Heart of the Gladiator (Affairs of the Arena Book 1)

by Lydia Pax

  Some time had been bought. The important thing now was to imagine a plan. He rushed through the trees, putting distance between himself and the beast.

  After being hungry for weeks, the bear seemed satisfied to eat at the tiger now. That bought Caius only a little time. Heavily armored referees with flogs and hooks distracted the bear and carried the corpse of the great cat out from the sands.

  Thinking quickly, Caius pushed the limp Lucius up against a nearby tree. As the bear clambered back toward them, Caius called out to it.

  “Come on, you great big bastard. We’re right here!”

  The bear was weary, but hungry still. Aggravated for days. Were it not death to let the bear live and try to leave, Caius would have done just that. But this was the arena, and mercy was a zero sum game.

  The bear charged. Caius waited—and waited still. Lucius’s shoulder dripped, cut to pieces. He needed help, and soon, or he would die from the blood loss.

  Working quickly, Caius wrapped around the nearby tree. He stood between that tree and the one where he posted Lucius. A clothesline of metal hung loose between them. The bear was at a full gallop. It looked as a giant cloud of teeth and claws.

  At the last possible moment, Caius yanked hard on the chain and dropped down. With all its weight, the bear slammed on the chain. The links, unable to hold such weight, snapped in two. Likely that saved Caius’s wrist from breaking. But the tripping force was enough to send the bear gasping and roaring down and tumbling into another tree.

  Caius swept up to his feet with Lucius’s trident. The bear rolled just before his blow hit home. With a heavy paw, it swept Caius off his feet. Caius’s blow, sour now, bounced off the bear’s fat-padded shoulder, snapping the head of the trident right off.

  In moments, the bear was on him, gnawing at his arm.

  Armor on his bad arm kept the bear from eating his face, but the strength there faded fast. His fingers pushed through the sand, searching—searching. Finally, they landed on the trident’s head.

  In one move, it was done. The prongs landed true straight into the beast’s skull. With a gurgle, the bear fell on Caius. All that weight, dead now.

  It took him a minute to build the strength to push the bear off of him. When he did, the crowd exploded with pleasure. Slaves had already entered the arena, clearing away the trees to give the crowd a clear view of Caius and Lucius.

  Dueling chants for Orion and Ursus filled the air—filled perhaps the city itself.

  Caius wished their cheers filled him with nothing. But in that moment, hearing them call out his name with such approval, their riotous cries were the lifeblood of the world.

  Chapter 36

  Aeliana sat over Lucius in the back of a cleared wagon, attending his wounds. They were less than an hour out from the ludus, and she looked forward to sleeping in her own bed again and being back among her own possessions. Or at least, the appearance of her own possessions—nothing she “had” was truly hers.

  During the fight, Conall had whispered the whole story of Lucius’s condition to her. So when the fight ended with Caius victorious, against all odds, she had been fully prepared to treat the slashed gladiator. There was no way in her mind he would leave the sands without being heavily wounded. The gashed mess of flesh and tissue on his shoulder now was as big of a wound as she had ever seen him take.

  As a retarius, Lucius always was open for more wounds than most men. But his skill and speed, combined with a long streak of luck, had kept him relatively unmarked aside from a few nicks and bruises here and there.

  She supposed, redressing the grisly wound on his shoulder, that his luck had run out. She changed the bandages every hour, hoping to keep him clear of infection. Lucius was her friend, and besides that—if she skimped on any possible effort, Porcia would have her head.

  Aeliana was not without feelings of responsibility for his condition. He was supposed to be under her care, and that care did not stop before fights in the arena. She had not checked him thoroughly enough, and now he was hurt.

  A little voice told her that no one had made him drink except himself, but still—Aeliana was tasked with the wellbeing of every gladiator in the ludus. Her misstep had almost killed Caius.

  She didn’t know if she felt worse about that—Caius nearly dying because of her failure to check Lucius—or about Lucius being hurt. Both were terrible weights upon her. With some mental effort, she tried to push them aside.

  Guilt was a difficult area for Aeliana. One begat another. If she spent too long with one, then they all began to spill out—and all guilt for her led back to Aelianus.

  She was not responsible for her brother’s death. There wasn’t a person in the world who would have thought so—aside from her father. And somehow that made all the difference.

  Smoke was on the horizon. A not uncommon sight during travel. Fire was often uncontrollable, and the smallest spark could make even the most unlikely of areas burn uncontrollably.

  Aeliana supposed she herself was an example of that. Never had she imagined that she would be in love. But her heart burned for Caius like nothing she could have imagined. The spark had been set off in exactly the right place, under exactly the right conditions.

  Every breath she took belonged to him and him alone. With the knowledge he was alive—and that he would thankfully not have to fight for many moons yet—there was only joy in her heart. Soon, they would find one another in a hidden corner of the ludus. Perhaps while Porcia was away on one of her many gambling missions.

  They would have time enough to sneak together, and finally she could feel the full expanse of that hard shaft she had been teased with for so long.

  In the wagon, Lucius let out a long moan. Not his first, and definitely not his last. He had not yet been fully conscious, but when he was, she was going to give him a long talking-to. She suspected, upon their arrival and Lucius’s healing, that he would be heavily punished. It was not excusable to fight in the condition that he had.

  And for once, Aeliana agreed with a slave owner’s policy. It was not excusable. Let him fight however he wanted when he fought only for himself. But he had been fighting with another man’s life on the line—with Caius’s life on the line. Were it not for the hand of the gods, her love would have been slaughtered.

  Her love?

  Oh. She sat up from Lucius, searching the column for the sight of Caius’s muscle-dense, dark-haired form. There, next to the other wagon with the injured, striding next to Conall. His arm in a sling. No doubt they were talking about their fights. Perhaps Conall was even looking forward to receiving his own brand, marking him officially as part of the brotherhood-in-arms of the House Varinius.

  Seeing Caius there struck her deeply. Hearts didn’t just flutter of their own accord. Stomachs did not fill with butterflies. Knees did not become jelly.

  And yet if Aeliana had not known specifically otherwise, she would have believed each and every sensation was some new metamorphosis of her being. She knew that she wanted Caius. She wanted him desperately. Wanted to feel those strong hands on her body again, pulling her tighter against his hard form.

  But love…?

  Did she love this man?

  A great cry went up as the column caught sight of home. The smoke that had filled the air—it came from the smoldering wreckage of the ludus itself.

  Chapter 37

  There had been much chaos at their arrival. Officials from the city were already there, the local legionary garrison tasked with putting out flames and pulling survivors from any collapsed portions of the buildings. By the time the gladiators and their retinue returned, almost all of the work of stopping the fire’s spread and rescuing those in danger had been done.

  The Governor of Puteoli had a great stake in the ludus and all the money it created, and besides, a fire spreading from the ludus would not take long to reach the walls of Puteoli.

  Most of the damage done had been to the outer walls and parts of the house itself. Fully three-quarters
of it was blackened and demolished. The cell blocks were left relatively untouched, but several horses had died from the fire spreading to the stables. Their bodies were covered with a long blanket and carried out with the slaves who had died.

  Porcia was still in Capua, enjoying her stay with the Senator Otho. She was beyond blame, much though Aeliana wished otherwise. Anything to see the woman hang at last.

  Aeliana was kept busy, trying to attend to the burns of anyone she could. Chloe, already, had done enormous work—keeping a number of men and women alive. But the governor had also hired out a number of medici to look after the wounded, and so very quickly Aeliana and her assistant were pushed aside to let “the men do their work.”

  An insulting gesture, and one that probably did more harm than good. Aeliana felt confident in her ability to treat burns. But it was not a time for arguing, and if she did argue, it would only make her life harder—and delay treatment for those who needed it.

  She had plenty of wounded to tend to in the first place from the fights in Capua. And so she returned to them, helping to situate them in their cell blocks and detailing the course of everyone’s treatment to Chloe.

  Some two hours after nightfall, a measure of normalcy returned to the ludus. Aeliana had enough free time to daydream about kissing Caius and guiding his fingers back down to where they had been before. Certainly, she had touched herself from time to time, but his fingers, so large and so rough, so strong…

  And one man had been responsible for almost never feeling Caius’s touch again.

  She entered Lucius’s cell block with Chloe, and nodded curtly to the girl. Right away, the assistant went to work, gathering up first the discarded and broken amphoras, and then what full ones remained. Aeliana, meanwhile, pulled up a stool next to Lucius’s bed. A wind caught in the cell, raising the stink of his lifetime of hangovers. Finally his eyes fluttered open.

  “You are going to stop drinking,” she told him.

  Lucius, torn ragged on his bed, just laughed at Aeliana. He could not make it safely up the stairs to her offices, so she had been required to move many of her supplies down to him. Needle and thread and herbs for poultices sat on a small table in the corner.

  “Do you think I’m joking?”

  “I think you’re living in fantasy,” said Lucius. “I will stop drinking wine when all the wine is gone, and no sooner.”

  “Are you proud of yourself, then? What you’ve done?”

  Lucius frowned. “I was proud. And then I was made to fight beasts. If that’s what I am to them, then I will be the low fighter they ask for, and I will drink.”

  “You drank before that.”

  “And now I shall drink ever more after that.”

  “That business in the arena had nothing at all to do with you!” Aeliana was furious. “It was a way to get at Caius, you dolt.”

  “And yet I got drawn in, simply by being the man’s friend. Some friend, I say. Some friend that would pull me into that.”

  That was too much. She slapped him. A hot rush of guilt followed—hitting an injured man. She could not help herself. His self-pity was aggravating to her very core; for Aeliana, who had spent her whole life trying to shed herself of any pity for herself so as to rise above all expectations of men, self-pity was a cancer.

  “That friend is your brother. And he saved your life in the arena, more than three times over. And you ought to be grateful.”

  “What for?” The argument had left his eyes now. It was replaced with confusion. “What for? Grateful for…this?” He looked down at his torn body. “I’m useless as a fighter now. And you know it. I won’t be in the arena again.”

  “Stranger miracles have happened, Lucius.”

  “I won’t fight again. I have made my life by being the best. And I was. And it returned me to this helpless, useless state.”

  Her anger began to subside. What she saw in him now was not truly self-pity, that was just one mask of many. He was a man without hope.

  “I do not think you are helpless. And I do not think you are useless. And I think the only way you could be is if you convince yourself to be as such. And the only way, really, that you are truly useless, is that you do not recognize that you are still alive. And being alive, you have chances.”

  He had nothing to say to that.

  “And if you do not apologize to Caius, and mean it, I will…” she paused for a moment. Lucius was at her mercy, technically, but she would never allow him to come to harm. “I will make your recovery as long and as painful as I possibly can.”

  He laughed in disbelief. “You wouldn’t.”

  The ludus was a brutal world, and it was time he learned she was part of it.

  There was a scalpel nearby. It fit neatly into her hands. “Tigers are small-minded students in the art of surgery, Lucius. I have been doing it for years. Do not test me. Apologize to your friend.”

  His eyes widened at the blade. He could see she was not joking.

  There was little protest now. “Yes, Aeliana.”

  “Thank you.” She set the scalpel aside. “Now, let’s change that bandage, shall we?”

  Chapter 38

  Fires happened all the time in Rome. Caius’s uncle had been killed in a fire in the city of Neapolis. Twice in the past year, Caius had been roused in the middle of the night because of a fire in Puteoli, holding his daughter tight and preparing to run should the flames come close enough.

  But, that was in the middle of the city, where drunks abounded and there were nearly as many flames as people. The ludus of House Varinius, while technically part of Puteoli, was not in the city at all, and fires were much less common in the country than otherwise.

  Suspicion of arson was already in his head. When Rufus called him to his bed the morning after their return from Capua, those suspicions began to solidify.

  The bedchamber was luxurious. The one place in the house, it seemed, untouched as of yet by Porcia’s attempts to sell whatever she could to afford her gambling habits. It had also been untouched by the flames, though the evidence of smoke was everywhere. The curtains, rugs, and blankets still were covered over with the thick grime of black-and-gray ash.

  Rufus, reclined in his bed, looked like the ferryman of death—Charon—at rest.

  “I was sick before you left, you know,” said Rufus.

  “Yes, Dominus.”

  “The smoke…” he paused. His words had not failed him—his lungs did. If he spoke more, then he risked coughing for minutes at a time, and possibly coughing up blood. Frustration filled his face. “The smoke made it worse.”

  His voice was little more than a whisper, harsh and hard to hear through the breeze of the day.

  “Yes, Dominus.”

  “I wanted to apologize to you. Strange, I know.” He smiled. “A master apologizing to a slave. But that was a poor fight to put you in. I am glad you survived. How is the arm?”

  Caius lifted it slightly, straining the sling. “It will heal.”

  “Good. That is good. And the crowd? Did you give us reason for pride?”

  “They were quite happy, Dominus.”

  “Good. Then…” Frustration again. He paused, taking a small sip of wine. Caius could smell the honey and lavender in it from where he stood several feet away. Good for calming a throat. “Then, perhaps there is hope for this place yet. I am told the purses were quite neat. With the crowd happy, we can increase our fees. And perhaps rebuild…”

  He drifted, and Caius thought that the sickness had taken his mind for a moment. But, Rufus had simply changed the direction of his attention. At the doorway was Quintus Pompilius Buteo and Felix.

  Quintus rushed toward the side of the bed, hands outstretched. “My dear Rufus, look at the state of you.”

  Rufus waved off his touch. “I am sick as well as injured. Better for you to stay away.”

  As if seeing a snake, Quintus withdrew. A myriad number of rings adorned his fingers, some two to a hand. “I see. That’s terrible. A terr
ible run of luck. Fortune gives and it receives, does it not? Your fighters win, and yet they are injured beyond repair. Your house gains fame, and yet…” he gestured toward the wreckage.

  Felix had no weapon, but it hardly mattered. He was a large man, clearly made for fighting. His face, young, looked like it had seen the conflicts from a hundred wars—and in each one earned a victory more dire than the last.

  Over the past several weeks in the ludus, Caius had heard ever more about Felix. The man was a prodigy, undefeated since the day of his brother’s death in the arena. Fighting as murmillo, he had the crowd completely on his side with every new victory. His star was rising and—with Lucius now so grievously injured—perhaps set to shoot across the cosmos.

  Quintus wanted to feel protected. Little better protection could be found than that of a gladiator. Caius suspected that Felix had a knife hidden somewhere on his person, probably somewhere in his tunic.

  “Fortune is mysterious, it’s true,” said Rufus.

  “And I have heard that due to the success of the Capuan games, our own games here have already sold every last ticket. Did you know they are even doubling our fees? We’re set to make a fortune.”

  “Lucky for me all of the gladiators and their supplies were out of the ludus. Why, if Fortune truly wanted to throw me a hand…” Rufus coughed slightly. It was an ugly, garbled sound. “Bandits would have set upon them on their return when they were most vulnerable. That would have been a blow…irrevocable. Buildings, homes can be rebuilt.”

  A slight red glow had appeared in Quintus’s cheeks. “Y-yes. Yes, oh my. Oh my, Rufus, you do look on the bright side, don’t you? That is what I love about you, my dear friend.”

  “And I do love your attentions, Quintus. You are kind to visit so soon. It was sad to hear you were pushed out of the Capuan games. What was the reason? You displeased the governor there?”