Chapter XLII #2
Telemachus curved toward the edge of the arena, shouting all the while and leaving a trail of confused stillness behind him.
Felix and Adel bolted after him, her long hair flying behind like the pennant of an army battalion, leading the charge.
They couldn’t get close enough to flank him, bodies and swords blocking their way. Ahead, Telemachus continued to shout.
“Do not spit in the face of God’s mercy! How can you celebrate His gift of victory over your enemies by cheering on murder? He has given you peace and safety and this is how you choose to use it?”
A glass amphora flew from the stands, narrowly missing Telemachus’s head. It crashed to the sand at Felix’s feet, shattering in an explosion of shards and wine.
“Go home, old man!” someone screamed.
Telemachus tilted his head back, flinging an arm toward the fighters. “These are men and women made, like you, in the image of our God. How can you, citizens of a Christian empire, cheer on the bloody spectacles of our pagan past?”
The hum of the crowd flared and fell, confusion and anger rising on the roar of tongues. Then a three-beat rhythm slowly rose from the stands, deep and dark, as if it came not from the voices of men but from the very pits of hell.
“Down with him!”
Down. With. Him. Down. With. Him.
A semicircle of warriors in various colors began to assemble around Telemachus, and not for his protection.
“Hurry!” Adel shouted, her heart pounding in time with her feet. She dodged to the right and Felix moved with her.
She leaped the body of a fallen Visigoth gladiator, shuttering her mind to any identification. There would be a time to mourn, but it was not now. Now was the time to fight. To defend the man who risked his life to save theirs. The man who even now was slowly being surrounded.
The circle was closing.
Why wouldn’t they listen to him?
Even as the question flicked through her mind, she knew the answer. If they surrendered, stopped hurtling down the path they were on . . . what was left for them? Who were they? What purpose did they, could they, have?
The fear of the unknown was greater than the hope of it.
The questions of surrender were more terrifying than the prospect of death.
Her lungs burned. She burst through the rapidly closing circle, Felix on her heels. The crowd’s chant slipped to one more familiar.
“Habet hoc habet!”
He has had it.
She positioned herself on one side of Telemachus and Felix mirrored her stance on his left.
“They are calling for your death,” Felix panted. He looked pale, slightly hunched.
Telemachus only nodded with an eerie resignation.
“They will call for ours next.” Adel glanced at Felix. Words that remained unspoken rested between her lungs like hot coals. He met her gaze, and she saw the same reflected in the warm granite of his eyes. Blood streaked his bare chest and marred his stubbled cheek.
“It was an honor—” Felix’s shoulders jerked and he stumbled back a step, face shifting from tenderness to confusion.
He blinked and looked down and then she saw it too.
The handle of a pugio dagger stuck in his abdomen.
The horror took three breaths to register in her mind.
They’d had a collapsing gladius but not that.
Felix’s gaze lifted, finding Telemachus and then shifting toward Adel. She suddenly couldn’t breathe. This was not part of the plan.
Save him. His mouth formed the words, but no sound emerged.
Telemachus jolted forward, swinging a fist to deflect the sword arm of the gladiator coming for Felix.
Adel followed suit, her sword glancing off the widened swing.
She stumbled, regaining her footing and twisting to deflect a second blow.
No time to check on Felix. She left him behind as he’d silently begged her to.
Anger and fear coursed through her in equal measure as she surged after Telemachus, deflecting blows.
The monk continued to shout for mercy, for a rebellion of peace.
Tears rose in her throat. In the corner of her eye, Felix jerked as his knees gave out.
He crumpled and she . . . she could not.
Not now, not yet, though she felt her heart ripping free from her chest, bleeding into the sand beside him.
She set her jaw. She could not fall apart. Not here, not when—
Telemachus grabbed his arm, redness seeping through his fingers.
“Do not do this!” he shouted. “God offered you mercy. Do not repay it with murder!”
A burn sliced through her thigh. She stumbled and kept on, joined by Gaiseric.
They flanked the pleading monk and tried to fend off the other gladiators, each fighting to win the crowd by cutting down the defenseless giant, bent on saving their lives at the expense of his.
And yet, Telemachus never quieted, never stopped. So neither did she.
Where were the others? Dreda, Tilla, the Hildas—had they fallen?
Escaped? Were they locked in a fight for their lives?
She and Gaiseric could not defend Telemachus forever.
Not two gladiators against dozens. Trash, cups, and chicken bones rained from the stands, cluttering the sand in razor-sharp shards.
An amphora shattered against Telemachus’s back.
He grunted and stumbled. “Have you been slaves so long, you’ve forgotten what it is to be free? To make your own choices? God’s mercy is for you, even now.”
A burning sting sliced through the sole of her foot as Adel lunged forward to deflect the gladius of the huge provocator in blue, whose black braids trailed down his neck in the very picture of betrayal.
“Wulfula!” She shouted his name, anger flaring. He was Visigoth. He should be an ally. “What are you doing?”
Wulfula shoved her backward, a cruel smile lifting the edge of this mouth. “Do you think you’re the only one who can win the crowd?” His dark eyes flickered toward Telemachus.
“Don’t.” Cold fear filled her limbs. “He’s trying to end this, to save our lives. Wulfula, please—”
“How I longed to hear you beg.” He let his eyes flutter back into his head, as if relishing the taste of something sweet. “I ended your medicus too quickly, I see.”
“You—” She couldn’t speak. He’d thrown the dagger at Felix? Fury and grief swelled in her chest and there was no time to do anything with them.
Wulfula’s eyes snapped back to hers with a calculated chill. “I said you would need me one day.” And he turned away as he’d said he would, striding straight into the chaos and toward Telemachus.
No time.
Adel raced after him.
“In the name of Jesus Christ, stop this!” Telemachus shouted, his voice breaking with the pain of failure.
It was the voice of one pleading for mercy, not for himself but for those he loved—and how could he love them?
They had done nothing for him. Any one of the men and women he pleaded for might turn at any moment and plunge a blade through him—they were already trying to—and yet, he spoke as if the very thought of one of them dying might rend the heart from his chest. As if they were the most precious of souls.
Was that how God saw her? Telemachus had tried repeatedly to assure her of this, and she had always scoffed.
Surely God did not want one such as her.
And yet . . . seeing the monk now, radiating some sort of otherworldly love, she wanted more than anything to believe him.
To cling to the truth as tightly as he did.
All this flickered through her mind in the moment it took to raise her eyes and look at him. The friend who had seen something worthy in her when no one else had.
Wulfula appeared beside him, gladius raised to strike down all that was good in this arena.
She launched herself toward him, throwing up her sword to meet his with a jarring crash.
His blade bounced, grazing her arm as it spun into the dust. His dark curse rang in her ears as he slammed his shield against her chest, throwing her backward.
Pain ricocheted through her body as each part hit the wooden arena floor, cushioned by the barest layer of sand.
She rolled, spinning to her feet, only to be thrown down again, the breath knocked from her lungs.
She gaped for air like a fish on the shore.
The clash of weapons went muffled and distant.
Wulfula turned his back, bending and gripping the shaft of a spear. Dust fell from it as he tossed it up, caught it, and drew it back.
Adel lurched upright, a shout strangled in her airless lungs.
Telemachus’s head snapped back at the same moment she saw the spear lodge in his chest.
Wulfula punched a fist into the air, his victory shout drowned by her own scream.
Adel shot to her feet, scrambling forward to wrap her arms around the giant as he stumbled once and buckled. The sheer size and weight of him brought her to her knees. His face twitched in an expression of pain and determination.
“In the name . . . ,” he whispered, blood beginning to trickle down his bearded chin. “In the name of Christ, stop.”
His face went blurry, kind hazel eyes lifting to the oval of blue sky above them and going still.
Adel sucked in a ragged breath that echoed in her ears. Her chin rose.
The arena had fallen silent.