from losing everything that mattered, the least of which was my life.”

  Mist gathered in the corners of her brown eyes. “Jonathan—”

  “Let me finish. Please.” He squeezed her hand again, savoring the feel of her fingers he intertwined with his. “You were right. I was alive, but not in the way that mattered. God wouldn’t give up on me, like you wouldn’t.” He swallowed and watched her eyes. “And I love you for that.”

  She tore her hand from his and covered her face.

  Had he misread her heart there in the tunnel? Misunderstood the way she returned his kiss? “Forgive me. If I’ve upset you—”

  Her hand moved swiftly from her face to press firmly against his lips. She tilted her face to the ceiling for several long breaths. When she looked down at him, the intensity in her g
aze caused something within him to shift. “I have known Christ since I was a little girl. I have seen miracles and tasted of the goodness of God in the darkest of places. But I have never, until this moment, known a joy as all-consuming as this.”

  There could be no mistaking the depth of feeling there in her eyes, the radiance in them unlike anything he’d ever seen.

  “To hear you claim Christ, speak of God and His great love for you, it reassures me God always heard my prayers for you. In your repentance, you strengthen my own faith.” The fingers at his lips lifted and came to rest on his linen-bound chest, her palm pressed flat above the steady beat of his heart. “I love you for that.”

  She sighed and placed her other hand on the crown of his head. Her smile returned, as beautiful as her answer. “I’ve loved you for so long.”

  He moved his hand to cover hers, for once easily able to ignore the screaming pain of his abused body. “I don’t know how, or when, but I promise you this. With God’s help, one day we will be free of Caius. I will earn our freedom and make you my wife. I swear it on my life.”

  Her smile turned bittersweet. “We are free of Caius. Not the way I’d prayed for, but I’m still grateful to God.”

  Jonathan suddenly became aware of more than her. The room, now that he looked about it, was one he had never seen before. “Where are we?”

  “An inn near the amphitheater.”

  “Where is Caius? Quintus and Tao?”

  “Quintus is here. Well, not at the moment, but he will return. Caius and Tao returned to Capua yesterday with the guards.”

  “Caius would never leave me behind. Something’s wrong.” He tried to sit up and almost succeeded before the pain in his chest knocked him back down.

  “Please don’t move. I’ll tell you everything, but I promise you we are safe.” She reached for something near her on the bed and soon a wineskin was at his lips. Her hand supported the back of his neck, and he had no choice but to drink. The wine refreshed him, though he remained wary of what would possibly motivate Caius to leave them in Rome.

  When he finished drinking, his head rested again in the cradle of her lap. Nessa angled away from him to replace the cork in the wineskin and her inner forearm came into view. Rows of deep purple, fringed in green and yellow, marred her skin. His injured hand formed a fist even as panic swept through him. “What happened to your arm?”

  She followed his gaze and shook the sleeve of her tunic so it covered the bruising. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing doesn’t leave marks like that.” When she wouldn’t meet his eyes, his fear grew. “Did Caius—”

  “No.” She laid her hand against his chest again and with the other returned to sweeping his hair back slowly. “I was on my knees praying, interceding for you as you faced Hulderic. When the slaves brought you in I was so deep in prayer I didn’t hear Quintus calling for me.”

  “And he grabbed you? Hard enough to mark you?”

  “Don’t be angry. You were bleeding everywhere, and still impaled with part of a broken sword. Thank God the arena attendants didn’t pull it out before carrying you in. Please rest. I promise you we are safe.”

  He would have a word with Quintus when the physician returned. Only one thing would compel Caius to leave him behind, though it wouldn’t explain Nessa’s presence. Unless God had performed another miracle for him he did not deserve. Jonathan set his face like flint, every bit the man of twenty-four who had survived countless times in the gladiator arena. But inside, where only he and God could see and hear, Jonathan was a boy again, afraid of the answers to questions he must ask before the uncertainty destroyed him. He closed his eyes. “Did Caesar free me?”

  He held his breath there in the darkness, hope bleeding through him with every breath.

  Nessa’s hand in his hair stilled. “No.”

  Jonathan exhaled, refusing to allow his disappointment to turn to weakness. He opened his eyes and drew strength from the love in Nessa’s.

  She smiled and resumed tenderly stroking his hair. “But you’re alive. You’ve returned to your faith. There is much we have to be grateful for.”

  A door opened, spilling natural light and the soft sounds of distant revelry into the room. The wide figure silhouetted in the doorway could only be Quintus. “Is he awake?”

  “Yes. He’s had a half skin of wine.”

  “Good.”

  Quintus turned back to them after shutting the door, and Jonathan did a double take. Below the bald head and bushy brows was a stunning black eye. “What happened to your face?”

  He glanced at Nessa. “You didn’t tell him?”

  “I hadn’t reached that part yet.”

  “Tell me what?”

  Quintus grunted and came to the bed. He felt Jonathan’s forehead, then his wrist, all while grinning. “Caius lost you in a bet. He showed up with your new owner, Torren Gallego, in the middle of Nessa and me trying to keep you on this side of the Styx. Caius claimed my services were not part of the barter and ordered me to step away, which I had no intention of doing.”

  Jonathan felt the anger return, swirling among the revelation he now belonged to someone else. “Caius hit you?”

  Quintus chuckled as he went to the table and poured something too thick to be wine into a cup. Bitter anticipation filled Jonathan’s mouth.

  “This is not from Caius. I told him I swore an oath I would uphold and didn’t give a potshard whether you were his slave or not and kept stitching. He grabbed my arm and Nessa here flew into a rage unlike anything the gods themselves have ever seen. I got this from the back of her head trying to restrain her before she got herself killed.”

  Jonathan glanced up to admonish her, angry she’d put herself directly in the path of Caius’ temper. But the affection in her eyes said she would do it again and lacked even a hint of regret. She stood ready to fight for him as he had her, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “You gave Quintus the black eye?”

  The blush he loved crept up her cheeks. “It was an accident.”

  “The scratches she left on Caius’ face were not,” Quintus said. “I thought she was going to claw his eyes out. If Gallego hadn’t grabbed Caius from behind, things would have gotten worse. By then soldiers had shown up. The good news is you live, and like always, though I don’t understand it, you’ll mend. The bad news is I’m out of a position. Gallego is paying for the inn and your care, but once you’re well enough to travel to his ludis, Nessa and I are going to have to find work.”

  Nessa and I. She would be parted from him. Something he couldn’t conceive.

  Quintus brought him the dreaded cup. “Drink this.”

  Nessa’s eyes apologized as she tilted his head up. Quintus placed the cup of animal blood and herbs to his lips. The familiar metallic taste was not as galling as knowing his time with her was short. Maybe days.

  “Almost done,” Quintus encouraged.

  He managed three more swallows before the cup and then his throat emptied. Quintus wiped his mouth with a cloth and Nessa kept his head tipped back. Nausea swirled in his stomach, this time from more than the blood. Nessa’s thumb tenderly stroked the skin below his ear. He’d never taken her touch for granted but he couldn’t fathom being without it. Without her.

  “Still all right?” Quintus asked.

  Jonathan knew what he meant, so he nodded.

  A knock sang out and Quintus eyed them both warily before approaching the doorway. “Who is it?”

  “Quintus, may I enter?” The voice was deep, even muffled through the planks of the wooden door.

  Quintus relaxed and opened the door. “Gallego, please come in. I’ll see if I can find a stool for you.”

  “No, I won’t stay long. I came to see how Jonathan fares.”

  The man stood shorter than his voice made him sound. He wore a modest tunic and belt. His face appeared too youthful for his dark brown hair to have flecks of silver at the temples. It was the air of assurance that clung to him like a cloak that struck Jonathan m
ost.

  The stranger tipped his chin in Nessa’s direction. “Lady.” His gaze met Jonathan’s. “I don’t know what impresses me more. Your stamina or the skill of your medicus.”

  Jonathan cleared his throat to make his voice strong, not an easy thing on the heels of his last drink. “Quintus is without equal in the healing arts. You should secure him at once for your ludis.”

  “I don’t doubt it, but I have a competent physician who has earned my loyalty. I cannot afford both of them.”

  Nessa’s fingers intertwined with Jonathan’s. Gallego must have noticed, because his expression softened. “Would that I could.”

  Quintus settled on a stool and rubbed the top of his head. “We’ll be fine. Something will come along.”

  Gallego turned to Quintus, the lamplight brightening a pale, jagged scar that ran above his right elbow. “I mentioned our introduction and the hardship it brought you to an acquaintance of mine. He informed me the Eighth Augusta’s general, Marcus Cassius, is seeking a physician. The pay would be considerable. If you like, I can arrange introductions.”

  Quintus considered this, and Jonathan’s heart sank further in his chest.

  “Hippocrates did say war is the only proper school of the surgeon.” Quintus’ gaze turned to Nessa. “Germania will be cold. Colder than anything you’ve ever known.”

  “I go where you go, Quintus.”

  Jealousy singed through Jonathan at her ready answer and he tightened his grip on her.

  Gallego noted the exchange before turning his attention back to Quintus. “I can send a messenger tomorrow for your answer when I rotate the guards.”

  “You guard me?” Jonathan hoped the edge in his voice matched the glare he pinned on Gallego.

  “Of course.” The man’s casual smile returned but the creases in the corners told Jonathan it took effort. Their gazes locked like swords. Gallego was taking the full measure of Jonathan as he was doing the lanista. Jonathan fixed his eyes, determined not to blink first.