Chapter XLII
XLII
FELIX BURST ONTO THE ARENA, the sounds of battle crashing in his ears, his heart thundering in his chest. How had they miscalculated so terribly?
To miss such a horrific possibility? Where was Adel?
It was impossible to tell in the melee. In the shouts, the screams, the whirling red and green and blue.
A gladiator in blue went down in front of him, a pugio thrust in his gut. The red-clad Thracian facing him tore the dagger free and turned away, leaving the man on his knees in the sand.
Felix rushed to him, catching him as he fell back. “Ruso.”
The provocator from the Gallic School looked up at him in confusion. “Medicus? What are you—” His face contorted.
“Don’t move. Stay still . . .” Felix laid him back and scanned the sand around him. A bit of fabric torn from a red costume lay abandoned a few feet away. He scrambled to retrieve it and pressed it against the wound in Ruso’s abdomen.
“Don’t bother,” Ruso groaned. “I’m a dead man.”
“Not dead yet. Where there is breath, there is hope.”
“Hope for what?”
“That things can still change.”
Ruso shook his head. “It’s too late for change.”
“I don’t believe that.” Felix reached for Ruso’s hand and pressed it over the rag. “Hold this here.”
“Where are you going?”
“To help where I can.”
“Take my sword, then. And my shield.”
Felix hesitated but one glance up told him he’d never make it to Adel without some sort of defense. He gathered the gladius and scutum and pushed to his feet.
“Be careful, medicus. And, thank you.”
Felix scanned the arena, the blur of bodies and colors obscuring identification—but there.
A flash of pale green and loose hair caught his eye.
And he ran. Dodging a murmillo engaged with a scissor and two crupellari doing their best not to fall over in their plate armor while fighting.
It might have been amusing if it weren’t deadly.
He rounded a plaster boulder and leaped a “fallen log,” angling for the place he’d seen her last. A shield thudded against his back, throwing him forward into the sand.
Pain shot through his abdomen as grit stung his eyes, screeched between his teeth.
He sucked in a grounding breath and blinked, catching a glimpse of Adel through the dance of bodies and swirling sand.
Standing with her back to him, sword raised in defense.
Before she could swing, her body jerked, the glint of a bloodied blade protruding from her back.
His vision seemed to blur, the roar of the crowd fading to a hum as the red bloom spread over her tunic. It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real.
He shoved to his feet, barreling forward with the anger of a penned bull.
He ducked past the net of a retiarius, Adel’s scream echoing in his ears, tearing at his heart.
After all he’d promised her, this was not how it was supposed to end.
Adel stumbled and sank to her knees and Felix was nearly to her when another body slammed into his, throwing him to the dust once more.
The gladius flew from his grip. He kicked and rolled, throwing both his assailant and his shield off him.
He crawled to Adel, swallowing back the burn rising in his throat as he lifted her into his arms and moved to brush back the hair tangled around her face.
He froze at the coldness of a blade pressed to his neck.
“Lay a hand on her and it’ll be the last thing you do.”
The voice sent a shudder through him. It was Adel’s, and yet, it came from behind him rather than from the woman cradled in his arms. He looked up.
Adel stood over him, expression fiery and trembling. The gladius shook as their eyes met.
“Felix?” She whispered his name in a voice that broke. “I thought you were gone.”
“I said I wouldn’t abandon you.”
She let out a shuddering breath and dropped to her knees beside him, the gladius ringing against the sand as it fell. Tears dripped from her chin as she bent over the form in his arms, brushing the pale brown hair away from Berit’s young face, twitching in agony.
“Shhh, Berit, I’m here. I’m here.”
The girl’s lips shook as she tried to smile, her gaze going glassy. Adel choked on a sob, pressing her forehead against the girl’s as her shoulders shuddered with apology. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Felix murmured. Warm blood trickled down his stomach, but he felt it on his hands. “I should have known they would do something like this.”
Adel shook her head, words muffled against Berit’s hair. “You did know,” she whispered. “You said all along that they do not love us. That they only love the blood we spill while they watch.”
“I thought for certain . . .”
“Nothing is certain in the arena. Only death.” She raised her head, the wide, angular planes of her face etched in sorrow. “Listen to them cheer, Felix. It is over. We tried, and we failed.”
The voices from the stands were deafening.
Spectators on their feet, fists raised overhead.
Any hint of compassion they’d felt a few moments before, drowned in the blood of the arena.
It pressed on the air like a physical weight, as if the old gods and demons of Rome had convened here to suffocate every hint of light.
What could one do against a force like that?
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places .
. . The words came to mind clear and sharp as one of Felicia’s kitchen knives, followed by a single command:
Stand.
A roar cut through the din of the arena, wounded and furious.
“What are you doing?”
Felix’s chin lifted. The voice was familiar and filled him with equal parts dread and hope.
“You would celebrate a victory given to you from God—by murdering each other?”
A hulking figure in a plain brown tunic pushed up from the sand near the gate of life and rushed toward the battle, arms flung wide. “Stop this!”
“Telemachus,” Adel breathed at the same moment Felix realized it too. “He’s unarmed—he’s going to get himself killed.” She was on her feet in a moment, scooping up her scutum and sword.
Felix gently lowered Berit’s still body to the sand and scooped up his own weapons.
Adel was already running. He stood and followed, pressing his shield arm against the spears of pain in his side.
Telemachus reached the first pair of gladiators, a dimachaerus locked in a flurry of flashing swords against a scissor with an iron arm.
Felix ran faster. What was the man thinking? Did he mean to shout at them like an old woman on a stoop?
Telemachus dodged the plate-shaped blade and wrenched the scissor back by his unarmored arm, spinning him away and throwing him to the dust. He rammed a shoulder into the dimachaerus in the next moment, sending him reeling and off-balance.
“You are playing into their hands!” he roared, flinging a hand toward the stands. “Do not feed their bloodlust.”
Sand slipped beneath Felix’s feet as he skidded to a stop beside Adel, who dropped into a stance behind Telemachus, ready to spring if the dimachaerus made a move.
The opposing gladiator regained his footing and turned toward Telemachus, flicking his wrists and swinging his double swords in menacing circles at his sides.
Telemachus stood his ground. “Refuse to fight. Show Rome it does not own you. A Christian empire ought not revel in such things. In blood and death and gore. You must refuse to fight.”
His pleading words had little effect. The dimachaerus took another step toward Telemachus, swords angled in a ready cross before him. “What if we love the fight?”
“Those who live by the sword will die by it.”
“In honor.”
“In futility. Do you think your name will be known in a year? For generations to come? Be remembered as the fighter who ended the games. Be the last gladiator.”
Indecision rippled across the dimachaerus’s scarred face. “If we stop fighting, we die.”
“We all die one day. Let us make our lives, however short, count for something bigger than ourselves. Join us!”
Trumpets and shouts nearly drowned out his words, their huddle of non-fighting gladiators drawing enough attention to warrant a distraction by the game master.
Swords twitching in his hands, the dimachaerus stared at Telemachus for a moment, then a strange mixture of resolve and surrender crossed his face before he turned and strode away.
Telemachus let out a breath, pivoting toward Adel. “Dear girl.”
Adel dropped her weapons and flung her arms around Telemachus’s neck, the gesture uncharacteristically vulnerable and desperate.
“You’re here,” she said as he hugged her back and set her on her feet once more. “Why are you here? You’re going to be killed.”
“Life is precious, Adel. And I cannot sit by and watch men cheer as it is ended. Watch men go to stand before their Maker without knowing who He is and what He’s done.
” Telemachus gripped her arm, pulling her out of the path of a retiarius’s net as it flew toward a running secutor.
“Will you join me? Fight for life. End these vile games. Be the last gladiatrix to set foot in this arena.”
She nodded and glanced at Felix, Telemachus following her gaze.
“Medicus.” Relief made the word emerge in a huff. “I thought I saw you fall.” His eyes dropped to Felix’s arm, clutched against his side.
“Not yet.”
Telemachus gave a single nod. “Then let’s end this.
In Jesus’ name. Let it be so.” With that he whirled away, rushing into the chaos, shouting, tearing fighters apart and throwing them to the ground.
He left confusion in his wake, fighters glancing between each other as if wondering if the game masters had sent a slave to call a cease to the fight.
“He’s doing it,” Felix muttered, and the knowledge sent an iron rod of hope through his spine.