Harsh chanting echoed beneath the wide bronze brim of the Secutor's helmet Lycon wore. He looked through the grating of his visor, his face as much a prisoner of the helm as he was to the lusts of the crowd. His vision swam with fluttering tunics and pumping fists. He felt more than heard the roar of thousands of throats. Steam rose from his sweat and blood-begrimed chest. The sweat was his; the blood was not.
The weight of the broken shafted three-tined trident dangled from where a single tine pierced his visor, inches from his left eye. He knew now how close he had come to being the one on his back in the sand at the mercy of the Roman crowd. He shifted his foot on the chest of the supine man.
As he waited for the Emperor's decree, he saluted the crowd with his short, broad sword. Blood from his vanquished foe, his friend, Taharqua the Nubian, dripped from the disk- shaped pommel of his weapon. He looked down upon the writhing form of the sleek, black warrior beneath him. In his mind Lycon pleaded with the crowd for mercy. He and Taharqua had fought well, but he knew his last slash had bitten deep into the back of the black man's thigh. Taharqua could never wield the trident and net again, and Rome had no use, and thus no mercy, for a hamstrung Retarius.
For a moment the shouting died to a hiss, as the Emperor seemed to ponder the wishes of the crowd. A corpulent man, the Emperor struggled to his feet, shifting his toga with a flourish and almost losing his laurel wreath in the process. The explosion of noise deafened Lycon as the crowd reacted to the Emperor's verdict: death.
Lycon dropped his long rectangular shield and knelt at the side of his fallen friend. "Forgive me, brother."
Lycon was glad that the sweat-slick giant nodded and raised his chin without a struggle, gladder still that he kept his eyes closed. Those eyes would have haunted him for the rest of his days. Thus, in the same manner they slaughter the oxen on festive days, Lycon slaughtered a man he had known for over a year. Taharqua's blood seeped from torn throat for the glory of Rome. Then rising and offering the Emperor and the crowd the expected salute, he crossed the bloody sand on quivering legs and returned to his cell. He told himself his muscles wobbled from the exertion of the fight.
In the dank chamber, lit only by the sunlight that filtered through bars high overhead, a slave-boy peeled off his sweat-soaked armor, first lifting the heavy bronze helmet from his head, the trident left jutting obscenely from the visor as it was put aside. The armorers employed by his lanista, his master and trainer, would see that the helm was repaired and burnished to shine like new for the next bout he fought. The slave, set the task of caring for his needs, scrambled around him, undoing the laces his armor and loosening the leather where it bit into his flesh. The boy peeled the steel-banded sleeve off his right arm and shoulder. Flesh came away with it where it had been cinched across his ribs. Lycon impatiently kicked off the metal greave covering his left shin, then ordered the boy to leave as he dropped the thick leather belt and untied his rough woolen loincloth. The boy staggered under the weight of the armor as he hurried to collect it and exit the chamber.
Lycon sat heavily on the cold wooden bench. Some of the other men were raucous after a victory, happy to be alive. Some he knew cherished the feeling of the kill, the proof of their prowess. Lycon felt only emptiness. Taharqua and he were never close- no two gladiators are. All know that if they live long enough they will face each other in the arena. He and Taharqua had been in the same training class; his death was a reminder of how capricious the fate of a gladiator can be. But there was more. He knew he should be the one being dragged to the crematorium. Now that the surge of battle had passed, he remembered the look of Taharqua's face as the signal to fight was given: the slight curl of his lips, the light in his eyes. Taharqua fought not for victory, but for freedom. It's difficult to throw a fight and attain a clean, honorable death in a way that doesn't end with both gladiators crucified. A man would have to be very skilled with the trident to impale his foe's helmet, but miss his face. Taharqua was an expert, and now Taharqua was free, while he was still a slave.
He rose slowly, picking up the bowl of thick olive oil and the strigil left by the boy. He smirked as he pondered this, his last performance of the day. All of the gladiators were required to do it after battle. He would slather his body in the rich oil, then scrape the mixed oil, sweat and blood off with the strigil. A slave would collect the syrupy scrapings when he was done and it would be sold to the fashionable ladies of Rome as body lotion. The men joked of other secretions bought by rich women for their facials, but so far he had only been required to save his sweat. His lanista made quite a profit off of the trade. Lycon's bitter victory had been the culmination of the day's events; his sweat would be quite valuable today.
He had no more than dipped his fingers in the bowl when a young slave pushed the heavy door opened.
"I'm not through yet, you'll have to wait!" he barked at the youth.
He noticed the wide-eyed look of fear on the boy's face as a pair of young slaves entered the room. These were no arena slaves; their tunics alone cost more than the life of the boy who attended him. Behind them a tall woman entered, her hair piled high in the tight curls of a patrician. She said nothing, her mouth and nose were covered with the hem of her shimmering saffron wrap, but her eyes made clear her authority. He had never seen so much silk before, only small kerchiefs that came fluttering down from the upper tiers when rich woman lost them in their excitement. Lycon knew himself to be valuable, even more so after today's victory, but the worth of the silk she wore was many times the price of his own life.
The only way she could be here without causing the scandal of the season was if all traffic of slaves and gladiators were rerouted from this section of the slave pens under the coliseum. A woman of this wealth and power could only be a senator's wife or close to the Emperor in some way. The boy who opened the door disappeared, as slaves are wont to do when they find themselves in such dangerous company. One of the lady's slaves, a youth he saw now, with his hair in tight golden ringlets, closed the heavy oaken door. The second slave, a young, willowy girl with short straight hair the copper of old blood, knelt at his feet and placed a series of containers and stoppered vials on the bench before him.
The lady dropped the hem of her wrap, exposing a face that was not unattractive. Her nose was far too aquiline to call her beautiful, but she was indeed striking. Her skin was white as the marble of the arena façade; so smooth and unblemished that it shone with more luster than that that of her well-scrubbed servants, though they were most likely half her age. Her sea-green eyes snatched his view. He could tell she expected to be recognized, wished it in fact, but Lycon truly had no idea who she was. Her eyes broke from his gaze and traveled languidly down his sweat slick body.
"Gladiator, I have bought the products of your bout today. I have brought my slaves to collect them in person. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, mistress." Unsure of how to address a lady of her station, he reverted to type: slave to master.
"Good, You will present yourself to my slaves to be oiled and stridulated."
Lycon stood, legs apart, arms raised parallel to his shoulders, as the slaves put aside the crude olive oil he had been about to use and decanted rich honey-colored oil into two small bowls. Lycon had never known shame at being naked before his masters, a man who is willing to expose his blood and viscera upon the sand has no qualms displaying something as impersonal as his genitals, but as her eyes washed over him he felt his face grow warm. Her opened stare assessed his body, as he would search the physique of an opponent just before a strike, coolly judging strength and weakness. He felt his face grow hot as he looked away, imagined that he blushed at his nakedness like the few slave girls he had been allowed to breed as rewards for his performance. He forced his eyes to meet hers. Had Lycon been born to a senator instead of a slave he would still not have been pretty like the pair before him. The life of a gladiator had marred him further. His thrice-broken nose turned an unhandsome face brutal. His body was a mass of corded muscle, his neck as thick as a man's thigh. Poorly knitted lacerations lined his chest and thighs; his back was crosshatched by stokes of the lash.
The oil was warm when the two slaves slathered it across his body. They kneaded it into his taut muscles, coating his body in a glistening sheen. Oil slowly dripped from his limbs.
