Wild Rider (Bad Boy Bikers Book 2) (30 page)

Caius nodded. “I shall see you in Elysium, brother.”

And then, hoisting his sword up, he ended the affair with a thrust.

––––––––

T
he Varinius ludus was outside of bounds of the city proper. People felt safer, generally, when gladiators were not kept directly inside urban centers.

The most massive of the slave revolts in Rome had been so long ago that they were thought better of as legends among most common people, and yet civic leaders chose to take few chances when it came to securing the peace. Rome depended heavily on slave labor for everything—building, transporting, farming, and—in Caius's case—entertainment. If even one slave revolted, freedmen and citizens became nervous that more might get the same idea and throw the entire society to shambles.

Rome, for its many problems, was a system that worked year after year, century after century. Systems of propriety layered on each other like enormous cakes to keep everyone, in every class, affixed to their proper place and to keep the society running for all.

Slaves, largely, were kept in their proper place with an abundance of rights (masters who killed slaves without reason were subjects of punishment), the possibility of wages, and the promise of freedom if they served their owners well. A slave with a harsh master had the worst of all possible lives, but a slave with a kind master was not necessarily worse off—and in many cases, was much better off—than a freedman who could not find work because of all the slaves.

And yet, the Varinius ludus was miles outside the town anyway. Romans were superstitious, and having gladiators live close to the public was one fear that would not break easy.

Such a placement was fine by Caius. When he had walked away from the gladiator life three years past, he’d thought it for good. He thought, in fact, that it would be all the better if he’d have to walk out of his way to return to his old haunt.

Return, like he did now. The fact held heavy on his heart, and the only thing that had cheered him in the last several days since he had made the decision was seeing the face of this lovely young medicae who had set his heart ablaze with a passion he'd forgotten he'd had. She had a fire to her, that was for certain—and he intended to see her again.

But, the intoxicating form of Aeliana drifted from view and Caius found himself in a circle of a great many fighters, each one wondering if he knew their names and their glories in the arena.

He pretended as best he could, not wanting to dishearten or insult anyone unduly. It would be a hard pill for most of them to swallow, he expected, that he had not gone to a single match since his last one—since the birth of his daughter three years ago.

But one man in particular Caius knew very well.

“Lucius!” he cried, exuberant. “Brother.”

Lucius was a younger man, ten years Caius’s younger at twenty-four years of age. He had a boyish handsomeness to his face, making him a hit with the women of Puteoli and also the reason he fought as a retarius.

The retarius was a strange form of fighter found only in the confines of the arena, modeled after a fisherman. He fought with a heavily weighted net swung in one hand a deadly trident in the other. He relied on mobility and visibility, and so was lightly armored—which included no helmet. When Lucius fought, his thick dark locks and bright blue eyes were there for all to see and the women swooned.

Caius knew Lucius to be headstrong and aggressive, but also stubbornly loyal. He was a good man to have on your side, and a beast as an enemy.

The two embraced. Caius had taken Lucius under his wing when the man had first arrived—in a similar way to how Septus had taken Caius under
his
wing. In this way, the brotherhood of gladiators was a long chain of men in the deepest, foulest mud in the world, pulling one another away from death one slippery step at a time.

“Haven’t you been watching the games, Caius?” Lucius’s breath had a gentle stink of wine on it. “They call me Orion now.”

“They call you Orion in the
arena
,” came a voice.

It was Rufus, the Dominus. His official title, for those who weren't his slaves, was a lanista—a gladiator trainer. He was dressed in a simple white robe with a long red sash. His hair was dark and poorly cut. A tall, rough gladiator walked behind him.

“In the arena, where you
transcend
your mortality. You are not
in
the arena, Lucius. You are in my ludus, and here you are a man like any other.”

With all haste, Lucius broke the embrace with Caius and nodded his head. “Of course, Dominus. It was a jest for an old friend.”

A ripple of surprise pushed through Caius. The years had changed Lucius. The young man he had known would have sooner punched Rufus in the face and suffer a month in the mines than apologize.

“Welcome back, Caius.” Rufus smiled. “Welcome
home
.”

He raised his arms with a grand flourish, as if Caius had not spent ten years inside these very walls, dreaming of a way to get out.

Rufus had always been a bit of a fop, but Caius never thought him a bad man. He was the sort who would serve you his cheapest wine and talk at length about the intimate efforts gone into creating it simply because he thought knowing more than you did might wow you into submission. For a lot of the gladiators in his ludus, Caius supposed he was right. Most were not exactly mental giants, and all were more cunning than smart.

“Thank you, Dominus.” Caius nodded, surprised at how easily the deference returned to his voice. “I am glad to be here.”

“That makes one of you.” The gladiator behind Rufus shook his head. “I don’t think any freedman belongs in this place at all.”

“Easy, Flamma.” Rufus held up a hand. “Caius here is as much a gladiator as any of you.”

Flamma was a tall man, thick of belly and chest. Some gladiators attempted to earn the favor of the crowd with a body cut from stone, as Lucius did. Others were not able or willing to trim down, and so developed layers of protective fat to have more flesh they could safely lose.

This one—Flamma—was definitely the latter. He had not been here when Caius was here last, and even with his ignorance of the games, he had heard of the brutal wins of Flamma. Maimings. Mutilations. Decapitations. All at the crowd’s behest.

That was the other way to win the crowd’s favor—to be as brutal as humanly possible to your opponents. Flamma had a wicked, dirty smile. Long, dark hair sprouted from the back of his head and knotted in several long tails down his back.

The presence of all this past hit him hard:

Rufus, who had owned him for ten years.

Lucius, fair-haired and handsome, who had been a younger brother to him.

Septus, grizzled and lean, who had been an older brother to him.

Flamma—who Caius had not known, but of whom he had known a dozen others like—as mean as the day was long.

And because he had known a dozen men like Flamma, he had expected this sort of protestation. That he was only a freedman now, now a fighting man. Caius slipped his pack down from his back. It contained mostly just some spare clothes from his house and a number of sweets that he thought might earn him some points with the bonafide fighters in the ludus.

Reaching in, he pulled out a short wooden sword.

“This is my rudis,” he said, holding it up so all could see. “Given to me the day of my last fight. The symbol of my freedom.”

“I know it well,” said Rufus. “I had it commissioned myself.”

With a flourish of his own, Caius broke the rudis over his knee. The crowd of gladiators around them was stunned silent.

“I am not a free man any longer,” said Caius. “I am a slave. I am a gladiator. And I am one of you.”

The crowd roared now with laughs and approval. Septus stayed quiet, however, stooping low to gather up the pieces of the rudis before they were crushed or spirited away.

Waves of overwhelming feeling threatened to pull Caius under. He knew that by returning to this place, he risked drowning again in the bloody zeal of honor and glory that the ludus advertised.

But there were parts of himself he had discovered over the past few years—fatherly parts, sensitive parts built from raising his dear Fabia. These were parts of himself that he liked.

His relentless ability to hold her tight and love her for everything she was and would be; his ability to wake early in the morning to feed her; his ability to work from dawn until dusk and dusk until dawn, just to put food on the table.

Not that it was enough. If there were some cosmic drawing of numbers in the universe, then Fortune had Caius’s number, and had no intention of changing his luck anytime soon. A dozen bad investments—each one seeming more promising than the last—had destroyed his finances since his last win over Vox in the arena.

That everything had soured after that fight only made the fight itself, already a sour memory, something more sinister altogether. An omen of destruction for Caius’s wellbeing.

Now, being back in the ludus, those feelings of instant brotherhood fought with his learned understanding that the world was out to get him.

And there was one more man left—wasn’t there? Who was Caius forgetting?

A crack of a whip answered his question. It all came flooding back now.

“What is this nonsense? Have you all lost your dignity? These are hours for training, not for standing. For
learning
, not for dallying. And I—”

The heavy, rough voice of Murus the doctore rang through the ludus air, bouncing off the tall stone walls. Like any good leader or teacher, Murus’s most important quality was the sound of his voice. Immediately authoritative and immediately heard, Murus was most often immediately obeyed. But, when the scarred, old gladiator saw Rufus and Caius, his face softened somewhat.

“Forgive me, Dominus,” he said. “I did not see you here. Of course there is no dallying if the men are learning from you.”

The play to Rufus’s ego was a necessary deception to placate the man. A sly smile indicated to Caius that the cause of the commotion was not lost on Murus.

“Caius here was just informing us that he was as much of a gladiator as ever.” Rufus smiled. “I’d like to see you put him to the test, Doctore.”

Again, Caius found himself slipping into the past, standing up straight and readying his legs. “I’d like that myself, Doctore.”

“Very good,” said Murus. “Now. Let us see if you still know anything. Lucius?” The elite gladiator stepped forward, crisp as ever to the doctore’s voice. “Take up your weapon. Give us a show.”

––––––––

A
eliana stood in her office above the training grounds, looking out the window as events unfolded.

Right away, watching the two men square off in the sands, tension wrapped around her heart.

The crowd of gladiators all stood or knelt around the two, each picking the likely winner. Iunius, a slave eunuch who acted as something of a black market dealer for the other slaves in the estate, sidled up next to fighter after fighter, taking bets.

Caius and Lucius took up their thick training weapons and began to circle one another. Lucius held a long pole, simulating the spear-like trident. Caius’s held a wooden sword but also a basketwork wicker shield which rustled noisily as he circled in the sand.

Lucius thrust, and Caius parried and counter-thrust, and the duel had begun.

Neither man could lose this stupid match, she realized.

If Lucius lost, then he would lose face among his fellows in the collegium. Like most other tradesmen, gladiators formed a sort of union—called a collegium—for mutual protection. Though, unlike other trades, the protection was not to ensure a promise of work.

Being slaves, gladiators had little say in what work they did in the first place. And even if they did, there was always a demand for the spilling of blood in the Empire, and so always more work.

No, rather the official purpose of the collegium was to ensure the protection of the gods. Each collegium had its own patron deities they paid tribute to. Small portions of every win or loss were donated to the collegium, and if a gladiator died, then his funeral services were paid with by withdrawing from the donatives.

The unofficial purpose of the collegium was to ensure that the gladiators were of a common mind and that they did not kill one another in training. It was a social club, with clear hierarchies, and Lucius was at the tip-top level. The group that followed him was mostly other retiarii, but more than that, it was simply the folks that Lucius got along with, like Septus.

Vying for his top role, though, was Flamma—with a group of his own—and up to this point the two had been civil, if not altogether friendly. Lucius had racked up seventeen victories in the arena over the last three years to Flamma’s twelve in the last two.

Both fought—and won—much more than the average. Normally, a gladiator fought four times a year at most. Lucius and Flamma stalked one another like lions in the wild, each carving out their own territory for the hunt.

And so, a loss to Caius, even in a duel, would bring Lucius’s reputation down. And Flamma would not hesitate to strike.

Yet, Caius could not lose either. Having gone so long as the undefeated champion of Puteoli, if he indeed lost on his first outing back, he would be shamed. No one in the school would trust him to fight again, and he would live in the ludus under a shadow of doubt.

The fighters in the sand continued to go at it, countering and thrusting, parrying and feinting. Both got good blows in. Caius slammed Lucius’s face with his basketwork shield, drawing blood from his nose. But in the very next volley of blows, Lucius managed to elbow Caius in the face right back, drawing blood from his.

And they were
smiling
.

Maniacs, thought Aeliana. Pure maniacs.

It didn’t help that her heart was pumping so fast, watching Caius move with his shirt off. She had, before, thought him large but ungainly. Like the bear of his namesake. But watching him now, she got to see all that bulk
move
, and move it did. It was not bulk, not really, just layers and layers of thickly wrapped muscle over long, strong bones. They may have called him a bear, but he moved like a cat, and every second that passed with him in the sands he seemed to gain more and more confidence in his feet.