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Sweat sheets his face and his breath is sour beneath the heavy helmet. The weight of the polished bronze bears down on his neck, but to stretch his tired muscles now would be to admit to weakness, and that is the last thing the crowd expects from Phoebus.
Blood runs down his left arm from the gash Lyrias gave him early on in the match. Even if he turns his head, he won’t be able to see the injury; the helmet restricts his sight too much. But every time he swings his shield in defence or attack it hurts, a low throb of pain, which is good. An injury that doesn’t hurt means the nerves are severed, or so the medicus says. All Phoebus knows is that pain is an advantage at this point in the match. It keeps him going, forces life into his tired limbs.
The amphitheatre shudders with the noise of the crowd. At the start of the bout, cheers of ‘Phoebus, Phoebus!’ rang out, while others cried admiration of his opponent. Now he can’t make out any words in the wall of sound. He is as good as nameless.
The secutor’s helmet is full-face and smooth. No feathers, no griffin crests or fancy decoration. Not even a slit for a mouth. Just two round holes for the eyes. A mockery of a visage; one that frightens the matrons. Funny, really: when they pay good money to come to him in his cell, they stroke his muscles and tell him he’s handsome, but when he stalks out onto the sand of the arena, they shrink from his featureless gaze.
Lyrias says it’s ironic. “Hiding a face as handsome as yours only makes them more desperate to see it,” he’d explained, arms hooked through the bars of the cell door adjacent to Phoebus’s.
Phoebus had thought about it. “Lanista doesn’t make you hide your face.”
The slightest pause, and then Lyrias had laughed, merry and inconsequential. “Why, Phoebus, are you saying I’m handsome?”
“No.” The reply was blunt, awkward. Phoebus tried again. “You’re pretty.”
Lyrias was quiet, then. But he didn’t go back into his cell. He was still there, with his arms outstretched between the bars, as if he could catch the sunlight in his hands.
Phoebus knows he said the wrong thing. Lyrias isn’t pretty. Out here on the sands, the scant armour of the retiarius showing off long limbs and a dancer’s grace, his dark curls oiled in the Cretan style and the joy of combat shining in his savage smile, Lyrias is beautiful. The bloodied nose and blackening eye from where Phoebus had smashed his shield doesn’t in any way diminish Lyrias’s looks.
His is not the glamour of a marble statue or a painting on an atrium wall, but the beauty of an unbroken horse, or a steady flame in an oil lamp in the darkest part of the night, or the thundering of waves on a gritty beach in the rain. The kind of beauty that can’t be caught, only experienced in the moment.
That moment is now. Phoebus feels it down to his toes, like the shock from one of those bejewelled eels kept as pets by the duumvir sponsoring these games. He meets Lyrias’s gaze, and it’s as if he’s been struck by a thunderbolt.
They’ve been fighting for a quarter-hour. Fighting well and bravely, entertaining the crowd with the showy feints, near-misses, and apparently brutal attacks that have made them both household names across Campania and even, so the lanista had boasted, as far as Rome. Blood has been spilled in carefully measured quantities, but the sun is hot and Phoebus is tiring. He wants an end to this soon.
Usually he gets a match over and done with inside ten minutes, at most. A secutor’s armour drags on the body, saps his strength. Which is why a skilled opponent will try to draw out the fight and wear him down.
Lyrias is exceptionally skilful.
As per the lanista’s orders, Phoebus had allowed Lyrias to draw first blood. The crowd had howled its appreciation. Retaliation was swift, Phoebus lashing out with his shield, angling the lower half up at the last second to shatter Lyrias’s trident in two. To chants from the spectators, Lyrias had picked up the broken shaft and jabbed it wildly at Phoebus’s stomach.
Only the jewelled belt worn high around his waist had saved him. Phoebus had teetered back on his heels then drove forward with his gladius, but Lyrias had danced out of range. The next few minutes were a blur of action, of avoiding the whirl and drape of the net and trading blows that looked good but did no real damage.
They’ve done enough. Now it’s time. Phoebus shifts into a more aggressive stance. Lyrias skips back and stumbles on the web of the net. Some women amongst the spectators scream at his mistake, but their fear swiftly turns to shouts of joy as he rights himself.
Then Lyrias abandons their set choreography and runs lightly across the sands, forcing Phoebus to chase him.
The audience is silenced for a moment, then it erupts once more. Some rain down abuse, calling Lyrias a coward, while others hoot to see Phoebus lumbering around after him, an elephant to Lyrias’s bounding gazelle. When the retiarius stands still and waggles his arse at Phoebus, the amphitheatre rings to the roar of laughter. The crowd’s mood is ever-changeable, but right now they have it where they want it.
Only one figure makes his displeasure clear: their lanista. Phoebus snatches a glance at their owner and reads anger in the tight hunch of the man’s shoulders. The lanista has always been cautious with his stock, certain that he alone knows how best to entertain the populace. He doesn’t like it when his gladiators do their own thing in a fight.
He’ll like it even less if all goes to plan.
Phoebus grips his sword. The weight of the shield is making his left arm tremble. He’s not going to run anymore. He’ll stand here, as solid and patient as the great conical mountain that rises above Pompeii, and wait for Lyrias to come to him. Too much is at stake to play silly games. The rudis has been promised as the prize, the wooden sword of freedom. There can only be one victor, and Phoebus is determined that it will be him.
He has no idea what he’ll do with his freedom. Perhaps he’ll take his winnings and travel to Crete. Lyrias has spoken of his homeland so often that Phoebus can picture it when he lays down to rest. Mountains capped with snow. Waterfalls that plunge into gorges so deep, sunlight only reaches a fingertip. The smell of wild herbs crushed beneath bare feet. A sea stocked with fish, flashing silver as they swim into the nets.
Lyrias slows his pace and circles closer. When he’s almost within range, he throws away his weapons. The short sword flashes once in the sun as it falls. The broken spear shaft he hurls like a javelin. The crowd is on its feet, baying. Lyrias grins at what he hears, teeth stark white against the blood around his mouth. The net is held loosely in one hand. With the other he waves to those shouting his name.
Phoebus readies himself.
He can’t feel the breeze, can’t smell or taste it, his senses trapped within the dark confines of the helmet, but he sees it in the flutter of the awnings above the crowd. It distracts him, just for a moment, for the space of a heartbeat, and then the weighted net clatters over him.
Phoebus ducks, twists, feels the net slide off—but Lyrias closes with him, risking everything. The net snags on Phoebus’s shield, but he ignores it for now. Lyrias has misjudged—is too close, feet kicking up sand as he tries to pull back out of range. A thrust, and Phoebus’s gladius opens a flowering line of red across Lyrias’s ribs.
The crowd screams. Blood splashes onto Lyrias’s loincloth, the fabric greedily drinking it up. It spatters over Lyrias’s legs, drips in great gobs onto the sand. Breaths gasping but smile still in place, Lyrias powers forwards past Phoebus’s guard, which renders the sword useless. He grasps the net in both hands and hurls himself sideways.
The shield is caught in the net. Phoebus doesn’t want to lose it. He resists, injured arm blaring with pain. He crouches, anchoring himself to the ground, and the two of them engage in a deadly tug-of-war. His breaths come fast and hot. There’s no air inside the helmet. Sweat pours out beneath the bronze collar, dashes down his bare chest. The roar of the crowd is muffled by the pounding of his pulse in his ears. If he keeps Lyrias in his sights, he can win this.
Lyrias drops to the sand and rolls beneath the bruising rim of the shield. He’s entangled in the net, but he’s not slowed by it. He hits Phoebus’s lightly armoured legs, throwing him off-balance, and the two of them go sprawling into the blood-darkened dust.
The world tips and spins. Phoebus can see the sky, a cloudless blue. His heart expands. Roaring in his ears—is it the crowd, or is it the surf on the beach where he spent his childhood? There’s no pain in his left arm. There’s no feeling at all. It’s only when he reaches out with his leg that he realises he’s dropped the shield.
Lyrias is on him like an eel, wriggling the length of his body. It reminds him of the time at the cena libera in Puteoli. Late in the evening when the tiros were weeping into their wine and the experienced gladiators had retired with their wives or with other men’s wives, he and Lyrias had taken a jar of Surrentine wine and found a quiet couch tucked away in their host’s summer triclinium. Lyrias had squirmed delightfully then. Now he’s all elbows and knees, jabbing into sore places.
Phoebus’s grasp loosens on the gladius. He’s glad when Lyrias takes it from him. Proud when his lover kneels astride his chest, the blade clutched in his fist. He wants to say something, but can’t find the words. He’s never been good at things like that.
Lyrias leans over him, no longer smiling. Such a shame the secutor’s helmet has no hole for a mouth. Phoebus would like to taste Lyrias one more time. He contents himself instead with the thought that Lyrias’s breath is misting the shining bronze, hiding his reflection as the helmet hides his own face.
In this moment they are one. Then Lyrias glances up. The sky is so very blue.
The blade comes down. Everything goes dark.
*
Phoebus wakes to a nausea so powerful he longs to slip back into oblivion. His head pounds like a blacksmith’s hammer, and when he groans, a rush of vomit fills his mouth.
“Easy, now.” Impersonal hands turn him onto his side and he lies there, retching into a bucket held beneath his head. Only when the sickness has passed and the room stops swinging does he begin to realise where he is.
Brick vaults above him. A brazier burning sweet incense to mask the stink of roasted flesh from cauterising irons. Moans of pain from the wounded. The slop of water in pails, the scuff of sand kicked over fresh bloodstains. The medicus in his butcher’s apron, washing his scalpels and needles clean in vinegar.
“My arm,” Phoebus croaks, but he knows it will be fine. He can feel the bandage tight around his bicep, and the dull throb of pain from the injury. He can feel, too, the cuts elsewhere on his body, stinging with realgar solution and smelly with the cold wet weight of a plaster of Lemnian earth mixed with yarrow and wine.
“You were lucky,” the medicus says, dry as ever.
Phoebus closes his eyes and his thoughts drift. He’s lost the match, but not his life. Lucky indeed. When he’s back on his feet, he’ll offer a black cockerel to Nemesis in gratitude for her favour.
When he opens his eyes again, Lyrias is standing there. He’s dressed in a blue tunic fastened with a wide leather belt, his oiled hair held back with a fillet. The bruising from his broken nose has swollen his face and one eye is closed, surrounded by puffed flesh the colour of the night sky. He still looks beautiful, and Phoebus tells him so.
“You’re a fool,” Lyrias says through a wobbling smile, “but it worked. Your crazy, stupid, utterly bone-headed plan worked.”
Relief greater than any tincture of opium spreads warmth through Phoebus’s body. “I knew if we fought well enough, if we gave the crowd more than what they expected to see, they would call for freedom for us both.”
“It was a risk.”
“One worth taking.” Phoebus twitches his left hand towards Lyrias. “The duumvir’s son is standing for aedile. He’ll do anything to guarantee the votes. Even pay off the cost of two gladiators.”
Lyrias snorts. “Lanista isn’t best pleased.”
“Good.” They share a grin, then Phoebus says, “Let me see it.”
Lyrias lets go of Phoebus’s hand and draws two swords from his belt. Two wooden swords, no good for attack or defence, no good for anything really except for the power of the phrases inscribed upon them.
Ignoring the medicus’s warnings, Phoebus forces himself to sit up. He takes the rudis with his name written upon it. Then, bandaged, aching, his head still tender, he limps out into the sunlight with Lyrias at his side, both of them free men.